THE WITCHES OF
BELVOIR
On the 11th of March 1618-19, two women named Margaret and Philippa
Flower, were burnt at Lincoln for the alleged crime of witch-craft.
With their mother, Joan Flower, they had been confidential servants
of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle.
Dissatisfaction with their employers seems to have gradually
seduced these three women into the practice of hidden arts in order
to obtain revenge. According to their own confession, they had
entered into communion with familiar spirits, by which they were
assisted in their wicked designs. Joan Flower, the mother, had hers
in the bodily form of a cat, which she called Rutterkin. They used
to get the hair of a member of the family and burn it: they would
steal one of his gloves and plunge it in boiling water, or rub it
on the back of Rutterkin, in order to effect bodily harm to its
owner. They would also use frightful imprecations of wrath and
malice towards the objects of their hatred. In these ways they were
believed to have accomplished the death of Lord Ross, the Earl of
Rutland's son, besides inflicting frightful sicknesses upon other
members of the family.
It was long before the earl and countess, who were an amiable
couple, suspected any harm in these servants, although we are told
that for some years there was a manifest change in the countenance
of the mother, a diabolic expression being assumed. At length, at
Christmas, 1618, the noble pair became convinced that they were the
victims of a hellish plot, and the three women were apprehended,
taken to Lincoln jail, and examined. The mother loudly protested
innocence, and, calling for bread and butter, wished it might choke
her if she were guilty of the offences laid to her charge.
Immediately, taking a piece into her mouth, she fell down dead,
probably, as we may allowably conjecture, overpowered by
consciousness of the contrariety between these protestations and
the guilty design which she had entertained in her mind.
Margaret Flower, on being examined, acknowledged that she had
stolen the glove of the young heir of the family, and given it to
her mother, who stroked Rutterkin with it, dipped it in hot water,
and pricked it: whereupon Lord Ross fell ill and suffered
extremely. In order to prevent Lord and Lady Rutland from having
any more children, they had taken some feathers from their bed, and
a pair of gloves, which they boiled in water, mingled with a little
blood. In all these particulars, Philippa corroborated her sister.
Both women admitted that they had familiar spirits, which came and
sucked them at various parts of their bodies: and they also
described visions of devils in various forms which they had had
from time to time.
Associated with the Flowers in their horrible practices were three
other women, of the like grade in life,Anne Baker, of Bottesford:
Joan Willimot, of Goodby: and Ellen Greene, of Stathorne, all in
the county of Leicester, whose confessions were to much the same
purpose. Each had her own familiar spirits to assist in working out
her malignant designs against her neighbours.
That of Joan Willimot was called Pretty. It had been blown into her
mouth by her master, William Berry, in the form of a fairy, and
immediately after came forth again and stood on the floor in the
shape of a woman, to whom she forthwith promised that her soul
should be enlisted in the infernal service. On one occasion, at
Joan Flower's house, she saw two spirits, one like an owl, the
other like a rat, one of which sucked her under the ear. This
woman, however, protested that, for her part, she only employed her
spirit in inquiring after the health of persons whom she had
undertaken to cure.
Greene confessed to having had a meeting with Willimot in the
woods, when the latter called two spirits into their company, one
like a kitten, the other like a mole, which, on her being left
alone, mounted on her shoulders and sucked her under the ears. She
had then sent them to bewitch a man and woman who had reviled her,
and who, accordingly, died within a fortnight. Anne Baker seems to
have been more of a visionary than any of the rest. She once saw a
hand, and heard a voice from the air: she had been visited with a
flash of fire: all of them ordinary occurrences in the annals of
hallucination. She also had a spirit, but, as she alleged, a
beneficent one, in the form of a white dog.
From the frontispiece of a contemporary pamphlet giving an account
of this group of witches, we transfer a homely picture of Baker,
Willimot, and Greene, attended each by her familiar spirit. The
entire publication is reprinted in Nichols's Leicestershire.
The examinations of these wretched women were taken by magistrates
of rank and credit, and when the judges came to Lincoln the two
surviving Flowers were duly tried, and on their own confessions
condemned to death by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir
Henry Hobbert.
* The above
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