Blame the Witch

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

Microsoft AI image. London Park

I’m 17k words into writing my seventh novel at the moment. The problem is I like to make sure I am historically correct, even though I’m writing fiction. For instance, I wrote, in 1645 that one of my characters was walking through a park in London to watch the people in their fine clothes promenading. Suddenly, it occurred to me were there such things as parks in London at that time. From what I have been able to uncover via a quick search on Google (according to Walking, Rambling and Promenading in eighteenth-century London: literary and Cultural history – Alison F. O’Byne 2003) Yes indeed, there was St. James’ Park. The park was newly opened to the public for walking. It was a place to be seen and be seen. Promenading was a way to show off your fine clothes and mix with polite society.

Walking in the parks allowed all classes of society to mix from tradesmen, shopkeepers and even low life as a poem from that time tells us: Whores… Great Ladies, chamber-maids, and drudges. The rag-picker and heiress… Carr-men, divines, great lords, and taylors, Prentices, poets, pimps, gaolers; foot-men, fine fops. It wasn’t just the poets who had fun writing about the mix of people promenading in the great park of London. Comedic play-wrights at that time used the setting to write about sexual intrigue and assignation.

While studying the era, in which I’m writing, I came across another interesting document called Dearth and English Revolution Harvest Crisis which highlights the problems Britain was suffering in 1645 – 50. At this time in England, the country was still caught up in the English Civil War between the Royalists, who were wealthy supporters of King Charles I and his son, Charles II of England, and the Roundheads (aka Parliamentarians) were the supporters of the Parliament of England. The Roundheads wanted a constitutional monarchy in place of the absolute monarchy sought by Charles II.

Like in Britain today, back in 1645, the price of food and goods was rising fast due to the economic slump from the English Civil War, along with a political crisis, and popular protest. Amidst all this, something much darker was happening as well. Someone had to be blamed for the failing crops, and the fact that the poor were forced to sell their bedding or wearing apparel to make ends meet. The number of hungry poor was growing daily as England was slipping into the shadow of famine.

AI Created image.

Bad weather had ruined the harvests of corn and hay for five years from the autumn of 1646 onwards and every succeeding year until the harvest of 1651 exacerbated the problems left by the previous ones. Grain crops were destroyed by summer rains in 1648 and by summer drought in 1649, and the frost of the particularly harsh intervening spring was so devastating to the winter corn crop that livestock perished in the fields. Cattle plague and sheep rot spread among farming communities. People travelled from village to village hoping to buy food to feed their families only to find residents were no better off.

As wages fell and prices rose it created the perfect storm. Essex clergyman Ralph Josselin, of Earls Colne, wrote in his diary on the 15th of September 1646 that the wheat harvest was ‘exceedingly smitten and dwindled and rank‘. By October, he wrote about the price of butter, cheese, and meat as being very dear. In the following year, all things continued to be expensive and by August, provisions were scarce to be gotten for our money. Over the following year, Josselin reported that beggars were many, and givers were few. Soon the failed harvests and other such calamities were interpreted by the church and state to reinforce a social order on the poor and uneducated as punishment visited on a sinful populace by the wrathful God.

During this time, there was a lack of understanding, especially scientific knowledge, as to why a cow, pig, or sheep suddenly dies; to why crops might fail because of blight. Alternaria alternata is a type of fungus whose spores overwinter on infected plant debris left in the soil, or they arrive on infected seeds. The spores, called conidia, spread to lower stems and foliage by water splashing, either from rain or irrigation. If the plant surface remains wet for 5 to 10 hours, spores germinate to infect the plant. The disease thrives in warm summer temperatures, spreading best in the 75° to 85°F range. Since early blight requires a long period of wetness, high humidity plays a key role as well. It is easy for us, with the internet in our pocket, to snap a picture of a dying plant in our vegetable plot and identify why our crop is failing.

Matthew Hopkins Witch Finder General AI Created image.

Back in 1645-50 you just looked for a scapegoat. An elderly lady sitting outside her hovel, with thin and sunken cheeks from lack of food, mumbling to herself must be cursing the villagers because that is why their crops are failing. Maybe her vegetable plot has been spared and is green and healthy because she always feeds them fresh soil and digs in manure. And what of her cat, don’t witches have familiars?

In 1645 Matthew Hopkins and his assistants travelled throughout Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Huntingdonshire doing his wicked work. Matthew Hopkins was your original Influencer as there had been a drop in persecution of witches after 1603. Then 1644 when Hopkins, an unknown lawyer with a practice in Manningtree in the north of Essex set off on his cruel mission. In March 1644, Hopkins wrote his ‘Discovery of Witches’ book in which he claimed he had uncovered some seven or eight horrible sect of witches living in Manningtree, with adjacent witches from other towns. Every six weeks on a Friday night their held a meeting close to his house, where they offered several solemn sacrifices to the devil.

The eight witches of Manningtree were arrested, tried, condemned to death and hanged. Matthew Hopkins was paid twenty shillings a time to get rid of witches, so the more he found the more he was paid. Evil gossip spread like wildfire as spiteful neighbours, damning evidence arising from medical ignorance helped to condemn eccentric old ladies to death. No one was safe.

In all honesty, witches never existed, only in the minds of uneducated people. Hopkins and other witchfinders were making money from the persecution of women, especially the vulnerable. Now if you are talking about wise, knowledgeable women of the village who had an understanding of healing, the knowledge of plants etc. These women did exist and their knowledge has been taken from us, because of the likes of Hopkins.

I hope you enjoy reading what I have uncovered in my research so far. Now I’m off the continue writing my seventh book.

Chat again soon.