HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT Volume 3 Dancing Lights Press Join our community at DancingLightsPress.com Follow us on Twitter @LightsPress SampleThe bearer of this document has the express file written permission of the publisher to make copies for personal use. A History of Witchcraft is based upon works in the public domain. Introduction and commentary copyright 2021 Berin Kinsman. All rights reserved. This is version 1.0 of this document. Special Thanks Denise Webster, Josephine Lawson, Agnes Foster, Homer Taylor, Jean Watson, Benjamin Silva, Roger Franklin, Dave Thompson, Keith Ferguson, Sidney Becker, Hugo Turner, Louis Williams, Lorene Alexander, Julio Meyer, Marguerite Townsend, Cameron Price, Kathleen Drake, Eunice Cobb, Roy Gray, Rachael Buchanan, Ignacio Ross, Santos McCormick, Javier Moss, Winston McKinney, Estelle Wolfe, Rudolph Hoffman, Grace Frank, Yolanda Burgess, Elias Barber, Hannah Cooper, Michelle Campbell, Ernesto Perry, Marco Lane, Nicholas Simmons, Melissa Joseph, Vicky Gibbs, Kara Walton, Dewey Hogan, Casey Carter, Bobby Cook, Shawn Reed, Nichole Sutton, Edgar Gardner, Jason Herrera, Kristopher Stephens, Armando Steele, Joshua Ortega, Ginger Hines, Jacob Jensen, Oliver Maldonado. They know why, and that’s what matters. Sample file CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................1 MATTHEW HOPKINS..........................................3 COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE..........42 THE LITERATURE OF WITCHCRAFT..................67 ABOUT DANCING LIGHTS PRESS.......................91 Sample file Sample file INTRODUCTION This History of Witchcraft is a system-agnostic sourcebook for any historical, horror, or fantasy game. It presents a real-world account of witchcraft in England between 1558 to 1718. Based on the academic work of Wallace Notestein, it focuses on the political and cultural causes and impacts of witchhunters and witch trials, rather than strictly religious or supernatural factors. The result is a rich, nuanced look at the period filled with information that can be mined for worldbuilding details usable in your own settings. There are colorful characters that can be adapted as villains and non-player characters. Story hooks abound, either as background details for your game world, or as adventure seeds for player characters to pursue. In presenting the Witchcraft Reference series, my goal is to get people to look beyond official gaming material for inspiration. There is a wealth of ideas to be found in history, biographies, and older fiction from before the tabletop roleplaying game era that is waiting to be tapped. My hope is that this book with fire up your imagination, and help you to discover new possibilities. Enjoy! SampleBerin Kinsmanfile Dancing Lights Press 1 How to Use This Book While this four-book series covers the history of the height of English witchcraft, each volume and individual sections can be read and utilized separately. For ease of reference, this book is broken into the following chapters: Matthew Hopkins The notorious Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed witchfinder-general, was responsible for over 100 people being tried and killed as witches. Commonwealth and Protectorate A look at how witchcraft was handled during the Interregnum, when no king ruled England following the execution of Charles I and prior to the rise of Charles II. The Literature of Witchcraft The writings on witchcraft following the James I era, from 1603 to 1660, and how both policy and superstition continued to evolve in England. Sample file 2 MATTHEW HOPKINS In the annals of English witchcraft Matthew Hopkins occupies a place by himself. For more than two years he was the arch-instigator in prosecutions which, at least in the numbers of those executed, mark the high tide of the delusion. His name was one hardly known by his contemporaries, but he has since become a figure in the annals of English roguery. Very recently his life has found record among those of "Twelve Bad Men." What we know of him up to the time of his first appearance in his successful rôle about March of 1644/5 is soon told. He was the son of James Hopkins, minister of Wenham in Suffolk. He was "a lawyer of but little note" at Ipswich, thence removing to Manningtree. Whether he may have been the Matthew Hopkins of Southwark who complained in 1644 of inability to pay the taxes is more than doubtful, but there is reason enough to believe that he found the law no very remunerative profession. He was ready for some new venture and an accidental circumstance in Manningtree turned him into a wholly new field of endeavor. He assumed the rôle of a witchfinder and is said to have taken the title of witchfinder-general. He had made little or no preparation for the work