Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, it is estimated that approximately 110,000 were accused of witch-craft, with some 60,000 “confessing” and being tortured or executed. Among the tens of thousands accused and/or executed, many were women who were often single, widowed, and of lower socioeconomic status. According to Sarah and Brady Hughes, “…centralized governments were willing to prosecute on sexual and religious matters fell heaviest on the lower class, those unable to use the law to protect themselves – too uneducated to learn to use its ways or too poor to afford it. The women who suffered from these handicaps were particularly vulnerable when the state turned its attention to witchcraft.” Sarah and Brady’s
