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The Witch Craze > East Anglia hunt > Flashcards

East Anglia hunt Flashcards

1
Q

When did it take place?

A

1645-1647

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2
Q

How many people were accused or faced trial?

A

700- 80% of them were women

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3
Q

Where did it take place?

A

7 counties across East Anglia, including Suffolk, Northamptonshire, and Cambridgeshire.

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4
Q

Why does the English Civil War begin?

A

Charles I, son of James I has Catholic sympathies which annoys many due to the religious changes over the 16th century.

Believes in Divine Right of Kings- believes he has divine pwr but Parliament have enough and in 1642 they begin the war- Royalists vs Parliamentarians.

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5
Q

Eastern Association

A

Group of armies put together across Eastern areas, supported Parliament

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6
Q

What religion was Oliver Cromwell?

A

A Puritan- they believe that you can’t do anything not stated in the Bible e.g. playing football, having bdays and giving presents on christmas and bdays, so these things were banned.

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7
Q

When did Charles I become King of England? Why was this an issue?

A

1625

  • Parliament had become more important during the Tudor and Stuart period
  • Charles came to blows w/parliament in 1620s- mainly due to money and military failures
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8
Q

What did Charles I do in 1629?

A

Dissolves parliament for 11 years (‘The Personal Rule’)

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9
Q

What happened during The Personal Rule?

A
  • Puritan MPs unhappy w/Charles’ almost Catholic approach to religion
  • Ship Tax (or Ship Money) caused further resentment
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10
Q

What was ‘Ship Money’?

A

A tax traditionally levied on coastal counties/towns in order to provide for the Navy. Charles extended the tax to the entire nation in 1928- v. unpopular move

Charles needed the £ but didn’t want to ask Parliament

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11
Q

What did Charles I do in 1640?

A

Recalled Parliment- debates between them and Charles continue until 1642 when he attempts to arrest 5 MPs who led efforts to restrict his powers- they flee, Charles raises an army in what he claimed was self-defence.

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12
Q

When does the Civil War officially begin?

A

Aug 1642, when Charles raised his standard in Nottingham

- 1st battle is Edgehill in October 1642

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13
Q

What was the Eastern Association (EA)?

A

Extremely Puritan military organisation comprising the 7 county militias of Eastern England formed during the Civil War

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14
Q

What was the New Model Army (NMA)?

A

An army formed by parliament in 1645- most soldiers taken from the EA
- Helped parliament win a decisive victory at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645; after this, the NMA held considerable political influence

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15
Q

What was the effect of the war on East Anglia in terms of its population?

A
  • By 1645, E. Anglia had been through 3 years of Civil War- Suffolk was parliament’s main recruiting ground.
  • Little actual fighting happened here but as many as 20% of men left to fight.
  • High mortality rates+more deaths–> strained existence
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16
Q

How was there a breakdown of traditional authority in East Anglia?

A
  • Deaths–> shift in traditional power relationships = worries women becoming too powerful
  • Traditional authority of CofE undermined
  • Authority of local gentry undermined
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17
Q

What happened due to the absence of traditional authority?

A

It meant various fears manifested as a witchhunt- fear of enemies/spies everywhere translated as fear of the Devil and witches

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18
Q

Example of how the fear of hidden enemies in East Anglia translated as a fear of the Devil and witches

A

Margery Sparham from Suffolk confessed to entertaining Devil’s imps in the shape of a mole and two blackbirds.

  • Alone + vulnerable when her husband went to fight.
  • Link w/Eve, women’s vulnerability; easily manipulated by Devil
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19
Q

What began to emerge due to the breakdown in traditional authority?

A

Stories of strange occurrences:

  • Royalist woman from Lancashire gave birth to headless baby
  • Women beginning to drink and swear like men
  • Body of a habitual sinner dug up and eaten etc

FEAR of witches as “bad women” and “bad mothers”

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20
Q

How was there a breakdown in legal authority?

A

Assize courts unable to function normally- local magistrates and other locals dished out justice. No Kingly authority meant laws were difficult to implement

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21
Q

How were the assize courts disrupted by the war heading towards East Anglia?

A

Ppl w/little legal authority oversaw few trials that did happened

eg Earl of Warwick had no experience- oversaw Essex Assizes in Chelmsford in 1645 so had to work w/county magistrates- sentenced 19 women to hang

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22
Q

What was the impact of the breakdown in legal authority in East Anglia on the hunt and Hopkins and Stearne?