that Samplenow came to his hand. King James's famous Dæmonologie file he was familiar with, but he may have studied it after his first experiences at Manningtree. It seems somewhat probable, 3 too, that he had read, and indeed been much influenced by, the account of the Lancashire witches of 1612, as well as by Richard Bernard's Advice to Grand Jurymen. But, if he read the latter book, he seems altogether to have misinterpreted it. As to his general information and education, we have no data save the hints to be gained from his own writings. His letter to John Gaule and the little brochure which he penned in self- defence reveal a man able to express himself with some clearness and with a great deal of vigor. There were force of character and nervous energy behind his defiant words. It is no exaggeration, as we shall see in following his career, to say that the witch crusader was a man of action, who might in another field have made his mark. To know something of his religious proclivities would be extremely interesting. On this point, however, he gives us no clue. But his fellow worker, John Stearne, was clearly a Puritan and Hopkins was surely of the same faith. It can hardly be proved, however, that religious zeal prompted him in his campaign. For a time of spiritual earnestness his utterances seem rather lukewarm. It was in his own town that his attention was first directed towards the dangers of witchcraft. The witches, he tells us, were accustomed to hold their meetings near his house. During one of their assemblies he overheard a witch bid her Sampleimps to go to another witch. The other witch, whosefile name was thus revealed to him—Elizabeth Clarke, a poor one- 4 legged creature—was promptly taken into custody on Hopkins's charge. Other accusations poured in. John Rivet had consulted a cunning woman about the illness of his wife, and had learned that two neighbors were responsible. One of these, he was told, dwelt a little above his own home; "whereupon he beleeved his said wife was bewitched by... Elizabeth Clarke, ... for that the said Elizabeth's mother and some other of her kinsfolke did suffer death for witchcraft." The justices of the peace accordingly had her "searched by women who had for many yeares known the Devill's marks," and, when these were found on her, they bade her custodians "keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars." Torture is unknown to English law; but, in our day of the "third degree," nobody needs to be told that what is put out at the door may steal in at the window. It may be that, in the seventeenth century, the pious English justices had no suspicion that enforced sleeplessness is a form of physical torture more nerve-racking and irresistible than the thumb- screw. Three days and nights of "watching" brought Elizabeth Clarke to "confess many things"; and when, on the fourth night, her townsmen Hopkins and Stearne dropped in to fill out from her own lips the warrants against those she had named as accomplices, she told them that, if they would stay Sampleand do her no hurt, she would call one of her imps. file 5 Hopkins told her that he would not allow it, but he stayed. Within a quarter of an hour the imps appeared, six of them, one after another. The first was a "white thing in the likeness of a Cat, but not altogether so big," the second a white dog with some sandy spots and very short legs, the third, Vinegar Tom, was a greyhound with long legs. We need not go further into the story. The court records give the testimony of Hopkins and Stearne. Both have related the affair in their pamphlets. Six others, four of whom were women, made oath to the appearances of the imps. In this respect the trial is unique among all in English history. Eight people testified that they had seen the imps. Two of them referred elsewhere to what they had seen, and their accounts agreed substantially. It may be doubted if the supporting evidence offered at any trial in the seventeenth century in England went so far towards establishing the actual appearance of the so-called imps of the witches. How are we to account for these phenomena? What was the nature of the delusion seemingly shared by eight people? It is for the psychologist to answer. Two explanations occur to the layman. It is not inconceivable that there were rodents in the gaol—the terrible conditions in the gaols of the time are too well known to need description—and that the creatures running about in the dark were easily mistaken by excited Samplepeople for something more than natural. It is possible, file too, that all the appearances were the fabric of imagination or invention. The spectators were all in a state of high 6 expectation of supernatural appearances. What the over-alert leaders declared they had seen the others would be sure to have seen.