WHEN THE EARL of Rutland learned that the Flower women had been arrested, he hastened to Lincoln with his brother George so that he might help interrogate them in person. He may not yet have known that Joan was already dead. As Justices of the Peace, both men were entitled to join in the examinations. Justices of the Peace were the elite of county society, and were closely linked to the wider political nation. Many of them were qualified lawyers, and some served as members of Parliament for their counties. Their numbers were relatively limited and depended upon the size of the county.1 As the law’s permanent representatives in the localities, the Justices were entrusted with a large amount of judicial and administrative work. The Earl of Rutland and other noble persons who held this post, however, did so more as an honorary appointment, which meant that the bulk of the work fell to a much smaller core of Justices in each county.
Although they set off later, the brothers may have reached Lincoln before Margaret and Phillipa. True, they had a longer distance to travel, but their journey would have been swifter and more comfortable than that of the beleaguered sisters. As the latter came within sight of Lincoln, their eyes would have been drawn to the magnificent cathedral, dominating the city atop the only hill for miles around. They might also have been able to make out the towers of the castle nearby. It was to there that their grim cavalcade now headed, winding its way through the city and up the appropriately named Steep Hill to the cobbled streets of the historic Bailgate area.
Having formerly been one of the principal cities of the kingdom, Lincoln had a long and distinguished history. It had risen to prominence during the Roman period, and traces of its Roman past would have been visible to Margaret and Phillipa as they made their way towards the castle. By the thirteenth century, it was the third largest city in England, and was favoured by a succession of monarchs. Although it had since declined in importance, James I had graced the city with a visit almost exactly two years before the Flower sisters’ arrival, in late March 1617. This had been celebrated with the pomp and pageantry that traditionally accompanied a royal visit, and all the chief noblemen, justices and clerics of the county had turned out in force to greet him. Francis Manners had played a prominent part in the proceedings, as recorded by a contemporary observer:
The Earl of Rutland, being Lieutenant of the County, did bear the King’s Sword, all the said Aldermen, Sheriffs, and other Citizens in their ranks, youngest first, did ride, two and two together, up the High-street, through the Baile unto the Minster-gates at the west end thereof, where the King kneeled down on a cushion, which was there prepared, and prayed a short prayer, and so, under a canopy which was held over him by four or six Prebends in surplices, went into the Quire [of the cathedral], the Mayor still bearing the Sword, the Aldermen and other Citizens in their gowns going before him into the Quire, and there sate by the Bishop’s pue hanged about with rich hangings in a Chair all prayer-time.
James later conducted various ceremonies in the cathedral and elsewhere to cure people of the King’s Evil.2 There had followed a number of banquets, entertainments, cock-fighting, hunts and other pastimes designed for the king’s pleasure.
But the city of Lincoln had a darker past. It had long been a place of prisons and scaffolds. The focus of statutory punishment had always been the castle that overlooked the city. Originally built by William the Conqueror, it had housed a courthouse and county gaol since Tudor times, and public executions were regularly carried out there in full public view. Margaret and Phillipa Flower entered the castle through the imposing East Gate, with two huge round turrets above the archway and portcullis. They were then conveyed to their place of incarceration, which was almost certainly Cobb Hall, a defensive wall tower in the north-east corner of the bailey which dated back to the thirteenth century. The upper floor was divided into recesses which served as cells, and the prisoners were chained to heavy iron rings, some of which can still be seen today. The lower floor was a dungeon with a similar layout, but it could only be reached by ladder from the trapdoor above. Carvings made by prisoners are also still visible, including an image of a stag being hunted down. Given their notoriety, the Flower sisters were probably chained up in this lower chamber (which became known as the ‘witch hole’ after their incarceration), where the prospect of escape was even more remote than above.
The two sisters would have endured cramped and insanitary conditions in this grim fortress. Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century prisons were described as ‘mere dens of misery and disease’, unfit to ‘keep the prisoners free from wind and weather’. Gaol fever – probably a form of dysentery – carried off hundreds of prisoners each year before they had even been brought to trial.3 A notorious case of it occurred in 1577, when several sick prisoners were tried at the Oxford assizes and proceeded to infect jurors and judges alike, with fatal results.
