HOPKINS, THE WITCHFINDER OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. -- On his return to his native county, Hopkins was assailed on every side by the outcries of his enemies, and he was alarmed at the indignation which his cruelties had excited. The extraordinary scale on which he had carried on his prosecutions, gave rise to a popular report that he was not himself unacquainted with Satan, from whom it was pretended by some that he had obtained the list of his subjects. Complaints had been publicly made against him, and his method of proceeding was laid aside as too rigorous and tyrannical. In fact, a great reaction had followed him in his course, and the witchfinder was now in disgrace. Hopkins felt this, and winced under the popular attacks.
It appears that he was of a weak constitution, and vexation and regret hastened the hereditary consumption to which was a prey. He returned to Manningtree in 1647, printed a pamphlet in his own defense, and then died. This we learn from his coadjutor Sterne, who assures us that he had "no trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsely reported of him."
A report was afterwards circulated, apparently without any foundation in truth, although adopted by Butler, - that, in the midst of the popular indignation against the witchfinder, some gentlemen had seized on him and put him to the trial of swimming; on which, as he happened to swim, he was adjudged to be himself a wizard.
Upon the death of Hopkins, the popular odium seems to have fallen on his colleague Sterne, who had taken up his residence at Lawshall, near Bury St. Edmund's. In 1648, provoked by the reflections that had been cast on himself and his colleague Hopkins, he published a defense of their conduct, under the title of "A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft," in which he boasts that he had been part and agent in convicting about two hundred witches in Essex, Suffolk, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely. He assures us "that in many places I never received penny as yet, nor any am like, notwithstanding I have hands for satisfaction, except I should sure; but many rather fall upon me for what hath been received: but I hope such sues will be disannulled, and that where 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."
Hopkins himself, in defending himself against the charge of interestedness, tells us that his regular charge was 20s. for each town, including the expenses of living, and journeying thither and back. In his book, he confesses that, besides the other practices of stripping the victims naked, and thrusting pins into various parts of their body, in search of marks; and swimming them, - he had practiced the new torture of keeping them awake, and forcing them to walk, which was an invention of his own: but he acknowledges that he had been so far obliged to yield to public opinion in the latter part of his course, as to lay aside this his own favourite remedy.
Adopted from Wright's Narratives of Sorcery and Magic.
The Witchfinder
The Witches Secret
Witches and Wicca
The Witches of Eastwick
Moonstone healing
Foreign retirees in Manchuria
Prejevalsky's Exploration in Mongolia
Was Prejevalsky the father of Stalin?
The Third Asiatic Expedition in Mongolia
Waiting in Ulaan Baatar
My first trip to Tibet
The Expulsion of Count Tolstoi
The Sinking of the Titanic and Other Great Sea Disasters
Changsha riots - Anti-Foreign Riots in China
Sin eaters and sin eating
Great Impostors: Mary Tofts and her rabbits
