The Self-Appointed Witchfinder General

In 1644, a 25‑year‑old man from East Anglia decided England needed a new kind of professional. He gave himself a title: Witchfinder General. Parliament never created the office. No royal commission appointed him. He simply assumed it, claimed to be working on Parliament’s behalf, and began presenting himself to terrified Puritan communities as an official expert in uncovering witches.

His name was Matthew Hopkins. For roughly two to three years, during the chaos of the English Civil War, he and his associates were responsible for the execution of somewhere around 200–300 accused witches — more, by most estimates, than had been put to death for witchcraft in England in the previous century and a half combined.

The Horror

Hopkins’s first recorded victim was Elizabeth Clarke, a 39‑year‑old widow from Manningtree in Essex. She had one leg and relied on a crutch. Local gossip and a tailor’s accusation were enough. Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne had her watched and “examined” for several nights, forbidding her to sleep. After days of forced wakefulness and interrogation, she confessed and named other women.

Sleep deprivation was his primary method. No rack, no fire, no rack of thumbscrews — just exhaustion: walking the accused up and down all night, tying them in uncomfortable positions, keeping them awake until they were desperate enough to say whatever might end it. It left no obvious marks, but it was torture nonetheless.

His second method was “pricking”. The accused were stripped and searched, their hair shaved or closely cropped, every inch of skin examined for moles, birthmarks or patches of numbness that could be declared “witch marks.” Hopkins or his assistants used special needles — sometimes with retractable points — to stab suspicious spots. If the victim didn’t bleed or flinch, it was taken as proof of a pact with the Devil. Given that almost everyone has a mole or mark somewhere, this test rarely produced innocence.

His third method was the swimming test. The accused were bound and lowered into a pond or river with ropes. If they floated, the water had supposedly “rejected” them and they were guilty. If they sank, the water had accepted them — and they were innocent, though they might drown in the process. Even when ropes allowed some to be hauled out in time, the test itself was a form of outlawed ordeal.

Among those caught in this machinery was an elderly clergyman, John Lowes of Brandeston, known for speaking against the witch hunts. Hopkins and his team subjected him to sleep deprivation and the swimming test; he confessed under pressure and was hanged. The man who criticised the system was fed through it.

Hopkins’s work was not charity. Local magistrates and parish authorities paid him and his company. Contemporary and later accounts report that he charged around twenty shillings per town, sometimes more, with additional fees per witch and for “expenses.” In at least one case, the town of Stowmarket recorded paying him £23 — a huge sum at the time — to conduct a witch hunt.

He and Stearne also promoted themselves with print. Hopkins published a short pamphlet in 1647, The Discovery of Witches, laying out his methods and justifying what he had done in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Its ideas and procedures later echoed in New England trials, including Salem.

By 1646, opposition was growing. Clergymen such as John Gaule preached against him. Judges began to question his methods, and some courts ruled that “swimming” and other ordeals were unlawful because they amounted to torture, which English common law technically forbade. Under pressure and with the civil‑war context changing, Hopkins faded from public view.

He died on 12th August 1647, in his late twenties, and was buried at Mistley in Essex. Parish records simply record his burial; later sources suggest he probably died of illness, perhaps tuberculosis.

A persistent legend claims he was himself tried by swimming and hanged when he floated — a piece of poetic justice that has been repeated in popular histories and fiction. The parish register disproves it. Hopkins died in bed, not at the end of a rope. The story survives because people needed his ending to hurt in a way his real ending did not.

The Modern Relic

Mistley, on the River Stour in Essex, is now a quiet village. Hopkins is buried somewhere in the churchyard; the exact spot is unmarked and unknown. The Mistley Thorn inn stands near where his house is thought to have been. The village pond where he reportedly carried out swimming tests has been filled in or altered beyond recognition.

What does survive is his pamphlet, The Discovery of Witches, in rare‑book rooms and digital facsimiles. In calm, orderly prose, it walks the reader through how to question suspects, how to search their bodies, how to “swim” them — a step‑by‑step manual for turning fear into accusations and accusations into hangings. It was meant as professional guidance. It reads now like a business plan for mass killing.

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