Manningtree: Revisiting the Essex Witch Trials

Elizabeth Gibson, was a forty year old farmer’s wife from Thorpe-le-Soken. Records show that she died from the plague in the gaol of Colchester castle in July 1645 before her trial could take place. Elizabeth was never indicted and died an innocent woman.

‘I hear them whispering in the market;  Watch her, she’s a witch, they say!’

‘Have you heard about Elizabeth the farmer’s wife?  Her herbs flourish though her husband’s harvest fails again.’

‘What strange rituals must she practice under the full moon?’

‘Some say she’s the devil’s gardener. A diabolical woman with dubious charms.’

‘I hear them say that disharmony follows in my footsteps. The gossips do tell that I am a subversive woman.’

‘Elizabeth was sullied by the devil long before she was married.’

‘In what filthy manner where her children conceived?’

‘Her husband must doubt her fidelity.  Only the devil shares the wickedness of her heart.’

‘Folk turn away their babes in fear.  My Lord!  What cruel fates do they imagine that I, a Christian woman might scheme against them?  They speak of me in hushed voices behind their shawls.  But I hear them.’

‘Even the witless farmyard creatures bring suspicion upon me. My neighbours spread wicked rumours of carnal scandal.’ 

‘Have you seen how she comforts her familiars? One amongst her goats she feeds in an unnatural way.  The black cat keeps watch, awaiting his turn. She nourishes these beasts who grant her strength. Her flesh must conceal the devils marks.’

‘The witch’s sins will bring misfortune to us all, she must be brought to justice.’

‘I fear that my fate is already sealed, fear and persecution are closing in around me like a dark moonless night.  But the truth Is something that they deny,  the witch who they seek to blame, exists inside their own hidden shame.’

By Rachelle Stone

Mary Coppin was reprieved after being sentenced to death, but was still in gaol in 1648.

By Louise Wheeler

Helen Bretton of Kirby-le-Soken was hanged as a witch for ‘bewitching a person [male] to death’ in 1645. This is an imagined scene involving her grown-up daughter, set approximately one year later.

The morning after father’s wedding, I wake with the sunrise. No one stirs. Not my husband snoring beside me, nor the servants. I long to walk alone on the saltings.

Slipping from the house like a ghost, I pass the quayside and along the sun-baked path. Larks curl above, trilling waterfalls of song, like blessings. All is intense blue; the reflections from the muddy water meet the clear sky at the horizon. I feel such pleasure back here again where the salt breeze can freshen the stale London air trapped within my robes. Crowds of wading birds feed at the water’s edge and I feel the soothing power of this place, my childhood home.

So long as the church tower and village remain out of sight behind me, I am able to prevent the intrusion of unhappy thoughts.

Just as mother used to, I gather a frothing armful of Queen Anne’s Lace and star-shaped Purple Mallow. I have a mind to bring them back with me to adorn our house in London. 

No sooner is Mother in my thoughts - and truly, she is never far from them - than I see a woman hurrying towards me. Not wishing to converse with anyone, I make to turn away, but the woman waves urgently, so I am impelled to wait for her.

She is one of father’s neighbours.

‘My Dear, I thought it was you,’ she says, bobbing me a curtsy. No doubt she wishes to congratulate me on father’s marriage, yet I dare not meet her eyes. ‘I wanted to say, privately…’ she begins, and looks over her shoulder as if to ensure no one observes our meeting. Sighing, she continues: ‘I believed your mother to be a kind, generous and wise woman, not responsible for the death of anyone, and I am heartily sorry for all the trouble and pain Mr Slaughter has stirred up in this parish. ‘

‘Mr Salter,’ I correct, in a mumble. The same Mr Salter, stand-in clergyman, who yesterday performed the marriage ceremony of my father to a young girl of my age; a girl with eyes full of fear and hands which trembled.

‘Some of us prefer to call him Mr Slaughter,’ she says. ‘Haste back to the safety of London, Miss Mary. Evil dwells here still.’

Struck dumb, I thrust my armful of flowers at her, spin, and stumble through the cold, gathering mist back to father’s house. What has he done? Why did he not protect mother? I think about his fearful new wife. And I weep for my poor, innocent mother and I weep for myself, who now feels like an orphan.

I will beg my husband to return us to London. It is not safe to remain here longer. We must leave without delay.

By Helen Chambers

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In 1620 Rebecca Jones was a servant in Great Clacton when she was alleged to have been given three imps, or familiars, in the form of moles, by the devil himself. Some 25 years later, she was accused of various deeds - carried out by these familiars: killing a pig, tormenting a child, and the murder of a couple from St. Osyth. Rebecca was hanged as a witch in 1645.

Before. A young, slight girl turns her face to the morning sun as the cart clatters along the dirt track into the village of Great Clacton. Coming to a halt, she jumps off and skips around to the front, tickling the whiskers of the old, bay nag and blowing into his nostrils. The horse releases a contented puff of grassy air back into her face, leaving a smudge of sweet, earthy foam on her cheek. Rebecca bids him good morning, tipping her head back in a giggle as she wipes the stickiness from her cheek with one swift movement of her hand. The cart-man tuts and mutters something disapproving, but in truth he has room for her joyful exuberance, unlike other folk; and besides, he likes to catch sight of her bright smile; her smooth, plump cheeks; and that smell of the sweet lavender water as it drifts on the breeze that teases the loose strands of hair escaping her cap.

Rebecca moves slowly along the track in the direction of the large house, placing one foot deliberately and precisely in front of the other, as if walking a thin, imaginary line. She is glad for her work, so the journey each day from St. Osyth is an easy choice. She pauses to scan a strip of tangled undergrowth and to make a record in her mind of its wild treats. Today there is a delicate stitchwort shadowed by a congregation of frothy cow parsley. A raucous caw-cawing interrupts Rebecca’s thoughts. She peers up though her fingers, shielding the light from her eyes while searching for the cause of this commotion. It is just the silly rooks! A great mass of dark, glossy birds lift off as one, rising from the branches of the tallest oak. They swirl in the air above, like steam rising from a pot where a hot broth bubbles furiously. She has to shout her greeting to the flock to be heard over the racket. Then Rebecca’s eyes are drawn to gravel path.

There.

A single feather.

Black as pitch, but with such iridescence that there must be a hundred other colours swirling together within in each of the barbs.

She plucks this treasure from the dirt and tucks it into her waistcoat, right where the seam frays to reveal a small pocket in the lining. Rebecca adjusts her cap, brushes down her apron. A respectable employee of the Bishop household. She enters the building, closing the door just as a chorus of children’s voices from across the way unite in rhythmic verse:

Witches in the hedgerow,

Witches on the green,

Witches with familiars,

Whose deeds are ne’er seen.

Witches in the churchyard,

Witches on the farm,

Better hide your children,

Afore they come to harm.

By Alison Tew

Joan Cooper was an 80-year-old widow, from Great Clacton, who died of plague in Colchester Castle before going to trial. Her daughter, Anne, was imprisoned for allegedly bewitching and killing a man, and died by hanging.

Surrounded by myself

My free will, my youth, my few things

It was never easy but it was never lonely

Until they came

Now it is crowded

And far too cold

And awfully loud

From the quiet suffering of those around

Silence was never this painful

And I have lived with it

But their voices were louder

They were too many to fight

For my strength was not enough

Against the power of the men

Who sought out the evil in me

They had within themselves

In this place full of

Half living souls

Away from my empty house

I have never been lonelier.

By Izadora Schöninger

Mary Wiles was a widow from Great Clacton who was one of the 15 women who lost their lives at Chelmsford on 18 July 1645.

I am so cold. The type of cold that makes your old, brittle bones feel like snapping- but I won't break. I am scared. I think this is the most fear I have ever felt before and I’ve faced off many a dog in my time! And I’m angry, how dare they accuse me of being a witch? Me? Who cared for so many of their children, who made poultices for cut knees and told tales when they couldn’t sleep. I can say their names because my conscience is clear; bless’d Anne, bless’d Anthony, bless’d George who were all taken too soon from this earth but not by my hand- and now I am to join them, and I’m scared. It Is not death that scares me, far from it. If this is the Lord's plan then I must obey. What terrifies me is having my last memory of this world be sunken cheekbones and vacant stares. Broken women who I once called friends. Is this how we will be remembered? I think that scared me most of all.

By Freya Leslie.

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Anne West, the mother of Rebecca West, was hanged in Manningtree on 1 August 1645. Anne was accused of witchcraft by her daughter Rebecca West.

When you are a mother, you are not like any other. There is a chord that ties you to your child, which is not cut by the clips of the midwife. It exists unseen, invisible, a phantom thread of connection that time cannot diminish. And so, perhaps, in some way it is a witchcraft of sorts. Perhaps that is why they say most witches be women.

Perhaps.

I have long since given up finding the sense of it. The world has gone upsadown.

It doesn’t matter.

Nothing does.

But for Rebecca -  and now she will do right. Now she is saved from the vice of the hangman’s noose.

Hallelujah. Praise be to Mary, Mother of God.

For I know it was She who heard me. She who heeds the fear of a mother losing a child, the terror of witnessing your little one put to death most horribly - for Justice sake, whatever that be. Yes, She felt the pain in me and she made Him come to set her free.

The others know what Rebecca has done so none now speaks with me - none. Yet even in these darkling days, what is left of my life, I find it is but a feather’s full of woe. To know, to see that your daughter may be relieved of this stinkhole, taken up into the light and gone from the darkness – it is a gift from Mary.  Though it was the witchfinder that made it so, and he is more like a devil than any I know.

