All language subtitles for Witches.Truth.Behind.the.Trials.S01E04.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH[EZTVx.to]

[music]

[Malcom Gaskill] July
1645, it's a hot summer's day,

middle of a market town
of Chelmsford in Essex.

There's always a kind of
carnivalesque atmosphere,

people selling souvenirs
and food and drink.

And this is the day
of the Assizes,

so this is where the
judges arrive from London.

There are 50 counts
of witchcraft

which are going to be heard.

This is going to be England's
largest ever witch trial

up to this date.

The witches have actually been
brought there in shackles

through the jeering crowd.

These are women who
are going to be dirty

and ragged and terrified.

They will resemble the
crowd's expectations

of what a witch might look like.

[Marion Gibson] And the
courtroom is an open space.

It's full of spectators,
it's full of people who

might be shouting things.

It will be noisy, it will
be hot, it will be smelly,

it will be a vile place to be.

And at the centre of
this terrible maelstrom

of accusation and
cruelty is Bess Clark

on trial for her life.

[Malcom Gaskill] She's a
middle-aged woman, a

single mother, a
woman who is disabled.

It's said she only has one leg,
so she'd be leaning on a crutch.

[Andrew Sneddon] Elizabeth
Clark, a pitiful figure,

watching her are Matthew
Hopkins and John Stearne,

self-made witch finders, the
men who brought her there.

[PEOPLE SHOUTING]

The interrogation of a

woman called Elizabeth Clark
really kick-starts the

investigation of witchcraft
that Matthew Hopkins

is associated with.

[Narrator] March 1645.

Rumours spread through
the town of Manningtree

that a disabled woman,
Elizabeth Clark,

has used witchcraft to harm
the wife of a local tailor.

Magistrates decide
to investigate

and send interrogators
to her home.

They search Elizabeth's body for
strange and unnatural marks.

[Diane Purkiss] The idea of
searching women's bodies

was the idea of searching
them for a witch mark.

What they were looking for was
a mark on the body of the woman

which indicated the point at
which the woman's familiar demon

had suckled her blood like
a breastfeeding baby,

but blood, not milk.

[Malcom Gaskill] So they search
Elizabeth Clark's body

and they find three teats which
they consider to be unnatural.

So Elizabeth Clark is
held under house arrest.

There are watchers, local
people who are appointed,

who will just sit and
stare at her as she

sits there on her chair,
and what they're really

waiting for is for her imps
to come and visit her.

[Darren Oldridge] Ordinary
people associated bad magic

with the activities
of nasty spirits

that were variously described
as puckles or imps or sprites,

and in the biblical language
of English Protestants,

became known as
familiar spirits.

[Malcom Gaskill] The watchers
will take Elizabeth Clark

and walk her up and down
until she's exhausted,

because it would be an
exceptionally cruel and

unpleasant thing to do to
somebody who was disabled.

[Nimisha Patel] So I think with
these whole combinations of

methods clearly intended
to break her,

and by that I mean for

her to lose any sense
of control or agency,

and I think these methods create
extreme emotional stress,

physical stress and exhaustion.

All of these together have
the impact that torture

is designed to have, which
is to make people say what

the torturers need them to
say or to confess to things

that are not true.

[Malcom Gaskill] So there's this
incredibly dramatic scene taking

place in this room
with the watchers,

Elizabeth Clark, who
hasn't really said

or done very much.

So then on the fourth
night of Tuesday 24th,

Hopkins and Stearne arrive and
take over this interrogation

of Elizabeth Clark.

[WALKING ON GRAVEL]

So Hopkins is probably
in his early 20s,

Stearne a little bit older,
maybe in his mid-30s.

He's got young children.

Hopkins is a rather more kind of
impetuous young man in a hurry,

eager to prove himself, less
established in society.

They are minor gentlemen
that have come from

the port of Manningtree
where Elizabeth Clark lives,

and they have followed
some of the suspicions

that have been voiced to them
by the townsmen of Manningtree,

who then ask them to
do something about it.

The thing about
Hopkins and Stearne,

they're not professional
witch-finders.

They've only really
just started out.

