In reality however, he was something much worse. Lastly, we can say that it is more than likely he would have been aware of the witchcraft traditions of the area, which ran deep. Together Stearne had discovered a small sect of witches in Manningtree, where Hopkins was residing. Suffolk itself was a Puritan stronghold and heavily backed the parliamentarians during the civil warHopkins educational records are equally sparse, though from his later writings, we know that he could both speak and write English and Latin with a degree of competency.

This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.The 17th Century was a turbulent period of great upheaval. In March 1644 he alleged his first discovery of witches—six of them, in Manningtree, who he claimed tried to kill him. This point is telling in itself and when paired with the often outcast and downtrodden nature of the vast majority of the accused, it becomes apparent that personal grudges and puritanical beliefs were a driving force behind many accusations. This is further backed by his first known job as a Clerk for a shipping company, where the language and knowledge gained from Europe would certainly have helped greatly.There are many legends that state Hopkins worked as a lawyer, mostly due to the manner in which he would later work as prosecutor during the witch trials he became so famous for, however, there is little hard evidence that he ever worked higher in the legal profession than that of Clerk. My Grandfather was a member of the Fitch family and he used to say that the phrase quoted in Notes and Queries was misleading. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica.Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. These were all contributing factors that would open the door for fear to stretch its fingers out to every corner of the country.

Still, unconcerned with this, the crew maintained their high rate of accusations until the 27th of August, 1645, the date of the Bury St. Edmunds trials. These trials were, up until Hopkins lifetime, the largest held in England and it seems unlikely to think that Hopkins would have had no knowledge of this local history.As the mid-1640s drew in, the civil war raged.

They were the first of their kind in Scotland and saw over one hundred accused, imprisoned and tortured, leading to many confessions. Elizabeth Clarke was placed in Jail and Hopkins and Stearne went about the business of coaxing a confession from her. Job titles were as diverse as today. They set about Manningtree and the surrounding area interviewing over one hundred people accused in one manner or another of witchcraft and demonic communions. People began to express concern over the manner in which admissions were being withdrawn, along with the sheer volume of witches being rounded up and the treatment that Hopkins and Co. were dealing out towards those accused. In 1735, the witchcraft act was replaced by a further amendment which instead charged witchcraft as a form of con-artistry, and labeled offenders as practicing the pretense of witchcraft rather than witchcraft proper. Given his family’s ties with shipping interests in the area, as evidenced in his father’s will dated 1634, having some French or Flemish ties it would not have been unusual to seek higher education on the continent and would once again explain the lack of any formal educational records for Hopkins. This was a mood that would sharply change as the wars raged and society broke down in the hamlets and towns around England however, and the Pendle trials would plant violent seeds that would help lay the groundwork for what was to become the most brutal series of witch trials in European history, all of which would be headed by just one man, aided by an amended Witchcraft Act that very much played to his carefully crafted MO, Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General.Matthew Hopkins early life is one steeped in obscurity and myth.

They kept Elizabeth for four days and four nights in a jail cell, and carried out a  practice they called “watching”, an innocent enough title, however the reality was far more sinister.