A
  • Witch hunt able to spread quickly and local fears intensified
  • Hopkins & Stearne able to work- locals thankful for their supposedly legitimate legal knowledge+efficiency.
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23
Q

What was the conviction rate in East Anglia due to the interference of Stearne and Hopkins?

A

English record 42% conviction rate

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24
Q

Crop failures in East Anglia were due to…

A
  • Wet weather and ergot led to poverty eg v. wet summer in 1646
  • Seed Corn had to be consumed in large amounts, threatening the harvest for the next year
  • Price of wheat rose by 20%
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25
Q

How did contemporaries view the terrible weather in October of 1645 and 1646 in particular?

A
  • Most extreme wet weather in living memory
  • Puritan preachers interpreted economic situation as God’s punishment- a sign Charles shouldn’t return to the throne
  • Easy to blame this misfortune on witches
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26
Q

What were the economic crises of the 1640s?

A
  • Crop failure
  • Changing land use
  • Economic impact of the Civil War
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27
Q

How was there changing land use in the 1600s?

A

Landlords enclosed land in order to focus on 1 particular agricultural product and evicted tenants–> more begging and lack of charity

(enclosure was the process of dividing more of tenants’ land up and charging more for tenants to live/farm on it)

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28
Q

What were ‘poor rates’

A

Local tax levied at parish level to finance the support of the poor- wealthier residents who had to pay it saw it as subsidising lifestyles they saw as feckless

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29
Q

Who was Sir Miles Sandys of the Isle of Ely?

A

Bought large estates, enclosed 4k acres of common land at Sutton- deprived poor of grazing land, fuel sources- 30 families had even built cottages on the land they were evicted from.

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30
Q

What happened due to Sir Miles Sandys’ actions?

A
  • Sutton residents petitioned Court of Chancery w/100 signatures to allow them to use the common land but failed.
  • Began rioting in late 1630s- many of the suspected witches at Ely in 1647 were linked w/this unrest
31
Q

Why was there less charity provided during the 1620s and 30s?

A
  • To wealthy Puritans idleness means sinfulness- some stop paying poor rates
  • Better-off continued to fear that old women beggars would use magic in revenge for a lack of charity
32
Q

What has historian Louise Jackson categorised the hunts as in terms of gender?

A

Organised, deliberate violence against almost exclusively women

  • Around 700 accused or faced trial in all E. Anglia
  • 80% of victims were women; 20% in Suffolk were men but many were already linked w/female witches
33
Q

How were accusations of witchcraft biased against women?

A
  • Accusations focused on female tasks, female spaces – the home, kitchen, nursery, feeding etc
    Across E. Anglia- poor women were involved in dairy farming so when things went wrong, (cream curdling, cattle dying) they were vulnerable to accusation
34
Q

How was Hopkins focused on getting convictions against women?

A

He was particularly keen to find evidence of sexual activity w/Devil and suckling of imps- referred to in the Margaret Baytes and Good Smith

35
Q

Mariticide (murder of one’s husband) and infanticide are regularly referred to in the trials. What are some examples of this?

A
  • Susanna Stegold convicted of mariticide after an unhappy marriage (def had domestic violence by him)
  • ~20% of accused witches charged w/harming/killing children- many confessed after sleep deprivation

Idea of the “bad mother” or “bad woman” – Gaskill)

36
Q

What was the class breakdown of the victims?

A

Info is sporadically recorded in court records, likely due to war, so hard to record class + occupations as a whole

37
Q

For the court records, suspects had to sign their name or leave a mark (if they were illiterate). Based on this, find the class of the victims

A

94% of the witches at Ely left their mark, meaning out of six male suspects and 11 female ones, 1 was literate.

38
Q

What is the class breakdown of the people involved in the trials?

A
  • Ely records show searchers were all illiterate- reflects surviving contemporary accounts that most of the searchers were neighbours of the accused
  • Witches’ ‘victims’ at Ely more likely to be literate- reflects how many accusations came about after a poor woman was denied charity from a wealthier neighbour
39
Q

Who was Matthew Hopkins?

A
  • Son of a respected, strict Puritan minister; from good social standing. Probs around 25 when hunt started
  • 2 older brothers- would’ve known from an early age he wouldn’t inherit the estate and would have to instead pursue a career
40
Q

Who was the Puritan William Stearne?

