His experiments having proved successful, Hopkins took up witch-finding as a vocation, one which provided him with the means of a comfortable livelihood, while it gratified his ambition by making him the terror of many and the admiration of more, investing him with just that kind of power which is delightful to a narrow and commonplace mind. Assuming the title of ‘Witch-finder-General,’ and taking with him John Sterne, and a woman, whose business it was to examine accused females for the devil’s marks, he travelled through the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Huntingdon, and Sussex.
He was at Bury, in Suffolk, in August, 1645, and there, on the 27th, no fewer than eighteen witches were executed at once through his instrumentality. A hundred and twenty more were to have been tried, but the approach of the royal troops led to the adjournment of the Assize. In one year this wholesale murderer caused the death of sixty poor creatures. The ‘test’ he generally adopted was that of ‘swimming,’ which James I. recommends with much unction in his ‘Demonologie.’ The hands and feet of the accused were tied together crosswise, the thumb of the right hand to the big toe of the left foot, and vice versâ. She was then wrapped up in a large sheet or blanket, and laid upon her back in a pond or river. If she sank, she was innocent, but established her innocence at the cost of her life; if she floated, which was generally the case, as her clothes afforded a temporary support, she was pronounced guilty, and hanged with all possible expedition.
Another ‘test’ was the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, which, it was believed, no witch could accomplish. Woe to the unfortunate creature who, in her nervousness, faltered over a syllable or stumbled at a word! Again she was forced into some awkward and painful attitude, bound with cords, and kept foodless and sleepless for four-and-twenty hours. Or she was walked continuously up and down a room, an attendant holding each arm, until she dropped with fatigue. Sometimes she was weighed against the church Bible, obtaining her deliverance if she proved to be heavier. But this last-named test was too lenient for the Witch-finder-General, who preferred the swimming ordeal.
One of his victims at Bury was a venerable clergyman, named Lowes, who had been Vicar of Brandeston, near Framlingham, for fifty years. ‘After he was found with the marks,’ says Sterne, ‘in his confession’—when made, to whom, or under what circumstances, we are not informed—‘he confessed that in pride of heart to be equal, or rather above God, the devil took advantage of him, and he covenanted with the devil, and sealed it with his blood, and had those familiars or spirits which sucked on the marks found on his body, and did much harm both by sea and land, especially by sea; for he confessed that he, being at Lungar Fort [Landguard Fort], in Suffolk, where he preached, as he walked upon the wall or works there, he saw a great sail of ships pass by, and that, as they were sailing by, one of his three imps, namely, his yellow one, forthwith appeared to him, and asked him what he should do, and he bade him go and sink such a ship, and showed his imp a new ship among the middle of the rest (as I remember), one that belonged to Ipswich; so he confessed the imp went forthwith away, and he stood still and viewed the ships on the sea as they were a-sailing, and perceived that ship immediately to be in more trouble and danger than the rest; for he said the water was more boisterous near that than the rest, tumbling up and down with waves, as if water had been boiled in a pot, and soon after (he said), in a short time, it sunk directly down into the sea as he stood and viewed it, when all the rest sailed down in safety; then he confessed he made fourteen widows in one quarter of an hour. Then Mr. Hopkins, as he told me (for he took his confession), asked him if it did not grieve him to see so many men cast away in a short time, and that he should be the cause of so many poor widows on a sudden; but he swore by his Maker he was joyful to see what power his imps had: and so likewise confessed many other mischiefs, and had a charm to keep him out of the jail and hanging, as he paraphrased it himself; but therein the devil deceived him, for he was hanged that Michaelmas time, 1645, at Bury St. Edmunds.’ Poor old man! This so-called confession has a very dubious air about it, and reads as if it had been invented by Matthew Hopkins, who, as Sterne naïvely acknowledges, ‘took the confessions,’ apparently without any witness or reporter being present.
