March 19, 2025 • 55 mins
In this episode for Podcasthon 2025, we welcome Holly Bamford, a History PhD candidate at Liverpool University who researches late medieval and early modern witchcraft and superstition. Holly examines the historical context of witch hunts through detailed case studies.We met Holly at the Magic and Witchcraft conference in York 2024, one of many academic events that help us connect with experts in the field of witch trial history and contemporary witch hunt research.The conversation covers the 1674 Hinchcliffe case, where neighbors petitioned courts defending the accused family's innocence, and the 1601 Trevisard case featuring twelve neighbors who approached a magistrate to accuse an entire family of witchcraft.This episode is part of our contribution to Podcasthon 2025, where 1,500 podcasters are using their platforms from March 15-21 to highlight causes important to them. Our featured nonprofit is End Witch Hunts, which can be found along with other charities at podcasthon.org.Renaissance Society of America -Boston 2025
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Witches, accused witches, witch hunters, general people, the
devil, witch Sabbath, everythinglike that.
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack this week is Fabian Mendes because we're
participating in Podcast on 2025where 1500 or more podcasters
(00:23):
from March 15th through the 21stare using their platforms to
simultaneously amplify causes and charities important to them.
You can learn more at podcast ondot org.
And you'll see that our nonprofit and witch hunts is
featured with the other charities.
Today we're joined by expert guest Holly Bamford as part of
(00:45):
our podcast on 2025 Ending WitchHunt series.
Holly, a history PhD candidate at Liverpool University,
researches late medieval and early modern witchcraft and
superstition. We met last year at the Magic in
Witchcraft conference in York, England.
If you like stories from history, you will enjoy this
(01:06):
episode. Be ready to learn about the 1674
Hinchcliffe case, which saw Susan and Joseph Hinchcliffe and
their daughter Ian Shiletto accused of witchcraft.
Notably, neighbors petition the courts defending the family's
innocence, a documented instanceof community support for the
accused. And be ready for the story of
(01:27):
the 16 O1 Trevorsard case, where12 neighbors approached the
magistrate directly to accuse anentire family witchcraft.
This case features a remarkably distinctive magistrate signature
on a document. You're going to love this
interview with the excellent Holly Bamford and two very
(01:47):
fascinating stories of witchcraft accusations, so let's
jump right in. Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast,
Holly Bamford, you presented a dynamic paper at the Magic and
Witchcraft conference at the University of York.
We were there to hear it in person, and we also got to eat
lunch at a picnic table with you.
(02:09):
It's so great to see you again today.
Please tell our listeners about yourself and work.
Thank you so much. I'm very excited and very
honoured to be here. I'm very much looking forward to
do to just talking about witchcraft.
I love it so much. We had a really good chat in New
York. I really enjoyed your
presentation as well about all of your work.
So it's going to be a really good conversation today, I hope
(02:31):
there. I'm Holly Bamford, I'm a final
year PhD student at the University of Liverpool.
I'm hoping to submit this summer, fingers crossed.
My thesis explores English witchcraft, witchcraft even from
1550 to 1700, and I'm using witchcraft cases at the lens to
view and understand the family. So I started my research, as
(02:51):
most do when you approach witchcraft scholarship, with the
misconception that the witch wasthis like isolated older woman.
I think many people still picture the only modern witch
this way as kind of like that old hag.
Like if you think about Macbeth or the Wizard of Oz, that kind
of thing. But obviously a more recent
scholarship has moved away from this.
And I come I came across this idea of the the witch being
(03:13):
constructed as this anti mother figure.
So she was like the antithesis to the good mother.
And I saw in the sources that the witch is often pitted
against this kind of Christian idea, especially in England when
you've got the Paris Reformation.
And during the Reformation, you've got a lot of ideas being
thrown about. And in witchcraft cases, you
tend to have constructed, at least from like a literary
(03:35):
perspective, the godly good accusers on one side and in the
evil, vicious witch on the otherside.
It's kind of mimicking that battle between God and Satan, if
you like. And from this, I kind of thought
about what the witch represented, the fears and
anxieties about English society,and specifically the perceived
threat of witchcraft to both theindividual and the community.
(03:59):
And that led me to think about what was a modern English
society like for everyday people.
What, how did they conceptualizeit?
And as is today, the family is kind of like the building block,
a very modern society. It's described as a little
church. And witchcraft directly
threatened the family. So in my work, I kind of wanted
(04:22):
to explore both the family and witchcraft and how both kind of
topics interrelated and what each topic revealed about the
other. So that's my thesis basically.
Thank you. We're so excited.
Today we get to talk to you about two of these intriguing
family cases. What got your interest in these
(04:47):
two particular cases? That's a very good question.
I grew up in Yorkshire, I grew up in Leeds.
I when I became interested in witchcraft, you're my
undergraduate. If you go on the the National
Archives website, they've got a folder of witchcraft sources,
and they had one about, I'll getto talk about it a little bit
(05:07):
later. It's a petition from some
neighbors saying that this womanwasn't a witch.
I found that infinitely fascinating.
And then I looked at it and I saw where it was from.
It was from this place called Denby Dale, which was like half
an hour from where I lived. So there was that personal
connection to it. And when I came to be doing my
PHDI read through the sources ina lot more detail and I realized
(05:31):
that this source was kind of, and the other sources about
company are pitting two familiesagainst each other.
So instead of it being like the witch hunter and the lone witch,
it was 2 prominent kind of families.
It's it's in 1674, so it's a little bit later than what I
previously sort of looked at. Originally I was going to stop
(05:51):
around 1640. I want this case is really good.
I want to keep going much to my supervisor's disdain.
So that that was how I kind of came across the first one and
the second one I came across, I'm going to talk about first.
I was doing my, my research trips.
I was going to archives and I went to the Exeter archives.
I was talking to the archivist there about the witchcraft cases
(06:14):
they had, because I'd done that the usual preliminary like
Internet searches and literaturereviews you do to find all your
sources. And I came across an article
from 1901 about this case in Ketteridge, I think is the guy
who wrote it. He calls this a typical
witchcraft case. And I went no, but it does.
It has everything in it. It's got familiar spirits, it's
(06:35):
got controlling the weather, it's got families being accused.
It's an entire family being accused.
And what really interested me was that the source itself, the
sources themselves were created because a group of neighbors
walked and travelled all the wayto the magistrate's house.
And when we think there's a family or a family of witches,
(06:58):
we've had complaints about them spanning a decade and you've
done nothing. All right, this is what we
think. Write it down.
Which to me was a little bit ballsy.
And you don't really see that elsewhere or I've not come
across it where people go to a magistrate in like, oh, maps and
go, we think there's family, thewitch.
I think there's about a dozen people who do it.
(07:21):
So it was two sources that I came across in my research that
kind of threw all of the stereotypes of witchcraft cases
out the window. If you think about like the
Pendle trails, which are really famous, it starts with like an
incident between Allison Devis and John Law, who's a peddler
and she's begging and then she curses him.
And it's like this one sparking incident that expand.
(07:44):
Whereas both of these families have long standing reputations.
They've been accused before or it's hinted and sources that
happened, but nothing's happenedyet.
And they're separated by 73 years.
But they're so similar and so different at the same time.
I find them, I find them fascinating.
That's kind of where my interestin these two cases came.
(08:07):
I'm so excited to get to do thistoday about specific cases with
you that I wasn't familiar with before I started studying to
meet with you today. I wanted to get one definition
discussed just briefly to kind of set the stage of
understanding what are. Malefic acts, yeah.
(08:29):
So most of the witches that we talked about today are accused
of maleficium, which is basically using witchcraft or
magic to harm something, whetherthat's a person, cattle,
property, that sort of thing. The definition is kind of is a
bit loose, like most things are legally you've got the the 1562
(08:54):
Witchcraft Act, which will influence the first case, which
happens in 1601 where, which is kind of where the first time
witchcraft is a felony. So it moves away from the
ecclesiastical courts to common law and it specifies that the
death penalty was only prescribed if you caused harm,
which is maleficia. So that kind of codified it if
(09:15):
you like in law of the forms of magic like locating objects or
counter magic, that sort of thing weren't counted as
maleficium. So they you could still be kind
of investigated for witchcraft, but under the the acts you were
less likely to get convicted andthen imprisoned or executed.
(09:37):
Would you like to tell us about the 16 O1 case?
Yeah, of course, I will talk a little bit about how before I
get into the nitty details of it.
Like I said earlier, both of these cases centre around
families. So in this case, which I called
the Trevisard case, is centred around a family.
So it's three people, Michael, Alice and their son Peter
(10:02):
Trevisard. They are accused in 1601.
This is when a group of people go to Thomas Ridgway, who's the
local magistrate who later becomes a very significant
figure in Ireland, which was a fascinating thing to uncover in
my research. But like I said there, there are
years and years of suspicion from the villagers around this
(10:22):
family about around the Trevorzard.
And they're accused of a whole variety of things from
maleficium to moving boats with magic to killing children with
magic to causing people to come.I'll so much is contained within
these document. So just to give you give you
(10:44):
some context about this case, Michael Trevorzard, the father
of the family, he was a fisherman.
Most of the family were poor. They had a long standing
reputation for witchcraft. And in 1594, so a few years
prior to the accusations, Alice was allegedly involved with an
altercation with William Thompson, who was another
(11:05):
sailor. So I'm guessing the families
kind of knew each other. They operated in similar
circles, Travis and Thompsons. During this altercation, Alice
threatens him, says thou shalt be better.
Thou hast never met with me. And within three weeks of this
kind of interaction, the ship that Thompson was sailing on
caught fire. Only six of the 25 crew were
(11:26):
saved, and William was picked upby a Portuguese vessel and
imprisoned in Spain for a year. And when he returned back to
Dartmouth, Alice speaks to William's wife.
And since he hath better luck than a good man, but this is no
matter, he shall be there again within this 12 months.
And so there's this other act ofprophecy and Alice's prophecy
(11:49):
comes true. Less than 1/2 a year later, he
is shipwrecked again. And they saw this as evidence of
Alice's witchcraft. So you've got in this sort of
initial accusation. So this happened six years
before, but it's one of the first ones that's discussed and
actually first curses and then she prophesizes that it'll
happen again. So you've got like 2 fairly
(12:11):
common English witchcraft thingsin the space of a paragraph in
this source. So they're very dense with
information, these information which is really good, but
they're kind of the general and the majority of the accusations
against the traversards are based around these kind of
negative comments that they make.
