Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  The fact that these two debated execution dates are a decade apart shows the European witch-hunt was now becoming a thing of the past, a blot on religious history, a dark time that humanity would wish to forget. Depending on which figures you choose to believe, between 30,000 and 200,000 convicted witches lost their lives upon the flames or on the gallows throughout a Europe smothered in superstition.

  Matthew Hopkins – Witch-finder General

  Between the years 1645 and 1647, this self-titled ‘Witch-finder General’ dressed in the fashionable Puritan tunic, cloak and hat, marched through numerous towns in Eastern England, confirming the suspicions of townspeople who believed that one of their own was in league with the Devil. In only fourteen months, Hopkins the witch-hunter passed his own dubious judgement on almost 200 suspected witches, almost surpassing the number of all his fellow witch-finders combined.

  Matthew Hopkins’s success was, for the most part, down to timing. By 1650, the country was embroiled in civil war, creating an unsettled atmos­phere particularly in the eastern counties where there was a considerable amount of support for the republican Roundheads. Owing to these uneasy times of Parliament versus Crown, the regular assizes were suspended and in their place, special commissioners were ordered to dispense rough justice. In the east of England, these commissioners would be parliamen­tarians with a tendency towards the puritanical and a hatred of Catholicism. Unable to vent out their frustrations on the Catholics, the republicans needed scapegoats for their built-up anxiety. It was, therefore, the perfect time for someone to provide the people with a focus. Enter: Matthew Hopkins.

  Matthew was brought up under the influence of his father, James Hopkins, a Puritan minister in Wenham, Suffolk, who ensured that Protestantism coursed through his veins. Rather than following in his father’s footsteps, Matthew chose to study law, and eventually moved to Ipswich to practise. This was far from successful so Hopkins was forced to pursue other avenues. And pursue he did, hunting witches throughout the eastern counties and preying on the insecurities and paranoia of the people during this troubled time.

  Hopkins would tell us later in his published work, The Discovery of Witches, how he began the chase to rid towns and villages of these unwanted Satan wor­ship­pers. In March 1644, in his home town of Manningtree in the north of Essex, he watched seven or eight witches meet every sixth Friday with others of their kind from neighbouring towns and villages, where they would make sacrifices to the Devil. In an attempt to further instil fear in anyone who’d listen, Hopkins went on to claim that four of these sorcer­esses sent a bear 40 kilometres (25 miles) to kill him in his garden. Clearly, this example of sorcery was not potent enough to succeed and Hopkins went on to make formal accusations against these alleged witches, of which nineteen were hanged. A further four died during their incarceration. And so Hopkins’ career as a witch-finder began. The training needed to become a witch-finder cannot have been as extensive as the books and tomes required for his law training. At that time only three publications were widely available to teach Hopkins the way of the witch and how to spot them.

  King James I, a known believer in witchcraft, published his own work in 1597 before he came to the English throne, entitled Daemonologie, in Forme of a Dialogue. The Trial of the Lancashire Witches was documented by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts, in 1612 and twenty-five years later Richard Bernard, a Calvinist Puritan, wrote his Guide To Jurymen, which dealt with protocol involved in bringing charges against those suspected of witchcraft. With the education of such texts, Hopkins was prepared to go among the unenlightened and ill-informed and make use of his training. The majority of the illiterate villagers he came across were easily swayed by the all-knowing witch-finder, and regarding those that did not trust his word he appealed to their religious convictions and directed them to Exodus 22:18 in the King James Bible wherein it stated that, ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.

  The Discovery – The Hunt

  Matthew Hopkins used many irrational and puzzling methods to divine a witch from an innocent, though often the people needed little persuading. In their minds the subject was already guilty and all that was required was confirmation. Such proof was ultimately achieved through confession. This is where Hopkins and his team came in. Sus­pects would very rarely admit to their collusion with the Devil without a degree of coercion. Hopkins expertly ensured that the suspect would come out the shadows and admit their true status as well the crimes they had committed.

