DR. ROMANY REAGAN: Elizabeth Clarke says that he was lucky

that he hadn't leapt onto his face, squeezed down his throat

and deposited a feast of toads in his belly. I can feel this is

a woman at the end of her rope. She's been kept up for four

days, she's elderly, she has one leg, she's poor. She probably

just wants all this to be over. And I don't like to think about

where she'd gone psychologically to get to that point.

HELEN ANTROBUS: In the UK, more than half of us own a pet. And

I've got three cats, Paddy, Lily and Sana. We feed them, speak to

them and keep them safe. But 400 years ago, doing any one of

those things could have led to your death. We're taking you

back to the 1600s, when keeping a pet could have got you accused

of witchcraft. And uncovering the strange stories of witches'

familiars.

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join

me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and

moments that made us.

I'm historian Helen Antrobus. Lean in for a tale from time

Back When.

Life's hard for regular people in the 1640s. There's political

instability, the English Civil War is raging, and communities

are poor.

Life's even harder for older people, particularly if you're a

woman. Because of your age, you might have lost your husband and

live alone. You might find it hard to make friends. So poor

and alone, you befriend a stray cat.

You offer it scraps and perhaps give it a safe place to sleep in

exchange for comfort and company. And the next thing you

know, your neighbours are accusing you of witchcraft. And

if you're found guilty, you'll hang.

Situations like this are not so uncommon. Women who are already

outliers in society are suspected of witchcraft. If

they're seen to do anything that isn't the norm, which could just

be feeding a cat. But why is this the case? And why are cats

and other animals so linked to witchcraft? Well, to understand

that, we first need to know why the hunt for witches began.

DR. ROMANY REAGAN: My name is Dr. Romany Reagan. I'm a scholar

of what I like to call dark heritage and feminist stories,

untold stories and hidden histories. The stereotypical

idea we have today of a witch is usually of a woman, she's quite

evil, she's on the fringes of society, she isn't very

attractive, she's old. And that is something that was born out

of the later witch trials.

If we look at the long 400-year history of the witch trials,

originally it was for acts of heresy. So to be accused of

witchcraft was actually to be against the church, using magic

in some sort of way. Whereas later definitions of witchcraft

then became more personal and more against women specifically.

People were losing their children, their crops were

failing, there was political instability. People needed a

reason. And it's much easier to believe that there's someone

inflicting this pain on you than to think that you're out of

control in your life.

Then you get the neighbours accusing their neighbours, and

that was usually the most vulnerable members of society,

which would have been the older women. It's quite sad when you

consider that the people that they were launching all these

complaints against were the ones who had no one to advocate for

them.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Between 1542 and 1736 approximately a thousand

people are killed for being so-called witches. Belief in

witchcraft and accusations of it fluctuate in popularity but

during the height of witchcraft hysteria self-appointed witch

hunters look for telltale signs of witchery.

One of the signs that someone might be a witch is if they had

an unexpected relationship with an animal, as animals with no

obvious use are suspected of being the devil in disguise,

luring people into the realm of black magic.

DR. ROMANY REAGAN: We love our pets so much, it's really hard

to think of and cast our mind back. To what society thought of

animals at that time. Animals belonged in barns, they belonged

in fields, they could not be kept close to humans.

When it comes specifically to the idea of the animal familiar

was this idea that these people being on the fringes of society,

they didn't have friends, they weren't, they didn't have any

kind of opportunity for closeness and companionship. The

animal must be working for you and if that job isn't

necessarily obvious then maybe it's something secretive and

it's scandalous and it's probably even satanic.

And especially too, if somebody is seen speaking to these

animals well, the idea of somebody just having a lovely

conversation with their pet cat, which now today we think of as

quite normal, this would be no-no. What was specific about

the idea of keeping a familiar was that Satan would usually

come in different forms.

And so he would often appear as animals, because the idea was

that in order to seal a pact with a familiar, you would be

feeding them blood to have them perform the evil deeds. But no

one actually saw this, and if something's done in secret, how

can you prove that it is or isn't done?

HELEN ANTROBUS: What's interesting about the idea of

animal familiars at this time is that it's uniquely English. And

this is because of Protestantism.

Witchcraft and religious beliefs are closely entwined. And you

can see this reflected in the way witchcraft was thought to

take place. In Europe, where many people have Catholic

beliefs, Witches are thought to go to a specific place to meet

with a familiar and speak with the devil.

This is in parallel with how people would go to church to

meet with a priest and talk to God. In England, where many

people now have Protestant beliefs, the devil is believed

to come to a witch's home in the form of a familiar, in the same

way that regular people might pray to God at home.

So how do animals like cats get people into trouble?