Tongues will wag when my child gets up in court. But I say ‘fie we do not care what folk think’. Or scholars with their learnings – for they have done for us. It was their words that did dress a cat up to be seen a familiar, dress a hound to be seen as imp, a  little bird -  flighty demon. Yes, tongues will wag. But her’s will too. And it will go on and breathe and sing and kiss and laugh. It will taste the sunshine and speak of  joy and one day, when she is far far away, it will tell her children about their grandmother, who bade her child to take the chance offered her. Who told it would be understood that she would make tales to please those judges, free herself, even if in doing so she would point to me and us ladies.  The finger of Blame had already found us anyway.  But we have lived lives and come to our end - you could see that destination in the finder’s eyes. But she, Rebecca, is young, too young, too fair, to hang like a dead dog under the gallows’ stare. And so I pushed her to it, I said ‘Take his offering, child. Say yes, do whatever you can to live.’

And she took it and she did it.

And now we must pay the bill.

Some more unhappily so.

And just as the rope is fastened round my neck, I sense the other chord touched to her, the one that was never severed by the midwife, and it is this that feels me with pride and hope even as I die. For she lives, she lives, Rebecca lives, my little one, my child….

By Syd Moore

Rebecca West, from Lawford, was persuaded to turn Crown chief witness against other women. Of the women she accused of witchcraft one was her mother, Anne West.

Mid November. Twilight.  The birds have gone to roost and scrabbling can be heard in the sparse thatch of the tumbledown cottage as the mice and rats go about their nightly business. It is but a stone’s throw to St. Mary’s Church, Lawford.

The unpleasant stench of fouled bedding reaches the nostrils of the priest before he becomes aware of the almost motionless body lying in a truckle bed on the far side of the room. From the light of his lantern, the pock-marked face of a woman becomes visible.

A weak, pleading voice whispers, “Parson, I need forgiveness”.

She slips in and out of consciousness as her breathing becomes more laboured. In between whiles she has lucid moments.

“My mother, Anne, birthed me, she did tell? The year of the second worst harvest in memory; the year of the Wicked Bible. ‘You be wicked too,’ she would say, ‘had to be torn out o’ me, a sickly little thing with the mark of the devil on your back! I had more luck feeding the kits and pups than I did  feedin’ yow!’

A silence.

She tries to clear her throat; then continues:

“I never felt loved. I would have loved my own sweet maid had she lived. We might have wandered the lanes together gatherin’ herbs, laughin’, chatterin’, feeling the sun’s warmth on our faces. T’weren’t meant to be.”

A tawny owl can be heard in the old oak tree in the churchyard, hooting gently, mimicking the woman’s wheezing breathe.

“That man Hopkins did say to I, ‘A pretty, young maid like you, Rebecca, could be wed and have a good life. Tell me the truth and you shall go free’.

“So I did say my mother, Anne, bewitched John Cutler and that Elizabeth Gooding bewitched John Edwards. I was afraid; the castle gaol was a foul, stinking place. I wanted to live, be loved, breathe the fresh air and be gone from there. I would have said anything, anything ....”

Her voice drifts away.

She dozes briefly.

A slight movement of the hand, beckoning.

The priest lowers his head to better hear the faint words:

“God forgive me.”

Stillness, silence, sleep.

By Heather Cleaver

The new Minister of Great Clacton, Joseph Long, was brought to the parish from Fingringhoe in 1644, appointed by Lord Rivers of St. Osyth. Long had a reputation to repair, having been previously accused of being, “a swearer and alehouse haunter.”Joseph Long was a key informant in a number of the women’s witch trials of 1645, including that of Anne Cooper. She was accused suckling familiars, offering her daughter a familiar (a kitten called Tom-boy), and of using them for murder. Anne was executed by hanging in Manningtree on 1st August of that year.

The rain drums furiously against the heavy, knotted door of the Church of St John the Baptist. A woman, shoulders hunched and covered under a sodden woollen shawl, sits on the edge of a bench, neck arching forward. Droplets of water run off the ragged fibres trailing on the seat and gather on the floor, soaking up dirt and dust; creating sparkling pools flecked with minute darting particles.

She clasps her hands tightly, pressing each finger hard into the rough, mottled skin beneath.

Her blanched, thin lips barely move as she whispers urgently:

“Oh, Lord God and Heavenly Father.

Show me the path where I might tread. My heart is open before you. Be my strength for I am weak. Our new minister does not show us the way that we so desperately seek in this darkness. The one who gives in to the temptations of the alehouse, and uses the vulgar words of a sinner. He prays without devotion and holds low morals. Others do not notice, or maybe do not care to notice, but I see him clearly. And he knows that I see him; and this I fear.

Dear Lord, you are my salvation. Show me the light. I cannot look the other way. Preserve my family as I devote myself to thee. I have seen the minister gaze too freely at my kin and my neighbours in a manner not fit for his standing. Lord, why have you sent this man to us? Is it to test us? I know not the reason.

Dear Lord, I have told him straight that his ways are not for us in this village, and that he cares only for himself, and for making companions of influential men; not the common folk who seek God’s guidance. He says I am but a woman who knows nothing of God and the ways of the righteous; that I should go home to my place by the stove, back to the howling brats, and to my filthy animals.

And Dear Lord, only last week he passed by my place. He spat some words from his twisted mouth, and then he did kick my Tom-boy, just because he purred and mewed so much, and rubbed against the minister’s leg. I held my tongue and kept my rage inside. A sickness rose from my gut. I cursed him under my breath and closed my eyes until he was gone.

Oh Lord, I am humble before you but I see that man, and he sees me. Show me the way, for I am in turmoil and am afraid.”

Silence, but for the unyielding torrent clattering on the roof.

Then, a shuffling sound, barely perceptible at first; muffled footsteps, and the shadow of a tall form in black materialises from the West Tower.

By Alison Tew

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Mary Greenliefe was an 84-year-old widow from the village of Alresford. In 1645, she was accused by Susan Sparrow of having a familiar in the shape of a hare which had plagued Susan’s teenaged daughter when they had shared a house with Mary and her daughter in 1615. Mary denied being a witch but died in gaol in 1646 after her trial was postponed, probably due to lack of evidence.

Mary Greenliefe hobbles out of her cottage near Alresford creek with the help of her walking-stick, cut for her years ago from an alder tree by her long-dead husband. It is early October 1644; a white mist hovers over the neighbouring fields, thickening over the creek, its mud-banks, and the heron already fishing there. Despite the chill and her stiff joints, Mary is determined to reach St Peter’s in time for morning service. She prays most comfortably in her cottage but knows that her absence from church would be muttered about by some of her neighbours. They think her strange for preferring her creek-side solitude to their company.

Mary takes a few steps towards the lane which leads to the church, then stops, suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of dread so strong it is like a fist wringing the air from her lungs. Grasping her stick more firmly she turns slowly to peer into the mist over the creek, her ancient eyes just able to discern a strange shape emerging from it.

‘Is that you, Tom?’ she gasps aloud, half-hoping it is the ghost of her fisherman husband, lost at sea in the spring gale of 1614.

‘Or maybe my darling Beth?’, Mary entreats, her breath catching in a sob at the thought of her daughter, whose death of the marsh ague a year after Tom’s had driven Mary almost mad with grief.

‘Are you come to tell me my time is nigh?’ Mary beseeches.

After more than four-score years on earth she is not afraid to die. But now it is the manner of her dying that terrifies her so, a foreshadowing of being forsaken by all and wrenched from her home to languish in pain, filth and darkness.

The strange shape comes closer, the mist resolving itself into the likeness of a large hare with piercing, reddish eyes. Mary tries to say the Lord’s Prayer to ward off evil, but the words stick in her throat. The hare circles her three times before sitting down on its powerful hind-legs. It blocks her path. Mary falls to her knees, moaning in fear.

‘What are you and why do you haunt me?’ she cries in desperation.

To her amazement the creature replies, ‘I am the hare your daughter Beth fed on green leaves and tamed to sit by your cottage-door; I am the hare no greyhound could course or shift, despite dying in the effort; I am the hare your friend Susan Sparrow grew afraid of, when she saw me by the door as her own child lay ill of the ague’.

‘But I have done no wrong - I nursed Susan’s girl to health, while my own daughter died,’ Mary insists, the decades of grief emboldening her to indignation.

‘Aye’ says the hare, ‘but do you think that will make any difference, when the witch-finders arrive? Susan will not hesitate to tell them that I was your familiar, when they question her. Going to church will not help you now, Mary Greenliefe’.

Mary gazes dumbstruck at the creature, as it dissolves slowly into the air. The fear within her is so strong she can barely breathe. Has she been visited by the devil himself? And what did the apparition mean with its talk of witch-finders and her old friend, Susan?

Weeping in confusion and distress, Mary struggles to her feet with the aid of her stick. What to do?

Her skiff is moored in a channel in the rushes close by; should she climb into it and drift away from Alresford and out to sea, to wherever the tide takes her?

Or should she continue her walk to church and the mercies of her neighbours?

What to do?

By Alison Rowlands

Dorothy Brooke was one of two women, Mary Greenliefe being the other, who had their trials postponed indefinitely. Dorothy was still in gaol in 1648 and we are unsure whether she ever got out.

I had always been able to make myself small, to disappear a little. It was a talent of mine. Until that time when I had been so in focus, so unpleasantly visible. No matter how hard I focussed on my own feet at the end of my shaking legs they still kept seeing the worst. Viewing me on an awful pedestal in that court room full of dead wood while a story about me was told.

But here wedged into the corner of this, well you can’t even call it a room, I have finally mastered invisibility.

Here in the corner of this small dank place I have ceased to age. I push my back hard against the surface of the wall until it aches. Feeling that little chink of reality allows me to go back. Back to being small. A much younger girl running through the woods, hiding.

Hiding behind that tree. It blocks out all the sound on the other side and you can really hear yourself think. You can hear yourself dream. I loved that rough place with the scaly bark, cold to the touch but breathing full of life.

And for one joyful day hiding in the parkland by that tree, it wasn’t just me.

Another young girl had appeared, perhaps visiting family… I don’t know… she only happened once. For one afternoon. She was so full of joy, so generous with her words and giggles.

