Matthew Hopkins and the East Anglian witch craze, 1645-47

Question 1

It is most likely that the motivations of the witch-hunters were one or both of the following factors.

Answer 1

The lucrative fee that could be charged by the witchfinders could be as much as £23 from one town- an enormous sum considering their work in each town would only take a few days.
They may have been motivated by genuine religious conviction. On the cover of Hopkins’ ‘The Discovery of Witches’, he includes the famous line from Exodus (22.18) used in so many witch-hunts across Europe: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. Here, Hopkins was clearly using Biblical justification to carry out his investigations.

Question 2

Both Hopkins and Stearne wrote their own defence of the witch-hunt.

Answer 2

They claimed that they only charged 20 shillings per town for their work.

Question 3

evidence to suggest that Hopkins was particularly fanatical before the witch-hunt began

Answer 3

Although his father was a Puritan minister, there is no evidence to suggest that Hopkins was particularly fanatical before the witch-hunt began.

Question 4

Eastern Association

Answer 4

a military organisation comprising the seven county militias of Eastern England formed during the English Civil War.