THE REAL WITCH-HUNTER

When Claire Boobbyer discovered strange marks above her fireplace, her curiosity led her down a macabre path

Young Matthew Hopkins was lowered into an unmarked grave. He had breathed his last, rasping, tubercular breath in his mid 20s on 12 August 1647, 375 years ago.

Unremarkable in death but terrifying in life, Matthew Hopkins grew up in a God-fearing household in Great Wenham, Suffolk, to become Britain’s self-styled Witchfinder General.

He believed in a Christian-driven mission to find women feared as witches and provide proof of their witchcraft to send them to trial. Convictions then led them straight to the gallows.

Between 1645 and 1647 Hopkins, the son of a rector, and comfortably off with an inheritance, wreaked havoc in East Anglia. He dressed in bucket-top boots with spurs, a broad linen collar, cape, and hat, and was accompanied by his pet greyhound, and sidekick John Stearne. Communities, gripped by fear, invited the duo (who were paid by parish taxes) to gather evidence of women (and some men) who were suspected by their neighbours of casting curses and cavorting with the Devil.

At Halesworth, Suffolk, near where I live, Hopkins investigated a bewitching of the beer at the brewhouse that killed local drinkers. In our newly acquired 500-yearold home, apotropaic marks, aka ‘witches’ marks’ to ward

Left to right: Manningtree is famed for its association with witches; an engraving of Hopkins at work off evil, are carved above our fireplace. The fear of sorcery must have been very real. Manningtree and Mistley unfurl along the south bank of the River Stour in Essex. Historian Malcolm Gaskill, author of several books on witchcraft, pinpoints the eye of the storm to Manningtree and the cold winter of Christmas 1644 when a tailor’s wife was struck down by an unnatural fever. The worried tailor summoned a female healer from across the Stour who denounced Elizabeth Clarke, a one-legged widow, as having bewitched his wife. Hopkins, now living in Manningtree, picked up the gossip. He’d been disturbed by sabbats in the woods – witches’ meetings, held every six weeks on a Friday night. When the news reached his home on South Street, close to the Red Lion pub, that ‘familiars’ or imps (spirits disguised as animals that were consulted and suckled) had been helping Clarke, his ears twitched. John Stearne collected the ‘confession’ of Clarke, presented it to the local magistrate, and obtained a warrant for ‘searching.’

Clarke was arrested and picked over by ‘searchers’, women recruited from the neighbourhood, who looked for marks on her body to prove suckling ‘familiars’ drank her blood. Over the course of three days, she was denied sleep (‘watched’) to see if the ‘familiars’ visited her.

Searchers found three teats in her genital region.

Clarke, later, in the presence of Hopkins and Stearne, confessed to sleeping with the Devil, and called the Devil’s ‘imps’ into the room. A dog, rabbit, toad, a polecat, and other animals entered. Clarke also denounced a neighbour as a witch.

Providing ‘fixed criteria of proof’, says Gaskill, was crucial. Clarke was sent to Colchester gaol. Her confession and the ‘watching’ experience gave Hopkins and Stearne the ‘mandate’ to continue their hunt. Word spread quickly and over the summer of 1645, 150 men and women from Suffolk were identified as witches.

Elizabeth Clarke was among 29 women suspected of witchcraft brought to trial at Chelmsford. Hopkins and Stearne gave evidence as witnesses before a jury who convicted 15 women, including Clarke. Their sentence? To be hanged by the neck.

But how did neighbour come to accuse neighbour? “Everybody believed in God, the Devil, the possibility of magic and the reality of magic,” says Alison Rowlands, Professor in European History at the University of Essex.

“And if you are going to get one of your neighbours hanged – testifying and going to trial – you had to have a fairly deep investment in the process.”

The roots of the 17th-century witch-hunting craze are found 200 years before in a 101 guide. The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of The Witches), published by Catholic German monks in 1486, instructed how to identify a witch, put them on trial, and punish them. It was the second most popular book at the time after the Bible.

Malleus recommended torture to secure confession, that secular courts prosecute witches for heresy, and the death penalty for the convicted. It built on the Church’s teaching, laid down in the Canon Episcopi of AD900. Witchery was forbidden but, crucially, it didn’t declare witchcraft to be real, just a delusion.

