This post began as a response to the
oft-repeated questions I got from other academics and friends on how many
Recusants were tried for witchcraft and/or what is the connection between
witchcraft and Catholicism in early modern England?
Early in the English Civil War in 1642,
anti-royalist and anti-papist mobs rioted in many towns and villages in the pro-parliamentarian
counties of southern East Anglia. The riots were followed by organised
iconoclasm and the largest witch-hunt in early modern England. I argue that violence against
religious non-conformists, particularly Catholics, ‘superstitious’ idols, and
witches were all rooted in a fear of the Devil working from within to
subvert the godly community.[i]
Malcolm Gaskill has suggested several other women in
Suffolk were likely of different religious persuasions from the majority of
their community – including being Catholic.[ii] Although
some of the accused witches may have been from Recusant families the
accusations against them seem to bear a far greater resemblance to the template
of Alan Macfarlane: accusations rose out of disputes between neighbours rather
than that these women (and sometimes men) being targeted because of their
religion.[iii]
I agree with the assessment of Francis Young that witch-hunting in England was
never Catholic-hunting. Young argues that “there is no evidence that Catholics
in England were ever accused of witchcraft in England (except in rhetorical
fashion)”.[iv]
However, during the crisis of the Civil War there is an overlap between the
communities that rioted against Catholics in 1642, and those that propelled the
East Anglia trials in 1645.
The town of Long Melford in Suffolk has few claims
to either fame or infamy for most people. However in the seventeenth century
the town produced one of the most successful witchfinders of the seventeenth
century. John Stearne was witchfinding partner of Matthew Hopkins, who would
become far more infamous as ‘The Witchfinder General’. Stearne was a gentleman
of some means, a committed protestant with perhaps an overtone of ‘Puritanism’,
who became involved in the interrogations in Manningtree , in March 1645. Over
the following three years he participated in or directed the interrogations of
hundreds of women and men accused of witchcraft in the eastern counties of
England.[v]
Although the town I wish to discuss in today’s blog
post, Long Melford, saw only one actual witch prosecuted (an elderly man called
Alexander Sussums), it still makes for an interesting case study. The town and
its surrounding area were one of the many pockets of godly religion in the
eastern counties, yet it had a small, but well-supported catholic minority; it
was the witchfinder John Stearne’s childhood home; was the site of
anti-catholic rioting in 1642; and was almost at the geographic centre of
Stearne’s area of interest in Suffolk, being just seven miles from his new home
in Lawshall. Unlike his associate Matthew Hopkins who travelled from Essex to
northern Norfolk, and across to Ely, Stearne’s activities in 1645 were
concentrated near his home in Lawshall, and later in nearby regions of Ely,
Norfolk and Huntingdonshire. Malcolm Gaskill suggests this may be in part
because his young wife and baby were in Lawshall, and he had friends in the
area who assisted his efforts.[vi]
Long Melford’s major claim to fame in the Civil War
period, is that it saw significant anti-Catholic riots in 1642. As John Walter
has established in Understanding Popular
Violence in the English Revolution, these riots were in part directed at
the eminent catholic Elizabeth Savage, Countess Rivers.[vii]
Savage had fled to Long Melford after her property in St Osyth, Essex, another
community that would likewise experience witchfinding in 1645, was threatened.
The riot in Long Melford severely damaged Countess Rivers house, and caused the
Countess to send for assistance to the Earl of Warwick (amusingly both a
Protestant and a Parliamentarian, as well as a judge in the Essex witch trials
in 1645), who consequently sent his steward to rescue the Countess.
The pre-existing conditions in Long Melford were not
unusual across the Eastern counties. The town experienced spasms of religious
violence during the Civil War. From anti-papist riots to iconoclasm, to the
visit of a witchfinder in the summer of 1645, towns like Long Melford could be
described as undergoing a series of panics about the Devil’s sinister influence
inside their community.
Of course panics about witches and papists were
nothing new in England in the early modern period. There are, I think, three
discernible peaks and troughs in the experience of local panics about both
topics, which coincide with national political, religious, and military crises.
