Happy Saturday. Coming up soon on the show, we have an episode that has some connections to witch trials in the UK and to the laws that were in effect that prohibited witchcraft at that time. So Today's Saturday Classic provides some of the historical context for all of that. It is our November four episode on Matthew Hopkins, who built himself as the witch Finder General. So enjoying Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we are going to talk about England's largest and deadliest set of witch trials, which were largely influenced by one man. That was Matthew Hopkins, who was known as the witch Finder General, although this really does seemed like a title that was given to him and any kind of formal or official capacity. This happened in the region of East Anglia between sixteen forty five and sixteen forty seven, so it was after the peak of which trial activity in early modern Europe, but it was also a couple of decades before the Salem witch trials on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the people who were put to death and these trials were poor, elderly women, and some of the methods that Hopkins and other investigators were using could be classified as torture, even though torture was not supposed to be used in cases of witchcraft at that time. So this behavior on his part was so over the line to a lot of people that he earned a lot of criticism for it in his day. Yeah, I think we tend to think that, oh, looking back, that was horrible, but everyone was on board then, No, no, absolutely not. These witch trials were not really about things like pagan practices or herbal medicine or fortune telling. As a basic definition, a witch was someone who was believed to be using magic to do harm. People who are using magic for good, like curing diseases were often called white witches or cunning folk. Aside from the fact that cunning folk were sometimes called in to help identify which is they weren't typically part of these trials at all unless someone found a reason to suspect them of doing harm. I think one of the common ideas about which trials is that somebody was practicing herbal medicine and authorities found that really threatening for some reason, and that wasn't so much the case with what was going on here. Beyond the basic idea of causing harm with witchcraft, specific beliefs about which is really varied over time and from one place to another. For example, the idea that which is made a pact with the devil was common in some parts of Europe before the seventeenth century, but it didn't really make its way to what's now the UK and Ireland until a little bit later. It might have been introduced by King James, the sixth of Skyland and first of England. King James wrote about that idea in his book Demonology, which he published in fift seven that was shortly after ascending to the throne of Scotland, and the idea of making pacts with the devil and having demonic familiars was a huge part of the witch trials that we're talking about today, but really not so much in English witch trials that happened centuries before. There were also variations in exactly how different communities dealt with suspected witches. To look at England and Scotland again, both had laws against witchcraft by the sixteenth century, but in England, the demand for accused witches to be brought to justice tended to start with members of a community who believed that they had personally been harmed. In Scotland, that demand tended to come from the ruling elite out of a broader desire to root out which is and anything else that was contrary to God. In early modern England, witchcraft accusations tended to follow a pretty regular pattern, even how deeply ingrained the belief in witchcraft was. It's totally possible that there were some people who actually were trying to harm their neighbors in some way, but most of the time these accusations were faults and it was really about an interpersonal dispute. Here's an example from the trials that we're talking about today. Robert Taylor testified that Elizabeth Gooding came into his shop and asked for half a pound of cheese, which she would pay for later. He said no, because he's horrible and denied people cheese. No, that's a totally not the thing. She muttered under her breath about it, came back later with the money and bought the cheese. That night, Taylor's horse fell ill, and four days later that horse died, which he said was Elizabeth Gooding's doing as a payback for him refusing to help her. Elizabeth Gooding denied all of these allegations entirely. So while these kinds of interpersonal disputes could spark isolated accusations of witchcraft, they weren't usually enough on their own to set off a huge panic. When that did happen, there was typically some other larger issue going on that was causing other social or political or economic unrest. In the case of Matthew Hopkins time as a witch finder, that something else was the English Civil Wars okay, as a quick recap, The English Civil Wars spanned from sixteen forty two to sixteen fifty one, and they also involved Ireland in Scotland. In England, the dispute was between the monarchy and its supporters on one side, and Parliament and its supporters on the other. Charles the First had ruled England without a parliament from six to sixteen forty a period known as the personal rule that has come up on the show before. He only summoned to Parliament when he had no other choice, but the King and Parliament disagreed over a number of matters, especially whether the king or parliament should have control over the military. During the English Civil Wars, King Charles the First was executed, his son Charles the Second was sent into exile, and at least a hundred eighty thousand people were killed in battle or as a result of the war. And then, on top of all of the violence and chaos and loss of life, both sides in the English Civil War used the idea of witchcraft to target the other. Royalist propaganda quoted First Samuel three from the Bible, which reads for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Parliamentarians claimed that Charles the first nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, was a witch and that his dog Boy was as familiar. Battlefield losses were blamed on bewitchment, and in sixteen forty three, parliamentarian forces executed a woman just before the Battle of Newbury. According to written accounts, first they examined her and they found physical evidence on her body that she was a witch. Although hundreds of executions for witchcraft were carried out during the English Civil Wars, this one in Newbury was something of an anomaly, because witchcraft was a crime that was typically handled through the English courts. This legal history went back to fifteen seventeen with the Bill against Conjurations and Witchcrafts and Sorcery and Enchantments, which made witchcraft a felony punishable by death. That law was later repealed, but the Act against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts followed in fifteen sixty two. The law that was in effect during the events that we're talking about today was the sixteen o four Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits. It repealed that fifteen sixty two law before going on to say, quote, if any person or persons after the said Feast of St. Michael the Archangel next coming, shall use practice, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit to, or, for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, as her or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resideth, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment, or shall use practice or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body or any part thereof. So if any person who did all of that stuff that I just read, they would be put to death as a felon, as would anybody who aided, or abetted or counseled them. The method of execution in these cases was generally hanging. Under the same law, anyone who used witchcraft to find treasure, provoke unlawful love, or cause harm to cattle or goods would be imprisoned for a year. Of course, the parliamentarians execution of the woman known as the Newberry which wasn't the only extra judicial killing of a suspected which there were definitely other instances of vigilante murder as well, but it was far more common for an accused which to be tried before a jury in the same court system that was being used for other crimes. Through much of the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, it