IN LATE FEBRUARY or early March 1619, the evidence from the examinations of Margaret and Phillipa Flower was presented to the grand jury of Lincolnshire gentlemen. This august collective represented the landed gentry of Lindsey, Kesteven and Holland – the three subdivisions of Lincolnshire – and its role was to determine which prisoners should be put on trial.1 Given that the Earl of Rutland was lord lieutenant of the county and its most important landowner, and that he arrived in Lincoln the same month, it is likely that he led the meeting. Such juries of necessity comprised local men, as the judge of assize at York in 1620 explained: ‘They who live in the countye and have an interest in the country and are sencyble of the mischeyfs which these offences doe breede may present the offenders to the judges.’2 The accused was never present at these hearings, and the members of the panel were often under pressure from the judges to send the case forward to trial. The grand jury for the Belvoir witch case wasted no time in finding that there was a billa vera (true case) for the two sisters to answer at the court of assizes in Lincoln, which was to take place in early March.3 This court, like the grand jury, was comprised of the local elite, but they were made very aware of their responsibility to carry out national government policies – among them the persecution of suspected witches.
Witchcraft persecutions had been the business of the assizes for some time. This was a twice-yearly court which operated in six ‘circuits’ across England and had been the country’s principal criminal court since the early fourteenth century. It was one of the most effective means of enforcing national authority in the localities. The assize judges (two for each circuit) were appointed by the monarch, who would brief them on their duties, and they would meet in Westminster to divide up the six circuits between them. The assizes was thus a hugely influential instrument of royal policy, and one contemporary referred to ‘these halfe-yeerlye circuits whereby the streames of Justice are derived into all the parts of this kingdome, which lyke the streames of paradice doe make this land such a garden of pleasure as now it is’.4 By the reign of James I, the court had become as much a social as a judicial occasion, drawing members of the gentry from across the county in which the hearings took place.
The court of assize was a much-anticipated event in each of the 50 or so cities that its judges visited, and it occasioned great pomp and ceremony. The entry into Lincolnshire by the judges assigned to the Midland circuit was heralded by trumpeters, and the judges were welcomed into the county by the sheriff’s bailiff. When they were within sight of the city of Lincoln, they were given a much grander reception by the sheriff, other local officers and members of the county gentry. This impressive cavalcade, attended by pike- and liverymen in specially made clothing, then progressed into the city amidst great rejoicing, with bells, music and sometimes Latin orations being sung. Once inside the city’s walls, the judges were met by the most distinguished local gentry (on this occasion including the Earl of Rutland and his brother), who briefed them on the state of the county. They then progressed to the cathedral for prayers and a sermon by the sheriff’s chaplain.5 Although often very long and tedious for the judges to sit through, these sermons were of real political significance, and would often be published after the event. They were an opportunity to air local grievances against the court or justice system, or to draw attention to the forthcoming business of the assizes. Given that the Belvoir witch case was by far the most notorious of all those that were to be brought before the judges, it is likely that the chaplain used his sermon to pontificate upon the evils of witchcraft.
Regrettably, the records of the Midland circuit assizes have long since been lost. Because it was not a centralised court, its records were not preserved in one place, but rather subject to random dispersal and destruction, whether accidental or deliberate.6 We therefore have to rely upon the account of the Belvoir witch trial given in the contemporary pamphlet, as well as knowledge of similar trials elsewhere. Where such pamphlets can be compared with surviving court records, factual inconsistencies often emerge. The pamphlets were deliberately sensationalist and their authors could distort, disregard or fabricate the evidence presented at the trials in order to make their accounts more appealing to their readers. There is no reason to suppose that The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillippa Flower, Daughters of Joan Flower was in any way an exception to this general rule. There are inconsistencies – such as in the spelling of names and, more seriously, the phrasing of the testimonies. Thus, Joan Willimot, an associate of the Flower women who was interrogated shortly afterwards, is recorded in the original pamphlet as saying that a ‘Spirit did aske of her her soule’, whereas in a later edition this has changed to a spirit having ‘enquired about her soul’, which implies a completely different meaning.
As befitted a trial of such high profile, the presiding judges were two of the foremost legal figures in the country. Sir Edward Bromley, a baron of the Exchequer, had convicted the Pendle witches seven years earlier and now again sat in judgement. He had a reputation for thoroughness, albeit one driven by a fierce desire to see witches brought to justice. In concluding the case of the Pendle witches, he had been careful to stress the strength of the evidence against them, thus leaving the jurors and other witnesses in no doubt that justice had prevailed. He told the accused that they had no ‘cause to complaine: since in the Triall of your lives there hath beene great care and paines taken, and much time spent: and very few or none of you, but stand convicted upon your owne voluntarie confessions and examinations’. He went on to praise the quality of the witnesses and the thoroughness of their interrogation, claiming that nobody of their ‘nature and condition, ever were Arraigned and Tried with more solemnitie, had more libertie given to pleade or answere to everie particular point of evidence’. He therefore concluded that ‘extraordinary meanes’ had been used to ensure that none of the proceedings had ‘touch[ed] your lives unjustly’.7 If he had protested too much, then nobody remarked upon it. Instead, the trial established his reputation as one of the foremost prosecutors of witches in the country.
His esteemed colleague Sir Henry Hobart was a former Attorney General, and now Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas – an immensely powerful position which carried national responsibility for the civil law. Both he and Bromley had been appointed by the king himself – an indication that James was following the case with great interest.8 Before they left Westminster, they and the other assize judges would have been summoned by the king, who made it clear that he expected them to apply the law according to his own interpretation of it. ‘As Kings borrow their power from God, so Judges from Kings,’ he told them. ‘And as Kings are to accompt to God, so Judges unto God and Kings.’9 And the one facet of the law about which the king’s views were best known was that relating to witchcraft. But to his credit, while James was fond of quoting the Book of Exodus that ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, he seemed concerned above all to see justice done. Daemonologie had included specific instructions in this respect: ‘Judges ought to beware to condemne any, but such as they are sure are guiltie, neither should the clattering reporte of a carling [an old woman or witch] serve in so weightie a case. Judges ought indeed to beware whome they condemne: For it is as great a Crime (as Solomon sayeth) to condemne the innocent, as to let the guiltie escape free.’
The choice of judge was crucial in a trial such as this. While in theory all four parties – accused, accusers, jury and judge – were given equal participation, in practice everything depended upon the nature and prejudices of the presiding judge. This makes the presence of Sir Edward Bromley, a renowned witch hunter, particularly significant. Both judges would have been aware of – and, the evidence suggests, were heavily influenced by – the publication of a major new handbook for the trial of witches just a year earlier. Michael Dalton’s The Countrey Justice provided an extraordinarily detailed set of instructions for determining legally acceptable ‘proof’ in witchcraft cases. This had always been an issue for those involved in the prosecution of suspected witches because the crime, by its very nature, was virtually impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt, as Dalton himself admitted: ‘Now against these witches the Justices of peace may not alwaies expect direct evidence, seeing all their works are the works of darknesse, and no witnesses present with them to accuse them.’10 Bodin agreed that ‘with the deeds of witches . . . the proof is so obscure and the wickednesses so hidden, that out of a thousand there is hardly one punished’. He added, with some regret, that ‘one must be very sure of the truth to impose the death sentence’.11 Both he and Dalton therefore set out to help those involved in the prosecution of witches to chart a course through the increasingly perilous waters of the laws surrounding witchcraft.
According to Dalton, two of the most important signs of guilt were the presence of a ‘familiar, or spirit’, and a mark on the suspect’s body to distinguish where their familiar ‘sucketh them’. Other proofs included the testimony of the victim, the examination and confession of the witch’s children or servants, and ‘their owne voluntarie confession, which exceedes all other evidence’.12 Bodin added that ‘if those whom she threatened have died afterward or fallen into a languor, especially if there are several of them, it is a most powerful presumption’.13 The interrogators of Margaret and Phillipa Flower had secured every one of these signs during the course of their examinations.
The Justices of the Peace were instructed to acquire a bewildering range of other information from the suspect, such as ‘his parents, if they were wicked, and given to the same kind of fault’, ‘his course of life . . . if a common alehouse-haunter, or ryottous in dyet, play or apparrell’, and ‘whether he be of evill fame, or report’. The Flower sisters would have given their examiners ample fodder for each of these questions. Even if they had denied their guilt or refused to answer, the simple fact of ‘blushing, looking downewards, silence, trembling’ was taken as proof of guilt.
Most assize hearings were conducted in buildings which had other uses when the courts were not in session. However, in Lincoln the court of assize had a permanent base in the castle, which also served as the headquarters of the sheriff. A survey carried out by the Duchy of Lancaster mentions the courthouse, which by then was one of the few buildings that survived within the castle walls. The layout of the courtroom followed a more or less standard pattern. The judges would sit in the middle of a raised bench, flanked on either side and on a low bench in front by county magnates. Meanwhile, the custos rotulorum (keeper of the county’s records), sheriff, undersheriff and court clerks sat at a low table. Behind them were the jury and the prisoners’ dock. Into the rest of the courtroom would be stuffed the throngs of ordinary people who had turned up to witness the proceedings. Criminal trials were one of the most popular spectator sports of the day. There was almost a carnival atmosphere at the assizes, with a constant crush of officials and members of the public, and the undersheriff desperately trying to maintain order. At the trial of one Catholic priest in 1582, the courtroom was so crowded that the judges were ‘forced to make room for themselves like ushers’. A similar scene was witnessed at Warwick in 1669, when a boy fell from a window and was skewered on the pike of one of the sheriff’s men standing guard below. A few years later, the floor of a courtroom in East Grinstead collapsed under the weight of spectators.14 Considering the high-profile nature of the Belvoir witch case, it is likely that the courtroom in Lincoln was even more crowded than usual on the day of the trial.
Once the judges and court officials had taken their places, a crier demanded silence and the formal proceedings began. These included reading aloud the names of the Justices of the Peace, coroners, constables and bailiffs, and the prisoners themselves. The jury, composed of between 13 and 23 ‘respectable men’ (usually middling yeomen and artisans), was called and sworn.15 To qualify for jury service, a man had to be between 21 and 70 years of age, and to be of property. In an admirable (if rare) attempt to ensure that justice prevailed, a juryman could not be connected to, or have any obvious bias against, the accused, and one of the sheriff’s duties was to ensure that he ‘returne indifferent juries for the triall of mens lives’.16
Once the jury had been sworn in, one of the judges would then read a solemn charge ‘telling the cause of their coming, giving a good lesson unto the people’, and summarising the cases which were to be examined.17 This ‘lesson’ was a forceful, often intimidating means of conveying the attitudes and priorities of the Crown and Council in Westminster, thus reinforcing official policy and making it clear that the king would not tolerate any deviation from it. Even though James’s preoccupation with witchcraft had lessened by the time the Flower sisters were brought to trial, the fact that their victim was one of the most influential noblemen both at court and in the county no doubt prompted the judges to reinforce the terms of the 1604 Act. The clerk of the court would then call the prisoners to the bar and tell them to raise their right hand and plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against them. In cases of felony, if the accused failed to answer, he was judged ‘mute, that is dumme by contumacie’ and condemned to ‘peine forte et dure’, or being pressed to death. This horrific procedure was described in a sixteenth-century account of the English justice system as ‘one of the cruellest deathes that may be: he is layd upon a table, and an other uppon him, and so much weight of stones or lead laide uppon that table, while as his bodie be crushed, & his life by that violence taken from him’.18
As was customary at such courts, there was no defence lawyer for those accused of felony – there was too great a fear that any such intermediary would be bolstered by the power of the Devil. Rather, the truth was expected to emerge from the written testimonies that had been taken before the trial. These testimonies were considered by the grand jury before the trial began. Because the assizes only happened twice a year in each circuit, there was always a great deal of business to get through. Even in winter, the proceedings began at seven o’clock in the morning and continued, by candlelight, until as late as eleven o’clock at night. It was common for seven or eight prisoners (each with entirely different cases) to be dealt with in quick succession, and there could be as many as 40 cases in one day alone. Routine trials lasted just 15 to 20 minutes, and even the more complex ones probably took little more than half an hour from arraignment to verdict. Some prisoners saved the court time by pleading guilty, which meant that their trial was bypassed altogether.
The profusion of different evidence must have been confusing for onlookers and participants alike – not to mention the grand jury which had to consider it all. Added to this was the fact that, in contrast to modern times, the defendant was effectively presumed guilty unless proved otherwise, and even the most circumstantial evidence was enough to secure a conviction. Those indicted for felony (such as the Flower sisters) were denied the assistance of counsel unless a point of law arose from the evidence, so were obliged to defend themselves. As most were not versed in the ways of the law and were at best barely literate, the odds were stacked against them.
Since he was the principal victim in the case, the Earl of Rutland’s evidence was heard first and accorded the greatest importance – even more so given his elevated status in society. Interestingly, his reaction to the women before him was rather more muted than that of the other people present. Indeed, he appeared almost penitential when he came to give evidence. The author of The Wonderful Discoverie put this down to the natural introspection of a devout man: ‘and although the Right Honourable Earle had sufficient greife for the losse of his Children; yet no doubt it was the greater to consider the manner, and how it pleased God to inflict on him such a fashion of visitation’. The use of the plural ‘children’ is interesting. By the time of the trial, only one of the earl’s sons was dead; the fate of the younger still hung in the balance. Katherine, meanwhile, was apparently out of all danger.
The Earl of Rutland showed no desire for revenge against the two women. ‘Such was the unparalleld magnanimity, wisedome, and patience of this generous Nobleman, that hee urged nothing against them more then their onne confessions, and so quietly left them to judiciall triall, desiring of God mercy for their soules, and of men charity to censure them in their condemnation.’19 This is not the behaviour that one might expect of a grief-stricken father when faced with the women who had confessed to his son’s murder and the attempted murder of his other two children. Surely if he had truly believed in their guilt, he would have pursued them relentlessly, bringing his considerable influence to bear on the presiding judges and not resting until he saw their bodies swinging from the gallows on the castle wall. Perhaps the earl was playing the jury by this show of meek acceptance of God’s will. Or perhaps the author of the Belvoir witch pamphlet was trying to show him as a shining example of true Christian compassion in order to draw a stark contrast with the wickedness of the Flower sisters.20
There is no record of any further witnesses being called, after the earl’s apparently quiet withdrawal. But since a minimum of two witnesses were required to attest that the accused had entered into league with the Devil or practised witchcraft, there would almost certainly have been more.
A record of another witchcraft trial of the early seventeenth century gives a sense of the type of evidence that witnesses typically gave, as well as of the quick succession with which they appeared in the courtroom. ‘There came in eight or ten which gave evidence against her . . . One woman came in and testified uppon her oath that her husband upon his death bed, tooke it upon his death, that he was bewitched . . . The woman tooke her oath also, that she thought in her conscience that the old woman was a witch, and that she killed her husband . . . There came in an other . . . He tooke his oath directly that she was a witch . . . Then came in two or three grave honest men, which testified that she was by common fame accounted a witch.’ Flimsy though they seem to modern observers, such testimonies would have carried great weight in a Jacobean court. They were certainly enough to convict the accused in this case, as the author records: ‘We found her giltie, for what could we doe lesse, she was condemned and executed: and upon the ladder she made her prayer, and tooke it upon her death shee was innocent and free from all such dealings.’21
In the unlikely event that there had been any witnesses called to speak in the Flower sisters’ defence, these would have carried little weight. During this period, defence witnesses, unlike those for the prosecution, presented their evidence unsworn. This enabled judges to intimidate them with warnings that they stood in fear of God if they told an untruth. And they further guarded against an unwanted outcome by instructing juries to give little heed to such evidence.