I was hiding from my chores and would usually have feared being caught out by any small noise. But I soon forgot myself as we sat there cradled in the cool shade and the leaf mould beneath those heavy boughs. I had never really clicked with my siblings at home and this was the first and last time I would meet someone so open to me. We talked for hours and of everything, painting all our hopes and dreams and desires on the air with our breath and with blushing cheeks. It felt as if we lived our whole lives together that afternoon. But the crows began to call folk home, too soon.

Too Soon.

And then we parted with the dusk. And I missed her. I think I have always missed her since.

So here pressed against the stone and rancid rotting plaster, all these things that don’t hold any life, I evaporate into the dark. Becoming the riddled cold vital bark of that big old tree and waiting for a girl to shelter with, and a laugh to light everything up. Just waiting to feel.

She was the only one I think who ever really saw, just me. So I will stay there. Forever. Not here. Here I have mastered invisibility. There I am free and I am solid and I am me. Dreams still blowing on the breeze, and a life still waiting to be lived. 

By Gemma Garwood

Joan Rowle was accused of bewitching to death John North and his daughter Rachel, in Leigh-on-Sea. She was the only woman from a South Essex village who appeared at court with the Tendring witches. She was also the only one acquitted.

How did she, this woman from Leigh,

Get caught up in the tragedy

Unfolding miles away from here

In North Essex, that awful year?

It’s far away is Manningtree

In miles 49.3

I ask aloud with no reply

Were folk just primed to decry

In civil war, that hot July

The widow with the evil eye?

Accused of witching Rachel North

And her father too thenceforth

The crimes confirmed by neighbours – eight

Confused, bewildered by their fate

Wife and mother settling the score

Of quarrels passed by years before,

And when the finger of blame uncurled

Were Joan’s protestations heard?

Or was she walked and watched and tried

Did finders speak or had they lied?

And when 19 met the gallows tree

How was Joan Rowle  set free?

Did she smile, her faith restored

Or flee the court and damn her Lord?

And did she live an okay life?

Was she fair mother and goodwife?

The finger of blame, did it follow her

Taint of witchcraft, a constant slur?

Could she ever scrub herself free?

Escape the shadow of the gallows tree?

Or was she banished from her town

Rumours chasing her around

Full of sin but sinning none

Whipped by every gossips’ tongue?

It’s not such ancient history.

There but for God goes me

Too loud, too old, too shouty,

I would have met the gallows tree.

This reflection redefines

The witch of old thought so malign

Surely now then it is time

For fairy tales to draw the line:

There were no witches, no good sense

Just women, poor, with no defence.

Remember that when you look in the mirror

We each harbour a sinner

Accuser and witchfinder too

All of us can misconstrue.

Remember that when you look in the mirror

Think of them and consider

Scapegoats have not been erased

Same witchfinder - different face

We’ve not moved on that far, I see

Just look at recent history:

Facebook, fake news, culture war

Civil strife like days of yore.

Fear, censure, witch hunts renew:

the finger of blame may yet point at you.

By Syd Moore

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Mary Johnson of Wivenhoe was tried and convicted of witchcraft in 1645, on the testimony of neighbours. She was reprieved later, but the absence of records intimates she may have died in gaol. The following is an imagining of her thoughts whilst imprisoned.

At night, when Mary Johnson dreams, her senses awaken. She hears children’s happy voices and she dances and whirls in the church where she is a girl and everyone smiles. Before singing for the Lord, before dancing for the Lord was forbidden and church became cold and miserable. Next, it is evening in The Falcon: grey smokiness and tang of French tobacco; gales of laughter and breezes of secret whispering; hidey-holes and ‘avert your eyes, Merry Mary,’ a scrap of silk ribbon bunched in her fist. Nicholas’ hand is firm and warm in the small of her back, she sees love in his eyes and recalls the promises he made, and mostly kept.

At night, when Mary dreams, she skips over the slippery causeway at low tide to Fingringhoe, the silver mud sparkling like jewels in the afternoon sun and Mary and her sister giggling and chattering too long. Mary splashes home late, up to her knees and worse in water and mud, laughing and waving, no one guessing her sister would soon perish in childbirth. Mary weeps at the burial site, sister and nephew both under the cold ground. And the neighbours are kind.

At night, when Mary dreams, wavelets dance on the River Colne, a brisk April wind bears the scent of spring and the taste of the sea. Her heart and belly are aflutter, for Nicholas’ boat is due back on the rising tide. Wivenhoe is waking after a long winter, Mary’s little cottage is clean and neat, and smells of baking - bread for the neighbours. Spinning gleefully, she tears off her cap and lets the warm breeze lift her hair.

At night, when Mary dreams, she dandles her lost babies on her lap, feels the pudgy weight of them and the sweet milky smell, and cries out as they turn into fish and slip through her fingers, into a river of tears and away into the sea. She turns slowly, examines her slimy, scale-encrusted fingers and wonders why they wouldn’t hold on. The neighbour takes her inside and cares for her.

At night, when Mary can’t sleep or dream and everything is as dark and grey, same as the daytimes in here, when she lies cold and stiff on the stone floor, barely aware of the stench of putrid moaning, whimpering bodies, when she’s past giving anyone comfort anymore - look where being kind to folk got her - mould infesting the ripped rags she wears. She’s got a reprieve, they say, she could leave, they say, if only someone would pay her gaol bills. And there’s no-one, not one of the neighbours she baked for, whose children she watched and played with, no one from the village who’ll help. Nick long gone to the bottom of the thieving sea. And her sister deep in her grave. And Mary rotting here alone in the dark. And all she wants is to sleep and never wake. Dancing on the gallows would’ve been a better end.

And she curses those jealous neighbours who testified and lied, she’d spit in their faces if she could, she’d dance with the Devil for it and not care, just don’t let me wake up tomorrow, she begs.

At night, when Mary Johnson dreams, her senses awaken.

By Helen Chambers

In April 1645 Alice Dixon, a widow from Wivenhoe was accused of bewitching Thomas, son of John Mumford, a husbandman. The child had died in July 1641. On remand for witchcraft, Alice accused another Wivenhoe woman, Mary Johnson, a sailor’s wife, of slipping an imp in the form of a rat, through the door of Elizabeth and Daniel Otley’s house, bidding it “go rock the cradle”. Johnson was accused by the Otleys of having given their small child an apple and a kiss the previous autumn and the child subsequently died. Alice Dixon and Mary Johnson blamed each other for the child’s demise.

On 17th July 1645 at Chelmsford Assize Court, Alice was tried for the killing of Thomas Mumford by witchcraft. She pleaded not guilty but was convicted and hanged the following day.

My name is Alice

A ghost I be

But yet, not dead.

Unseeing, unhearing 

The mob about me

I call “God help me” in my head.

Muttering, stuttering,

I climb, I stumble.

I slip, I mumble.

Rough hands

Grasp me;

Tight bands

Clasp me

A ghost I be…

By Heather Cleaver

From Great Clacton, 40. Wife of Robert Waters of Clacton, Labourer. Accused of sorcery and witchcraft. Found guilty on 21 June 1645 of entertaining an evil spirit in the likeness of a dun coloured mouse. Endorsed by Joseph Longer, Richard Cole. Pleaded not guilty. Sentenced to be hanged by the neck until she be dead. Has no goods, chattels, lands, nor tenements for forfeiture.

Was reprieved but must remain in gaol without bail until the next gaol delivery. Pardoned in March 1646. Died in gaol 1645/1646.

It’s cold in here. There’s a dry, stabbing iciness, cutting at my throat, like old rope. But I didn’t get the rope, not like the others. At first they’d said I was to be hanged by the neck. I’d even got used to the idea over the endless dark, cramped nights spent in this cell. To be at peace finally, with my Robert, had become a constant daydream. But the old gaoler pushed his gnarly finger into my face that morning, when the others were brought out, and said I wasn't to go with them. I was reprieved, I may even be pardoned.

It was my late husband’s masters that put me in here; Joseph Longer and Richard Cole. My husband, Robert, had worked for them, you see. He was indentured; owed them money on behalf of his own father, a wicked man who beat his wife and spent all his wages in the tavern. Miserly old brutes them masters, kicking their horses and flogging the workers till their backs were raw. They did that to my Robert; made him work outside in the rain and snow, all day long in wet clothes, with no victuals except a piece of bread and a sip of beer. That’s why he got ill - coughed all day and all night for weeks he did before he passed.

They came to the cottage not long after Robert was laid to rest:- Masters Longer and Cole. It was a grey morning, rain pouring from the roof. I hadn’t yet had chance to sweep the floor when they showed up - banging on the old door, shouting and cursing and forcing themselves in. Said they wanted payment, as my Robert hadn’t worked long enough to pay off his debts before he died. Called him all manner of names they did, lazy, shirker, and worse. They made a right old mess, kicking about, knocking over the wooden table.

Mad them men were.

But I had nothing worth taking. We had no goods, no chattels, no lands, nor tenements for forfeiture. Just the bowls and cups we ate from and the old table and the straw bed in the corner. We lived a simple life. ‘You’ll pay for this,’ they said. How dare I carry on living on their land rent-free? But they didn’t do anything to me. Not then.

It must have come in to get away from the rain, poor little thing. Smelled the few crumbs spilled on the floor from breakfast. I remember seeing it scamper over Master Cole’s foot when he was cussing about Robert to me. I smirked a bit then, thinking it had just as much respect for him as I did!  He’d kicked it off, blaspheming even more.

Pretty little thing it was, dun-coloured like Robert’s old horse.

Two days’ later they came back: 21 June 1645. They weren’t alone this time - they’d brought the local Justices with them, and another man. Matthew Hopkins I heard him called…

“Dorothy Waters, you are under arrest upon suspicion of witchcraft and are ordered to come with us forthwith where you shall be held in gaol in Colchester Castle until such time as you shall be on trial.”

