NOT SO ‘ORRIBLE ‘ISTORIES*
WHAT THE DICKENS? Penny Griffiths-Morgan investigates
The Witch Trials of
Chelmsford
C
harles Dickens wrote in a letter to his friend Thomas Beard on January 11th 1835 saying that “If any one were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the Earth, I should decidedly say Chelmsford”
An armed man with an earpiece then arrived and spoke to the guide and then they both looked at me. He smiled at me and then took the two phials. I had no idea what was going on. A little later he returned with the two phials filled with water. “This is from the Popes private font. Take it with you and use it wisely,” the guide smiled. I couldn’t believe it! I took the phials and thanked him and the armed guard with so much zest they must have thought that I was a nutter! How lucky was I? I have asked sceptics, very well-known ones in fact, about my story. They have said that they can’t explain it but it’s not supernatural(?) or I fell asleep in front of a history programme! What bullsh*t! Since this experience I have seen three other previous lives that I have led. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we are reincarnated time after time. The only thing I would say is, be the best version of yourself that you can be in this life as if you are not, you’ll be back to perfect it until you get it right!
Nicky x
Psychic Medium, Tutor & Magazine Columnist Author of M.E Myself & I: Diary of a Psychic Twitter @NickyAlan07 Instagram @nickyalan333
Unsurprisingly (well, I do live here) I would vehemently disagree with him, as Chelmsford in Essex (UK) actually has a lot of fascinating bits of history which it can lay claim to, even if all Dickens found of interest was attending public hangings at nearby Springfield Prison (true story). Whilst I could go over around four hundred years of intriguing Chelmsford and Essex based history, I am going to focus on one element that may interest readers, that of witchcraft.
A
gnes Waterhouse is frequently written about as the first woman to be executed for the felony of witchcraft, but this is not actually true, she was actually the first for whom her trial and subsequent hanging was a media frenzy (as much as it could have been in 1566). She was in her mid-sixties and came from a small village on the outskirts of Chelmsford called Hatfield Peverel. What many do not realise about Essex is that during the Tudor period, it could have been seen as Witch central, in fact over a period of just twenty three years, ten different people – nine women and one man - from the same village as Agnes were tried and found guilty of that crime. Astonishingly one of the charges levied against Agnes was that she had been heard saying her prayers in Latin, and this was expressly forbidden in now Protestant England. Less than one hundred years later we have the appearance of the infamous Matthew Hopkins, self-proclaimed witch finder general (or misogynistic murdering conman, whichever job description you think fits). HAUNTED MAGAZINE
Here was a man born in Suffolk, who is said to have bought an Inn/Hotel in Mistley in Essex, settled in nearby Manningtree and began in 1644 with his witch hunting all over East Anglia, but unsurprisingly, Essex took the brunt – remember, it was associated with witchcraft already, if the cap fits and all that. They were not looking for those practicing maleficium so much, but to prove that an individual had made a deal with the devil, it was then they could be seen as heretics, and that was a crime deemed so heinous that normal legal procedure ceased to apply.
One of the reasons I despise Hopkins and his partner John Stearne so much (could you not tell?) could be that it is quite obvious that they were not looking to rid the world of witchcraft, more so saw an opportunity for money and notoriety. They would charge each town for the amount of witches that they were being expected to interview, with many having to heavily tax their inhabitants to pay for it. To give you an idea as to how exorbitant their costs were, in one small Suffolk village the cost was around £28…when the average wage was nearer sixpence. You can also look at their methods of torture, swimming being one, now this was not a new way of finding out if someone was deemed in league with Satan, it was advocated in King James I book Daemonologie, and had been mentioned in the Northampton trials in 1612. Merely operating a type of reverse baptism was not going to be enough for the cruel fame hungry pair, they came up with their own method where the individual was bent double, their arms crossed in front of their legs, and their thumbs tied to their big toe. A rope was looped around the person’s waist, and they were then placed into the water to sink and raised three times, if the men controlling the rope were not quick enough, it would be very easy for the individual to drown, and many did lose their lives this way.
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