Prisoners were crammed together in communal cells, with little if any segregation according to sex or offence. These cramped, squalid conditions made them susceptible to disease. As well as gaol fever, plague was particularly virulent in prisons, carrying off many hundreds of inmates at a time. In the Home Counties circuit of the assizes, it has been calculated that some 1,292 prisoners died in gaol between 1558 and 1625.4 In Essex alone, 21 women accused of witchcraft died in gaol between 1560 and 1603. When the notorious Lancashire witches were holed up in Lancaster Castle in 1612, the octogenarian Elizabeth Southerns soon ‘dyed in the castle before she came to her Tryall’.5
Living in cold, unhygienic conditions, prisoners were often undernourished or given food more fit for animals. In 1545, a monk appealed for better treatment for prisoners, pointing out that ‘their lodging is too bad for hoggys, and as for their meat it is euil enough for doggys’.6 Their only hope was if they had friends nearby who were prepared to bring them rations, or had the means to bribe their corrupt gaolers; given that most accused witches were ‘abandoned wretches, without friends or money’, this was rarely an option for them.7
Those who survived were commonly mistreated by their gaolers, many of whom also extracted extortionate fees from them in return for paltry ‘privileges’. An inquest held in 1630 was highly critical of conditions in the gaol in Colchester Castle, where ‘the miseries of the poore prisoners are soe great & lamentable partlie by reason of the crueltie of the Gaoler & partlie by reason of the extreame wantes they suffer that many of them are famished’.8 Little wonder that the suspected witch Jane Wenham fell down before one of her accusers, ‘begging her not to swear against her, using many expressions of fear, least she be sent to gaol’. As the writer of her trial pamphlet noted: ‘Under her circumstances, she could expect nothing less than a Course of misery and Hardship worse than death.’9 Neither could a witch hope for rescue from her satanic master. It was widely believed that, once in custody, a witch lost all her demonic powers. ‘If this witch is imprisoned, she is void of hurt, and Satan leaves her,’ opined James I in his famous tract on witchcraft. ‘For where God beginnes justlie to strike by his lawfull Lieutenantes, it is not in the Devilles power to defraude or bereave him of the office, or effect of his powerful and revenging Scepter.’10
Faced with the grim prospect of a miserable, possibly prolonged imprisonment, followed by almost certain death, it may be reasonably expected that a high proportion of suspected witches attempted escape. But the evidence suggests that, although some avoided arrest after a warrant had been issued, escape from prison was exceptionally rare. This perhaps had less to do with the effectiveness of the security measures than the fact that many of the accused were confused and frightened old women who literally had nowhere else to go. In the insular world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rural life, there was little migration even between neighbouring communities, let alone further afield. Most people would therefore only have been familiar with their own villages, and as these were effectively closed to them after they had been accused of witchcraft, there must have seemed no other option but to endure the misery of their fate.
The horrors of prison were made even worse for Margaret and Phillipa by the fact that they were incarcerated in the middle of winter, and in a dungeon that was bitterly cold even during the summer months.11 Neither would they have had much food to sustain them, since their rations were dependent upon the charity of the prison-keepers. Given the notoriety of their crimes, and the fact that they had no friends in the city, it is likely that they went hungry most of the time. As suspected felons, they were not permitted to ‘goe at liberty within the prison, nor abroad with their keeper’.12 Their only comfort – and it was a cold comfort at that – was the prison chaplain, whose job it was to reconcile the accused to their likely fate. But any sympathetic ministrations that he gave would have been far outweighed by the ill treatment, threats and bullying meted out by the gaolers, who often brought pressure to bear on prisoners over a prolonged period in order to extract confessions or the names of other suspects.
The Flower sisters had no hope of bail. This was a privilege denied – in practice, if not in theory – to suspected witches, along with other felons. But it was unlikely that they endured a long wait before their interrogation began. Jean Bodin urged that this must follow as soon as the suspect was incarcerated: ‘One must first of all and as soon as possible, begin interrogating the witch. While that is certainly useful for all crimes, for this one it must be done. For it has always been found that as soon as the witch is arrested, she immediately feels that Satan has abandoned her, and terrified she confesses willingly then what force and torture could not extract from her. But if she is left in prison for some time, there is no doubt that Satan will give her instruction.’13
In contrast to James I, Bodin urged that, once imprisoned, a suspected witch must never be left alone. ‘She speaks to the Devil . . . who dissuades her from telling the truth, or makes her depart from what she has confessed and always promises her that she will not die, which creates many obstacles . . . Others already condemned to death, kill themselves, as we have often seen.’14 By the time they reached Lincoln Castle, the Flower sisters had already won such notoriety that their gaolers no doubt heeded this advice very carefully for fear that they might escape the grisly fate that looked set to befall them.
