In 1597 King James VI of Scotland released his successful book, Daemonologie, which explored the areas of witchcraft and demonic magic. The kingdoms of Scotland & England were united in 1603 when King James moved south and became King James I of England. He had Parliament pass the Witchcraft Statute of 1604, making witchcraft a crime punishable by death. This led to a heightened public anxiety about witches that quietly grew in the decades that followed, worsened by similar fears in Europe.
King Charles I (1600-49) first created the Long Parliament in Nov 1640, not long after the dissolution of the Short Parliament. It was Charles' practice to have women accused of witchcraft brought before him, and in most cases, he concluded that they were old or mentally unbalanced. Eventually he gave them money and sent them home.
At first John Stearne made the principal accusations, and Hopkins, who he met in Manningtree Essex in 1644, was appointed as the assistant. Hopkins had overheard 6 women inside his own property, Thorn Inn in Mistley, women who were discussing their meetings with the Devil. Hopkins got villagers to hire him and his two paid assistants to search out witches, get their confessions and have the authorities hang them. In Mar 1645, the arrests and trials of Rebecca West and Anne West her mother, Elizabeth Clarke, Elizabeth Gooding, Anne Leach and Hellen Clarke followed.
Records show that Hopkins was also given an official commission by the Long Parliament and received payment from the government to prosecute witches. Hopkins and Stearne became known as "professional" witch-finders. Of the next 23 women they tried as witches, four died in prison and 19 were later convicted and hanged.
Before long, Hopkins’ zeal had surpassed Stearne’s, and he became the leader, assuming the title of Witch-finder General in 1645. In the chaos of the Civil War and with the lack of appointed court judges, torture was accepted. Hopkins, Stearne and their associates travelled the villages and towns of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk & Huntingdon where, within a year or more, there were c250 people accused of witchcraft. c100 of those were hanged. These cases, including a few Anglican clergymen, were called The Hopkins' Trials.
Witch-hunting was meant to be a judicial process, so torture was illegal. Yet many of his methods of inquisition used by Hopkins were very close to torture and were taken directly from King James’ best seller Daemonologie.
Hopkins used many methods to examine and torture:
A] He prevented women from sleeping, walking them around endlessly without shoes on. Once their feet blistered, it led to a quicker confession.
B] Witches fed their accompanying familiars/animals with their own blood. So by keeping the witch under guard, this ensured that their familiars would not be able to feed. He concentrated on the familiars at night because it was at night that witches frightened the townsfolk.
C] Hopkins pricked any skin deformity on the accused that was thought to be an extra mole for suckling imps, determining if the woman possessed the Devil’s mark. Lady Pickers cut the woman’s arms with a needle or pin, and if she did not bleed, she was said to be a witch.
D] The Water Test involved dropping the accused into water, because a witch, having denied baptism, would be repelled by the water. Hopkins’ infamous Swimming Test involved binding the arms and legs of the accused to a chair before throwing her into the village pond. If she sank and drowned, she would be innocent and received into heaven; if she floated and survived, she would then be tried as a witch.
Thus the women drowned if they were not witches, and were hanged or burned if they were!!
Burning of the witches. Image credit
Conclusion
Hopkins’ favourite method of interrogation once torture was by illegal in England was swimming where the woman was bound and thrown into a pond. If she floated she was deemed a witch who rejected the waters of baptism; if she sank and drowned, then she was innocent. Yet Hopkins’ ongoing motivation for hunting witches was unclear.
Hopkins’ favourite method of interrogation once torture was by illegal in England was swimming where the woman was bound and thrown into a pond. If she floated she was deemed a witch who rejected the waters of baptism; if she sank and drowned, then she was innocent. Yet Hopkins’ ongoing motivation for hunting witches was unclear.
Matthew Hopkins supervised the Essex witch trials
University of Essex Library
Hopkins profited financially from the trials, but was this his primary motivation? Hopkins had not possessed property, was not well educated, lacked good ancestry and had no military experience or community power. Perhaps he was just relishing in his newly found power. Perhaps he hated women.
Some accounts say Hopkins drowned undergoing his own Water Trial, after being accused of witchcraft himself. Hopkins actually died after an illness in 1647. Just a few decades later (1684), the very last execution for witchcraft in England took place in Exeter.
The witches of Salem in the USA were hanged in 1692. Was it Matthew Hopkins who inspired New England witch hunters?
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30 comments:
The perusal of the aforementioned post instilled within me a profound sense of unease. The treatment meted out to women is utterly indefensible. The method employed by Hopkins to ascertain witches is such that, regardless of whether the woman floats or sinks, the inevitable consequence is her demise.
Not only blacks, Jews, gays, socialists and paedophiles were tortured and killed. What did Hopkins think he could achieve by torturing innocent women?
Hopkins was the son of a Puritan vicar and that may have influenced his early awful views of women. But why didn't his own wife point out that women needed their husbands' protection? Was she afraid of being killed as a witch?
roentare
that profound sense of unease remains till today :( You could understand if a king or prime minister feared their political power would be taken over by their enemies. And you could understand if the Catholic Church feared being exterminated by the Protestants. But who feared the wives and mothers of East Anglia?
Deb
the list of peoples at risk of persecution in the past were all minority groups who could be wiped out without too much fuss being made in the general community eg mentally unstable patients.
But no family would want their beloved wife and mother to be drowned or burnt in hideous pain.
