Devout Puritan, money-grabbing charlatan or servant of Satan? Discover England’s most infamous witch hunter
Devout Puritan, money-grabbing charlatan or servant of Satan? Discover the truth behind England’s most infamous witch hunter
There is perhaps no other name so closely connected with the horrors of the witch-hunting era in England than that of Matthew Hopkins, the man responsible for more confessions of and executions for witchcraft than any other individual in English history.
Under Elizabeth I and then James I, witchcraft was a felony, and witchcraft-related crimes could mean the death penalty for those convicted at the assize courts. Despite the initial spate of executions under the Witchcraft Acts of 1562 and 1604, however, by the mid-17th century, official persecution for witchcraft had greatly dwindled, with magisterial interest in the crime on the wane for the preceding several decades. With the advent of the English Civil Wars, this changed; a deadly cocktail of social, religious and political breakdown led to unique and volatile conditions that ignited a new fear of the enemy within, a fear that found expression in renewed attacks on that most deadly of foes: the witch.
It was this very shift that allowed Hopkins and his ideas to flourish fatally unchecked during the brief span of his witch-hunting career. Born the son of a Puritan clergyman, according to Hopkins, his mission was inspired by personal experience. In 1644, nearby to his home in Manningtree,
Essex, a group of witches apparently used to meet for their Friday Sabbats, and he listened in on their diabolical conversations. Terrifyingly, Hopkins found he had not been careful enough; the witches had caught wind of his eavesdropping, and as punishment had sent a spirit in the form of a bear to kill him.
Hopkins met a man with a similar mindset – John Stearne – in March 1645. The pair set on a deadly path together, which would wreak havoc across rural England. Amid the speculation, worry and suspicion bubbling beneath a country divided, in the county of Essex, local magistrates Sir Harbottle Grimston and Sir Thomas Bowes were encountering tales that were alarming indeed. Witches, it was said, were rife, causing illness, suffering and death to local people and livestock. Even worse, these witches were members of the very communities they were tormenting; a threat from within at a time when it was more crucial than ever to be united.
One of those suspected was aged, one-legged Elizabeth Clarke from Manningtree, who was accused by tailor John Rivet of bewitching his wife. Supposedly, it was Elizabeth Clarke’s name (according to Hopkins) that had been whispered by the Manningtree witches. Amid a heady combination of accusation, fear and fate, Stearne, with Hopkins assisting, was at the forefront
of the mission to uncover what lay behind the accusations. Elizabeth was arrested and searched, and before the sorry affair reached its end, the poor, elderly woman had confessed to owning devilish imps, having sexual intercourse with Satan, and had implicated numerous others into the bargain.
In the wake of this startling development, further suspects were taken in for questioning, and thanks in large part to the dubious methods employed by Hopkins and his associates, confessions of all manner of dark crimes came to light. The witches of Essex were a plague on the area, responsible for causing much suffering to innocent people. Central to the plethora of scandalous details related before the eager witchfinders was the confession of making a pact with the Devil and the owning of imps or familiars. These spirits – appearing in a variety of seemingly innocent forms such as cats, dogs, ferrets and birds – carried out the witch’s evil tasks on her behalf. Unbelievable as such beliefs may seem, Hopkins and Stearne, along with a goodly proportion of the population, were in no doubt as to the existence of such creatures. The witch hunters had more reason than most to believe such claims; they had witnessed them first-hand, as Elizabeth Clarke introduced one after another of her familiars to those who watched her. No doubt merely the old woman’s pets, but in the heightened atmosphere of suspicion, fear and sleep deprivation, all present were convinced that what they saw confirmed the existence of a witch and her devilish imps.
What could persuade someone to confess to such clearly fantastical things? In the questioning of Elizabeth Clarke, Hopkins and Stearne hit upon a winning formula. The suspect was stripped and her body searched; those carrying out the task briefed on the variety of seemingly innocent marks, moles or lumps that actually betrayed the places from where a witch fed her imps. Such ‘teats’ were often concealed from view, but their use was glaringly apparent to the trained eye. Other marks betrayed the pact the witch had made with the Devil. The goal now was to extract a confession, and, as a bonus, to get the suspect to incriminate others in the process. The suspected witch was not to be allowed to sleep until this aim was achieved. Appointed ‘watchers’ remained with her at all times to enforce this, and also to keep a look out for the expected appearance of the suspect’s imps, sure to come to be fed by their mistress once enough time had passed. Keeping someone from sleep for a prolonged period of time against their will is hard but not impossible; suspects were walked back and forth repeatedly across the room in which they were held, feet rubbed raw, legs aching, body and spirit crying out for mercy at any cost. The price was high: the deeds related under such conditions were enough to send many desperate, exhausted people – Elizabeth Clarke among them – to the noose.