But what they profess
is that they have

experience in witchcraft.

They start interrogating her,
seems quite unforthcoming,

and they're just about to
leave, and as they leave,

Elizabeth Clark suddenly
makes this extremely

dramatic announcement,
which is, "I will show

you my imps, for they
be ready to come."

That then changes the
situation in the room.

[Marion Gibson] If you're there
in the dark, alone with a witch,

and she says she's going to
bring demons into the room,

naturally enough, if you
were a good Christian

in the 17th century,
you were scared.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

[Malcom Gaskill] So once
Elizabeth Clark says,

"I'll show you my children,
they be ready to come,"

then this parade of
animals enter the room.

So first of all, you
get Holt, who is a cat,

and then you get Jamara,
who is a white dog,

then Vinegar Tom, who is
a strange kind of hybrid

between a greyhound and
seemingly an ox or a bull,

and then various other
creatures that then follow on,

and this leading up to
the rabbit or a toad,

which Elizabeth Clark
says is going to leap

down John Stearne's throat
and lay toads in his belly.

We're not really clear
what's happening here.

Is this Elizabeth describing
the familiars that she sees?

Did people in the room
really see something?

If so, what?

Did an animal run
through the room?

Was it shadows?

What was it?

[Malcom Gaskill]So this is a
witch who's really kind of

warming to her own
theme, because now she's

presenting this
picture of absolute

phantasmagorical terror,
which is probably more than

Hopkins and Stearne
want to hear, because
they're no longer just

the disinterested
bystanders, she is actually

threatening them directly.

So that then Hopkins
and Stearne start asking

more questions about,
"Are you not afraid

of these creatures?"

And she says, "Why would
I be afraid of them?

These are my children."

So then, you know, if these are
her children, who is the father?

Well, of course, the
father, she says, is Satan.

She says that, you know,
he's a fine gentleman,

he wears a lace collar,
that, you know, their

lovemaking takes place regularly
and lasts half the night.

You know, this sounds like
this kind of sexual fantasy

of a lonely woman who
doesn't have a husband,

doesn't have a lover.

And, you know, whether
she believes this or not,

she's certainly saying
the kinds of things that

Hopkins wants to hear,
because, of course, these

are deeply horrific,
terrifying things

for a woman actually to have
had sex with the devil.

[Marion Gibson Elizabeth says
not only that she is a witch,

but that some of her neighbours
are witches as well.

By the time her
confessions have finished,

and she's subjected to several
rounds of questioning,

she's known four or five
other people from surrounding

villages as witches.

It's difficult to say why she
accused the people that she did.

In some cases, they
do already have a bad

reputation for witchcraft.

I think one of the horrifying
things about witch trials

is that you feel it
could happen to anybody.

Some of these people come across
as being actually quite pious.

[Malcom Gaskill] So all these
women will soon be interrogated

and will start confessing
to such crimes as

causing harm to livestock,
to consorting with

familiars, and to taking
the devil as a lover.

The trial comes
round in Chelmsford.

It's been four months since
Hopkins and Stearne first

interrogated Elizabeth Clark.

And by this time, we've got
at least 30 women being

held in Colchester Castle.

[Marion Gibson] The women are
all brought before magistrates.

That's the first step
in an English witch

trial in this period.

And then you, and the
statement that you have made,

whether it's a
confession or not,

are sent off for trial at a
court called the Assizes,

which is the court for
serious crimes in the period.

[Malcom Gaskill] In front of
the whole gathered court, the

jurors, the witnesses,
the magistrates, the

ministers, everyone present,
Elizabeth Clark is found

guilty of witchcraft and
sentenced to be hanged

by the neck until dead.

[Marion Gibson] After Elizabeth
and the other

women have been sentenced,

they're marched through the town
of Chelmsford to their death.

[Malcom Gaskill] 14 women are
taken up to the gallows,

led up to the ladder

and choked there before this
great jeering, excited crowd.

[Marion Gibson] Hopkins and
Stearne would have been very

pleased with this outcome.

They'd got a number of
people executed as witches.

[Malcom Gaskill] Hopkins and
Stearne, whatever they intended

to do, they're now actually
a witch-finding duo,

and people look to them as
professional witch-finders.

