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frame Witches disclose their familiar spirits to Matthew Hopkins.Matthew Hopkins, d. 1647, was an English witchhunter whose career flourished in the time of the English Civil War. He held, or claimed to hold, the office of "Witch-finder General" as bestowed by the Puritan Parliament, and practiced his witch-finding in Suffolk, Essex, and East Anglia.
Hopkins was a lawyer and the son of James Hopkins, a Puritan clergyman. According to his book The Discovery of Witches (not to be confused with Reginald Scot 's book The Discovery of Witchcraft) he began his career as a witch-finder when he allegedly overheard various women discussing their meetings with the Devil in March of 1644, in a village near Colchester. As a result of Hopkins's accusations, nineteen alleged witches were hanged and four more died in prison.
Hopkins was soon travelling over eastern England, claiming truthfully or not to be an official specially commissioned by Parliament to uncover and prosecute witches. His witch-finding career spanned from 1644 to 1646Events Ongoing events English Civil War ( 1642- 1649) Births April 15 King Christian V of Denmark April 26 King Peter II of Portugal July 1 Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat and lawyer. Deaths 1646.. While tortureTorture is the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain as a means of cruelty, intimidation, punishment, for the extraction of a confession or information or simply for the entertainment of the perpetrator. Signatories of the Third Geneva Conve was technically unlawful in England, he used various methods of browbeating to extract confessions from some of his victims. He used sleep deprivationSleep deprivation is an overall lack of the necessary amount of sleep. A person can be deprived of sleep by their own body and mind, insomnia, or actively deprived by another individual. Sleep deprivation is sometimes used as an instrument of torture. as a sort of bloodless torture. He also used a "swimming" test to see if the accused would float or sink in water, the theory being that witches had renounced their baptismIn certain religions such as Christianity, Mandaeanism, Sikhism, and some historic sects of Judaism, baptism is a water purification ritual. The word baptize derives from the Greek word (the infinitive; also listed as the 1st person singular present activ, so that all water would supernaturally reject them. He also employed "witch prickers" who pricked the accused with knives and special needles, looking for the Devil's mark that was supposed to be dead to all feeling and would not bleed. It was believed that the witch's familiar would drink their blood from the mark.
On the strength of his commission, Hopkins then demanded that the communities he visited pay him for his work. He also sold fetishes he called "witch boxes" that were supposed to protect the households of their owners from sorcery.
Samuel Butler's satire Hudibras commented on Hopkins's activity, saying:
- Has not this present Parliament
- A Lieger to the Devil sent,
- Fully impowr'd to treat about
- Finding revolted witches out
- And has not he, within a year,
- Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire?
- Some only for not being drown'd,
- And some for sitting above ground,
- Whole days and nights, upon their breeches,
- And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches.
- And some for putting knavish tricks
- Upon green geese and turky-chicks,
- And pigs, that suddenly deceast
- Of griefs unnat'ral, as he guest;
- Who after prov'd himself a witch
- And made a rod for his own breech.
The last line refers to a tradition that disgruntled villagers caught Hopkins and subjected him to his own "swimming" test: he floated, and therefore was hanged for witchcraft himself. Unfortunately, the parish records of Manningtree in Essex record his burial in August of 1647.
Matthew Hopkins's witch hunts were loosely adapted into a horror film starring Vincent Price as Hopkins, under the title The Conqueror Worm.
