After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Essex's Darkest Witch Hunt

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

This is the story of a 16th century cunning woman, a folk healer, who was found guilty of being a witch. Accusations spiralled until more than a dozen women faced the threat of death. The St Osyth witch hunt became a landmark case, setting a dark precedent for the witch hunts that would explode across the country in the century that followed.Our guest today is Marion Gibson, author of 'Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials'.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the summer of 1582, the narrow lanes of St. Osith were thick with whispers. Inside a cold, dark cell in nearby Colchester, Ursley Kemp sat alone, a poor widowed healer, now labelled a witch. Her neighbours had claimed she spoke to spirits, that animals died at her word, that illness followed her footsteps. Even her own son had been questioned and testified against her. Desperate, frightened, and. and cut off from the world, she confessed under pressure. Soon, the bells that signaled market days would toll for a hanging.

In St. Osseth, fear had found a name, and, as it so often is, it was a woman's. The darkest chapter in the history of this quiet Essex village stands as a solemn reminder of just how easily human beings can turn neighbours into enemies and suspicion into a deadly weapon. But who were the people at the heart of this tale? Who held the power and who paid the price? And welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. Now, today we're in late 16th century England,

a place where fear of witches hung heavy in the air, fueled by religion, uncertainty, and a desperate need to explain misfortune. In the village of St. Ozeth in Essex, that fear turned inward. Transforming neighbour against neighbour, a suspicion took hold. What followed was not just a witch hunt, but a tragic portrait of how panic can devour a community from within.

So to take us through this dark chapter of English history is Professor Marion Gibson from the University of Exeter, my own alma mater, of course, where I did the old PhD. She is the author of Witchcraft, a history in 13 trials after dark listeners and watchers. Don't tell me you're not going to rush out and get that. That is exactly the kind of book that you want to read. and the witch of St Osseth, which is the topic that we're going to be discussing in this episode. Marion, welcome to After Dark. Thank you for inviting me. Genuinely, very excited for this episode.

Marion, the story begins in 1581. Elizabeth First is on the throne. We're in, am I pronouncing this quickly, it's St. Ozeth in Essex? What kind of place is this? Where is it geographically? I think it's quite close to the coast, isn't it? And what would life have been like there? It is.

It's a tiny little town on the Essex coast, up a muddy creek. And it's very flat there, so it's kind of marshy. People are looking out over the North Sea and the Blackwater River. It feels, I think, probably like the end of the earth in those days. There was a big priory there in the time of Henry VIII, but of course he got rid of it. And after that, I think there was probably not as much for the people to do as there might have been before. So it's quite a poor little town. It probably feels like things are on the down there and not going so well. Okay, so there's a lot of tensions brewing. There's a lot of pot. possibility of, I suppose, disenchantment amongst the locals. There's also a large manner that's owned nearby by the Darcy family, isn't there?

And we'll get on to how they're going to play a role. But I suppose, is it fair to say, there's a sort of a disconnect between the poverty that exists in the village and the wealth outside? And that sort of power dynamic is going to come into play. Yes, it is. Yeah, absolutely. So the Darcy's take over the Priory when it's shut down, turn it into a huge mansion. So this is, that's the context of the place. talk a little bit about the context of the time in terms of witchcraft. And we are some, you know, 120,

whatever it is, years. I'm not a mathematician, as we well know on this podcast, away from demonology. We'll wait for each time. None of us have that amount of time. I'm not getting my calculator out to figure out what it is. But, you know, we're not quite at the demonology point. We're not at the Matthew Hopkins point. We're not at that 17th century. I think probably in some ways more famous now, trials. So what is it about the context of this time that particularly hooks itself to witchcraft? Is there a difference between 16th and 17th century witchcraft? Or is this the inheritance that people like Hopkins walk into 100 plus years later? Yeah, it is. It is what they inherit. But it's also different, as you say. So there's a witchcraft act in 1563, which outlaws witchcraft. There were

the previous attempts to do so. But this is the big one. This is the one that people will have noticed in the 1580s. Okay. this stuff is not allowed anymore. Right, what are we going to do about it? There's a little bit of an upsurge in prosecutions in the late 1570s, 1580s. And they're looking at essentially driving out magical practitioners in their communities, finding anybody who they think is religiously problematic. Later on, it all gets more intense, as you say. So you've got the Pendle trials in 1612. You've got the Matthew Hawkins trials in the 1640s. And by that point, you know, they're they're accusing 200, 300 people.