Although most women accused of witchcraft received the cursory treatment that an overcrowded justice system could afford, cases involving well-connected families such as the Manners were handled with rather more attention to detail. The author of the trial pamphlet concurs that the Flower women were ‘specially arraigned’ and the evidence against them ‘taken and charily [carefully] preserved’.15 The account books at Belvoir attest that the Earl of Rutland spared no expense in his determination to see them brought to justice. A payment of £20 was made to the family’s treasurer, Francis Jephson, on 16 March 1619 ‘for charges in prosecuting the witche[s]’. A further £20 was paid to Jephson on 15 July ‘uppon my Lorde’s jorney to the assises at Lyncolne’.16 One further payment, dated 2 September, was made to Jephson for £17 for unspecified goods or services.17 In total, the earl spent almost £6,000 in modern money. His determination may not have been an act of vengeance but of prevention: if the Flower women were put to death, then their power over his ailing younger son might be extinguished.
Francis and George Manners were joined in their examinations by the other two most distinguished members of the Lincolnshire aristocracy, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby and Sir William Pelham.18 Lord Willoughby was a close friend of the earl, and was his deputy in the lieutenancy of Lincolnshire. Pelham, meanwhile, was also a regular visitor to Belvoir and had been knighted there by James I in 1612. As high sheriff of Lincolnshire, he was arguably the most experienced in the law, having been trained at Gray’s Inn following legal studies at New College, Oxford. As well as their official positions, the men were connected by blood or marriage and called each other ‘brother’ or ‘cousin’. It was an extraordinarily close-knit circle, and every member of it would have been very conscious of the unspoken reason for their being present at the trial: to bring the Flower women to swift and brutal justice.
The closed, incestuous world of the local aristocracy and justice system was not exclusive to Lincolnshire: it was mirrored in every part of the country and underpinned the entire administration of local and central government. Anyone who was not part of this privileged world and fell foul of the law could expect little by way of justice. It was even worse for those who, like the Flower sisters, had committed crimes against the aristocracy. In cases such as these, the full power of the English state would be brought down upon their heads.
The other examiners were hardly less distinguished. They included Henry Hastings, sheriff of Leicester, who belonged to the distinguished family of the Earl of Huntingdon. He was of a strong Protestant bias, and as such took a keen interest in cases of witchcraft. A Justice of the Peace, Mr Butler, was also among their number. The final member of the interrogation team stood out from the rest because he was neither of noble birth nor a member of the judiciary. He was the Reverend Samuel Fleming, rector of Bottesford since 1581 and official chaplain to four successive earls of Rutland, including Sir Francis Manners.
Fleming stood apart from his fellow interrogators because of more than just his birth and profession. He was a writer and intellectual of some renown, and the evidence suggests that he was sceptical about witchcraft, and therefore less motivated than the rest to see the Flower sisters hanged.19 He was in his early seventies at the time of the trial and emerges from the contemporary records as a gentle and benevolent man, whose generosity towards the poor of the local community can still be seen in Bottesford today.20 Fleming also differed from his noble patron by dint of his devout Puritan faith.
