During the English Civil War of the 1640s, a man named Matthew Hopkins
proclaimed himself the ‘Witchfinder General’, although that title was never bestowed upon him officially by
Parliament. His witch-hunting activities mainly took place in
the eastern counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk and occasionally in the more
central counties of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and
Huntingdonshire.
Hopkins' witch-finding crusade began in March 1644 and ended in 1647,
when he retired from his busy career. During those brief three years, he and
his associate, John Stearne, spread terror and death across these counties with
their zealous witch- hunting and were responsible for more people being hanged
for witchcraft in England than had occurred in the previous 100 or so years.
Hopkins and Stearne brought a new energy to
searching out those who had made ‘a pact with the Devil’. Having sex with Satan
was now seemingly rampant in the eastern counties of the country and incidences
of suspected witches signing the Devil’s book with their blood, abounded,
according to Hopkins and his sidekick.
When this pact is made, the witch’s souls are given
to their ‘master’ in exchange for diabolical favours, such as wealth, fame,
power, youth and knowledge. It is a bargain made in hell. Sometimes though, according
to writings of the time, some of those who signed or marked oaths and covenants
of allegiance to the Devil received nothing. One may wonder why then they
should risk their eternal souls in this way.
Those
who made this pact, promised Satan they would kill children or devote them to
him at the moment of birth, so midwives were prime targets for Hopkins and
Stearne, when, as was common in that time, babies often died at birth. Taking
part in Sabbaths and having sex with demons was another activity of those who
had signed the book. Once the pact had taken place, according to witch trials
and inquisitions, they left a ‘diabolical mark’ where the person had been
touched by the Devil to seal the agreement. Hopkins and his associate
enthusiastically searched their victims for these marks as proof to determine
that the pact was indeed made, so they could secure convictions and cause more
innocent people to go to their deaths. If they could not find any such visible
marks, they would ‘discover’ invisible ones by having the suspects pricked with
knives and special needles. This spawned another industrious group of torturers
called ‘witch prickers’. They shaved the victim of all their body hair so they could
search for moles, birthmarks or anything
that could be proclaimed as the Devil’s mark. The witch's familiar, an animal,
such as a cat or dog, drank the witch’s blood from this place.
Interestingly,
torture in England during this time was actually unlawful but the ever
resourceful Hopkins still managed to get away with using techniques such as
sleep deprivation to gain his desired confession. Another method he used was cutting
the arm of the suspect with a blunt knife. If this did not cause bleeding, then
the accused was a witch. Then of course there was the old tried and tested
method of ‘swimming’. As witches had supposedly renounced their baptism, water
would obviously reject them. The poor suspects were tied to a chair and thrown
into water. Those who floated were witches. Those that did not, basically drowned,
unless retrieved in a timely manner, which was often not the case. It is said that Hopkins was warned against using this
act (unless he had the accused’s permission to do so) but he seems to have
ignored that and he continued to do it. Ironically, the practice of swimming was
legally stopped in 1645 because of Hopkins appetite for it; although we know
from records, it was done to other poor souls after this time.
Hopkins and his accomplices were said to have been responsible for the
deaths of some 300 women between 1644 and 1646. As fewer than 500 people
had been executed in the whole of England over a period of 300 years (between
the 15th and 18th centuries) Hopkins and Stearne’s activities accounted for something
like 60 per cent of the total. In their short campaign, these cruel madmen
sent to the gallows more people than all the other witch-hunters in England did
over the previous 160 years.
If anyone
had made a pact with the Devil and signed his book, it was Matthew Hopkins and
John Sterne. Let us hope their souls are paying the appropriate price.
