The Bewitching of Anne Gunter by Sharpe James;

Author:Sharpe, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

The trial demonstrated two peculiarities. The first was its length. As already mentioned, assize trials in this period were normally short affairs, sometimes taking as little as twenty minutes. The trial of Anne Gunter's tormentors began, according to Chocke, with the jurors being sworn in between 2 and 3 p.m., after which ‘they stood at the bar, hearing the evidence’ for eight hours, at the end of which process ‘they went from the court, to consider the issue, and the proofs, that were made of the evidence’. Thomas Hinton, likewise, was to comment that ‘a great part of that whole day (as he remembreth) was spent by the judges with great diligence in the business’. Secondly, the social profile of the trial jury was unusually high. The jury at an assize trial was usually composed of men of middling property, typically drawn from those yeomen, husbandmen and tradesmen whose role as constable or other local officer had ensured that they were already at the assizes, and therefore might conveniently be empanelled as jurors. On this occasion, Alexander Chocke, gentleman and justice of the peace, was made foreman of the jury, two other justices, Edward Clarke and Thomas Dolman, were sworn in as jurors, while the remaining jurymen were, in Chocke's words, Very sufficient jurors, and men of good quality and sufficiency for the trial of the said persons’. The judges, perhaps alert to the general difficulties involved in trying witchcraft, or perhaps conscious of the difficult circumstances surrounding this case, were evidently cautious to show as much care as possible in securing a fair trial.

This raises the intriguing possibility that the judges might have been briefed to expect a difficult witchcraft case at Abingdon. We know that Anne's alleged bewitchment had attracted official attention in London before the judges had set out. Early in 1605 the newly appointed bishop of London, Richard Vaughan, had asked the fellows of the College of Physicians to examine Anne to determine whether her sufferings were caused by witchcraft. We have already encountered Edward Jorden giving medical evidence in the case of Mary Glover, which occurred three years before Anne's, and trying unconvincingly to persuade the judge that in this instance the allegations of witchcraft were false. Jorden was, in fact, only one of a number of doctors involved in this case, for those anxious to secure a conviction, as well as those who thought the supposed bewitcher innocent, had gone to the College of Physicians in search of expert medical opinion to help bolster their position. The Glover case was one of a number of well-publicized incidents of bewitchment and possession that took place around 1600, and it is perhaps significant that the opinions of the College should once more be sought. The three members of the College appointed to examine Anne made their report on 4 March (that is, immediately after the trial at Abingdon), and in it they said that Anne was feigning possession. It is interesting to speculate as to whether the assize judges had been given advance warning of this opinion.

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