By the time of Margaret and Phillipa’s imprisonment, witchcraft prosecutions had gained the same notoriety as crimes such as murder or treason, which were punishable by death. Among lawyers, witchcraft was known as crimen exceptum – which meant that it was not subject to the normal legal procedures. ‘It is absolutely necessary to bear in mind that the crime of witchcraft must not be treated in the same way as others,’ insisted Jean Bodin.21 ‘Those who let witches escape or who do not carry out their punishment with utmost rigour, can be assured that they will be abandoned by God to the mercy of witches. And the country which tolerates them will be struck by plagues, famines, and wars.’ By contrast, he asserted: ‘Those who take vengeance against them will be blessed by God, and will bring an end to His wrath. This is why one who is charged and accused of being a witch must never be simply let off and acquitted, unless the calumny of the accuser or informer is clearer than the sun. Since the proof of such wickednesses is so hidden and so difficult, no one would ever be accused or punished out of a million witches if parties were governed, as in an ordinary trial, by a lack of proof.’22
Bodin’s views were echoed throughout the judicial sphere. Measures of proof could be much flimsier than for other cases, which usually required a confession and two witnesses, while methods of interrogation could be altogether harsher. It was not necessary for a suspected witch to confess to her crimes in order for the authorities to secure a conviction. Indeed, if she denied her guilt, then she was often simply adding perjury to her other sins. Thus, in the notorious case of the Pendle witches in 1612, when Jennet Preston protested her innocence, it was deemed ‘a very fearful thing to all that were present, who knew she was guilty’.23
Nevertheless, because a confession was accepted as irrefutable proof of guilt, there was a considerable incentive to secure one. Furthermore, once a person had confessed, they became a powerful witness against others. The accused would therefore be subjected to intense pressure and ‘sharp speeches’ by their interrogators, who all too often goaded them into admitting their crimes by the threat of torture, unending imprisonment or death.24 The psychological effects of being kept in solitary confinement led many others to confess. The notorious ‘Witchfinder General’, Matthew Hopkins, recorded with some relish how many of his victims would be ‘brought into a sad condition, by understanding of the horribleness of her sin, and the judgements threatened against her; and knowing the Devill’s malice and subtile circumventions, is brought to remorse and sorrow for complying with Satan for so long, and disobeying God’s sacred Commands, doth then desire to unfold her mind with much bitterness’.25
The fact that the trial papers often contain detailed descriptions of curses and spells given by the accused might suggest that they had in fact tried to cause harm by magical means. But these descriptions are so similar as to be almost formulaic. It would have been sufficient for a small number of people to cite such spells and incantations for them to become common knowledge among the legal community. And it is entirely possible that those responsible for interrogating the accused may have planted the idea of these magical arts into the confused, tired and frightened minds of their prisoners in order to secure a conviction. By the time they confessed, most suspected witches had lost the capacity to distinguish truth from fiction; reality from fantasy.
A witch’s own confession aside, courts could admit the evidence of those who were not usually permitted to bear testimony: women, ‘old silly persons’, convicted felons and interested parties.26 ‘One must not . . . insist on the ordinary rules for handling, challenging or admitting witnesses in such a hateful crime as this one,’ insisted Jean Bodin.27 So-called witnesses in witchcraft trials did not even have to have seen the crime. As one cynical contemporary noted, if this had been a requirement, ‘it will be then impossible to put any one to death . . . [for] hardly can a man be brought, which upon his owne knowledge, can averre such things’.28 It was enough to testify to the motives and effects of the alleged witchcraft. The fact that women, in particular, were allowed to act as witnesses was a radical departure from standard legal procedure. Traditionally, as Bodin pointed out, ‘according to canon law women in a criminal action are not admissible as witnesses on account of the imbecility and fragility of the sex’, and ‘one must always have two women to equal the testimony of one man’.29 That this rule did not apply to witchcraft cases is perhaps an indication of how desperate the authorities were to secure convictions.
The testimonies of children were also considered admissible evidence. An alarming number of children were pressured into giving evidence against their parents. ‘Sundry tymes the evidence of children is taken accusing their owne mothers, that they did see them give milke unto little thinges [familiars] which they kept in wooll,’ observed George Gifford. ‘The children comming to yeares of discretion confesse they were entised to accuse.’30 In an age when infants were raised on stories of witches, fairies and goblins, it is easy to see how their overexcited imaginations made them swear that they had seen an old woman flying through the night sky on a broomstick, or a devil emerge from the shadows in their room while they were asleep. All too often, children were manipulated by the authorities to confirm outlandish tales of witchcraft. The interrogator in the notorious case of the 14 women who were tried for witchcraft in 1582 persuaded Ursula Kemp’s eight-year-old son, Thomas, to confirm that she had four familiars: ‘And being asked of what colours they were, [he] saith that Titty is like a little grey cat, Tiffin is like a white lamb, Piggin is black, like a toad, and Jack is black, like a cat. And he saith, he hath seen his mother at times to give them beer to drink, and of a white loaf or cake to eat; and saith that in the night-time the said spirits will come to his mother and suck blood of her upon her arms and other places of her body.’31
The most notorious case of a child giving evidence against their family was that of the Pendle witches in 1612. When her elder sister, brother, mother and grandmother and several of her neighbours were accused of witchcraft and brought to trial at Lancaster Castle, nine-year-old Jennet Device was called to the witness stand. Upon seeing her daughter enter the courtroom, Elizabeth Device let out an anguished scream, knowing that the girl’s testimony would be enough to send all of the accused to their deaths. But according to the contemporary account of the trial, Jennet was unmoved by her mother’s distress and demanded that she be removed from the room. She then stood on a table so that the entire court might see her, and calmly denounced her mother as a witch. Elizabeth and all of the other members of the Device family who had been implicated, along with most of their neighbours, were hanged the next day.
