The Ghost Of Matthew HopkinsWitch Finder General
'Invoking evil spirits and using witchcraft, charms or sorcery whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed.' Hopkins began his career as the self-styled Witchfinder General in March 1645. He joined John Stearne, both having been authorised by the magistrates to investigate a suspected witch. The suspect, Elizabeth Clarke, was alleged to have brought about the cause of a convulsive illness and death of a local tailors' wife through witchcraft. Hopkins' primary tool in investigation was to use sleep deprivation. After three days and nights of this torture Elizabeth Clarke confessed. The one-legged widow admitted, in front of witnesses, to summoning beasts that were familiar spirits, which she used to harm others and that, the devil was their father. Elizabeth also divulged the names of other witches in Manningtree. Her confession led to the exposure of a coven that Hopkins claimed had sent a spirit to kill him. Hopkins and Stearne travelled the length and breadth of Essex in search of witches. They employed the help of Midwives and Witch Prickers in their efforts to gather evidence and persuade a jury. The Midwives, also known as search women, would identify the genital teats where imps were supposed to suckle on the alleged witch. Anne Leech, a widow from Mistley in Essex was examined by one of the search women. She admitted several offences after marks were found 'around the privie parts of her body'. 'Witch pricking' was the method of pricking a suspects 'witch mark' with a knife. If the witch mark did not bleed then this was said to prove the guilt of the accused.
The women were tried by the Earl of Warwick who was not a professional Judge but in fact a Puritan Soldier. At the end of the trials one woman was acquitted and another nine were reprieved due to insubstantial evidence. The nine women were remanded in gaol until their pardon applications were sent to parliament. At least one of them died waiting. The nineteen remaining women were to be hanged. English witches were not burned at the stake as they were in the continent. Death at the stake was reserved as punishment for traitors and heretics, under the Witchcraft Act of 1563, death by hanging was the sentence carried out on those found guilty of sorcery. Four of the women were hanged at Manningtree and the other fifteen were women met the same fate at Chelmsford. Margaret Moone collapsed and died on her way to the gallows. She had proclaimed on several occasions that the Devil often told her she would never be hanged. Elizabeth Clarke, the first woman accused of witchcraft by Matthew Hopkins, was helped to a height where the noose could be put around her neck (because of her disability) and then hanged. Hopkins and Stearne went their separate ways once they had embarked on their 'cleansing' of Suffolk. Hopkins took the east side and Stearne took the west. By now Hopkins was enjoying the power and material trappings that went with being a Witchfinder. He employed two assistants, wore fashionable Puritan clothing and was earning fifteen to twenty three pounds per Town cleansed of witches. That being in a time when wages were as little as twelve and a half pence per week. Hopkins and Stearne had earlier faced a stand off with the townsfolk in Colchester during the witch trials in Essex, and now it would seem the people of Suffolk were growing concerned with both Hopkins' allegations and methods during his investigations in their County. Rumours were beginning to circulate that he was preying on confessions from elderly, defenceless women with pets. One example of this being: 'Faith Mills, of Fressingham, Suffolk, admitted that her three pet birds, Tom, Robert and John, were in reality familiars who had wrought havoc by magically making a cow jump over a sty and breaking a cart. She was hanged'. Hopkins was also rumoured to be using a retractable blade during 'witch pricking'. That being the case, a guilty conclusion would be reached on the suspected witch every time during the test. Opposition to Hopkins' bloody persecutions had grown and the end was near for the Witchfinder General. In 1646 a parishioner showed John Gaule, the Puritan Minister of Great Staughton, a letter written by Matthew Hopkins. The letter asked if he would be welcome in the parish. Gaule replied by preaching against Hopkins from the pulpit, and hinted that Hopkins himself was a witch. Gaule also published a book called 'Select Cases Of Conscience Touching Witches And Witchcraft', an expose of Hopkins' methods condemning him and Stearne. Gaule's preaching added to complaints already made against Hopkins and forced him to answer some awkward questions before Judges in Norwich. Hopkins protested he was the victim of rumours and conjecture. He was also by this time suffering from an illness, believed to be consumption.