So it's on the comments that Alice said to William, and
(12:34):
they're retroactively kind of attributed to any of the bad
fortune that follows. So it's a bad fortune because
days, weeks, but often months later.
And this is kind of understand interesting for understanding
complexities of popular beliefs about witchcraft because there
seems to be no like expiry date on bad fortune and attributing
(12:54):
to witchcraft. It makes me it's like
reminiscent of if you get 7 years bad luck for breaking a
mirror. It's not an instant thing.
It's over a long time. So that's alias Michael
Trevorzard, obviously the fatheralso is accused of witchcraft.
He has a reputation as an ungodly man.
He has altercations of some men,but kind of a significant thing
(13:16):
he's accused of, which kind of at first doesn't seem to be
related to witchcraft. They're tenants of Christian
weather, that's their landlord. And the Trevor's alts
collectively owe her over a year's rent and Michael only
pays 6 shillings of it, so he doesn't pay the full amount of
rent. And this is kind of in the
accusations. It's not like a throwaway
(13:38):
comment, which sometimes you getin other cases where they go
this, which is a really bad person.
She killed XY and Z and also doesn't have any money here.
It's kind of demonstrating Michael's incompetence as a
father, as a, as the head of hishousehold, as a father in in
London, England, you're expectedto provide for the family,
(14:00):
you're expected to protect them.And part of that is obviously
economically providing for them.And he fails to rectify this
error. It reflects badly on his
character, as does his wife's actions.
So like the conjugate pair so that their husband and wife.
In early modern England, the theman is often seen as a
responsible for his wife's actions.
(14:22):
So when she's being mouthy, if you like, where she's making
these prophecies, where she's cursing people, as the accusers
would say, it's also a reflection of Michael's
inability to not control her, tohave.
It reflects badly on his authority or his perceived
(14:42):
authority, what he should have. And again, this is just, it's a
fascinating case because Alice is definitely the focus, but her
and Michael get accused of roughly the same number of like
different types of witchcraft. Their son isn't accused as much.
He is accused of insulting someone who refuses to give him
(15:06):
a drink when he's playing. And then she later falls.
I'll. So again, it's this kind of
retroactive attributation to it.But I think the case, and I've
kind of touched on it a little bit, it's kind of reminiscent of
this idea that the witch was theantithesis to the good mother.
The male witch was the antithesis to the good father,
(15:27):
the child, which was the antithesis to the good child.
Because Alice threatens people, Michael fails to provide for his
family, and Peter, the son doesn't respect the authority of
other Elms. And I think it kind of hits
demonstrates them points quite nicely.
And it also demonstrates a lot of different beliefs in
(15:50):
witchcraft. You get a lot of coastal cases
as this is in Dartmouth, which is on the South Coast.
So if you think of the North Berwick trials in Scotland, so
it's a little bit of a differentcontext, but they talk about
that using a sieve to sink King James ship.
So it tends to be a lot of waterrelated witchcraft beliefs,
(16:10):
especially on coastal cities. And this kind of hints at that
whilst also demonstrating a lot of the other, the lease in
witchcraft in England. One thing that is interesting
about this is there's no real mention of a familiar spirit,
which I would expect, I expectedto see coming into it having not
read any of the sources before. I was really expecting there to
(16:31):
be a familiar and that wasn't. So that's the only thing I would
say that kind of was very shocking about this not having a
familiar spirit and also going, this is an entire family accused
of witchcraft. I have no idea how old Peter
Trevisard is. The child I have looked, I've
tried to get to the parish records, but there's there's
(16:53):
nothing. But he's described as playing in
the street, which makes me thinkhe's maybe 6 to 13 years old
latest, probably a little bit younger, which is pretty young
to be accused of witchcraft. Yeah, it's a fascinating cases
if you've got any questions. Yeah, It had me thinking the
view as a family being a little church, when you have other
(17:17):
families feeling like their family unit is being attacked
diabolically. I, I just like, that's
interesting. So a family unit is being used
to attack other family units diabolically.
I know I definitely had at the start of this research, this
misconception that early modern people believed that the witch
(17:40):
was an outside threat that couldattack you and your home.
There's nothing more intimate, Ithink, than you and your home.
And this is kind of demonstrating that.
But the fact is a family collectively that are diabolical
and there's not really instancesof them working together.
There's no real like coven or witches Sabbath kind of thing in
(18:03):
this case, but collectively a family doing it.
I think it, I think it hints at the anxieties about the
fragility of the family unit in early modern England.
Because if the devil could temptall of the members in the
family, it whose responsibility is it to stop that from
(18:23):
happening? Because you've got this idea if
you're if the father is typically in like in this
idealized world, seen as the protector of the family, it's
his responsibility. But if he's tempted by the
devil, if he's a witch, what's protecting his wife and his
children? That kind of, I think what sort
(18:44):
of what cases like this is suggesting is that people that
because of the Reformation, because of post Reformation
ideas and there's lots of anxieties about religion.
Anyway, cases like this is showing that the family is
perceived as vulnerable, like witchcraft is a threat to it.
(19:04):
But also this, this ideal, as you said, of the little church
is if the family can be attackedby the diabolical, the community
can be attacked by the diabolical, the nation can be
attacked by the diabolical. It's got that sort of
correlation. And I think it's like an
implicit fear that the family isn't this perfect idea, which
(19:29):
it isn't. There are so many cases of
habit. You'll have single men up until
like 40s, which is obviously notideal, not what like family
advice writers want from a family or suggest that the good
family should be. But yeah, I think it's
definitely a fear that an entirefamily can be corrupted and no
(19:53):
way of protecting other familiesfrom it.
That makes sense. I thought you made a really good
point earlier with as far as howvague the curses were.
I think thought that all the curses that were mentioned in
this Trevisard case were things,like you said, where she was.
It would have been better had you never met me.
(20:13):
Not that oh, I'm cursing you right now.
You're not explicit in saying I'm going to sink your ship or
I'm going to kill your swine with some weird disease or
something. It's very vague, so I thought
you made a really good, excellent point on that.
Yeah, I think a lot of curses that I've come across a lot so
(20:33):
tricky to this curses are reallyvague.
So you get again, I'll go back to the Pendle trial because I
think most people have heard of it.
Allison is just described as cursing John Law, which in the
context is like a magical curse but could literally be her
telling him to effer pardon and it just take him the wrong way.
(20:55):
And you get in so many other cases it being really implicit.
I think there's another point where they're accused they're
accused of, I think it's Peter. He goes to borrow a fat chit
from a neighbor and she denies it and he kind of can't.
(21:16):
I can't remember the exact wording, but it basically
implies that he kind of grumps off, which makes me think of
like a teenage salt. And then later she falls ill and
it's attributed to that. So I think it is very vague.
I don't think there's ever, I could be wrong, but I don't
think there's ever a case of someone pointing directly at a
person and going, you are going to fall down the stairs in three
(21:36):
days and break your neck kind ofthing.
So yeah, that's a really good point.
I really considered that. What was the outcome for this
family? You're going to really hate this
answer. We don't know the sources.
So Thomas Ridgeway is the magistrate who writes the
sources and they're in duplicateand triplicate.
(21:57):
So there's 2 copies of some 3 copies of another, which implies
he's preparing for a trial. So I think it probably went to
the as eyes or it went to the local ports and then the AS I.
But the other records for the Southern circuit in that time
don't exist. The actual documents, this is a
(22:19):
kind of side note following the wall.
So World War 2, a lot of the archival material were were
scattered basically, obviously because it's on the southern
coast. So it got bombed a lot.
I was talking to the archivist about this because I was
interested and she said, so the actual, the original documents
are in a private collection in Washington, DC.
(22:42):
Apart from four or three or fourthat were found in a box in
someone's attic because at one point the archive had boxes on
basically on the steps. So people stole it because it
was just panic. So people returned it to the
archives. 80 a hundred years later going, I found someone
(23:03):
granddad's attic. I'm really sorry.
He might have stolen it 80 yearsago, which I found quite funny.
And it's just it kind of hints at how lucky we are to have
these records about this family.We don't know what happened if
they were, if it did go to trial, if it's similar to like
the Witches of War Boys cases, which is another family that all
get accused, I would reckon they'd get executed.
(23:27):
But we don't know which is the worst answer.
Sufficient Earth historian, because we want to know.
Yeah, those private collections are are tough.
Yeah, it's the joys of archival research.
Luckily with a lot of the witch hunt cases, the depositions that
go to as I transfer the travelling circuits, they're
(23:48):
centralized to their all in the National Archive.
So when I went, I just had boxes, they were all there.
It was great. I could take pictures and
transcribe them. But when you've got cases like
this and like the next case which doesn't quite get there,
it's a lot harder to find out what happened.
So I know the seven counties which Hunt project are doing a
(24:10):
lot of work on the seven counties and the how what
happened to the witches afterwards.
They're looking at parish records and other sources that
aren't typically related to witchcraft cases to see what
happened to descendants of accused witches 10/15/30 years
later and also to people in trials who weren't accused or
(24:34):
were accused but were acquitted.What happened to them 30 years
late kind of thing, which is really interesting.
What can you tell us about the case you mentioned in Denbigh?
Yes, this is one of my favorite cases because of that document
that I saw. It's one of the first documents
(24:55):
that I saw. I saw a picture of it online and
it's one of the very you documents from the 17th century
that is really easy to read because who whoever wrote it
basically block lettered most ofit, which is really nice.
If you ever tried to read 17th century documents, it will give
you a headache until you get used to it.
(25:15):
So I really enjoyed it. So this case happened in 1674,
so 70 ish years later in a different part of the country.
But it's it's a bit similar as Ihope you'll see.
It's significant that it's in the 1670s because England at the
time is very different. It's post the Civil Wars, after
(25:35):
the Five Mile Act. There's greater religious
fracturing at this time. So it kind of like a different
canvas for accusations to occur in.
It's after the East Anglican witch hunts with Matthew
Hopkins. It's after the big trials in
Newcastle and the Northeast. So it's really interesting that
(25:56):
it starts differently to the other case.
