Meet Matthew Hopkins, Witch-finder General

Myths and opinions on 'The Burning Times' in different parts of the neo-Pagan communities often take center stage. To some, it is a particularly depressing chapter in the long history of human bigotry and credulity, and to others, it is clear proof that an ancient matriarchal mystery religion not only survived well in to the medieval and early modern age, but was cruelly suppressed by Christian authorities who felt threatened.

It is clearly time to look at the facts of the so-called 'Burning Times' - this has of course been done better and far more throughly elsewhere, but I'd like this to be the first in a short series of posts on the subject from my own neo-Pagan perspective.

In this post, I'd like to present to you Matthew Hopkins, self-proclaimed Witch-finder General of England, as an example of the sort of thing that went on during the European witch craze. Hopkins was a Puritan and apparently a failed lawyer, and at the height of the English witch craze in the 1640's he presented himself as a witch-finder, playing on people's fears and anxieties and earning himself a handsome living an a bit of fame in the process.

At the time, the spectre of civil war and unrest generated much anxiety in communities all over England, especially in Essex, where 'war tensions and a strong previous tradition of [belief in satanic] witchcraft came together' (Russel & Alexander, p. 97). Hopkins was clearly able to convince the local people of Essex that they were under threat from a powerful conspiracy of satanic witches hiding in their midst, blighting crops and causing death and disease in humans and livestock.

Hopkins was active between 1644-1647. In his book, 'The Discovery of Witches', he describes how his suspicions were first aroused when he overheard a group of women discussing their ritual meetings with Satan. After having had this astounding revelation, he began touring the southeastern counties of England, appointing helpers along the way and offering his ministrations in the many villages he and his band passed through. In the end, Matthew Hopkins was to cause more people to be hanged for witchcraft in the two years he was active than had been hanged in the preceding century (Russel & Alexander, p. 98).

Hopkins seems to have been inspired by Continental ideas about witchcraft - he accused his victims of belonging to a sect of devil-worshippers, flying out at night to meet their infernal master, have sexual relations with him, initiate newcomers by unspeakable blasphemous rites and sacrifice to him, and so forth. In England, the belief in witches took a different form - witches were not thought to have the same amount of direct contact with Satan, they were not thought to have sexual relations with him or sign any form of contract with him, and they did not fly off to indulge in satanic sabbats. Instead, they kept to themselves, owned familiars and spent their time blighting crops and spreading disease.

Jeffrey Russel suggests that the belief in witches' familiars, common mostly in England and to a lesser extent in Germany, could have grown from a belief in 'the little people', fairies or goblins, who had been transformed into lesser demons with the advent of Christianity (Russel & Alexander, p. 92). However, that something may have been based on folklore, which in turn may have been based on pagan religion, does not make that actual surviving paganism.

Hopkin's accusations were based both on Continental and on local British beliefs about witches, and it is even possible to make an educated guess on which books he gleaned his apparently boundless knowledge from.

There is something deeply cynical about this approach - did Hopkins, clearly something of a self-styled intellectual and expert, one day simply decide to make a profit scaring peasants and murdering the poor and helpless, and then got his hands on some new Continental notions which were even more effective at causing mass hysteria than the local British ones? He has been dead for 252 years, and we can never hope to discover his motivations. In one village, he and his two assistants earned two pounds, which would have been the equivalent of an average person's income in a whole year. Clearly such pecuniary details would not have been entirely irrelevant to him. Perhaps he enjoyed the fame and adulation, as well as the fear and awe he inspired as he bullied his victims and excited the crowds against them? Or perhaps he actually believed that he had been appointed by the Almighty to combat the legions of darkness?

