The decline of witches

250px-Daemonologie1By 1619 James, according to Borman, was becoming skeptical about witches. None the less, events such as the Belvoir Witch Trial meant that witchcraft remained a topic of much interest.

 

I’ve posted about the Belvoir Witches previously but just a quick reminder, the Earl of Rutland’s two young sons died.  Blame was ultimately placed on Joan Flowers and her two daughters, Margaret and Philippa.  They had been dismissed from their posts at Belvoir accused of theft and had left muttering curses.  The family had fallen on hard times – probably because Joan’s husband, John, had died.  It was rumoured that the three women were offering a range of services to community – at any rate both daughters were described in the records as “abandoned and profligate.”  It probably didn’t help that Joan liked a good argument.

Then Henry Manners, Lord Ros died. The doctors had been unable to decide what his illness might have been.  Shortly after that the Earl of Rutland’s other son also died. Initially the earl and his wife Cecilia (incidentally a Tresham of Gunpowder Plot connections) didn’t believe that the deaths were witchcraft but ultimately the Flowers women were arrested and taken off to Lincoln for trial where they inevitably confessed.

However, times so far as James were concerned, were changing.  When the Leicestershire witch trials took place James was on progress and interrogated the women and their accusers.  They were released.  James was beginning to develop skepticism.  When he wrote a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer he made no mention to the existence of evil in the form of witches – as he lost interest so the number of witch trials declined. It was becoming more common to make jokes about witches rather than to string up hapless little old ladies who had the misfortune to be poor, ill looking cat owners. This was unfortunate for witch hunters who were usually paid by result which probably accounts for the fact that once one was discovered several more popped up in the same place.

Some of the women accused of witchcraft now took the opportunity to take their accusers to court.  One of them Agnes Fenn, a Norfolk widow of mature years, went to the Star Chamber and named the men who’d set upon her, beaten her, forced her to sit on knives and set off gunpowder in her face in an effort to make her confess to being a witch. Despite having been terrorised and stabbed in the face the Norfolk gentlemen who had carried out the attack declared themselves innocent of the accusation and Agnes received no further redress – demonstrating that being old and poor wasn’t a good starting point from which to hope for justice.

By the 1630’s killing witches was almost a thing of the past – but then the English Civil War came along and with one thing and another witch hunting once more became a popular pastime.

Which witch- some Jacobean witch trials

king-james1The History Jar’s previous post showed that James’ witchcraft trials were no respecter of rank, although it is telling that Francis Stuart survived the encounter.  When James became king of England as well as Scotland he carried his interest in witches with him- not that trials were a new phenomena- between 1560 and 1701 there were 279 trials for witchcraft in Essex and those are only the ones that made it into the record books.

Like James, Henry VIII had thought that witches were plotting against him. And let’s not forget the rumour concerning Anne Boleyn. It was suggested that she carried the “devil’s mark”  in the form of a mark on her neck and in the existence of a sixth finger on her right hand.  Elizabeth introduced a law against witches in 1563.  James was simply able to dust the law down and remind folk that practising witchcraft and consulting with them was an offence punishable by death.

Probably the most famous English case during the reign of James I was that, in 1612, of the Pendle Witches where three generations of one family found themselves on the wrong end of the swimming test (that’s the one where if you sink and drown you’re not a witch but if you bob to the top of the water having had your hands tied to your feet then you were a witch and having been hauled out and dried off could be burned.) To be honest it’s the case that springs to mind when thinking about Jacobean witch trials.  Yet, in Scotland between 1603 and 1624 there were approximately 420 witchcraft trials a year which is a lot of elderly crones when all is said and done, even if only half of them were executed.

There were many fewer trials in England, Notestein suggests somewhere between forty and fifty, but they did tend to have a much higher profile and were mostly at the start of James’ reign.  Take for example the scandalous affair of Francis Howard, Countess of Somerset and the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower.  Francis  was said to have gained poisons from her friend Anne Turner who had a reputation for being a wise woman and it it was discovered had associated with Simon Forman who had predicted his own death.  Even worse, if possible, Cunning Mary (a name with which to conjure) told the court that Francis had promised her a £1000. Anne was executed for her part in the murder whilst Francis who pleaded guilty was quietly pardoned and released.