was possible and even likely, to be found not guilty of witchcraft. For example, between fifteen sixty and sixteen hundred, two hundred fifty eight people were indicted for witchcraft in the home Circuit assizes. The assizes were criminal courts that tended to focus on more serious crimes. Less than a quarter of those two hundred fifty eight people were found guilty. Even after the passage of the Witchcraft Act of sixteen o four, which was stricter than the law that it replaced, conviction rates still tended to be about twenty or lower, even though there were definitely periods where that percentage was much higher. The witch trials that happened in East Anglia between sixteen forty five and sixteen forty seven happened during one of those periods when allow more people were convicted of witchcraft. The chaos of the English Civil Wars had led to an increase in the number of witchcraft allegations. Authorities in general were also overstretched because of the war, and then on top of that, the courts themselves were understaffed. Most of the assize circuits had lost at least one judge after the ones who had sanctioned King Charles's personal rule of England were impeached, so an overburdened understaffed court system was having to deal with a sudden influx of all of these allegations. And another important point, Matthew Hopkins was out there drumming up allegations, and we're gonna get into that after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Matthew Hopkins went from relative obscurity to being the most notorious and influential figure in England's largest series of witch trial, seemingly overnight. His father was a Puritan named James Hopkins, who was vicar of Great Winnham in Suffolk, England. James took that position in sixteen twelve, which was a couple of years after he got married. James's father had been a landowner and he inherited money from both of his parents, so the family was able to live pretty comfortably regardless of how profitable their vicarage was, and they were able to set their children up with trusts. James Hopkins died around sixteen thirty four. That's the year that his will was proved or legally accepted as the last will of the deceased. That will referenced six children, including Matthew and his brother Thomas. It left them in the care of his widow with instructions that they be brought up quote in the Fear of God. This suggests that at least some of James's children were not legal adults yet when he wrote this will. Based on the timing of his marriage and death and the fact that Matthew was the fourth of six children, most sources estimate that he was born in sixteen nineteen or later, and then it is a mystery. Given the family's affluence, Matthew probably had a good education, but we don't really know in what He's often described as being a lawyer, but there's no evidence that he formally studied law. Although his fixation with witchcraft clearly had some religious roots, it does not seem as though he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps into the clergy. We don't even know whether he had really studied the literature of the day on witchcraft and the identification of witches, which there was a whole lot of. There was the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, which was written by two Dominicans from Germany and Austria and published around fourteen eighty six. The Hammer of Witches became a standard manual for witch hunting, and there were almost thirty editions published between fourteen eighty six and sixteen hundred. We mentioned King James's Demonology earlier. That was a compendium on necromancy, sorcery and spirits. It might have been one of the sources for Shakespeare's Macbeth. George Gifford produced two books on witchcraft. They were A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devils by Witches and Sorcerers in seven and a Dialogue concerning Witches and witchcrafts in John Cota published The Trial of Witchcraft in sixteen sixteen and then republished it nine years later as The Infallible, True and Assured Witch. Richard Bernard's A Guide to Grand Juryman came out in sixteen twenty seven and discussed methods of identifying which is, as well as natural conditions in quotation marks that might be mistaken for witchcraft. There were to be clear also writers arguing that at least some of this was superstitious nonsense, including the more skeptical The Discovery of Witchcraft by Reginald Scott in fifteen eighty four. As an aside, he has long been on my list as a subject. How good this show. I went on kind of a rabbit hole of all of these various writings on witchcraft and was like, I wish we could just do episodes on all of them, because some of them are just so bizarre in their claims that they put forth. Um Various historians have closely read hopkins writing to try to find traces of these and other previous works on witchcraft. They have drawn varying conclusions on what he might or might not have been familiar with. Given his upbringing and his father's position and the really widespread belief in this type of witchcraft, it's probably something that he would have talked about at home among his family. But aside from King James's Demonology, Hopkins doesn't directly reference any of these previous works in his own writing. He instead says that his knowledge of witchcraft and how to identify witches came from his own experience. I like how the idea of talking about it at home leads me, of course, be like, if you don't talk to your kids about witchcraft, I learned it by watching you, right exactly. That's exactly the whole entire self entertainment loop that's running in my head right now That experience, though, that Tracy just referenced, started in sixteen forty four when Hopkins was living in Manningtree in Essex. In his account, in which he refers to himself in the third person quote in March sixteen forty four, he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of which is living in the town where he lived, a town in Essex called Manningtree, with diverse other adjacent witches of other towns, who every six weeks in the night, being always on the Friday night, had their meeting close by his house and had their several solemn sacrifices they're offered to the devil. Hopkins went on to say that one night he heard one of the witches talking to her imps and telling them to go to another witch, who was then caught and searched for a devil's mark which these which is purportedly used to feed their imp familiar. In this case, the woman who was examined had quote three teeths about her, which honest women have not. This woman was Elizabeth Clark, who was an elderly disabled woman who was living in poverty. Having identified the mark, the next step to identifying a witch was to keep her awake for at least two or three days to lure her familiars into coming to her assistance. This was known as watching the witch, and sometimes it was combined with walking or making the accused woman stay on her feet pacing around, sometimes until she injured herself. In hopkins account, the familiars in this case appeared on the fourth night, and there were ten people in the room when it happened. Hopkins said, Clark called several familiars. Quote one Holt who came in like a white kittling to Jarmara, who came in like a fat spaniel without any any legs at all. She said she kept him fat for she clapped her hand on her belly and said he sucked the good blood from her body. Three vinegar to Mom, who was like a long legged greyhound with an head like an ox and a long tail and broad eyes, who, when this discoverer spoke to and bade him go to the place provided for him and his angels, immediately transformed himself into the shape of a child four years old without a head, and gave half a dozen turns about the house and vanished at the door. Four sack and sugar like a black Rabbit, five News like a pull Cat. After this, Hopkins said, the imprisoned Clark named several other witches from the community, including where their witch marks were, how many imps they had, and what those imps names were. Those were names that included Lamanzer Pie, Wackett, peck in the Crown, Grizzle, and Greedy Gut. So if you're looking for pet names, maybe make a list today, because there are a lot of good ones in this episode. As I was working on this, I kept getting really frustrated because, I mean, the story is about a lot of women, most of them elderly and living in Poppy, who were put to death for no reason and sometimes tortured beforehand, which is awful, But these descriptions of their familiars and stuff are amazing, and I'm like, I'm having like I wish this story wasn't so horrible and tragic because these are great. Yeah, I mean, that's always like the long term appeal of of all of these stories, right, there is something fantastical and fantasy and wonderful about them, Like it's this panic made people real creative, um, but unfortunately it also made them jerks and treat women with just deplorable uh methods. Yeah, yeah, so like we don't want to minimize that at all. But at the same time, pie Whackett and peck in the crown like it's fascinating. While she was being questioned, Elizabeth Clark said that Anne West was another witch, and soon accusations of witchcraft were spreading all through the community. Rebecca West, who was Anne's teenage daughter, accused several women as well, including also accusing her mother. After these and other accusations, trials began in sixty five, Clark gave her own testimony about this before the Right Honorable Robert Earl of Warwick and several Justices of the Peace. In her confession, she said that the devil had been coming to lie with her in bed for six or seven years. She traced it back to another woman. That woman being and West. Clark had been gathering sticks in a field one day, and Anne West had seen her and felt sorry for her because she only had one leg. According to Clark, West said she would send quote a thing like a little kitlin that would help her and bring her provisions. And her confession, Rebecca West said that she and leech Elizabeth Gooding Helen Clark and her mother had all met at Elizabeth Clark's house. They had prayed to their familiars, and they'd planned a number of misfortunes and tragedies that had happened in the community, and she said that the devil came to them while they were there. Her confession ended with the devil having appeared to her at night and married her, a thing that we should note here. All of this testimony about the appearance of familiars in various animal forms suckling on the bodies of the accused sounds really bizarre. Some of this is often attributed to the nature of the questioning. If watchers kept a suspected which awake for days at a time, she was likely to be delirious by the end of it, and it would make total sense for her sleep deprived statements to sound absolutely unreal. And many of the techniques used to test which is are defined as abuse or torture today, So it also makes a lot of sense that the accused people would tell the investigators what they wanted to hear to just stop the torture, or otherwise simply to protect their own life. At the same time, though people sincerely believed that this type of witchcraft and these imps and familiars, they believed all that was real, and in court documents, the watchers and the investigators, who hadn't been through any of these ordeals themselves, also described personally seeing these demonic familiars in various shapes and forms. In the case of Elizabeth Clark, that included Matthew Hopkins, his associate John Stern, four women who had participated in watching her, and other people, all of whom testified to personally seeing these familiars when they were in court. The testimonies from this first set of sixteen forty five witch trials are documented in a true and exact relation of the several informations, examinations and confessions of the late witches arraigned and executed in the County of Essex who were arraigned and condemned at the late Sessions Holden at Chelmsford before the Right Honorable Robert, Earl of Warwick and several of His Majesty's Justices of Peace the twenty nine of July sixty five, wherein the several murthrs and devilish witchcrafts committed on the bodies of men women and children and diverse cattle are fully discovered published by authority. So there are scans of this online and it goes on and on with pages of testimony detailing witch marks and imps and marriages to the devil, as well as accidents, illnesses, miscarriages and deaths that the witches purportedly caused and in some cases confessed to. In July of Elizabeth Clark and Anne West were tried along with thirty four other suspected witches. Nineteen of them were executed by hanging and nine more died of disease in prison. Rebecca West was released in exchange for testifying against the others. Only one of those women was actually acquitted. These accusations and trials then spread well beyond Essex, and we will get to that after another sponsor break. The accusations of witchcraft that were made in Manningtree were the start of a set of witch trials so widespread and so closely associated with Matthew Hopkins that it is sometimes called the Hopkins witch Panic. Hopkins and his associate John Stern traveled from place to place investigating reports of witchcraft, inspecting women's bodies for marks, watching suspected witches and in some cases swimming them, which was throwing them into the water, sometimes tied up to see if they would sink or float. More than ten people were put on trial in Sudbury, forty in Norfolk, and eight in Huntingtondonshire. They were overwhelmingly, but not exclusively women. The records are not always clear, but in total at least two hundred fifty people were put on trial in East Anglia between sixteen and sixteen forty seven, and more than one hundred of them were executed. Some estimates double all of those numbers. The number of accusations was so big that Parliament appointed a special Commission of Oyer and termin Or to hear the cases, and that followed the letter of the sixteen No for Witchcraft law. The commission criticized Hopkins and his methods. Torture had been outlawed and the questioning of witches, so they thought some of what he was doing was unacceptable. Although the most questionable cases were thrown out, most of the accused were again found guilty, although Hopkins and Stern maintained that they only went to places where they had been invited by concerned people in the community. The people in those towns were not universally welcoming, even apart from the people being accused of witchcraft. The witch finders were paid for their work and paid well, so people accused them of making up allegations for money. Hopkins total pay has been estimated at one thousand pounds, when the average person at the time was making pennies per day. Hopkins and Stern were criticized for what they were doing almost from the very beginning when they started doing it, possibly even criticized from Parliament. One of hopkins biggest individual critics was Puritan rector John Gall, who was something of a skeptic when it came to witchcraft. Gall directly challenged what Hopkins was doing, and in sixteen forty six he published quote Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts, which begins with a letter from Hopkins saying that he was going to go into Great Stotton to look for witches. Gall believed that which is existed, and in his opinion, total disbelief in which is was a first step on a path of disbelieving in God. But at the same time he thought what was really at work in England. In sixty six was superstition. He thought that people were using witchcraft and demons to find something to blame for the ordinary problems of life. After noting his belief that which is did exist, he wrote, quote, but there are also a sect or sort that, on the other hand, are as superstitious. In this point, as these can be infidelious, they conclude preremptorial lee, not from reason, but in discretion, that which is not only are, but are in every place and parish with them. Every old woman with a wrinkled face, of furrowed brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue, having a rugged coat on her back, a skull cap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a dog or cat by her side, is not only suspect, but pronounced for a witch. Every new disease, notable accident, mirrable of nature, rarity of art, nay and strange work, or just judgment of God, is by them accounted for no other but an act or effect of witchcraft. Gall also noted that this whole profession of witch finder seemed to be a new invention. Before this work had fallen to people like magistrates and justices of the piece, but now it was being handled by people like Matthew Hopkins, who was calling himself the witch Finder General, and Gall placed the blame for the witch panic where it belonged on Hopkins and Stern, who were going from town to town stirring people up. In Gaul's words, quote, it is strange to tell what superstitious opinions, affections, relations are generally risen amongst us since the witch Finders came into the country. And May of sixteen forty seven, Matthew Hopkins published his own pamphlet in response to these and other criticisms. It was called Quote the Discovery of Witches, An Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judges of the Assize for the County of Norfolk, and now published by Matthew Hopkins, witch Finder, for the benefit of the whole Kingdom. Hopkins framed his defense as a series of answers to fourteen queries he had purportedly been asked, although some of the queries are really statements rather than questions. Uh The first is that he must be a witch, sorcerer and wizard himself, otherwise he could not have done what he was doing. The second is that, if he wasn't a witch himself, that he had met with the devil and stolen a book containing the names of all the witches in England, so he was doing this work with the help of the devil. He responds to the first of these statements with quote, if Satan's kingdom be divided against itself, how shall it stand? That's his whole answer. He responds to the second by basically saying that if he did steal the devil's book, wasn't that something that he should be commended for rather than judged. It's also in the earlier queries that Hopkins says his knowledge of witchcraft came from his own experience, which he describes as quote yet the surest and safest way to judge by Query five in this pamphlet points out that a lot of people, especially people who are poor or elderly, have marks on their bodies naturally, along with quote other natural excrescencies as hemrhods, piles, childbearing, etcetera. So how is one man to judge that one of these perfectly normal things is un natural? Hopkins reply is quote the party, So judging can justify their skill to any and show good reasons why such marks are not merely natural, neither that they can happen by any such natural cause, as is before expressed, and for further answer for their private judgments alone. It is most false and untrue. For never was any man tried by search of his body, but commonly a dozen of the ablest men in the parish or elsewhere were present, and most commonly as many ancient skillful matrons and midwives present. When the women are tried, which marks, not only he and his company attests to be very suspicious, but all beholders, the skillfullest of them, do not approve of them, but likewise assent that such tokens cannot, in their judgments, proceed from any the above mentioned causes. In the next query, Hopkins goes on to explain that you can tell these marks aren't natural because they're in unusual places. They're also insensible to pain, and they change shape, for example, because they're sending their imps to feed from someone else to avoid the tection, or because their imps have been able to feed from anyone for a period of time. This pamphlet goes on to explain in Hopkins opinion various aspects of witchcraft, and to defend his own actions, simultaneously explaining the necessity of practices like waking and swimming witches, and saying that he utterly denies any confession that results from torture. And the last query quote all that the witch finder doth is to fleece the country of their money, and therefore rides and goes to towns to have employment, and promiseth them fair promises, and it maybe doth nothing for it, and possesseth many men that they have so many wizards and so many witches in their town, and so heartens them on to entertain him. His answer quote, you do him a great deal of wrong, and every of these particulars. For first one, he never went into any town or place, but they rode rit or sent often for him, and were for aught. He knew glad of him too. He is a man that doth disclaim that ever he detected a witch, or said thou art a witch, only after her trial by search and their own confessions, as he as others may judge. Three lastly, judge how he fleeceth the country and enriches himself by considering the vast sum he takes of every town he demands, but twenty shillings a town, and doth sometimes ride twenty miles for that, and hath no more for all his charges thither and back again. And it maybe he stays a week there and find there are three or four witches, or if it be but one, cheap enough, and this is the great sum he takes to maintain his company with three horses. Hopkins partner John Stern published his own defense of their work, called A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, and like Hopkins, Stern pushed back on criticisms that quote, there are no witches, but that there are many poor, silly, ignorant people hanged wrongfully, and that those who have gone or been instruments in finding out or discovering those of late made known have done it for their own private ends, for gain and such like, favoring some where they thought good, and unjustly prosecuting others. Unlike Hopkins, who made only one direct reference to King James's demonology, Stern's work cites a lot more references, especially Bible verses. There are so many book chapter in Birth citations, especially in the first portion of this, that it is difficult to read. It's like every third word is a book of the Bible, and some chapters and verses. By the time Stern published his book in sixty eight, The East Anglia, which trials were essentially over. As English Civil War drew to a close, the courts got back to a more normal operation, and the number of witchcraft accusations dropped. People were also less inclined to trust Hopkins and Stern in the face of such vocal criticism about their methods. Hopkins was also dead. He published his defense of his work Flee, three months before he died. He was probably in his mid to late twenties, and his pursuit of Witches and East Anglia had lasted for less than three years. Although there is a popular story that Hopkins was eventually convicted of witchcraft himself, he actually died of tuberculosis, which was probably affecting his health for most or all of the witch trials that he was part of. He was buried at miss Ley with Manningtree on August twelve, seven, and today he is said to haunt miss Ley Pond and other sites around the area. He's also the focus of the nineteen film witch Finder, which is directed by Michael Reeves and Stars. Previous podcast subject Vincent Price and best actor of all time. I never speak in superlatives, but I sure do love and some Price, and he has a rad little bob in that movie. Yeah, Holly and I had a conversation before U, before this whole outline was even done, really about how I'm so used to seeing Vincent Price clean shaven or with a beard that seems to denote I am evil, like a little very pointy beard that h for when I watched the trailer um to this film, which finder at first I did not recognize him, Like his face is there in the thumbnail and I'm like, oh, I wonder what character he played? Oh, it's that one. As soon as you started talking, I of course immediately knew who it was. Um, this whole story we talked earlier about, like this incongruity between how tragic and terrible it is and how bizarre and fantastic all the testimony from the trial is. But the thing that I just find the most terrifying about it is that basically this guy kind of showed up out of nowhere at age twenty something, and not single handedly. There was other stuff going on. But he definitely was the instigator in in these trials all across East Anglia. Um that went on for roughly three years, and then he died at with not really any experience that anybody knows of besides his own opinion about who was a witch. Yeah, it's interesting because it's it's uh one of those things where I mean, I certainly joked in this episode about all the great names for pets, but like when you think about one person on this weird quest to do this thing and how many lives he completely obliterated in of course of it, it becomes very sobering and dismaying. Well, and we've also we for sure talked about figures on the podcast before who singlehandedly uh had just terrible consequences and a lot of a lot of time. That was a person who was already in a position of power, um not not you know, the relatively well off son of a vicar who didn't seem to have any other notable background to to put him in that level of authority besides his own authority that he decided to keep up for himself. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or Facebook U r L or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Happy Saturday. Coming up soon on the show, we have an episode that has some connections to witch trials in the UK and to the laws that were in effect that prohibited witchcraft at that time. So Today's Saturday Classic provides some of the historical context for all of that. It is our November four episode on Matthew Hopkins, who built himself as the witch Finder General. So enjoying Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we are going to talk about England's largest and deadliest set of witch trials, which were largely influenced by one man. That was Matthew Hopkins, who was known as the witch Finder General, although this really does seemed like a title that was given to him and any kind of formal or official capacity. This happened in the region of East Anglia between sixteen forty five and sixteen forty seven, so it was after the peak of which trial activity in early modern Europe, but it was also a couple of decades before the Salem witch trials on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the people who were put to death and these trials were poor, elderly women, and some of the methods that Hopkins and other investigators were using could be classified as torture, even though torture was not supposed to be used in cases of witchcraft at that time. So this behavior on his part was so over the line to a lot of people that he earned a lot of criticism for it in his day. Yeah, I think we tend to think that, oh, looking back, that was horrible, but everyone was on board then, No, no, absolutely not. These witch trials were not really about things like pagan practices or herbal medicine or fortune telling. As a basic definition, a witch was someone who was believed to be using magic to do harm. People who are using magic for good, like curing diseases were often called white witches or cunning folk. Aside from the fact that cunning folk were sometimes called in to help identify which is they weren't typically part of these trials at all unless someone found a reason to suspect them of doing harm. I think one of the common ideas about which trials is that somebody was practicing herbal medicine and authorities found that really threatening for some reason, and that wasn't so much the case with what was going on here. Beyond the basic idea of causing harm with witchcraft, specific beliefs about which is really varied over time and from one place to another. For example, the idea that which is made a pact with the devil was common in some parts of Europe before the seventeenth century, but it didn't really make its way to what's now the UK and Ireland until a little bit later. It might have been introduced by King James, the sixth of Skyland and first of England. King James wrote about that idea in his book Demonology, which he published in fift seven that was shortly after ascending to the throne of Scotland, and the idea of making pacts with the devil and having demonic familiars was a huge part of the witch trials that we're talking about today, but really not so much in English witch trials that happened centuries before. There were also variations in exactly how different communities dealt with suspected witches. To look at England and Scotland again, both had laws against witchcraft by the sixteenth century, but in England, the demand for accused witches to be brought to justice tended to start with members of a community who believed that they had personally been harmed. In Scotland, that demand tended to come from the ruling elite out of a broader desire to root out which is and anything else that was contrary to God. In early modern England, witchcraft accusations tended to follow a pretty regular pattern, even how deeply ingrained the belief in witchcraft was. It's totally possible that there were some people who actually were trying to harm their neighbors in some way, but most of the time these accusations were faults and it was really about an interpersonal dispute. Here's an example from the trials that we're talking about today. Robert Taylor testified that Elizabeth Gooding came into his shop and asked for half a pound of cheese, which she would pay for later. He said no, because he's horrible and denied people cheese. No, that's a totally not the thing. She muttered under her breath about it, came back later with the money and bought the cheese. That night, Taylor's horse fell ill, and four days later that horse died, which he said was Elizabeth Gooding's doing as a payback for him refusing to help her. Elizabeth Gooding denied all of these allegations entirely. So while these kinds of interpersonal disputes could spark isolated accusations of witchcraft, they weren't usually enough on their own to set off a huge panic. When that did happen, there was typically some other larger issue going on that was causing other social or political or economic unrest. In the case of Matthew Hopkins time as a witch finder, that something else was the English Civil Wars okay, as a quick recap, The English Civil Wars spanned from sixteen forty two to sixteen fifty one, and they also involved Ireland in Scotland. In England, the dispute was between the monarchy and its supporters on one side, and Parliament and its supporters on the other. Charles the First had ruled England without a parliament from six to sixteen forty a period known as the personal rule that has come up on the show before. He only summoned to Parliament when he had no other choice, but the King and Parliament disagreed over a number of matters, especially whether the king or parliament should have control over the military. During the English Civil Wars, King Charles the First was executed, his son Charles the Second was sent into exile, and at least a hundred eighty thousand people were killed in battle or as a result of the war. And then, on top of all of the violence and chaos and loss of life, both sides in the English Civil War used the idea of witchcraft to target the other. Royalist propaganda quoted First Samuel three from the Bible, which reads for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Parliamentarians claimed that Charles the first nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, was a witch and that his dog Boy was as familiar. Battlefield losses were blamed on bewitchment, and in sixteen forty three, parliamentarian forces executed a woman just before the Battle of Newbury. According to written accounts, first they examined her and they found physical evidence on her body that she was a witch. Although hundreds of executions for witchcraft were carried out during the English Civil Wars, this one in Newbury was something of an anomaly, because witchcraft was a crime that was typically handled through the English courts. This legal history went back to fifteen seventeen with the Bill against Conjurations and Witchcrafts and Sorcery and Enchantments, which made witchcraft a felony punishable by death. That law was later repealed, but the Act against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts followed in fifteen sixty two. The law that was in effect during the events that we're talking about today was the sixteen o four Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits. It repealed that fifteen sixty two law before going on to say, quote, if any person or persons after the said Feast of St. Michael the Archangel next coming, shall use practice, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit to, or, for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, as her or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resideth, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment, or shall use practice or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body or any part thereof. So if any person who did all of that stuff that I just read, they would be put to death as a felon, as would anybody who aided, or abetted or counseled them. The method of execution in these cases was generally hanging. Under the same law, anyone who used witchcraft to find treasure, provoke unlawful love, or cause harm to cattle or goods would be imprisoned for a year. Of course, the parliamentarians execution of the woman known as the Newberry which wasn't the only extra judicial killing of a suspected which there were definitely other instances of vigilante murder as well, but it was far more common for an accused which to be tried before a jury in the same court system that was being used for other crimes. Through much of the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, it