Historical Note & The witches of Lynn
I am by no means an expert, and certainly do not claim to be a historian. I just write stories, but some research is usually necessary. To establish facts, timelines, settings and all the stuff that go into giving a story a background. After establishing facts, story tellers will decide which ones to use, disregard, or perhaps tweak a bit to hopefully provide something others will enjoy reading or listening to.
Story tellers of Lynn, past and present tell of the Witches executed on the Tuesday Market Place. All being burnt at the stake for being in solemn league with the devil. This includes Margaret Read, aka Shady Meg who met her fate, as in the story, during the heatwave of 1590, on 20th July. While it makes for good folklore, did she really suffer an excruciating death by fire as her punishment?
The burning of people found guilty of witchcraft in England was very rare. English law prescribed hanging as the maximum punishment, treating those found guilty of being a witch in line with common criminals. Most records that have a note of the punishment meted out during the period list death by hanging.
Burning at the stake was a far more common occurrence in mainland Europe, and Scotland, than it ever was in England. Presumably they had more wood going spare. However, in England, burning could be the punishment for the crimes of treason and heresy. During Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary’s reign, some two to three hundred Protestant heretics suffered this end. Something that continued, though the religion may change, right through to the last burning of a heretic in 1612. This dubious honour fell to the Puritan, Edward Wightman, in Lichfield on Easter Saturday 11th April, at the second attempt. During the first attempt in March he cried out in pain, as you do, and thinking Wightman wanted to recant, spectators rushed to retrieve him from the flames. All to no avail, and having received burn injuries themselves, one must wonder what they thought when discovering Wightman didn’t recant at all.
Treason is a very serious crime, but not one you would think to involve the average character accused of Witchcraft. This being, but not exclusively, older women. Probably living alone, inflicted in some way, or were considered ugly, or rude or scary. Perhaps they were in dispute with someone, or simply another person coveted their patch of dirt. The bad news for a witch was that treason was not just a crime against the state. Treason was a charge to be levelled against them if they had killed their husband.
None of the stories of Shady Meg I’ve read say she bumped off her hubby, though some suggest her husband’s demise was suspicious. If true, surely it would crop up in most stories about her, as the death of Nick Kirk does.
Kirk was rumoured to have gotten a pretty young woman named Marion Harvey pregnant out of wedlock, then dumped her in favour of another. Marion sought revenge through Shady Meg. When Kirk heard of her visit to Margaret Read, he shrugged it off as nonsense. A week later, he suffered severe chest and stomach pains, and was dead within days.
The family called in the authorities, whose search of Margaret’s home allegedly found an effigy with pins in its chest and stomach. Shady Meg was arrested, and subjected to the swimming test (not ducking, ducking stools were for scolds rather than witches). The swimming test meant the witch had her hands tied to the opposite foot, then pulled into the water. If she floated, she was a witch and guilty. If she drowned, she could go to meet her maker, safe in the knowledge of her innocence. Meg did a bit of both, but floated just long enough for it to count.
Despite the folklore, Margaret was probably hanged. Why would the burning method have been chosen? Other than someone happened to have a pile of spare timber on their hands. The year 1590 was part of a period that saw deep freezing winters and hot summers. This would be followed by three or four extremely wet years that would cause crops and harvests to fail. The summer of 1590 saw a heatwave that reduced the mighty River Trent in Nottinghamshire to a trickle. Whilst Lynn had managed to build many properties in brick by this time, there were still older houses around. Most of which would have been tinder dry. Would they really have wanted to set a ton of wood aflame to burn a witch when water might have been in short supply? A hanging was easier, cheaper, less resource hungry and slightly more environmentally friendly.
In Henry J. Hillen’s ‘History of the Borough of King’s Lynn’ published in 1907, a section on ‘Crime And Punishment’ covers witches and witchcraft. It mentions the names of Margaret Read, executed 20th of July 1590, and Mary Smith executed on the 12th of January 1616. Mr Hillen states that these two ladies were burnt at the stake for their crimes. He adds a third execution. That of Elizabeth Housegoe, who died in 1598. Mr Hillen is unsure whether her execution was at the stake or the gallows.