Other notable cases were as follows:

1606

  • Royston in Hertfordshire, Joanna Harrison was found to have in her possession the bones of a man and a woman. Her property was searched after she made a man ill simply by looking at him.

1607

  • The Bakewell Witches demonstrates that it paid not to get on the wrong side of anyone. “A Scotchman staying at a lodging-house in Bakewell fell in debt to his landlady, who retained some of his clothes as security. He went to London, concealed himself in a cellar, and was there found by a watchman, who arrested him for being in an unoccupied house with felonious intent. He professed to be dazed and declared that he was at Bakewell in Derbyshire at three o’clock that morning. He explained it by the fact that he had repeated certain words which he had heard his lodging-house keeper and her sister say. The judge was amazed, the man’s depositions were taken down, and he was sent to the justices of Derby.” The writer (Wallace Notestein) added that there was little evidence for this but that a number of women were hanged in Bakewell on charges of witchcraft at this time.

1612

  •  Witches discovered in Northamptonshire. Eight women were accused of  torturing a man and his sister as well as causing lameness in the neighbourhood. One of them Agnes Brown had a wart that was taken to be the devil’s mark. She and her daughter already had a dubious reputation.  Another was suspected because a child looked at her in church and when he got home went into convulsions.
  • Arthur Bill and his parents were accused of bewitching Martha Aspine.
  • The Pendle witch trials which was essentially two families at feud with one another.  Sixteen women found themselves locked up in Lancaster Castle on witchcraft charges.

 

1613

  • In Bedford Mother Sutton and her daughter,Mary, fell foul of the local landowner who was called Enger. Enger claimed that on moonlit nights Mary was in the habit of manifesting herself at his side.  She would sit and knit and tell him that if he agreed her terms that he would be restored to full health.

1616

  • The Leicester witch hangings.  A boy had fits and claimed that they were caused by witches. As a result nine women were executed and six more were saved by James who was on progress and found that the boy was lying.

1618

  • The Earl of Rutland claimed that both his sons had been killed by witches.  The Belvoir witches were tried in Lincoln. Joan Flower and her two daughters were dismissed from Belvoir Castle and when the second of the earl’s sons died it was realised that not only had he been killed by witchcraft but so had his sibling who had died several years earlier. It should be noted that Joan and her daughters had been dismissed some five years before the boy died. I’ve posted about the death of the earl’s sons earlier. https://thehistoryjar.com/2018/01/20/witchcraft-scandal-and-the-duke-of-buckingham/

 

1620

  • The saw called Bilston Boy case. Essentially thirteen year old William Perry craved attention and got it by having fits. He accused Jane Clarke of causing the fits and the case went to trial.  It was only thanks to a very perceptive bishop that Jane didn’t hang.

1622

  • The Fairfax case in York saw six women accused on the testimony of children.

 

Notestein, Wallace (1909) A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31511/31511-h/31511-h.htm#Footnote_115-3_42

Witchcraft, scandal and the Duke of Buckingham

george villiers.jpgGeorge Villiers, pictured left, was not the scion of a powerful family but he had received the kind of education, at his mother’s insistence, that a courtier required. His good looks had attracted James I’s attention. This was enough to ensure that the enemies of Robert Carr, the king’s then favourite, paid to raise George to the post of the King’s cup bearer. The rest as they say, is history.

 

By 1619 George was the Marquis of Buckingham and in search of a wife. Families looked at their unmarried daughters and wondered if the investment of a bride would improve their own fortunes. However, Buckingham and his mother Mary Beaumont already had a bride in mind.

Lady Katherine Manners was the daughter of the 6th Earl of Rutland. She was the earl’s sole heir. Her older brothers, Henry and Francis, had died in mysterious circumstances. The whole family fell ill in 1613 after dismissing a woman and her two daughters from their service.   Henry died. Three years later nine women were hanged in Leicestershire having been found guilty of bewitching a child. Then in 1618 Francis also died and the Manners family sought the arrest of the three women and the monument to the two boys makes it clear that the earl held witchcraft responsible for the death of the boys, “Two sons – both died in infancy by wicked practice and sorcery”.

