J Murray £20 pp364

In 1645-47, the bleakest years of the English civil war, a witch craze erupted in East Anglia. Around 300 suspects were interrogated, of whom a third were hanged. Two minor gentlemen from Essex, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, were responsible. In the final days of the purge, Hopkins proclaimed himself “Witchfinder General”. In 1968, Hopkins and Stearne were depicted in a horror film with the same title starring Vincent Price as Hopkins. Its slogan famously was: “Leave the children at home . . . if you are squeamish stay home with them!” Malcolm Gaskill seeks to rediscover the true story. This, he feels, lies more in the “how” than in the “why”. At a moment when the parliamentary iconoclasts were cleansing the churches of the diabolical “remnants of popery”, allegations of occult superstitions were predictable. Not even the vigilance of the preachers could eradicate the popular belief in magic, notably that witches made a pact with the devil. What needs to be explained is how a single accusation triggered a purge.

Events began when a tailor’s wife was stricken with a fever. Her husband consulted a “cunning” woman, who denounced a one-legged widow living alone on charity as a witch. The local magistrates would normally have questioned so unsubtle an accusation, but the war effort stretched them to the limit. Enter Hopkins and Stearne, who volunteered as investigators.

Hopkins was probably a lawyer’s clerk: he was adept at presenting evidence in ways that convinced juries. Like Stearne, he was staunchly puritan. Both men had an apocalyptic vision. They held that Satan stalked the streets as well as the battlefields in a deadly struggle between good and evil. They saw themselves as called to serve God and the commonwealth. Their speciality was interrogation. Suspects were tied onto cross-legged stools for up to 24 hours without food or sleep, then made to walk or run up and down until they hallucinated. Only when they satisfied the witchfinders’ leading questions were they permitted to sleep. Often, they would awake unaware that they had confessed.

Since English law discouraged self-incrimination, Hopkins and Stearne looked for more technically robust evidence. They developed a system of “watching” and “searching” to prove their victims were “visited” by the devil’s “imps” or “familiars”. Such apparitions came as animals or insects, and were suckled with blood from “teats” usually found around a suspect’s genitalia. Then, the “searchers” (usually women, but sometimes men) examined the suspect. Warts, haemorrhoids, vaginal polyps, spots or pimples were all potentially “teats”, and in view of rudimentary hygiene, most people had something to show.

For almost a year, Hopkins and Stearne were heroes as they crisscrossed the eastern counties. They created a mood in which exterminating witches appeared to be part of the war effort against the hated royalists. Then, sticklers among the magistrates began rejecting indictments that appealed to crude stereotypes. Shortly afterwards, the authorities decided that the costs of prosecuting witches should be met by taxpayers. When it then emerged that Hopkins was charging in excess of the modern equivalent of £1,000 per week in fees and expenses, witch-hunting rapidly went out of fashion.

A strong-minded clergyman, John Gaule, published an exposé. He began a campaign against the witchfinders, which culminated in a lawyers’ manifesto. Ironically, this campaign also fed on superstition. The innuendo was that since Hopkins had been so diabolically successful, he, too, must have a guilty secret. Maybe he had access to the devil’s book naming all the witches in England? When Hopkins attempted to justify himself, his self-vindication became his valediction. He died soon afterwards from pleural tuberculosis, caught while interrogating suspects at an infected jail. Stearne lived for another 20 years, but was ostracised by his neighbours and accused of theft.

Gaskill vividly shows how the barbarity and fanaticism of civil war could spill over into the administration of justice. Readers should be warned that the book retains many features of an academic study, but those who persevere will be rewarded. Gaskill never talks down to us or his characters. He thinks our ancestors were mostly decent and intelligent people who could sink to the worst cruelty and credulity at times of crisis. He writes with sympathy, respect and deep human understanding.

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