Hopkins enjoyed considerable fame and success in his endeavours, but only for two or three years. He seems to have overreached himself, and to have set in motion a mass hysteria that would, in turn, be replaced with resentment towards himself. As William Godwin put it:

'The fate of Hopkins was such as might be expected in similar cases. The multitude are at first impressed with horror at the monstrous charges that are advanced. They are seized, as by contagion, with terror at the mischiefs which seem to impend over them, and from which no innocence and no precaution appear to afford them profficient protection. [...] But, after a time, they begin to reflect, and to apprehend that they have acted with too much precipitation, that they have been led on by uncertain appearances. They see one victim led to the gallows after another, without stint or limitation. They see one dying with the most solemn asseverations of innocence, and another confessing apparently she knows not what, what is put into her mouth by her relentless persecutors. They see these victims, old, crazy and impotent, harassed beyong endurance by the ingenious cruelties practised against them. They were at first urged on [...] to be satisfied with nothing but blood. But humanity and remorse also have their turn. Dissatisfied with themselves, they are glad to point their resentment against another. The man that at first they hailed as a public benefactor, they presently come to regard with jealous eyes, and begin to consider as a cunning impostor, dealing in cool blood with the lives of his fellow-creatues for paltry gain, and still more horrible, for the lure of perishable and short-lived fame.' (Godwin, p. 436-7).

According to popular tradition, Hopkins was in the end seized by the angry crowd whose fears he had been using to his own advancement, and subjected to the test of water - a torturous method he himself used to test possible witches, and then driven out of town. However, there is nothing to suggest that this actually happens; in fact Hopkins seems to have died from tuberculosis in his own home the same year. But what sort of ending is that?

We all prefer stories in which the villain meets a cruel and suitable end, and this is true for us as well as for those Essex villagers. By emplying that he is punished by the villagers after they have freed their minds from his evil manipulations, the villagers themselves are redeemed and justice is served. Sadly, on closer examination, history doesn't usually lend itself to such convenient and poetically just endings.

Several things must be remembered concerning the case of Matthew Hopkins. First of all, he acted on his own initiative; the church did not employ or appoint him, and neither did Parliament. He was a self-proclaimed saviour, playing on people's fears and feeding them with anxieties common of his time - not an agent of a malicious religious or political establishment.

Secondly, the people of the villages he targeted supported him and played along with his evil schemes. When he presented himself, he would ask whether the village had any suspected witches, not just pick somebody at random. Clearly, there is a vast amount of complicity here that needs to be addressed. The myth of the poor, suppressed peasant who is shivering with fear under the looming shadow of and Catholic inquisitor or Protestant witch-finder is comfortable, but not entirely accurate. Of course the villagers who participated in this cruel social ritual would not like to find themselves accused, but did not seem to hesistate pointing Hopkins and his ilk in the right direction. There are many other cases of witch hysteria elsewhere in Europe where one clearly sees the forces of organised mass-murder at work, but the story of Matthew Hopkins demonstrates that this was not always the case, and that 'common people' were not blameless in the atrocities committed.

Thirdly, there is nothing in the story of Matthew Hopkins or any other witch-finder or inquisitor to imply that they were working to suppress actual surviving pagan practices. Medieval European belief in witchcraft had been formed by several different sources - they had grown out of pagan religion, then sorcery and folklore, and when thoughts about Christian heresy as well as Christian scholastic theology was mixed in, the result became the belief in diabolical witchcraft as seen in the late middle ages and early modern period. The motif of twelve witches worshipping Satan in the form of a goat or horned, cloven-hoofed man was thought to be a parody of Christ and his apostles, not a distortion of a pagan ritual. Also, this motif was only introduced in the later middle ages, so it seems very doubtful that it was in reality a surviving pagan witch cult.

People like Matthew Hopkins still exist today, and will continue to exist in the future. They are self-absorbed cynics who will declare themselves the protectors of a community against a whole array of imaginary threats. Switch on one of the television channels that cater to the credulous and the religious fanatics. If you have the stomach for it, look up one the vile websites run by political extremists and racists.

The story of Matthew Hopkins should be seen in the context of the human capacity for unspeakable evil and cynicism, a story which sadly does not seem to be ending any time soon. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - it is bad taste in the extreme, as well as factually incorrect, to attempt to appropriate the victims of the witch craze as martyrs for a surviving pagan matriarchal mystery religion. The neo-Pagan community has real and present challenges to deal with, and we do not need to aggravate the situation by feeding the aptly named 'More Persecuted Than Thou'-syndrome.

Godwin, William: Lives of Necromancers, an account of the most eminent persons in successive ages, who have claimed for themselves, or to whom have been imputed by others, the excercise of magical power. London 1834.

Russel B., Jeffrey & Brooks Alexander: A New History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans. London 2007.