So this is a very different kind of trial later on. They are bigger trials. They are mass trials. But for the 1580s, this and oath this trial is quite a big one. It feels like this is the stirrings of what will happen later. Yeah, it does feel like that, doesn't it? It feels like this is the foundation, or a manifestation of the foundations of what's coming. By the way, as I had said that, it said 100 plus years later.

It is not 100 plus years between 1580 something and 1640 something. So apologies for everyone who's listening to that. whole time. Yeah, I was like, no, don't make me add. You're seeing some of the same threads go through. I just want to push a little bit into this idea. You said about magical practitioners, and I love this idea. And it's not something we actually come across very often, do we, in terms of when we're

talking about witchcraft, because what we end up talking about and what I know we will in this case, too, is marginalisation about, you know, misogyny and all of those things that we find again and again and are forever worthy of our study and our attention. But this idea of magical practitioners, tell me a little bit more about that because what it does, I think, the phrase, is it gives weight to some of the practices that are not maybe controlled via religion. It says that they're important in the society. So tell us a little bit more about that. They are important. So for most people, the sources of authority in their community would have been the landed gentry. So we've talked a bit about the Darcy's already. There would be the church.

And then there'll be another layer of people. There'll be people from their own community. So if you're a poor person in Elizabeth and Essex, you're not going to call a physician in if somebody falls ill in your family, but you can't afford it. And there probably isn't one in your village anyway. So what do you do?

You go to somebody who is some kind of medical, magical practitioner who advertises themselves as having skills to take off a bewitchment from you or help you with your pregnancy or cure some illness that your child has. And these people are often referred to as cunning folk or magical practitioners or service magicians. There's all sorts of ways of looking at them. They can also help you with things like love magic.

They can find lost goods for you. They're a really important layer of authority in these communities. And they are men, they are women. They're a very mixed group, actually. But in this case, we're looking at female practitioners. So you're absolutely right. There is also a layer of misogyny here. Women are not supposed to have authority.

So if you see somebody in your community who is going around saying, yeah, I can help you with that. Yeah, you know, I have a direct line to God, to the fairies, to whatever I think my source of magical ability is, then there is a fear that that person may fall under suspicion of witchcraft. Let's talk about one of those people then at the beginning of the story. And I'm always interested with witch trials about when that first spark happens and how events start to tumble out of control. Ursley Kemp is a cunning woman in the village. Tell me a little bit about her. I love her name.

If ever there was a 16th century name, Ursulay Kemp is a one. She's pretty much the only Ursulah. You know, if you look her up online, it's her. She pops up right away. Oh, really? Yeah. It's fantastic. It's a version of the name Ursula. Yeah.

So it's a kind of, you know, local version of that. Was your campaign to bring it back as a baby name? We should, yes. Call your baby is Ursulie. She's a really interesting woman. She is a really interesting woman. She is. It looks like she's probably been married before because she has a couple of names.

So she's Ursulkeh, alias Gray. So maybe she's a widow from previous relationship. Maybe she's a daughter of somebody called Gray. We are not entirely sure. But either way, she advertises herself as I. She's a cunning woman. And sometime in the winter of 1581, possibly before, but we don't have any evidence of before. What we do know is the winter of 1581 to 2, things start to go wrong for firstly.

She's looking for work in her community. but it looks like people are becoming suspicious of her and starting to think that instead of somebody who's going to help them, she is in fact a witch. She may be the person bewitching them. And is this because I suppose the services that Ursulian people like her offered are promising to cure you of disease, of fix your problems, find your lost goods,

help you find a love of your life, all of that? And I suppose that's all well and good when it works. But when things go wrong, you are going to have the finger of blame pointed at you, right? So is this what happens? Does something go wrong with her? Is she malpracticed her magic in some way? Yeah, we're not entirely sure, but it looks like... So there's a woman called Grace Thurlow, whose child falls ill, little Davy Thurlow. He's basically a kind of toddler. And he falls ill and he seems to have some sort of strange disease which involves some kind of convulsion or muscle spasm or something like that.

Maybe it's just a bad fever, Essex is a marshy place. It might be malaria. It might be one of those diseases that. that we don't have here anymore, but people in Essex would have been very familiar with in this period. And she says that she can cure Davy and she starts to do that. But meanwhile, Davy's mother, Grace, has started to suspect that her own lameness, which again is maybe something like arthritis in that cold winter,

something like that, is Ursulies' fault. And she's saying, well, can you cure this? But of course, as soon as you've said you can cure something by magic, there's going to be a thought in the back of the mind of the person you're curing. Yeah, but if you can cure it, did you also cause it? Of course, because as it gets paid for her services, it would in a sense be in her interest to make somebody sick and then go around and knock on their door and say, how can I help? It's a strange and very dangerous position to put oneself in or to find oneself in because you are at the whim of belief and this

idea that belief is a changeable thing and it's in the context of the 16th century when, you know, a lot of religious upheaval is happening and has happened, then what does this do to this practice? Do you think that Ursulay would have seen herself as being in a position of, I don't want to say danger, because it feels a little bit too retrospective, but would she have known, do you think, and we can never know, but would she have known that she was part of a balancing act at the time, do you think? I think so, because what you can see in the villages around there, and I suspect elsewhere too, is cunning folk blaming each other for bewitching people. So there's a kind of community of them, but they are also rivals.

So it's kind of handy. It's like you need to Ud. and I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's too late now, Maddie. Yeah. It's kind of handy if you can go around to your neighbour and say, I can cure you. I think old mother so-and-so has bewitched you. So I think Erzy is well aware.

There's a kind of ping-pong between these people about who's bewitching whom and who is curing whom. So I think she would have known that it was a marginal position she was in. So we have Grace, who is described as lame, possibly with arthritis or something like that. We have Little Davy, who is undergoing some kind of illness again. We're not sure what that is. And then Grace also has a little baby daughter, doesn't she? She does.

And what happens to her? She does. So Ursulie goes around and supposedly cures Davy. She performs some kind of charm or spell over him. So she goes up to the child and she says, Oh, good child, how art thou loden? So how are you loaded down with something? You're carrying a heavy burden kid.

And she goes out of the door three times to take this load off him, to throw it out into the street. So this all looks very impressive and Grace is happy. And then Ursulis starts pestering Grace really to say, oh, you know, you're pregnant. I can see you're having some problems. would you like me to help you out? She wants really to look after Grace

during her pregnancy and perhaps be involved in the delivery. We don't know. For a fee presumably. For a fee presumably and I think that is one of her motivations. She's not a card-carrying midwife but she seems to want to be part of that group of women who supports mothers and babies. And Grace says, no, no, it's fine, I'm sorted, thank you.

I don't actually want you round my house because I think even then she is a little suspicious. Sure, yeah. And she goes for somebody else to do that job. And then she has the child, little Joan. But really, really sadly, several months after her birth, Joan falls out of her cradle. And we don't know how this happened. But she breaks her neck and the baby dies.

Oh, wow. And it's just this horrible tragedy. And you can see how terribly upset Grace would have been about it, no matter what the course she must have felt to some extent responsible. But she's also thinking, did this happen by chance? Or was it perhaps because I said no to Ursulay Kemp? Could she have done it? You know, she knows that witches can harm children.

Is this what has happened to her little girl? And it would be, I suppose in that moment, it would feel good to be able to place the blame elsewhere and to say, you know, this wasn't me or it wasn't bad sleep practice or something. This was, you know, outside forces. The other thing that we haven't said about Grace is that, she just so happens to be employed at the priory by the Darcy family, doesn't she? She does. She does. So she's in an excellent position if she has suspicions to share them with people who can do something about witches in the community.

And she does do that, doesn't she goes to them? She does. So after the death of her baby, I think this is probably the final straw in her suspicions of Ursulie. She's had Ursulay ran to do this work for her. She's said no to her as a future helper. She's actually also refusing now to pay her for this. healing work that she's done. So things are really hotting up between the two women. And finally, she goes to her employer or her employer's relative, Brian Darcy, a magistrate. And she complains about Ursula, very convenient. And he is one of the people who can do something about this. So he's empowered as a magistrate to call Ursul Insurgling and investigate this claim that witchcraft is active in St. Ozith. Give us an idea, Marian, of what position, a magistrate generally, but the Darcy's particularly occupy within this society.

Where are they placed above, because it will be above, Ursul. They're way, way above, yeah. So these are the Lords, Darcy. You don't get much higher than that, not in that part of the world. Well, that's way, Brian Darcy seems like such a modern name compared to all the other names that were coming across. Even David Perlow. Brian Dar and Darcy from HR.

Yeah, it's like, suddenly, but anyway, sorry to interrupt you. So they are the Lords of the Area, basically. Yes, that's right. No, Brian does see, I remember thinking that when I first encountered this, is that not a modern name? That sounds kind of 70s. Well, what's going on here? Yeah, so he and his cousin, the reassuringly named Thomas does. There you go.

That's a bit more Elizabethan, isn't it? They are absolutely at the top of this society. It's a huge mansion, St. Oseth Priory. You know, even today, this vast, sprawling place, it's many, many, many times bigger than any of the houses that the ordinary people of St. Osis lived. You know, there are cottages straggling down to the edge of the creek. And this is what most people live in. So Ursulay is probably living in some kind of very small cottage or perhaps a room in a house, some sort of shared accommodation.

She has a little son, her little boy, again, perhaps her a previous relationship, because his name is Thomas Rammett. And so he's got a different surname from her, and he's eight. But they're probably in very cramped and nasty accommodation compared to the Darcy. So you're living in this, you know, fantastically plush,

residents just down the road. Ursul's not going to be at home for long, is she? Because she is arrested, she's taken up. And I think taking to Chelmsford for trial, is that right? But before that, she's locked in the local lockup, which I've got a photo of now. And it sort of looks like a sort of classic Essex house, really. It looks like a landmark trust holiday cottage. It's like, I can go here for a writing retreat or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. It's got the sort of medieval overhang a little bit. and it looks like it's the kind of thing that would have some kind of pargeting on it. I don't think it's that grand. But it's very typical of the area of the county of Essex. But presumably this was a lot smaller and not somewhere you would want to be in this period. So she's arrested. She's taking to trial.

Now, tell me this, Marion. If you're a magistrate in this period and you are approached about an accusation of witchcraft, is there a hunger within you to get started? done something like this because you can make your name. Or is there a sort of an eye roll moment of, oh gosh, this is going to be so tedious and there's going to be so much sort of local squabbling. Like what would... Yeah, I can't be bothered with this.

I don't have the energy. But thinking of Brian and his role as the magistrate, would this have been something that would attract him as a case? I think it would attract him because I think, you know, as the kind of person I think Brian Darcy was. Okay. But magistrates generally, you know, they, you know, There is various as people might be in any line of work.

So some of them, yeah, it would be just, oh God, the villagers are falling out again. It depends where you stand on the spectrum belief about things like witches. But unfortunately, Grace has chosen pretty well in complaining to Brian Darcy because he seems to have a really strong interest in finding out what's going on in the community, perhaps because of a religious position. We're not quite sure what his religious position was. but he seems to be in pretty pious. The Darcy family were Catholic.

We're not sure whether Brian's sort of on the edge of that or is he maybe a bit more godly. Is he a bit more puritanical? We really don't know. But he's very, very excited, I'm afraid, by what Grace is saying and he wants to get early in and question her and the whole thing starts to spiral from there.

He also has some new questioning techniques that he wants to try out, which again is really ominous, isn't it? Everyone tell us about those. Well, these are so interesting on. because they're quite unusual for the time, right? They are. So he writes about them with considerable pride,

which is how we know that he paid attention to how he was going to approach this case. So he must have done some planning. And one thing he thought was, well, I can question the children of the accused people. So remember, Ursul has this eight-year-old son. So he starts with him. And he also thinks he's been reading some books about this.

He's been reading some French demonology. just come out with the 1580 Jean-Baudan, big French jurist has written a book on demonology and witchcraft. And I think Brian's been reading that. And one of the things Bowdoin says is, you know, you can question their children. And then he says, also, it's fine to lie to them. Right. Oh, dear.

So, you know, you can say, well, you know, if you tell me the truth, it'll be absolutely fine. You know, you're not going to be hanged or burned or any of that stuff. Just tell us what happened. Just go along with what I say. And when you think about it, they must have been, such a delicate position, these poor women, like Ursulie, who he ends up questioning. Here's the big man come down from the big house with all his, you know, silks and furs and, you know, all his fancy stuff and some clerks to come with him to take down your evidence.

And they were called to his house, which was also in the village, another big house. And I think invited to assent to what he thought was going on. So Bowdoin also says, well, it's fine to ask them leading questions. So we're probably dealing with an approach which is very softly, softly at the start, but maybe involves saying things like, when did you first become a witch? It's fine, you can tell me. It's so chilling, isn't it? It is so chilling.

You think about, we know so much about the torture practices, you know, sleep deprivation, physical torture that are used on which is certainly later, in the later cases, the Pendle Witch trials, for example, that you mentioned. But this feels so manipulative. And I suppose thinking about Ursulie as well, women like her, who have no male protectors in this society. You mentioned she's maybe had multiple relationships or marriages. We're not sure. But she's obviously not, she doesn't have anyone by her side at this moment.

And to use her own child against her. I mean, that is a form of torture. It's so dark and it's so underhand and it's frightening. And as you say, there's something particularly frightening about the softness of that approach and leading her in and reassuring her that everything's going to be okay when it absolutely is not going to be fine. No, it's really not going to be okay. He is lying and he knows he's lying. And he records that in the pamphlet that he subsequently has published about these events. So he's not at all ashamed of it. He actually thinks he's doing the right thing. And he wants to tell other people so that they too, when they're questioning, supposed, which, They can also use these techniques. So it is really chilling. This case is really chilling.

But actually also the idea that he wants to spread these techniques across the English magistracy is just appalling. There is this idea coming from him. I'm interpreting not that he says this himself, but that there's almost something, and obviously everything you're saying is true, about him being, from his own perspective, humane or modernising, that he views himself as being like, you know, I'm a man of the future. Look at me not torturing this woman. You know, that kind of thing. So you said that he spoke to Ursley's son.

Do we know if the son gave any evidence? So what information did he manage to extract there? We do. I'm afraid the little boy did. I mean, he was only eight. What was he going to say? I'd say it now. The big man is.

I think she is. Yeah, somebody needs to go and look at her. Yeah. The big man is questioning. What's he going to do? He's going to say yes, sir. And he's also going to come up with a wide range of fantasies, which you often see not only in children,

but also in adults in this period. So people in this community believe that witches have these animal familiars, which is quite a familiar idea these days. We know about this. But this is where it comes from. And he says, yeah, my mum's got four animal familiars. You know, it tells the names. They're called Titty and Tiffin and sucking and Jack.

And they're these kind of. little toads and cats and other things. And he tells this story about how she, you know, she feeds them. I don't know where he gets this idea from it. It's maybe sort of folklore. It's the things that communities believe. Maybe his mum actually in her practice as a cunning woman does believe she's got some kind of spirits attending on her. We're not really sure about familiars. They're just so interesting. But either way, this little boy ends up telling the magistrate that she's got these animal familiars. And, you know, yes, of course she did bewitch people. You know, she'd be witch the neighbour's child.

She'd be which Grace's child. She'd be which Grace. And he also says, and she works with other women to do this. And you can see where this is going. So, Ursul's neighbour Alice Newman is drawn in and things start to spread from there. Before we go on, this has been eating at my brain since you said it. I need you to, after your next book, write a book called A Familiar Idea. That is a book about the history of familiars.

So there you go. You can have that order. I'll be quite close to do that. I'll wait for like four years' time, whatever. Right, sorry. So we have this now spreading accusation that's happening. What happens when Ursula yourself is questioned? Does she corroborate?

It's the wrong word because none of it's true. But like, does she back this up to some extent? I'm afraid she does, yeah. And she does it because Brian used exactly the techniques we've just described. So he lulls her into this. And he bullies her, and I imagine he keeps badgering her for quite some period of time. And she tells him all sorts of things. She starts off by explaining her practice as a cunning woman.

So she tells her about some of the spells that she does. And then she moves on ultimately to agreeing with him. We know that she breaks down in tears during the course of the discussion between them, which is obviously becoming very pressurized. And Brian records this because he's really pleased. He's broken this woman. He's got to the truth. He's got her to confess using his new modernising techniques.

Good for Brian. And so she starts crying and then she corroborates the child's evidence and so, yeah, I do have these familiars. Yes, I sent this one to bewitch so and so. I sent that one to bewitch this other person. She says some of them are for killing people. Some of them are for harming people and animals. So she goes into this whole kind of private demonology about how supposedly her magical world works. And that's it. She's done. She's confessed.

I am really interested, Marion, in the line between cunning practice that seems to be accepted in that it is widespread. People are doing it. People are going to cunning people for help. And that seems to be the norm across certainly this part of Essex, if not England, more generally, and the British Isles. But is it malice, an evidence of malice that tips over into witchcraft? has it become prosecutable? Because this, it seems to me that Ersley is kind of proud of what she does to a certain extent, you know, even in the pressurized environment in which she's being interrogated, that she is explaining, as you say, her magical practice and how she understands the world, how she understands how she operates on the force that she's dealing with and putting

out. So does she not see it as a crime at this point? No, she doesn't. And you get this over and over again in the cases of English witchcraft, like the Pendle case that we're talking about earlier, same thing happens. People tell the magistrate all about the magical skills that they have, and they often see them in a religious light. So very often they will say, I say this prayer over somebody. You know, how can that be wrong? They would not see that as being wrong. I don't think people realise, particularly older people, don't realize that the church has moved on in its position that, you know, now the new Protestant church, and particularly the Puritans who are coming up in the Elizabethan period as a real force in the church, they see all

kinds of magic as wrong. They think it's all demonic. So you may think you are communing with the fairies, you may think you were saying an old prayer to God, which maybe's got a bit of Latin in it and, you know, some traditional thing, which goes back to the Anglo-Saxon period. In some cases, you can literally find these charms and prayers in Anglo-Saxon books, and then people are still using them in the 16th century. So for them, this is like, well, this is just religion, you know, it's just traditional wisdom. There's nothing wrong with this. Well, that's amazing. Actually, to really tie those thoughts together in terms of that Anglo-Saxon thing. You mentioned she talks about giving details of her spells. I very rarely encountered this. I mean, you hear them confessing

to people who accused of witchcraft, confessing to having familiars. Do we have any documentary evidence of what this spell might have looked and sounded like? We do. Turns out, yes. Yes. Yes. Turns out, yes. What a leading question, magistrate Delaney. I thought somebody might ask this. Now, what Ursley says she does? So she starts off by curing herself, aren't she? She says 10 or 11 years ago she had some lameness herself.

So this is the spell that she's going to use on grace for her lameness, right? And she tells Brian Darcy all about it. This is what she says she does. So she says that she got it from somebody else. And what this woman told her was she must take hogs dung, yuck, and cherville, the herb chervil, and put them together and hold them in her left hand and take in the other hand a knife

and prick the medicine. No, she refers to it as the medicine, three times, and then you stick the knife under a table and you make sure that it sticks in the table. I think that's something to do with seeing whether the spell is working on it. If the knife sticks in the table, it's all good.

If it falls out, oh, this isn't working, right? We've got to try something else or do it again. So she's pricked the... the ball, yuck of hogs dung and cherville with the knife. And then she throws that into the fire and she sticks the knife under the table. So that's the first bit of it. And then she says, take three leaves of sage and the same of Herb John, which is like a Hypericum, you know, another form of herb. And put them in ale and drink it last thing at night, first thing in the morning.

And your lameness will be cured. So she's got sort of two strands to this kind of medical activity. The first one is obviously magical. So it's actually carrying out some symbolic act, you know, finding this dirty thing and stabbing it as if to maybe drive the bewitchment, the sickness out of the body, and then burning it. So it's all gone. That's fine.

That's the magical bit. But then there's also a kind of more medicinal bit where, you know, have a nice drink of ale morning and night, you know, put some herbs in it, use some sage and some hypericum, and that will help you. What strikes me about the magical element of this as well is that it's so close to the kind of religious practice that they would have seen in church, right? The sort of the repetition of things, especially in threes,

the transformative power of whether it's drinking something or purifying something with fire or, you know, this, it just seems to me the issue here is that people are practicing this outside of the church and therefore they are not authorized to do so. It's a threat, especially if you're a woman. Do we know the other women who are accused, and there's one man as well as in the Henry Sells, but there's at least nine others in addition to.

to the names that she initially gives. Are they accused and do they admit to similar medical practices when it comes to spells? Or are they completely clueless and saying, hold on a second. I was just digging my field and now I'm holding up in front of you. I was in little, now I'm here. Yeah, I think they do basically fall into that category. One woman is she made an ointment for another woman. And I've always thought, oh, is there a little kind of frie-son of maybe she's a cunning woman too,

but there isn't any further evidence of that. And I think that's probably about right. You know, there are, across the history of witchcraft, cunning people are accused, but they do tend to be in a minority. So most people are probably not involved in magical practice as such, or not that we know, they're people like us. You know, they're just ordinary folk and they're going about their business. And then they maybe have a row with somebody, a neighbor, or something goes wrong in the community

and suddenly fingers are pointed at them, you're a witch. So it starts with Ursulie, the cunning. woman, but it does spread out to a much wider group of people, I say. It's so tantalizing, isn't it? That we, I suppose, won't ever be able to fully access what all that network of relationships looks like and why these particular

people are accused and what those little arguments are that have got them to this point. It's a sort of an incredible moment and a snapshot of a community that we have some access to. Do you find that frustrating working on witchcraft that you can almost

be plonked down in that village, but Not quite. I do. I started researching this like 25, 30 years ago when I first read this trial. And I always thought I need to go back to that and I need to find out more about it. It's just this itch. I must find out more about these people. And I've done absolutely everything I've done. I have looked at every document from these communities that I can find. One day maybe another one will show up. You never know. But I've looked at everything. And sometimes you can see something. So the sales family that you mentioned, they're from little cloud. Acton, a village near St Oasis. They're having a row with their landlord. See, that's nicely obvious. You know, Henry works for this guy who accuses them.

