House of Lords Scotland and Ireland. The House of Lords was reduced to a largely powerless body, with Cromwell and his supporters in the Commons dominating the Government. On 19 March 1649, the House of Lords was abolished by an Act of Parliament, which declared that "The Commons of England [find] by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England." The House of Lords did not assemble again until the Convention Parliament met in 1660 and the monarchy was restored. It returned to its former position as the more powerful chamber of Parliament—a position
Great Scottish witch hunt of 1649–50 of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Berwick-upon-Tweed as well as in the surrounding villages in Northumberland, in which Scottish witch hunters were involved. Some 612 records of accusations of witchcraft are known for Scotland in the years 1649 and 1650. Of these most, 399, are from 1649. They include 556 named persons and another 243 unnamed persons. According to Christine Larner, 1649 was "the year which may have seen the greatest number of executions in the whole of Scottish witch-hunting". More than 300 witches were executed in the trials, with as many as 200 executions in Lothian alone. The Newcastle witch trials involved