British witchcraft trials

The Pendle Hill witch trials of are amongst the most famous in British history, partly because their events are so well documented, partly because a number of those involved genuinely believed that they had supernatural powers, and partly because so many of the accused were eventually executed: Only one of the dozen individuals implicated in the case, Alice Grey, was found not guilty, and one, Margaret Pearson, was sentenced to being pilloried, but was spared the gallows.

The trials began when a young woman named Alizon Device, from Pendle in Lancashire in northwest England, was accused of cursing a local shopkeeper who soon afterwards suffered a bout of ill health, now believed to have probably been a mild stroke. The first to be tried in a different but related case was Jennet Preston , who was found guilty and executed in York on July 29; the last was Alizon Device herself, who, like her grandmother, was reportedly convinced that she indeed had powers of witchcraft and freely admitted her guilt.

In all, 10 men and women were hanged as a result of the trials. Following the arrest of Alizon Device in Pendle in , the discovery that witchcraft was being practiced in Lancashire caused a wave of paranoia that swept across the county and eventually implicated three women—Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and her daughter Ellen or Eileen Bierley—from the neighboring village of Samlesbury.

Unlike the trial of the Pendle witches, however, the Samlesbury trial was quickly turned on its head. Therefore, accusations of witchcraft became another way for women to be oppressed in early modern society. However, men were also suspected and accused of witchcraft, such as the male witches of Edmonton. Lots of the sources in this resource are legal documents that relate to witchcraft trials.

When a person was accused of witchcraft an Indictment would be drawn up, then witnesses would be called, an examination of the accused would be carried out and sometimes a confession drawn out, possibly with torture.

Those found guilty would be executed. Not all accusations of witchcraft were believed, however. Even in this period, people were suspicious of attempts to pretend to be bewitched, or pretending to be a witch, and were aware that not all cases of witchcraft were genuine. Witchcraft caused great fear within society, but it also often became a function of normal life.

Somebody new to a community might be accused of witchcraft because his or her neighbours were suspicious of them. Sometimes a person might pretend to be bewitched because it was a way of making money. People were more suspicious of witchcraft when the harvest failed, as they looked to find a cause. Witchcraft trials became ways for grievances and disputes to be aired, and for people to stand in testimony for or against their neighbours.

In many ways, therefore, understanding the history of witchcraft tells us less about the supernatural than it does about the realities of everyday life for ordinary people in early modern England.

This 30 minute talk, which features some of the documents within this collection, was delivered online on Friday 23 October by Dr Jessica Nelson. 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. This was at a time when the daily wage was 2.

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. Matthew Hopkins, Witch Finder General. From a broadside published by Hopkins before 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. The Pendle trial would be used as legal precedence for the Salem witch trials of Credit: James Stark. In all, 10 men and women were hanged as a result of the trials. Those included Alizon Device who, like her grandmother, was reportedly convinced that she was guilty of being a witch. The Pendle trial would go on to be used as legal precedence to allow the testimony of children in trials of witchcraft.

At the Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts, most of the evidence was given by children. The burning of Louisa Mabree in a cage filled with black cats suspended over a fire Credit: Wellcome Images. The Bideford witch trial in Devon came towards the end of the witch-hunting craze in Britain, which peaked between and There were only a few cases of executions for witchcraft in England after the Restoration.

Three women — Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards — were suspected of causing the illness of a local woman by supernatural means. The trials were later denounced by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Francis North, who claimed the prosecution — which had been based almost entirely on hearsay — was deeply flawed.