Although they were welcomed by many, there were criticisms of the work of the witchfinders from the start, and by the summer of 1645,
the pair moved on, passing across the county border into Suffolk and leaving the dungeons of Colchester Castle to hold a crop of suspected witches awaiting trial.
It was in this county that the greatest excesses of Hopkins and Stearne were carried out, as with carefully honed techniques, they set about their work afresh, leading to one of England’s largest witch trials and executions for the crime of witchcraft in England’s history. The two men parted company, covering one half of the towns and villages each as they worked their way through those that showed signs of being most receptive to their scheme. With fear and suspicion ratcheted to unprecedented levels, under the Puritan zeal of Hopkins and Stearne, it was in the summer of 1645 that England experienced its only true witch craze.
As was true of previous spates of witchcraft prosecution in England, those accused before the eager witchfinders were mostly women; often old, disliked or known for immoral or undesirable behaviour. Women were also viewed as an easy target for accusers, and to defy feminine gender norms was deeply threatening to English village society. If denouncing troublemaking women for witchcraft was all it took to be rid of them for good, then that was to be done. It was also believed that women were more likely to not only be taken in by the scheming promises of the Devil, but also to spread what they learned to others. Under Hopkins’ careful questioning, tales of hardship, poverty, bereavement and loneliness
"to defy gender norms was deeply threathening to village society"
were shaped and molded to fit the narrative he now expected to find; these women had been seduced – in many cases, quite literally – by the Devil himself.
It was in Suffolk also that it became clear, however, that witchcraft was not exclusively a female issue; several men found themselves accused and arrested on suspicion of witchcraftrelated crimes. Brandeston vicar John Lowes was the most prominent of these. Aged over 80, known for being quarrelsome and determined in an argument, Lowes tragically fell victim to Hopkins’ witch-hunting fervour and the longstanding dislike by his parishioners. Accused of being guilty of murder by witchcraft, owning and feeding imps and being the very head of a coven of dangerous witches, Lowes refused to admit to anything that might incriminate him. It was only after Hopkins had the elderly man swum (a type of water torture) in the moat at Framlingham Castle that Lowes at last began to cooperate, broken by a man whose determination to win outshone even his own. Before a triumphant Hopkins, Lowes confessed to causing harm and death by witchcraft, including sending his imps to cause deadly mischief at sea – capsizing ships on more than one occasion. He also revealed marks on his tongue and head, showing where he fed his familiars, and was taken before a magistrate before being imprisoned with the growing number of other suspects.
The accused were tried at the Bury St Edmunds assizes on 26 August, the fear of news that
Royalist forces were advancing on the area further heightening the atmosphere of panic that gripped those involved. 18 were found guilty of causing death and injury by witchcraft and sentenced to death for the next day, marking not only the largest yield in a single trial for Hopkins, but also the largest single execution for witchcraft in English history. The condemned women and men spent their final night in a barn, where all but one made a pledge to say nothing further until the end. The assizes were suspended until further notice due to the pressure of the Royalist advance, leaving by some estimations a couple of hundred suspected witches under lock and key, untried.
It was too late for Lowes and his companions, however, and they went to the gallows in one of the worst travesties of the period. Although Stearne was allegedly present at the execution on 27 August, having recorded the fact in his later justification of their witch-hunting excesses, the whereabouts of Hopkins is unknown. Although they continued to operate for the next couple of years, extending into Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire and leaving pockets of witch-hunting fever in their wake, Bury St Edmunds heralded the beginning of the end for Hopkins and Stearne.
Criticisms of the pair and their work across East Anglia and beyond had been gaining volume for some time, and they would never again be able to act so freely. Printed two years later, Hopkins’ pamphlet, The Discovery of Witches, details the main criticisms against the witch hunters, along with Hopkins’ refutation of them.