After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Who Was the Witchfinder General?

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Mathew Hopkins, also known as the ‘Witchfinder General,’ was responsible for a campaign of terror across 17th-century England. In just a few short feverish years, his witch hunts swept through East Anglia, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people… Edited by Tim Arstall, Produced by Tom Delargy, 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.  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.

It's the 1640s in England. Church bells toll ringing out under the restless skies of a nation at war with itself. Amid this climate of fear and chaos, people become gripped with anticipation of another threat, one from the supernatural realm. Witchcraft is on the rise. In this fevered world, certainty is scarce. And it is during these times of violence and panic that self-appointed Savior, emerge. Through the mud and mist he arrives. The witch-finder general. His horses hoofs

drum upon the mud and echo through the street as villagers watch and fear. They have heard his name whispered between prayers and sobs, the man who sees the devil's mark upon human's skin. In a world turned upside down, his arrival feels like judgment itself. But who, they wonder, will suffer at the hands of his dreadful trials. Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And today we're talking about Matthew Hopkins, or as you might know him better,

the Witchfinder General who was responsible for a campaign of terror across 17th century England. Oh, I'm excited for this one. I feel like he's one of those people where you know who he is, but actually when it comes down to it, you don't know a lot about it. Or certainly I don't know a lot about him.

Yeah, and that's, the kind of historical factual position that we find ourselves in, we may not be discovering an awful lot more about him in this episode. So whatever you think you know, off you go, you know enough. No, but I think there are some really interesting things to come up here. I will be talking about, which I always do in these situations. And I think this is a really good example of the history of skepticism in terms of, you know, in terms of how belief is so readily available in this, in other retellings of this. But we'll get to all of that. Shall I give you some context as to the time we're talking about? I mean, if you insist, go on. Well, the producers

want me to, so I will. We're talking about the 1640s, which if you know anything about English history, we know that this is a decade of significant turmoil. It's a crazy time. It is a crazy time. We are coming into civil war time. So the, you know, you often hear it said that the country is turned upside down. The idea of power and structure is no. longer what it used to be, or it's in the process of changing. This is very religiously driven. There are tensions between Catholics and Protestants, of course, but it's the Puritans that we are going to zone in on in today's episode. The good old Puritans. You know, as an 18th centuryist, obviously I think the long 18th century is the most interesting century in which everything happens,

but I will concede that this period of the 17th century is particularly fascinating. And it changes so much of English history, English culture. It's fascinating. It is really important. And lays the foundations for so much of what unfolds in the 18th century, actually, in terms of how we understand power structures. Somebody's writing a new book. We are. Somebody is. Someone's thinking about this.

So when we're talking about puritans, what are we actually talking about? It's very easy to say, right, here are some puritans. But what are we believing? And you see the dress, you know what I mean, that stereotypical black hat, black clothing, blah, blah, blah. And the clue is in the title, really, in terms of this idea of purity, an expunging sin and corruption from the state, the town, your village, whatever it might be. Basically getting rid of the Catholic jazz of everything. It's stripping everything back, isn't it, and simplifying? It is.

And even going, so there's that, and that's absolutely true. And then even pushing that further again, whereas in the Anglican faith, they're going, those guys are gone crazy now. That's too much, you know, in terms of puritanism, specifically. So we are seeing, it's an extreme of even Anglicanism, of Protestantism. So it's, it is seen even at the time as something that's rather out there. Remember now that this is, as said, the 1640. So we have the relationship between Charles I, who's king at the time, not for much longer. And Parliament is starting to. You might have heard a little thing called this English Civil War. It's deteriorating and it is engulfed by Civil War by 1642. 200,000 people, that's 4.5% of the population, are killed during this conflict. And this only serves to kind of heighten this idea of hysteria, tension between neighbors, whose side is this person on? Can you trust your family members? Because, you know, the very famous stories of families divided during the Civil War in terms of whether they took the king's side or parliament side.

And so we have this idea that. your neighbour can be your enemy. And this becomes very prevalent. And when we think about this in terms of witchcraft and magical thinking, then we have to kind of go back to Charles I, the first father, James I, and First. And his idea of, in the context of what we're talking about today, witchcraft and his belief in witchcraft.