This is not to suggest these threats were ever far from the minds of the Godly,
but I think the periods at which these panics are heightened says something
very interesting about the relationship between threats to the nation at large and
local panics about the Devil within the community.[viii]
In discussing the intermittent nature of panics
about Catholics, Robin Clifton described a brief timeline of panics which could
have been experienced by someone alive at the beginning of the Civil War.[ix]
There were panics in Sussex panic in 1596, and in Hampshire and Monmouthshire
in 1605 – of course there was also the Gunpowder plot later that year. These
were followed by a series of panics in Northumbria in 1613, and in the south east
in 1625 (the year of Charles I accession), and then a few more scattered every
so often up until the actual Catholic rebellion in Ireland in 1641. During the
aftermath of the rebellion in Ireland fears about the internal Catholic threat
in England were more pronounced than they had been since the sixteenth century,
and fears about Irish Catholics joining forces with Royalists were perpetuated
by accounts of Irish women wielding skeins accompanying the King’s army.[x]
I would argue that the pamphlet material and English
witch trial data suggests a co-relation between fear of external violence –
from Catholic armies and/or rebellions – and fears about the presence of the
Devil’s agents (whether witches or Catholics) inside the community.
As the home of John Stearne’s youth, Long Melford
and its neighbouring villages make an interesting place to focus upon in a
micro-study of the interplay of local and national concerns. Between the
confession of Alexander Sussums and the writings of John Stearne, a picture of
how both witches and Catholics were seen as a form of internal disease, a
cancer if you will, which others felt needed to be cut out or removed in order
to protect the godly from their influence, can be seen.
As John Stearne put it in 1649 “I have heard in some
places … where popery and prophanenesse is, with contempt of Preaching or vile
neglect thereof, there Witch-craft is most rife.”[xi] Of
course in 1645 the outbreak of the witch panic had been a source of satire for
Royalists who joked at the godly counties of the Parliamentarian Eastern
Association having ‘a plague of witches’, and noted the Bible's injunction from
1 Samuel 15:23 that ‘Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft’. An offended
parliamentarian newsbook, A Diary, or an
Exact Journall, responded to their mirth indignantly in 1645, proclaiming
that while:
It
is the ordinary mirth of the Malignants in this City to discourse of the Association
of Witches in the Associated Counties, but by this they shall understand the
truth of the old Proverbe which is, that where God hath his Church the Devill
have his Chappell. To labour in to the depth of this Mistery of Iniquity, we
must dive as low as Hell.[xii]
The internal
threat could often be narrowed down to particular people, from particular
families; not only recusant families, but families whose disorder had
threatened community stability, and/or who were accused or prosecuted for
witchcraft. Alexander Sussums, an elderly man living in Long
Melford meeting John Stearne in a local house, presumably where Stearne was
staying during his work in the area, confessed without any questioning, or any
accusations against him, to being a witch: “he confessed that he had things [meaning
familiars] which did draw those marks I found upon him· but said he could not
help it, for that all his kin[d]red were naught’.[xiv] This
comment on kindred who were naught is echoed in other trials in the 1640s where
witches were either accused of having had relatives executed for witchcraft, or
admitted to having mothers, sisters, uncles or cousins who were witches.[xv]
Apart from the fear they evoked from their Godly
neighbours, witches, like Catholics, could also suffer from a reputation
established in previous generations. Like families locally ‘known’ to be
recusant or ‘church papists’, families could have a reputation for witchcraft. John
Stearne was clearly shocked by Alexander Sussums’ proclamation of his own
diabolism and questioned him on his confession:
I
asked him again why he should do it, when as God was so merciful towards him,
as I then told him of, being a man whom I had been formerly acquainted withal,
as having lived in Town. He answered again, He could not help it, for that all
his generation was naught; and so told me his mother and aunt were hanged, his
grandmother burnt for Witchcraft, and so others of them questioned and hanged.[xvi]
This emphasis on a family ‘known’ for being of a
dangerous sort is one of the more notable parallels between recusancy and witchcraft
in early modern England.[xvii]
The context of Sussum’s confession to coming from a family
that was ‘naught’, is one of religious contention. Clifton argued that “attacks
on Catholics in the autumn of 1642… [indicate] that serious occurrences in
national politics may have been understood in terms of a papist/anti-papist
dichotomy.” In other words, national crises or national concerns could cause
local outbreaks of persecution against Catholics. Given the rhetorical
association between Catholics and witches during the Civil War, and the
emphasis on the diabolic elements within Royalism (often equated with the
King’s catholic supporters), heightened fears about witches in the same period
seems almost inevitable.[xviii]
Ian Gentles concluded in The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdomes, 1638-1652
that the outbreak of popular activism reflected Puritan Preaching that the “construction
of a godly people reinforced the idea of an active citizenship”.[xix]
He concluded that the English revolution and the accompanying print revolution
helped enlarge the role of popular activism in English politics, and that in
1642 this resulted in the outbreak of popular violence against Catholics and
Royalists.