I didn’t learn of the exact nature of my crime until the trial itself: “Entertaining an evil spirit in the likeness of a dun coloured mouse”. I nearly laughed out loud when the magistrate spoke those words; if he hadn’t have been so serious, so hard and hostile. “Not guilty” I said…”not guilty”……..

It’s a different rope I got. A slower, colder one, cutting my throat from the inside out. I don’t know how long it will take but I don’t think I’ll be here much longer.

There’s mice in here too. I like to think it’s the dun one I can hear scampering by - my ‘familiar’ as they called it. Come to keep me company until I’m with Robert again. I talk to it now, softly; reading out my eulogy:

“Dorothy Waters, forty years’ old, once condemned a witch, then pardoned, wife of the late Robert Waters, daughter of  Mary ….and friend of the dun mouse…”

By Katie Southwell.

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Elizabeth Clarke was an elderly disabled widow who lived in Manningtree.  She was the first of the woman to be accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth implicated a number of local women during her brutal interrogation, when she was questioned, searched and watched.  At trial she was found guilty and hanged, along with others from Manningtree and the surrounding area on 18th July 1645.

Word spreads through the fetid streets, as effortlessly as the pestilence.  ‘The witches are going to swing tomorrow!’  Townsfolk abandon their errands and crane to glimpse this pompous exhibition of condemned devil worshipers:  Guilty at the behest of powerful men.

Filthy women, emerge squinting into the light.  The last to join them, Elizabeth Clarke, Bess, a pitiful one-legged crone, wizened and scabrous.  She hunches painfully with age, resentfully braced by her appointed captors. The cacophony of the crowd outside the courtroom is unintelligible and disorienting.  She can make no sense of the vociferous condemnation from the rabble.

The Manningtree Witches, well known to one another, are subdued with shock and the ill temper of recrimination.  They say little, but someone snipes, ‘Damn you Bess for your loose tongue, we will all hang thanks to you.’

But Bess has gone now, or at least her sense has.  Her muttering is mostly incoherent and riddled with delirium.  Yet her rancorous curses of the guards are perfectly clear.  ‘Devils henchmen! Brutes! Have you no goodness for a lowly old woman?’

The horses find their pace as the cart shudders and jerks through the streets.  Wearily closing her opaque eyes, so long since rendered useless by age.  The darkness of captivity has been easier to bear for her than the others as she has lived in the twilight for years.  That shameful and harrowing invasion of her body to prove her guilt had brought such terror to her.  It was so relentlessly cruel.  To end her torture, she confessed – they had promised her peace and redemption.

Now as the sunshine warms her bones and eases her mind, the purpose of her journey is lost to her.  Looking upon herself in her youth, lucidity manifests.  She seeks refuge in her memories and smiles uneasily with fitful reminiscence.

‘I shall meet my dear husband from his work this evening.  We will make our way home together along the bight of the river and up the hill.  He will bring me oysters from the Saltings and we will feast together by the fire making plans for our future.  When God blesses us with healthy rosy cheeked children, they will learn to live well.  Just as I did from my own dear mother.  I learned of the power to be found in the forest and the river as I sat at her feet winding bobbins.’

As the cart slows and Bess’ story comes to an end, she returns from her remembrance.

‘A witch they call me!  Just as they said of mother, but we were simple God-fearing folk.  So much idle tittle tattle.’  That child Hopkins, he knows nothing of the lores of these parts.  For all his learning and righteousness and lavish clothes.  He is a cruel imposter, who made mischief with my words.  He is the devil himself.  Curse him and his pickthank meddling Puritans.  I curse them all!’

By Rachelle Stone

Sarah Bright was widow who lived in Manningtree nearly 400 years ago. Alongside 29 other women, she was executed as a witch 1645. She was accused of causing the death by witchcraft of Anne, the daughter of Henry Woolvett, a local landowner.

It’s a short walk down to the river. From the top of South Street, the glint of the water catches your eye the moment you step outside. On a Spring tide, it runs right up the road, but this morning it’s low, the slick mud criss-crossed by godwits and sandpipers.

Sarah leaves home with a bundle of sheets at her hip. She is uncommon tall and used to carrying herself but, lately, the looks gather like crows at the edge of her eyeline. Talks quiets at her approach. There’s a sense of turning, at the waist, at the neck, just beyond her eyeline.

A neighbour’s child died in the night after a week of languishing. Little Anne Woolvett. Sarah had seen her only hours before she was taken ill, walking ahead of her mother, curls shining in the morning sun, cheeks bright and full of life. She swung a long feather ahead of her and dropped it, her brow knit for a moment and Sarah, pleased to see the child, bent to collect it for her, stroking the child’s soft face as she handed it back. “Yours, I believe” she whispered, as her mother ushered her away.

Of course, Sarah knew the loss of a child. Knew the gnawing pain of it. The anger. The cruelty of dreams that woke her in the night, and too often her neighbour. She knew it many times over, as each child was lost so soon after in was conceived. It had driven her husband to war, where he remained, in unending rest upon a field somewhere she would never visit.

She reached the riverside, fussed with her bundle preparing the sheets for washing, aware of the eyes on her. She looked about for a friend, but found none. No sign of the Woolvetts today. But the Applegates and the Parsleys were there, just leaving the Edwards’ house, still raw from their own loss. She couldn’t believe what they said about Old Mrs Clarke, or the others over at the Thorne. They were poor and lonely to be sure, a vision of the life that awaited her perhaps, but she trusted their faith in God was as sound as her own.

She thought of the strangeness of the times, as she looked out across the water. The tide coming in fast over the mud, already warmed in the morning sun. She watched the wading birds scatter as the tide pulled in closer. And at the same time, she felt a change behind her, heard the rising voices, and turned to see the crowd of people coming down South Street at the backs of Hopkins and Sterne. She looked back to the water, to the turning of the tide that was sweeping across the river, and through the street, and across the nation. She took a breath, and held it.

By Amy Hutchings

Elizabeth Gooding was the wife of Edward Gooding, and the couple lived in Manningtree. Edward worked as a ‘cordwainer’, which is an artisan shoemaker. In 1640, Edward’s business was doing sufficiently well as to be on the tax list and, as the wife of a skilled tradesman, Elizabeth may well have been seen as a respectable woman.  She knew Elizabeth Clarke, Helen Clarke and Ann Leech, and (it was suggested by Rebecca West) she attended social gatherings at Elizabeth Clarke’s house.

However, by the time of Elizabeth’s trial in 1645, Edward was mentioned in the court records as a labourer.  This suggests that the fortunes of the Goodings had turned and they were experiencing hard times. This may well have lead to the incident when Elizabeth was said to have ‘cursed’ one Robert Taylor for refusing her credit when she attempted to buy cheese from his shop.  Taylor, a leading local Presbytarian, accused Elizabeth of bewitching his horse,. Elizabeth was finally implicated by Anne Leech, during her interrogation.

Elizabeth was detained with other accused women in horrendous conditions in Colchester Castle prior to her trial at Chelmsford assizes in July 1645, to which they were taken by open cart.  After a short trial she was found guilty.  Elizabeth Gooding was hanged in Chelmsford on the 18th July 1645.

My name is Elizabeth Gooding, and I am a woman of this parish.  I am called ‘witch’ and am to  hang at Chelmsford.  The year is 1645, and it is the year that I was forced to leave this earth.  But, please, ask not how I died, but rather how I lived, and I will tell you.  Call me not ‘the shoemaker’s wife’ for I am my own, and I belong only to the earth.

I am well known hereabouts, once as a respectable woman, but now some call me ‘lewd’ because I have a voice and won’t be told to keep my counsel.  I believe in community, to share and to help. I ask only for what I need.  But those values have no weight any more. They have turned man against wife; neighbour against neighbour.

We women have knowledge.  We use what nature provides us to nurture, to feed, to restore and, where we can, to cure.  The earth is clever, and she is powerful.  All we need is all around us, it is everywhere you look. But you need to learn how to see, and you need to protect that knowledge for it is considered dangerous to some.

I know the feel of the sun warming my face; the sound of the rain clattering on my roof.  I can tell the way the wind is blowing, and it blows danger.  Danger for the women.  For they fear us, and they hate what they don’t understand. What they can’t control. I know what’s coming and I fear it not.

I’ll say not a word at their court, for there are no charges to answer. None that I recognise, at least. I’ll not listen to their vainglorious rhetoric; their false claims; their twisted religion.  It is a conceit and I’ll not bow to it. My body is useless now, old and ugly and I no longer have need of it.  They may do what they will. We’ll not walk from this.

Some of us will die, like the old year.  But, like the first buds of spring, more will follow. The skills and knowledge of women will pass from daughter to daughter down the ages.  We are in the books and the recipes, in the gardens and the seasons, in the flower beds and the herbs that heal us. The wheel of the year will keep turning, and we will continue.

By Claire Hindmarch

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Marian Hockett, widow from Ramsey, was found guilty of witchcraft and executed by hanging at the green in Manningtree. Marian’s sister, Sarah Barton, was similarly accused and when searched she was said to be harbouring the devil’s imps. Under violent interrogation at Harwich gaol, the petrified Sarah ‘confessed’ that her sister, Marian, had given them to her. She was hanged in Manningtree on the 1st of August 1645.

The March air is thin and chill, and the scent of grass is carried on the breeze as it brushes, fresh, against my face. A low mist lingers on the marshes, hovering oppressively in the grey, morning light.

The hem of my wool skirt is wet and heavy as it flaps at my legs, rubbing back and forth against my skin as I walk. My step quickens across the boggy earth and away from the village.

I breathe deeply. The air is clearer here and I long to see the water.

The tide is rising in the inlet. It runs through the manor of Ramsey and out to the sea at Harwich where my sister, Sarah lives. I follow it across the wastes and marshes as far as I can on my way to see her.

My sister suffers with her aches and ailments. When last I saw her, she complained of a new rash and my basket now is filled with herbs and nettles for an ointment that I hope will soothe her.

