The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins

Their next triumph came a month after the events in Manningtree. Read more about: Popular Culture A discovery of witches: British witch trials in the 17th century Hopkins and Stearne were paid handsomely for helping to bring the accused to ‘justice’. Nineteen of the women were found guilty and hanged. In reality, this mark of Satan was often little more than a birthmark, a small deformity or a blemish, but if the seekers said they were the dreaded Devil’s Mark, that was good enough for Hopkins and Stearne.įollowing Hopkins’ and Stearne’s ‘investigation’, thirty-six women were formally charged with witchcraft in Manningtree. He subjected the women to sleep deprivation and employed the services of ‘seekers’ - women who would search the accused's' bodies for what was known as the ‘Devil’s Mark’.

A self-styled investigator, Hopkins set about finding evidence of witchcraft among the group of women Stearne had accused. In a world with no social safety nets where you made your money any way you could regardless of how morally questionable that was, Hopkins was only too happy to jump on the witchfinding bandwagon. Read more about: Kings and Queens Popery, puritans and witches: The reign of King James I and VI

James’ paranoia spread amongst his people, so much so that by the 1640s it was a commonly held belief that the country was awash with witches and that they must be rooted out and exterminated by any means necessary. His fear of the supernatural led him to write a book on the subject called ‘Demonologie’ in 1597. This had its origins in the paranoia of the late King James I, who became convinced that the land he ruled was beset by devilry and witchcraft. England at that time was a suspicious and God-fearing land highly susceptible to the idea that witches lurked around every corner. It was Stearne who first accused a group of Manningtree women of witchcraft.

It was in Manningtree that Hopkins met John Stearne, another enthusiastic ‘witchfinder’ who would work closely with Hopkins throughout a fourteen-month reign of terror across East Anglia and beyond.

According to local legend, Hopkins turned up in the town to buy a local inn with money he had inherited from his late father, a puritan preacher by the name of John Hopkins. The first official mention of Matthew Hopkins - the infamous ‘Witchfinder General’ - appears in 1644 in the town of Manningtree in Essex.

The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins