What is a witch? To this deceptively simple question, history provides a myriad of different answers. The late-sixteenth-century commentator George Gifford produced the following succinct definition: ‘A Witch is one that woorketh by the Devill, or by some develish or curious art, either hurting or healing.’1 His contemporary, William Perkins, agreed: ‘A witch is a Magician, who either by open or secret league, wittingly and willingly, consenteth to use the aide and assistance of the Devill, in the working of wonders.’2 The author of the pamphlet about the Belvoir witches attempted a more detailed definition, which included categorising the different types of witches. These included ‘Phythonissae’ (who dealt with artificial charms), ‘Necromancers’ (who exhumed corpses and used them to foretell the future), ‘Geomantici’ (who conversed with spirits and used incantations), ‘Ventriloqui’ (who spoke with ‘hollow voyces’ as if they were possessed by devils), and ‘Venefici’ (who used poison to either cure or kill).3
In a tract published during Elizabeth I’s reign, William West provided no fewer than six classes of witch: magicians, soothsayers, divinators, jugglers, enchanters and witches. The latter were defined most closely.
A witch or hag is she who – deluded by a pact made with the devil through his persuasion, inspiration and juggling – thinks she can bring about all manner of evil things, either by thought or imprecation, such as to shake the air with lightnings and thunder, to cause hail and tempests, to remove green corn or trees to another place, to be carried on her familiar spirit (which has taken upon him the deceitful shape of a goat, swine, or calf, etc.) into some mountain far distant, in a wonderfully short space of time, and sometimes to fly upon a staff or fork, or some other instrument, and to spend all the night after with her sweetheart, in playing, sporting, banqueting, dancing, dalliance, and divers other develish lusts and lewd disports, and to show a thousand such monstrous mockeries.4
All of the authorities on the subject agreed that there were both good (‘white’) and bad (‘black’) witches. The former, often known as ‘cunning folk’, used their powers to provide a range of useful services to their community, such as healing the sick, finding lost or stolen goods, or predicting the future. In his Treatise Against Witchcraft – which was the first pamphlet on witchcraft to be published in England – Henry Holland attempted to explain the difference: ‘Hereby it is manifest, that hurtfull magitians and witches which kill and hurt mens bodies and goods, are onely to be avoyded, and so they doe amongst us, but such of these practitioners, as can and will cure the sicke, finde thinges loste, have a good neere gesse in praedictions, and are not in any wise to be blamed . . . are often sought after in necessities unto this day, and they seeme to doe no man harme, but much good, and they speake the very trueth often.’5 Not everyone took such a positive view of them. The influential pamphleteer, Richard Bernard declared: ‘All Witches, in truth, are bad Witches, and none good.’6
The main crimes attributed to ‘black’ witches included the causing of death or injury to another person. They might also harm or kill farm animals, which in a primarily agricultural economy could spell disaster. A single cow could be vital to the well-being of a poor family, so it is not surprising that there was almost as much concern for the health of animals as for that of friends or family members. One Norfolk farmer lamented that thanks to the maleficium of a local woman, his boar ‘could not cry or grunt as beforetime’ and five of his calves ‘were in such case as we could not endure to come nigh them by reason of a filthy noisome savour, their hair standing upright on their backs and they shaking in such sort as I never saw’.7 Meanwhile, in neighbouring Suffolk a woman stood accused of committing various acts of sorcery against one Thomas Aldus, including having ‘caused one of his cows to skip over a stile and burst her neck’.8
Witches were also accused of interfering with nature by ruining a harvest, preventing a cow from producing milk, or frustrating some other domestic operation. On the Continent, their powers were believed to extend to commanding the weather. In Wiesensteig, in south-western Germany, 63 women were executed as witches between 1562 and 1563 for causing a violent hailstorm. The trial records are also littered with accusations that suspected witches had disrupted sexual relations. Such cases were relatively rare in England, which had the highest proportion of female witches; elsewhere in Europe a significant number of men were convicted of the crime.
The word ‘witch’ has several possible derivations. These include the old English wicca (meaning sorceress) and the German wichelen (to bewitch or foretell). Although the words ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’ tended to be used interchangeably, they were different disciplines. Witchcraft was an innate power which might be inherited or conferred by the Devil. Sorcery, on the other hand, was the employment of destructive spells, charms and the like. Anyone could learn to be a sorcerer, but to be a witch, one had to be born to it. The methods of maleficent sorcerers were thought to vary from the straightforward uttering of curses or evil prophesies, to the use of technical aids. Among the most common of these were making a wax image of the victim and sticking pins in it; stealing their hair, fingernails or even excrement and manipulating this in some way; burying their clothing; or writing their name on a piece of paper and then burning it.
By such means, suspected witches were believed to have caused many thousands of deaths, injuries and illnesses in England alone during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Little wonder that they were feared and reviled in equal measure.
One of the most famous witch hunters in history was James I, who was King of England from 1603 to 1625. His personal crusade resulted in the deaths of thousands of women in Scotland, his native land, and hundreds more south of the border. Among the latter were Joan, Margaret and Phillipa Flower, who became known as the Witches of Belvoir. Their story could have been taken from the pages of a fairy tale, albeit one with a dark and terrible twist. There is the contented, prosperous and noble couple whose carefree existence in their castle is brought to an abrupt end when malevolent witches curse their children. As in all classic fairy tales, the story concludes with good triumphing over evil when the witches are put to death. But the children of Francis and Cecilia Manners were not to enjoy the happy ending of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the rest. The spell was never broken; they never awoke from their entranced slumber. Instead, as their tomb bears testimony, they met the same fate as their wicked bewitchers.
Notorious in its time, the case of the Belvoir witches has since faded from memory. In the historiography of the period it is overshadowed by trials such as Pendle in 1612, or the infamous Hopkins witch hunts of the mid seventeenth century. That I knew of it was due to the fact that the women involved were tried and executed in my native city of Lincoln, but even there the story is neglected. One can search in vain for any mention of it in the guidebooks to the city, or even to the castle, where the Flower women met their grim fate.
Wicked Practise & Sorcerye, an excellent and painstakingly researched study by Michael Honeybone, an eminent local historian, has gone some way towards redressing the balance. The Belvoir witches also inspired a novel by Hilda Lewis: The Witch and the Priest (1967). By contrast, there is a wealth of general histories of witchcraft, most notably Keith Thomas’s seminal work, Religion and the Decline of Magic, which first appeared in 1973 and has since been reprinted numerous times.
The popularity of books such as this proves the huge groundswell of interest in witchcraft. This is reflected by the internet. Even the most cursory of searches for the word ‘witch’ results in more than 6.5 million sites, and there are as many again for ‘sorcery’, ‘dark arts’, ‘spells’ and the like. Almost half a million websites are dedicated to the history of witchcraft, and a number of these refer to the Belvoir witches as being one of the most curious of all the cases that were brought before the courts of seventeenth-century England.
As well as being one of the most enduringly popular topics of historical research, witchcraft is also one of the most fiercely debated. Given that the contemporary sources are both startlingly vivid and frustratingly patchy, this is perhaps inevitable. Historians have long attempted to explain the reason why, between 1450 and 1750, around 100,000 people – most of them women – were tried for this crime in Europe, and a little under half put to death. What were the beliefs and fears which led to these executions? How and why did the legal systems of countries across Europe support them? And why were scores of the most intelligent scholars so convinced of the existence of witches that they wrote long books supporting their persecution? For every question, there are at least a dozen answers, none of them convincing enough on their own to lay the debate to rest.
Despite all the extraordinarily rich and vivid contemporary accounts of witches, their victims and their fate, there are substantial gaps in the sources – notably the complete absence of trial records in most counties of England. Moreover, because the vast majority of the accused were among the poorer members of society, their lives were generally obscure until they gained notoriety as a result of their supposed crimes. Although there are numerous contemporary pamphlets describing particular witchcraft trials or condemning the practice in general, the accused women’s own voices are almost entirely absent. This is perhaps not surprising, given that most were illiterate. It is also indicative of their powerlessness in the face of their accusers, and of the subservient position that women in general endured at this time.
Likewise, although the scores of witchcraft pamphlets attracted a diverse readership, the fact is that they were invariably written by the educated elite. There is no comparable source for the uneducated, illiterate masses who made up the vast majority of the population. Their views can only be reconstructed from scattered shards of evidence, rather than lengthy treatises. The latter tend to represent ordinary people’s perceptions of witchcraft as being rooted in ignorance and superstition. Glimpses of their true opinions can be gained from the patchy records of witchcraft trials, which suggest a genuine, deep-seated fear of the dark arts, as well as the strength of mystical traditions. They also reveal the tensions that existed in local communities, which led to many more cynically motivated accusations being levelled. In short, popular perceptions of witchcraft were every bit as rich and complex as those held by the so-called elite members of society.
The deeply held beliefs, superstitions, faith and world-view of the people who lived through these times are, inevitably, alien to modern readers. We can imagine, we can (to an extent) empathise, but we cannot enter the minds of those who practised the magical arts, those who believed they had fallen victim to such people, or those who hunted them down. Partly as a result, the theories as to why the witch hunts dominated European society for so long – and, equally, why they disappeared so suddenly – are many and varied. But the key to gaining a deeper understanding of the subject perhaps lies not in assessing the phenomenon as a whole, but in conducting a detailed case study of a particular trial. Such is the aim of this book.
The story of the Belvoir witches is one of the most extraordinary of all the witchcraft trials that took place in the seventeenth century. It has all the classic elements of the dark arts: spells, familiars, sexual deviancy and pacts with the Devil. And yet it is also set apart from the many other cases of witchcraft in Jacobean England because it was not merely the product of a dispute between neighbours, but involved one of the foremost aristocratic families in the country. The tendrils of this darkly fascinating tale stretch to the court itself, with James I and his closest favourite playing a significant, possibly sinister, part.
It is for this reason that the sources are richer than for many other witchcraft trials. Such was the Flower women’s notoriety that court letters, diaries and state papers have all offered illuminating insights into the case, enabling me to reconstruct the witches’ history and that of their ‘victims’ at Belvoir Castle. Principal among the contemporary records consulted, though, has been The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillippa Flower, Daughters of Joan Flower, neere Bever Castle, a salacious pamphlet published shortly after their trial in March 1619. Glorious for its sensationalist descriptions of the spells, familiars and other ‘devilish arts’ with which Joan Flower and her daughters were able to destroy the young scions of the noblest family in England, it is also suspiciously biased, confused and inaccurate on numerous points of detail. A true reflection of the events it described, or a cynical attempt to disguise the real culprits? The answer to this, and to the question of the Flower women’s guilt, became gradually – shockingly – clear as I sifted through the shards of evidence to build the narrative. It led me to believe that theirs was not just one of the many ordinary tragic miscarriages of justice that marked the long history of the witch hunts; it had at its heart a murderous conspiracy that has remained hidden for almost 400 years.