Author: Peter C. Brown
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750957956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Medieval folk had long suspected that the Devil was carrying out his work on earth with the help of his minions. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII declared this to be true, which resulted in witch-hunts across Europe that lasted for nearly 200 years. In 1645, England – and Essex in particular – was in the grip of witch fever. Between 1560 and 1680, 317 women and 23 men were tried for witchcraft in Essex alone, and over 100 were hanged. Essex Witches includes biographies of many of the local common folk who were tried in the courts for their beliefs and practice in herbal remedies and potions, and for causing the deaths of neighbours and even family members. These unfortunate citizens suffered the harshest penalties for their alleged sorcery and demonic ways, and those punishments are recorded here.
Author: A. K. Blakemore
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1646221575
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Wolf Hall meets The Favourite in this beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves. "This is an intimate portrait of a clever if unworldly heroine who slides from amused observation of the 'moribund carnival atmosphere' in the household of a 'possessed' child to nervous uncertainty about the part in the proceedings played by her adored tutor to utter despair as a wagon carts her off to prison." —Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review England, 1643. Puritanical fervor has gripped the nation. And in Manningtree, a town depleted of men since the wars began, the hot terror of damnation burns in the hearts of women left to their own devices. Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumors of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca—and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling. Brimming with contemporary energy and resonance, The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust, and betrayal run amok as a nation's arrogant male institutions start to realize that the very people they've suppressed for so long may be about to rise up and claim their freedom.
Author: Peter C. Brown
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750957956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Medieval folk had long suspected that the Devil was carrying out his work on earth with the help of his minions. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII declared this to be true, which resulted in witch-hunts across Europe which lasted for nearly 200 years. In 1645, England (notably Essex) was in the grip of witch fever. Between 1560 and 1680 in Essex alone 317 women and 23 men were tried for witchcraft, and over 100 were hanged. Essex Witches recounts many of the local common folk who were tried in the courts for their beliefs and practice in herbal remedies and potions, and for causing, often by their familiars, the deaths of neighbours and even family members, and had meted out the harshest penalties for their sorcery and demonic ways.
Author: Syd Moore
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786070995
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Rosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. No, not at all. It’s no surprise therefore when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There’s the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for old bones, those of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there’s curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can’t decide if he’s tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating. It all adds up to looking like her plans to sell the museum might need to be delayed, just for a while. Finding herself and Sam embroiled in a most peculiar centuries-old mystery, Rosie is quickly expelled from her comfort zone, where to her horror, the secrets of the past come with their own real, and all too present, danger as a strange magic threatens to envelope them all.
Author: Philip Kellingley
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781514874899
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64
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Book Description
The Essex Witch Trials of 1645 is a new, edited, printing of 'A true and exact Relation Of the severall Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the late Witches, arraigned and executed in the County of Essex. Who were arraigned and condemned at the late Sessions, holden at Chelmesford before the Right Honorable Robert, Earle of Warwicke, and severall of his Majesties Justices of Peace, the 29 of July, 1645. Wherein the severall murthers, and devillish Witchcrafts, committed on the bodies of men, women, and children, and divers cattell, are fully discovered.' It is an important historical document, containing testimony from Matthew Hopkins (the self-styled 'Witchfinder General') and his accomplice John Sterne. It was used, indirectly, as a reference by John Hale who was present at and wrote an account of the witch trials at Salem, Massachusetts some 50 years later. This volume is the first in a series of reprintings of original documents relating to witch trials in order to make them accessible to academics, students and the wider public.
Author: Stacy Schiff
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316200611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, THE WITCHES is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story-the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.
Author: Glyn Morgan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
Author: Syd Moore
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007478488
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
A chilling, haunting ghost story that delves into the dark past of the 16th century Essex witch trials.
Author: Mary Beth Norton
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030742636X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study. In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—had fled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Struck by the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed and what the witchcraft “victims” described, many were quick to see a vast conspiracy of the Devil (in league with the French and the Indians) threatening New England on all sides. By providing this essential context to the famous events, and by casting her net well beyond the borders of Salem itself, Norton sheds new light on one of the most perplexing and fascinating periods in our history.
Author: Malcolm Gaskill
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674025424
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
By spring 1645, two years of civil war had exacted a dreadful toll upon England. People lived in terror as disease and poverty spread, and the nation grew ever more politically divided. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to drive out the presumed evil in their midst. Touring Suffolk and East Anglia on horseback, they detected demons and idolators everywhere. Through torture, they extracted from terrified prisoners confessions of consorting with Satan and demonic spirits. Acclaimed historian Malcolm Gaskill retells the chilling story of the most savage witch-hunt in English history. By the autumn of 1647 at least 250 people--mostly women--had been captured, interrogated, and hauled before the courts. More than a hundred were hanged, causing Hopkins to be dubbed "Witchfinder General" by critics and admirers alike. Though their campaign was never legally sanctioned, they garnered the popular support of local gentry, clergy, and villagers. While Witchfinders tells of a unique and tragic historical moment fueled by religious fervor, today it serves as a reminder of the power of fear and fanaticism to fuel ordinary people's willingness to demonize others.