(The River Stour, pictured left) So what became of the Witchfinder General? There is a tradition that Hopkins was subjected to his own 'swimming' test: he floated and was therefore hanged for witchcraft himself by disgruntled villagers after returning from Suffolk to his home in Manningtree. Most historians believe that Matthew Hopkins died of tuberculosis in his bed shortly before the retirement of his partner John Stearne in the autumn of 1647. The parish records for Manningtree in Essex record Hopkins' burial in August 1647. He was buried at Mistley Heath, which is now an overgrown field. However, Mistley Heath does not seem to be the final resting place of Matthew Hopkins. For the reported sightings of his ghost in various locations in both Mistley and Mannningtree in Essex would suggest that Hopkins, and at least one of the women that he condemned to death, are not resting anywhere. Some of the Haunted locations associated with Matthew Hopkins are: - Mistley Place, Mistley - A ghost reported to be the spirit of Matthew Hopkins has been seen around the 'Ducking Pond' by locals at what used to be Hopkins' headquarters. - White Hart Inn, Manningtree - Matthew Hopkins is said to have frequented the establishment and it is reputed he can still be heard in the building to this day. - 'Hopping Bridge', Mistley A 'Phantom Jaywalker' seen wearing 17th century clothing is reported to be the ghost of Matthew Hopkins. He has been seen walking in the vicinity of the small hump-backed bridge known as 'Hopping Bridge'. - Thorn Hotel, Mistley The ghost of Matthew Hopkins has been reported here. A ghostly serving girl who used to work at the hotel is said to still walk along the corridors and a boy who was pushed under a cart and trampled to death during a fight is seen at the rear of the building. - Red Lion, Manningtree This public house is said to be haunted by a Victorian gentleman nicknamed George. Although many people claim the ghost is actually that of Matthew Hopkins. - River Stour, Manningtree The ghostly screams of a tormented witch being interrogated at the hands of Matthew Hopkins are said to be heard coming from the opposite shore. - Seafield Bay, Manningtree Elizabeth Clarke, executed on the orders of Matthew Hopkins is said to walk the shoreline of Seafield Bay. Sounds heard here on certain nights have been attributed to the screams of tortured witches and also the sound of Elizabeth Clarke's familiars looking for her. The last English witch was executed in 1685, the last conviction for witchcraft occurred in 1712 and The Witchcraft Act itself was repealed in 1736. Is the ghost of Matthew Hopkins still looking to rid the country of witches from beyond the grave? Unaware that times, and time itself has moved on? Or is the legacy of The Witchfinder General buried with him in a field in Mistley? This article had been kindly supplied by Jason Day, and is as such © Jason Day. |
Matthew Hopkins was born in 1620 and was the youngest son of James Hopkins. James was a Puritan Minister and lived in Great Wenham in Suffolk, England. Little is known of Matthew Hopkins' childhood though it is thought that he would have been educated at a grammar school, and without a doubt he would have been instructed in the righteous preaching of the Puritan cause from his father. Matthew did not go onto University as his father and brothers had. The fact that his signature appears on a conveyance from 1641 suggests that he was an apprentice to, and himself became, a lawyer. By 1644 Hopkins had moved across the River Stour to Manningtree, Essex. During this time England, and in particular Essex, was in the grip of 'witch fever'. Following the witchcraft laws of 1542, 1563 and 1604, the death penalty was liable for:
In July 1645 twenty-nine women who had been held in a dungeon in Colchester, on suspicion of practicing witchcraft, were moved to Chelmsford to face trial. Hopkins had persuaded Rebecca Lawford, charged with causing a woman to miscarry, to turn crown evidence against several others to escape the noose. Hopkins and Stearne moved on to Suffolk to continue their witch finding crusade but returned to give evidence in the trials and were witnesses against many of the accused. 
Meanwhile, John Stearne had continued onto the Isle of Ely and Cambridgeshire but the damage was already done by John Gaule's campaign against the witchfinders. Public opinion was going against them and after the witch trials in Ely acquitted the accused witches, Stearne retired. He later wrote a memoir published in 1648 entitled ' A Conformation And Discovery Of Witchcraft' in which he exonerated both himself and Matthew Hopkins of any wrongdoing. By the end of the East-Anglian 'witch craze' as many as three hundred people are believed to have been accused and over one hundred were executed. In Suffolk alone Hopkins is believed to have had sixty eight people executed.