They believe that
they're on a mission,

and their mission is to root
out devilry in the community.

So they are zealous,
they are also ruthless,

because they believe that the
stakes are incredibly high.

This is the godly future
of their community

and the region of the country
which they believe is at stake.

[Narrator] After their recent
success, Hopkins and Stearne

travel farther into Essex
with plans to hunt

the evil witches
they believe are

terrorizing the country.

But travel across
England is dangerous.

The country is deeply divided
as a brutal civil war rages.

[Marion Gibson] What the civil
war does is break down

structures of authority.

The courts stop working
as they normally do,

magistrates and judges
can't travel to courts,

and therefore it becomes
a bit of a free-for-all

in English justice.

[Darren Oldridge] It became
possible for men like

John Stearne and Matthew Hopkins

to some extent take matters
into their own hands

and to set themselves
up as witch-finders.

[Malcom Gaskill] So the English
civil war breaks out in 1642

and this is the battle
between Crown and Parliament.

So Charles I is the king,
he's claimed that he

is an absolute monarch, he
doesn't need Parliament,

Parliament think otherwise.

But this is, like all
civil wars, turns the

country upside down.

It is, of course, the most
dramatic constitutional crisis.

[Darren Oldridge] In that
context, there was

much talk of the devil

because the devil for both
sides was the secret instigator

of the mischief.

[Malcom Gaskill] The political
tumult of the

civil war made many people think

that this was the
start of Armageddon,

and that in that
context of fear,

you get all sorts of strange
omens and apparitions

and miracles and happenings.

So the London pressers pour
out all kinds of pamphlets

and weird and wonderful
stories of things that

people have experienced,
such as a one-eyed kitten

with the hands of a child,
which seem like evidence that

the world is coming to an end.

That's the kind of world
in which one would

expect witches to appear.

brutally extracting
confessions from accused

brutally extracting
confessions from accused

witches in welcoming towns.

[Malcom Gaskill] You've got to
understand exactly what Hopkins

and Stearne are doing
in these communities.

They don't convict anybody,
they don't execute anybody,

they don't even really
accuse anybody.

What they do is that
they are facilitators

who listen to the
suspicions of local people

and then encourage those
people to come forward

and to tell their story.

[Alison Rowlands] And then what
they do is they develop methods

for gathering
pre-trial evidence,

and it's in that capacity
that they question suspects

and torture suspects.

[Malcom Gaskill] They are not
averse at all to physical

violence, particularly
to starving people of sleep.

[Marion Gibson] Hopkins and
Stearne travelled

around the country

with a team of women employed
to search the naked bodies

of witchcraft suspects to see if
they had demonic marks on them.

[Alison Rowlands] They also
prick various marks with needles

to see if they bleed
or to see if they're

insensitive to pain.

[Marion Gibson] I think they
were obsessed

with the idea of women's bodies.

I think they were troubled
by women's sexuality.

The number of times that
they find demonic marks

in what they call the
secret parts of a woman

is quite striking.

[Alison Rowlands] We're dealing
with

very, very patriarchal
societies,

societies which see women as
inferior, as more sinful,

and also women have
less legal power,

they have less economic
power, and so they are less

able to defend themselves
if they do get

suspected or accused.

[Nimisha Patel] I think that
kind of dehumanising

allows all sorts of public
shaming, public blaming.

It's easy to demonise
women and justify torture.

[Malcom Gaskill]
Hopkins and Stearne are
actually very brutal.

I think they see
themselves like soldiers,

and of course there are
untold acts of brutality

which are being committed
in the name of both

the side of Parliament
and the Crown during

the ongoing civil war.

They start using methods
which are really illegal,

and torture is only used
in English law in very

exceptional circumstances.

They're not permitted
to do this,

but again, the Hopkins
and Stearne feel that the

ends justify the means.

Hopkins and Stearne, their
fame spreads accordingly,

particularly amongst
communities which have been,

some of them, waiting
for a generation

in order to have the
confidence to get rid of

the people in their
midst who they sincerely

believe to be witches.

