Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘the fear of the witch acted as a sanction in enforcing neighbourly conduct; that people gave to others because they feared their evil power. A conflicting idea, however, also existed. This was that the best way to prevent witchcraft was to sever all connexions with the suspect. Since witches often worked through physical objects, it was best to avoid all borrowing from, and lending to, suspects.‘

‘Unfortunately, it is impossible to assess from the Assize records how many people confessed or pleaded guilty. From the indictments we learn of only seven who confessed, but comparison with the witchcraft pamphlets reveals that a much larger number of suspects admitted their guilt. Probably more accurately recorded were the cases where the accused pleaded pregnancy.‘

‘The first English Statute concerning witchcraft was enacted in 1542. The position before that date is not altogether clear. Although Britton and Fleta declared that ‘an inquiry about sorcerers is one of the articles of the sheriff’s turn’, most authorities suggest that witchcraft was treated as a branch of heresy, an ecclesiastical offence which was later punished by the State‘

‘Essentially, Thomas argues that witchcraft accusation was related to failure to carry out some hitherto recognised social obligation; a poor woman would ask for charity or to borrow essential supplies (often from another, slightly better off, woman), but would be denied and eventually, if misfortune happened to the one who had denied her, would be accused of using witchcraft to cause the misfortune.’

‘one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of the European witchcraze... Over the winter of 1644-5 Matthew Hopkins, an obscure petty gentleman living at Manningtree in north-east Essex, became worried about witches in his neighbourhood. His worries bore fruit in the prosecution of thirty-six witches, of whom perhaps nineteen were executed, at the summer 1645 assizes in Essex.‘

‘theme running through many of these accounts, and one which clearly added to the growing image of the Quaker as witch, was the prominence of animals, or familiar spirits, the latter a quintessential English feature of witchcraft beliefs. In the Cambridge case cited above, Philipps (or Prior) accused the Quakers of transforming her into a mare and riding her to the feast, or sabbat’

‘The prosecution of witches was secularised in Scotland at a fairly early
date, and there was considerable cooperation between church and state in prosecuting the crime. James VI, the king of Scotland during one of the country's most intense periods of witch hunting, not only was a royal
absolutist but also wrote a treatise that encouraged the prosecution of witches.‘

‘witchcraft must be multifactorial, relating it to a number of discrete, or at least separable, causes. Any attempt to suggest that there is a single cause, or even a dominant one, a hidden key to the mystery, should be treated with the greatest suspicion. There has been no shortage of heroic attempts in this direction, of course. Some have thought witches really existed, whether as devil worshippers, heretics’

So far I’m enjoying this much more than The Plague Charmer. I’ve enjoyed all of Karen Maitland’s books, but sometimes I just prefer characters in certain books more than others.

‘Although the case of Joan, Margaret and Phillipa Flower is emblematic of the treatment suffered by thousands of others accused of witchcraft, it had come at a time of growing scepticism. By 1619, even King James had seemed thoroughly bored with both the theory and persecution of witchcraft. As one commentator put it, he ‘came off very much from these notions in his elder Years’.’

‘According to Dalton, two of the most important signs of guilt were the presence of a ‘familiar, or spirit’, and a mark on the suspect’s body to distinguish where their familiar ‘sucketh them’. Other proofs included the testimony of the victim, the examination and confession of the witch’s children or servants, and ‘their own voluntarie confession, which exceedes all other evidence’.‘

‘Cooper went on to advise that the examination of the suspect ‘may either be made by Question from the Magistrate, by certaine wise and crosse Interrogations to this end’. Surprisingly, given that it was in theory illegal, he advised that a conviction might also be obtained ‘by Torture, when together with words, such violent meanes are used, by paine, to extort confession’’

‘There was no such miracle cure for the young Lord Ros, whose condition continued to worsen, despite the ministrations of the country’s best doctors. It may have been Joan Flower’s failure to heal her son that persuaded Cecilia and her husband to finally heed the ‘newes, tales and reports’ which their servants and tenants had been whispering ever since the death of the elder Manners boy.‘

‘Whether or not the Flower women had intended harm against the Manners family, shortly after Margaret’s dismissal a calamity befell the household at Belvoir. In late summer 1613, their elder son, Henry, Lord Ros, suddenly ‘sickened very strangely’, and ‘did lingring, lye tormented long’. To his parents’ horror, he never recovered. He died in September‘

‘Between 1610 and 1612, there was a sudden prevalence of accusations of sorcery across most of the Continent. The celebrated eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire estimated that there were as many as 10,000 victims of the witch craze. Only the lands of the Orthodox church in the east and the Dutch republic in the west offered any sanctuary. The situation was mirrored in England’

‘He was a product of the strict Scottish Reformation. From an early age he was trained by scholars of the Protestant faith, and he grew up with a strong aversion to Catholicism. Because the latter was closely entwined with sorcery in the minds of many of his contemporaries, it was perhaps natural that the King of Scots should develop a deep-seated suspicion of witchcraft.‘

‘Meanwhile, severe outbreaks of plague during the same period created a deeply insecure and volatile society. A succession of bad harvests and near famines, such as occurred at Trier in Germany in the late sixteenth century, coincided exactly with a period of frenzied witch hunting. Likewise, an outbreak of plague in the town of Ellwangen in 1611 promoted a spate of witchcraft cases.’

‘An increasing number of shopkeepers sought to attract custom by listing prices; ticketing their wares with no abatement; offering special bargains or particularly low prices for ready money. The evidence points to a quickening of trade and keener competition. Local shopkeepers vied with each other for custom and sought to match or outdo their competitors from major centres such as London’

‘What do the reports of Eden and Davies reveal about the household economy of the poor at the end of the century? First, that food, including candles and soap, absorbed somewhere in the neighbourhood of 65 to 70 percent of the income, a figure remarkably similar to the workers’ budget in the midnineteenth century.‘

‘Petty shops formed a very large proportion of all shops in London, over 50 percent; possibly less in a city such as York. However small the trade of an individual shop, the total amount of business handled by petty shopkeepers was no trifling affair. Based on the incomes of the assessed classes in London, some 40 percent of the revenue derived from the retail shop trade went to small shopkeepers.‘

‘Pitt’s tax on retail shops was not a success. It was short-lived (1785-9), failed to yield the anticipated revenue, and, more damaging, alienating a considerable portion of the London commercial community. But the whole proceedings form a fruitful source of information on the retail traders of the kingdom, particularly their business practices and principles.‘

‘At the same time, demand for consumer goods increased. The expansion of the home market was the result of a number of interrelated forces. The quickening of industrial activities and changes in the organisation of agriculture brought about an ever-larger number of workers almost wholly dependent on wages. Most experienced an improvement in their disposable income.’

I can’t imagine being trapped in a house, waiting to see whether any member of your family succumbs to the plague. This family cleaned and buried two children, who they soon found out died of the plague. So the townspeople have locked them inside their house in case they caught it and spread it to other people. Sadly this happened quite a lot back then.

‘As Lemire’s work makes clear, there was a huge market for second-hand clothes in eighteenth-century England. Supplies came from a variety of sources. Thefts from houses, shops, laundries or even the bodies of their owners provided not only large quantities of used clothing, but also - via the testimonies of the victims and the accused given when such crimes went to court - much of our knowledge of the trade.’

‘From about 1530, after a century of stagnation, there was a marked revival in the demand for Cheapside properties, which by 1600 had surpassed the values attained three centuries earlier. During the course of this change a few shops were divided into smaller ones, but the proliferation of minute shops and trading sites... did not reappear.’

‘As in many parts of western Europe, the years between about 1050 and 1300 witnessed an impressive expansion of formal marketing in markets and fairs in England. This can be linked to the contemporary growth of population, employment, trade and monetary circulation... In England by 1200 there were already at least 356 markets and 146 fairs held by ancient right, or licensed by the crown.‘