was possible and even likely, to be found not guilty of witchcraft. For example, between fifteen sixty and sixteen hundred, two hundred fifty eight people were indicted for witchcraft in the home Circuit assizes. The assizes were criminal courts that tended to focus on more serious crimes. Less than a quarter of those two hundred fifty eight people were found guilty. Even after the passage of the Witchcraft Act of sixteen o four, which was stricter than the law that it replaced, conviction rates still tended to be about twenty or lower, even though there were definitely periods where that percentage was much higher. The witch trials that happened in East Anglia between sixteen forty five and sixteen forty seven happened during one of those periods when allow more people were convicted of witchcraft. The chaos of the English Civil Wars had led to an increase in the number of witchcraft allegations. Authorities in general were also overstretched because of the war, and then on top of that, the courts themselves were understaffed. Most of the assize circuits had lost at least one judge after the ones who had sanctioned King Charles's personal rule of England were impeached, so an overburdened understaffed court system was having to deal with a sudden influx of all of these allegations. And another important point, Matthew Hopkins was out there drumming up allegations, and we're gonna get into that after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Matthew Hopkins went from relative obscurity to being the most notorious and influential figure in England's largest series of witch trial, seemingly overnight. His father was a Puritan named James Hopkins, who was vicar of Great Winnham in Suffolk, England. James took that position in sixteen twelve, which was a couple of years after he got married. James's father had been a landowner and he inherited money from both of his parents, so the family was able to live pretty comfortably regardless of how profitable their vicarage was, and they were able to set their children up with trusts. James Hopkins died around sixteen thirty four. That's the year that his will was proved or legally accepted as the last will of the deceased. That will referenced six children, including Matthew and his brother Thomas. It left them in the care of his widow with instructions that they be brought up quote in the Fear of God. This suggests that at least some of James's children were not legal adults yet when he wrote this will. Based on the timing of his marriage and death and the fact that Matthew was the fourth of six children, most sources estimate that he was born in sixteen nineteen or later, and then it is a mystery. Given the family's affluence, Matthew probably had a good education, but we don't really know in what He's often described as being a lawyer, but there's no evidence that he formally studied law. Although his fixation with witchcraft clearly had some religious roots, it does not seem as though he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps into the clergy. We don't even know whether he had really studied the literature of the day on witchcraft and the identification of witches, which there was a whole lot of. There was the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, which was written by two Dominicans from Germany and Austria and published around fourteen eighty six. The Hammer of Witches became a standard manual for witch hunting, and there were almost thirty editions published between fourteen eighty six and sixteen hundred. We mentioned King James's Demonology earlier. That was a compendium on necromancy, sorcery and spirits. It might have been one of the sources for Shakespeare's Macbeth. George Gifford produced two books on witchcraft. They were A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devils by Witches and Sorcerers in seven and a Dialogue concerning Witches and witchcrafts in John Cota published The Trial of Witchcraft in sixteen sixteen and then republished it nine years later as The Infallible, True and Assured Witch. Richard Bernard's A Guide to Grand Juryman came out in sixteen twenty seven and discussed methods of identifying which is, as well as natural conditions in quotation marks that might be mistaken for witchcraft. There were to be clear also writers arguing that at least some of this was superstitious nonsense, including the more skeptical The Discovery of Witchcraft by Reginald Scott in fifteen eighty four. As an aside, he has long been on my list as a subject. How good this show. I went on kind of a rabbit hole of all of these various writings on witchcraft and was like, I wish we could just do episodes on all of them, because some of them are just so bizarre in their claims that they put forth. Um Various historians have closely read hopkins writing to try to find traces of these and other previous works on witchcraft. They have drawn varying conclusions on what he might or might not have been familiar with. Given his upbringing and his father's position and the really widespread belief in this type of witchcraft, it's probably something that he would have talked about at home among his family. But aside from King James's Demonology, Hopkins doesn't directly reference any of these previous works in his own writing. He instead says that his knowledge of witchcraft and how to identify witches came from his own experience. I like how the idea of talking about it at home leads me, of course, be like, if you don't talk to your kids about witchcraft, I learned it by watching you, right exactly. That's exactly the whole entire self entertainment loop that's running in my head right now That experience, though, that Tracy just referenced, started in sixteen forty four when Hopkins was living in Manningtree in Essex. In his account, in which he refers to himself in the third person quote in March sixteen forty four, he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of which is living in the town where he lived, a town in Essex called Manningtree, with diverse other adjacent witches of other towns, who every six weeks in the night, being always on the Friday night, had their meeting close by his house and had their several solemn sacrifices they're offered to the devil. Hopkins went on to say that one night he heard one of the witches talking to her imps and telling them to go to another witch, who was then caught and searched for a devil's mark which these which is purportedly used to feed their imp familiar. In this case, the woman who was examined had quote three teeths about her, which honest women have not. This woman was Elizabeth Clark, who was an elderly disabled woman who was living in poverty. Having identified the mark, the next step to identifying a witch was to keep her awake for at least two or three days to lure her familiars into coming to her assistance. This was known as watching the witch, and sometimes it was combined with walking or making the accused woman stay on her feet pacing around, sometimes until she injured herself. In hopkins account, the familiars in this case appeared on the fourth night, and there were ten people in the room when it happened. Hopkins said, Clark called several familiars. Quote one Holt who came in like a white kittling to Jarmara, who came in like a fat spaniel without any any legs at all. She said she kept him fat for she clapped her hand on her belly and said he sucked the good blood from her body. Three vinegar to Mom, who was like a long legged greyhound with an head like an ox and a long tail and broad eyes, who, when this discoverer spoke to and bade him go to the place provided for him and his angels, immediately transformed himself into the shape of a child four years old without a head, and gave half a dozen turns about the house and vanished at the door. Four sack and sugar like a black Rabbit, five News like a pull Cat. After this, Hopkins said, the imprisoned Clark named several other witches from the community, including where their witch marks were, how many imps they had, and what those imps names were. Those were names that included Lamanzer Pie, Wackett, peck in the Crown, Grizzle, and Greedy Gut. So if you're looking for pet names, maybe make a list today, because there are a lot of good ones in this episode. As I was working on this, I kept getting really frustrated because, I mean, the story is about a lot of women, most of them elderly and living in Poppy, who were put to death for no reason and sometimes tortured