  Witch-finding began with the search for the Devil’s mark. This required the subject to be shaved to ensure all areas of the body could be thoroughly inspected. The reference books on witchcraft studied by Hopkins and others like him all state this mark to be a true confirmatory sign that the subject is a witch. This visible symbol upon the skin would often take the form of a teat or nipple which was believed to be used to suckle supernatural imps known as familiars; low-ranking demons given to the witch by the Devil. These came in the shape of domestic animals which were commonly found in the homes of the suspects. If a supposed witch was found not to own a cat or dog, Hopkins and his people would attest that an insect such as a bee or fly discovered in the home was the witch’s familiar!

  Even when the poor victim passed this examina­tion and no visible marks could be found on the body, the witch-finders administered a technique known as ‘pricking’ to discover invisible marks. These unseen marks were unique in that they were resistant to the pricking made by a bodkin – a sharp, pointed dagger – which was stuck into the skin. If the witch felt no pain and blood failed to exit the wound, this was confirmation that the undesirable had the sign of Satan upon her. Hopkins carried his own special bodkin to prove to the cynic that such invisible marks existed. After stabbing the skin, the knife was withdrawn and lo and behold no mark would appear. Little did the witnesses know that Hopkins’ bodkin was a fake. The blade would retract into the handle, therefore inflicting no pain and drawing no blood.

  One way or another, Hopkins was determined to find some sign that the subject was a slave to Satan, bringing further interrogation in order to extract the damning confession. As torture was illegal, Hopkins had to be creative with his techniques and developed alternative methods to acquire the admission; methods that would fail to leave any marks on the body. Some victims would experience sleep depriva­tion for days on end. Others would be forced to pace up and down without respite or sit cross-legged on a table for twenty-four hours, destroying any last trace of resolve. When put through such anguish, the suspect would admit to almost anything in order to stop the torment and Hopkins and his fellow hunters would accept the faintest of grunts and groans as answers to questions or admissions of guilt.

  There was another common practice that reached its peak at the time of Matthew Hopkins. In the eyes of the witch-hunters, witnesses and even the alleged witches themselves – it could clear up any doubt and confirm innocence or guilt. This was known as ‘swimming’ and saw the accused submerged in a nearby lake or pond by her tormentors. The witch was bent double with their arms crossed between their legs and their right thumb tied to their left toe. Another rope was then fixed around their torso and held by a man on either side of the pond. The logic behind this ‘dunking’ came from the Christian act of baptism. Being in league with the Devil, all witches immersed in this way would be rejected by the sacred water and so float to the surface. Those who were pure of faith and innocent of witchcraft would sink and unfortunately drown. Such was the price for absolution. Very few achieved such exoneration, because the men holding the rope were in control and often ensured the submerged suspect would rise from the water, sealing their fate – to be condemned as a witch before their accusers.

  Hopkins would then move on to the next town beseeching him to deliver them from the evil residing in their humble neighbourhood. With the tricks of the trade he had developed it was relatively simple to prove to the next village that they had a witch among them. This witch would usually be the weakest,
poorest soul in the village; one that the community deemed undesirable. All that was needed was the smallest doubt or hint at some strange activity. In such an unenlightened time, almost anything slightly askew could be pounced upon and reviled.

  The Hunted: Elizabeth Clarke

  His first find was a one-legged woman called Elizabeth Clarke. Her mother had been hanged as a witch before her, so the suspicions and rumours had always surrounded her. This was an easy start for Hopkins. He quickly approached a local justice of the peace and swore that Clarke was an enchantress. These accusa­tions saw her arrested and thrown into prison. Behind bars and away from the public eye, Hopkins, and his assistant John Stearne had her stripped, whereupon she was found to possess the devil’s mark in triplicate upon her body. Three ‘teats’ (probably moles) were found, prompting the acquisition of an order to have her watched. Clarke was starved of food and sleep for three consecutive nights, and on the fourth she capitulated, confessing her sins to Hopkins and Stearne. In order to bring an end to the suffering she promised to call one of her familiars – a white imp – and play with it on her lap as proof of her supernatural powers. Her request was refused and soon after she admitted that she regularly slept with the Devil. She told Hopkins that he would take the form of a gentleman and appear several times a week at her bedside demanding sexual relations. The accused confessed she never rejected these advances.

