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East Anglia (Ending (Re-establishment of Traditional Authority…

- - - - Re-established of traditional authority kept a check on "bottom-up" pressure
    - - JPs
        
        JPs could fulfil their function properly
        
        An increasing number of accusations of witchcraft were rejected before they even came to trial
      - Return of Royalist Gentry
        
        Able to mediate accusations of witchcraft among their tenants, thus nipping accusations in the bud before they got out of control
        
        Once the war was over, royalist gentry returned to their East Anglian estates
      - Renewal of the Assizes
        
        Re-established centralised control of the judiciary and more and more accused witches were being acquitted
        
        1646, Charles I surrendered and the English Civil War came to an end
      - Clergy
        
        Clergy were often Church of England and far more moderate than Puritans
        
        Removed a large number of zealous Puritan clerics
        
        Clergy that had been royalist sympathisers started to take post in East Anglia once again
  - - - 20% of East Anglian men had been recruited by Parliament therefore their return decreased the vulnerability of women from accusations of witchcraft
    - - Single Women
        
        With the end of the war, men began to return home therefore there were fewer women living on their own who challenged patriarchal society
      - Poverty
        
        As men returned, this helped to alleviate poverty therefore fewer women were begging and causing resentment within communities
  - - - Hopkins
        
        Died 12th August 1647
      - Stearne
        
        Withdrew at the end of 1647
        
        Lawsuits
        
        Number of lawsuits made against him
        
        Overturn a wrongful conviction
        
        Taken to court to recover the cost of his fees
        
        Convictions
        
        With re-establishment of the judicial authority, it was harder for Stearne to achieve a successful conviction
        
        New Born Child
        
        Returned home to look after his new born child
    - - The death of Hopkins and the withdrawal of Stearne deprived the witch-hunts of leadership and collection of "evidence" to convict witches, which was increasingly more difficult
  - - - Uncertainty
        
        Although poor harvests continued, the fear of uncertainty that had driven much of the Puritan godliness to achieve victory subsided
      - Suffering
        
        End of the English Civil WA brought an end to suffering
        
        Less of a need for scapegoats as there had been previously
    - - Relief from uncertainty and suffering removed many of the reasons why people within society made accusations of witchcraft
  - - - Fees for Hopkins and Stearne
        
        Ipswich had to raise a local tax
        
        Hopkins made £1000 for his services
        
        Aldenburgh paid £40 for his services, 1/7th of the villages income
      - Cost of Executions
        
        Whilst hanging was relatively cheap, it all added up
        
        Mary Lakeland of Yarmouth was burned which cost £3
      - Cost of Assizes
        
        Accommodating and feeding the assizes judges and their staff was high
        
        One judge from the assizes of 1645 sent an invoice of £130
      - Feeding Prisoners
        
        Costs rose as prisoners increased
        
        Bury St Edmunds
        
        An officer was appointed to collect bread money from the town for detained witches
        
        A charge was introduced for spectators at executions
      - Imprisonment
        
        Ipswich
        
        Prisoners cost £50 to keep while they awaited trial
        
        Cost 3d per day for each prisoner
    - - A number of debts were owed to Stearne were never called in, suggesting that he was aware of the futility of pursuing them
      - Funds were needed to deal with the end of the English Civil War and witch hunting was seen as an unnecessary expense
      - The cost of keeping and prosecuting witches was too high to warrant further investigations
      - Critics of the cost of the hunts began to make their voices heard
  - - - Moderate Intelligencer
        
        September 1645
        
        Parliamentary newspaper which expressed unease at the state of affairs in East Anglia
      - John Gaule
        
        Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts (1646)
        
        Affirmed the existence of witches but criticised the methods used by Hopkins and Stearne
        
        Pleaded for common sense and restraint
        
        Launched a campaign of preaching against witch-hunting
        
        Told parishioners that confessions should not be taken at face value
    - - Gaule made people question their accusations before they made them
      - Gaule's work helped to convince the authorities that the witch-hunts were no longer necessary
      - Publications against witch-hunting were easily disseminated by print,therefore they could make the authorities more aware of what was happening in East Anglia
- - - - Purging of the Clergy
        
        Clergy who were thought to be unreliable in the faith were frequently purged by enthusiast Puritans
        
        John Lowes, an Anglican vicar, was accused of witchcraft and killed
      - Iconoclasm
        
        1644, wave of iconoclasm arose in East Anglia which was led by the Puritan William Dowsing
      - Reformation of Manners
        
        Immoral behaviour was monitored which in turn led to accusations of witches
        
        A lot of confessions were linked to sex
        
        Puritan clergy sought to regulate morals in accordance with scriptural principles
      - Invitation
        
        Those ares which were involved in iconoclasm tended to invite Hopkins and Stearne
    - - Other areas of the country had Puritan tendencies, such as Kent, yet did not experience these large scale witch-hunts
  - - - Self-Interest
        
        Earned a considerable sum of money conducting their witch-hunts; Hopkins earned over £1000
      - Hopkins' Interest
        
        Upsurge in persecutions coincided with Hopkins' sudden interest
        
        1644, Manningtree (Essex), Hopkins' became concerned about witchcraft when he was kept awake by the women next door
      - Religious Convictions
        