beforehand, which is awful, But these descriptions of their familiars and stuff are amazing, and I'm like, I'm having like I wish this story wasn't so horrible and tragic because these are great. Yeah, I mean, that's always like the long term appeal of of all of these stories, right, there is something fantastical and fantasy and wonderful about them, Like it's this panic made people real creative, um, but unfortunately it also made them jerks and treat women with just deplorable uh methods. Yeah, yeah, so like we don't want to minimize that at all. But at the same time, pie Whackett and peck in the crown like it's fascinating. While she was being questioned, Elizabeth Clark said that Anne West was another witch, and soon accusations of witchcraft were spreading all through the community. Rebecca West, who was Anne's teenage daughter, accused several women as well, including also accusing her mother. After these and other accusations, trials began in sixty five, Clark gave her own testimony about this before the Right Honorable Robert Earl of Warwick and several Justices of the Peace. In her confession, she said that the devil had been coming to lie with her in bed for six or seven years. She traced it back to another woman. That woman being and West. Clark had been gathering sticks in a field one day, and Anne West had seen her and felt sorry for her because she only had one leg. According to Clark, West said she would send quote a thing like a little kitlin that would help her and bring her provisions. And her confession, Rebecca West said that she and leech Elizabeth Gooding Helen Clark and her mother had all met at Elizabeth Clark's house. They had prayed to their familiars, and they'd planned a number of misfortunes and tragedies that had happened in the community, and she said that the devil came to them while they were there. Her confession ended with the devil having appeared to her at night and married her, a thing that we should note here. All of this testimony about the appearance of familiars in various animal forms suckling on the bodies of the accused sounds really bizarre. Some of this is often attributed to the nature of the questioning. If watchers kept a suspected which awake for days at a time, she was likely to be delirious by the end of it, and it would make total sense for her sleep deprived statements to sound absolutely unreal. And many of the techniques used to test which is are defined as abuse or torture today, So it also makes a lot of sense that the accused people would tell the investigators what they wanted to hear to just stop the torture, or otherwise simply to protect their own life. At the same time, though people sincerely believed that this type of witchcraft and these imps and familiars, they believed all that was real, and in court documents, the watchers and the investigators, who hadn't been through any of these ordeals themselves, also described personally seeing these demonic familiars in various shapes and forms. In the case of Elizabeth Clark, that included Matthew Hopkins, his associate John Stern, four women who had participated in watching her, and other people, all of whom testified to personally seeing these familiars when they were in court. The testimonies from this first set of sixteen forty five witch trials are documented in a true and exact relation of the several informations, examinations and confessions of the late witches arraigned and executed in the County of Essex who were arraigned and condemned at the late Sessions Holden at Chelmsford before the Right Honorable Robert, Earl of Warwick and several of His Majesty's Justices of Peace the twenty nine of July sixty five, wherein the several murthrs and devilish witchcrafts committed on the bodies of men women and children and diverse cattle are fully discovered published by authority. So there are scans of this online and it goes on and on with pages of testimony detailing witch marks and imps and marriages to the devil, as well as accidents, illnesses, miscarriages and deaths that the witches purportedly caused and in some cases confessed to. In July of Elizabeth Clark and Anne West were tried along with thirty four other suspected witches. Nineteen of them were executed by hanging and nine more died of disease in prison. Rebecca West was released in exchange for testifying against the others. Only one of those women was actually acquitted. These accusations and trials then spread well beyond Essex, and we will get to that after another sponsor break. The accusations of witchcraft that were made in Manningtree were the start of a set of witch trials so widespread and so closely associated with Matthew Hopkins that it is sometimes called the Hopkins witch Panic. Hopkins and his associate John Stern traveled from place to place investigating reports of witchcraft, inspecting women's bodies for marks, watching suspected witches and in some cases swimming them, which was throwing them into the water, sometimes tied up to see if they would sink or float. More than ten people were put on trial in Sudbury, forty in Norfolk, and eight in Huntingtondonshire. They were overwhelmingly, but not exclusively women. The records are not always clear, but in total at least two hundred fifty people were put on trial in East Anglia between sixteen and sixteen forty seven, and more than one hundred of them were executed. Some estimates double all of those numbers. The number of accusations was so big that Parliament appointed a special Commission of Oyer and termin Or to hear the cases, and that followed the letter of the sixteen No for Witchcraft law. The commission criticized Hopkins and his methods. Torture had been outlawed and the questioning of witches, so they thought some of what he was doing was unacceptable. Although the most questionable cases were thrown out, most of the accused were again found guilty, although Hopkins and Stern maintained that they only went to places where they had been invited by concerned people in the community. The people in those towns were not universally welcoming, even apart from the people being accused of witchcraft. The witch finders were paid for their work and paid well, so people accused them of making up allegations for money. Hopkins total pay has been estimated at one thousand pounds, when the average person at the time was making pennies per day. Hopkins and Stern were criticized for what they were doing almost from the very beginning when they started doing it, possibly even criticized from Parliament. One of hopkins biggest individual critics was Puritan rector John Gall, who was something of a skeptic when it came to witchcraft. Gall directly challenged what Hopkins was doing, and in sixteen forty six he published quote Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts, which begins with a letter from Hopkins saying that he was going to go into Great Stotton to look for witches. Gall believed that which is existed, and in his opinion, total disbelief in which is was a first step on a path of disbelieving in God. But at the same time he thought what was really at work in England. In sixty six was superstition. He thought that people were using witchcraft and demons to find something to blame for the ordinary problems of life. After noting his belief that which is did exist, he wrote, quote, but there are also a sect or sort that, on the other hand, are as superstitious. In this point, as these can be infidelious, they conclude preremptorial lee, not from reason, but in discretion, that which is not only are, but are in every place and parish with them. Every old woman with a wrinkled face, of furrowed brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue, having a rugged coat on her back, a skull cap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a dog or cat by her side, is not only suspect, but pronounced for a witch. Every new disease, notable accident, mirrable of nature, rarity of art, nay and strange work, or just judgment of God, is by them accounted for no other but an act or effect of witchcraft. Gall also noted that this whole profession of witch finder seemed to be a new invention. Before this work had fallen to people like magistrates and justices of the piece, but now it was being handled by people like Matthew Hopkins, who was calling himself the witch Finder General, and Gall placed the blame for the witch panic where it belonged on Hopkins and Stern, who were going from town to town stirring people up. In Gaul's words, quote, it is strange