However, Mr Hillen is not one for naming his sources, as such there is nothing to back this information up as gospel. Unfortunately, as the town records covering these events before 1620 no longer exist, Mr Hillen’s text may simply be the written version of the verbal stories and legends of Lynn.
Many stories also claim Mary Smith was burnt at the stake in 1616. It is said that when she died in the flames, her heart burst from her chest and hit the wall of a house in the Tuesday Market (some also attribute this to Shady Meg too. There is still a heart sign above the door where it is supposed to have happened. However, the frontage of the house is, I think Georgian, so take it all with a pinch of salt). It is also claimed her heart then bounced out of the Market Place and down the lane towards the river to plunge into the murky waters.
Why would the heart burst out from the victim’s chest, then leg it? Not sure about the trotting off toward the river part but, apparently, in some places where burning was more commonplace, the witch was either strangled, or given gunpowder to swallow prior to burning. Obviously given a bit of time of being warmed by the flames, the gunpowder would go bang, and possibly shooting the heart out of the body. Both methods were designed to ease the suffering of the executed though not, I suspect, of those clearing up afterwards.
Anyhoo, I digress. Mary Smith was pursued as a witch for years by a clergy man, who was clearly obsessed. He even wrote a (very) lengthy document on the subject in the aftermath, called ‘A Treatise of Witchcraft, by Alexander Roberts B.D and Preacher of Gods words at Kings-Linne in Norffolke.’
Most of the Treatise is made up of evidence against her, with the name of victims, also a lot of religious justification of his pursuit of Mary. Interestingly, at her execution, Mary was given the option to sing a psalm, that:
“she answered willingly that she desired the same, and appointed it herself, 'The Lamentation of a sinner', whose beginning is 'Lorde turne not away thy face'. And at the ending thereof thus finished her life.”
Unfortunately, it does not clarify the method of execution, but was there a fire of some sort? For it continues:
“For Gods mercy is greater than mans misery can ever be and even for the like unto this very fact, we have a bookcase, already adjudged, and over ruled in those Ephesians, who brought their conjuring books, sacrificed them on the fire, estimated at nine hundred pounds of our money, repented of their sinnes, and obtained mercy. Acts 19 Verse 19.”
Roberts is quoting the Bible where the burning of conjuring books is concerned. Probably not meaning a great queue of Lynn people lining up to burn their copies of 'The Big Boy's Book Of Magic'. I wonder if this is where the idea Mary Smith was burnt at the stake comes from?
It’s also a shame that the Quarter session minutes record for the trials of seven witches in September 1646, who fell foul of the “witch discoverer” Matthew Hopkin, do not mention the punishment. Only that one was guilty, five were found not guilty and one was not of sound mind and could not be given a proper trial. All of which, says more about the methods employed by Hopkin than anything else. You pays a man to find witches and find witches he shall.
Online References (copy & paste links into your browser)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/burning-at-the-stake
https://norfolkrecordofficeblog.org/2018/10/31/the-witches-of-lynn/
https://www.icysedgwick.com/shady-meg-kings-lynn/
https://www.history.com/news/7-bizarre-witch-trial-tests
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/edward-wightman-executed-heresy
Books of Interest
The History of King’s Lynn, Volumes 1 & 2 – Henry James Hillen.
Witch Hunt, The Persecution of Witches in England – David & Andrew Pickering
Religion and the Decline of Magic – Keith Thomas
Witchcraft, A very Short Introduction – Malcom Gaskill
Witchcraft – Suzannah Lipscomb (Very short but interesting, er, the book I mean obviously)
Witchfinders, A seventeenth Century English Tragedy – Malcom Gaskill
Witches, James I and the English Witch Hunts – Tracy Borman
England’s Witchcraft Trials – Willow Winsham
