“Wicked Practises and Sorcerye”: Cunning Folk, Witch Trials, and the Tragedy of Joan Flower and Her Daughters

Witches Series, #3 of 4. In 1618, the Earl of Rutland and his wife accused three women of bewitching their family. They believed that bewitchment was the cause of death of their first son, and the long-term illness of their second. The women in question were former servants of their household at Belvoir (or Beaver) Castle near Bottesford, England: Joan Flower, a Bottesford cunning woman, and her two daughters, Margaret and Phillipa. Joan Flower died while being transported to the prison at Lincoln; her two daughters were interrogated mercilessly by the Earl and several other noblemen who also served as magistrates in Lincoln County until they confessed. The jury found both guilty, and the judge sentenced them to death. Less than a year later, the Earl’s second son succumbed to his long-term illness. The Earl had his family tomb inscribed with these words: “In 1608 he married ye lady Cecila Hungerford, daughter to ye Honorable Knight Sir John Tufton, by whom he had two sons, both of which died in their infancy by wicked practises and sorcerye.”[1] Francis Manners and his wife, Cecily, were convinced that their family had been cursed by a witch. Historian Tracy Borman suspects foul play of a non-magical sort. Ultimately, the motive mattered little to the Flower women. Their accusers were too powerful to be denied a conviction, and they were too inconsequential, with too few friends in Bottesford or Lincoln, to survive a witch hunt. Full transcript and bibliography at digpodcast.org

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Bibliography

Michael D. Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).

Tracy Borman, Witches: James I and the English Witch-Hunts,(London: Vintage, 2014).

Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992).

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