In the Shadow of Matthew Hopkins - the Witchfinder General

In 1645 screams echoed around Lawford, Manningtree and Mistley. Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne were about their witch hunt.

An eighty year old one legged beggar woman was accused of having caused the sickness of a neighbour through witchcraft. Poor Elizabeth Clarke confessed and the witchfinders were given their power to investigate further. Search women investigated the accused for the teats from which the evil spirits would have suckled, then the ‘witch’ was watched to see if her familiars (the animals which were her Devil’s helpers) approached her. This ‘watching’ often meant the accused were kept for days without food or sleep and often made to walk up and down until they became totally confused.

The ‘watching’ certainly had Elizabeth so distraught that she claimed the Devil said to her ‘Besse I must lie with you’ and apparently he did! Even more amazing seven witnesses saw the oddest procession of animals come to be her ‘familiars’.

A terrible madness seems to have affected the area as more women were accused and confessed to witchcraft. From all over the Tendring peninsula they were taken to ColchesterCastle to be imprisoned. Old women were kept in cramped conditions in darkness sitting in their own urine. Some died in jail before they reached trial. The remainder were tried and hanged at Chelmsford.

Nobody knows where in Manningtree Matthew Hopkins, the self appointed Witchfinder-General, lived. The accused witches' hovels have long since gone. There are still places, however, to visit in the area, which have connections to this bizarre historical period.

Pretty Lawford Church has stone angels that were smashed by the Puritans restoring their ideal of worship. It was in this church that young Rebecca West was supposed to have put the evil eye on Prudence Hart causing her to miscarry her child. The local rector John Edes believed the stories his parishioners told him of the ‘witches’.

In Manningtree a weaver’s cottage in Brooke Street has the ‘hall’ house pattern so common in 1645. Often the houses in the area around South Street have handsome Georgian exteriors but extensions that are much earlier. In the High Street are Elizabethan chimneys that were the pride of Richard Edwards, the richest man in the town, who accused the women of bewitching his cows and baby. A modern Indian Restaurant has a brickwork and wooden structure that show its origins as a guild hall. Tradition links Hopkins with the Thorn Inn at Mistley but there is more convincing evidence that was the town where he was buried.

For too long came from the horror movie “Witchfinder General” starring Vincent Price shaped people’s ideas but the scholar Malcolm Gaskell’s book “Witchfinders “ has begun a new understanding of what really happened.

For a clear compact summary of 1645 witchcraft order Jan Williams’ booklet “A Candle in the Dark” price £3 from email address Janwilltell@aol.com. This was produced for the Essex Storytellers’ remarkable project ‘Green Mist Rising’.