Witchfinders: A seventeenth-century English tragedy
Posted: 02 Nov 2006 @ 00:00
John Murray £20 (0-7195-6120-5)
Church Times Bookshop £18
THE Devil raged in England in 1645, at least according to Puritans, and
never more so than when the King's forces advanced on Puritan strongholds in
East Anglia. Godly ministers, magistrates, and the self-appointed knew that
they must act to root out the evil in their midst; and in 1645 this meant
witches.
Gaskill presents the story of two witchfinders among the Puritan minor
gentry in Essex, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. In the midst of civil war
and apocalyptic fervour, they mounted a campaign of interrogation and
intimidation across East Anglia which, by 1647, produced more than 100
execu-tions. The victims included the Royalist Vicar of Brandeston, who
conducted his funeral service from the banned Book of Common Prayer at the
gallows.
What did it all mean? Witches were "allegories expressing deep-rooted
subconscious fears about patriarchy and the state, and their deaths fulfilled
fantasies about restoring male authority and order", says Gaskill; yet he notes
that this was England's only witch-hunt "worthy of the name". So was it
the result of superstition and prejudice, or of the stresses produced by
poverty and war?
Gaskill's researches suggest an answer: witchcraft was, above all, the
charge exploited by Puritans to intimidate or murder their opponents - Roman
Catholics, Laudians, or sectaries. This gripping book tells who said what about
whom, why disturbed people were coerced into incriminating themselves, how
local grudges were paid off, and how the legal system was subverted by mass
hysteria.
Pointing to mass executions of witches in sub-Saharan Africa and in India
even today, Gaskill infers that "in our ideas, instincts and emotions we are
not very different at all" from our 17th-century
ancestors. It is a disturbing conclusion; but does it really follow from
the evidence?
Professor Clark is Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at
the University of Kansas, USA.
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