And his setting out of how to persecute, control, find and eliminate witches in England in the 17th century. So it's this real, this, what the history that we're about to talk about today, the history of Matthew Hopkins, who was he, could only happen, I would argue, in the 1640s. In this moment. Yeah, that's so interesting. You know, I think what kind of fascinates me and I find slightly difficult to marry up in my head about the 17th century is that on the one hand, you have this idea of this rearrangement of

government and power and everything. feels quite, yes, it's violent, yes, there's a war being for, but it feels quite bureaucratic. It's quite, it's interested in the tools of the state, how that power is enacted, how things organised, who is holding more position. And then you have this element of magical thinking, in terms of both religion and superstition, and they go hand in hand in this moment and are very much intertwined. And marrying those two things, one that seems quite sort of practical, pragmatic and as I say bureaucratic and then something that feels less tangible

but actually it's all this melting pot happening at the same time and as you say this is a moment when hierarchies and world order is set on its head everything feels confused people who previously didn't have a voice are having a voice now and so there's conversations happening ideas being born

ideas being introduced that previously weren't there or they didn't have the same platform that they do now And everything just feels chaosy and complicated. And it's that dichotomy, which in fact isn't a dichotomy at all, between the magical thinking and the superstition and the rationality and the sort of states craftness, that's a technical historical term,

that I just find it so compelling and I do struggle with it. Let's get to the heart of this story, though, the man, the myth, the legend that is Matthew Hopkins. Tell me more. I think man, myth and legend is very apt in this. She's a profession. She knows for history. He is someone we've invented around, I think, over the last.

So when you're talking about myths and legends, it's all here. There is a lot of missing information. I was reading some brilliant work by Ronald Hutton in preparation for this. Shout out to friend of the pod, Ronald Hustner. Yes, Prof Ron Hutt. But he has talked about how we are missing so much of the information from the beginnings of his history. And that tells you something about his origins. He is gentry, but he's minor gentry.

He's living on the very edges of gentry. His father is a parson, a Puritan clergyman. So he's already in the Puritan faith? He's born into it. Okay. Yeah. He is born in Great Wenham in Suffolk. We're not exactly sure when, but we think around 1619, 1620.

And as I say, his father is a Puritan clergyman. He has that upbringing. There is this idea of there being a climate of fear. Remember, I spoke about James I 6th and 1st. That's very much in place from 1603 onwards. So we have this idea. that this is around us. For some people, bear that in mind,

we'll talk about that in terms of skepticism when we get into the story a little bit more. Because I think when you say the name Matthew Hopkins, people think of like widespread panic and paranoia. Everyone's thinking there's witches. It's a literal witch hunt going on across society. But you're saying that's not necessarily the case. We'll come to it, but that is what I think at least.

Yes. So in the 1640s then, at this time of tumult that we've talked about in terms of the English Civil War, He inherits a sum of money, which he puts towards buying an inn, the Thorn in Essex in the town of Mistley. So this is somebody who has a little bit of social mobility. He's aspirational. Money and profit is a driving factor for him. He doesn't run the pub himself.

He just oversees it and finances it. So he's not behind a bar. So that's probably worth, you know, pointing out. But it's interesting to see how that maybe comes into an idea of profit and making your way. the world might come into his witch hunting in a little bit later on. Yeah, the impression that I'm getting so far, because he's quite young still, right? He's in his 20s. He's born around 1620, so he is in his 20s at this moment. Spoiler, he doesn't get past them, but okay. I mean, are we sad about that, given what we know about him? Not really. But yeah, he's someone who is,

as you say, kind of aspirational. He's maybe opportunistic. But so far what I'm not seeing is his Puritan faith going hand in hand with what he's doing in his life. I mean, only a tavern for a start seems a little bit not quite in keeping with these ideas of puritanism and... Of extreme puritanism. Exactly, yeah, the extremity of that. So I'm wondering how this Puritanism is going to creep in and presumably take over for him. It's going to become a driving force. Or is it the faith or is it personal ambition, misogyny? Discuss. Yeah. What is it going to be? That was such a GCSE history question. Were the motivations for Matthew Hopkins, religious or political?

It is a melting pot of all of these things that brings his position about. And he is working, he's not working alone, which is something that most people don't realize when we talk about the witch finder general. There is a group of people around him, most particularly a man called John Stern, who is older, he is working with him. They are witch hunting and witch-finding when this happens together. And Stern is about a decade older. And what we have to remember about both of these men,

and there's a group of maybe like five cronies that's with them at any one time when they're going through these places. So what we need to remember about Matthew and John and their cronies that are going around is that they're operating in mostly parliamentary areas and there is a correlation between the parliamentary side against the royalists, civil war, and puritanism.

So remember, Oliver Cromwell is quite puritanic as well. so it's quite Puritanic, the poster boy of Puritanism. He did sway that way slightly. So it's like it is this perfect melting pot and he is right there at the centre. But why is he? Why is he? So before we get on to why is he, I just want to say then that this this interconnection between religion, superstition and the politics of the time is becoming clearer to me now

in that it is in these parliamentary strongholds where there's this attempt to flush out evil in all of its perceived forms. And that is completely tied to the identity. And I'm using that term kind of broadly because there are lots of different identities within the parliamentary cause, of course. But within that broad identity of the parliamentarians, that there are. is an effort to, as you say, I suppose, purify and simplify society actually, and that Matthew Hopkins is, I think, opportunistically playing into this. Already I'm kind of seeing... It's certainly an argument that that people put forward. One of the things that I want to point out here, I said that this could only happen in the 1640s. And I'm bringing some proof to