[Narrator] July 1645.

Hopkins and Stearne leave Essex
and push north into Suffolk.

[Marion Gibson] People
would have received
Hopkins and Stearne

as authoritative figures,
so they would have

brought letters with them,
perhaps from magistrates,

perhaps from other people
saying that their work was good

and that the village or town
they'd come to should help them.

[Malcom Gaskill] When Hopkins
and Stearne go into Suffolk,

they hear confessions
that are similar to those

that they've heard in Essex,
but if anything, they're

even more fantastical.

Some of these Suffolk
confessions give us a sense

that they are part of
the fantasy of rather

lonely, love-starved women.

[Marion Gibson] Stories like
Margaret Wyard's.

Margaret lived in
Framlingham in Suffolk,

and she confessed that
many years before

she had met the devil
in the form of a calf.

Surprisingly, the
calf could speak

and he asked Margaret
to have sex with him.

[Malcom Gaskill] And there are
even more men accused as well.

Men tell rather similar
stories to women

about the way that they
met with the devil

and that they formed the
blood pact with Satan

and then familiars came to them
and that they sent the familiars

out after their enemies.

[Nsrrstor] Suffolk is a triumph
for Hopkins and Stearne.

Their reputation as formidable
witch-finders continues to grow.

They separate to
cover more ground.

[Malcom Gaskill] This parting
of the ways reflects their

different character
and their different

circumstances.
Stearne is a slightly

older family man,
he wants to go back

to his young children,
whereas Hopkins has this

real sense of himself
as the witch-finder,

this charismatic witch-finder
who can ride out,

and he does, on this
great lonely trek,

probably around 300 miles
as he goes up into Suffolk,

into Norfolk, down the
east coast of England

and then back round again
in a great circuit.

One of the reasons he becomes
a witch-finder in 1645

I think lies in his
upbringing and his childhood.

So he's born in
around about 1620.

His father, James Hopkins, is a
university-educated minister.

And so Hopkins is growing up
in this sense of Puritanism

and the things that
threaten Puritanism.

[Alison Rowlands] His father
dies in the mid-1630s

and his
widowed mother,

Marie, moves to Manningtree
and she marries the minister

of Mistley and Manningtree.

[Malcom Gaskill] So I think he
would have grown up

with a very
strong sense

that there were things
that threatened godliness

and that godliness needed to
be protected at all costs,

and even if that meant
actually a kind of an

aggressive counterattack
against the things which

threatened that sense of purity
in English religious life.

And witches were
certainly a part of that.

In fact, witches were
really the standout emblem.

I think people respect
Matthew Hopkins

when he arrives in
their communities

because he has this swagger,
he has this charisma.

He is able to persuade people
that he does have authority

and particularly he
has experience which

they don't have.

He's quite skilled at
psychologically understanding

what is in the minds of accusers
and possibly what's in the

minds of the accused as well.

[Marion Gibson] He must have
created a climate of enormous

fear in those communities that
were waiting for him,

having told him to come to their
town and search for witches.

[Malcom Gaskill] The scale of
the witch hunt that Hopkins and

Stearne are fomenting,
jails absolutely crammed.

We have reports that
there are as many as 150

witches are in the jails and
witnesses coming forward,

all these bizarre stories.

They do cause concern
in Parliament

that justice is possibly
not being done.

This isn't scepticism
about witchcraft,

but it is scepticism about
correct legal procedure.

And so witch-finding does
raise some eyebrows.

One of the key concerns
that's voiced in

Parliament at this time
is word that an ordained

clergyman has been
arrested for witchcraft.

[Marion Gibson] It still
surprises me that John Lowes,

the vicar of Brandistown
in Suffolk, becomes

a witchcraft suspect.

He's a Church of
England clergyman.

He's not an ex-clergyman,
he's not a member

of some obscure sect.

He's the clergyman who's served
that community for 50 years

and yet he's still a
victim of witchcraft.

He's a victim of witchcraft.

He's the clergyman who's served
that community for 50 years

and yet he's still
accused of witchcraft.

[Alison Rowlands] John Lowes
is aged about 80 at this point.