One of the most well-documented cases is that of Elizabeth

Clarke, who is the first woman to be persecuted by the

self-proclaimed Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins and his

associate John Stern.

At a time of heightened paranoia about witchcraft, Hopkins claims

to have been officially commissioned by Parliament to

uncover and prosecute witches. He and Stern are the driving

force for the witch hunts between 1645 and 1647. Elizabeth

Clarke herself is believed to be from a family of witches, so

when one woman in the village becomes unwell, her husband

blames Elizabeth.

DR. ROMANY REAGAN: She was very elderly, very poor, and she was

living on parish charity. He was the first to accuse her, and the

rest of the community were very quick to fall on board as well

in any kind of grievances they could think of. They harassed

her so much that she actually confessed to it.

She said, yes, absolutely, I have had dealings with the devil

and many witches besides. But she refused to name any of these

witches. I think she was just kind of talking a bit of trash,

actually, just to get them off her lawn. That's what I think.

But they took this and they ran with it.

They took what Stern had written of her supposed confession.

Which to me is just a woman yelling on her porch. And from

there, they got a warrant. And this warrant allowed them to

gather the searcher to come and search her. And with them,

Matthew Hopkins and John Stern were able to also watch her.

HELEN ANTROBUS: When someone is accused of witchcraft, they're

tortured until they reveal their otherworldly powers. They're

pricked with needles to see if they bleed. They're stripped

naked and searched for a witch's mark. And they're kept awake and

watched intently.

DR. ROMANY REAGAN: So yeah the prickers and the watchers who

would corral this woman in her home for four days and four

nights and they sat her on a stool and they just stared at

her basically and they just made sure that she couldn't sleep.

You can see the fever dream aspect of it. You've been up for

days and you are expecting malfeasance. You know she's a

witch.

You're just waiting for that proof. And she lasted out for

two days before she started to name names. Then she started to

discuss her familiars and you can understand this now as a

kind of fever dream, she talks about the animals that come to

her and what their names are. And you can almost envision her

making them up on the spot because they're bizarre names

like Vinegar Tom or Sack and Sugar.

And so eventually when a small cat comes into the house, oh my

gosh, finally, this is the familiar. And so there was a

cat, there was a, there wasn't a cat, and there was a dog that,

oh no, it wasn't a dog. And then eventually there was a, there

was a rabbit that came in and this was, this was Sack and

Sugar.

And this is when we get a quote from Elizabeth Clarke herself,

Stern is kind of making a joke, saying, oh, this is your grand

familiar and she says that he was lucky that he hadn't leapt

onto his face, squeezed down his throat, and deposited a feast of

toads in his belly. I can feel this is a woman at the end of

her rope.

She's been kept up for four days, she's elderly, she has one

leg, she's poor, she probably just wants all this to be over.

And I don't like to think about where she'd gone psychologically

to get to that point. And with regards to her supposed

familiars, we have a small white cat, we have a fat white dog,

Then we have a tall, skinnier dog, and then we have a rabbit.

That's it. Maybe they made all this up, but it does seem like

perhaps these animals genuinely were in her house. But it also

seems to me that if you are an elderly woman who's cast, you're

an absolute cast away from your society, you don't have an

opportunity for love and companionship, but you do have a

dog, you have a cat, and you have a rabbit.

And that's that. And that was enough to have her marked for

execution, which she was later that year, so it was quite

swift, and she was hanged for witchcraft in 1645.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Elizabeth Clarke isn't the only woman to be

accused of witchcraft, partly because she kept pets. But her

story is one of the most well-documented at the time.

Having said that, familiars are actually more popular in

witch-hunt propaganda than they are in the trials themselves.

The mystery and intrigue surrounding their supposed

relationships with witches fascinates the general public,

which is perhaps why, so commonly, we see witches with an

animal sidekick in fictional stories today. Cats, owls,

toads, bats and rats are all some of the familiar characters

we see in fiction like Harry Potter, The Worst Witch and

Halloween celebrations. But behind the folklore and the

fiction is a much darker truth.

In reality, people are looking for someone to blame for their

hardships. So the truth is twisted to fit a narrative and

explain their misfortunes. Anything seen out of the norm

can be used against you. And ultimately, if you have the

misfortune of being an animal lover who is seen as an

outsider, you are an easy target for an accusation of witchcraft.

If you'd like to explore objects and links to witches at National

Trust places, head to nationaltrust.org.uk, where

you'll also find Halloween events and activities for the

whole family. Thanks for listening to this episode of

Back When. If you've enjoyed it, make sure you follow, rate and

review us on your favourite podcast app. We'll be back in

two weeks with another story. See you next time.