The Witch-finder-General, when on his expeditions of inquiry, assumed the style of a man of fortune. He put up always at the best inns, and lived in the most luxurious fashion, which he could well afford to do, as, when invited to visit a town, he insisted on payment of his expenses for board and lodging, and a fee of twenty shillings. This sum he claimed under any circumstances; but if he succeeded in detecting any witches, he demanded another fee of twenty shillings for each one brought to execution. Generally his pretensions were admitted without demur; but occasionally he encountered a sturdy opponent, like the Rev. Mr. Gaul, of Great Staughton, in Huntingdonshire, who attacked him in a briskly-written pamphlet as an intolerable nuisance. Hopkins replied by an angry letter to one of the magistrates of the town, in which he said: ‘I am to come to Kimbolton this week, and it shall be ten to one but I will come to your town first; but I would certainly know afore whether your town affords many sticklers for such cattle [i.e. witches], or [is] willing to give and afford us good welcome and entertainment, as other where I have been, else I shall waive your shire (not as yet beginning in any part of it myself), and betake me to such places where I do and may persist without control, but with thanks and recompense.’
Neither Mr. Gaul nor the magistrates of Great Staughton showed any anxiety in regard to the witch-finder’s threat. On the contrary, Mr. Gaul returned to the charge in a second pamphlet, entitled ‘Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,’ in which, while admitting the existence of witches—for he was not above the superstition of his age and country—he vigorously attacked Hopkins for accusing persons on insufficient evidence, and denounced the atrocious cruelties of which he and his associates were guilty. I have no doubt that this manly language helped to bring about a wholesome change of public opinion. In the eastern counties so bitter a feeling of resentment arose, that Hopkins found it advisable to seek fresh woods and pastures new. In the spring of 1647 he was at Worcester, where four unfortunates were condemned on the evidence of himself and his associates. But the indignation against him deepened and extended, and he hastily returned to his native town, trembling for his wretched life. There he printed a defence of his conduct, under the title of ‘The Discovery of Witches, in answer to several queries lately delivered to the Judge of Assize for the county of Norfolk; published by Matthew Hopkins, witch-finder, for the benefit of the whole kingdom.’ His death occurred shortly afterwards. According to Sterne, he died the death of a righteous man, having ‘no trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsely reported for him.’ But the more generally accepted account is an instance of ‘poetical justice’—of Nemesis satisfied—which I heartily hope is authentic. It is said that he was surrounded by a mob in a Suffolk village, and accused of being himself a wizard, and of having, by his tricks of sorcery, cheated the devil out of a memorandum-book, in which were entered the names of all the witches in England. ‘Thus,’ cried the populace, ‘you find out witches, not by God’s name, but by the devil’s.’ He denied the charge; but his accusers determined that he should be subjected to his favourite test. He was stripped; his thumbs and toes were tied together; he was wrapped in a blanket, and cast into a pond. Whether he was drowned, or whether he floated, was taken up, tried, sentenced, and executed, authorities do not agree; but they agree that he never more disturbed the peace of the realm as a witch-finder.
Butler has found a niche for this knave, among other knaves, in his ‘Hudibras’:
‘Hath not this present Parliament
A lieger to the Devil sent,
Fully empowered to set about
Finding revolted witches out?
And has he not within a year
Hanged threescore of them in one shire?
Some only for not being drowned,
And some for sitting above ground
Whole days and nights upon their breeches,
And, feeling pain, were hanged for witches ...
Who proved himself at length a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech’—
the engineer hoist with his own petard—happily a by no means infrequent mode of retribution.
Sterne, the witch-finder’s colleague, not unnaturally shared in the public disfavour, and in defence of himself and his deceased partner gave to the world a ‘Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft,’ in which he acknowledges to have been concerned in the detection and condemnation of some 200 witches in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Norfolk and Cambridge, and the Isle of Ely. He adds that ‘in many places I never received penny as yet, nor any like, notwithstanding I have bonds for satisfaction, except I should sin; but many rather fall upon me for what hath been received, but I hope such suits will be disannulled, and that when I have been out of moneys for towns in charges and otherwise, such course will be taken that I may be satisfied and paid with reason.’ One can hardly admire sufficiently the brazen effrontery of this appeal!