And they have a bit of a fight over, you know, Henry's out plowing. And the horses fall down dead in the field. And so, of course, Henry gets the blame. And his wife is having a row with this man as well. So it's all, that's kind of nice and neat. But in some cases, you've just got no idea. People live in the same village. That's about what you know of them.

Yeah. It's so frustrating and so tempting to fill in those gaps, but of course we can't. Yeah. But of course we can't. What we do know is, as you've been saying all along, is that there is a trial and that there is an outcome. But despite the fact that Darcy says, just tell me what you're doing, this is going to be absolutely fine. Ursulay and another woman, Elizabeth Bennett, from that group of people who are accused, are found guilty and sentenced to death. They are.

So this does lead to execution. It does. Those two are, I'm afraid, executed. So Ursley is executed, partly on the evidence of her own child. Heaven knows what happened to that little boy. Again, I tried to find out, but I haven't found him. I don't know what happened to him. And this other woman, Elizabeth Bennett, the wife of a farmer in the St. Ozith vicinity,

is also accusing Darcy bullies her as well and says she's going to be hanged and burned if she doesn't confess. So naturally, she confesses. and she says she's got familiar and for that she is executed. They are taken to Chelmsford as she said earlier and they're tried there in the county town at the Assizes and they found guilty and they are hanged. There's a novel in that, isn't there, the other Elizabeth Bennet?

Yes. Do we know what happened to the others who were accused? Is there a record of what happened to them? There is, yes, it's all quite confusing because Brian Darcy clearly comes back from the trial thinking, yes, loads of these people are going to be hanged. So the pamphlet that he produces about this quite often says convicted, you know, will be hanged and so on.

But actually we know that the other people were not executed. So some of them were found guilty, some of them were acquitted. The sales family that we talked about earlier, there's just a particularly horrible fate for them, though. They are not executed. They found guilty of some offences acquitted of others. But they kept in jail because, as you might know, you had to pay your jail fees before you could go home.

And I suspect there's also a bit of turbid. around them, I think people are sort of looking for other things to try them for because their landlord is upset with them and he's quite powerful. So they kept in prison and what happens, they die in jail. Oh, wow. It's just hideous, isn't it? So there are inquest documents for them and they seem to have died of some sort of plague or epidemic or something, as people very often did in jail. Because that happens in the Pendle Trail as well, doesn't it? It does. Some of the women do die in prison as well. And it's just a testament to how dangerous these accusations were, even if you're not, you know, if you don't make it to the gallows or the scaffold or whatever it is,

how you're going to be killed, that actually there is risk of death anyway. This is an incredibly dangerous process and a damaging one. It is. You're taken out of your community and your life is no longer in your control and you're stuffed into some stinking jail, which, you know, is cold and wet in winter and some of these are quite frail people and hot and infectious in summer when plague and fever is sweeping through the community, you know, full of rats and lice and bugs which carry diseases,

it is quite likely that you're going to die in there if you can't get yourself out. And if you can't pay your jail fees, if you're a poor person, you're there until you can. Yeah. For the people who do make it out, who have been accused but acquitted,

what is life like going back into that community? Are you able to assimilate or do you have to just simply up and leave and go somewhere else and start again? We don't know, and again, this is very frustrating. Isn't it? It would be nice to know more. And I suspect there is evidence out there. It's just a question of finding it.

People like Alice Newman, for instance, she isn't freed for years. She does eventually come back, we think, to St. Osseth. She released under a general pardon years after she was imprisoned. Years? Yes. And is that because she simply can't pay her way out to jail? She's stuck, though. They sort of forget about her.

But maybe she went back to St. Osseth. Certainly she left the jail. But it must have been awfully. difficult, wasn't it, to go back to a community having served your time and still be under suspicion. We do know from the Matthew Hopkins trials in the 1640s that we're talking about earlier, that some people are had up for witchcraft, either accused, you know, either acquitted rather, sorry, or convicted. And then they go back home to their home village and people just carry on accusing them again and then they're tried again. And this

happens to one woman three times. Wow. It's just terrific, isn't it? This is going to sound so basic, and I apologise for the lack of insight here, but it has just occurred to me that we often talk about witchcraft trials or whichcraft accusations. Sometimes I find the accusations more interesting than the trials themselves, because like what's gone on? What's the dynamic there? And we struggle to understand how these things present themselves. And as I was listening to you there, Marion, I was thinking, is there an equivalent? Is there a way that we can – but if you think about the legislation that happens between neighbors and families to – over land or over inheritance or over, you know, oh, you bumped into my wall or whatever it is

