Witchfinder General by Ronald Bassett

Author:Ronald Bassett [Bassett, Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2015-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

1645

Chapter 15

Hopkins and Goody Phillips reached the frozen Waveney River, the northern limit of Suffolk, in late December, and entered Hoxne in a swirling snowstorm. A township that had enjoyed importance under the Saxon kings, and harboured the murder of St Edmund the Martyr, Hoxne had long been eclipsed by the younger and more vigorous Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds — a fact viewed with sullen resentment by its common council. But if towns of lesser lineage had arraigned witches, to the confusion of Satan and the greater glory of God, then Hoxne was not to be outdone, and Sir John Thruston, Justice of the Peace and staunch pillar of the True Church, gave Hopkins, with some misgivings, authority to proceed.

Dorothy Roper was Hopkins’ sixtieth victim, and now he was as skilled as he was callous. Since Brandeston he had contemplated the opposite sex with detestation. ‘God’s law proves,’ he claimed, ‘that women are more corrupted than men. There are fifty witches to one sorcerer. Quintilian said that women are worse than men, and Plato wrote that woman is a transitional stage between wild beast and man. Women are liars. They have larger intestines than men — and wisdom never comes from women!’ Hopkins was determined that woman would pay sevenfold for the downfall of Eve — and the old wife was doomed from the moment he had noted her name.

He used the methods he had proven at Manningtree. She was kept sleepless and naked in the December iciness of Hoxne’s gaol for several days then, exhausted, confessed that she did indeed maintain an imp named Nan. This was sufficient, and it mattered nothing that, following a night’s rest, she forswore her confession, protesting bitterly that the only ‘Nan’ she knew was a pullet she called by that name. Hopkins, she sobbed, had twisted her words.

Pompous Thruston, beset by doubts, had the temerity to suggest the possibility of error in Hopkins’ findings. The lawyer, no longer awed by rural magistrates, smote the floor with his cane and answered hotly.

‘You will ever be deceived by the spawn of Eve!’ he snarled. ‘If I had my way I would torture and break her in body and spirit. I would strip her before the court, her head and genitals shaven — so that no devil might be concealed in her hair. I would lead her before you backwards so that her eyes might not rest on you and bewitch you — and I would drive a stake through her corpse so that the Devil should not raise her from the grave!’

Savagely, Hopkins sought more women to arraign. Alice Warner, of Rushmere, was forced to confess that she entertained evil spirits whom she ordered to carry lice to the wife of a man named Wright, and so make her lousy. Elizabeth Green, of Wingfield, conceded, under pressure, that she had familiars in the shape of three chickens, named Giles, Alse and Bess, which had been given to her by a Goody Wright of Stradbrooke,

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