  Along with this carnal confession, Elizabeth continued to disclose further bewitching acts she had committed in the past. She told of how she was instructed by Satan to kill a pig belonging to a Manningtree local, and the horse of one Robert Tayler. She revealed that the white imp was just one of five familiars she kept. This menagery included a white kitten called Holt, Newes the polecat, a black rabbit called Sack-and-Sugar, Jarmara the spaniel and Vinegar Tom, a long-legged greyhound with the head of an ox. These familiars were surely just misunder­stood pets of the one-legged woman but were apparently seen by others, including Hopkins, who on 25 March 1645 during the trial perjured himself in court by swearing under oath that he had seen four of Clarke’s imps appear before inexplicably vanishing into thin air.

  Clarke went further still, implicating other sup­posed witches in the area. Anne and Rebecca West, Anne Leech, Helen Clarke and Elizabeth Gooding were all given up by Clarke and, when questioned, these women surrendered yet more names. In all thirty-two people were indicted, revealing that there clearly was no honour among witches! The trials of these accused slaves of the Devil began in Chelmsford on 29 July 1645. The presiding judge was one Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick who, after hearing the prosecution from Hopkins, found twenty-nine guilty of witchcraft. Ten of these were hanged in Chelmsford, the others were executed in the surrounding villages. Their specific crimes varied though the most common was bewitching to death. The deaths of many unfortunate townsfolk residing in a community that harboured witches were considered to be the work of satanists. Blame was placed not at the doors of poor sanitation and disease but at those of strange old women. Such was the illogical, irrational behaviour of seventeenth century England.

  News of the Chelmsford trials spread quickly throughout the South East and Matthew Hopkins was soon called upon to provide his skilled witch-finding techniques in other towns and villages that believed they too had an infestation. The demand for his services was so great that he had to expand is team. Along with his assistant John Stearne, Hopkins employed Mary ‘Goody’ Phillips a midwife skilled in finding devil’s marks and Edward Parsley and Frances Mills soon followed.

  The Hunted: Lowes

  On 15 August 1645, the people of Great Yarmouth agreed to send for him and in the same month Hopkins and his band of witch-finding employees arrived in Bury St Edmunds where they performed fifteen examinations of possible witches. After the routine search for marks of the devil, four confessions were given freely to the Witch-finder General. Then came the careful invisible torturing or ‘watching’. Confessions from the remaining prisoners came soon after. Two after one day of watching, four after two days and five after three days; the maximum period allowed to achieve a declaration of guilt.

  His next find was John Lowes, the vicar of nearby Brandeston, proving that Hopkin’s prey were not always women. Despite being instituted to the vicarage back in 1596 and with more than fifty years of service, his parishioners turned on him. It has been chronicled that he was a ‘painful preacher’ from whom the townsfolk were keen to liberate them­selves. No doubt the fact that the old clergyman was now well into his eighties and so fitted the profile of the unpopular old crone helped suspicions to grow among the anxious and afraid of Brandeston. He was forced to undergo the ‘swimming’ in the castle ditch of Framlingham, and on being rejected by the water he was kept awake for three days and nights and then made to walk without rest until his feet blistered from constant running back and forth. After this painful and energy-sapping torture, his confessions came thick and fast. He admitted to making a pact with the Devil and sealing it with his own blood, to receiving three familiars which he suckled upon three teats found by the searchers; one on the crown of his head and two under his tongue. He even owned up to causing a ship to sink at Landguard Fort near Harwich, sending out his yellow imp to scupper the vessel, killing fourteen aboard. His confession of this evil act ensured the fate of the minister while also showing how much faith the authorities placed in it, for it is believed that nobody made the necessary effort to find out if a ship had actually foundered that day!

