Tracy Borman - Witches: A Tale of Sorcery, Scandal and Seduction

Contents

SEPTEMBER 1613.

In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of Englands great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is tormented with violent convulsions. Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. Soon the whole family will be stricken with the same terrifying symptoms. The second son, the last male of the line, will not survive.

It is said witches are to blame. And so the Earl of Rutlands sons will not be the last to die.

Witches traces the dramatic events which unfolded at one of Englands oldest and most spectacular castles four hundred years ago. The case is among those which constitute the European witch craze of the 15th-18th centuries, when suspected witches were burned, hanged, or tortured by the thousand. Like those other cases, it is a tale of superstition, the darkest limits of the human imagination and, ultimately, injustice a reminder of how paranoia and hysteria can create an environment in which nonconformism spells death. But as Tracy Borman reveals here, it is not quite typical. The most powerful and Machiavellian figure of the Jacobean court had a vested interest in events at Belvoir. He would mastermind a conspiracy that has remained hidden for centuries.

Tracy Borman studied and taught history at the University of Hull and was awarded a PhD in 1997. She went on to a successful career in heritage, and is now Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust and interim Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces.

Tracy is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books, including Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror and Elizabeths Women, which was Book of the Week on Radio 4. She regularly appears on television and radio, and is a contributor to BBC History Magazine. Tracy gives public talks and lectures across the country on a wide range of subjects. She lives in Surrey with her daughter.

Elizabeths Women:
The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen

Henrietta Howard:
Kings Mistress, Queens Servant

Matilda: Wife of the Conquerer,
First Queen of the England

The keep, Belvoir Castle. (By kind permission of The Duke and Duchess of Rutland, Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Francis Manners, th Earl of Rutland. (By kind permission of The Duke and Duchess of Rutland)

The interior of St Marys Church, Bottesford.

Detail of the tomb, showing the two Manners boys.

A seventeenth-century woodcut showing a witch kissing Satan on the buttocks. ( akg-images)

Witch riding a broomstick. ( Wellcome Library, London)

Le Dpart pour le Sabbat, by David Teniers the Younger. ( Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin/A. Psille)

The Witches Sabbath, by Francisco Goya. ( Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid, Spain/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Woodcut from Newes from Scotland. ( Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)

The title page of Daemonologie. ( The British Library Board/C..aa.)

James I of England and VI of Scotland, after John De Critz the Elder. ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and family. ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

The hanging of four witches. ( Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

The swimming of a witch. ( Wellcome Library, London)

The title page of the contemporary pamphlet telling the story of Joan Flower and her daughters. ( The British Library Board/C..b.)

In memory of Eva Reeson,
with love

Nestling in the far north-eastern corner of Leicestershire, on the edge of the Vale of Belvoir, is the magnificent church of St Marys, Bottesford. A testament to the God-fearing and prosperous inhabitants of the nearby castle, it is one of the largest village churches in England and its lofty spire can be seen for miles around. The fame of the so-called Lady of the Vale derives not from its scale and magnificence, however: it is from something altogether darker.

At the eastern end of the church lies the chancel, which houses the tombs of the lords of Belvoir Castle. In order to accommodate these cumbersome monuments, the arches and capitals were hacked into, and the roof of the chancel was pushed upwards. Even so, there was barely room to house the most unwieldy tomb of them all a classical-style mass of pretentious vulgarity, flanked by pillars and crowned by an enormous canopy, on top of which a peacock crest is jammed in with its head touching the rafters. This is the tomb of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland.

But the figures who immediately draw attention are the two small boys kneeling alongside, each clutching a skull. The long and insufferably pompous inscription records that the earls second wife, Lady Cecilia Hungerford, bore him these two sons, both who dyed in their infancy by wicked practice & sorcerye. The earl was so determined that the shocking story of his sons demise would live on after his own death that he personally commissioned this extraordinary inscription. It is the only reference to witchcraft that can be found in an English church.

The alleged murderers of his two boys were Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Phillipa the Witches of Belvoir.

What is a witch? To this deceptively simple question, history provides a myriad of different answers. The late-sixteenth-century commentator George Gifford produced the following succinct definition: A Witch is one that woorketh by the Devill, or by some develish or curious art, either hurting or healing.

In a tract published during Elizabeth Is reign, William West provided no fewer than six classes of witch: magicians, soothsayers, divinators, jugglers, enchanters and witches. The latter were defined most closely.

A witch or hag is she who deluded by a pact made with the devil through his persuasion, inspiration and juggling thinks she can bring about all manner of evil things, either by thought or imprecation, such as to shake the air with lightnings and thunder, to cause hail and tempests, to remove green corn or trees to another place, to be carried on her familiar spirit (which has taken upon him the deceitful shape of a goat, swine, or calf, etc.) into some mountain far distant, in a wonderfully short space of time, and sometimes to fly upon a staff or fork, or some other instrument, and to spend all the night after with her sweetheart, in playing, sporting, banqueting, dancing, dalliance, and divers other develish lusts and lewd disports, and to show a thousand such monstrous mockeries.

All of the authorities on the subject agreed that there were both good (white) and bad (black) witches. The former, often known as cunning folk, used their powers to provide a range of useful services to their community, such as healing the sick, finding lost or stolen goods, or predicting the future. In his Treatise Against Witchcraft which was the first pamphlet on witchcraft to be published in England Henry Holland attempted to explain the difference: Hereby it is manifest, that hurtfull magitians and witches which kill and hurt mens bodies and goods, are onely to be avoyded, and so they doe amongst us, but such of these practitioners, as can and will cure the sicke, finde thinges loste, have a good neere gesse in praedictions, and are not in any wise to be blamed... are often sought after in necessities unto this day, and they seeme to doe no man harme, but much good, and they speake the very trueth often.