show you that. In the 1640s, because royal power, although the king is still alive, he doesn't die until 1649, by die, I mean be beheaded. Yes, he didn't slip away gently. It wasn't killed until 1649. In 1642, there's already been a royal power collapse. Now, when somebody might have been accused of witchcraft prior to this, and it wasn't particularly common, we're coming into a spate of it now. When they were accused of witchcraft before, they would be tried by royal assizes. So these are courts that are traveling maybe from London or from, you know, York, depending on where you are, and they are coming to that area, to a hub in that area, and it is an extension of royal power,

and they are overseeing this legal procedure. And this is like a big event, right? The Assizes when they happen in any local area, like it's a big thing, and people will come from all over the countryside to watch them, to witness them. And it's like an event every year, isn't it? Yes, absolutely, it's an event.

What's happening now is that because royal power has collapsed, those judges are needed for the literal, civil war conflicts, legal conflicts that are happening throughout the country. So they are elsewhere. They are more centralized. And so what we see is this vacuum of power that's created, this vacuum of legal oversight that's created in the wake of the civil war breaking out in 1642. And this allows individuals, thought processes, people like Matthew Hopkins, to fill those gaps, those legalistic gaps. And he does so by conducting his own trials. Or by finding it.

He actually facilitates the trials rather than necessarily holds them himself. He's investigates them. This is just so classic of human behavior that when any kind of vacuum is formed and people need to step up into that to perform some kind of civil service, that it's always the worst people who do this.

At the moment, at home, I'm on a rewatch of Foyles War. Have you ever seen Foyles War? Oh, it's really good. It's on Netflix. But I think, I don't know, old British TV. I don't know what channel it was on originally.

kind of made in the 2000s of a detective during the Second World War dealing with crime on the South Coast. And there's so much in there about the home guard. I sat there the other day talking to my husband about the fact that if we had to have a home guard now, it would just be the worst people who would step up to do that. You can just imagine there'd be some good people who would step up to do it as well. But you can imagine the sort of power-hungry, little local people who would do that.

And I feel like Matthew Hopkins is kind of one of them. He just wants a little bit of it. importance and a little bit of power on a local level. I want to also put in here that when it comes to him writing his own history, which he does, the reason we know so much about Matthew Hopkins is that Matthew Hopkins tells us so much about him. Now, there's other people writing to you. Entirely reliable source, I'm sure.

He is writing his own history to a great extent. But one of the things that we need to bear in mind is other factors apart from just power and just religion, although this might feed into religion. he says that before he started out on his witch-finding crusade, he heard a gaggle of witches, whatever the plural of witches is, he heard them. A coven. Oh, there you go, a well-known word, actually. How does she know it? She's a witch.

He heard them by his house. So he was living in Manningtree at the time in Essex. And he could hear witches convening, groups of which is convening. Okay, Matthew. Yeah. So it's either, okay, Matthew, just stop making shit up. Or, and we'll come back to this. Or it's all real. No. Or there has recently been talk around his mental health and where he was, by recently, I mean by historians, not by Matthew himself or whoever else. He's dead just to let you know. So this idea that there may have been either a medical condition, which we will come to in a minute, or there might have been this idea of, religious fanaticism, where he is hallucinating sounds, and so he's either way not operating

in a very coherent manner if you were to go down that field of stup. So there are multiple options here for motivations on what is drawing him into this world. Because even given, as you've said, as you've set out, the climate of fear and mistrust and superstition in this moment that's really a hangover from James' rain 20, 30 years earlier, you know, still existing. And then we have this period of turmoil in which everything has gone head over heels. Everything has become complicated. The rules of the world don't seem to apply anymore. Magic, the devil, evil seems to be creeping in. And people can buy into this. Even in that context, it does seem like a little bit of a leap to become like,

well, he's not, I suppose at this point, titling himself as such, but the witch finder general. Oh, no, he does title himself. No, yeah, yeah, that's his title. Okay, so this isn't something that's been retrospectively applied to him. No, no, no, he gives it to himself, yeah, as far as we're aware. He certainly refers to himself as such. Okay, so you said at the beginning of his career as a witch hunter, that he's working with John Stern, who is older and presumably a more experienced witch hunter than him, potentially.

So why is he now the witch finder general? Why has he promoted himself? And sidebar to this, interesting militarizing. of the language around that in this moment in which everyone's promoting themselves to made up positions because it's chaos. Yeah. I don't think that's even a sidebar. I think that's like right on the money where it's like which finder general, sure. And like when the world settled. Not to which finder left tenant. No, no. And it's like once once this world settles down again, maybe this will be my role in it. Like maybe this is how I will rise through the ranks of minor gentry and

become somebody a little bit more important if we were to just go down the parable. So, I mean, this is kind of well known, but as he's witch-finding, and it starts in Manning Tree, and we'll go into that in a second, but as he's witch-finding, some of the tests that he uses, we've talked about these before. Yeah, tell me what this looks like on the ground. What is he actually? Is he just travelling around going, you're a witch? You're a witch?