The thick brushes rustle, catching my ear like whispers. A solitary bee accompanies me, watching almost as I pick my way along the banks.

The basket now taps against my hip as I stride over the uneven ground. Its handle drags at my arm but I hold it steady. My linen bonnet pulls at the nape of my neck and my rough fingers seek to loosen it. A strand of hair escapes.

I think of my Sarah. Always fretting, always uneasy, her mind fractious. I wish she would walk out now and then and take the air. Away from the filth and noise of the narrow, stifling streets.

The warning call of a magpie makes me turn but there is no one there. He flies up to the still-bare branch of a hawthorn tree and another joins him; their glossy, black plumage puffing up against the cold as they nod and chatter.

My breath is suddenly loud to me against the stagnant air. I hasten on; searching once more for the water’s edge as the mist clamps down across the marshes.

My sister ails, and I must go to her.

By Caroline Roberts

Elizabeth Harvey was a 70-year-old widow from Ramsey. She was found guilty of entertaining evil spirits, each in the shape of a mouse, at the Chelmsford Assize Court on 17 July 1645 and sentenced to be hanged. She was reprieved but died in gaol at some point in 1645 or 1646.

Elizabeth known to those who knew her as ‘Rose Ramsey’

This gentle sensitive soul a real character; lives in small house she has a green fingers too:

she forages often in the local wood nearby, she is quiet speaks only when she has something to say.

‘Elizabeth Rose Ramsey’ does have one very good friend: who is younger than

her … she sees occasionally. She’s teaching the younger one who is an

apprentice of sorts.

Rosie Rose is fit and well for a 70 year old woman with a sharp wit and mind. Indeed she can be outspoken: More often very quiet: in her way.

We join her at an important moment in her life: when she finds herself being

accused of something she didn’t do: She feels helpless and hopeless. Yet,

defiant in her protest of her defence: she will put her energies into proving her

innocence. She doesn’t understand how this could happen to her . She’s

shocked, upset: but determined. We go to a moment where I meet ‘Rosie rose’ in

our hamlet where we’ve both lived for our lifetime: I’m her friend. We both

experienced loss: She lost her husband and I lost my father to the bigotry of

fools. Propelled by anger and fear using the law’s that were to persecute those

they do not understand. It’s a story as old as time of this age. The Puritans and

Roundheads conflict affected her as her life partner was killed for his religious

beliefs: in the wrong place at the wrong time … persecution for simply being.

She loved the chapel in the small town that was burnt down by the hate and fear

of men she didn’t know: but still goes to the site of destruction.? Her god and joy

is nature and it’s healing properties

My friend, Elizabeth Harvey Ramsay,  is called “Rosie rose Ramsey” because of her ruddy red

cheeks and hands. She is fit and well for a seventy-year old. 

Each week she goes off gathering the seasons offerings in the same place: she

finds what she needs with ease in the small woodland on our doorsteps and

sometimes in the forest that is further afield.

She collects both Herbs and medicinal food.

Knowledge was passed down by the women of the village  generation by generation, teacher to student: passing on wisdom of collecting and

preparing the herbs into tinctures or foods that can be eaten … or rubbed into the

skin. She is a widow, a kind soul and not a witch at all. Just an ordinary woman with this knowledge of old.

Today as I walk out of the small alleyway that connects our backyards where

we both live I say to my friend:

‘“How do you do: this fine spring day ‘Rosie Rose?”

Rosie Rose

replies …

“Well I’ve just finished gathering

for my supplies from the forest!

Foraging for every day magic:

See my hands: red

with the juice of Elderberry”

Wiping her hands on her apron

“These deep pockets: darlin,’ she says

Endless resources here:

I’ve got everything

… in these pockets so deep:

- A handkerchief

- Tiny pouches with remedies:

- tied neat

To brew and drink

To wrap and rub

Oh my love : my sweet

Share tea with me

Share time … this time

Ticking ….time

waits for no one,” she says.

“Come on my dear” she speaks

Going towards her door.

I’ve visited many times before

Walking together

Into the small parlour

with the familiar smell

Of Rosemary and Thyme

Tied in Bunches

and in small jars

Laughing at something.

We forget and remember

“Let’s drink “

she says and pours out warm liquid into cups for each of us.

We drink: nibbling on some very dry oat cake.

There was peace there is a Maggie bird

perched on the window sill.

Rosie says:

“One for sorrow

two for joy

Three for a girl

Four for a boy

Five For silver

six for gold and …

seven for a secret never to be told”.

Shafts of light fill the space.

“ I wonder if we will see grace in my life?

“Only god knows what I will receive at the hands of these men that I’ve done nothing to harm?

Only god my judge:

In the morning if I’m gone

Please feed my cats…eh love!

and you can have anything here.’

“The rumours well “I  sighed.

“They are only that!

"They will not punish

an ordinary old lady likeyou”.

The daylight fades into dusk

I  squeeze her hand

We sit ..

A butterfly settles with us.

It comes right into the room.

Wild roses bloom

Curling this way and that

In the courtyard

Twilight twinkling

“Come walk with me,”

she says” let’s take a slow walk round

Together step by step”

A tear rolls down my cheek,

Rebellious and fat.

“Come on darling Rosie Rose says. ‘Let’s enjoy this moment’.

By Kathleen Dutton

Sarah Hatyn was from the small village of Ramsey, located close to the prosperous shipbuilding market town of Harwich. Sarah was accused of sorcery, which she denied. Without any legal representation, or solid evidence Sarah was arrested, interrogated and kept prisoner before being tried and then executed.

I carved my name into the stone wall, Sarah Hatyn of Ramsey. I don't know how's it come to this. I'm sitting here in the cold goal, in Chelmsford, the warm sun shining outside. It's July 1645, yet there's no sun shining on me.

Tomorrow on the 17th, that morning will be my last. They have given me my judgement for sorcery and murder. I am to be "hang by neck until be dead".

It happened like this. I'd been that morn'in to the May Day market in Harwich. To meet my friends and have some merriment. When I gets back to my home in Ramsey they was waiting to cart me off to Colchester Castle. Seven hours of jolting, shivering with cold and fear.

They told lies on me. Rob and Will said I bewitched Lionel Jefferson, then later he dies. They says I used sorcery on him. I spit on that Francis Stock. Since that Constable impressed my William into a soldier, and he never comes back to us. My husband was a tailor. We were respectable people. Now I have nothing except these wretched rags I die in. Not even enough for my sons to pay for a decent burial.

I knows that Constable suffered what with his wife, both daughters and his man servant all dying in the most awful ways. But we've had the plague in these parts, it's touched many a family. They that gets it have fevers and rants, crying out all manner of weird things. The Constable's wife and both daughters says it was me. They screamed out it was I, SARAH, who was bewitching them all.

Ooh! It weren't true, I never did nothing to them. What grounds did they have to take me away, except for hear say? In front of them Justices of the Peace, I looked into their cold, cruel eyes. I pleaded with them saying, I'm not guilty of any of this. They never believed me.

So, here I am a wretch, in this foul smelling goal. I'm scared, so scared.

There ain't no warm sunshine here.

By Linzi Martin

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Anne Thurston was a woman of Greater Holland, married to Edward Thurston. Her age is unknown. She was accused of having two familiars: a bird and a mouse. Her biggest crime, however, was bewitching to death a black cow. These accusations are obviously unfounded and were not proved in any way before she was sent to the gaols. Her ultimate fate remains unknown: she was alive and imprisoned in 1648 despite being condemned to death in 1646.

I do not want to open my eyes. My cell is already bright, but I have nothing interesting to look at. I feel the cool damp of the stone walls and the warm damp of sick perspiration of my fellow women. Perhaps if I just lay here a little longer, the day will go by faster.

Here they are. The birds are chirping outside, preventing me from falling asleep again. I have lost all sympathy for their famished cries. Cry away, little traitors! Denounce yourselves! I hope a mischievous boy comes along and finds you with his sling! I hope his mother cooks you for supper! Or that his sister keeps you in a cage, as her enslaved performer.

I don’t mind the mice as much, for I have never intentionally fed them. Who, in their right minds, would befriend a harbinger of disease? If one found its way inside my home, it was through its own cleverness and hunger. No decent homemaker would invite one inside. If I am guilty of anything, is to make delicious bread.

I mostly think about the cow. How one stupid animal’s death - no doubt brought along by the devilish mouse itself! - has been the cause of all my suffering. I also think about my neighbours. How did I not see their evil intentions? Every favour asked, I complied. I greeted them politely at each encounter. For what? For them to ruin my family because of an animal I have never laid eyes upon!

I wish I were indeed a powerful witch.

I wish I could fly away from this cell, or maybe turn myself into a tiny mouse and escape through the holes on the floor. 

I wish I could cast a spell that would cause the whole village to sicken. 

I wish to inflict in them my pain, and leave them with open wounds to their fronts, so everyone could see the marks of their treason.

I am bitter, for I do not believe in forgiveness. Forgiving is divine, and I am but a human. 

I have done nothing wrong.

I don’t believe any of these women have. 

God has not made humans powerful in that sense. These men of God, who claim His appointment, are in search of power and fame. But it is alright. When we all stand in Heaven, watching on from above, they will learn that it is not holy to be prideful.

This is my only solace.

I can only hope it comes soon.

By Alice Tremea

Bridget Mayers from Great Holland was reprieved after being found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced today. Although she was officially pardoned in March 1646 she was still in goal in 1648.

Life weighs heavily around my neck

Fear is rife, but what d’you expect?

My old hands are sore, a sign of neglect

All I can do is wait

As we turn on each other, more so than before

The wolves of violence appear at my door

I thought I’d borne pain but this is far more

And all I can do is wait

Even now if I am acquitted or freed

I will keep my back turned from this creed

The women around me scratch their arms till they bleed

God! End this waiting

In a life led in fear; of God and dereliction

The only thing I can hold is conviction

Oh.. 3 more women have swung today

The waiting is over for now

I close my eyes and pretend, even now

That I’m back on the beach…

By Freya Leslie

Anne Cade was a spinster from Great Holland who was hanged after being found guilty of witchcraft at the Chelmsford Assizes on 17 July 1645.