Quite what had motivated Jennet to send her family to their deaths is still a matter for debate. It is possible that relations between them were not good, but she must have harboured a deep-seated hatred of them to exact such a revenge. More likely, perhaps, is that she had been pressured and intimidated by members of the judiciary, who were intent upon making an example of this Catholic family, and at the same time winning favour with their Protestant witch hunting king. Four years later, another mass trial rested upon the testimony of a child. On that occasion, nine women were sentenced to death at Leicester on charges of witchcraft which were supported by the uncorroborated evidence of one boy.32
In other cases, children made their accusations of their own free will, motivated by a desire to cause mischief. One of the most notorious was Anne Gunter, a 14-year-old girl from Berkshire who in 1604 fell into a series of strange fits. The ministrations of physicians worked no effect, and in her torment Anne railed against a number of local women whom she claimed had bewitched her. The story rapidly spread throughout the local area, and soon her sick chamber became thronged with people from far and wide, curious to catch a glimpse of the ‘hysterical passions and paralytical convulsions’ experienced by the young girl. In her fevered ramblings, she described in extraordinary detail the familiars of the witches who had brought her to this sorry state. They included ‘a whitish mouse with a man’s face and long beard, called Sweat’, ‘a black rat with a swine’s face and boar’s tusk named Catche’, and ‘a whitish toad called Vizitt’. Her case attracted the notice of some of the country’s leading scholars and ministers, who all hastened to see the girl for themselves. Clearly enjoying the attention, on one occasion when a godly young man was fervently praying at her bedside, Anne suddenly kicked a lighted candle into his face. On another, she ‘put her head under the bed clothes, as some observers suspected, to have a quiet laugh’. Determined to silence those who began to whisper that the whole matter was an elaborate ruse, Anne’s father took her to be examined by King James himself. Bemused by the whole affair, James referred it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in turn committed Anne to the care of his chaplain, Samuel Harsnett, who had uncovered a fraudulent witchcraft case some years earlier. Anne and her father were shortly afterwards accused of conspiracy before the Star Chamber. Throwing herself on their mercy, Anne confessed that she had suffered only from a ‘natural distemper’ and that her father had ‘persuaded her to feign strange symptoms’.33
Pierre De Lancre, who was actively involved in the hunting down of witches in south-western France, described the familial nature of many of the trials and accusations. He had been told by one member of his local community that ‘If the number of witches condemned to the fire is so large, it will be odd if I do not have a share in the cinders.’ De Lancre concluded: ‘This is why one very often sees a son accuse his father and mother, a brother his sister, a husband his wife, and sometimes the other way round. This family link is why several heads of family, officers, and other people of the better sort finding themselves affected by it, prefer rather to suffer the disability which may exist in this abomination . . . than to see so many executions by gibbet, flame and fire, of people who are so closely related to them.’34
Far greater importance was given to the character of the accused than in other, more standard criminal investigations. The demeanour, characteristics, enemies and motives of the suspect were subjected to intense scrutiny. The leading manual for Justices of the Peace, published in 1618, advised that the nature of the accused be examined to determine whether they were ‘civill, or hastie, wittie and subtill, a quarreller, pilferer, or bloudie minded, &c.’. Their mode of employment was also looked into, and if they ‘liveth idly or vagrant’, this was enough grounds to arrest them. Likewise, their way of life was subject to detailed investigation, and if they even so much as dressed in unusual clothes, then they were instantly suspected of being ‘of evill fame’. Having thoroughly satisfied themselves of the suspect’s character and way of life, the Justices of the Peace were then instructed to investigate the parents to see ‘if they were wicked, and given to the same kind of fault’.35
Although the investigations made a show of being thorough, in reality they needed to yield very little concrete evidence in order to bring the suspected witch to trial. No impartial observer ever testified that he had witnessed an act of sorcery. Neither did the authorities ever conduct a raid on a suspected witch’s house or coven, even though they often did so for other subversive activities. Rather, the evidence for sorcery consisted of the depositions of neighbours who accused them of harm, and the alleged witch’s confessions. Both types of evidence were deeply suspect. If the accused was found to have a notorious reputation as a witch, was known to harbour malice towards the victim or to have put a curse on them before ill fortune struck, then the investigators could be satisfied that their efforts would result in a court hearing. Better still if the Devil’s mark had been found on the body of the accused, or there were witnesses to attest that a pact with Satan had been forged. In such cases, there was little hope of a reprieve. But even without such ‘proof’, a conviction could be secured. It was generally acknowledged that ‘in the case of Witch-craft many things are very difficult, hidden and infolded in mists and clouds, overshadowing our reason and best understanding’.36 In short, even if it could not be proved, it could still be punished.
