Any beggar woman was a potential scapegoat during the European witch craze

In the three centuries between 1450 and 1750 in Europe it is estimated that up to 100,000 women were burned, hanged, drowned or put to death in other ingenious ways on suspicion of being witches. John Callow’s thoroughly researched book tells the story of three such women, the last judicial victims in England of what has been dubbed ‘the great European witch craze’.

Craze is an appropriate word for a phenomenon which spanned a period when the Continent was supposedly emerging from the dark ages of superstition into the sunlight of the Enlightenment. But in the dawning Europe of Kant, Voltaire and Newton a cloud of unreason persisted, of which the Bideford witch trial was a small but significant example.

In 1682, Grace Thomas, the sister-in-law of Thomas Eastchurch, a prosperous businessman in the Devon port of Bideford, was stricken by a mysterious illness. Eastchurch called in expensive physicians who treated Grace with various remedies; but nothing seemed to work and she remained bedbound. Then one day a magpie flew into the house and flapped about before being chased out by two servants.

In the street they spotted a well-known local beggar woman, Temperance Lloyd, lurking in the shadows. They reported this to their master, who made an instant connection between his sister-in-law’s illness, the bird’s brief incursion and the presence of Temperance in the vicinity. On these flimsy grounds Eastchurch accused Temperance of bewitching Grace. He took his case to the constabulary and Temperance was confined in the local lockup. While she was there, others came forward to accuse her of various forms of enchantment, including causing sickness or injury by sympathetic magic. Confronted by the charges, she made a partial confession, blaming a sinister ‘man in black’ who had driven her into league with the Devil.