A
  • Mid-30s during the hunt- older than Hopkins
  • Grew up in Suffolk, married + had a daughter
  • 1st to receive a warrant to search suspected witches from Manningtree by magistrates Sir Harbottle Grimston and Sir Thomas Bowes. Hopkins volunteered to help him
41
Q

Why did contemporaries respect the authority of Stearne and Hopkins?

A
  • Right place right time- Hopkins presented himself as a Puritan saviour at a time when East Anglia was riddled w/political and economic crises
  • Stearne was passionate about witch hunting from the onset
42
Q

Who was William Dowsing?

A

Parliamentarian soldier who’d been appointed ‘Iconocast General’ tasked w/seeking out and destroying Catholic statues and idols.

Went through E. Anglia in 1643-44- Hopkins + Stearne may have had official backing to follow his work in seeking out evil

Mapped out areas that’d be receptive to their work

43
Q

When did the hunt start and why?

A

Hopkins kept awake at night by a sabbat near his house in Manningtree in 1644. 1st witches were all women. Hopkins and Stern presented their accusations to local magistrate in 1645.

They then began offering their services to towns and parishes for a fee.

44
Q

Who was the first victim of the hunts?

A

Elizabeth Clarke

  • Elderly widowed lady, w/one leg- reliant on charity
  • Long suspected of being a witch
45
Q

John Lowes was the only clergyman to be tried in all of the English witch hunts. Who was he?

A
  • 80 year old Royalist clergyman who’d defended an accused witch
  • Arrested, denied sleep, 1st victim of swimming test
  • Confessed to sinking a ship off the port of Harwich and killing cattle
  • Found guilty and executed
46
Q

What happened in Elizabeth Clarke’s case?

A
  • Arrested, strip-searched, watched for several nights
  • “walked” and denied sleep
  • Eventually confessed + implicated Rebecca West
  • Hopkins said several familiars appeared, incl. a dog-like creature called ‘Jarmara’ and a rabbit called ‘Sack & Sugar’
47
Q

What happened after the Elizabeth Clarke case?

A

Hopkins and Stearne took the hunt to other parishes in Essex and Suffolk- they spent the next 2 years apart, investigating witches separately across East Anglia.

48
Q

Geographical map of the hunts

A
  • 120+ examined in Suffolk
  • Hopkins went to Yarmouth, Aldeburgh, Yoxford, Westleton, Dunwich- 40 people tried in Norfolk in 1645.
  • Hunt moved to Huntingdonshire in 1646 then to Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.

NO GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERN- THEY SIMPLY FOLLOW THE £

49
Q

What has Gaskill (historian) suggested about the role played by Stearne and Hopkins?

A

They themselves didn’t have significant power, and they simply acted as facilitators who simply assisted and gave confidence for accusers to pursue suspects

50
Q

What were the witch finders’ methods?

A
  • Isolation
  • Search-women (searched for a mark)
  • Watching and sleep deprivation
  • Possible other tortures
  • Walking
  • Swimming test
51
Q

What did Stearne and Hopkins aim to find when interrogating witches?

A
  • Relationship with the Devil
  • Any marks associated with witchcraft
  • Other witches or members of a coven
  • Imps or Familiars
52
Q

How were Stearne and Hopkins good at their jobs?

A
  • Could do assessments of suspected witches quickly and efficiently before moving on to receive their nxt invite
  • Paid fee+expenses (food, lodgings, horses)
  • Often helped in interrogations by local magistrates/ officials
53
Q

How involved in the actual legal proceedings were Stearne and Hopkins?

A
  • Evidence they occasionally testified in court.
  • However unlikely it may seem, no evidence they were actually present at the executions

They would only stay long enough to set legal proceedings in motion

54
Q

What 4 things led to the end of the hunt?

A
  • Growing cost of the hunt
  • Re-establishment of traditional authority
  • Role of John Gaule
  • End of the Civil War- no need for scapegoats
55
Q

How expensive did imprisonment become?

A

~3p/prisoner/per day. The witches at Ipswich cost up to £50 to keep while they awaited trial

56
Q

In particular, what aspects of imprisoning witches became expensive?

A
  • Keeping/convicting witches too dear to warrant investigation
  • Feeding prisoners increasingly dear as more were jailed
  • Executions: burning cost 3x hanging. Spectators now had to pay
57
Q

How expensive were the assizes?

