The Dark History of Essex’s Smallest Town
Dear all,
It’s been Geography Enrichment week in School, and Monday’s assembly reading merged a dark and intense period in our local history that has recently been commemorated in the form of a local walking trail.
The quiet Essex town of Manningtree is the subject of this afternoon’s assembly. The smallest town in our County, it was nonetheless the centre of a dark and disturbing period of English history.
In the mid-17th century, during the English Civil War, a tide of fear and suspicion engulfed the eastern part of Essex and the southern part of Suffolk. It was in Manningtree, which lies a few miles north-east of Colchester, that Matthew Hopkins began to accuse several women of witchcraft. The first person he accused was his disabled neighbour, Elizabeth Clarke, and while he appears to have held a genuine belief in the existence of witches as agents of the Devil, he also seems to have quickly recognised there was a great deal of money to be made from denouncing witches. Hopkins and his assistant, John Stearne, employed cruel methods to force confessions. Using a retractable spike, they sought a ‘witch-mark,’ a spot on the body supposedly insensitive to pain, while one of their other methods was the ‘swimming test,’ whereby suspects were bound and immersed in water; floating meant guilt, while sinking (and drowning) implied innocence.
The human toll was devastating. Hopkins and Stearne are estimated to have sent between 200 and 400 individuals to their deaths in three years during the 1640s, with nineteen hanged on a single day in Chelmsford. The victims were often single women and/or those who didn’t quite fit in with their neighbours, no doubt many of them living with what would be recognised nowadays as disabilities.
By 1646, Hopkins had retired to Manningtree as a rich man, though public support waned as his methods were questioned and accusations of greed grew. The Essex Witch Trials remain a powerful lesson on the dangers of unchecked superstition, scapegoating, and intolerance – a chilling reminder of the injustice faced by ordinary people in extraordinary times, right here in Essex.
The University of Essex has undertaken a major study into the lives of the women who fell victim to Hopkins and his supporters. Their ‘Revisiting the Essex Witch Trials’ project highlights the stories of the accused women, and is accompanied by a walking map for those who wish to commemorate their suffering in person. Earlier this year, the Tendring Witch Heritage Trail was launched, which allows visitors access to re-enactments and testimonies of the witch trials via a smartphone as they walk the trail. A fascinating, if rather terrifying, piece of our local history.
Have a great weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