In 1645 local members of the communities across East
Anglia undertook the watching of witches, and generally only once a confession
had been obtained was the accused witch brought before a JP or magistrate. In
many communities ministers were also actively involved in the process of
extracting these confessions. However by mid 1645 parliament was concerned
enough about this outbreak of popular witchfinding to send a special Commission
of Oyer and Terminer to oversee the cases in Suffolk, including that of
Alexander Sussums. It is interesting to note that this attempt to restore order
was an echo of Parliament’s response to the anti-Catholic riots of 1642 –
bringing the violence to an end and into the courtroom, rather than allowing
the mob to continue to attack people and property.
By and large witches were punished for being
witches, and Catholics were punished for being Catholics. However the two
groups had significant similarities in the way in which they were
conceptualised by their godly neighbours. Both were a form of ‘heresy’ to the
majority of Protestants around them; both were seen to have passed down their
secret and diabolic beliefs through their families; and both were seen as a
danger to their community. So, while violence against Catholics and the
prosecution of witches are certainly linked to the same underlying fears of
their Protestant neighbours, there is little evidence that recusant Catholics
or members of non-conformist Protestant communities were commonly accused of
witchcraft in court. Many authors made rhetorical links between witchcraft and
papacy, and later between witchcraft and Quakerism, but this did not, by and
large, result in accusations and prosecution. That is not to say that
religiously fractured communities weren’t a major source of witchcraft trials,
just that the accusations themselves were not made because of someone’s
religious denomination.
As for Alexander Sussums, the records of his trial
have sadly been lost, and we only have fragments with which to reconstruct it.
It appears he was tried by the Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer, along
with nearly a hundred other accused witches, the majority of whom were found
guilty, and hung for witchcraft. Fortunately in the case of Sussums, the
Special Commission that Parliament had sent to Suffolk was not convinced. In
spite of his confession, he was found not guilty.
The witchfinder John Stearne disgustedly recorded
that “This man is yet living, notwithstanding he confessed the sucking of such
things above sixteen yeers together, [and] was suspected for doing of mischief”.[xx]
[i] Malcolm Gaskill,
Witchfinders: A seventeenth-century English
tragedy, (London, 2005): p. 2
[ii] Note, One of the
few cases which I have seen where a witches religion was openly discussed was
in Wickham Skeith, Suffolk, in 1645. The local Minister Edward Willan – who was
an indiscriminate persecuter of all sectaries, be they Leveller, Quaker,
Familist or anything else – described one of the accused witches in his parish
as an Anabaptist and ‘runner after the new sects’. See C. L’Estrange Ewen, Witch-Hunting and Witch Trials (1929):
pp. 302– 3. See also Peter Elmer, ‘Saints or sorcerers: Quakerism, demonology
and the decline of witchcraft in seventeenth-century England’, in Jonathan Barry,
Marianne Hester and Gareth Roberts (eds), Witchcraft
in Early Modern England: Studies in Culture and Belief, (Cambridge, 1996): pp.
176– 7.
[iii] See Gaskill’s
coverage of the Elizabeth Tillott in Gaskill, Witchfinders, pp. 94-95; See also British Library, Add MS 27402,
fos. 104–121: f. 107; Alan Macfarlane,
[iv] Francis Young, English Catholics and the Supernatural,
1553-1829, (Ashgate, 2013): 15.
[v] See John Stearne,
A Confirmation And Discovery of
Witch-Craft, (London, 1648).
[vi] Gaskill, Witchfinders, p. 80.
[vii] John Walter,
Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester
Plunderers (Cambridge University Press, 1999): pp. 38-39, 45-46; See also John Walter, 'Anti-Popery and the Stour Valley Riots of
1642' in David Chad, History of Religious Dissent in East Anglia, III
(Norwich, 1996), p.121-40; Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance
and Intolerance in England, 1500-1700 (Manchester University Press, 2006),
p.133.
