Witch Craze: The haunted landscapes of the witch hunts
The witch trials of the early modern period are some of the most potent examples of human cruelty in our history. Between 1400 and 1782, something like 40,000 to 60,000 people were sentenced to death for practising witchcraft, with some estimating as many as 100,000. Today, memories of the witch craze continue to haunt our landscapes.
There are countless reasons why Europe was overrun with witch trials throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, religion being one of the most crucial. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the concept of the witch in Christendom underwent a radical change. For a long time, witches had been viewed as sorcerers who the devil had tricked. Suddenly, they went from being ignorant participants to active collaborators. Witches, this new strain of thought argued, slept with the devil and were given supernatural powers to use against Christians in return.
It’s also worth noting that the early modern period was a time of incredible religious division. It’s not unimportant that the witch trials reached a high point from 1560 to 1630 during the Counter-Reformation. Some have also argued that environmental factors may have had an impact. The Little Ice Age (1303 to 1850) lowered temperatures and increased the frequency of crop failure, while colder seas prevented certain fish from migrating North. In moments of extreme hardship, societies seek scapegoats. Often, those scapegoats were elderly women deemed to be a burden by their communities.
The haunted landscapes of the witch hunts
Pendle Hill (England)
A story of family rivalry, superstition and public hysteria: The Pendle Hill witch trials are the most notorious of the 17th century. It all began in Trawden Forest, where Alizon Device was walking when she passed by a local man called John Law. She asked him for some pins, and when he refused, she cursed him. Shortly after the incident, Law’s heart gave out, leading a rival family to accuse her of witchcraft. Alice, her mother Elizabeth, and her brother James were ordered to stand trial, during which they managed to accuse the Chattox family of murdering four men by witchcraft.
Soon enough, the villages of Pendle, Padiham, Samlesbury and Windle were all swept up in witch fever. Twelve people were accused in total, with one dying in custody. One was tired and found guilty at York. The other ten were tried at Lancaster Castle, where all but one were found guilty and hanged. The whole trial was documented in Thomas Potts’ The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.
King’s Lynn (England)
East Anglia is haunted by the spectre of Mathew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witchfinder General responsible for over 300 witch trials and the execution of over 100 people. In the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds, Hopkins oversaw the execution of 18 people. In the village of Brandeston, meanwhile, he interrogated and tortured an 80-year-old vicar based on trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Hopkins later drowned John Lowes in the moat of Framlingham castle.
But the East Anglian witch trials go back further than Hopkins. Throughout the 16th century, the marketplace in King’s Lynn was the scene of public executions of alleged witches. One of the most famous executions was that of Margeret Read, who was found guilty in 1590 and burnt alive. It’s said that, as the flames were consuming her body, her heart (sometimes the spirit of the devil) leapt out of her chest and hit the wall opposite. To this day, you can see a black heart-shaped mark on the brickwork of one of the houses on Devil’s Alley.
North Berwick (Scotland)
It’s only really in the last decade that the full extent of the Scottish witch trials has emerged. Around 4000 people were executed for witchcraft in Scotland between the late 16th century and 18th century – that’s one of the highest numbers per capita in the whole of Europe.
The most brutal of these trials took place in North Berwick, a sleepy fishing town just East of Edinburgh. Between 70 and 200 supposed witches were put on trial, tortured and eventually executed in Berwick and the surrounding area. As usual, we have James VI to blame, who, after nearly perishing in a storm while travelling to Denmark to collect his new bride, became convinced that the Witches of North Berwick had tried to sink his ship.
Trékyllisvík (Iceland)
The witch craze is frequently (and, more often than not, rightly) described as a crime against women. However, in Iceland, almost all of the people accused of witchcraft (92%) were men. The Icelandic view of magic differed from that of King James VI, who regarded all sorcery as a product of Luciferian collaboration. In Iceland, however, Christianity’s grip was still very weak, and magic had nothing to do with the Devil. It was instead divided into two categories: black magic and white magic, only the former of which was punishable by death.
One of the areas hit hardest by the 17th-century Icelandic witch trials was Trékyllisvík. Here the sorcerers Þórður Guðbrandsson, Egill Bjarnason and Grímur Jónsson were accused of black magic and burnt alive in 1654 at Kistuvogur cove. If you want to learn about Witchcraft in Iceland, the best place to go is Hólmavík, where you will find the Museum of Icelandic Witchcraft and Sorcery – home to a pair of ‘Necropants’ made of flailed human skin.
Salem (USA)
In January 1692, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams began contorting themselves into unnatural positions. It had started with groans, which then grew into screams, which developed into a particular language muttered under their breath. Reverend Parris called for a local doctor, who blamed the Devil. By that time, another girl, Anne Putman, was experiencing the same fits. When asked who was responsible for their afflictions, the girls named three women: Sarah Goode, a local beggar; Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman; and Tituba, the Pariss’ Caribbean slave.
Between 1692 and 1693, Salem, a puritan settlement in Massachusetts, found itself plagued by neighbourly rivalry and religious paranoia. Over 200 people were accused of witchcraft, and 20 were executed. The trials have since become synonymous with state-endorsed injustice, hence why Arthur Miller set his play The Crucible – a critique of the McCarthy trials – in late 17th century Salem. Today, witch tourism is big business. You can even visit the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, the only home of one of the executed victims open to the public. It was here that Rebeca’s family buried her body after reclaiming it from a mass ‘grave’ at the hanging hill.