He is deeply disliked by some
members of his congregation.

Some of his parishioners
absolutely hate him.

They've been in court
cases with him.

They feel he's a very litigious,
a very problematic minister.

Some of the parishioners of John
Lowe's think they've got this

opportunity now because of the
witch-finding to finally get rid

of this minister who they
really don't like at all.

[Malcom Gaskill] I think
Hopkins rather

assumes John
Lowes' guilt.

He certainly sees him as
a disreputable person.

[Alison Rowlands] He's
subjected to the same

cruel
methods of interrogation

by Matthew Hopkins as any
of the other suspects,

so his age and his gender and
his status don't protect him.

[Marion Gibson] Hopkins and
others come to him and question

him and they watch him
and they walk him,

as they have done with
the other suspects.

Their special method
of torture, which they

don't consider torture,
but which, of course, is.

[Alison Rowlands] And he's
famously swum

in the moat of
Framlingham

Castle in Suffolk and
this was a method

by which alleged witches
or suspected witches

were put into some body of water
to see if they sank or swam

and if they sank,
they were innocent.

If they swam, the idea
was the water was sort

of spitting them out and
saying they were guilty.

[Diane Purkiss] It was yet
another of the

random and
monumentally silly efforts

to provide actual forensic
evidence for witchcraft.

[Malcom Gaskill] People often
think there's

a kind of
catch-22 here

that meant that you
died either way.

We know that people
were tied to a rope,

so the idea that if you
were innocent and you sank,

you could be pulled
out of the water.

It's a bit like
being waterboarded,

like literally half
drowned in the water and

then dragged up again.

And, in fact, actually, nobody
wanted the witches to drown

because that would
have been murder.

What they really wanted
to do was to have this

piece of public theatre where
somebody was either, you

know, proved to be innocent
or, more often, that they

were shown to be guilty.

But, again, it becomes part of
the theatre of an investigation

against a suspect which will get
people behind the accusation,

even if that actual test itself
is not officially sanctioned.

It was really one of
the most shocking and

brutal interrogations
that Hopkins oversees

during the campaign.

[SHOUTING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

John Lowes floats,
and therefore it

seems like he's guilty
because the element of

water is rejecting him.

One of the strange things about
the swimming of John Lowes

is that in order to
underline his guilt,

some other people jump
in and show that they

actually sink to the bottom.

It's a sort of a kind of
control experiment, really,

to show that actually it
isn't just a case that

everybody would float, and
this really is a way of

underlining John Lowes' guilt.

[Nimisha Patel] People are
enduring pain

that carries on
for a long time

may say whatever they
need to for that to stop.

[Alison Rowlands] So, he admits
he's a witch

under this pressure.

[Malcom Gaskill] He lifts up his
tongue and he shows that there

is a teat under there,
that's what's reported,

and that's where he
feeds his familiars.

And he says he sends
his familiars to cause

all sorts of havoc and
destruction, mayhem.

A ship sailing off the
coast is sunk, and all the

sailors on it have drowned.

And this, he says,
he rejoices in.

There will now be a
reckoning for him.

[Narrator] After his wild
confession,

extracted under
brutal torture,

John Lowes is
dragged to a jail,

filled with others
accused of witchcraft.

News of the vast
numbers awaiting trial

reaches Parliament.

They intervene, keen to ensure
the prosecutions are handled

in accordance with English law.

[Malcom Gaskill] The end of
July 1645, and Parliament sends

a special commission,
a special court of Oyer

and Terminer, it's called,
which will go out to Suffolk

to oversee the trials there.

It's a measure that's put
in place by Parliament

to meet this emergency situation
of this unprecedented number

of witch suspects, because
the courts normally

are just not set up
to deal with this

incredibly high number
of accused individuals.

Parliament's probably also
trying to get control

of the situation as well.

I think they feel that the
witchfinders are perhaps

getting a little bit out
of hand in their efforts.

Trials are set for August
26th to deal with the cases,

it's said, of as
many as 150 witches,

and, of course, the
star witnesses will

be Hopkins and Stearne.

I think there's always going
to be a point at which

Hopkins and Stearne's methods
are going to hit against

what is actually
permitted procedure.

