Matthew Hopkins,
the Witch-Finder General of Essex
In 1644, Matthew Hopkins began his successful career as the self-styled Witch-Finder General by questioning old one-legged Elizabeth
Clarke of Manningtree. By the time he had finished with her, thirty-one others had been named as accomplices to witchcraft.
English witches were not burned at the stake or tortured in the popular continental manner. Death at the stake was a fate reserved for
traitors and heretics, and under the Witchcraft Act of 1563, death by hanging was reserved for those found guilty of murder by sorcery.
Despite these setbacks, Hopkins managed to have between 200 and 400 people executed. In Suffolk alone, Hopkins had 68 people executed.
Hopkins's primary means of inducing confessions included tortures which shed no blood. His primary 'torture' was sleep deprivation.
In one instance, John Lowe, 70-year-old vicar of Brandeston, was 'swum in the moat,' kept awake for three days and nights, and then
forced to walk without rest until his feet were blistered. Denied benefit of clergy, Lowe recited his own burial service on the way to
the gallows.
Being the witch-finder general was financially lucrative. In a time when daily wages were as little as 2.5 pence, Hopkins was raking
in £15 to £23 per town cleansed of witches. Hopkins dressed fashionably in Puritan tunic and cloak, and was able to employ two
assistants to help him with his work in East Anglia.
Hopkins's specialization seems to have been extracting confessions of witchcraft from elderly women with pets. "Faith Mills, of
Fressingham, Suffolk, admitted that her three pet birds, Tom, Robert, and John, were in reality familiars who had wrought havoc by
magically making a cow jump over a sty and breaking a cart. She was hanged."
Not above using trickery to prove guilt, Hopkins employed such witch-finding tools as the spring-loaded knife. Since witch spots did
not bleed when pricked, Hopkins would stab at such marks with a retractable blade. The victim would be left without a mark - clear
proof of sorcery.
Eventually, opposition to Hopkins's bloody persecutions grew. In 1646, Puritan minister Reverend John Gaule of Great Staughton, wrote a
pamphlet called Select Cases of Conscience towards Witches and Witchcraft, an exposé of Hopkins' methods. Gaule also preached against
Hopkins's brutality from the pulpit, and hinted that Hopkins himself was a witch.
In retaliation, Hopkins published his own pamphlet entitled The Discovery of Witchcraft (not to be confused with
The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot). Nonetheless, the tide had begun to turn
against him. Two accounts exist of Hopkins' demise: one, that he was himself accused of witchcraft and hanged, and two, that he died in
his bed of tuberculosis.
Vincent Price portrayed a rather earnest but unsympathetic Hopkins in the 1968 British film Witchfinder General, aka The Conqueror Worm.
Copyright 2007 Todd Frye
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