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.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: In the UK, more than half of us own a pet,
and I've got a dog, Scout. We feed them, speak to them and
keep them safe. But 400 years ago, doing any one of these
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. I'm Ranger Rosie Holdsworth. Welcome to the Wild
Tale of Witches' Familiars.
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 neighbors accusing their neighbors, 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.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Between 1542 and 1736, approximately 1,000
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,
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?
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: 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 and
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 a 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.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: 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, from Elizabeth Clarke herself. Stern is, is, is
kind of making a joke saying, oh, this, this is your, this is
you're 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.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: 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 we so commonly 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 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 as out of the norm
can be used against you. And ultimately, if you have the
misfortune of being an animal lover who's seen as an outsider,
you're 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
Wild Tales. 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.