My name is Anne Cade, the year is 1623 and today is the Winter Solstice.

Word around the village is that there’s something grand happening in the skies tonight, a bright star, something that only happens once every 400 years!

This morning, just before dawn, mother called me to hurry up and get dressed, she wanted to give me my ‘gifts’ before I left for work.

Gifts she said.

I remembered I would receive a gift on the Solstice, but not ‘gifts!!’

How exciting!!

I splashed my face with cold water and rubbed dried lavender all over my arms and my legs.

Mother told me today was a special day, she said I come ‘of age’ today and become a woman, just like those women in the village with their skirts all swishing about.

I’m not a girl anymore, I’m all grown up, my mother told me so.

She kissed my cheeks, told me to close my eyes and hold out my apron in my lap..

I heard a rustling then felt something warm moving in my lap.

“Open your eyes little Annie, Solstice Blessings my sweet one” she says.

I looked down and in my lap were the most handsome little mice I have ever seen! My eyes filled up with so much joy that tears gave my little friends their first bath!

“You have to give them names you know” my mother says…

Hmmmmm….I see the twitchy nose. This whitest one, reminds me of the farmers boy James, he gets all twitchy when I say hello, so James this little one is.

“Oh and what about you” I say to the patchy grey one…one of his little ears has a tiny hole, so, “Prickeare” I giggled.

“Prickeare?!” my mother exclaimed.

“Yes, Prickeare” I replied with all the tenderness of a mother to my little furry friend.

“And what about you then” I pondered whilst looking over my last little mouse…I picked him up and with surprise saw his reddy brown chest, “And you my little friend shall by known by the world as Robyn.”

I kissed each in turn before my mother told me to close my eyes again, I did feel a little panic as the sun was coming up over the back wall and I needed to leave.

I opened my eyes, a freshly woven willow bird cage with the most dearest little Sparrow nestled on a mound of straw…

I flung my arms around my mothers neck and said thank you thank you over and over and how I’d be aching all day to come home and play with my new friends.

“You can’t go without naming this little feathered one” she cried….I grabbed my dairy bonnet from the mantle and called out before rushing through the door, “Sparrow mother, his name is Sparrow!!”

I heard her laughter ringing, gathering up my apron and running out the back gate towards the fields…

A proper women…all grown up today!

Never mind a few men folk seemed to forget before today I was just a girl. With their winks and smiles…. although tis strange how I seem invisible when arm in arm with their lady friends….strange folk men are, especially that Robert Freeman and John Tillet….hot kettle one minute, stoney cold the next.

As for that George Parby and Samual Ray, they’re married, so’s that John Rawlins….shouldn’t like to be their wife, trying their luck with a milk maid.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense…

…It’s the Solstice and tonight on my way home, I shall be looking out for that brightest star in the sky and make a special wish…May we all be happy, may we all be well and may we all be blessed.

Words by Tina Catchpole

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Sarah Bright was widow who lived in Manningtree nearly 400 years ago. Alongside 29 other women, she was executed as a witch 1645. She was accused of causing the death by witchcraft of Anne, the daughter of Henry Woolvett, a local landowner.

It’s a short walk down to the river. From the top of South Street, the glint of the water catches your eye the moment you step outside. On a Spring tide, it runs right up the road, but this morning it’s low, the slick mud criss-crossed by godwits and sandpipers.

Sarah leaves home with a bundle of sheets at her hip. She is uncommon tall and used to carrying herself but, lately, the looks gather like crows at the edge of her eyeline. Talks quiets at her approach. There’s a sense of turning, at the waist, at the neck, just beyond her eyeline.

A neighbour’s child died in the night after a week of languishing. Little Anne Woolvett. Sarah had seen her only hours before she was taken ill, walking ahead of her mother, curls shining in the morning sun, cheeks bright and full of life. She swung a long feather ahead of her and dropped it, her brow knit for a moment and Sarah, pleased to see the child, bent to collect it for her, stroking the child’s soft face as she handed it back. “Yours, I believe” she whispered, as her mother ushered her away.

Of course, Sarah knew the loss of a child. Knew the gnawing pain of it. The anger. The cruelty of dreams that woke her in the night, and too often her neighbour. She knew it many times over, as each child was lost so soon after in was conceived. It had driven her husband to war, where he remained, in unending rest upon a field somewhere she would never visit.

She reached the riverside, fussed with her bundle preparing the sheets for washing, aware of the eyes on her. She looked about for a friend, but found none. No sign of the Woolvetts today. But the Applegates and the Parsleys were there, just leaving the Edwards’ house, still raw from their own loss. She couldn’t believe what they said about Old Mrs Clarke, or the others over at the Thorne. They were poor and lonely to be sure, a vision of the life that awaited her perhaps, but she trusted their faith in God was as sound as her own.

She thought of the strangeness of the times, as she looked out across the water. The tide coming in fast over the mud, already warmed in the morning sun. She watched the wading birds scatter as the tide pulled in closer. And at the same time, she felt a change behind her, heard the rising voices, and turned to see the crowd of people coming down South Street at the backs of Hopkins and Sterne. She looked back to the water, to the turning of the tide that was sweeping across the river, and through the street, and across the nation. She took a breath, and held it.

By Amy Hutchings

Anne Leech was a poor widow from Mistley, and the mother of another of the accused ‘witches’, Helen Clarke. Anne was searched for ‘witches’ marks’, probably ‘watched’, and interrogated.  She was the first person to mention meetings of alleged ‘witches’ at Elizabeth Clarke's house. Anne was found guilty of murdering Richard Edwards’ baby son John by witchcraft. She was executed in Chelmsford in July 1645.

I am alone by the river at early light, wrapped up in my thoughts. The grey mist rises over the Stour. Flights of birds enjoy the spoils in the mud the receding tide reveals.  I can taste the familiar salt air on my lips. I love it here, it’s my home.

Closing my eyes, I hear the familiar sounds of gulls and the trees softly sighing but my stomach knots -  a wave of fear overcomes me. Recalling recent disturbing happenings in the village, I find myself petrified. Tears well up, they sting my eyes, but I cannot help them coming and I try to slow my breathing, filling my lungs with the cold winter air.

Certain of us women, including my precious daughter Helen, feel threatened and vulnerable. England is in the middle of a civil war but here many women have their own battle.

Over the last few months my parish and companions have become divided and suspicious since the arrival and interference of one, Matthew Hopkins. Prayer group meetings with my friends at Elizabeth Clarke’s house have taken a different turn.  Now we fear for our safety. I am terrified that I will be caught in the conflict and that my life will be cut short by a single man.

As soon as I caught sight of HIM at church, I felt uneasy. Fancily dressed in black clothes, with raven ringlets, his penetrating dark eyes and haughty manner immediately instilled within me a palpable fear. Like a net was being cast, I had no choice but to be snared.

An impoverished widow, I am at the low end of society, very misunderstood. Life can deal a harsh hand to some, and the passing of my husband was a crushing blow. I have had to draw on all my inner strength and my faith in the Lord to be strong and to bring up my daughter in the best way I can. Not always in ways I would have chosen.

Day to day life is a struggle for me. I cannot always afford food and sometimes must resort to…begging. It is my shame. The Poor Rate has helped, but many resent impotent widows.

Hopkins began to ask questions about us. I felt as though I was being targeted with other older, poor women and those unafraid to speak their minds - we’re continually watched. It’s intimidating.

There is no one I can trust.

I don’t understand - I have done nothing wrong, why am I being persecuted?

I just want to be left alone.

The shivering starts. It’s not just the cold air. My body is exhausted from anxiety and worry.

Wrapping my threadbare blanket around my shoulders I drag myself up the hill towards Mistley Heath. My steps are laboured, my heart heavy. I hate the feeling of getting old - wrinkled skin, rotten teeth and worn, weary bones, not being able to move as I used to.

Nearly home. I must bury these thoughts, get on with my day and strengthen  my faith.

God knows his own.

By Felicity Borwick

Helen Clarke was the daughter of Anne Leech from Mistley Heath and lived in Manningtree with her husband, stonemason Thomas Clarke. Helen was accused of murdering Mary and Edward Parsley’s daughter, Anne, by bewitching her. Edward Parsley was a local bricklayer, an outspoken Puritan and a man of standing in the town, who acted as one of Helen’s watchers. Helen was tried in Chelmsford on 17th July 1645 and was one of the four women taken back to Manningtree to be hanged on 1st August 1645.

July 1645. My mother Anne Leech’s life has been taken, Now I, Helen Clarke, am to be used as an example and publicly hanged in full view of my neighbours and the parish of Manningtree along with three others - Anne West, Anne Cooper and Marian Hockett. In goal, so weak from lack of food, daylight and even water, it is hard to muster any emotions, I am resigned to my fate, as others before me have.

The past feels unreal, dreamlike. When I sleep, I see it all happening again in my mind, the tortuous methods of extracting confessions used on me by Matthew Hopkins. The night they beat down my door and invaded my home is etched in my head. Three long days and nights I was watched. They denied me food and sleep. I became delirious, feeling like I had drunk too many mugs of ale. Unaware of what I was really saying, I confessed that the devil appeared in my house.  I told Hopkins about Elimanzer who has the likeness of a white dog which I fed with milk-pottage. It was like I was in a nightmare – so confusing - Elimanzer bade me to deny Christ. Then, Mary, ‘Goody’ Phillips examined my body to see if there were any marks which might be teats for familiars to suckle on.

I was taken to the local gaol in Manningtree, where my mother and others were. In here I was cruelly tortured, stripped of all my clothes, beaten, and left without any food, then ordered to walk barefoot across the cold stone floor of my single cell until my feet were blistered and bloody. 

