Terror of the Witchfinder
QUESTION The 1968 film Witchfinder General is based on 17th-century witch hunter Matthew Hopkins. How accurately does it portray him? Witchfinder General was a lowbudget horror film directed by Michael reeves and starring Vincent Price.
in graphic detail it tells the story of Matthew hopkins, a lawyer from Suffolk, who set himself up as a freelance interrogator of witches.
With his partner John Stearne (played by robert russell), between 1645 and 1647, he secured the conviction and execution of 230 people for witchcraft.
the film is based on an historical novel by ronald Bassett, which is a mixture of fact and fiction.
it takes the trial and execution of a real priest, John Lowes (rupert davies), as its starting point, adding a fictional love story between Lowes’s ward Sara (hilary dwyer) and a roundhead soldier, richard Marshall (ian Ogilvy).
hopkins claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, though this title was never bestowed on him by Parliament.
his reign of terror began in March 1645 in the village of Manningtree, essex, where he was living. his investigation resulted in the execution of 19 local women in July.
there are documents showing hopkins and Stearne tried more than 250 people for witchcraft between July and december 1645. despite this, little is known of hopkins other than he was the son of a Suffolk clergyman, trained as a lawyer and died of consumption in 1647.
technically, torture was illegal in england by 1645. the film accurately portrays how hopkins subverted this by putting suspected witches through sleep deprivation to extract confessions.
Another of his methods was the swimming test, based on the idea that as witches had renounced their baptism, water would reject them.
the suspects, who were mainly women, were tied to a chair and thrown into the water. All those who ‘swam’ — that is floated — were considered to be witches.
the film shows his attempts to find and pierce the ‘devil’s mark’ — the teat that witches used to suckle their imps, usually concealed as a mole or wart. it was said it would not hurt or bleed if pricked.
in the film, Stearne is seen piercing these with a dagger. hopkins’s real method was more insidious: he used a retractable pin, so it would appear that he was piercing the mole or wart. this method ensured a high conviction rate.
the film has inaccuracies. hopkins was probably in his 20s, not middle-aged like Price; it does not show any of the trials; and hopkins was never legally sanctioned, as the film implies.
the depiction of witch-hunting as the manipulation of a credulous public during the civil War is justifiable.
James Sharpe, writing in instruments Of darkness: Witchcraft in early Modern england, commends the film for coming close to historical accuracy.
Michael Fulton, Southampton. QUESTION What is known of Richard Birch Hoyle, who translated Edmond Budry’s hymn A Toi La Gloire to give us one of our great Easter hymns, Thine Be The Glory? richArd Birch hOYLe was born in cloughfold, Lancashire, on March 8, 1875, into a Methodist family.
he trained for the Baptist ministry at regent’s Park college, London, and served as a minister for 26 years in Aberdeen, Sudbury, Suffolk, London and Belvedere, Kent, and worked for the YMcA movement, editing its magazine, the red triangle.
from 1934 to 1936, he was visiting professor of systematic theology — the study of christian doctrine along orderly, rational lines — at Western theological Seminary, Pittsburgh.
despite the fact he had hearing problems, hoyle was a polyglot who translated hymns from 13 languages into english, including 30 french hymns.
While his most famous translation is thine Be the Glory, other well-known works include holy God, We Praise thy name (from German) and What Joy to think Of that Vast host (danish).
hoyle died in Wimbledon on december 14, 1939, aged 64. Mrs Andrea Moore, Twickenham, Middx. A tOi La Gloire was written in Switzerland by edmund Bundry (1854-1932), a pastor at Vevey for 35 years.
it was published in french in 1904 and uses an arrangement of a chorus from handel’s Judas Maccabaeus from 1746.
John Webb, St Albans, Herts. QUESTION When a rocket is launched for a Moon mission, does it fly straight? further to the earlier answer that explained the difficulties of hitting the Moon — which is in orbit around the earth at a distance of 239,000 miles and travelling at 2,000mph — the film Apollo 13 illustrated this well, showing an engineer using a slide rule to calculate a course correction for the spacecraft.
this was 1970, so was before the era of fast computers and even the widespread use of pocket calculators. A slide rule consists of two pieces of wood or plastic that slide together and make use of the logarithmic scale to make complex mathematical calculations.
A logarithm compresses scale — the most widely used example is the indication of the severity of an earthquake, where magnitude seven would shake ten times more than magnitude six.
to make the course correction for a Moon mission, the engineer would need to do the calculation in three dimensions, adding space-time before deciding for how long to burn the single engine.
A mistake would have resulted in the capsule burning up in the earth’s atmosphere or spinning into space without any chance of recovery.
Bill Fewtrell, Hook, Hants.
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