The Last Witches in England

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

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4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

In 1682, three impoverished women from Bideford in Devon were hanged, becoming the last people to be executed for witchcraft in England. The evidence against them was flimsy and their conviction was secured against a background of a baying mob mentality. Yet their story has endured, and their names were chanted as recently as the 1980s, as both inspiration and incantation, by women peace activists at Greenham Common.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to John Callow, whose new book The Last Witches of England demonstrates how the case of the Bideford witches sheds light upon the turbulent religious, political, class and social tensions of the 17th century.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some of the best candidates for the dubious honour of being the last witches to be hanged
0:09.2	in England are temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards.
0:15.2	All were beggar women living in Biddeford in Devon, who were tried at the extra sizes
0:20.8	and condemned to death on the basis of one confession and much hearsay in 1682.
0:29.1	Three years later Alice Molland was also convicted and sentenced to death at the extra
0:33.9	sizes, but about whether her execution was actually carried out we have little information.
0:40.9	This means that the so-called Biddeford witches are the candidates about whose case we
0:45.5	know the most.
0:47.3	It was unusual timing, at the Whom Circular sizes between 1660 and 1701 or 48 witchcraft
0:55.0	indictments ended in an acquittal.
0:58.6	Witnesses were still being made therefore, but the judiciary was just less willing to believe
1:03.0	that witchcraft was at work.
1:05.6	But not in Devon.
1:07.6	Here a sense that witches walked the world was still held in common in the 1680s by ordinary
1:13.8	and elite folk, by the unlearned and the lettered by rural and urban populations.
1:20.0	And those who proved most likely to attract suspicion were the very poorest of the poor.
1:25.4	Joining me to talk about the case against Lloyd, Trembles and Edwards is John Callow,
1:31.3	honorary research fellow at the University of Suffolk and the author of the recent book,
1:36.4	The Last Witches of England, A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition.
1:48.1	It is real pleasure to talk to you about this book which is a fascinating examination
1:54.3	of a very, very late case of witchcraft.
1:58.4	The Last Witches of England were accused in Bidaford in Devon in 1682 and in your book
	...

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