Matthew Hopkins

"Exod.22.18, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

"That he must needs be the greatest Witch, Sorcerer, and Wizzard himselfe, else hee could not doe it. Answ. If Satans kingdome be divided against it selfe, how shall it stand?"

"From whence then proceeded this his skill? was it from his profound learning, or from much reading of learned Authors concerning that subject? Answ. From neither of both, but from experience, which though it be meanly esteemed of, yet the surest and safest way to judge by."

"I pray where was this experience gained? and why gained by him and not by others? Answ. The Discoverer never travelled far for it, but in March 1644 he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of Witches living in the Towne where he lived, a Towne in Essex called Maningtree, with divers other adjacent Witches of other towns, who every six weeks in the night (being alwayes on the Friday night) had their meeting close by his house and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the Devill, one of which this discoverer heard speaking to her Imps one night, and bid them goe to another Witch, who was thereupon apprehended, and searched, by women who had for many yeares knowne the Devills marks, and found to have three teats about her, which honest women have not: so upon command from the Justice they were to keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars, which the fourth night she called in by their severall names, and told them what shapes, a quarter of an houre before they came in, there being ten of us in the roome."

"Vinegar Tom, who was like a long-legg'd Greyhound, with an head like an Oxe, with a long taile and broad eyes, who when this discoverer spoke to, and bade him goe to the place provided for him and his Angels, immediately transformed himselfe into the shape of a child of foure yeeres old without a head, and gave halfe a dozen turnes about the house, and vanished at the doore."

"King James in his Demonology saith, it is a certaine rule, for (saith he) Witches deny their baptisme when they Covenant with the Devill, water being the sole element thereof, and therefore saith he, when they be heaved into the water, the water refuseth to receive them into her bosome, (they being such Miscreants to deny their baptisme) and suffers them to float, as the Froath on the Sea, which the water will not recieve, but casts it up and downe till it comes to the earthy element the shore, and there leaves it to consume."

"How can any possibly beleeve that the Devill and the Witch joyning together, should have such power, as the Witches confesse to kill such such a man, child, horse, cow, the like; if we beleeve they can doe what they will, then we derogate from Gods power, who for certaine limits the Devill and the Witch; and I cannot beleeve they have any power at all. Answ. God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt, and the devill doth play many times the deluder and impostor with these Witches, in perswading them that they are the cause of such and such a murder wrought by him with their consents, when and indeed neither he nor they had any hand in it, as thus: We must needs argue, he is of a long standing, above 6000. yeers, then he must needs be the best Scholar in all knowledges of arts and tongues, & so have the best skill in Physicke, judgment in Physiognomie, and knowledge of what disease is reigning or predominant in this or that mans body, (and so for cattell too) by reason of his long experience. This subtile tempter knowing such a man lyable to some sudden disease, (as by experience I have found) as Plurisie, Imposthume, &c. he resorts to divers Witches; if they know the man, and seek to make a difference between the Witches and the party, it may be by telling them he hath threatned to have them very shortly searched, and so hanged for Witches, then they all consult with Satan to save themselves, and Satan stands ready prepared, with a What will you have me doe for you, my deare and nearest children, covenanted and compacted with me in my hellish league, and sealed with your blood, my delicate firebrand-darlings."

"Has not this present parliament A leger to the devil lent, Fully empower’d to treat about Finding revolted witches out? And has not he, within a year, Hang’d threescore of ’em in one shire? Some only for not being drown’d, And some for sitting above ground, Whole days and nights, upon their breeches, And, feeling pain, were hang’d for witches, And some for putting knavish tricks Upon green geese and turkey chicks, Or pigs, that suddenly deceas’d Of griefs unnat’ral, as he guess’d; Who after prov’d himself a witch, And made a rod for his own breech."

"To John Gaule, vicar of Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, is due the merit of exposing these proceedings. Gaule was a puritan and a Cromwellian, who believed in witchcraft, but not in Hopkins. A letter from Hopkins to one of his parishioners complains of Gaule's opposition. On 30 June 1646 Gaule published a small book containing the substance of a month's sermons on witchcraft. "Every old woman," he says, "with a wrinkled face, a furr'd brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voyce, or a scolding tongue, having a rugged coate on her back, a skull-cap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a dog or cat by her side, is not only suspected but pronounced for a witch." Hopkins's "signs" discover "no other witch but the user of them.""