No, no, he's not. And this is interesting. Again, it feeds into this idea of, we've talked about this so many times before, but I think it's so interesting when we look at women's histories, and we've talked about it on the podcast, this girl bossification of history, where often you will see, I see it on TikTok a lot. And it is just a reminder that like watch your sources when you are finding public history in places that, you know, maybe is not fully vetted or is not fully researched. There is this idea often that with some of the women that are accused of witchcraft, that they are powerful women who are speaking out against the patriarchy or misogyny or whatever it might be. And that's a really early 21st century view on what's happening. What's really happening in the Manning Tree, which or in the Essex, which is in this case, is that these are women on the edges of society who maybe look a little less than normal, whatever that means, maybe older, maybe missing teeth, maybe, you know, have some kind of disfigurement, are certainly poor in this specific

case. Or God forbid, post-manipausal. Well, I mean, almost always in this case. Not exclusively women, And by the way, there are a couple of men that are involved in this as well. But what they are, again, this is site Ronald Hutton here, and not me. I just thought this was so fascinating in terms of where we are today. They are a burden on the societies that they live in. Yes. They are demanding financial help. There's arms that are needed.

They're begging on the side of the street. And therefore, they're going, well, why are you getting, I have to work for my money? And also, they provide no perceivable function in society because in this world, they cannot be wives and mothers because they've aged out of it or because of health reasons or they're unsuitable or whatever it is. They're ruined or whatever. Yes, exactly. So for whatever reason.

And in that situation, they do exist outside of the bounds of the patriarchy if we want to term it that. And again, let's be a little bit careful in terms of our 21st century language that we're using for the 17th century. But they do exist without those bounds. But I agree it's not necessarily that these are women who are powerfully speaking. out against these systems. Often they are just trying to survive and they are minding their own business on the very, very edges of these societies. Yes. So I think that's really important to keep in

mind because I often go and I think people often go, God, what must it have been like? What must this witch hunt have been like? But we know, we see it in our media every day. The iterations of it looks different. Now we talk about illegal immigration where, you know, oh, it's a drain, it's this, it's this. But there is manifestations of this. We know what the rhetoric around this would be. We see it through our history. We see it in 1930s Germany, right?

It's the reason why you can't buy bread is because of your Jewish neighbor. Yep, the Red Scare in the States in the 1950s. We see, we know what, and this is why witch hunt gets bandied around in those situations because the ties are more than linguistic. And also why this happens specifically in the 1640s, because of the context of what's happening in the world and that society has collapsed. And we see that. We see it in all these pockets. 20th century too. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, look, that's that's us being on our historical pinpointing mission as it goes. But what Matthew Hopkins is doing is he's often going

back to James I stick some first texts in terms of how you find a witch. Oh, it's a classic rule book. Yeah. And I mean, these are not even James's, these are in place, but certainly that's what he's using. So we have the swimming test, which of course, it's dunking subjects into a bucket of water, they could be tied to a chair to see if they float. Remember, if you float, you're a witch. And if you don't float, oh, you weren't a witch, but you're dead. So that happens. So that's fine. Pricking, of course. So we know that they're looking for the devil's mark, which could be anything. It could be a skin tag, a mole. Yeah, a birth mark. Literally anything. Often, which says a lot in terms of some of these older women, they're finding it in the groin area, which, and they will have

shaved their... Well, I mean, this is ritual humiliation. This is. This is assaults. This is all intended to drag this victim down and to really literally and metaphorically, spiritually, emotionally strip them back. And they are keeping them, unlike in continental Europe at this time, torture is illegal in England. But he is torturing them as well. They are torturing them. We have to bear in mind he's not acting alone here.

And the village is often endorsing sometimes the village is endorsing these things, the village he goes into. What system is there in place to police this? Well, something. is about to swoop in, but right now, no, nothing. So he has free reign in this moment. He does, but I will also say we have to bear it mind that it's the people in the villages that are looking for the investigations. When he turns up, they're like, any witches?

And just like, listen, Mary's pissing me off. Yeah. Go and have a look at her there. She's got three teeth and bad breath and 20 cats. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on. Yeah. So it's like, despite the fact that torture is illegal, what he often does in terms of, or they often do in terms of their interrogation is

tie them to a chair with their legs crossed. and keep them awake for at least 24 hours, if not more. Now, if that's not torture, I don't know what it is. I guess in their minds they're thinking, well, we're not cutting off their fingers one by one. We're not, you know, taking their tongues out or anything. But the idea with sleep deprivation, of course, is that you then can force someone to confess to the crimes you're accusing them of

because they're just so exhausted they either get confused or they just want some respite, and they will agree that they've done anything you say that they've done. So let's look at a case study then. Yes. Which will help us with this. So this is. is one of the earliest witch hunts that was undertaken by Stern and Hopkins.

And we are in Manningtree in Essex and it's 1643. So we're a year in to their little sojourn and into the Civil War. So we have a local woman named Elizabeth Clark and she was accused of setting a curse on the wife of a tailor by the name of John Rivett in late 1643. Now, obviously, from our modern perspective, we don't believe that she necessarily, well, I mean, she, look, she could have set a curse. We know that people in this period were routinely casting spells cursing their neighbours. We don't know whether she did that in this particular circumstance. We don't know whether she believed in that kind of thing. But what I think is fascinating about which trials and looking at these accusations is that you get such a good and clear record of the dynamics of a community. that and don't underestimate the importance of linguistic cursing without the practice of witchcraft where someone in a rage shouts after you down the street well you know whatever might be.

Words have enormous power or perceived have enormous power in this moment you know the repetition of prayer in church is powerful it is like the casting of a spell and you can say something and then someone might drop dead and someone would be like well Anthony you said a second ago that she should drop dead. And if you think that's really old-fashioned and like, oh my God, how did they believe that? We talk about manifesting today. I manifested it. She manifested it.

It's like I believed it so strongly that it came into being. So, you know, we're not necessarily all that more enlightened sometimes than we think these people were. We should do an episode on manifestation. Oh, God, I know somebody who ended up in hospital because of extreme manifesting. Wishing to be in hospital? No, no, as in like, was so engrossed. in this idea that, yeah, it was so incredibly scary. When I say I know them, I don't know them that well.

But maybe we won't cover their story. No, no, no, no. But, yeah, we should do that because I think that's a really interesting. Yeah, there's a really interesting conversation to be had there. Okay, so we have Elizabeth Clark. She's accused of cursing the wife of a tailor named John Rivett. I love how we don't have the name of his wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She was at the center of this, but we don't know who she was, Mrs. Rivet. Nobody bothered, yeah, Mrs. Rivet. we're in 1643 here. What's going to happen? Well, as we were kind of saying, Elizabeth Clark is older. She's a mother and she has, we think, one leg or certainly some type of disability.

Okay, so some kind of physical difference, visible difference. Yes, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so this word has gotten out that she may be a witch in the locality and the mob forced her before her landowner, Sir Harbottle Grimston. No. That's the most 17th century name you've ever heard in your life.

Sir Harbottle Grimston at your service, Lord. No, I don't like it. I know. And they determine that she should be put on trial. Now here's the thing. I can't take him seriously. I'm sorry. He has no authority.

Yeah. What is it? You are not a man of God. You are not a man of God. That's a very Irish reference. Sorry. But do watch the Magdal and sisters have ever you get a chance. And my lovely friend Eileen Walsh is in it and she says that line.

It's iconic. Anyway. What's happening? Watch it. Have you watched that? I have seen it. It's extremely good. I mean, it's depressing. So, Clark was put under observation by watchers for several days to see if she would summon any familiars. And now, we know what familiars are, right? They can be imps or fairies or demons, but they can also just be your cat. Yeah, yeah. I've got two cats and two dogs at home, mate. I am familiarizing all over the place. And it is in this context that Stern and Hopkins, I'm at pains here to all.

always make sure, but people know it's not just Hopkins, and there's other people with them, too, but that they show up and they quickly take over this investigation, they deprive her of sleep, as have said. So again, they're very opportunistic, because they're just traveling around looking for these accusations that might already be happening. And they jump on them, they're like, guys, you can step down now. We're here. We know what we're doing. We'll take over. They're not necessarily igniting this flame. They're just capitalizing on it or trying to, I don't know, administer it or whatever. Yeah, they're getting paid and they're paid quite, well for it. But they were, they were determined to see her familiars. And we actually have Matthew

Hopkins' own words on this particular case, which he has in his deliciously titled, The Discovery of Witches, which of course, branding, thank you very much. I mean, this man is a bit of a master brander, self-brander. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Here's, go on, let's hear his words. So he says, so upon the command of the justice. And that's, that's Harbottle. It is. They were to keep her from sleep for two or three nights, expect in that time to see her familiars, that's key I think, which the fourth night she called in by their several names, a quarter of an hour before they came in, there being 10 of us in the room. So that's Matthew Hopkins describing what has happened in. So they've been,

quote unquote, watching this woman, i.e. not allowing her to sleep for several days, saying, who are you familiars, who are you familiars, who are you familiar, who are you familiar? And she's like, what are you talking about? Please get on my. Can I just go to sleep? Like, leave me alone. And by the fourth night, obviously, she's not slept. She's, I mean, presumably close to death at that point. I don't know how long it takes you to die of a lack of sleep, presumably, quite quickly. Yeah, I think it is quite quickly. It must be a very dangerous thing. And she's presumably hallucinating at this point. She's very confused, disorientated. And she says, yeah, sure, I've got some familiars. Here are the names and explains what kind of animals they are, I

suppose, or what kind of creatures or magical beings they are. Well, I can help you with this, actually, because Hopkins himself, in his pamphlet gives us an image of what this might have looked like. This is a very famous image. It's a very famous image. I'm going to let you tell us what's in it. I mean, it is sort of delicious. You see it replicated a lot on social media.

