Witchland: A Tale of Witch Hunting and War, a Deadly Moral Panic in Seventeenth Century Britain
The 1640s were a tumultuous time in Britain. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1642-1651) pitted England’s Royalists against the Parliamentarians, while also involving the Scots Covenanters and Irish Confederates. It ended with the beheading of King Charles I, the exile of Charles II, and the rise of Oliver Cromwell. And with war came great hardship, including food shortages, supply chain issues, the breakdown of church and government functions, and people accusing their neighbors of witchcraft.
Renowned author Marion Gibson traveled from the Scottish Lowlands to Essex, Suffolk, East Anglia, the Midlands, and northern England, following the witchcraft accusations and the trials during that tumultuous decade. Her travels provide Witchland readers with a sense of past and present, which old buildings and industries survived, how social and economic dynamics changed, how people lived in the 17th century and today. Gibson visited the shops and markets, the churches and graveyards. She walked the paths where convicted witches went from the prison to the gallows.
In Witchland, Gibson explains how the court functioned normally and how the wars changed that, from having less qualified men on the bench to towns hiring the self-styled Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. (In part, the witch hunts stopped because towns realized the greed of the witch finders, when they started charging by head instead of by location.)
The author explains the cruel methods of getting confessions, from sleep deprivation and constant movement (known as watching and walking) to using torture devices like thumb screws and leg crushers. One accused witch, Margaret Thomsone, stood on a stool, intermittently, for 26 days and nights. Not surprisingly, the mental and physical exhaustion caused some to confess to having imps, signing demonic pacts, or having sex with Satan. The vicar, John Lowes, confessed of his pride and boasted that his devilish powers caused him to sink a ship, causing 14 women to become widows. Before he was “turned off” the ladder, however, the vicar recited the Christian burial service for himself. Margaret Wyard, after confessing to being a witch, actually thanked her torturers.
From the remnants of records that exist, Gibson describes some of the accused, the charges, the confessions, the trials, and the verdicts, if known. In several towns, she discovered parish registers with a list of those “executed for witchcraft” who were buried in the churchyard.
Gibson says it is important to memorialize the witch hunts in Britain, not just to remember the victims but to recognize the causes—from economic uncertainties, corruption, and divisiveness to misogyny, culture wars, and politics—are lessons for us today.
Highly recommend.
See also my review of Marion Gibson’s Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials.
Note for Towne descendants: Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, is included.