At my trail in Chelmsford an informant, not a local that I know, talked about me passing the Parsley’s door and muttering a curse on the child. I admit, after Mary and I had a particular disagreement, there were times when I wished badly of her, but I didn’t say her daughter “should rue for all”. This is the truth, God knows, but I am not believed. Since her baby died, Mary has blamed me for the death. People have turned against me.

The trials were so quick, there were so many other women accused and it was all very bewildering, the courthouse was packed, noisy and hot. Each accused woman had precious little time to defend herself against the spoken lies of others.

As it all drew to an end my mother and I managed to embrace, our last precious moments together, both weeping deeply into each other’s shoulder.  I became hysterical when a guard roughly prised us apart:  my mother, with the others, was taken away.

It felt as though my heart had been ripped out.

Separated forever: I never saw my mother again.

The next day she was taken and executed.

It must have been some comfort to her to think that I was saved.

But it’s only for a matter of hours.

Tomorrow I will meet my end.

I put my trust in God for He is my maker.

By Felicity Borwick

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Margaret Moone was condemned as a witch alongside 28 other women from the Manningtree area, including her daughter, in 1645, a time of Civil War. She was accused of bewitching two children who had died in the community, as well as the cow of a local yeoman, alongside a range of other offenses. Margaret was incarcerated at Colchester Castle and sentences to hang, but collapsed and died on the way to the gallows. The poem that follows aims to capture both the chaos of the times and the change she would have seen during her lifetime, as well as giving her back some strength and dignity in death, through the telling of her unique story.

She grows old in an age of young men, bored of peace and bound for slaughter,

Across the fields fresh dug, a drawing forth of arms and, in the water,

All harms exposed, things emerge at her bidding,

Creatures loose and wild, and neighbours unforgiving, turn,

All eyes on the bent back of Margaret Moone, and they whisper,

Voices passed from room to room, rising in a chorus with tide,

WITCH WITCH WITCH

She will not hide, but turns to face the surge of water

Now growing old and strange is case for slaughter

In Manningtree where she has watched as fear sets seed,

She knows where whispers lead, as they have across the nation,

To the gallows and slow asphyxiation,

She feels the tightening of her breath with every step,

Across the rushes and towards her death.

Which comes like a spring tide all too soon,

The heart of Margaret Moone stops on the steps of the gallows,

A last quiet act of dissent, with all that remains her,

Her body folds into a curled crescent without a sound,

A pace away from execution, she rests upon ground and the crowd quiets,

Along the Walls, the talk falls silent,

The tide is out, but the moon is full, defiant.

By Amy Hutchings

Elizabeth Hare, from Great Clacton, was accused by Mary Smith of giving her two imps.  She was found guilty of witchcraft at Chelmsford Assizes on 17th July 1645.  She was hanged the following day.

I did not take to needlepoint as a child, much to mother’s frustration. As a young thing, I was interested only in the beasts my father tended for the master. I would linger when I took father his luncheon, and observe. No one noticed. I was slight, with a pinched face, and easy to overlook.

By the time I married my dear Thomas I could mend a chicken’s wing as easy as pluck it for the pot. I had a quiet reputation as a healer: Folk would bring me their lame dog or colicky mare. Often, I could help, but many times I was not able. I wonder now what scared people - when I healed – or when I did not.

For surely people were scared and I was noticed. Fear and accusation took fast. First in Manningtree and then across the Hundred. According to Mr Longe, when he finally came to Clacton and my door, I was accused by Mary Smith, although I did not believe it.  Mistress Smith came to me two months past with a sickly dog, and was most joyful when I told her it was pregnant. A few weeks later, two young were born, small and healthy, and one with a delightful tail as like a squirrel.

Mr Longe says Mistress Smith says I gave her two imps. She meant nothing by it, naming me. But when Mr Longe pressed me for the names of others who sought out my “devilish healing”- (which he mocked, as if no woman might be able to soothe a cat or dog), I named none.

Instead, I raised my hands upward and spoke that if I were guilty of any such thing, then may the Lord show me. And then I was overcome with shaking and trembling and fell to the ground, whereupon I could scarce move. I remained this way as they took me to Chelmsford and as they locked me away. Occasionally I would be well enough to glimpse a raven or a blackbird and the sight brought me a little comfort, but I soon lapsed again into sickness.

I was still sick when I was condemned to hang. And I was sick when I finally passed and I see now that God protected me. He saw what was in my soul and found no witchcraft in my heart.  He found no witchcraft in any heart that year.

I was long passed when the trials ended and Matthew Hopkins retired. Rumour has it that he died of consumption, transmitted to him a few years earlier. Apparently a dog bit him one Sunday on the way home from church. Of that, nothing is known, except the dog had an interestingly fluffy tail.

By Tracey Vickers

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Mary Starling was a married woman from Langham. Although deprived after being found guilty, she was still in gaol in 1648 and we are unaware of her fate.

She is peeling potatoes, the smell of apple mint steaming from the already boiling pot and painting a fog on the window of her busy kitchen. Next she will pluck the pheasant laid long on the table.

The vegetables fit so neatly in her hand as she runs the knife cleanly between flesh and skin, pulling it toward her and not even needing to look. She has the nervous grace of a ghost, sitting tall on her stool with her knee twitching lightly til she gets moving again. She pops the potato into the bubbling water and enjoys the heat of the steam on her hands.

She keeps her house warm and herself always moving, always busy. Her house is built of wood and plaster. Not stone. That old castle with the honeyed stone, must have seemed a home once. To someone.

She shivers. Deep inside there are dark sharp things hiding. The cold of the past resides in the meat of her bones.

So she dreams out through the window over the scouring moor. A space so open it makes her squint her eyes, stone blue like a clear Essex winter sky. A line of honking geese pass in a great chevron. They must be the last cohort, heading somewhere warmer themselves.

Outside a mist is lifting and at this time of year it becomes such a thick happening, helping her to disappear from the folk buzzing around in the seething cold air. She longs to avoid their scathing gaze and often wears John’s clothes like a disguise. Besides, they are cosier than her skirts as she wanders out there with the wind and the moss.

On the days she dresses for worship she could still turn a head or two and has one fine dress. Crisp linen with forget-me-nots sewn all over. In it she looks every inch a lady, but the cap missing from her head makes those so called decent folks scowl. She refuses to cover her hair which has been ice white for decades, belying her years. It turned in her 20s during the trial.

It keeps folk at a distance which suits her.

Her voice is small, quiet, concise

But clear. An economy of words she looks just past you as she speaks

As if watching the future approach.

She uses it to call one of the dogs to heel and tends to a kettle of water that has finally come to boil. As she leans in over its shimmering steam, the squirming hound lifts its nose to catch her owners reassuring scent. Woodsmoke and sweet dried herbs.

They step out of the door leaving dinner to swim on the fire and ready itself.

The last of the day’s sunlight catches on the remnants of seeds from the garden caught in her hair.

And here she sits and drinks warm tea

Thyme, Lemon Verbena, lavender steeped with a little honey

Cradling it in her hands to cherish its heat

John strides home along the horizon, bringing her peace with him. A hard-won smile breaks loose as the dog runs to meet him and she holds her happiness close while he flashes his bright smile right back at her.

The world need only be her and John and the dogs, and the birds up in the big sky.

Time can stop here now.

By Gemma Garwood

Susan Wente was a 70-year-old widow from Langham. At the Chelmsford Assize Court in 1645, she was convicted of entertaining two evil spirits in the shape of moles. She was reprieved rather than being hanged but remained in gaol, where she died by 1646. We know little about why she was given up to the witch-finders by her neighbours; they probably feared her and saw her as a burden on the community. I chose to commemorate Susan in poetry by writing:

An ancient penny, Susan’s lucky charm,

Was meadow-found and polished clean of dirt

and threaded on a ribbon round her neck;

‘You keep it close’; her mother’s prayer-like words

Are held within her heart, are precious things

Reminding her of times when she was loved

and looked at with a smile and not the scowl

of fearful neighbours spitting in her face.

Her penny now is clutched tight in her hand

So hard the gaoler cannot pry it loose,

The only thing she brought into the gaol

when first arrested, back in ’45,

and carried with her all throughout her trials,

Until this day, when death has set her free.

By Alison Rowlands

Mary Cooke was a widow who lived to the age of 60 in the village of Langham. During her long life she would have witnessed many witch hunts, though none as fierce as the one instigated by Mathew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, which called her to account. We have no record of what ‘crimes’ she was accused with, but we do know she died of the plague, while awaiting trial for witchcraft in Colchester Castle.

Sixty summers I’ve seen.

Yes, ‘tis more than most.

And many babes birthed.

Some blessed to live,

Some blessed to die.

As God willed it.

A Widda?

I am!  As accused,

But a good wife I was.

And ‘tis true,

If my husband was here,

I would not be.

So, hang me and be done with it!

They’ll be no others come to you in times of sickness.

Condemn yourselves to suffering then!

Now I understand why Jesus wept.

For you be criminals all,

You break God’s commandment:

Thou shalt not kill.

Blasphemy you cry!

I shout Hypocrite!

You seek my condemnation from your new gods, the Witchfinder and Hangman.

Who you set above all: God, the Church,

And your good reason.

I confess to being a witch,

Only to deny you the pleasure of seeing me float or bleed.

There is no cure for your sickness.

See them, glancing and whispering?

Who will be to blame when I have gone?

Who will be next?

For evil is surely within you.

Do you see yourself, floating and hanging?

Death will not suffer me to be gawked at,

Hanged from the nearest gibbet

As I curse you to damnation!

He comes a courting now, on his prancing black horse,

Arms full of rings o’roses,

And offers my salvation!

I will be gone before the scaffold’s done.

Departing this earth, as your trial is begun!