[Alison Rowlands] The court does
try to limit some of their more

excessive activities, so,
for example, it says you

mustn't swim witches any longer.

[Malcom Gaskill] Confessions
mustn't be forced, there mustn't

be these superstitious
extra-legal methods,

and that also the
communities that are

producing these accusations
are going to actually have

to cover some of the costs.

So this serves as a
kind of rebuke against
Hopkins and Stearne

for everything that
they've been doing,

and particularly the way in
which they've been doing it.

Inevitably, they're going to
come to the attention of those

who don't agree with
them, and therefore that

they are going to find that
there'll be enemies who are

throwing rocks in their path.

[Narrator] Despite murmurs of
opposition to

the witch-finders' methods,

John Lowes is still
brought to the stand to

face trial as a witch.

[Malcom Gaskill] The thing about
the court of Oyer and Terminator

is that it's not
skeptical of witchcraft,

it's only skeptical
about certain methods,

and, of course, there is
evidence against John Lowes.

Villagers have sort of dirt on
John Lowes going back for years,

so this does become very
convincing to the jury,

even if some of the methods
are disapproved by the judge.

In the end, it's the jury
that is going to decide.

And the jury decide that
the evidence is sufficient

to find John Lowes
guilty of witchcraft.

So I think we can imagine that
John Lowes must be in a state

of utter exhaustion and despair.

The judge passed the
sentence of death upon him,

which he has, of
course, he has to do.

And then August 27th,
John Lowes mounts the

ladder up to the gallows.

But John Lowes, as a minister,
asks that he can conduct

his own funeral service.

An act of defiance
against the witch-finders

who had brought
him to his death.

[Alison Rowlands] I think he
was showing that he was still a

minister of the cloth, that
he wasn't a witch, that he

was trying to sort of
consign his own soul and the

soul of the other people
being executed with him.

He's not giving in to the
court's guilty verdict.

He's saying, "No, I'm not
guilty, I'm not a witch.

"I'm still a minister of God
who can perform this sort of

necessary ritual as I am dying."

[ROPE STRETCHING]

[Malcom Gaskill] So there's a
tremendous amount of public

interest in these witch trials.

Some of it is enthusiastic
and supportive,

some of it's rather skeptical.

But a lot of this is passing
through the London presses,

so there are pamphlets,
there are printed ballads,

which are in fact about witches,
and there are also what they

would have called news sheets.

This is spreading the
news of the witch hunts.

[Narrator] As his fame
increases, Hopkins continues his

hunt, stopping in the coastal
town of Aldborough

before pushing into Norfolk.

[Malcom Gaskill] All towns in
England, including Aldborough,

are under very significant
economic pressure,

because of the war.

High taxes have been levied,
horses have been requisitioned,

all sorts of property
has been requisitioned

by the parliamentary forces,
so that everybody is

strapped for cash.

This is bubbling under at the
time of increasing convictions,

increasing witch trials,
increasing numbers of

witches in the jails.

It's just this sense of,
"Can we afford this?

"We should pay for it," and is
this money being well spent?

[Narrator] In Aldborough, seven
people

are accused
of witchcraft.

At their trial, five
months later, all

seven are found guilty.

But the executions and Hopkins'
fees cost a staggering £40,

one-seventh of the town's
entire annual budget.

[Malcom Gaskill] So the
evidence we have

is that
Hopkins stays in local inns,

he runs up a tab, not
excessively, just really

for bed and board,
but, you know, still

costs that someone is
going to have to meet,

and that will always be
the local authority,

and the local authority will
pass it on to the local people.

It becomes an
expensive procedure,

just the execution of
a witch costs a pound,

which is a lot of
money in those days.

These costs do
start to build up.

I think there's not really
actually very much evidence

that he was extracting
huge amounts of money

from local people.

[Marion Gibson] I don't think
he's really even

doing it for glory.

I think he's doing it because he
feels it's his religious duty.

He was put on this earth
to go after witches.

[Malcom Gaskill] Hopkins, to
some extent,

is the victim of
his own success.

