1600s Superstar Witch Hunter

Matthew Hopkins 1600s Witch Hunter
Proclaimed Witch Hunter General
Superstar status sending scores of
Innocent man and women to the gallows
Using forbidden torture and heinous trickery
Turned witch hunting into lucrative enterprise
Incentivized to find and hang more innocents
The elderly often easy marks and easy money
People in towns and villages didn’t mind the killings
Social cleansing of those they didn’t like or need
Eventually the costs became Hopkins undoing
Taxes raised too high to pay for his infamy
Demand for his costly skills evaporated
1647 the Witch Hunter General died
Probably of a disease like tuberculosis
Never taken to task for the deaths
Of 100 innocent people. More’s the pity.

Bob Boyd

An Appalling Level of Casual Brutality

Essex England, 1600s, witches everywhere
Elizabeth Clark, elderly with only one leg
Hair cut off, body searched, roughly treated
By three women searching for Devil’s mark
Later tied to a chair, denied sleep for days
Forced to confess by Witch Finder General
Matthew Hopkins, fantical, cruel, evil
Proudly broke the 80-year-old woman
Who lied to stop the sleep-deprived torture
Confessed to being a witch and claimed
Other women in her village witches too
Her life ended with 15 other women
Condemned as witches, hung on the gallows
At Chelmsford Market Square in 1645.

Bob Boyd

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