Most of the accusations come from two people, and both of
them are teenagers. So their main accuser is a
teenager by the name of Mary Moore, and she claims to have
been bewitched by Susan and Joseph Hinchcliffe and their
daughter Anne Schulte. And interestingly, Mary's
(26:18):
deposition contains what she claims to be an almost verbatim
transcript of a conversation sheoverhears between Susan and
Ansel, the mother and daughter. And I know we just had a little
talk about how curses are vague.There aren't any real curses in
this, but there are real detailed conversations about
(26:38):
what they allegedly did. So it kind of like two sides of
the same coin. They're both accusations of the
first case was pretty vague in the curses and what they did.
This one is quite specific, which is quite cool.
So Mary claims that Susan and Ann were discussing attempts to
take the life of a teenage boy called Timothy Hague, who also
(27:02):
testifies his testimonies. I think 3 lines Mary's is an
entire paragraph. So there's a little bit of a
disparity there. I think Timothy and Mary were
connected. I'm not saying they were dating
or anything, but they definitelyknew each other.
Their families were in the same circuit.
Timothy later testifies that he saw Mary coughing up pins, which
(27:22):
is a common sign of being bewitched.
But Mary's testimony specifically is really
interesting, and the conversation she allegedly
overhears is Susan, the mother, bragging about attempting to
kill Timothy by leading him up and down the mall with intention
that he should either have broken his neck or drowned
himself. He's been pretty specific here.
(27:44):
But she's not saying I'm doing this by magic.
I think there's a distinction there.
And there is testimony, again like the other case, frames the
Hinchcliffs as a kind of bad family.
Susan especially is very hatefulin the language that she use.
If we take it at Mary's word that this is a verbatim
conversation, which I doubt it, if you've ever tried to remember
(28:06):
verbatim a conversation you haveor a conversation you overhear,
it's very unlikely you'll get itright.
But if we're going to take it with a pinch of salt, you can
kind of see that Susan is definitely constructed by Mary
in her testimony and as a bad woman, as a bad mother, as a bad
neighbor. Susan also allegedly brags about
(28:28):
shortening Timothy's mum's leg, causing her to limb, which is,
again, is very specific. She doesn't say she did it by
magic, but she doesn't say how she did it.
So the implication there is the only way you could shorten
someone's leg without them knowing is magical.
So Susan has a lot of accusations made against her by
(28:53):
Mary, but Joseph Hinchcliffe wasthe accusations against him is
what, after I read them, what made me dive into this case
Because it's not male witches, obviously, or less common, but
it's not often. You get a lot of detail about
them as well. So he is constructed of this
(29:13):
very angry, resentful man, and he's punishing those who wrong
his family, or at least who he thinks wrongs his family.
He declares, according to Mary, that if anybody would not let
his family have what they wanted, it would take their
life. Which even if he's not a witch,
is a pretty bold statement. He's definitely far from this
(29:37):
ideal Christian man that didactic literature such as
family advice manuals talk about.
So in these, I'll just kind of briefly, tangently talk about
family advice manuals discuss how a family behave.
They're written for men and women who were wanting to start
family or are working out how tofind a partner.
(29:58):
Basically, they're like the early modern equipment of like a
agony Ant column. A little bit is how I think
about them in my head. And Thomas Deacon, who's a 16th
century preacher, says that men should make provision for his
wife, children and family so that they'd lack nothing
necessary for their living. So basically provide for your
(30:20):
family. William Jude, who's a Puritan,
writing a little bit later, describes the husband as the
protector of his wife and family, stating that by virtue
of the husband place in office, he is on the one side his wife's
protector to defend her from hurt and preserve her from
danger, and on the other side a provider for all needful and
(30:42):
necessary things for her. So it's kind of two sides to
this, a kind of ideal masculinity.
If you think about this as what they think a good man should be,
they should protect and provide,basically.
And Joseph is constructed as angry and vengeful.
He goes after a cobbler who doesn't make his shoes properly.
He thinks he's trying to hurt him.
(31:04):
There's a couple of other reallygood examples that I will find
in a minute where he's specifically going after people
who he's perceiving as a threat to his family.
Obviously Mary in her testimony frames this as him being very
vengeful and angry, which is notgood traits of a good Christian,
but you can kind of, if you takeaway Mary's kind of framing of
(31:26):
him, I think Joseph is actually kind of constructed as a good
husband and father because he istrying to defend his family.
So I think there's a little bit more nuance in his depiction as
a man than what Mary's testimonyis suggesting he is and what his
character is portrayed as in other sources.
(31:49):
I will say that I am generalizing a little bit.
There's a lot more to these kindof concepts of idealized
masculinity and idealized femininity in any of other
England. But that would be another three
hours of talking. So I if anybody wants to know
more about that, I can recommendmany a boring article for you.
(32:10):
But I think it's really funny that following these
accusations, you have this depiction of the Hinchliffs as
really bad people. And Mary Moore and Timothy Hague
are really good people because they've found these witches and
we can get rid of them. And it's great.
And then a few months later, a petition is presented to the
magistrates from over 40 membersof the neighboring churches
(32:38):
saying actually then not witches, the hindcliffs are good
people. This is one of the very few
cases what basically a petition or a certificate is produced
defending an accused witch. A few I can think of at the top
of my head. Joan Guffey has a certificate
produced by her neighbors claiming that she's not a witch.
(32:59):
There's a case in Hull where some neighbors defend the
accused, but there's not many. And, and the petition that these
neighbors write about describe Susan especially as a good
person. They described her as not only
very sober, orderly and unblameable in every respect,
but also with good example and very helpful and useful in the
(33:22):
neighborhood according to her poor ability, which is a
completely different depiction of Susan than to Mary's
depiction. And I think that says something
about the role all of our sources on the majority of our
sources were all witchcraft are from the accuser's point of
view. So this is, it's not quite the
(33:44):
accused point of view, but it's someone on their side If you
want to jump. I think that's really, really
interesting. I will say it's really important
to note the petition doesn't mention Joseph and I've owned
and heard about why this is the case.
It's given me a bit of headache.I I talked to the the late James
Sharp about this a few years ago, asked if he'd had any
(34:07):
insights. And it's possibly this struggle
that a lot of early modern theorists had with
conceptualizing the male witch. But I also think it's probably
easier for the neighbors to present Susan as a good, like a
(34:27):
sober, orderly, good person in the neighborhood than it is
Joseph. If he is antagonist as
antagonistic as Mary suggests, we won't know.
But it's really interesting thatJoseph is not accused.
Susan and Anne are accused. I hope Anne Shilter again.
I'm not quite sure how old she is.
(34:48):
I have been to the archives 3 or4 times just to see if there's
anything I found references to the name Shilter, but no one
whose timeline lines up with her.
And I kind of think if it's hardfor them to defend Joseph,
because conceptually he's a malewitch, it's a little bit harder
for them to go to work it out. They can defend Antilto because
(35:11):
she's more similar to the kind of typical witch.
So it's easier. They've got like a more clear
framework to defend against, if that makes sense.
I think that's maybe what's going on there.
Antilto is she's kind of indirectly accused of witchcraft
in this case. If her witchcraft is always tied
within her mother's witchcraft, she's not very independent.
(35:34):
You get some accused child, which is who are very
independent. You're the Samuel family, Alice.
The child is very independent inthat.
But I think a lot of accused witches who are children are
linked heavily to their parents.There's a case in 1612 where one
(35:54):
woman accused of being a witch, but they say she's of poor
parentage and she has a daughteras gracious of her mother.
So that's implying that there's three generations of of witches
who are all bad people. And it's kind of comes from a
little bit of the idea in these family advice manuals that if
you as a parent are sinful, you will pass on these sinful traits
(36:15):
to your children. So you need to be as good a
person as you can in order to raise a good child.
So there's definitely a relationthere.
And I think these two cases and a way I've talked for a while
about that, the hinted place, I think if you compare it to the
previous case I talked about, there are some clear
similarities between them, but there's some very obvious
(36:35):
differences as well. And I don't think that's just
because of the time and the distance.
I think it's to do with how neighbors and communities
perceived people and other people, even if they're not
witches in that community. Did you want to expand on that a
little bit more? You're welcome to.
(36:57):
I do have a question, but I can wait.
I kind of show a lot of, I thinkthe community is a really
interesting idea because it it basically boils down to like
inter family dynamics and how families relate to the wider
society and the nation and people's identity on a personal,
(37:21):
familial level. And on a wider level, if you
think of your own identity, you'll think of your name, your
age, your gender, et cetera, if you think.
And then if you think of your identity in relation to other
people, I'm a daughter, I'm a granddaughter.
If I think of my relation to other people, I've got friends,
(37:42):
I've got colleagues. And that's just like the modern
way of thinking it. So the early modern people have
the same kind of circles, if youlike.
And there's a lot of emphasis inscripture and theology about the
family. So a lot of these ideals I
talked about is disgust in familiar context because the
(38:04):
family is kind of the building block, if you like, of society.
But there's kind of a disconnectbetween the family and the
community. There's not advice manuals on
how to be a good family in a community.
There's advice manuals on how tobe a good family in a community.
(38:24):
There's advice manuals on how tobe a good person in your family.
So it's kind of an interesting, I can't really get my head
around it because the people I'mstudying haven't got their head
around it yet. Or a lot of people disagree
about how this is conceptualizedand it's trying to get to, OK,
fair enough. This is the theory.
These are the Sylogians are saying, but what do people think
(38:46):
and which rough cases? Because then by their nature and
antagonistic, you're showing them like where people in the
community are butting heads and where people are rallying behind
other people. So you're seeing kind of social
networks emerge by their very nature, which is fascinating to
me just to understand how complex and what the society
(39:11):
was, which sounds really stupid because we know it was, but it's
really easy, especially if you're a witchcraft historian,
to go to think about a case. So just think about the
Trevisard case and just think about the Trevisards and their
accusers, but then not think about the magistrates who were
involved, the other people who were victims but didn't accuse
their neighbors who didn't want to get involved, or people who
(39:35):
were really involved but were like 2 towns over so didn't on
on the paperwork, if that makes sense.
And it's kind of like you get the very, it's a, it's an
overdone cliche, but you get thevery, very tip of the iceberg
and you've got to try and get hints of what lays beneath.
That's so great. Thank you so much for
highlighting these elements of the context around these trials
(40:00):
and these situations are really interesting ones.
I noticed I was thinking about Mary's accusation.
A lot of witch trials that I'm familiar with, accusations can
be outrageous, but it they'll bearound somebody who has died or.
(40:21):
Cattle has died or, you know, damage to something.
And I noticed Mary's accusationsare about their scheming.
