CHAPDISC: DH29, THE LOST DIADEM

[Goddlefrood]

No: HPFGUIDX 184355

Many thanks to Yolanda for an excellent summary.

> Yolanda:
> 3)  Despite the source (Alecto Carrow, a Death Eater) could there 
> be some truth about Muggles driving wizards "into hiding by being
> vicious towards them"?

Goddlefrood:

Absolutely. The date that the WW went into seclusion (1689 or 1692, 
depending which book one prefers to believe) is no coincidence IMO. 
At that time, and not only from an English and Welsh perspective - 
Scotland didn't join the union until a few years later - there was 
a great deal of persecution against witches in particular from the 
Muggle population. The same was true in North America and elsewhere. 
1692 was the year of the Salem witch trials, something related to 
witches in Mexico iirc, as well as being the year in which the 
Massacre at Glencoe occurred. The latter didn't involve witches 
or wizards per se, but it might have for all we can now ascertain 
;-)

For some centuries prior to this date, which I think JKR took as 
being significant because of all or some of the above incidents, 
witches and wizards had been victims of torture in order to 
extract confessions from them. Some were burnt at the stake, 
Agnes Nutter (one of the Pendle witches burned in 1612 - the 
date of a goblin rebellion) multiple times. This earlier incident 
was during the time of James I, a vehement anti-witch who even 
wrote several tracts against them.

In the fictional WW I suspect there was a strong movement 
toward seclusion for many decades before the seclusion law 
came into effect largely due to what the Muggles were doing. 
Once the seclusion was enforced it appears that witch and 
wizard persecution at first reduced and then proceeded to 
decline to the point where Muggles ceased to believe that 
they existed.