Throughout the centuries, many women found themselves accused of being witches or involved
in witchcraft, and the Kings and Queens greatly feared sorcery.
Henry VIII would sentence Elizabeth Barton to death for prophecising the King’s death,
and the Tudor Monarch believed she was also a witch.
Many women found themselves being subjected to witch trials, for example some were dunked
in water and if they survived their ordeals they were sentenced to death anyway.
It was a very dangerous time, and scores of women all over Europe were being executed
just because someone had the audacity to accuse them of witchcraft.
However during the reign of King James I, there were 3 women, a mother and two daughters
who were accused of being involved in the deaths of two young brothers, the heirs to
Francis Manners, the 6th Earl of Rutland who lived at Belvoir Castle.
However what is their story?
Joan, Margaret and Philippa Flower later became known as the Witches of Belvoir, and were
known in the local area to have been herbal healers, and they were suffering financially
at the turn of the 17th century.
They accepted employment to work as servants for the 6th Earl and Countess of Rutland at
Belvoir Castle, and they worked as additional staff as King James I was planning to visit
their house and castle.
However the sisters and their mother were very unpopular with the other staff, and they
faced accusations of theft and poor behaviour, and all three of them were sacked, but only
Joan was given any form of severance package, and she was given 40 shillings, a pillow and
a mattress of wool.
After the sacking of the Flower family and the women, the Earl and Countess of Rutland
became severely ill, and were suffering from vomitting and convulsions, but their son and
heir Henry Baron de Ros also became ill, and he succumbed to his illness and died on the
26th September 1613.
Their younger children also got very sick, and their other son named Francis and the
next in line for the heirdom was also killed by the illness.
However this attracted suspicion, especially after the sacking of Joan, Margaret and Philippa
and the fact they were considered herbal healers and meddlers with the dark arts.
There were 9 women hanged as witches in Leicestershire on the 16th July 1616 for charges such as
bewitching a young boy, and these were charges that were similar to what happened in the
case of the Earl of Rutland and the Flower’s girls.
These women were said to have kept cats as familiars, however 5 years after the sacking
of the women they were arrested, and after their initial interrogation in February 1619,
the women were sent to Lincoln Jail and were held within the confines of the castle.
The mother Joan protested her innocence at the jail, and she was not known for being
a religious woman, but she claimed that she could not have been a witch.
On the route to the prison, she asked for some bread for the Eucharist as she wanted
to prove she was not a witch, however she said something so blessed as holy bread could
not be consumed by a witch.
But disturbingly after her first bite she choked, and died from this with many believing
that she had actually been a witch, and that the good light of the lord had killed this
malevolent woman.
But whilst at Lincoln, Margaret one of the daughters now accused her mother of witchcraft,
but Philippa her sister admitted to witchcraft on behalf of her mother and sisters.
She said that they entered into communion with familiar spirits that helped them to
poison and bring about the deaths of the Earl of Rutland heirs, and in making the family
very sick.
They claimed that they stole the glove of one of the boys, and gave it to their mother
who had dipped it in boiling water.
They then cast some incantations, and this then caused the Lord Ros to become ill and
die.
They admitted that they attempted to harm their daughter Lady Catherine, and that this
failed after a cat named Rutterkin, their mother’s familiar had no power over her.
The women also took some feathers from the bed of the Earl of Rutland, and it was believed
they cast this into a pot and then boiled them, and they mixed this with blood and cast
spells to prevent the Earl and Countess of Rutland having any more children.
Both the women admitted to experiencing visions of the devil.
But during their interrogation, they revealed the names of other women from the local area
that helped them.
These were Anne Baker of Bottesford, Joan Willimot of Goadby and Ellen Greene of Stathern,
and these 3 women claimed that they had similar visions.
Willimot said her familiar was called Pretty and had been blown into her mouth by a former
master in the form of a city.
Willimot testified as a cunning woman and not a witch, and she said her familiar only
spoke to her and helped her about healing.
She said, ‘She never hurt any body, but did help divers persons that were stricken
or fore-spoken (bewitched): and that her Spirit came weekly to her, and would tell of divers
persons that were stricken and fore-spoken: and she saith that the use which she had of
the Spirit, was to know those did which she had undertaken to amend and she did help them
by certain prayers which she used.’
Ellen Green claimed she went with Willimot to a wood and there Willimot conjured up two
spirits in the form of a mole and a kitten, and that these were then sent to kill a woman
who died within a fortnight.
However Margaret and Philippa Flowers were tried before Henry Hobart, the Lord Chief
Justice of the Common Please, and Edward Bromley, a Baron of the Exchequer.
The pair were both found guilty.
Margaret on the 11th March 1619 was taken from her place of imprisonment and walked
onto the walls of Lincoln Castle.
Here a large gallows stood, and she was taken onto these and an executioner then hanged
her in front of the huge crowd that had assembled below.
However Philippa was not executed for her crimes, as it was said that she managed to
drug the guards who were tasked with keeping her under lock and key, and she then fled
the castle and managed to get to Kent where she had three children and lived a life before
eventually dying after escaping her fate.
But some also claimed that she was too hanged at Lincoln on the same gallows as her sister
would be.
But the case of the three witches was incredibly shocking as it also involved many more women,
and the Earl and Countess of Rutland believed so much that their sons had been killed by
witchcraft that this was inscribed in their monument at a local church.
It read, ‘In 1608 he married ye lady Cecila Hungerford, daughter to ye honourable Knight
Sir John Tufton by whom he had two sons, both of which died in infancy by wicked practices
and sorcery.’
Some historians have claimed that the women were framed, and that in fact the family was
poisoned.
The story of the Witches of Belvoir is a strange one, and it is not known how much of the interrogations
of the women were extracted through threats or even torture.
It would be strange if all of the women involved admitted their actions years after the deaths
of the two sons, but at the heart of this was a number of women who were being accused
of witchcraft during a very dangerous time, in which the English King James I himself
was obsessed about the subject of witches.
They could have been women who themselves were accused of crimes and had little way
of getting off the charges, and their testimony could have been falsified, and they could
have in fact been victims themselves.
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