Yeah. What kind of weight would that
carry in quote? Mary's very interesting and I
had AI had a really good conversation with a man called
David Hinchcliffe. He was a descendant of the
(40:44):
Hinchcliffe because he he's justrecently published a book on the
trial. So we're talking a little bit
about this, I think. So the Five Mile Act is just
comes into effect a few years prior, which basically means if
you're a Presbyterian or anotherkind of denomination is not the
(41:04):
right word, but I'm going to useit for this context.
You're another denomination and you move churches, you have to
be 5 miles away. But that's a very generic term
about thinking about it. So I think and Peter Elmer has
this enough sudden note, I thinkMary and her family were perhaps
(41:25):
part of the church that the Hinch place go to and then they
left. We don't know whether it's in
disgrace, but considering she later accuses them of
witchcraft, I'm going to hazard a guess and say they left in
some form of disgrace. And I say this because a lot of
the signatories on the petition,I haven't found all of them, but
(41:47):
I think it's George Sedekears. He's the main 1, and I think
he's the person who wrote it. He's a very prominent Puritan.
He's in the New Model Army. So he's very involved in wider
society, is very involved in thereligious kind of conflicts at
the time. So I think there's definitely
that kind of aspect to it, whichyou don't see because Mary
(42:10):
doesn't mention it, so why wouldshe?
It's interesting. It's not mentioned in the
petition, but I think that's by the nature of it's literally
it's, it's about that much of text and then almost double of
names. So it's quite significant.
And they all seem to be at leastthe first kind of few rows seem
(42:32):
to be prominent church members, which is fascinating.
And it does seem to be a kind ofretaliatory accusation, but not
against something that is done to Mary, but something that like
a slight she thinks or her family thinks is against her.
And there's no evidence that anybody was actually injured or
(42:56):
actually died, like the this supposed limb that sue them
gives to Martha Haig. Martha Haig doesn't testify.
So it's it's a weird case. I would say when you dive into
the the kind of deeper nitty gritty of it where you have to
get a little bit speculative because we just.
(43:19):
Yeah, I found Mary Moore's testimony to be very suspect, to
say the least. Because whatever the crime is,
who has a public conversation orconversation that could be
overheard where you detail all of your plot and your scheme at
exactly how you're going to takethe power to take a life and
(43:40):
then what you're going to do with that power?
It's very suspect. And then the the neighbors
themselves seem to think there'ssomething suspicious about Mary
because there's a line at the end of the petition where
they're saying we have more to say about her character, but we
don't think that besmirching heris going to do any favors for
(44:01):
the accused. Yeah, exactly.
I'm. I'm so glad you brought it up
because they do. You're quite right.
Literally say we're not going toattack Mary's character because
what's the point? She's obviously flying it almost
feels like, which is fascinatinghow I think it's the fact she's
(44:21):
a teenager who's able to utilizeso much power, which most
teenagers, especially of her social standing at this time,
wouldn't ever be able to do. When I first kind of looked at
this case, almost blew me away. It was, she's obviously making
(44:43):
this up and we can kind of see that as people removed from the
situation. But her depositions are recorded
by GPS, by magistrates. So people obviously believe.
I think The Hague family and theMoore family, like I said, they
definitely operate in the same circles.
I think they're friends. I also think they're quite
(45:06):
locally powerful, definitely more so than the Hinchcliffs,
who the petition says she's goodand useful and helpful in the
neighborhood according to her poor ability.
So it suggests that the Hinchcliffs are quite lower on
the kind of socioeconomic scale compared to the Moors and the
(45:27):
Hagues. So there's definitely like a
power imbalance on how Mary is able to utilize her, the status
of her family. But again, she's a teenager
doing that, which is quite fascinating.
I don't know. There's references to her being
a teenager, but there's no references to her actual age or
(45:51):
I can't find. But because she's described as a
teenager, she's not described asa woman.
So I'd imply she's pretty young unrelatively, which again makes
it even more surprising that she's able to utilize this power
over a family or at least start accusations against them and
(46:15):
start the entire trial process because there there is a before
the depositions are written downand recorded.
There's got to be like the jump from her going, I'm going to
accuse these people of witchcraft or I think these
people are witches to her actually making the accusation.
So it could be that she does actually believe that witches,
but it's probably that she's making it up because I can't
(46:37):
remember a conversation that I had with my friend yesterday.
If you asked me to write it downand you asked her to write it
down, it'd be two very differentstories you know well.
What was the outcome for the accused?
It's a very sad story, this one.It never gets to trial because
(47:00):
Susan Hintycliffe commits suicide because of the intensity
of these accusations. Peter then finds her body in the
woods and he dies a few days later.
And not of suicide, just they are very old so it's possibly
that it was just one stress too much for him and Shelter
survives. But obviously because the two
(47:20):
Hinch clips are dead they and most of the accusations are
against the parent, they can't really progress to trial
anymore. And if they were guilty, then
the outcome would have been the same almost.
So it's already sad kind of end to a story.
(47:41):
And it I think it's it shows just how influential accusations
of witchcraft could be on like it basically destroys an entire
family. The local area I imagine for
would be shaped by this event. And chilter.
There's no records of her afterwards, so we don't know
(48:04):
what happened to her. She could have moved away
because I probably would if thathappened to me.
I don't think I'd want to be in this place or have to associate
myself with the people who accuse my family of witchcraft.
But yeah, it's a it's a sad. Like most witchcraft cases, it's
a sad end. I understand you're coming to
America for a conference to givea a panel.
(48:30):
I am Me and a few other people are attending the Renaissance
Society of America conference inBoston in March, which is very
exciting. I've never been to America
before, so if you've got any recommendations for the East
Coast, please let me know. But our panel is called
Constructing, Describing, Depicting and Performing
(48:50):
Witchcraft, a dialogue between textual sources and visual
presentations. So we're in interditionary plan.
There's a couple of historians, there's a couple of historians.
We're sponsored by the Association for Textual
Scholarship in Art History, which is really exciting.
They do some amazing work. Thank you to them.
Our wonderful friend Olivia Garrow has facilitated the
(49:12):
panel. But when there's five of us on
the panel, we're doing 4 papers.So Olivia Garrow and Aaron
Wilson, they're doing a paper together and the rest of us are
doing our individual ones. But we're hoping to talk about
the the textual sources. So everything I've talked about
today is from textual sources, but I'm sure everyone's familiar
with the woodcuts you get. So Olivia deals with a source
(49:36):
from Italy that has so many woodcuts of witches, accused
witches, witch hunters, general people, the devil, witch
Sabbaths, everything like that. What we kind of want to do
collectively with our papers is examine these textual sources
and these visual sources work together because quite often in
(50:01):
English witchcraft pamphlets, not all of them have pictures,
but I'm sure you've seen the andif you haven't, I will send you
a picture of it because it's amazing.
The Witches of Northamptonshire pamphlet from 1612 has this
amazing woodcut of three witchesriding a pig.
It's one of my all time favoritewitchcraft pictures ever.
(50:21):
But it's how that relates to thesources because it's kind of as
a historian, I deal mainly with textual sources.
I deal with the words, I deal with the people behind the
words. But then you've also got these
images that accompany it. You've got lots of Charlotte
Rose Miller in her book published a few years ago,
looked at familiar spirits. So she had all these wonderful
(50:44):
pictures of the various woodcutsdepicting all these familiars in
various English witchcraft pamphlets.
And that was really good for me to see how you can like
incorporate both, how you can understand visual culture, how
you can understand textual culture together.
(51:04):
I think one of the first witchcraft pamphlets, but I
can't remember the title off thetop of my head, it's Agnes and
Jim Waterhouse to get accused. And there's an image of a witch,
like a woodcut of a witch, wherethey say it basically labeled
this is I can swat across the witch.
But Marian Gibson when this isn't actually a woodcut of a
(51:24):
witch. It's just a woodcut of a woman.
They had Andy when they printed it.
So it's stuff like that and how the visual culture feeds into
witchcraft release. I'm sure if, if you ask someone
to dress up as a witch for Halloween, they'd put on the big
hat, maybe get a nose, a really long nose, maybe get a broom.
You kind of have this like iconography of the witch already
(51:45):
in your head. Like if I was dressing up for a
witch, that's what I do. I've got a whole witch like
stuff Tony behind me that has a witch's hat.
I had a little detachable broom.And that kind of associated with
the witch. And that kind of comes from this
visual culture that as historians who deal made it
textual sources, we don't often get an opportunity to explore.
(52:07):
So I'm very much excited for this of this conference in
Boston and to explore the areas that are related to our topic
because obviously witchcraft history doesn't sit in its own
little bubble. It's related to religious
history, It's related to cultural history.
It's related to the history of the family, if you may.
It's related to to so much partsof history, such as part of 17th
(52:32):
century, 16th century history. I am.
So it could be really, really interesting.
Thank you so much for sharing these stories with us today.
The time really blue. I was so engaged in your
storytelling. Yeah, thank you so much.
I can't wait till we get to do this again.
I'm happy to talk about, I'm happy to talk about any
(52:54):
witchcraft in England that you that you want.
I've got. There are literally hundreds of
cases that I find equally as fascinating as those two.
There's so much to talk about when it comes to understanding
English witchcraft, and I hope I've kind of shown how English
witchcraft understanding witchcraft cases can lead to a
(53:16):
greater understanding early modern society because that's
what I personally find to be themost exciting.
Thank you. Mary Bingham is back with a
minute with Mary. In today's minute, Mary's
narrative highlights the impact which trials had a mothers and
(53:38):
families in Salem. A quote from the Salem Which
trial documents, dated December 3rd, 1692.
I, having six children and having little or nothing to
subsistence on, being in a manner without a head to do
anything for myself or them, andbeing closely confined can see
(54:01):
no other ways, but we shall all perish.
These are the pleading words of Abigail Faulkner, whose husband
became very ill during her incarceration.
Abigail's voice is one of many to come to life from these
documents. Like many of her family, she was
accused for witchcraft. Unlike her other family members,
(54:26):
Abigail did not let the male magistrate sway her and declared
her innocence until her release from jail.
In fact, she was not afraid to call out her accusers to their
faces. She rightfully declared blame on
them, knowing her own outcome could be death.
(54:46):
However, Abigail most likely wasmore concerned with the welfare
of her children and her on and off again ailing husband whose
sickness became apparent while she was in jail.
Her love and courage was unwavering and a tribute to
women everywhere, both then and now.