And it's kind of an interesting one because it seems quite comic and fun in this very kind of 70th century woodcut style of art that seems very light-hearted, I suppose. And we have to remember this is like a really grim moment in this woman's life. So we have Elizabeth Clark on the right seated tied to a chair. In the centre top of the image we have Matthew Hopkins himself, of course, taking pride of place. With his little Puritan outfit on his big spurred boots and his big stick and his hat. And there's another, is that meant to be another watcher seated as well? Is it either a watcher or the justice maybe?

Oh, yes. He's interrogating her anyway. Yes, someone asking Elizabeth questions. And there's a little kind of speech banner that's coming from Elizabeth. And she said, my imps names are. And then in the bottom foreground of this image, we have her imps. They have manifested these familiars. And they are all labeled with their names.

So we have, they're sort of bizarre. The top one, the first one is what looks like a little cat with a very unusual tail. Next down we have, I mean. Some of the renderings of these animals are questionable. Just to say, some of the animals are real animals, real looking, and then others you're just like, I don't know what that is. If you imagine an incredibly startled Spaniel that is drowning in a puddle and also is a sheep. Yeah, and also a mop.

And also a sort of Charles I first hair cut situation, like a spaniel. And this one is labelled Jamara. And then we also have a black hair. hair who's called sack and sugar. There's a little, oh now is that meant to be like a stote maybe at the bottom called News or Neuess. There are some other names here, peck in the crown, grizzle greedy gut. Yeah.

And then in the foreground, we have Vinegar Tom, who is kind of like a cat lizard ox hybrid. Yeah. It's got a sort of face of an ox with horns and this kind of weird. chameleon-esque curly tail going on. These are often cited as like brilliant names for your pets. Vinogatom being a particularly great one or grizzle greedy. I see another one there, pie whack it. That's one that's one that's a lot.

Oh my gosh, pie whack it. Yes, yeah, yeah. So it's, I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. To us, these seem like hilarious. This looks like a joke. Yeah. And the familiars don't look particularly threatening to us. They seem a little bit fun, a little bit silly.

how would this be perceived, though, by a 17th century audience reading The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins? Well, the first thing I want to point out about it is that they went in with an aim, and the aim was to see the familiars, to see her familiar. And this is proof that they have. And this is proof that they turned up, but they never turned up. Like, no familiars. Telling me Vinegar Tom, the oxen chameleon hybrid's not real. Now, she named familiars. She did give them names of familiars that she had.

she was forced to confess. I wonder how close the names that she gives are to the ones that we see on the page here, because these feel very crafted and sort of falsified and very sort of specific. I would say my instinct, I don't know the answer to that because, I mean, we just don't know. We just won't know. But I would say there's an element of there are tropes here. Pywacket's a trope in these. That is a name that will come up again and again in terms of witchcraft.

you will see pie-wack it as... And a lot of them are to do with kind of like domestic and particularly food things, aren't they? Like, vinegar-tom or sack and sugar. Like, there's kind of... Their names taken from an environment that this woman might live in. Yeah, and it is an invention of what they hoped to find

and they didn't find. She gave them names, yes, as I say, but, you know, as a result, she also named other people, and we see this again and again, don't we? Because how can they be of use? How can they maybe save themselves, I suppose? And so multiple women are then,

tried at Chelmsford on the 17th of July 1645, and the surviving record say that 36 women and one man from across Essex were indicted. Twenty-nine were then condemned to death, including Elizabeth Clark and Hopkins himself references this in his work. I will say one of the things, we get some interesting numbers across all of these trials and executions. And there is an idea that about 200 people were tried and about 100 people were executed during this time period. But what we also need to remember is that a lot of that statistical historiography is coming from Hopkins himself. Right.

Because we don't have those a size documents that we would otherwise have. And so there's just something to bear in mind there. I'm not sure what I'm saying. How prolific was he really? Because he's very proud of the work that he's done. Absolutely. He's selling it again, isn't it? Yeah. And I suppose we can take it with a pinch of song. We might be able to assume that he has inflated those numbers.

You spoke at the beginning of this episode about contemporary skepticism in the 17th century, people's lack of belief, people's, I suppose, doubt over whether this was real and whether Matthew Hopkins specifically was doing a good job and a good thing in the world. Is there a backlash? Do people resist him traveling around the country, jumping on these local squabbles and igniting them into something much more bloody and dangerous. I think this is key, as I said, and as I always say in these episodes, almost immediately. Oh.