A

Costs included eg judges, horses, heat, food for officers, administrators, witch hunters, etc.
eg Judge at 1645 trial in Bury St Edmunds charged £130

58
Q

What costs did Hopkins and Stearne use fees to cover?

A

Stays at inns, upkeep of horses, paying of search-women and watchers

59
Q

Hopkins and Stearne were eager to claim they were good value for money. What evidence proves the opposite?

A
  • Case in Kings Lynn in September 1646 saw 7/9 nine suspects acquitted. Hopkins given £2, left town promptly.
  • Fee could be as much as £23 from one town, an enormous sum
60
Q

When did the reestablishment of legal authority in East Anglia begin?

A

When Charles surrendered to the Scots at Newark in May 1646, East Anglia became safe enough to receive assize judges again.

61
Q

How was traditional authority resestablished in East Anglia in the form of the gentry:

A

Royalist gentry were able to return to estates- began to punish tenants and servants if they’d been involved in parliamentarian fighting. Puritan hold, and hunt for witches, was now being disturbed.

62
Q

How did the end of the Civil War lead to the end of the hunt?

A
  • End of civil war meant end to population’s suffering (although poor harvests continued for a few years)
  • Acquittals now more likely with War’s end- towns/parishes not as fearful. No longer a need for scapegoats.
63
Q

Evidence that traditional authority had been reestablished in East Anglia:

  1. What happened in Kings Lynn in September 1646?
  2. What happened in Ely in September 1646?
A
  1. Case in Kings Lynn in Sept 1646 saw 7/9 nine suspects acquitted. Hopkins given £2, left town promptly.
  2. 3 witches tried in Ely in Sept 1646, saw all accused acquitted- probably at judge’s direction, John Godbold.
64
Q

What happened at the Norfolk assizes of 1647?

A

Presiding judges given a list of ?s compiled by leading gentry who’d taken issue w/aspects of hunt.
?s were influenced by the scepticism of John Gaule.

65
Q

What were some of the sceptical questions presented to Hopkins based on the questions compiled by the gentry?

A
  • Why are so many condemned with strange marks, when most of these occur naturally?
  • Swimming test not allowed by law- why was he using it?
  • Was Hopkins himself a witch, because he had great knowledge of sorcery?
66
Q

Overall, what did the questions compiled by the gentry ask or say about Hopkins?

A

Accused of him sorcery due to his knowledge of it, ?d his use of methods like watching and walking as they’d inevitably lead to confessions, and accused him of blasphemy for suggesting the Devil had power to kill when God had curbed his power

67
Q

Who was John Gaule?

A

Minister of Great Staughton- parish between St Neots and Kimbolton, where no. of suspected witches had been investigated (Cambridgeshire)

  • conservative- noted privately his anger that the episcopacy had been eroded + replaced w/independent churches
68
Q

Why was John Gaule sceptical of the witch hunts?

A
  • Aware that parishioners were blaming witches for their misfortunes- he believed their own sins were to blame
  • Visited accused witch from confessions at Huntingdon- convinced him the witchfinders aren’t doing noble work
69
Q

When did John Gaule publish his criticisms of the witchfinders?

A
  1. ‘Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft’
70
Q

What were the main points of John Gaule’s ‘Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft’?

A
  • Affirmed witches exist + noted approval of witch-hunts but criticised Hopkins and Stearne’s methods
  • Pleaded common sense + restraint in following up accusations- stressed caution
  • Alleged craze was becoming idolatrous- ppl praising witchfinders more than God, Christ and Bible.
71
Q

What was the impact of John Gaule’s ‘Select Cases of Conscience’ and his sermons preaching caution?

A

His opinions may not have had much support initially but his work helped convince authorities and especially judges that the hunt was no longer needed.

72
Q

What was John Gaule’s main issue with the witchfinders?

A

They’d assumed authority where in reality they had none

73
Q

Define ‘episcopacy’

A

Hierarchy of bishops that controlled the CofE

74
Q

Why was the hunt widespread?

A
  • Extreme economic hardship
  • Breakdown of trad authority (Crown, gentry and clergy)
  • Breakdown of traditional legal systems
  • Significant role of Hopkins & Stearne in starting craze, ensuring it was widespread; end of hunt coincides w/Hopkins death

The Witch Craze (14 decks)

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