"Fascinating and vivid." New Statesman "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 "An important work."
All About History "Well-researched." The Tablet On the morning of
Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping
at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its
appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a
matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary
of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives.
As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to
be forever 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 of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was
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 seems that the memory of these three women
- and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was
transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration
in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during 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acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration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.
General
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