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Matthew Hopkins – Witch Hunter or Fraudster?
THE BRIC A BRAC SHOP
22 May 2021
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The Witch Finder General! A name that sounds like it should be in a TV series. That’s the name that Matthew Hopkins named himself. Giving himself the job to hunt down witches, with his associate John Stearne.
Not that much is known about Matthew Hopkins. We think he was born around 1620. The son of a Puritan Clergyman and vicar of St.John of Great Wenham in Sulfolk. From his inheritance he set himself up as a gentleman and bought The Thorn Inn in Mistley. Some people considered him a lawyer from the way he conducted himself however there is no evidence he was.
He started his career as a witch hunter when his colleague John Stearne over heard some women speaking about their meetings with the Devil in March 1644 in Manningtree. Hopkins first victim was Elizabeth Clarke, an 80 year old woman with one leg, old and poor. In 1645, twenty three women were tried of witchcraft in Chelmsford.
This was their start of their business to track down and hunt out witches. Hopkins based many of his investigations on the ‘Daemonologie of King James’, and not on ‘maleficium’, which is ‘magical acts to cause harm to people or property’, but on making a covenant with the Devil.
Making a pack with the Devil was hearsay, and was the worst crime, and so had their own legal procedures. They would look for the ‘Devil’s Mark’ which was a mole, birthmark, extra nipple, breast, or a part that was dead to feeling and wouldn’t bleed if pricked.
The accused were force to sleep depreciation, or to walk their cells continuously, till they confessed. In some cases it was the ‘swimming test’. They were tied to a chair and thrown into the water. If they floated they were a witch. The idea that if they renounced their baptism the water would reject them and so they would float.
In 1646 there was opposition when John Gaule, the vicar of Great Staughton of Huntingdonshire began to question Hopkin’s practices. He wrote to parliament, wrote a publication on it, and mentioned it in his sermons to put a stop to the witch hunts. Also with all their knowledge on witchcraft maybe they were delving into the dark arts themselves? By the time Hopkins and Stearne were to be investigated they had retired.
In the two years Hopkins was in operation he had sent 200-300 people to be executed. That was about 60% of all witch executions since 1487 in just two years.
He wrote his book The Discovery of Witches (1647) which certainly started the trials and executions in New England. He ended up dying from tuberculous at home in Manningtree on 12 August 1647. John Stearne lived to 60 dying in 1670.
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What do you think? Was Matthew Hopkins ridding the country of witches for the good, or was he ust a fraudster? Write your comments.
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