to tell what superstitious opinions, affections, relations are generally risen amongst us since the witch Finders came into the country. And May of sixteen forty seven, Matthew Hopkins published his own pamphlet in response to these and other criticisms. It was called Quote the Discovery of Witches, An Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judges of the Assize for the County of Norfolk, and now published by Matthew Hopkins, witch Finder, for the benefit of the whole Kingdom. Hopkins framed his defense as a series of answers to fourteen queries he had purportedly been asked, although some of the queries are really statements rather than questions. Uh The first is that he must be a witch, sorcerer and wizard himself, otherwise he could not have done what he was doing. The second is that, if he wasn't a witch himself, that he had met with the devil and stolen a book containing the names of all the witches in England, so he was doing this work with the help of the devil. He responds to the first of these statements with quote, if Satan's kingdom be divided against itself, how shall it stand? That's his whole answer. He responds to the second by basically saying that if he did steal the devil's book, wasn't that something that he should be commended for rather than judged. It's also in the earlier queries that Hopkins says his knowledge of witchcraft came from his own experience, which he describes as quote yet the surest and safest way to judge by Query five in this pamphlet points out that a lot of people, especially people who are poor or elderly, have marks on their bodies naturally, along with quote other natural excrescencies as hemrhods, piles, childbearing, etcetera. So how is one man to judge that one of these perfectly normal things is un natural? Hopkins reply is quote the party, So judging can justify their skill to any and show good reasons why such marks are not merely natural, neither that they can happen by any such natural cause, as is before expressed, and for further answer for their private judgments alone. It is most false and untrue. For never was any man tried by search of his body, but commonly a dozen of the ablest men in the parish or elsewhere were present, and most commonly as many ancient skillful matrons and midwives present. When the women are tried, which marks, not only he and his company attests to be very suspicious, but all beholders, the skillfullest of them, do not approve of them, but likewise assent that such tokens cannot, in their judgments, proceed from any the above mentioned causes. In the next query, Hopkins goes on to explain that you can tell these marks aren't natural because they're in unusual places. They're also insensible to pain, and they change shape, for example, because they're sending their imps to feed from someone else to avoid the tection, or because their imps have been able to feed from anyone for a period of time. This pamphlet goes on to explain in Hopkins opinion various aspects of witchcraft, and to defend his own actions, simultaneously explaining the necessity of practices like waking and swimming witches, and saying that he utterly denies any confession that results from torture. And the last query quote all that the witch finder doth is to fleece the country of their money, and therefore rides and goes to towns to have employment, and promiseth them fair promises, and it maybe doth nothing for it, and possesseth many men that they have so many wizards and so many witches in their town, and so heartens them on to entertain him. His answer quote, you do him a great deal of wrong, and every of these particulars. For first one, he never went into any town or place, but they rode rit or sent often for him, and were for aught. He knew glad of him too. He is a man that doth disclaim that ever he detected a witch, or said thou art a witch, only after her trial by search and their own confessions, as he as others may judge. Three lastly, judge how he fleeceth the country and enriches himself by considering the vast sum he takes of every town he demands, but twenty shillings a town, and doth sometimes ride twenty miles for that, and hath no more for all his charges thither and back again. And it maybe he stays a week there and find there are three or four witches, or if it be but one, cheap enough, and this is the great sum he takes to maintain his company with three horses. Hopkins partner John Stern published his own defense of their work, called A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, and like Hopkins, Stern pushed back on criticisms that quote, there are no witches, but that there are many poor, silly, ignorant people hanged wrongfully, and that those who have gone or been instruments in finding out or discovering those of late made known have done it for their own private ends, for gain and such like, favoring some where they thought good, and unjustly prosecuting others. Unlike Hopkins, who made only one direct reference to King James's demonology, Stern's work cites a lot more references, especially Bible verses. There are so many book chapter in Birth citations, especially in the first portion of this, that it is difficult to read. It's like every third word is a book of the Bible, and some chapters and verses. By the time Stern published his book in sixty eight, The East Anglia, which trials were essentially over. As English Civil War drew to a close, the courts got back to a more normal operation, and the number of witchcraft accusations dropped. People were also less inclined to trust Hopkins and Stern in the face of such vocal criticism about their methods. Hopkins was also dead. He published his defense of his work Flee, three months before he died. He was probably in his mid to late twenties, and his pursuit of Witches and East Anglia had lasted for less than three years. Although there is a popular story that Hopkins was eventually convicted of witchcraft himself, he actually died of tuberculosis, which was probably affecting his health for most or all of the witch trials that he was part of. He was buried at miss Ley with Manningtree on August twelve, seven, and today he is said to haunt miss Ley Pond and other sites around the area. He's also the focus of the nineteen film witch Finder, which is directed by Michael Reeves and Stars. Previous podcast subject Vincent Price and best actor of all time. I never speak in superlatives, but I sure do love and some Price, and he has a rad little bob in that movie. Yeah, Holly and I had a conversation before U, before this whole outline was even done, really about how I'm so used to seeing Vincent Price clean shaven or with a beard that seems to denote I am evil, like a little very pointy beard that h for when I watched the trailer um to this film, which finder at first I did not recognize him, Like his face is there in the thumbnail and I'm like, oh, I wonder what character he played? Oh, it's that one. As soon as you started talking, I of course immediately knew who it was. Um, this whole story we talked earlier about, like this incongruity between how tragic and terrible it is and how bizarre and fantastic all the testimony from the trial is. But the thing that I just find the most terrifying about it is that basically this guy kind of showed up out of nowhere at age twenty something, and not single handedly. There was other stuff going on. But he definitely was the instigator in in these trials all across East Anglia. Um that went on for roughly three years, and then he died at with not really any experience that anybody knows of besides his own opinion about who was a witch. Yeah, it's interesting because it's it's uh one of those things where I mean, I certainly joked in this episode about all the great names for pets, but like when you think about one person on this weird quest to do this thing and how many lives he completely obliterated in of course of it, it becomes very sobering and dismaying. Well, and we've also we for sure talked about figures on the podcast before who singlehandedly uh had just terrible consequences and a lot of a lot of time. That was a person who was already in a position of power, um not not you know, the relatively well off son of a vicar who didn't seem to have any other notable background to to put him in that level of authority besides his own authority that he decided to keep up for himself. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or Facebook U r L or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.