It was probably at this point that Margaret and Phillipa Flower gave their testimonies. Before doing so, the sisters would have been told by the judges that they stood accused of having ‘felloniously . . . practised . . . witchcraft against the form of the statute etc. And against the peace of the Crown and the Dignity of the Lord King.’22 The fact that they had apparently talked so freely of their pact with the Devil might suggest that they pleaded guilty to the charge. However, it was common for defendants to confess their crimes during the examinations that preceded their trial and to still enter a plea of not guilty on the day. Even if the official record of their trial had survived, it is unlikely to have included their plea, so this must rest with conjecture. Besides, it would have made little difference to the outcome of the trial. As one contemporary account of assize trials noted: ‘If a man attainted of Felony be brought to the Bar, and asked what cause he can shew why he should not suffer death according to his Judgment, and he will stand mute, he shall be hanged.’23
It is unlikely that the sisters were given much time to plead their case. By this stage of the proceedings, most defendants of ‘low and common education’ were so overawed and intimidated by the ‘awful Solemnities’ of the assizes that they were barely able to utter anything very comprehensible in their defence.24 It was all too common for judges to push home their social and intellectual advantage by bullying the accused into submission. One critic of the system observed in 1653 that the prospect of acquittal at such trials was extremely remote because it was virtually impossible to find a Judge who would ‘suffer a Prisoner to speak for himself, nor any one else for him, but he’ll daunt them, vilifie & threaten them with his great menacing words and big looks, as if the very name of being a prisoner were sufficient enough to argue him guilty, without any further evidence or testimony; this practice has cost many an innocent man’s life’.25 When 9 of the 14 women who were brought before the Essex assizes in 1582 refused to confess, the judge warned that ‘they which doe confesse the truth of their doeings, they shall have much favour; but on the other they shall bee burnt and hanged.’26
It seems, however, that Margaret and Phillipa refused to be intimidated by the august body of men before them. Although Sir Edward Bromley and Sir Henry Hobart had many years’ experience in the law, they were apparently shocked by the Flower sisters’ stubborn defiance. The trial pamphlet describes how they ‘not only wondred at the wickednesse of these persons, but were amazed at their practises and horrible contracts with the Divell to damne their onn soules’.27 Likewise, the persons who were present at the trial were ‘amazed’ when they heard the lurid details and ‘the circumstances of this divellish contract’.28 According to The Wonderful Discoverie, the onlookers were also shocked by Margaret and Phillipa’s ‘desperate impenitency, and horrible distraction . . . exclaiming against the Devill for deluding them, and now breaking promise with them, when they stood in most need of his help’.29 The reference to the sisters’ ‘desperate impenitency’ suggests that they presented little in their defence.
Given that the accused in cases of this nature had no legal representation, few if any reliable witnesses in their defence, and scarcely any opportunity to present their own evidence, assize trials often degenerated into an ‘altercation’ between prisoners, prosecutors and witnesses.30 The fact that Margaret and Phillipa Flower were apparently so brazen in their guilt, shocking the packed courtroom with lurid descriptions of their pact with the Devil, indicates that their trial might well have gone the same way.