So I'm going to fast forward a little bit and then I'll come back to Matthew. By 1735, the Witchcraft Act places officially and legally witchcraft as a non-existent hoax book coming to. Name checking my book. And say, this is 17. This is essentially 100 years later saying witchcraft does not exist. It's only ever going to be a hoax if you come across us. And not only this, but if you accuse someone of witchcraft by 1735, you yourself will be prosecuted. Now, nothing changed overnight in 1735. This is a process that has been in place for quite some time. Remember, the 1640s is this upsurge of witchcraft accusations and prosecutions.

So doubt and skepticism over witchcraft has very much been in place prior to. to the 1640s. And it is, interestingly, I think, another Puritan, yes, named John Gull, who emerges as maybe one of the loudest voices of opposition, who's saying, what on earth. He publishes in 1646, but he's been saying this for a long time prior. And he's saying, what on earth is this silly superstition. Good for you, John Gaw. Okay. And I just think we overlook this factor way too easily because it's not as good a story to go, some people didn't believe this actually, maybe quite a few. But I think it's more interesting.

It's so much more interesting. And it's more, you know, we talk about these moments of kind of mass panic and witch hunting throughout history and that we are living in something similar at the moment. It is comforting and important to know that in these moments we're looking back on, there were people who resisted this nonsense and fought back against it. I think that's an incredibly helpful thing. Absolutely. And vital to remember in terms of the history of society where it's not this just blanket belief in witchcraft.

And I think we're still very much sold that. That in this time, oh, it was everywhere. Everyone believed it. And actually, think about it. Like, you have a witchmark on your, you've a tattooed witchmark, right? I do. And it's like, so did they in their houses, as we know, as you know, better than most people. These are upchipar marks to keep away the witches.

Yes. But also, I do wonder if there's not just some form of community custom going on there or like heritage acknowledgement or, you know, okay, hidden decoration. You know? With the apotropate marks, I think specifically, they are toned witchmarks today in the popular press. Every Halloween, you know, and every National Trust and England Heritage property will, you know,

and rightly so, like get the people into your property to say, we've got some witch marks carved on, you know, the window or the doorframe or whatever. And I always think they are so much more complicated. And actually they appear so much in church. And there is so much debate around, so we're talking about like hexafolds or daisy wheels here, which looks like a little sort of petaled flower inside of surface. And there are other, you know, versions of these potrapeau marks or kinds of symbols.

But the symbology is so complex and there are so many different interpretations for it. And this idea that it specifically repels witches, I don't think it's simply true. That, of course, in some circumstances, that is what people would have believed. But as you say, it's shared heritage. It's just common practice. People did this all the time. It's a way of protecting your home. You would carve these in doorways, as I say,

windows over fireplaces anywhere where evil could enter your house. But it's also a way of protecting the building. People used to make graffiti in particular so their building didn't burn down, a way of protecting the house from fire, things like this. So it's so much more complicated. And I think that just to come back to your point, the big point you're making here, is that people's belief, some of it was routine because other people believed and their parents had believed and their parents believed and their neighbours believed and their cousins believed. And so you would just kind of be like, oh yeah, well, obviously, you know, that's that. But also, there is a world in which people practice this without fully buying into it. Yes. Yeah. And I think we see that today.

Like, it's, it's, this shouldn't be a strange concept to us. So it is this idea that people at this time thought what he was doing was apparent. They thought that what he was doing was, and it was illegal. Remember, torture is illegal. He is not appointed by parliament. He has not officially appointed. This is a self-appointed thing. Also, you are going to. rub people up the wrong way. If you turn and say, hi, I'm the witch finder general. Yeah. I'm sorry. This then takes a legalistic approach and they are condemned very widespread condemnation of the ways in which they're interrogating these mostly women and the ways they're tramping around the countryside. And so it stops and it doesn't last very long. I think it's a three, four year period

in which this is happening. In which time they do plenty of damage. Oh yeah, absolutely. And they get around to a lot of, you know, those Puritan townships where they can wreak a bit of havoc. But Hopkins is dead by the time he's 28 in 1647. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And here's where I alluded to this earlier. There's this idea that he died of, well, we're not 100% sure, but one of the theories at the moment is that it was TB.

And he had a form of TB that led to hallucination and potentially hysteria. And that's why he was hearing witches, or what he interpreted to be witches, before he embarked on all of this. That's fascinating. That's just, again, Ronald Hutton. But it is, I buy it. I'm at least intrigued by it. You know, there's always problems with retrospectively diagnosing somebody, but, you know,

TB is not going to be uncommon at this time. And TB is not just a lung disease like we think to be today. Yeah. And there's a lot more to it than that. I think there's so much more to be said about people's altered states of reality, whether through mental health, whether through, you know, substances that they are using. I'm thinking about people like the romantics in the late 18th, early 19th century,

you know, confessions of an opium eater and all that and William Wordsworth lying on the carpet, writhing in agony because he needs more opium, that people's perception of reality, how they understood the world around them, what they put out into the world as a result, is so often tied to this altered state, whether through illness or whatever it is.