and how petty and silly and how that gets. The stakes are significantly lower, of course, you're not going to. But there's something of an inheritance in that pettiness and in that silliness that rings true here. That neighbors are dysfunctional very often. and the consequences in terms of the 16th and 17th century can be deadly even on the smaller scale. And that this is a very human drama,

not necessarily a magical one, even if there is magical practice and belief within that community that actually it's the human beings and their gripes and their frustrations that lead this forward. Yes. And I love this thing about it,

you said, Marian, and again, this is new for me, this idea of practitioners and this idea of practicing something that's maybe been there since Anglo-Saxon times because I always have this idea about disbelief or not believing in witchcraft or magic or whatever. But actually, for a lot of these women and men, they may not be understanding this in magical terms. They're understanding it in terms of a practice. And I think that's a really useful terminology to go, it's not that I'm magic necessarily.

It's that I have this skill. Yes, I think so. And I've said the right words in the right order. Yeah. And I've done the right ritual actions. and when I do this at church, it's fine, as you say. You know, I go through what the priest tells me to do and this is fine, and apparently God is pleased with me.

So why shouldn't it be the same at home when I do these things that my grandmother taught me? Yeah. Now, Marion, before we wrap up, just thinking about this case in particular, we mentioned famous of the cases, obviously we've got, you know, Matthew Hopkins as the witch finder general later on. We've got the Pender Witch Trials and, of course, famously the Salem Witch trials as well across the pond. What is it about this early case? that stands out for you, why is it important in the history of witchcraft trials?

It's important because Brian Darcy writes that book about it. And it's a really quite influential book. So it's over 100 pages long. The book that he puts together about it, I think he did it with somebody who was working with him another, you know, Clarkly figure in his community. He's clearly ambitious, though, isn't he? And they take it up to London and they get it published.

And he must think, oh, this is fantastic. You know, I'm going to get all sorts of rewards out of this. And sadly he does. He does seem to become more eminent in his community. And he's made sheriff of the counties, like the top magistrate, if you like, three years later. It's important because of that because lots of people read it. And people like Reginald Scott, who is a Kentish squire who comes along later in the century, and becomes a big skeptic about witchcraft beliefs, reads this.

And he abuses Brian Darcy really roundly in his book. Go on, Reginald. Yeah. He says this. And, you know, this man is ignorant and cruel and wicked and clearly ambitious and we don't like him and he's got this all wrong. And I don't think these people are witches. And from Scott, the story gets into Shakespeare. So you get the same kind of things coming up in Macbeth that you get in this trial, including some of the names of familiars.

In certain versions of Macbeth, you know, you might know Macbeth got rewritten during the course of Shakespeare's lifetime. So it's really, really influential trial. because of print, because this book is published about it. So people far beyond the village of St. Oisth get to know about it. And they act on it in some cases. You find it being quoted in later witchcraft prosecutions. So both sceptics and witch hunters get something out of it. Is it worth going to St Oisth today?

Yes. Is there a good witchy life? No. Absolutely. Skip that. No, it really is. It's a really atmospheric place. You know, if you go in the depths of winter in particular, which is when, of course, as we know, when the trial kicks off,

there is this tremendous sense of bleakness and isolation and it's, you know, the rain is sweeping in and the cold wind is coming in from the North Sea. And it's a very atmospheric place. It's like, again, the end of nowhere, you know. It's giving the start of great expectations. Yes, it really is, a tiny little village street and the big house and virtually nothing else. But when you're there, I think you can feel something of the world that these people lived in. Well, I'm adding it to my travel list, I think. Well, listen, I hope you've enjoyed this episode.

You know, we've done so many witchcraft episodes. And sometimes you think there's not much else that you can discover about it. But actually, there's been so much rich learning for me in this. So thank you so much, Marion, for coming in and sharing with that. Let people know where they can find you or where they can read you. Is there a book that you would like to direct people towards? Yeah, so I've written about the witches of St Osseth in the book, The Witches of St Ois. So if you want to know more about the story of Ursulay and Grace and all the other people who are accused, have a look at that one.

And a book called Witchcraft of History and 13 trials as well, which is a bit more widespread and tells you about European witchcraft and the Salem trial as well, as you said earlier. And also contemporary witchcraft accusations, you know, probably the last thing to say is that this stuff hasn't stopped. There's some people around the globe. So actually witchcraft is still really relevant today. And there is always more to discover about it. There are always more stories to tell because there's such good stories, aren't they? And it tells us so much about who we still are and how we still are suspicious and all of these things. So those are your books.

That's your After Dark Reading List sorted for the next couple of weeks. Thank you for listening wherever you get your podcast. And we will see you again next time.