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Witchcraft
was not made a capital offence in Britain until 1563 although it was
deemed heresy and was denounced as such by Pope Innocent III in
1484. from 1484 until around 1750 some 200,000 witches were
tortured, burnt or hanged in Western Europe. Most
supposed witches were usually old women, and invariably poor.
Any who were unfortunate enough to be 'crone-like', snaggle-toothed,
sunken cheeked and having a hairy lip were assumed to possess the
'Evil Eye' ! If they also had a cat this was taken a proof, as
witches always had a 'familiar', the cat being the most
common. Many
unfortunate women were condemned on this sort of evidence and hanged
after undergoing appalling torture. The 'pilnie-winks' (thumb
screws) and iron 'caspie-claws' (a form of leg irons heated over a
brazier) usually got a confession from the supposed
witch. Witch
fever gripped East Anglia for 14 terrible months between 1645 -
1646. The people of these eastern counties were solidly
Puritan and rabid anti-Catholics and easily swayed by bigoted
preachers whose mission was to seek out the slightest whiff of
heresy. A man called Matthew Hopkins, an unsuccessful lawyer, came to
help (!) He became known as the 'Witchfinder General' . He had 68
people put to death in Bury St. Edmunds alone, and 19 hanged at
Chelmsford in a single day. After Chelmsford he set off for
Norfolk and Suffolk. Aldeburgh paid him £6 for clearing the
town of witches, Kings Lynn £15 and a grateful Stowmarket
£23. This was at a time when the daily wage was 2.5p. A
heart carved on a wall in the market place at Kings Lynn is supposed
to mark the spot where the heart of Margaret Read, a condemned witch
who was being burnt at the stake, leapt from the flames and struck
the wall. Much
of Matthew Hopkins theories of deduction were based on Devils Marks.
A wart or mole or even a flea-bite he took to be a Devils Mark and
he used his 'jabbing needle' to see if these marks were insensitive
to pain. His 'needle' was a 3 inch long spike which retracted into
the spring-loaded handle so the unfortunate woman never felt any
pain.
Matthew
Hopkins, Witch Finder General. From a broadside published by Hopkins
before 1650 There
were other tests for witches. Mary Sutton of Bedford was put
to the swimming test. With her thumbs tied to opposite big
toes she was flung into the river. If she floated she was guilty, if
she sank, innocent. Poor Mary floated! A
last reminder of Hopkins' reign of terror was discovered in St.
Osyth in 1921. Two female skeletons were found in a garden,
pinned into unmarked graves and with iron rivets driven through
their joints. This was to make sure a witch could not return
from the grave. Hopkins was responsible for over 300
executions.
Mother
Shipton is remembered still in Knaresborough, Yorkshire.
Although called a witch, she is more famous for her predictions
about the future. She apparently foresaw cars, trains, planes
and the telegraph. Her cave and the Dripping Well , where
objects hung under the dripping water become like stone, are a
popular site to visit today in Knaresborough. In
August 1612, the Pendle Witches, three generations of one family,
were marched through the crowded streets of Lancaster and hanged. Though
many of the Acts against witchcraft were repealed in 1736, witch
hunting still went on. In 1863, an alleged male witch was
drowned in a pond in Headingham, Essex and in 1945 the body of an
elderly farm labourer was found near the village of Meon Hill
in Warwickshire. His throat had been cut and his corpse was
pinned to the earth with a pitchfork. The murder remains unsolved,
however the man was reputed, locally, to be a wizard. It
seems that belief in witchcraft has not entirely died out. ©
E.P.C
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