Bury St Edmunds witch trials

As well as being the seat of county assizes, Bury St Edmunds had been a site for both piepowder courts and court assizes, the latter since the Abbey was given a Liberty, namely the Liberty of St Edmund.[2][3][4] For the purposes of civil government the town and the remainder (or "body") of the county were quite distinct, each providing a separate grand jury to the assizes.[5]

The first recorded account of a witch trial at Bury St Edmunds Suffolk was of one held in 1599 when Jone Jordan of Shadbrook (Stradbroke[6]) and Joane Nayler were tried, but there is no record of the charges or verdicts. In the same year, Oliffe Bartham of Shadbrook was executed,[7] for "sending three toads to destroy the rest (sleep[8]) of Joan Jordan".[6]

The trial was instigated by Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General,[9] and conducted at a special court under John Godbolt.[10] There was much to keep the minds of Parliamentarians busy at this time with the Royalist Army heading towards Cambridgeshire, but concern about the events unfolding were being voiced. A report was carried to the Parliament that the witch-hunters were extracting confessions through torture; therefore, a special commission of oyer and terminer was formed, to ensure a fair trial.[11] On 27 August 1645, no fewer than 18 people were executed by hanging at Bury St Edmunds. 16 of the 18 people executed that day were women.[11] The executed were:

• Anne Alderman, Rebecca Morris and Mary Bacon of Chattisham
• Mary Clowes of Yoxford
• Sarah Spindler, Jane Linstead, Thomas Everard (cooper) and his wife Mary Everard of Halesworth
• Mary Fuller of Combs, near Stowmarket
• John Lowes, Vicar of Brandeston
• Susan Manners, Jane Rivet and Mary Skipper of Copdock, near Ipswich
• Mary Smith of Great Glemham
• Margery Sparham of Mendham
• Katherine Tooly of Westleton.
• Anne Leech and Anne Wright, origin unknown.[12]

It has been estimated that all of the English witch trials between the early 15th and early 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions; in which case this one trial, with its 18 executions, accounted for 3.6% of the total.[13]

Witch Finder General, from a broadside published by Matthew Hopkins before 1650.

According to John Stearn(e)[14] known at various times as the witch–hunter,[15][16] and "witch pricker",[17] associate to Matthew Hopkins, in his book A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft there were one hundred and twenty others in gaol awaiting trial, of these 17 were men.[18] Thomas Ady in 1656 wrote of "about a hundred",[19] though others record "almost 200".[20] Following a three-week adjournment made necessary by the advancing King's Army,[21] the second sitting of the court resulted in 68 other "condemnations";[21][22] though reports say – "mass executions of sixty or seventy witches".[23][24] Both Hopkins and Stearne treated the search for, and trials of witches as military campaigns, as shown in their choice of language in both seeking support for and reporting their endeavours.[25] After the trial and execution the Moderate Intelligencer, a parliamentary paper published during the English Civil War, in an editorial of 4–11 September 1645, expressed unease with the affairs in Bury:

But whence is it that Devils should choose to be conversant with silly Women that know not their right hands from their left, is the great wonder ... The(y) will meddle with none but poore old women: as appears by what we receive this day from Bury ... Divers[26] are condemned and some executed and more like to be. Life is precious and there is need of great inquisition before it is taken away.[25][27]

...especially in these times, wherein things of this nature are so much controverted, and that by persons of much learning on both sides.[28]

Decrying the controversial ("so much controverted") nature of views on witchcraft and witch-phobia, even during the 17th century, the original pamphlet about the proceedings in 1662 A Tryal of Witches was only printed anonymously, and not until twenty years later.[28] The original writer is described as having sat in on the proceedings and taken an account "for his own satisfaction" before passing it to another anonymous "private Gentleman's hands in the country" who later passed it to the anonymous publisher of the work who printed it 1682.[29] Thus the three different people in this chain all chose to remain anonymous.

The trial began on 10 March 1662,[30] when two elderly widows, Rose Cullender and Amy Duny (or Deny or Denny), living in Lowestoft, were accused of witchcraft by their neighbours and faced 13 charges of the bewitching of several young children between the ages of a few months to 18 years old, resulting in one death.[31] They may have been aware of each other, inhabiting a small town,[32] but Cullender was from a property-owning family, whilst Denny was the widow of a labourer.[33] The charge of witchcraft was first brought against them by a Lowestoft merchant, Samuel Pacy,[34] who claimed that both women had separately called at his house to purchase herring, but had been upset to be turned away. Pacy accused the women of causing the afflictions of his two daughters, Elizabeth and Deborah, age eleven and nine respectively.[35] Pacy's sister Margaret also testified against the women.[36] They were tried at the Assize held in Bury St Edmunds under the auspices of the 1603 Witchcraft Act,[37] by a well-respected judge Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.[38]

Thomas Browne attended the trial and was called upon to give his opinion.[39][40] His opinion was that the accused persons were bewitched and he related similar events that had recently occurred in Denmark. These views may have influenced the jury to bring a guilty verdict .[41][42] He had expressed his belief in the existence of witches twenty years earlier,[41] and that only: "they that doubt of these, do not only deny them, but spirits; and are obliquely, and upon consequence a sort not of infidels, but atheists"[43] in his work Religio Medici, published in 1643:

... how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysics, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of spirits: for my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches;

According to the pamphlet, the judge instructed the jury they only "had two things to enquire after. First, whether or no these children were bewitched? Secondly, whether the prisoners at the bar were guilty of it?" They were convicted on Thursday March 13, 1662 (Julian) and executed four days later at Bury St Edmunds on 17 March 1662.[44]

The 1682 pamphlet A Tryal of Witches erroneously dates the trial as March 1664, both on the front page and introduction. Original documents in the Public Record Office[45] and other contemporary records clearly states it took place in the 14th year of the reign of Charles II (30 January 1662 to 29 January 1663).[46][47]

The last was in 1694 when Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt, "who did more than any other man in English history to end the prosecution of witches",[58] forced the acquittal of Mother Munnings' of Hartis (Hartest[59]) on charges of prognostications causing death.[60] The chief charge was 17 years old, the second brought by a man on his way home from an alehouse. Sir John "so well directed the jury that she was acquitted".[61]

• Witch trials in the early modern period
• Francis Hutchinson
• Robert Calef
• Letter from Cotton Mather to William Stoughton September 2, 1692
• Cambridge Association of Ministers

Notes

Bibliography

• Gaskill, Malcolm, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy. Harvard University Press: 2005. ISBN 0-674-01976-8
• Geis, Gilbert, and Bunn, Ivan, A Trial of Witches: A Seventeenth-century Witchcraft Prosecution. Routledge: London & New York, 1997. ISBN 0415171091
• Jensen Gary F., The Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts. Rowman & Littlefield 2006 Lanham ISBN 0-7425-4697-7
• Notestein, Wallace, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 Kessinger Publishing: U.S.A. 2003 ISBN 0-7661-7918-4
• Discovery of the Beldam Witch Trials: The Examinations, Confessions and Information Taken; in 1645 Essex. USA, 2016. ISBN 978-1548284299

• A Sample Case: The Trial at St. Bury Edmunds
• Sir John Holt (1642–1710): a biographical sketch, with especial reference to his witchcraft trials