(55:08):
Thank you, Mary, and thank you listeners for joining us this
week during Podcast on 2025. We appreciate your support for
our podcast and our nonprofit and witch hunts.
You can help by volunteering anddonating to our projects.
Tomorrow Podcast On continues with a discussion on European
(55:30):
witch hunts. TuneIn to learn about this
fascinating history and how thathistory is being remembered
today. Thank you for joining us for
podcast on 2025. Have a great today and a
beautiful tomorrow.
Witches, accused witches, witch hunters, general people, the
devil, witch Sabbath, everythinglike that.
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack this week is Fabian Mendes because we're
participating in Podcast on 2025where 1500 or more podcasters
(00:23):
from March 15th through the 21stare using their platforms to
simultaneously amplify causes and charities important to them.
You can learn more at podcast ondot org.
And you'll see that our nonprofit and witch hunts is
featured with the other charities.
Today we're joined by expert guest Holly Bamford as part of
(00:45):
our podcast on 2025 Ending WitchHunt series.
Holly, a history PhD candidate at Liverpool University,
researches late medieval and early modern witchcraft and
superstition. We met last year at the Magic in
Witchcraft conference in York, England.
If you like stories from history, you will enjoy this
(01:06):
episode. Be ready to learn about the 1674
Hinchcliffe case, which saw Susan and Joseph Hinchcliffe and
their daughter Ian Shiletto accused of witchcraft.
Notably, neighbors petition the courts defending the family's
innocence, a documented instanceof community support for the
accused. And be ready for the story of
(01:27):
the 16 O1 Trevorsard case, where12 neighbors approached the
magistrate directly to accuse anentire family witchcraft.
This case features a remarkably distinctive magistrate signature
on a document. You're going to love this
interview with the excellent Holly Bamford and two very
(01:47):
fascinating stories of witchcraft accusations, so let's
jump right in. Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast,
Holly Bamford, you presented a dynamic paper at the Magic and
Witchcraft conference at the University of York.
We were there to hear it in person, and we also got to eat
lunch at a picnic table with you.
(02:09):
It's so great to see you again today.
Please tell our listeners about yourself and work.
Thank you so much. I'm very excited and very
honoured to be here. I'm very much looking forward to
do to just talking about witchcraft.
I love it so much. We had a really good chat in New
York. I really enjoyed your
presentation as well about all of your work.
So it's going to be a really good conversation today, I hope
(02:31):
there. I'm Holly Bamford, I'm a final
year PhD student at the University of Liverpool.
I'm hoping to submit this summer, fingers crossed.
My thesis explores English witchcraft, witchcraft even from
1550 to 1700, and I'm using witchcraft cases at the lens to
view and understand the family. So I started my research, as
(02:51):
most do when you approach witchcraft scholarship, with the
misconception that the witch wasthis like isolated older woman.
I think many people still picture the only modern witch
this way as kind of like that old hag.
Like if you think about Macbeth or the Wizard of Oz, that kind
of thing. But obviously a more recent
scholarship has moved away from this.
And I come I came across this idea of the the witch being
(03:13):
constructed as this anti mother figure.
So she was like the antithesis to the good mother.
And I saw in the sources that the witch is often pitted
against this kind of Christian idea, especially in England when
you've got the Paris Reformation.
And during the Reformation, you've got a lot of ideas being
thrown about. And in witchcraft cases, you
tend to have constructed, at least from like a literary
(03:35):
perspective, the godly good accusers on one side and in the
evil, vicious witch on the otherside.
It's kind of mimicking that battle between God and Satan, if
you like. And from this, I kind of thought
about what the witch represented, the fears and
anxieties about English society,and specifically the perceived
threat of witchcraft to both theindividual and the community.
(03:59):
And that led me to think about what was a modern English
society like for everyday people.
What, how did they conceptualizeit?
And as is today, the family is kind of like the building block,
a very modern society. It's described as a little
church. And witchcraft directly
threatened the family. So in my work, I kind of wanted
(04:22):
to explore both the family and witchcraft and how both kind of
topics interrelated and what each topic revealed about the
other. So that's my thesis basically.
Thank you. We're so excited.
Today we get to talk to you about two of these intriguing
family cases. What got your interest in these
(04:47):
two particular cases? That's a very good question.
I grew up in Yorkshire, I grew up in Leeds.
I when I became interested in witchcraft, you're my
undergraduate. If you go on the the National
Archives website, they've got a folder of witchcraft sources,
and they had one about, I'll getto talk about it a little bit
(05:07):
later. It's a petition from some
neighbors saying that this womanwasn't a witch.
I found that infinitely fascinating.
And then I looked at it and I saw where it was from.
It was from this place called Denby Dale, which was like half
an hour from where I lived. So there was that personal
connection to it. And when I came to be doing my
PHDI read through the sources ina lot more detail and I realized
(05:31):
that this source was kind of, and the other sources about
company are pitting two familiesagainst each other.
So instead of it being like the witch hunter and the lone witch,
it was 2 prominent kind of families.
It's it's in 1674, so it's a little bit later than what I
previously sort of looked at. Originally I was going to stop
(05:51):
around 1640. I want this case is really good.
I want to keep going much to my supervisor's disdain.
So that that was how I kind of came across the first one and
the second one I came across, I'm going to talk about first.
I was doing my, my research trips.
I was going to archives and I went to the Exeter archives.
I was talking to the archivist there about the witchcraft cases
(06:14):
they had, because I'd done that the usual preliminary like
Internet searches and literaturereviews you do to find all your
sources. And I came across an article
from 1901 about this case in Ketteridge, I think is the guy
who wrote it. He calls this a typical
witchcraft case. And I went no, but it does.
It has everything in it. It's got familiar spirits, it's
(06:35):
got controlling the weather, it's got families being accused.
It's an entire family being accused.
And what really interested me was that the source itself, the
sources themselves were created because a group of neighbors
walked and travelled all the wayto the magistrate's house.
And when we think there's a family or a family of witches,
(06:58):
we've had complaints about them spanning a decade and you've
done nothing. All right, this is what we
think. Write it down.
Which to me was a little bit ballsy.
And you don't really see that elsewhere or I've not come
across it where people go to a magistrate in like, oh, maps and
go, we think there's family, thewitch.
I think there's about a dozen people who do it.
(07:21):
So it was two sources that I came across in my research that
kind of threw all of the stereotypes of witchcraft cases
out the window. If you think about like the
Pendle trails, which are really famous, it starts with like an
incident between Allison Devis and John Law, who's a peddler
and she's begging and then she curses him.
And it's like this one sparking incident that expand.
(07:44):
Whereas both of these families have long standing reputations.
They've been accused before or it's hinted and sources that
happened, but nothing's happenedyet.
And they're separated by 73 years.
But they're so similar and so different at the same time.
I find them, I find them fascinating.
That's kind of where my interestin these two cases came.
(08:07):
I'm so excited to get to do thistoday about specific cases with
you that I wasn't familiar with before I started studying to
meet with you today. I wanted to get one definition
discussed just briefly to kind of set the stage of
understanding what are. Malefic acts, yeah.
(08:29):
So most of the witches that we talked about today are accused
of maleficium, which is basically using witchcraft or
magic to harm something, whetherthat's a person, cattle,
property, that sort of thing. The definition is kind of is a
bit loose, like most things are legally you've got the the 1562
(08:54):
Witchcraft Act, which will influence the first case, which
happens in 1601 where, which is kind of where the first time
witchcraft is a felony. So it moves away from the
ecclesiastical courts to common law and it specifies that the
death penalty was only prescribed if you caused harm,
which is maleficia. So that kind of codified it if
(09:15):
you like in law of the forms of magic like locating objects or
counter magic, that sort of thing weren't counted as
maleficium. So they you could still be kind
of investigated for witchcraft, but under the the acts you were
less likely to get convicted andthen imprisoned or executed.
(09:37):
Would you like to tell us about the 16 O1 case?
Yeah, of course, I will talk a little bit about how before I
get into the nitty details of it.
Like I said earlier, both of these cases centre around
families. So in this case, which I called
the Trevisard case, is centred around a family.
So it's three people, Michael, Alice and their son Peter
(10:02):
Trevisard. They are accused in 1601.
This is when a group of people go to Thomas Ridgway, who's the
local magistrate who later becomes a very significant
figure in Ireland, which was a fascinating thing to uncover in
my research. But like I said there, there are
years and years of suspicion from the villagers around this
(10:22):
family about around the Trevorzard.
And they're accused of a whole variety of things from
maleficium to moving boats with magic to killing children with
magic to causing people to come.I'll so much is contained within
these document. So just to give you give you
(10:44):
some context about this case, Michael Trevorzard, the father
of the family, he was a fisherman.
Most of the family were poor. They had a long standing
reputation for witchcraft. And in 1594, so a few years
prior to the accusations, Alice was allegedly involved with an
altercation with William Thompson, who was another
(11:05):
sailor. So I'm guessing the families
kind of knew each other. They operated in similar
circles, Travis and Thompsons. During this altercation, Alice
threatens him, says thou shalt be better.
Thou hast never met with me. And within three weeks of this
kind of interaction, the ship that Thompson was sailing on
caught fire. Only six of the 25 crew were
(11:26):
saved, and William was picked upby a Portuguese vessel and
imprisoned in Spain for a year. And when he returned back to
Dartmouth, Alice speaks to William's wife.
And since he hath better luck than a good man, but this is no
matter, he shall be there again within this 12 months.
And so there's this other act ofprophecy and Alice's prophecy
(11:49):
comes true. Less than 1/2 a year later, he
is shipwrecked again. And they saw this as evidence of
Alice's witchcraft. So you've got in this sort of
initial accusation. So this happened six years
before, but it's one of the first ones that's discussed and
actually first curses and then she prophesizes that it'll
happen again. So you've got like 2 fairly
(12:11):
common English witchcraft thingsin the space of a paragraph in
this source. So they're very dense with
information, these information which is really good, but
they're kind of the general and the majority of the accusations
against the traversards are based around these kind of
negative comments that they make.
So it's on the comments that Alice said to William, and
(12:34):
they're retroactively kind of attributed to any of the bad
fortune that follows. So it's a bad fortune because
days, weeks, but often months later.
And this is kind of understand interesting for understanding
complexities of popular beliefs about witchcraft because there
seems to be no like expiry date on bad fortune and attributing
(12:54):
to witchcraft. It makes me it's like
reminiscent of if you get 7 years bad luck for breaking a
mirror. It's not an instant thing.