The publication of Malleus stepped up the brutality and punishment in the 15th century. In 1542 the Witchcraft Act was passed; it was revised in 1563. King James I of England, arch Anglican, and once sceptic of the supernatural, penned Daemonologie in 1597 describing the ‘fearefull aboundinge… of these detestable slaves of the Devil, the witches or enchanters.’ In 1604 the Act was strengthened: invoking evil spirits and keeping ‘familiars’ with the purpose of creating harm was punishable by death. The testy atmosphere of the 1640s was rooted in a decade earlier of religious conflict when solidly Puritan East Anglia was swept up in the politics and the religion of the day. England, from 1629, was now under the rule of King James’s son Charles I who rejected Parliament and ruled as an absolute monarch by royal decree. He increased taxes and tried to suppress Puritanism. Civil war broke out in August 1642. In Essex, men and women faced off in anger lingering Catholics,

Clarke, later, in the war disrupted the assizes, harvests failed and poverty befell many. presence of Hopkins and Turmoil percolated through daily life; superstitions and Christian Stearne, confessed to sleeping rituals ebbed and flowed. The with the Devil atmosphere was ripe for suspicions to be cast. This tinderbox led to hundreds being put on trial in eastern England Clockwise, from Into this maelstrom strode Hopkins and Stearne. They above: Matthew exploited the disruption of the courts and countryside to Hopkins; a witch’s style themselves as arbiters of justice. Gaskill says their bottle at the Colchester Museum exhibition; Wenham self-styled witch hunt across East Anglia led to around 300 interrogations and 100 executions. But the pair only Church; a ferret is achieved their mission because local people were one of the devil’s complicit in the witch hunt. ‘imps’; Old Knobbly, “They were maverick Puritans,” Professor Rowlands where the witches’ sabbats were held; the green on South says, “but there was a whole system of complicity – from the Justices of the Peace, local officials, and the accusers. Street; the Red “It’s important to remember,” she says “that all Lion Pub suspects were tried by a court of law. They weren’t tried

But on 1 August 1645, four women tried at Chelmsford were executed on the sloping green on South Street opposite the Red Lion pub

Clockwise, from top left: Magpies were believed to have the Devil’s blood on their tongues; Colchester Castle imprisoned hundreds of suspected witches during the trials; 13 witches were kept in The Cage in 1582 by Hopkins and Stearne, and there was no lynching.

“But what happened in particular,” says Professor Rowlands, “is that they offered their services to communities and spread the hunt further than they needed to have done by going around East Anglia. They also used ‘watching’ a lot, which quickly got confessions out of people.”

Today, Manningtree and Mistley are well-heeled pretty villages of small greens and handsome sash-windowed homes, shops, and cafés. But on 1 August 1645, four women tried at Chelmsford were executed on the sloping green on South Street, opposite the Red Lion pub.

Today, a new ‘Revisiting the Essex Witch Trials, Where are the Women?’ (snappingthestiletto.co.uk/rewt) route with QR codes takes you to 12 stops where a story about the accused, and augmented reality art by artist Sian Fan inspired by the stories, can be accessed via a smartphone.

By night, Haunting Nights tours talk you through the ghastly sights and sounds of bygone Mistley.

“A lot of stories are told from the male point of view,” says Professor Rowlands.

“It’s important to get these stories told that foreground the women – without belittling what happened to them.”

Hopkins’ undoing came when the God-fearing souls of East Anglia became sceptical and John Gaule, a minister, questioned Hopkins’ expertise, suggested the teats on witches’ bodies could be natural marks from piles or childbearing, and that witch finding should only be undertaken by the Church or the law. Hopkins published his own defence – The Discovery of Witches – in May 1647. Three months later he was dead. There was no suggestion that witchcraft was at work. n Until 6 January 2023 an exhibition Wicked Spirits? Witchcraft + Magic at Colchester Castle will carry out its own investigations into the witch-hunts of East Anglia. colchester.cimuseums.org.uk/wickedspirits