Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England

Joan of Navarre, Eleanor Cobham, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and Elizabeth Woodville. Four royal women in 15th-century England, related in family and in court ties, who were accused of practicing witchcraft in order to kill or influence the king. Some of these women may have turned to the "dark arts" in order to divine the future or obtain healing potions, but the purpose of the accusations was purely political. Despite their status, these women were vulnerable because of their gender, as the men around them moved them like pawns for political gains. In a time when the line between science and magic was blurred, their trials offer insight into how malicious magic would be used and would later cause such mass hysteria in centuries to come.