It is interesting to note, that the 1586 Witchcraft Act appears to ameliorate the punishment for killing someone by sorcery down from a treason (for murder 1495) to a regular felony, as murders might be most common law jurisdictions.

There's no mention of petty-treason in the act, as there was no need for England (as it would have been understood), upon which it was based, but it seems to me that by going against Irish homicide law with the 1586 act, a convicted killer might convincingly argue that the more

A legal-historian of early modern Irish crime and punishment, I will 'live-tweet' the last days and hours of John Atherton, a bishop of Waterford & Lismore and ally of the Wentworth executive, who was executed on 5 Dec 1640 in Dublin. One of the primary sources for this is Nicholas Bernard, 'The penitent death of a woefull sinner', published in London in 1651. Bernard attended to Atherton's spiritual needs in the condemned cell at Dublin Castle, whilst being transported north of the river, and at the scaffold