The accused was completely powerless to produce an alibi because it was believed that evil spells could be cast many miles from the intended victim. The 1618 manual advised that ‘halfe proofs are to be allowed, and are good causes of suspition’.37 The law took on a new, dangerously eager credulity, and everything seemed geared towards securing a conviction.
Not everyone was so blinded by the furore of the witch hunts that they could not see the enormous potential for injustice that this system allowed. ‘Experience shows that ignorant people . . . will make strong proofs of such presumptions, whereupon sometimes jurors do give their verdict against parties innocent,’ lamented William Perkins.38 Even George Gifford, whose pamphlets helped whip up popular fear and hatred of witches, admitted that ‘many times there is innocent blood shed: which is a grevous sin. The jury commit perjury and cruel murther, which uppon blinde surmises of ignorant persons, do give their verduit, for they should see what knowledge of God, the accusers have.’ He was aghast at the blatant disregard for the normal procedures of the law, whereby a suspect could be put to death upon the slightest of evidence. ‘The Lord doth not allow one witnesse being a man in a cause of death to be sufficient: but these would alow the accusation of one devil if he accuseth xi persons . . . Many Jurers never weigh the force of the evidence which is brought, but as if they had their oth for conjectures or likelihoodes, they are oftentimes very forward to finde guilty, being sicke of the same disease that the accusers be.’39
Gifford excused such miscarriages of justice, not on the grounds that the accused could not possibly have committed murder by cursing, spells or other maleficent magic, but because the Devil had misled the victims. ‘What vile and monstrous impieties are here committed . . . It is strange to see the madnes of the people, that wil aske the devill who sent him. And then he telleth who is his dame, and to how many she hath sent him, and how many hee hath kylled. If it were the Devill indeede, would they beleeve him: Is it not his desire to bring innocent persons into daunger? Would not hee very gladly have a number of men perjure and forsweare themselves? Doth the Lord will men to goe upon their oth in a matter, at the testimony of a devil?’40 The situation was little better 30 years later, when Richard Bernard wrote his Guide to Grand Jury Men. He lamented how frequently cases were brought to trial which should have been shown to be groundless during the preliminary investigations, ‘and so thurst an intricate case upon a jury of simple men, who proceed too often upon relations of meere presumptions, and these sometimes very weake ones too, to take away mens lives.’41
But such criticism had no bearing upon the case of Margaret and Phillipa Flower. They had even less hope of justice than most other suspected witches because they were pitted against not just the English legal system, but the wealth and influence of one of the country’s most powerful noble families. The Manners had the county, the king and – most people believed – even God on their side. The beleaguered Flower sisters had only themselves. Their chief hope – and it was a faint one at that – was that there would be insufficient evidence against them. But if they could not control what their neighbours and other witnesses might say, they could at least remain steadfast in protesting their innocence.