The more he does, the
more his fame grows,

the more work he gets, but
this inevitably is going

to attract adverse comment
about the things that he does.

You start to feel that Hopkins
is going to run out of time

and political support.

[Alison Rowlands] As Hopkins
and Stearne move further away
from

Essex and Suffolk,
people are a bit less

keen on their methods,
they're a bit less keen

on their intervention.

So by 1646, their efforts are
being met with less enthusiasm,

and this is particularly
the case with a man

called John Gaul.

He's also a Puritan minister,
and basically John Gaul

is very, very critical
of the witch-finders.

He doesn't want them
coming to his parish,

he doesn't want them
encouraging his parishioners

to name witches.

He thinks they're
uneducated upstarts

who have no authority
or training to do

what they're doing, which
is kind of actually true.

[Malcom Gaskill] By
1646, John Gaul

is one
of many men in England

who wants this world
turned upside down

that England's become during the
Civil War to be righted again.

So he wants proper procedure,
proper social relationships,

proper law and order.

Witch-finding to John
Gaul represents the

worst kind of example
of men exploiting the

breakdown of law and
order for their own ends.

[Alison Rowlands] So what John
Gaul does is he preaches

against the witch-finders and
against witch-finding,

and then he publishes the
sermons that he's preached

against the witch-finders in a
book called Cases of Conscience,

and it's really a very
impassioned criticism.

He never names them
as Hopkins and Stearne,

but, of course, everybody knew
who he was talking about.

And he basically says they're
whipping up popular fanaticism,

they have no real expertise, no
warrant for what they're doing,

they're acting illegally.

[Malcom Gaskill] By this point
in 1646,

there's a lot of
adverse opinion

which is being spoken
of in gossip networks,

but some of it is also
finding its way to print,

not just John Gaul,
but there are also

comments made by others
about the fact that

witch-finding is out of control.

So the First Civil War
ends in June 1646.

[Marion Gibson] The Civil War
ends with a

parliamentarian
victory,

meaning that Parliament has
assumed authority in the country

and it no longer rests with
the king, as it has done

in all the previous centuries
that people can remember.

[Malcom Gaskill] Soldiers start
returning, the economy's been

severely disrupted,
there is great poverty

and dislocation,
there's disease

spreading as well, and
so England is still

in a considerable state.

Things become more dangerous, in
a sense, than they were before.

Soldiers come home
from the front,

they find their families
have been disrupted,

some will find their
relatives have been executed.

Hopkins and Stearne are in a
pretty difficult position

as the Civil War
comes to an end.

So Hopkins is invited into
the town of Kings Lynn.

It seems that he is
actually welcomed there

like some kind of
conquering godly hero

and feted in the streets.

But there are eight who tried
and six of them acquitted.

It's very difficult to know
exactly what happened.

It may well be that the jury
themselves were skeptical,

not of witchcraft, but
of the methods and the

evidence which were used.

So this is deeply
humiliating for Hopkins.

[Alison Rowlands] And then in
1647, some

of the magistrates
in Norfolk

begin to question what Hopkins
and Stearne are doing as well.

[Malcom Gaskill] There are even
more acquittals.

This is a sign that the
magic, the glamour,

that he has in getting
convictions seems

to be running out.

[Marion Gibson] Things
have become very

difficult for
him indeed.

Some local gentlemen, he
says, have drawn up a

list of questions for
him, which they present

to him at the assize.

So one of the questions,
for example, asks if

he is a witch himself.

It says, "Well, if you know
so much about witches,

"surely you are a witch too."

A lot of the questions he's
asked are about his methods.

People say to him, "Are these
people not just confessing

"because you've put
words into their mouths?

"Are you not just
confessing because you

keep them awake all night?

"Is this not incredibly cruel?

What are you trying to do?"

And he does find it very hard
to answer those questions.

He just restates over
and over again the thing

that he's been saying,
presumably for months,

which is that these
are effective methods,

they've been authorised
by justices of the peace,

by the magistrates.

He's asked very
specific questions

about why there is this
particular sexualised obsession,

why there is this particular
obsession with motherhood.