Joe
I cannot find ANY mention of Hopkins ever marrying or even having a close woman friend. Perhaps women could see he wouldn't be a good choice in husbands. Or perhaps his failure to attract a wife may have made him dislike women even more strongly.
Mind you, even if there had been a wife, she would have kept silent until Hopkins died.
Hello Hels, The killing or persecution of random targets has been common throughout history and in most if not all countries. Women in general made good targets because society placed a low value on them (and in some ways still does). I have not seen details statistics of witch-victims, but I wonder how many of them were single, lonely, aged, or odd, as opposed to, say, healthy younger women with husbands and children, although I am sure a few were.
Even if some of the "witches" were clearly beneficial to society, random attack and blood-letting has always been a popular method of concentrating power and control. (This is true even in companies--when a new boss comes in, random people are often fired to strike fear, and potentially improve performance, among those remaining.)
--Jim
p.s. Your mention of the needle test lends additional nuance to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice when Portia, in defense of Jews, says, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" The entire speech asserts that Jewish people are ordinary human beings, but that particular wording suggests that there was a kind of being that did not bleed when pricked, and that those people were felt not to have any rights to property, or even to life itself.
--Jim
It has taken women a very long time to free themselves from the yoke of male dominance. In some parts of the world, the yoke has never been revoked and in others it has been reintroduced. Shameful!
Fico muito feliz em saber que você ama bilhar. Aqui no Brasil, chamamos de sinuca 🎱 🎱.
Parnassus
there were several reasons why Hopkins had most "success" with older women, even though older women were usually more religious. Firstly they were more likely to be widows than young women, and had noone to protect them. Secondly older women often had moles or skin blemishes altogether, but especially visible ones. Thirdly poor people (some males included) were more easily targeted.
All quite horrible, really. Conform to societal norms or be targeted.
Parnassus
thank you. I had never thought of Portia in connection with bleeding.
Hopkins' lady pickers cut the woman’s arms with a needle, and if she did not bleed, she was said to be a witch. Thus the victim would really WANT to bleed. I don't think Hopkins wanted to show that women/witches were ordinary human beings.
jabblog
yes indeed. Male dominance always was, is and probably will be an irreversible factor for women in many countries. But it usually was because the Church taught that women were seen as weak, unemployable, unlearned, unintelligent and needed protection.
Hopkins and the other witch hunters saw women more vulnerable to the seductive powers of the Devil. Thus women didn't need protection; they deserved execution.
Luiz
I had 2 brothers and 3 male first cousins living together. If I wanted to have company back then, I had to learn their sports, games and activities :)
Andrew
I would add just one extra thought. Conform to the _norms of the witch hunters_ or be targeted. After all the very same women had largely conformed to societal norms before 1645 and after 1647!
A very bad time for women back then and since those times they have found other ways to demean women, and now, in the US at least, women are being picked on again. What is it about us that makes men so afraid?
Hopkins was a cruel man, the women would have died anyway, unfortunately even if they were innocent.
River
if women were equals, they might take the better jobs or earn more money or look at other men, not their husbands. Or they may leave the tiring housework to their husbands. Men would hate all those possibilities.
But witch hunters said that women were more vulnerable to the seductive powers of the Devil!!! I wonder if the community then (and now) even believed in the seductive powers of the Devil, let along excuse men from such stupidity.
Margaret
if the witch hunters had truly worried about innocent women, they would have given them verbal trials like other people suspected of criminal behaviour. But the women were tortured until they "confessed" ... then their execution was assured one way or another. Innocence was irrelevant.
Oops! That was Shylock's speech, not Portia's. That attribution was bothering me so I checked. So much for quoting from memory!
--Jim
Parnassus
Older age is a shocker :( I used to love mediaeval and renaissance history and art. Now I have to focus on the 19th century and on.
Thank you, dear Helen! Witch hunting was a terrible era in the Middle Ages! Many women healers were tortured and killed. One example is Alexandre Dumas' novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".
I read something a long while ago about being taught to fear witches when instead we should be taught to fear those who hunt them.
Irina
Excellent, thank you. Here is the goodreads summary:
"Set in 1482 Paris, Victor Hugo's powerful historical romance The Hunchback of Notre-Dame tells the story of the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda, condemned as a witch by the tormented archdeacon Claude Frollo, who lusts after her".
I quite believe there were witches in the 15th century, but the archdeacon had a stupid reason for condemning her.
River
I have seen that quote all over the place, sometimes with slight changes.
a] The ones who burned the women were teaching us to fear them when they did it, thus maintaining the fear.
b] Because they wanted women to be afraid of freedom.
c] The witch killers wrote the women's confessions.
d] The witch killers wrote the historical documents etc
Bom dia. Uma excelente quinta-feira, com muita paz e saúde. Obrigado pela visita e comentário.
Luiz
it is a fascinating, if horrendous topic. Thanks.
I've read about this and of course we had a witch issue in one US city back in the late 1600's. I'm not sure the "witch" problem has gone away, now it's just put towards other issues like race, religion, etc. Thanks for this interesting article.
Erika
read "The witches of Salem Ma were all hanged: 1692"
https://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-witches-of-salem-were-all-hanged.html
and let me know if there was a direct link between East Anglia and Massachusetts eg church documents sent across the ocean. It fascinates me, even now.
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