It's over a long time. So that's alias Michael
Trevorzard, obviously the fatheralso is accused of witchcraft.
He has a reputation as an ungodly man.
He has altercations of some men,but kind of a significant thing
(13:16):
he's accused of, which kind of at first doesn't seem to be
related to witchcraft. They're tenants of Christian
weather, that's their landlord. And the Trevor's alts
collectively owe her over a year's rent and Michael only
pays 6 shillings of it, so he doesn't pay the full amount of
rent. And this is kind of in the
accusations. It's not like a throwaway
(13:38):
comment, which sometimes you getin other cases where they go
this, which is a really bad person.
She killed XY and Z and also doesn't have any money here.
It's kind of demonstrating Michael's incompetence as a
father, as a, as the head of hishousehold, as a father in in
London, England, you're expectedto provide for the family,
(14:00):
you're expected to protect them.And part of that is obviously
economically providing for them.And he fails to rectify this
error. It reflects badly on his
character, as does his wife's actions.
So like the conjugate pair so that their husband and wife.
In early modern England, the theman is often seen as a
responsible for his wife's actions.
(14:22):
So when she's being mouthy, if you like, where she's making
these prophecies, where she's cursing people, as the accusers
would say, it's also a reflection of Michael's
inability to not control her, tohave.
It reflects badly on his authority or his perceived
(14:42):
authority, what he should have. And again, this is just, it's a
fascinating case because Alice is definitely the focus, but her
and Michael get accused of roughly the same number of like
different types of witchcraft. Their son isn't accused as much.
He is accused of insulting someone who refuses to give him
(15:06):
a drink when he's playing. And then she later falls.
I'll. So again, it's this kind of
retroactive attributation to it.But I think the case, and I've
kind of touched on it a little bit, it's kind of reminiscent of
this idea that the witch was theantithesis to the good mother.
The male witch was the antithesis to the good father,
(15:27):
the child, which was the antithesis to the good child.
Because Alice threatens people, Michael fails to provide for his
family, and Peter, the son doesn't respect the authority of
other Elms. And I think it kind of hits
demonstrates them points quite nicely.
And it also demonstrates a lot of different beliefs in
(15:50):
witchcraft. You get a lot of coastal cases
as this is in Dartmouth, which is on the South Coast.
So if you think of the North Berwick trials in Scotland, so
it's a little bit of a differentcontext, but they talk about
that using a sieve to sink King James ship.
So it tends to be a lot of waterrelated witchcraft beliefs,
(16:10):
especially on coastal cities. And this kind of hints at that
whilst also demonstrating a lot of the other, the lease in
witchcraft in England. One thing that is interesting
about this is there's no real mention of a familiar spirit,
which I would expect, I expectedto see coming into it having not
read any of the sources before. I was really expecting there to
(16:31):
be a familiar and that wasn't. So that's the only thing I would
say that kind of was very shocking about this not having a
familiar spirit and also going, this is an entire family accused
of witchcraft. I have no idea how old Peter
Trevisard is. The child I have looked, I've
tried to get to the parish records, but there's there's
(16:53):
nothing. But he's described as playing in
the street, which makes me thinkhe's maybe 6 to 13 years old
latest, probably a little bit younger, which is pretty young
to be accused of witchcraft. Yeah, it's a fascinating cases
if you've got any questions. Yeah, It had me thinking the
view as a family being a little church, when you have other
(17:17):
families feeling like their family unit is being attacked
diabolically. I, I just like, that's
interesting. So a family unit is being used
to attack other family units diabolically.
I know I definitely had at the start of this research, this
misconception that early modern people believed that the witch
(17:40):
was an outside threat that couldattack you and your home.
There's nothing more intimate, Ithink, than you and your home.
And this is kind of demonstrating that.
But the fact is a family collectively that are diabolical
and there's not really instancesof them working together.
There's no real like coven or witches Sabbath kind of thing in
(18:03):
this case, but collectively a family doing it.
I think it, I think it hints at the anxieties about the
fragility of the family unit in early modern England.
Because if the devil could temptall of the members in the
family, it whose responsibility is it to stop that from
(18:23):
happening? Because you've got this idea if
you're if the father is typically in like in this
idealized world, seen as the protector of the family, it's
his responsibility. But if he's tempted by the
devil, if he's a witch, what's protecting his wife and his
children? That kind of, I think what sort
(18:44):
of what cases like this is suggesting is that people that
because of the Reformation, because of post Reformation
ideas and there's lots of anxieties about religion.
Anyway, cases like this is showing that the family is
perceived as vulnerable, like witchcraft is a threat to it.
(19:04):
But also this, this ideal, as you said, of the little church
is if the family can be attackedby the diabolical, the community
can be attacked by the diabolical, the nation can be
attacked by the diabolical. It's got that sort of
correlation. And I think it's like an
implicit fear that the family isn't this perfect idea, which
(19:29):
it isn't. There are so many cases of
habit. You'll have single men up until
like 40s, which is obviously notideal, not what like family
advice writers want from a family or suggest that the good
family should be. But yeah, I think it's
definitely a fear that an entirefamily can be corrupted and no
(19:53):
way of protecting other familiesfrom it.
That makes sense. I thought you made a really good
point earlier with as far as howvague the curses were.
I think thought that all the curses that were mentioned in
this Trevisard case were things,like you said, where she was.
It would have been better had you never met me.
(20:13):
Not that oh, I'm cursing you right now.
You're not explicit in saying I'm going to sink your ship or
I'm going to kill your swine with some weird disease or
something. It's very vague, so I thought
you made a really good, excellent point on that.
Yeah, I think a lot of curses that I've come across a lot so
(20:33):
tricky to this curses are reallyvague.
So you get again, I'll go back to the Pendle trial because I
think most people have heard of it.
Allison is just described as cursing John Law, which in the
context is like a magical curse but could literally be her
telling him to effer pardon and it just take him the wrong way.
(20:55):
And you get in so many other cases it being really implicit.
I think there's another point where they're accused they're
accused of, I think it's Peter. He goes to borrow a fat chit
from a neighbor and she denies it and he kind of can't.
(21:16):
I can't remember the exact wording, but it basically
implies that he kind of grumps off, which makes me think of
like a teenage salt. And then later she falls ill and
it's attributed to that. So I think it is very vague.
I don't think there's ever, I could be wrong, but I don't
think there's ever a case of someone pointing directly at a
person and going, you are going to fall down the stairs in three
(21:36):
days and break your neck kind ofthing.
So yeah, that's a really good point.
I really considered that. What was the outcome for this
family? You're going to really hate this
answer. We don't know the sources.
So Thomas Ridgeway is the magistrate who writes the
sources and they're in duplicateand triplicate.
(21:57):
So there's 2 copies of some 3 copies of another, which implies
he's preparing for a trial. So I think it probably went to
the as eyes or it went to the local ports and then the AS I.
But the other records for the Southern circuit in that time
don't exist. The actual documents, this is a
(22:19):
kind of side note following the wall.
So World War 2, a lot of the archival material were were
scattered basically, obviously because it's on the southern
coast. So it got bombed a lot.
I was talking to the archivist about this because I was
interested and she said, so the actual, the original documents
are in a private collection in Washington, DC.
(22:42):
Apart from four or three or fourthat were found in a box in
someone's attic because at one point the archive had boxes on
basically on the steps. So people stole it because it
was just panic. So people returned it to the
archives. 80 a hundred years later going, I found someone
(23:03):
granddad's attic. I'm really sorry.
He might have stolen it 80 yearsago, which I found quite funny.
And it's just it kind of hints at how lucky we are to have
these records about this family.We don't know what happened if
they were, if it did go to trial, if it's similar to like
the Witches of War Boys cases, which is another family that all
get accused, I would reckon they'd get executed.
(23:27):
But we don't know which is the worst answer.
Sufficient Earth historian, because we want to know.
Yeah, those private collections are are tough.
Yeah, it's the joys of archival research.
Luckily with a lot of the witch hunt cases, the depositions that
go to as I transfer the travelling circuits, they're
(23:48):
centralized to their all in the National Archive.
So when I went, I just had boxes, they were all there.
It was great. I could take pictures and
transcribe them. But when you've got cases like
this and like the next case which doesn't quite get there,
it's a lot harder to find out what happened.
So I know the seven counties which Hunt project are doing a
(24:10):
lot of work on the seven counties and the how what
happened to the witches afterwards.
They're looking at parish records and other sources that
aren't typically related to witchcraft cases to see what
happened to descendants of accused witches 10/15/30 years
later and also to people in trials who weren't accused or
(24:34):
were accused but were acquitted.What happened to them 30 years
late kind of thing, which is really interesting.
What can you tell us about the case you mentioned in Denbigh?
Yes, this is one of my favorite cases because of that document
that I saw. It's one of the first documents
(24:55):
that I saw. I saw a picture of it online and
it's one of the very you documents from the 17th century
that is really easy to read because who whoever wrote it
basically block lettered most ofit, which is really nice.
If you ever tried to read 17th century documents, it will give
you a headache until you get used to it.
(25:15):
So I really enjoyed it. So this case happened in 1674,
so 70 ish years later in a different part of the country.
But it's it's a bit similar as Ihope you'll see.
It's significant that it's in the 1670s because England at the
time is very different. It's post the Civil Wars, after
(25:35):
the Five Mile Act. There's greater religious
fracturing at this time. So it kind of like a different
canvas for accusations to occur in.
It's after the East Anglican witch hunts with Matthew
Hopkins. It's after the big trials in
Newcastle and the Northeast. So it's really interesting that
(25:56):
it starts differently to the other case.
Most of the accusations come from two people, and both of
them are teenagers. So their main accuser is a
teenager by the name of Mary Moore, and she claims to have
been bewitched by Susan and Joseph Hinchcliffe and their
daughter Anne Schulte. And interestingly, Mary's
(26:18):
deposition contains what she claims to be an almost verbatim
transcript of a conversation sheoverhears between Susan and
Ansel, the mother and daughter. And I know we just had a little
talk about how curses are vague.There aren't any real curses in
this, but there are real detailed conversations about
(26:38):
what they allegedly did. So it kind of like two sides of
the same coin. They're both accusations of the
first case was pretty vague in the curses and what they did.
This one is quite specific, which is quite cool.