What is it that Hopkins and
Stearne are fretting about

when they strip women naked
and get other women to examine

them for demonic marks?

That's quite a dangerous thing
to be asked in front of a court,

which is holding a witch trial.

What if, heaven forbid, they
start walking and watching him?

[Malcom Gaskill] This is the
beginning of the end for them.

Not only are his days as a
witchfinder coming to an end,

but so is his life.

By the time that Hopkins writes
a self-defensive pamphlet

against the charges that
have been put to him

by the gentlemen of Norwich,
he's probably dying.

Probably from the start
of the witch hunt,

he's almost certainly
been suffering from

consumption of the lungs.

There's always a possibility
that Hopkins already knew

that he was dying and
that there was an added

urgency to his work.

He's in kind of legacy mode,
he's already realising

that his time is up and
he needs to actually make

this his lasting statement
about the sincerity of

his motives and what he
was trying to achieve.

[Marion Gibson] I think it
really got to him, those

questions, and he wrote the book
as a response to that.

It's called A
Discovery Of Witches.

It has a lovely woodcut
of Matthew Hopkins

and the witches and
their familiars,

and it's really that that
cements his reputation

as an important man of his time.

It's that book and
it's that one picture

that makes us remember
him the way we do.

[Alison Rowlands] It was
organised in a sort of

a Q&A
method.

It's sort of a criticism and
then his response to it.

So it's very clearly structured.

This is what they said about me
and this is how I'm responding.

[Malcom Gaskill] The tone of
the book

is extremely
self-defensive,

rather embittered, I
think, that such things

should be said against
him when actually Hopkins

believed that he was a
sincere godly warrior

whose only motivation really
was to root out wicked witches

from East Anglia's communities.

[coughing]

We simply
don't know how

many copies were printed or
how many copies were sold,

but with the subject matter and
with this garish illustration,

I think we can assume
that it was actually

a bit of a bestseller.

[Marion Gibson] Shortly after
he publishes his book,

Matthew
Hopkins dies.

He dies very young,
probably still in his 20s.

It's a very quiet end
to a very noisy career,

a quiet death of a young
man, tragic in its own way,

in a small village, but
it does bring to an end

the witch hunt that he and
others had started in 1645.

[Malcolm Gaskill] Matthew
Hopkins, after his death,

becomes a kind of a folk devil.

Partly, I think, because of that
famous woodcut on his book,

The Discovery Of Witches.

Hopkins has been called many
things over the years -

the Napoleon of Witch-Finding,
the Foulest Of Foul Parasites,

the Grand Inquisitor.

But the name with which he will
be associated for all time

is the name that he gave
himself, and that was

Witchfinder General.

[Marion Gibson] After Matthew
Hopkins' death,

he was quite
widely mocked.

Many people did not agree
with what he had done,

and even to his supporters,
it must have seemed that his

crusade had ended in failure.

John Stearne outlives
Matthew Hopkins,

even though he's probably an
older man, and he goes home.

And he certainly felt
he'd been hard done by,

and he felt under threat
as a result of his death.

He felt under threat
as a result of his

witch-finding activities.

He regards himself as
somebody who's been

cancelled and silenced,
and that's the last that

we hear of him protesting
from his village home.

[Diane Purkiss] There never are
again persecutions in

East Anglia on the scale of the
Hopkins trials.

In that sense, it
does kind of go away.

Hopkins is a one-off.

[Malcom Gaskill] What you find
is that across the whole of the

16th and 17th centuries
in England, we know about

1,000 trials happened
and probably around

about 500 executions.

But the extraordinary thing is
that a quarter of those trials

happened in East Anglia
in the years 1645-7.

So in East Anglia,
which amounted to 300,

people are interrogated
and questioned,

and 100 of them are executed.

We always know the names
of Matthew Hopkins and
John Stearne,

but it's also really
important to remember

the names of the people whose
deaths they orchestrated.

So names of people like
Margaret Moore of Sutton

or Rose Hallibred from
St Osith in Essex.

[Marion Gibson] Ellen Driver,
Mary Scrutton, Margaret Wyard,

Mary Vervey, Priscilla
Collett and Elizabeth Clark.

[music]