The latter was easier said than done. With growing scepticism about the validity of witchcraft trials, the importance of securing a confession was greater than ever. And the methods employed to extract such a confession were becoming increasingly sophisticated. Just two years before the arrest of the Flower women, a lengthy treatise was published which set out in great detail the means which should be employed for the detection, examination and conviction of witches. Thomas Cooper’s The Mystery of Witch-craft was a popular work and, appearing so close to Margaret and Phillipa’s arrest, may well have been consulted by the men appointed to luring a confession from them. Cooper urged the presiding magistrate to make careful enquiry concerning the crime, ‘and that not upon every corrupt passion, or sleight occasion, but upon weightie Presumptions, probably conjecturing of the Witch’. These ‘weightie Presumptions’ he defined as being the testimonies of neighbours; the accusation of a fellow witch or witches; ‘if after Enmity, quarreling, or threatning, a present mischief do folow’; if the suspect was related to a known witch; whether she had a mark from Satan in ‘some privy place’; and finally if the prisoner proved ‘contrarie’ and ‘fearefull’ when examined, then this would indicate ‘a guiltie conscience’.42 The author counselled that the following ‘proofes’ were necessary to secure a conviction: ‘The Free confession of the crime by the party suspected, after due examination, being found in divers tales’; if they refused to confess, then the testimony of two witnesses that the accused had made a pact with Satan or ‘hath done some knowne practise of Witch-craft’ would be more than sufficient. The latter could include anything from entertaining a familiar spirit to calling upon the Devil for help.43
Cooper went on to advise that the examination of the suspect ‘may either be made by Question from the Magistrate, by certaine wise and crosse Interrogations to this end’. Surprisingly, given that it was in theory illegal, he advised that a conviction might also be obtained ‘by Torture, when together with words, some violent meanes are used, by paine, to extort confession, which may have place when the partie is obstinate’.44 The ordeal that Margaret and Phillipa were about to suffer adds weight to the theory that their interrogators had been influenced by this guidance.
Although torture was illegal in England, the threat of it was often employed, and the practice probably also. The authorities could find ample justification for it if they so wished. The infamous witch hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, declared that the use of torture was justified because witchcraft constituted ‘high treason against God’s Majesty’. ‘Any person, whatsoever his rank or position, upon such an accusation may be put to the torture, and he who is found guilty, even if he confesses his crime, let him be racked, let him suffer all other tortures prescribed by law in order that he may be punished in proportion to his offences.’ Its authors advised the authorities to have a number of different methods of torture at their disposal, but urged them to keep these secret: ‘Like a physician who strives to cut out gangrenous limbs and separate the mangy sheep from the healthy, the prudent judge can now surmise that the denounced woman is infected with the sorcery of silence, but no single, unfailing rule or method can be described for wrenching out this silence. Indeed, it would not be safe to give one, because if that method became a common practice and general rule, then, when the sons of darkness foresaw it, they could more easily avoid it as a trap for their damnation or take precautions.’45
In Scotland, King James sanctioned – and even encouraged – torture of the most savage kind in order to exact confessions, believing that only the most ‘grievous pains and cruel torments’ would bring the necessary information to light.46 According to his dangerously warped logic: ‘Experience daily proves how loath they [the accused] are to confess without torture, which witnesseth their guiltiness.’47 This included pulling off the prisoner’s fingernails with a pair of pincers and thrusting needles ‘even up to the heads’ into what was left of their fingertips.48 Another horrifying method was the ‘torment of the boots’, whereby wedges were driven into the prisoner’s boots in order to shatter his shins and ankles. A contemporary account describes how one such unfortunate prisoner had his legs ‘crushed and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow spurted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable forever’.
There were similarly horrific accounts from the Continent. One particularly tragic case involved a man named Johannes Junius, burgomaster of Bamberg in Germany. His interrogators subjected him to a horrific cycle of torture, involving thumb-screws, leg-screws and the strappado – whereby his hands were tied behind his back, then he was hoisted up and suspended from the ceiling by a rope, with weights attached to his feet, which would almost certainly cause his arms to dislocate. After his eventual confession, he wrote to his daughter in trembling hand as he awaited death at the stake: ‘Innocent have I come to prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent I must die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head . . . They never leave off with the torture till one confesses something; be he never so good, he must be a witch. Nobody escapes.’49
Some torture had strongly sexual undertones. Thanks to the witch hunts, prisons were now filled with large numbers of women, and for the first time men had unrestricted access to them. The legally sanctioned torture that they performed included sadistic experimentation and gratuitous sexual advances. To try to force a confession, a French priest applied hot fat repeatedly to Catherine Boyraionne’s eyes, armpits, thighs, stomach and ‘dans sa nature’ (vagina). The unfortunate woman died in prison, no doubt from her injuries. When the executioner Jehan Minart of Cambrai in northern France prepared a condemned witch for the stake, he examined her mouth and ‘parties honteuses’ (shameful parts).50 Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister who played a key role in the notorious Salem witch trials, uncovered and fondled the breasts of a 17-year-old girl whom he claimed was possessed by demons. It was also common for a suspected witch to be stripped to the waist and whipped, her breasts bared to the public. Others were raped during their imprisonment, but stood little chance of justice because their attackers claimed that they had bewitched them.