So Mary claims that Susan and Ann were discussing attempts to
take the life of a teenage boy called Timothy Hague, who also
(27:02):
testifies his testimonies. I think 3 lines Mary's is an
entire paragraph. So there's a little bit of a
disparity there. I think Timothy and Mary were
connected. I'm not saying they were dating
or anything, but they definitelyknew each other.
Their families were in the same circuit.
Timothy later testifies that he saw Mary coughing up pins, which
(27:22):
is a common sign of being bewitched.
But Mary's testimony specifically is really
interesting, and the conversation she allegedly
overhears is Susan, the mother, bragging about attempting to
kill Timothy by leading him up and down the mall with intention
that he should either have broken his neck or drowned
himself. He's been pretty specific here.
(27:44):
But she's not saying I'm doing this by magic.
I think there's a distinction there.
And there is testimony, again like the other case, frames the
Hinchcliffs as a kind of bad family.
Susan especially is very hatefulin the language that she use.
If we take it at Mary's word that this is a verbatim
conversation, which I doubt it, if you've ever tried to remember
(28:06):
verbatim a conversation you haveor a conversation you overhear,
it's very unlikely you'll get itright.
But if we're going to take it with a pinch of salt, you can
kind of see that Susan is definitely constructed by Mary
in her testimony and as a bad woman, as a bad mother, as a bad
neighbor. Susan also allegedly brags about
(28:28):
shortening Timothy's mum's leg, causing her to limb, which is,
again, is very specific. She doesn't say she did it by
magic, but she doesn't say how she did it.
So the implication there is the only way you could shorten
someone's leg without them knowing is magical.
So Susan has a lot of accusations made against her by
(28:53):
Mary, but Joseph Hinchcliffe wasthe accusations against him is
what, after I read them, what made me dive into this case
Because it's not male witches, obviously, or less common, but
it's not often. You get a lot of detail about
them as well. So he is constructed of this
(29:13):
very angry, resentful man, and he's punishing those who wrong
his family, or at least who he thinks wrongs his family.
He declares, according to Mary, that if anybody would not let
his family have what they wanted, it would take their
life. Which even if he's not a witch,
is a pretty bold statement. He's definitely far from this
(29:37):
ideal Christian man that didactic literature such as
family advice manuals talk about.
So in these, I'll just kind of briefly, tangently talk about
family advice manuals discuss how a family behave.
They're written for men and women who were wanting to start
family or are working out how tofind a partner.
(29:58):
Basically, they're like the early modern equipment of like a
agony Ant column. A little bit is how I think
about them in my head. And Thomas Deacon, who's a 16th
century preacher, says that men should make provision for his
wife, children and family so that they'd lack nothing
necessary for their living. So basically provide for your
(30:20):
family. William Jude, who's a Puritan,
writing a little bit later, describes the husband as the
protector of his wife and family, stating that by virtue
of the husband place in office, he is on the one side his wife's
protector to defend her from hurt and preserve her from
danger, and on the other side a provider for all needful and
(30:42):
necessary things for her. So it's kind of two sides to
this, a kind of ideal masculinity.
If you think about this as what they think a good man should be,
they should protect and provide,basically.
And Joseph is constructed as angry and vengeful.
He goes after a cobbler who doesn't make his shoes properly.
He thinks he's trying to hurt him.
(31:04):
There's a couple of other reallygood examples that I will find
in a minute where he's specifically going after people
who he's perceiving as a threat to his family.
Obviously Mary in her testimony frames this as him being very
vengeful and angry, which is notgood traits of a good Christian,
but you can kind of, if you takeaway Mary's kind of framing of
(31:26):
him, I think Joseph is actually kind of constructed as a good
husband and father because he istrying to defend his family.
So I think there's a little bit more nuance in his depiction as
a man than what Mary's testimonyis suggesting he is and what his
character is portrayed as in other sources.
(31:49):
I will say that I am generalizing a little bit.
There's a lot more to these kindof concepts of idealized
masculinity and idealized femininity in any of other
England. But that would be another three
hours of talking. So I if anybody wants to know
more about that, I can recommendmany a boring article for you.
(32:10):
But I think it's really funny that following these
accusations, you have this depiction of the Hinchliffs as
really bad people. And Mary Moore and Timothy Hague
are really good people because they've found these witches and
we can get rid of them. And it's great.
And then a few months later, a petition is presented to the
magistrates from over 40 membersof the neighboring churches
(32:38):
saying actually then not witches, the hindcliffs are good
people. This is one of the very few
cases what basically a petition or a certificate is produced
defending an accused witch. A few I can think of at the top
of my head. Joan Guffey has a certificate
produced by her neighbors claiming that she's not a witch.
(32:59):
There's a case in Hull where some neighbors defend the
accused, but there's not many. And, and the petition that these
neighbors write about describe Susan especially as a good
person. They described her as not only
very sober, orderly and unblameable in every respect,
but also with good example and very helpful and useful in the
(33:22):
neighborhood according to her poor ability, which is a
completely different depiction of Susan than to Mary's
depiction. And I think that says something
about the role all of our sources on the majority of our
sources were all witchcraft are from the accuser's point of
view. So this is, it's not quite the
(33:44):
accused point of view, but it's someone on their side If you
want to jump. I think that's really, really
interesting. I will say it's really important
to note the petition doesn't mention Joseph and I've owned
and heard about why this is the case.
It's given me a bit of headache.I I talked to the the late James
Sharp about this a few years ago, asked if he'd had any
(34:07):
insights. And it's possibly this struggle
that a lot of early modern theorists had with
conceptualizing the male witch. But I also think it's probably
easier for the neighbors to present Susan as a good, like a
(34:27):
sober, orderly, good person in the neighborhood than it is
Joseph. If he is antagonist as
antagonistic as Mary suggests, we won't know.
But it's really interesting thatJoseph is not accused.
Susan and Anne are accused. I hope Anne Shilter again.
I'm not quite sure how old she is.
(34:48):
I have been to the archives 3 or4 times just to see if there's
anything I found references to the name Shilter, but no one
whose timeline lines up with her.
And I kind of think if it's hardfor them to defend Joseph,
because conceptually he's a malewitch, it's a little bit harder
for them to go to work it out. They can defend Antilto because
(35:11):
she's more similar to the kind of typical witch.
So it's easier. They've got like a more clear
framework to defend against, if that makes sense.
I think that's maybe what's going on there.
Antilto is she's kind of indirectly accused of witchcraft
in this case. If her witchcraft is always tied
within her mother's witchcraft, she's not very independent.
(35:34):
You get some accused child, which is who are very
independent. You're the Samuel family, Alice.
The child is very independent inthat.
But I think a lot of accused witches who are children are
linked heavily to their parents.There's a case in 1612 where one
(35:54):
woman accused of being a witch, but they say she's of poor
parentage and she has a daughteras gracious of her mother.
So that's implying that there's three generations of of witches
who are all bad people. And it's kind of comes from a
little bit of the idea in these family advice manuals that if
you as a parent are sinful, you will pass on these sinful traits
(36:15):
to your children. So you need to be as good a
person as you can in order to raise a good child.
So there's definitely a relationthere.
And I think these two cases and a way I've talked for a while
about that, the hinted place, I think if you compare it to the
previous case I talked about, there are some clear
similarities between them, but there's some very obvious
(36:35):
differences as well. And I don't think that's just
because of the time and the distance.
I think it's to do with how neighbors and communities
perceived people and other people, even if they're not
witches in that community. Did you want to expand on that a
little bit more? You're welcome to.
(36:57):
I do have a question, but I can wait.
I kind of show a lot of, I thinkthe community is a really
interesting idea because it it basically boils down to like
inter family dynamics and how families relate to the wider
society and the nation and people's identity on a personal,
(37:21):
familial level. And on a wider level, if you
think of your own identity, you'll think of your name, your
age, your gender, et cetera, if you think.
And then if you think of your identity in relation to other
people, I'm a daughter, I'm a granddaughter.
If I think of my relation to other people, I've got friends,
(37:42):
I've got colleagues. And that's just like the modern
way of thinking it. So the early modern people have
the same kind of circles, if youlike.
And there's a lot of emphasis inscripture and theology about the
family. So a lot of these ideals I
talked about is disgust in familiar context because the
(38:04):
family is kind of the building block, if you like, of society.
But there's kind of a disconnectbetween the family and the
community. There's not advice manuals on
how to be a good family in a community.
There's advice manuals on how tobe a good family in a community.
(38:24):
There's advice manuals on how tobe a good person in your family.
So it's kind of an interesting, I can't really get my head
around it because the people I'mstudying haven't got their head
around it yet. Or a lot of people disagree
about how this is conceptualizedand it's trying to get to, OK,
fair enough. This is the theory.
These are the Sylogians are saying, but what do people think
(38:46):
and which rough cases? Because then by their nature and
antagonistic, you're showing them like where people in the
community are butting heads and where people are rallying behind
other people. So you're seeing kind of social
networks emerge by their very nature, which is fascinating to
me just to understand how complex and what the society
(39:11):
was, which sounds really stupid because we know it was, but it's
really easy, especially if you're a witchcraft historian,
to go to think about a case. So just think about the
Trevisard case and just think about the Trevisards and their
accusers, but then not think about the magistrates who were
involved, the other people who were victims but didn't accuse
their neighbors who didn't want to get involved, or people who
(39:35):
were really involved but were like 2 towns over so didn't on
on the paperwork, if that makes sense.
And it's kind of like you get the very, it's a, it's an
overdone cliche, but you get thevery, very tip of the iceberg
and you've got to try and get hints of what lays beneath.
That's so great. Thank you so much for
highlighting these elements of the context around these trials
(40:00):
and these situations are really interesting ones.
I noticed I was thinking about Mary's accusation.
A lot of witch trials that I'm familiar with, accusations can
be outrageous, but it they'll bearound somebody who has died or.
(40:21):
Cattle has died or, you know, damage to something.
And I noticed Mary's accusationsare about their scheming.
Yeah. What kind of weight would that
carry in quote? Mary's very interesting and I
had AI had a really good conversation with a man called
David Hinchcliffe. He was a descendant of the
(40:44):
Hinchcliffe because he he's justrecently published a book on the
trial. So we're talking a little bit
about this, I think. So the Five Mile Act is just
comes into effect a few years prior, which basically means if
you're a Presbyterian or anotherkind of denomination is not the
(41:04):
right word, but I'm going to useit for this context.