        Both Hopkins and Stearne were zealous Puritans
        
        Puritanism gave them the religious conviction to seek out nonconformists and purify society
      - Interrogation Techniques
        
        Included sleep deprivation and loaded questioning
    - - Usually invited to conduct witch-hunts but the community and thus it could be argued that they simply offered leadership to popular pressure
  - - - Breakdown of Centralised Judiciary
        
        JPs distracted by the war therefore failed to keep a check on witchcraft accusations
        
        Assizes disrupted which meant that cases were heard by those who were unqualified like the Earl of Warwick
      - Economic Consequences
        
        High taxation, food shortages and inflation made life hard
        
        Caused accusations of maleficium which encouraged accusations
      - Uncertainty
        
        Fear of royalist invasion of East Anglia encouraged religious zeal among Protestants
      - Heightened Religious Tensions
        
        Puritans saw Catholics as evil and Charles as the Devil's agents
        
        Religious differences between the Puritan sympathetic Parliament and the Catholic sympathetic Charles which encouraged Puritans to seek out non-conformists
      - Death and Destruction
        
        190000 deaths caused by the war which reinforced the idea of the Devil and the need for godliness
        
        20% of East Anglian men recruited into Parliamentarian armies
    - - The whole of England experienced the Civil War yet East Anglia was the only area to experience a large scale witch-hunt
      - East Anglia escaped most of the fighting
  - - - Failed Mothers
        
        Prissilla Collit
        
        Confessed that the Devil appeared to her and tempted her to kill her children to escape povery
        
        Had no economic resources or means of bettering their a lives and hoped that a pact with the Devil would bring financial security
        
        Infanticide explained through demonological language
        
        20% of the Suffolk "witches" were accused of harming or killing children
      - Dairy Communities
        
        Women had more autonomy which challenged the patriarchal society
        
        Cheese, milk and butter were prone to spoiling and as women did these jobs, they would be accused of maleficium
      - Failed Wives
        
        Thomazine Ratcliffe
        
        Confessed that the Devil came to her in form of a man and "lay hevy upon her"
        
        Used the language of demonology to explain rape
      - Midwives
        
        Infant mortality
    - - 20% of those accused in Suffolk were men
      - Most of the accusations made against women were from women themselves
      - Freely given confessions were typically given
  - - - Legislation had been in place for over 40 years
      - Changes to legislation gave a legal case for witch trials but does not explain the cause
    - - Witchcraft Act (1563)
        
        Using witchcraft for anything else was punishable by imprisonment for the first offence and death for the second
        
        Killing people through witchcraft was punishable by death
        
        Reestablished witchcraft as a felony
      - Witchcraft Act (1604)
        
        Broadened the 1563 Act
        
        Death penalty for:
        
        Injuring people on first conviction
        
        Using dead bodies
        
        Anyone who "consults with spirits"
        
        This statute that was enforced by Hopkins
- - - - Accusations were often centred on female tasks and spaces like the home, the kitchen, the nursery, feeding etc
      - Poor women were involved in dairy farming and whenever anything went wrong, women were vulnerable to being accused
    - - Hopkins keen to find evidence of sexual activity with the Devil and the suckling of imps
      - Margaret Baytes and Good Smith included in their confessions that they fed imps from teats
    - - 20% of accused witches in Suffolk were men but they were already associated with an accused female witch
      - Study has shown that the witch trials can be interpreted as organised and deliberate violence, exclusively carried out against women
      - Argued that the prevalence of women accused is a reflection of men's expectations of them
    - - Susanna Stegold found guilty of killing her husband through witchcraft after an unhappy marriage, which almost certainly involved domestic violence inflicted by him
      - 20% of accused witches were charged with harming or killing children
      - Prissilla Collit
  - - - Uncovered more witches and took a fee from each local council in Aldeburgh, Yoxford, Westleton and Dunwich
      - Hopkins offered and invitation to help identify witches in the Norfolk port of King's Lynn and the surrounding villages
      - 40 women were tried at the assizes of 1645 in Norfolk
      - Stearne went to Ely
    - - 8 women tried in 1646
    - - Over 120 were examined in Suffolk
      - John Lowes
        
        80 year old Royalist vicar
        
        Spoke in defence of Ann Annson
        
        After intense interrogation, he confessed to having a pact with the Devil and keeping familiars
        
        Admitted to sinking a ship off the port of Harwich
    - - March 1645, Hopkins and Stearne presented accusations to a magistrate named Sir Harbottle Grimston
      - Elizabeth Clark
        
        Older woman with one leg
        
        Four search women inspected her and found three teats
        
        Watched for several nights and Hopkins claimed that several familiar appeared
        
        Named other witches like Rebecca West, who later turned witness for the Crown
      - Hopkins first became concerned about witches in 1644 when he was kept awake at night by what he claimed was a meeting of witches
      - July, Chelmsford, nearly 20 witches were found guilty including Clark
  - - - Clear that the searchers were all illiterate
      - Victims of the witches were more likely to be literate
      - The witnesses were much more likely to be literate
      - If they only left their mark on the records, they were almost certainly illiterate
      - All but one of the Ely witches left only their mark