[viii] Note, The first
peak in witch trials and witchcraft pamphlets could be generally described as
matching the period from the Spanish Armada to the Popish plot -with a little
lee way a few years either side. So there was a peak in witchcraft prosecutions
from the 1580s to 1605 – though as I say there is considerable leeway either
side of those dates.[viii]
Robin Clifton, argued that ‘from time to
time English towns and villages were swept by panic fears of “Catholic Plots” –
most of them imaginary – to rebel and massacre protestants”.[viii]
Similarly, from time to time, communities would experience spasms of witch
trials, usually small such as those in Essex in the 1580s and 90s, and
sometimes larger, such as in Lancashire in 1612.The second period of sustained
panic about both witches and popish plots, unsurprisingly coincides with the
Civil Wars of the late 1630s, and lasts until the Restoration of Charles II in
1660. And a final spasm of concern occurs in the late seventeenth century, with
concerns over a catholic head of state, James II, with a succession crisis
followed by the Glorious Revolution, and then unease about rebellion in Ireland
and/or a French invasion in support of the ousted James II.
[ix] See Robin
Clifton, ‘The popular fear of Catholics during the English Revolution’, in Past
& Present, 52 (1971).
[x] Note, the depiction of Irish women as sexually depraved, violent, and
diabolic whores, was an established part of anti-papist propaganda that was
intensified by Irish insurrection and fears about Catholic infiltration through
the Irish ‘backdoor’. Irish Catholics were portrayed as the inverse of English
Protestants – much as the witch was portrayed as the unnatural inverse of good
motherhood. They were part of the binary that depicted the true church of
England as the good wife of God, and the Catholic Church as the ‘Whore of
Babylon’. Mary
O’Dowd, ‘Women and War in Ireland in the 1640s’, in
Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O'Dowd (eds), Women
in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991),
p.96.See also Alexandra Walsham, ‘“This Newe Army of Satan”: The Jesuit Mission
and the Formation of Public Opinion in Elizabethan England’, in David Lemmings
and Claire Walker (eds), Moral Panics,
the Media and the Law in Early Modern England (Houndmills, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
[xi] Stearne, A Confirmation And Discovery of Witch-Craft,
p. 2
[xii]
Matthew Walbancke. A diary, or, An exact iovrnall faithfully communicating the most
remarkable proceedings in both houses of Parliament (London, 24– 31 Jul. 1645), pp. 5– 6.
[xiv] Stearne, A Confirmation And Discovery of Witch-Craft,
p.36.
[xv] For example,
Elizabeth Clarks who I discussed last week was described as having “[a] mother
and some other of her kinsfolke did suffer death for Witchcraft and murther.” See
‘H.F.’ [Anon], A true and exact relation, p. 1.
[xvi] Stearne, A Confirmation And Discovery of Witch-Craft,
p. 36.
[xvii] Note, There is
also the suggestion that ‘his grandmother burnt for witchcraft’, which is
rather extraordinary given that only very special cases in which a witch had
also committed the crime of petit treason,
were burnt at the stake. In fact I know of only one case in Suffolk of a witch
being burnt at the stake, and that was from the same trial as Alexander
Sussums. So while it is highly unlikely she died in the way he described, it is
possible she was executed for witchcraft, although I have so far not found no
other Sussums (or any name like it) being executed for witchcraft.
[xviii] During the Second Battle at Newbury, in October 1644, it was reported
that the Catholics of the King’s army had many witches amongst them, whom
‘Cromwell’s souldiers did plainly perceive to fly swiftly from one side of the
[K]ing’s army to another’.
The original pamphlet, which apparently made
this claim, has not been found but it was quoted in the Royalist newsbook Mercvrivs
Avlicvs. See [Anon], Mercvrivs Avlicvs, (27 October to 2 November, 1644). The Mercvrivs Avlicvs later mocked the witch-hunt in England,
claiming that ‘we have also multitudes of witches among us ... More, I may well
say, than ever this Island bred since the Creation. I speak it with horror. God
guard us from the Devil, for I think he was never so busy upon any part of the
Earth that was enlightened by the beams of Christianity; nor do I wonder at it,
for there’s never a Cross left to fright him away.’ See [Anon], Mercvrivs
Avlicvs (July 13 to July 20 1645).
[xix] Ian Gentles concluded
in The English Revolution and the Wars in
the Three Kingdomes, 1638-1652, (Abingdon, 2014): p. 139.
[xx] Stearne, A Confirmation And Discovery of Witch-Craft,
pp.36-37
*I presented a longer version of this at the Australian Historical Association conference in 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment