The accusers of witches are commonly believed to be men wishing to suppress unruly women. This may be true, but is far more indirect and subtle than popularly believed.

The responsibilities held by the housewife – as already mentioned – had immense importance in her role in society. Women are responsible for preserving the boundaries of social and cultural life. When this process is disrupted, the authority and identity of the housewife are put in question: she can no longer control the processes needed for her to fulfil her role. Rather than admit this loss of control, it may have been easier for the housewife to blame a witch, usually someone who has wronged her.

This is in evidence in the notes of the trial of Agnes Heard, at St Osyth , Essex, in 1579. One of her accusers was Bennet Lane ; a woman with whom Agnes used to be friends with. The two women quarrelled and Bennet accuses Agnes of bewitching her home and disrupting her responsibilities.

Female accusers may have felt the need to assert and prove their own ‘normality’ and their willingness to accept the restrictions and assumptions of a patriarchal society. Accusing another may also have been a way of diverting attention away from themselves.

It may also have been that men manipulated such fears in order to dominate women. Ostracism was a punishment for an unruly woman’s rejection of her allotted role in society.

Due to the anxiety surrounding pregnancy, when a woman was nearing birth, she chose four or five close friends (gossips), one of whom would be the midwife, and they saw her through the labour. They provided her with a mother’s caudle, which was warmed ale or wine with sugar and spices; they also blocked the keyholes in the room and hung heavy drapes over the window. This served to separate the mother from normal household affairs. No men were allowed into the house over the birth period.

The problems arose when a baby was stillborn or malformed or died soon after birth. On these occasions the mother sought to blame outside influences. Often, a woman who had not been chosen to be one of the gossips may feel she had been unfairly treated, and if she voiced these beliefs and the baby was harmed in some way, then the woman who was not included was often blamed.

The Summer Assizes in July 1652 at Maidstone put on trial a number of men and women reputed to be witches. Some were acquitted, others imprisoned or pilloried, but six women were sentenced to death by hanging. A Common’s reprieve for three of them arrived in time to save only one. Due to this, an anonymous author wrote An advertisement to the jury-men of England, touching witches. Contained within this book are several attacks on previously accepted methods for identifying a witch. One of these is against William Perkins, of whom it states:

"Such as shall not bee pleased with this Tractate, are left to their liberty to consider whether all those Proofs and Presumptions number’d up by Mr Perkins for the Conviction of a Witch be not all condemned, or confessed by himselfe to be unsufficient, or uncertaine"

Evidently, not everybody accepted the foregone conclusions about witchcraft. However, the author of An advertisement was wise to remain anonymous. Johan Weyer (1515-1588), who was physician to Duke William of Cleves, was an active opponent of the witchcraft craze and wrote one of the most celebrated books exposing it: De Praestigiis, in 1563. His views created so much opposition that, without the protection of the Duke, he would have been burned as a witch lover.

Balthasar Bekker’s The World Bewitched (1691) was one of the last works attacking the witchcraft craze. Bekker stated that the theory of witchcraft was invented by the papacy "to warm the fires of purgatory and to fill the pockets of the clergy" who burned witches to confiscate their property and to pay the salaries of the inquisitors. Bekker "was turned out of the ministry and and assaulted by nearly all the writes of his age" (Charles W. Upham). He was also called an atheist for questioning the witchcraft craze and was attacked by the Calvinist divines. The Reformed Dutch Church expelled Bekker, but he Amsterdam magistrate prevented a public burning of his book and continued to pay his ministerial stipend.