Description
“Thoroughly researched.” The Spectator
“Intriguing.” BBC History Magazine
“Vividly told.” BBC History Revealed
“A timely warning against persecution.” Morning Star
“Astute and thoughtful.” History Today
“A very powerful work.” All About History
“Well-researched.” The Tablet
On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping on the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his circle of relatives had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird used to be an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric in their lives. As the results of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be perpetually defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred in their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it used to be said, used to be a place of witches.
Though ‘pretty much worn away’ the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it kind of feels that the memory of these three women – and in their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – used to be transformed from canker to be apologetic about, and from be apologetic about into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example used to be cited all over the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common.
In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.