That the men involved in hunting down and prosecuting suspected witches could thus take sexual pleasure without fear of recrimination may help to explain the bewilderingly rapid spread of the witch craze, and why it took hold for so long. Everyone from gaolers to court officials and even priests could indulge their sadistic fantasies and cause untold suffering and terror among their victims. That they did so under the guise of ridding society of evil is bitterly ironic.
Another favoured method of extracting a confession was the tormentum insomniae, or forced sleeplessness. This was particularly popular in England, perhaps because the authorities believed that, with no physical pain involved, it did not constitute real torture. The method involved keeping the suspected witch awake for 40 hours or more until they were so delirious with fatigue that they had no idea what they were admitting to. It proved so effective that one judge claimed that fewer than 2 per cent of all victims failed to submit. ‘Watching’ was employed to particularly devastating effect by Matthew Hopkins during his reign of terror in Essex. The Puritan cleric John Gaule described this in detail:
Having taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture, to which she submits not, she is then bound with cords; there is she watched and kept without meat or sleep for the space of 24 hours for (they say) within that time they shall see her imp come and suck. A little hole is likewise made in the door for the imp to come in at; and lest it might come in some less discernible shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or flies, to kill them. And if they cannot kill them, then they may be sure they are her imps.51
One unfortunate victim of this treatment was a vicar from Brandeston in Suffolk who had attempted to protect a convicted witch, and was soon hauled in for the same crime himself. The lord of the manor recorded the dreadful treatment that this unfortunate man, who was then well into his seventies, suffered: ‘I have heard it from them that watched with him that they kept him awake several Nights together and ran him backwards and forwards about the Room, until he [was] out of Breath. Then they rested him a little, and then ran him again; and thus they did for several Days and Nights together, till he was weary of his life, and was scarce sensible of what he said or did.’52 It is easy to imagine how, after undergoing such frightening and exhausting treatment, the half-crazed prisoner would confess to any number of fantastical ‘devilish’ acts. Those who were tasked with ‘watching’ them would have been similarly susceptible to fevered imaginings. Once they had been told to expect the appearance of imps and goblins, the slightest noise, movement or shadow within the room could have taken on the ghastly appearance of a witch’s familiar.
It has been convincingly argued that the great witch hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would not have happened without the use of torture.53 A witch’s ‘owne free confession . . . happeneth very rare and seldome’, admitted one authority in 1616.54 It is certainly hard to imagine scores of prisoners willingly confessing to all of the outlandish crimes associated with witchcraft unless torture – or the threat of it – had been employed. King James acknowledged this, but maintained that the suspects’ confessions were still an indication of their guilt.55 It was the prospect of such torture that led thousands of prisoners to effectively sign their own death warrants by fabricating confessions. Among the convicted witches in Lorraine was Mengeatte des Woirelz, who in 1584 explained that she had made false statements because ‘tired of being in prison, and of the pain of the torture, joined with the fear of the evil reputation she had been falsely given in the town, she had chosen to die rather than live in such anguish. She had reckoned that in saying what she did to us . . . we would have enough reason to put her to death.’ In a similar case 20 years later, Barbelline Chaperey admitted that ‘she had confessed more than she had committed or done, but this was because she was under torture, and that she had not reckoned there would be so many people hostile to her, after thinking about which, she had been led to make sure confessions’.56
Holed up in their freezing cold, damp and stinking prison, Margaret and Phillipa Flower’s resolve not to confess might already have been weakening as they faced their interrogators.