You're another denomination and you move churches, you have to
be 5 miles away. But that's a very generic term
about thinking about it. So I think and Peter Elmer has
this enough sudden note, I thinkMary and her family were perhaps
(41:25):
part of the church that the Hinch place go to and then they
left. We don't know whether it's in
disgrace, but considering she later accuses them of
witchcraft, I'm going to hazard a guess and say they left in
some form of disgrace. And I say this because a lot of
the signatories on the petition,I haven't found all of them, but
(41:47):
I think it's George Sedekears. He's the main 1, and I think
he's the person who wrote it. He's a very prominent Puritan.
He's in the New Model Army. So he's very involved in wider
society, is very involved in thereligious kind of conflicts at
the time. So I think there's definitely
that kind of aspect to it, whichyou don't see because Mary
(42:10):
doesn't mention it, so why wouldshe?
It's interesting. It's not mentioned in the
petition, but I think that's by the nature of it's literally
it's, it's about that much of text and then almost double of
names. So it's quite significant.
And they all seem to be at leastthe first kind of few rows seem
(42:32):
to be prominent church members, which is fascinating.
And it does seem to be a kind ofretaliatory accusation, but not
against something that is done to Mary, but something that like
a slight she thinks or her family thinks is against her.
And there's no evidence that anybody was actually injured or
(42:56):
actually died, like the this supposed limb that sue them
gives to Martha Haig. Martha Haig doesn't testify.
So it's it's a weird case. I would say when you dive into
the the kind of deeper nitty gritty of it where you have to
get a little bit speculative because we just.
(43:19):
Yeah, I found Mary Moore's testimony to be very suspect, to
say the least. Because whatever the crime is,
who has a public conversation orconversation that could be
overheard where you detail all of your plot and your scheme at
exactly how you're going to takethe power to take a life and
(43:40):
then what you're going to do with that power?
It's very suspect. And then the the neighbors
themselves seem to think there'ssomething suspicious about Mary
because there's a line at the end of the petition where
they're saying we have more to say about her character, but we
don't think that besmirching heris going to do any favors for
(44:01):
the accused. Yeah, exactly.
I'm. I'm so glad you brought it up
because they do. You're quite right.
Literally say we're not going toattack Mary's character because
what's the point? She's obviously flying it almost
feels like, which is fascinatinghow I think it's the fact she's
(44:21):
a teenager who's able to utilizeso much power, which most
teenagers, especially of her social standing at this time,
wouldn't ever be able to do. When I first kind of looked at
this case, almost blew me away. It was, she's obviously making
(44:43):
this up and we can kind of see that as people removed from the
situation. But her depositions are recorded
by GPS, by magistrates. So people obviously believe.
I think The Hague family and theMoore family, like I said, they
definitely operate in the same circles.
I think they're friends. I also think they're quite
(45:06):
locally powerful, definitely more so than the Hinchcliffs,
who the petition says she's goodand useful and helpful in the
neighborhood according to her poor ability.
So it suggests that the Hinchcliffs are quite lower on
the kind of socioeconomic scale compared to the Moors and the
(45:27):
Hagues. So there's definitely like a
power imbalance on how Mary is able to utilize her, the status
of her family. But again, she's a teenager
doing that, which is quite fascinating.
I don't know. There's references to her being
a teenager, but there's no references to her actual age or
(45:51):
I can't find. But because she's described as a
teenager, she's not described asa woman.
So I'd imply she's pretty young unrelatively, which again makes
it even more surprising that she's able to utilize this power
over a family or at least start accusations against them and
(46:15):
start the entire trial process because there there is a before
the depositions are written downand recorded.
There's got to be like the jump from her going, I'm going to
accuse these people of witchcraft or I think these
people are witches to her actually making the accusation.
So it could be that she does actually believe that witches,
but it's probably that she's making it up because I can't
(46:37):
remember a conversation that I had with my friend yesterday.
If you asked me to write it downand you asked her to write it
down, it'd be two very differentstories you know well.
What was the outcome for the accused?
It's a very sad story, this one.It never gets to trial because
(47:00):
Susan Hintycliffe commits suicide because of the intensity
of these accusations. Peter then finds her body in the
woods and he dies a few days later.
And not of suicide, just they are very old so it's possibly
that it was just one stress too much for him and Shelter
survives. But obviously because the two
(47:20):
Hinch clips are dead they and most of the accusations are
against the parent, they can't really progress to trial
anymore. And if they were guilty, then
the outcome would have been the same almost.
So it's already sad kind of end to a story.
(47:41):
And it I think it's it shows just how influential accusations
of witchcraft could be on like it basically destroys an entire
family. The local area I imagine for
would be shaped by this event. And chilter.
There's no records of her afterwards, so we don't know
(48:04):
what happened to her. She could have moved away
because I probably would if thathappened to me.
I don't think I'd want to be in this place or have to associate
myself with the people who accuse my family of witchcraft.
But yeah, it's a it's a sad. Like most witchcraft cases, it's
a sad end. I understand you're coming to
America for a conference to givea a panel.
(48:30):
I am Me and a few other people are attending the Renaissance
Society of America conference inBoston in March, which is very
exciting. I've never been to America
before, so if you've got any recommendations for the East
Coast, please let me know. But our panel is called
Constructing, Describing, Depicting and Performing
(48:50):
Witchcraft, a dialogue between textual sources and visual
presentations. So we're in interditionary plan.
There's a couple of historians, there's a couple of historians.
We're sponsored by the Association for Textual
Scholarship in Art History, which is really exciting.
They do some amazing work. Thank you to them.
Our wonderful friend Olivia Garrow has facilitated the
(49:12):
panel. But when there's five of us on
the panel, we're doing 4 papers.So Olivia Garrow and Aaron
Wilson, they're doing a paper together and the rest of us are
doing our individual ones. But we're hoping to talk about
the the textual sources. So everything I've talked about
today is from textual sources, but I'm sure everyone's familiar
with the woodcuts you get. So Olivia deals with a source
(49:36):
from Italy that has so many woodcuts of witches, accused
witches, witch hunters, general people, the devil, witch
Sabbaths, everything like that. What we kind of want to do
collectively with our papers is examine these textual sources
and these visual sources work together because quite often in
(50:01):
English witchcraft pamphlets, not all of them have pictures,
but I'm sure you've seen the andif you haven't, I will send you
a picture of it because it's amazing.
The Witches of Northamptonshire pamphlet from 1612 has this
amazing woodcut of three witchesriding a pig.
It's one of my all time favoritewitchcraft pictures ever.
(50:21):
But it's how that relates to thesources because it's kind of as
a historian, I deal mainly with textual sources.
I deal with the words, I deal with the people behind the
words. But then you've also got these
images that accompany it. You've got lots of Charlotte
Rose Miller in her book published a few years ago,
looked at familiar spirits. So she had all these wonderful
(50:44):
pictures of the various woodcutsdepicting all these familiars in
various English witchcraft pamphlets.
And that was really good for me to see how you can like
incorporate both, how you can understand visual culture, how
you can understand textual culture together.
(51:04):
I think one of the first witchcraft pamphlets, but I
can't remember the title off thetop of my head, it's Agnes and
Jim Waterhouse to get accused. And there's an image of a witch,
like a woodcut of a witch, wherethey say it basically labeled
this is I can swat across the witch.
But Marian Gibson when this isn't actually a woodcut of a
(51:24):
witch. It's just a woodcut of a woman.
They had Andy when they printed it.
So it's stuff like that and how the visual culture feeds into
witchcraft release. I'm sure if, if you ask someone
to dress up as a witch for Halloween, they'd put on the big
hat, maybe get a nose, a really long nose, maybe get a broom.
You kind of have this like iconography of the witch already
(51:45):
in your head. Like if I was dressing up for a
witch, that's what I do. I've got a whole witch like
stuff Tony behind me that has a witch's hat.
I had a little detachable broom.And that kind of associated with
the witch. And that kind of comes from this
visual culture that as historians who deal made it
textual sources, we don't often get an opportunity to explore.
(52:07):
So I'm very much excited for this of this conference in
Boston and to explore the areas that are related to our topic
because obviously witchcraft history doesn't sit in its own
little bubble. It's related to religious
history, It's related to cultural history.
It's related to the history of the family, if you may.
It's related to to so much partsof history, such as part of 17th
(52:32):
century, 16th century history. I am.
So it could be really, really interesting.
Thank you so much for sharing these stories with us today.
The time really blue. I was so engaged in your
storytelling. Yeah, thank you so much.
I can't wait till we get to do this again.
I'm happy to talk about, I'm happy to talk about any
(52:54):
witchcraft in England that you that you want.
I've got. There are literally hundreds of
cases that I find equally as fascinating as those two.
There's so much to talk about when it comes to understanding
English witchcraft, and I hope I've kind of shown how English
witchcraft understanding witchcraft cases can lead to a
(53:16):
greater understanding early modern society because that's
what I personally find to be themost exciting.
Thank you. Mary Bingham is back with a
minute with Mary. In today's minute, Mary's
narrative highlights the impact which trials had a mothers and
(53:38):
families in Salem. A quote from the Salem Which
trial documents, dated December 3rd, 1692.
I, having six children and having little or nothing to
subsistence on, being in a manner without a head to do
anything for myself or them, andbeing closely confined can see
(54:01):
no other ways, but we shall all perish.
These are the pleading words of Abigail Faulkner, whose husband
became very ill during her incarceration.
Abigail's voice is one of many to come to life from these
documents. Like many of her family, she was
accused for witchcraft. Unlike her other family members,
(54:26):
Abigail did not let the male magistrate sway her and declared
her innocence until her release from jail.
In fact, she was not afraid to call out her accusers to their
faces. She rightfully declared blame on
them, knowing her own outcome could be death.
(54:46):
However, Abigail most likely wasmore concerned with the welfare
of her children and her on and off again ailing husband whose
sickness became apparent while she was in jail.
Her love and courage was unwavering and a tribute to
women everywhere, both then and now.
(55:08):
Thank you, Mary, and thank you listeners for joining us this
week during Podcast on 2025. We appreciate your support for
our podcast and our nonprofit and witch hunts.
You can help by volunteering anddonating to our projects.
Tomorrow Podcast On continues with a discussion on European
(55:30):
witch hunts. TuneIn to learn about this
fascinating history and how thathistory is being remembered
today. Thank you for joining us for
podcast on 2025. Have a great today and a
beautiful tomorrow.
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