England's Witchcraft Trials by England's Witchcraft Trials

Author:England's Witchcraft Trials [Trials, England's Witchcraft]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General
ISBN: 9781473870963
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

The Witch-Finders: Bury St Edmunds – 1645

For first the Devil’s policy is great, in persuading many to come of their own accord to be tried, persuading them their marks are so close they shall not be found out, so as diverse have come 10 or 12 miles to be searched of their own accord, and hanged for their labour.

The Discovery of Witches, Matthew Hopkins, 1647

Unlike Continental Europe, there was only one time during its history when England could be said to have experienced a true ‘witch craze’ or panic.1 In the mid-seventeenth century, when the country was battling against itself in civil war, the people of England found themselves with another enemy within to contend with: the witch.

The period saw an eruption of accusations and executions for the crime of witchcraft, and the area to suffer the most in this fresh wave of persecution were the towns and villages of East Anglia. With both Suffolk and neighbouring Essex a hotbed of political, social and religious tensions, the area was a smouldering powder keg waiting to explode at any moment. The preceding decades had seen relatively few official accusations for witchcraft, with prosecution and execution on the wane, but now, in the heightened atmosphere of the Civil War and the perceived collapse of order and security, local fears and suspicions that had been building steadily were vented, bubbling over with fatal consequences.

Of all the names connected with this period there are surely none better known than those of Matthew Hopkins and his co-worker John Stearne. With thousands of deaths and horrifying feats of torture and torment attributed to the pair, the ‘Witch-Finder General’ and his reign of terror are, to many, the epitome of seventeenth-century fanaticism and persecution. Over a period of just three years, Hopkins and Stearne travelled between many towns and villages, identifying and ousting witches in vast numbers as they went. Ensuring that as many victims as possible paid the penalty for their crimes, they themselves were also paid, some said very handsomely, for their work.2

One of the largest yields achieved by the witch-finders – and indeed of the entire period – took place at the assizes in the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds in August 1645. As related in the pamphlet A True Relation of the Arraignment of Eighteen Witches that were tried, convicted and condemned, at a Sessions holden at Edmunds-bury in Suffolk, eighteen individuals from the surrounding area went to the noose as a result of the trial, making it not only a record for Hopkins, but also marking the largest single trying of witches to take place in England.

Their work in Suffolk was not their first; in the early months of 1645, the two men had passed through Essex, leaving a string of suspected witches festering in the foetid conditions of Colchester Castle. They had been rather over-zealous and complaints began to mount, with the pair finally having to leave the county before they were hounded out all together.

With this previous experience

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