By Nicola Edwards

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Susan Cocke was one of four women from St Osyth accused in 1645 of having joined forces to bewitch a local carpenter’s apprentice, amongst other acts of harmful magic. Contemporary pamphlet testimony suggests the women were closely linked socially; I have imagined them, through Susan’s eyes, as friends. All four women lost their lives as a result of the 1645 witch-trials; Rose Hollybread died of the plague in Colchester Castle before trial; Margaret Landish and Joyce Boanes were hanged; Susan was reprieved but died in gaol awaiting release.

My name is Sue, Sue Cocke, of St Osyth. I laugh loud with my head thrown back and my hair flowing. My husband John says it is not seemly but still I love him as the Bible tells me I must. Though I am merriest with my friends, my dear friends, Rosie, Maggie and Joy. We’ve known each other these long years past and meet when we can along the field-paths to talk and watch the sun set together. We take care to pick hazelnuts or blackberries or sloes as we go, as the godly folk of St Osyth mislike women who seem idle and gather just to take pleasure in each other’s company.

I am alive with questions about the world and its mysteries and would ask them more often but for the blow I was fetched as a young woman and newly-wed. I asked the minister then about Rosie’s surname. I asked ‘Is Hollybread the same as holy bread? And does it mean the communion?’ It was meant in all earnestness but the minister replied I was blaspheming and struck my face hard.

Now I keep my questions inside, like a pot boiling with the lid on, and only ask them of my friends, my dear friends, who do their best to answer me and laugh with me when they can’t.

I love my cottage, my village, my family, my friends, the hedgerows and fields alive with life, and the salt-marshes with the mud and the cattle and the darting birds and the swooping sea, and all that I can touch and taste and smell and hear and see. Though I am not wealthy, I give my friends the comfort of my voice and my arms and my aid when they ask for it. I know they will help me in their turn and this is the charity, I think, of which the minister sometimes preaches.

Our godly neighbours frown and fold their arms and purse their lips a great deal because of the king in London who they say taxes us unjustly and is too nigh a Catholic for our comfort. Although I see no comfort in their frowns and deeds. They smashed and burnt the altar rails in our church because they were too comely, but no good will come of their destruction. Maggie is afeared now and weeps more often than she laughs, as they say a war is coming. I tell her, softly, that there will be no war and not to fear it if it comes as war is men’s concern and no matter for the four of us to worry about.

We are but women.

By Alison Rowlands

Of all the ways I had imagined I might take my leave of this mortal world, I had never once considered that I would be sent to die for the simple sin of having lived a long life.

I almost laugh to think of myself as ‘blessed’ as I crouch pitifully here in a spiteful clutching corner of Colchester Castle, but I have, it seems, been burdened with the ‘blessing’ of too many years.

I would, I swear it, give half of them back for a single day at the little house on the farm at Copper’s Green.

One might suppose it a torturous task to think of home in a place such as this, but I can conjure that wonderfully unremarkable image in a happy instant! It is both a memory and a dream and I feel as though I am there, though I remain here. I turn to the fireplace toward the easternmost end of our two-room cottage. It is modest, built to be so, adorned with the ornaments of a simple, deliberate, daily life. Perhaps it is the iciness of the hard, grey flagstones of the Gaol I can still feel that ushers me here to the small, strong but comforting flames of our warming hearth; maybe sentimentality; just as likely habit, as I spent much of my days here tending to the gladdening monotony of life.

I notice for a moment that my husband, John, is not here and wonder that it must still be daylight outside. (Oh, how I have missed that these last weeks!) For certain it is early though, as supper is not yet simmering.

I am instantly pulled from thoughts of John by the familiar short nick of a splinter to my thumb, and I realise that I have been searching the smooth surface of the old oak lintel above the fireplace. John had carefully carved a little daisywheel into the underside of the lintel, close enough to the stone jambs so as not to be licked by the flames. A simple splay of six perfect petals reaching out to touch the edge of their own protective halo. I can feel it now, clean and deep but no longer fresh to the touch. I know it before I even look at it, that once imperceptible detail that now diminishes every other thing in the room, the frontier between then and now. The mark of the madness.

The madness began, as it so often does, with callous whispers and envious suspicions of the eternally untrusted ‘other’ – anything, anyone that may be different. I waited patiently for it to tighten its stranglehold around the town, as I was sure it would. As too had the pestilence, and the hunger of failed harvests; the ebb and flow of this ever-bloody war. I had outlasted all of that, and I was steadfast in my resolve to endure this too. Even when they took the first of us, I was not too afraid. I did not see that this, my survival, my many years, was my ‘otherness.’

In the weeks to come the madness crept assuredly to the battened-timber door of our house, as it had done to so many others. Our friends became our neighbours and then strangers and, finally, our denouncers.

And so, at my behest, John etched our demon trap into the wood, our last desperate defence against this evil, this madness. Better we had etched it on the priory walls and the doors of the courthouse, for that is where danger prowled, not at our hearth!

But there is not time enough for anger, or despair, or even hope. I am not in this gaol -  I am home. I hope that John will be back soon.

It seems, I am blessed with the burden of my final days.

By Samantha Pace

Rose Hollybread (or Hallybread) was one of five women from St Osyth accused of witchcraft in 1645. A poor, 65-year-old widow, Rose was accused of keeping demonic imps and of joining forces with three of the other accused St Osyth women (Joyce Boanes, Susan Cocke and Margaret Landish) and their imps to work witchcraft against their neighbours. Rose was questioned by the Manningtree Justices of the Peace, arrested and taken with the other women to the holding cells of Colchester Castle. Rose died there on 11 June 1645, probably of the plague, before she could be taken to Chelmsford for trial.

Hovering mists over the fields

Winding around gates and trees

Stones knocking in the river

The creak of the well rope, lifting the overflowing bucket

The scent of fresh earth, hardpacked and drying

Pouring milk, thick into the blue glazed bowl

Ripping roots

Cuttings drying over the fire

Humming knowledge, my books surround me

I sleep peacefully

Being alone

The freedom to walk

The orange light of evening

The smell of the seasons

The waves of my parents, seeing my figure appear at the bend on the lane

My mother heaping honey on my bread, chatting all the while

My father seating me closest to the fire in the cold, in the shade in the heat

My child, seeking my face out in a crowd

My husband’s contented smile

Saying a prayer over the graves of the three wives who came before me

The quiet of twilight.

Then

The accusations, a mirror of their darkest thoughts

Those eyes, these men

Absent from those Holy Fields, purging cowardice on our Purple Islands

My rage burns bright

As cold and as sharp as sunlight on a winter’s day.

By Kayleigh Boyle

A married women from St Osyth, Margaret Landish was accused, along with Rose Hollybread, Joyce Boanes, and Susan Cocke of conspiring to do harm against their neighbours with demonic imps. We don’t know what friendship these women had, but it was deemed dangerous by the people around them. Margaret was hanged at Chelmsford in 1645.

Come on Ol Pegg, lift your head and meet em in the eye. You my gel are made of stronger stuff than this, don’t we just know it. And they think you’re strong enough to have killed all them piggies. Poor beasts… So let em be scared of you. If they’d ever bothered to care for you awld gel they’d know that you wouldn’t lift a finger in cruelty to such creatures as God made so dependent on us.

Human beings though, some of them do deserve such cruelty as they visit on others. God willing it comes back to em times over.

Don’t give in to your legs, let em shake, still let em hold you up. Now isn’t the time to let em see you go down Gel. These ‘fine’ folks have spent enough time scorning at your expense. They have laid you low ol Pegg but now you must tell em as is, tell em what was seen and done.

Is it such a crime to love God’s creatures as I have never been loved? No no no. Don’t listen to the ache in the middle of your eyes, let em sting…But don’t give em any more of your tears Pegg.

Oh Lor, I hope someone will be kind to my dogs…

I was so lonely you see and so tired of being lonely. And God had gotten so quiet, yeah, even heavenly father stopped wanting t’talk to me in the end. But until they sat up so long with me I really did think I was still listening out for him. But maybe them whispers were from somewhere dark all along, yes. It makes me cold to the meat of my bones to think it but p’raps they were from somewhere less divine.

But still it holds, and I stand by it that unkindness deserves unkindness returned to it. I did mutter bitter words and I don’t regret it. No don’t Regret it Pegg, not for a moment. If it hurt them as they hurt you, so be it. I only wanted someone to care for me, I hoped for God at least…

Yes awld Gal… we can still hope for God. Lift up your head Old Pegg, and tell your truth. As it always was, always is. As it always will be.

By Gemma Garwood

Joyce Boanes was a married woman from St Osyth was was hanged for witchcraft in 1645 at Chelmsford.

Hanged

After being found guilty

On the 17th of July, 1645.

Just outside Chelmsford court now

On the eighteenth,

And there’s others, I’ve heard,

Anne Leech from Mistley and a few others:

Rebecca Jones from St Osyth,

There’s others:

some married, some spinsters and widows…

just a mix of women really.

I mean, the thing is,

what I know is this:

I’m Joyce Boanes from St Osyth.

I’ve been married and

I’m at the peak of my life.

And

although my life ain’t ended

in 1645

this is a little, a few, words that I left

hanging

space of hope

at the end of a

very red rope.

‘What? A witch?’ you said.

What?

Your words cut like knives

My blood will flow into the earth

that bleeds.

Trees reach out their arms

sadly

seeping

sap.

Willows weeping

water

healing.

Cries like a baby

Distant sounds

Dreams are dashed and

there’s a rope – frayed

raw skin

red

flashback

some voices, disembodied, rushed, broken.

Images flash fast and I close my eyes on a world

that feels bitter

at the end.

Here and now –

gone

into a place of light.

No pain

No fight

Recycling the cycle of love

Back home in the arms of the beloved

The angels gather for you

‘Peace! Peace, oh, peace,’ she cried

‘Let me rest in this eternal peace.’

She found peace

in

this

place.

By Kathleen Dutton

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