And because that's hard to access in the archive, I think it is often overlooked. Yeah. And as you say, particularly in our own age of social media, in the way that we consume a lot of these histories, in particular when it comes to witches, that there isn't room for that nuance. And I think that's something we should bring to this conversation,

that whether or not we'll ever know whether Hopkins really was hallucinating and that was a sort of important factor in his campaign against women, I just think that's a really interesting thing to think about and to think about how people, you know, we've spoken about before how people, perceived night time in this period, why they would be afraid of things. You know, when you go to bed with one candle and you blow it out and you're in darkness, there's no light pollution,

there's noises in your house, there's rats scuttling in the attic overhead or on the canopy of your bed, there's, you know, beams that are clicking into place and clicking out of place depending on the time of year and the warmth or the cold or the damp or whatever. And just all these things, it's so hard to return to or to access with this historical distance. and that, to me, is really compelling what you're saying. And this, again, let's credit Ronald Hutton with this. But, you know, I think that's a really important and exciting point, actually. And his legacy lives, you know, I say he dies at 28 and we're like, well, no great loss in one sense.

But actually, his legacy in terms of witch hunting and his impact on the prosecution of women and what we would now understand as the illegal. And by the way, they did at the time in England at least understand that what he had done was the illegal. persecution of women. As opposed to the legal prosecution of women. There was lots of that. But he is used as a benchmark in the Salem witch trials, 50 years later. As in someone to aspire to. As in what are the methods?

What was he doing to find? And there use his own playbook to do that. And he's also influencing American, North American witch trials before, which hunts before even Salem. comes in in 1692. So he has this printed legacy is actually one of the things that serves him best

if we want to frame it like that. And he is the, to some extent, he becomes this embodiment of somebody who sees an ill in society and he wants to remove this idea of this cancer or this devil, literally the devil from society. I mean, we spoke about earlier

Elizabeth Clark being accused of cursing someone and the power of even just verbal curses and words, the power that words have in this moment. And actually, it's Matthew Hopkins words set down on paper. And, you know, there's a kind of magical power in that in this moment, that there's, you know, the circulation of print is this new thing still. And it's exciting for people. It's powerful.

And it has this, you know, we see it with the tracks that James I first and sixth writes on witches as well, and that effect that it has on Matthew Hopkins reading those texts. And then Matthew Hopkins' own text, as you say, being kind of, carried to the Puritan communities in America in this later period of the 17th century, that he is the one who is saying spells and putting evil into the world with his own vitriol, and that that is the lasting damage, the lasting threat, I suppose, not the words of women going about their lives. And you talked about earlier, and I suppose this is a place to wrap it up, but just to bear this in mind, we talked about the potential hallucinogenic influence of TB.

or an illness or a mental illness. But what we failed to kind of talk about, and I think it's just as plausible, or maybe there's two things happening at once, which of course is often the case, the fanaticism of puritanism can lead to this, we see it in Salem later, this almost hallucinogenic quality to, yeah, where we're not being rational now. We are gone to an extreme. we have in our pursuit of perfection or whatever, purity, I suppose, is a better term. And what allows that to flourish? It's isolationism. It's communities where they set themselves apart and say everyone outside of our community is a threat. They are other. They are not worthy of our time. They are a threat to us. They are seeking to destroy us. And it's that inward-looking focus and obsession that then it spirals and spirals because it's a,

What's the word I'm looking for? It's a kind of echo chamber of repetition, and it gets worse and worse as time goes on and more powerful. I think one of the things to take away, if we can, is that I'm increasingly, the more we do these episodes, everyone always asks why we're fascinated by people like Hopkins. He has endured, Elizabeth Clark hasn't. Why we're fascinated by these horrendous dictators, these murderers, these serial killers, this dark side of history. And I had this light bulb moment. It's not that. It's very basic.

So forgive me for being so basic. But at the same time, I just went, oh, I think I understand it now. This literally happened in the last 24 hours as I was doing this. It's because if we don't look at them and if we don't continue to hold them up and scrutinize them and try and pull them apart, people like Hopkins, people like Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, then we need to look at ourselves and say, actually, how close can I come to this? And so rather than doing that and feeling very uncomfortable in the violent tendencies or the uncomfortable. comfortable things that lie within each and every single one of us. We can place that on other people. And then we turn them into this kind of totem of evilness where we can take away that

from ourselves, expunge that from ourselves. Because humanity has those, you know, Matthew Hopkins probably isn't outright evil. But it's very easy to see the ways in which it coalesces around him. And he becomes a short hand for the problems of society in that moment. So now we've solved it. We've fixed all of history. Well, done. Thanks.

Thanks very much for listening to this episode. Leave a comment below if you're watching online. Leave us a five-star review, wherever you get your podcast. It helps other people to find the show. And it's a little bit of an ego boost for us. You're just kidding. Until next time. Bye.