It’s nearly Halloween and that means it’s time to dig out your pointed hat. But, one town is spending their spooky season attempting to clear the name of executed ‘witches’ from 1560 to 1680. Let’s take a look
Think of witch trials and you often think of the hysteria of Salem in Massachusetts, US, where more than 200 men and women stood accused between February 1692 and May 1693.
But witch trials were also rife in England, with around 1,000 held between 1560 and 1680. Now, one town is trying to clear the names of its executed ‘witches’.
Here we take a look at what happened in Maidstone, Kent…
‘Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble!’ When William Shakespeare wrote those lines for his play Macbeth, first performed in 1606, witchcraft was seen as a very real threat.
And the trio of women who chanted them, in between chats with the ill-fated Scottish general, were not only a spooky nuisance but a coven of criminals.
People were convinced that communication with the devil could happen. And in a religious society where resources were often scarce, loss of crops or cattle could be seen as evil at work.
The first law to make witchcraft illegal was ‘An Act against Conjurations, Witchcrafts, Sorcery and Inchantments’ passed by Henry VIII in 1541. The resulting witch trials took place across England, spanning more than 300 years.
Most were carried out in the 16th and 17th centuries, with around 500 people sentenced to death.
Maidstone, the county town of Kent, had one of the largest trials of the 17th century.
An account from the time – ‘A prodigious & tragicall history of the arraignment, tryall, confession, and condemnation of six witches’ – reveals exactly what those in court were accused of in the summer of 1652.
Anne Ashby, Mary Brown, Anne Martyn, Mildred Wright and Anne Wilson, all of Cranbrook, and Mary Reade, of Lenham, appeared at the Maidstone Assizes in front of Peter Warburton, one of the Justices of the Common Pleas.
Anne Ashby was said to be the “chief actresse” in the trial, accused of bewitching a baby and a three-year-old girl to death. She and Anne Martyn confessed that “the divell had known them carnally and that they had no hurt by it.”
Ashby, in view of the judge and jury, “fell into an extasie before the Bench, and swell’d into a monstrous and vast bigness, screeching and crying out very dolefully.”
She claimed an evil spirit, called Rug, had come out of her mouth “like a mouse” and given her a piece of flesh to touch that would grant all her wishes.
Pins were used to prick Mary Browne, Anne Wilson and Mildred Wright, but they didn’t feel anything – further ‘proof’ they weren’t entirely of this world.
At the trial, 18 people stood accused, 12 women and six men. They were said to have killed 10 pigs and bewitched nine children in total, as well as causing the loss of £500 worth of cattle and much corn “wrack’d by witchcrafte”.
The contemporary record adds: “These miserable Wretches deservedly received the Sentence of Condemnation, as aforesayd; for it is written, shalt not thou suffer a Witch to live.”
Fourteen of the accused were convicted, although one was later reprieved, and the six women were condemned to death. They were hanged on Penenden Heath, a mile outside of Maidstone, and their final resting place is unknown.
Professor Malcolm Gaskill, a witchcraft expert and historian, says victims were targeted for various reasons – not just because they were widows or loners.
He explains: “Seventeenth-century society was crammed full of widows and other lonely people who were never accused.
“The truth is that, however terrible, people were accused of witchcraft typically because their neighbours believed they were witches.
“At law and in religion and popular culture, the power to cause harm through the devil was very real.
“The root cause nearly always came from interpersonal conflict between neighbours, especially competition for scarce resources of food, land and authority.”
Professor Marion Gibson, of the University of Exeter, agrees.
“People who were accused of witchcraft usually stood out in their community in some way,” she explains. “Maybe they’d quarrelled with neighbours or had an illegitimate baby, making them unhelpfully visible to the authorities.”
“Religious conflict is the big one. People were looking for heretics and religious criminals, and that included witchcraft.”
But misogyny was always a big factor. Across Europe, up to 90% of people accused of witchcraft were women – 100% at some trials.
Trial and error
Maidstone is now spearheading a campaign to get all of England’s witches pardoned by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Campaigners say confronting the historic injustice will help tackle gender-based abuse today.
Council leader Stuart Jeffery has written to Ms Mahmood asking that she grants a general pardon to the hundreds executed under Witchcraft Acts.
He says their deaths were “rooted in misogyny, fear, and social scapegoating,” adding: “These historic acts of murder cannot be undone, but those women could be granted a general pardon by a similar route.”
Councillor Claire Kehily also wants a memorial for the women.
She says: “They weren’t witches, they were women who had no one to speak for them. They were executed for being different.”
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
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