Witchfinder General

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Phil Waters

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I am reading about Matthew Hopkins, the man employed to travel the East of England and hunt down witches.

He was given the title Witchfinder General and there was a film made about it (albeit pure fiction to an extent).

Did he really believe he was looking for witches? Or did he know for a fact that he was an instrument of abuse with no justification?

The women (and some men!) who were tried and executed for being a witch were brutally dealt with and it is definitely one of England's shameful sins of the past.
 
It is no coincidence Phil that the height of witchfinding took place under Cromwell and the Puritans . Due to a mixture of the breakdown of the rule of law and the fact that the Puritans were much more credulous about such nonsense than the monarchs that preceded them.
 
Absolutely.

It wasn't a long period of terror, but has left its mark for sure.
 
I worked for a non-fiction publisher a long time ago, and we published a book called 'Old Time Punishments' which illustrated and detailed many a charming mode of extracting 'the truth', mostly from those accused of witchcraft and Devil worship.

Pressing to death (from whence 'being pressed' for an answer) was shackling the person to a stone floor, on their back, placing a strong square wooden board on top of them, upon which weights were carefully placed. The accused would be asked to confess, to alleviate their distress. As long as they refused, the interrogators added more weights, day by day, until the accused either very slowly suffocated, indicted some complete innocent for a similar crime, or confessed. Upon the latter, they were then cheerfully executed. Nice...

I can't remember the 'record' for bearing the most weight until death, but it was very neatly recorded by the 'presser' in the daily pressing log, and it was very, er, impressive indeed.

Trial by water was another no-win exercise in cruelty. The accused would be thrown into a deep pond - and remember very few people, including sailors, knew how to swim back then - and exhorted to confess to their crime. If they failed, they were kept offshore until they drowned. If they agreed, they were hauled in and... no guesses, now!
 
Thank God David Blunkett is no longer Home Secretary - you'll have been giving him ideas K.
 
You can chuck that nasty Ikea stool away now, matey. I'm not going near it unless it's at least Chippendale.
 
Krizon, that was what drew me into reading about Matthew Hopkins etc.

It was clearly a no-win situation and as Ardross has stated, was a result of the breakdown of the rule of law.

Being pressed to death would be incredibly frustrating.

I am not sure which method I would have preferred though. Being pressed, drowned or burned. Horrific.
 
There seems to have been a great deal of sadistic satisfaction involved in some of the more high-profile torturings, too, Phil. Priests who were accused of holding unholy gatherings or of consorting with witches were treated in ways guaranteed to cause excruciating agony, to the point that one infers that punishments were meted out through pure spite, jealousy, power-craziness, or even just plain craziness.

If our geneticists ever find the 'torture gene', I don't think anyone will object to having that little mutant removed from the human gene pool. Curious how it's survived, through religious and ruler-led history, to modern despots too numerous to list here.
 
If our geneticists ever find the 'torture gene', I don't think anyone will object to having that little mutant removed from the human gene pool
Click to expand...

Gimps will be out of business!
 
As many of you already know I suffer from racknaphobia (an unnatural fear of being stretched) and some of these stories are giving me palpitations. There are currently numerous gangs roaming the streets of Glasgow with fold down racks. Only the other day a small nursery infant was severely stretched by one of these gangs. They cruelly told her she was about to "grow up fast". B@stards.
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Brian, please don't stretch my patience. It's no laughing matter. The situation is ongoing and elastic. It's going to be a long hot spring up here.
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Shame Matthew Hopkins did not have any lie detectors , they would have saved him a lot of trouble
 
HT, aw, c'mon, don't be so spineless! We're just ribbing you - but if you will hang around some dodgy joints, what do you expect?
 
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