There are records of other witchcraft trials collapsing into little more than shouting matches between victims and accused, with members of the public joining in. There was so much noise at the trial of Mary Spencer in 1634 that she was unable to hear the evidence brought against her. There was similar confusion at Anne Bodenham’s trial in 1653, when the cacophony was so great that neither she nor the judge could hear each other. ‘The crowd of spectators made such a noise that the Judge could not heare the Prisoner, nor the Prisoner the Judge; but the words were handed from one to the other by Mr R. Chandler, and sometimes not truly reported.’31 In most cases, the people who flocked to witness witchcraft trials were little better than a braying mob, determined to witness the accused being condemned to death. A late seventeenth-century commentator scorned the ‘ignorant and foolish rabble’ who frequently attended the courts, lamenting: ‘It is seldom that a poor old wretch is brought to trial upon that account, but there is, at the heels of her, a popular rage that does little less than demand of her to be put to death.’32 Sometimes it was the accused themselves who caused the commotion. Anne Ashby, one of the women tried at Maidstone in 1652, ‘fell into an extasie before the Bench, and swell’d into a monstous bigness, screching and crying out very dolefully’.33 Given the highly emotive nature of the Flower sisters’ case, involving as it did the bewitching of three innocent children, it is likely that their trial degenerated into similar disorder.
There was no summing-up by the judges when all of the evidence had been heard, because they would already have commented as each individual statement had been made. Instead, they instructed the jury that in reaching a verdict, they must remember God, their consciences and what they had heard. In all of this, the outcome desired by these two formidable representatives of the law would have been made patently clear to everyone present. Assize trials were dominated by the constant and pervasive influence of the judges, who were often the only ones present with any formal legal training. As such, they saw it as their duty to provide the jury with what one authority condescendingly described as ‘a great Light and Assistance by his weighing the Evidence before them, and observing where the Question and Knot of the Business lies, and by shewing them his Opinion even in Matter of Fact, which is a great Advantage and Light to Lay-Men’.34
The judge could bring such pressure to bear upon the jury that the latter had little choice but to deliver the verdict that was expected of them. If a jury proved particularly stubborn and ignored this pressure, then they would be bullied into submission. Some judges even threatened – or actually used – fines or imprisonment to get their own way. The right to threaten juries, either before or after they reached a decision, was seen as an entirely acceptable convention.
Juries would often retire to consider the evidence of several cases together. On such occasions, they would be given a list of the relevant prisoners ‘for their better direction and help of their memory to know who they have in charge’.35 Sometimes, though, they reached a verdict without retiring. As in modern times, this had to be unanimous: ‘all ought to agree, and any one dissenting, no Verdict can be given’.36 Considering that there was growing scepticism about witchcraft at this time, it was a very real possibility that the jury in the Belvoir witch trial might have included at least one nay-sayer. But the judges would have already made it clear what was expected of the jury, and if they had disagreed with their verdict, they could have had it overturned quite easily. It was not uncommon for a person whom a jury had acquitted to be imprisoned on the orders of a judge who thought otherwise. Sir Edward Bromley had attempted to do just that in the trial of the Lancashire witches, but had been forced to content himself with admonishing those who had been acquitted to ‘presume no further of your Innocencie than you have just cause: for although it pleased God out of his Mercie, to spare you at this time, yet without question there are those amongst you, that are as deepe in this action, as any of them that are condemned to die for their offences’. He had concluded by exhorting them to forsake the Devil immediately.37
Sir Edward was not to be thwarted a second time. Margaret and Phillipa Flower were pronounced guilty according to the terms of the 1604 witchcraft statute. Satisfied that the two women did ‘consult covenant with entertain employ feede or rewarde any evill and wicked Spirit to or for any intent or purpose’, the judges passed sentence. ‘Thou hast beene endicted of such a felonie and thereof arragned . . . they have found thee guiltie, thou hast nothing to say for they selfe, the Lawe is, thou shalt first returne to the place from whence thou camest, from thence thou shalt goe to the place of execution, there thou shalt hang till thou be dead.’38 Justice had been done – or had been seen to be done. ‘God is not mocked, and so gave them over to judgement, nor man so reformed, but for the Earles sake, they cursed them to that place which they themselves long before had bargained for.’39