Hello all!
My very first published novel, way back in 2014, was Ella’s Memoirs. It was a gothic tale that included witch trials, although mine were set in Germany where persecutions reached some of their most terrifying heights. You do not need to look abroad to find witches, though. Devon has its own story, and it came shockingly late. In 1682, three women from Bideford were tried for witchcraft and hanged. Their case is remembered as one of the last executions for witchcraft in England.
The women were called Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles. They were all poor, marginalised, and vulnerable. Temperance had already faced accusations before, Susannah was widowed and socially isolated, and Mary had lost her family and survived by begging. In other words, they fitted the profile of women who were easiest to target when fear and resentment ran high (Callow 2021).
The charges themselves were built on flimsy ground. Local gossip claimed that Temperance had confessed to meeting a “black man” who gave her power, that she had pinched and cursed a neighbour. Other testimony accused the women of travelling in invisible form or leaving marks upon the afflicted (Barry 2012). The trial was held at the Exeter Assizes, in Rougemont Castle, under Judge Thomas Raymond. The jury convicted them, and they were executed at Heavitree on 25 August 1682 (Gent 1982).
What makes the case so striking is its timing. By the 1680s much of Europe had moved away from witchcraft prosecutions, and even in England most accusations ended in acquittal. Devon, though, put three women to death on little more than suspicion and prejudice. John Callow describes it as a “tragedy of sorcery and superstition” and reminds us that the intensity of hatred towards them is part of the reason their story was preserved when so many others were forgotten (Callow 2021).
So, when I wrote about witches in my first novel, I imagined Germany. Yet the same story was happening here in Devon, with the same ingredients of poverty, fear, and prejudice. These women remind us how close folklore and tragedy can sit together, and how easily a story can become a sentence.
References:
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Barry, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640–1789. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
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Callow, John. The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition. Bloomsbury, 2021.
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Gent, Frank J. The Trial of the Bideford Witches. Bideford: Edward Gaskell, 1982.
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Exeter Civic Society. “The Devon Witches Plaque.” exetercivicsociety.org.uk (accessed 2023).