  Lowes was found guilty of many acts of witch­craft and condemned to death. Despite Lowes’s admission that he owned a charm given to him by the Devil, which would prevent him being hanged, the con­victed witch was executed by rope on 27 August 1645, but only after reciting his own burial service as an illustration of his innocence.

  Found Out: The End of Hopkins’s Reign

  By the close of 1645, Hopkins had almost 200 sus­pected witches locked up awaiting trial in Suffolk. The Witch-finder General’s prolific pursuit and prose­cution of these poor unfortunates was now infamous. However, along with those who fervently sought his hunting skills, there were those who had begun to doubt his ‘talent’ for sorcerer spotting. In April 1646, Hopkins abilities were openly challenged. On arriving with his team in Huntingdonshire, he met with opposition from the vicar of Great Staughton, John Gaule, who spoke out against the actions of witch-finders in his services. On discovering this resistance, Hopkins reacted by writing to one of the parishioners, accusing Gaule of ignorance and threatening that he would soon be forced to recant his rants from the pulpit. A battle of words ensued, provoking Gaule into publishing his Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcraft. The book exposed Hopkins as a torturer of the innocent.

  His livelihood under threat, Hopkins retaliated with a published work of his own entitled Discovery of Witches. This was effectively a defence of his role written in question and answer form. It listed fourteen frequently asked questions. In it, he refuted the claim that he was purely out to fleece his countrymen of their money, stating that he never went where he had not been called. This seems to have been the case. As well as finding witches, Hopkins found a steady flow of income worth an estimated total of £1,000. He was invited all over East Anglia visiting Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich, King’s Lynn and Stowmarket, where the authorities even imposed a special tax on its parish­ioners to pay the rate of £28.3d for witch-finding services. This was a huge amount of money consider­ing the average monthly wage at that time was only sixpence.

  The remainder of 1646 saw Hopkins con­tinue offering his services to the towns and villages in the eastern counties. On 26 July 1646, Hopkins saw to the demise of 20 Norfolk witches and in his home county of Suffolk, he is thought to have been respon­sible for the arrest of 124 supposed witches of whom 68 were executed. After this time, however, the call for his witch-hunting prowess grew quiet. Had he success­fully rid East Anglia of all witches? Had the desire to attack undesirables died? Or was the faith of these town
s in the abilities of Matthew Hopkins lost? It is known that Hopkins retired to Manningtree in Essex, while his second in command, John Stearne, chose to move away to Bury St Edmunds, fearing he would stir up public hostility if he remained close to his ‘General’. Stearne went on to write his own work called A Confirmation and Discovery of Witch-Craft in 1648, the year following Hopkins’ death, which is often used to contest the myths that surround Hopkins’ demise. The legend has it that Hopkins was forced to taste his own medicine following an accusation that he was himself a witch. The fairy tale ending has him ducked under the water to prove his innocence. Stearne wrote that in fact Hopkins died peacefully after suffer­ing from consump­tion – another term for tuberculosis – and was buried in the nearby village of Mistley on 12 August 1647.

  While Hopkins’s ability to discover witches is doubtful, his skill as a spin doctor is inarguable. He was able to heighten awareness of witchcraft as a harmful demonic practise and feed the paranoia emanating from that. With such an air of mystery and intrigue surrounding witchcraft, it was easy for Hopkins to manipulate any factor to serve his actions. His skills must have seemed almost supernatural, with some degree of irony, and one can conclude that Matthew Hopkins successfully bewitched the villagers and townsfolk throughout East Anglia quickly and effectively with ease.

  Salem

  One of the most infamous episodes in witch-hunting occurred a long way from Europe. In 1692, a small farming village in the American state of Massachu­setts saw the beginning of a fanatical hunt for sorcerers. What made the Salem witch-hunts so remarkable was that the accusations did not come from some authoritative body or expert witch-hunter but from a group of deluded teenage girls. Their finger-pointing and melodramatic theatrics in effect sealed the fate of between 170 and 200 supposed witches, although only twenty were eventually executed.