 

The three women became known as the Belvoir Witches. Joan Flower, the mother protested her innocence from her arrest and during her imprisonment in Lincoln but her daughter Margaret confessed that Joan was a witch and her other daughter Philippa said that they were all witches. Joan died in prison and was buried at a crossroads, Margaret was hanged and in some versions of the story Philippa escaped from jail.

 

Tracey Borman offers a different theory. She records that the Flower women were employed as servants prior to a visit by King James I but that they were unpopular with Belvoir’s other servants and accused of pilfering. Borman goes on to note that the women had a reputation for herbal cures and late night entertaining – of males. They, she argues, were convenient scapegoats.  In fact the boys had been murdered on the orders of George Villiers.

There is some evidence to suggest that by 1618 George Villiers, a Lincolnshire landowner, had his eyes set on a wealthy prize – which if she became a sole heiress would become even wealthy. Most historians consider that on the death of her brothers Katherine Manners became the wealthiest heiress in the country with estates in Yorkshire and Northamptonshire as well as her mother’s dower estates that came from the Knyvet family.

 

Katherine was considered a plain woman but more alarming so far as King James I was concerned, she was a Catholic. Both those factors aside Katherine’s father was against the proposed match. He knew about George Villiers. He had seen the king’s favourite at court and seen the way that the king and George fondled one another in public. Nor was Rutland terribly amused by the fact that George wanted a hefty dowry along with the plain heiress. For the time being the wedding was off.
But then in March 1620 Mary Beaumont, George’s mother visited the Countess of Rutland when the earl was away from home. She invited Katherine to dine with her, promising to bring her back home that evening. The countess of Rutland, Katherine’s step-mother, agreed.

 

Mary entertained Katherine in her lodgings in Whitehall but did not send the girl home. She claimed that Katherine was ill and could not return home. To make matters worse, George who had also been invited to dine, failed to return to his own lodgings which were within walking distance. Poor Katherine was ruined. She had stayed over night in the home of an unmarried man who had slept under the same roof. The earl of Rutland was furious. He refused to allow Katherine to return home and now found himself insisting that Villiers marry his daughter because her reputation was so badly tarnished. The scandal was so great that the lavish wedding that you might expect never happened. It was a private occasion witnessed only by the earl and the King on the 16 May 1620.

 

It is difficult to know whether Katherine connived with Villiers and his mother in her own ruin. She certainly appeared to dote on her husband even if he did not love her in return.  Nor did she lead a very happy life with George. She hated the way he lived his life at court, his relationship with the king and the fact that George didn’t stop having mistresses just because he was married. Come to think of it much of Europe was scandalised by George’s behaviour, especially when he travelled to France in 1625 and became besotted with the French queen Anne of Austria – as in Dumas’s story of The Three Musketeers.

 

Katherine had converted to Protestantism before the marriage but returned to Catholicism during the course of her married life and if her letters are anything to go by she did not simply accept George’s infidelities, sometimes using her health and emotions as a way of trying to control her husband’s behaviour.

george_villiers_duke_of_buckingham_and_family_1628-1-1024x702.jpg

Life cannot have become any easier for Katherine when George, a Duke since 1623, became the target of national hostility because of Charles I’s foreign policy. George was widely assumed to be responsible for the assorted disasters that beset the English. Parliament attempted to arrest him in 1626. It was only his friendship with the king that saved him. Two years later George was killed by John Felton in Portsmouth.

 

During the next seven years Katherine could only watch as her four children with George were adopted into the royal family to be raised with Charles I’s children. In 1635, much to the king’s fury she married the 2nd earl of Antrim, Randall McDonnell, a man six years her junior. Eventually Katherine convinced Charles that she had married for love and that Randall had no intention of disinheriting her children.

Katherine_Manners_Duchess_of_Buckingham_in_Mourning.jpg

She died in 1649.