Ronald Bassett - Witchfinder General

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Ronald Bassett - Witchfinder General (Pan, 1968: Herbert Jenkins, 1966)

Blurb:

A vivid, colourful and brutal novel — based on the life of Matthew Hopkins. one of the most vicious Englishmen who ever lived.

While Cavaliers end Roundheads are locked in bloody combat, Hopkins — self-appointed Witchfinder General — wages a savage war against the helpless under the pretext they are servants of Satan. Mercilessly he satisfies his appetite for lust and cruelty by spreading a trail of terror through the Eastern Counties. And with every innocent death his purse grew heavier ...

We join the action in 1643. A lawyer without clients, Matthew Hopkins has enlisted as a pikeman with the Suffolk Militia to escape his creditors, a decision he already regrets. Soaked through and hungry, seven disillusioned regiments of Cromwell's pre-Model army trudge toward St. Albans ostensibly to engage Bloody Rupert's fearsome Cavaliers. Discipline is slack, morale non-existent and several marchers disappear into the trees to take a leak, never to return. John Stearne, a coarse fellow who has unfathomably taken a shine to Hopkins, suggests there's plenty of money to be made in these times of upheaval by they who are shrewd and plucky enough to grasp the opportunity. Before they can desert, the Parliamentarians capture six looting Royalists, four women, two men, Irish Catholics all. Unfortunately for the prisoners, Samuel Halfhide, the Militia's #1 religious lunatic, is sworn to deliver every last one of Satan's brood - i.e., Papists and womankind - to the fiery furnace. One of the women is butchered as she clings to Hopkins' leg. To prove she was the devil's concubine, Halfhide insists on searching her bloody corpse for the witch's teat.

1644. Hopkins and Stearne have taken residence at the White Hart in Manningtree where the lawyer is approached by a local farmer. John Rivet insists his neighbour, Elizabeth Clarke, is a witch because she called him a clod-poll and an oaf who would live to have his impudence snuffed. Sure enough, his wife has since fallen ill as a leper sow. Hopkins isn't interested until Rivet offers that Clarke's mother and an uncle were hanged as witches at Chelmsford in King James time.

"Could you not have told me of this earlier? The daughter of a witch can only be the daughter of Satan. How could it be that this — this spawn of the Devil has lived unchallenged until this time. Are you all simpletons in Manningtree? Do you go about with your eyes closed and your ears muted? How many infants have been malformed, people sickened, cattle diseased, crops blighted — because you are too blind to see witchcraft under your very noses?"

Having first cautioned him that where there's one witch there are always more, Hopkins has Stearne snoop about the village for gossip/ incriminating evidence while he brushes up on his reading of The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witchcraft in the Countie of Lancaster, "The Devil is everywhere and the earth is his empire ...."

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Hopkins visits Bradfield Hall, home to the local magistrate, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, a ferocious Parliamentarian who regards him an upstart with far too many airs and graces for so lowly a worm. Hopkins needs Sir Harbottle's permission to take Elizabeth Clarke into custody, and argues his case persuasively. If Sir Harbottle will only allow him to put the old woman to the question she will surely implicate the rest of her vile coven. Much as he dislikes the lawyer, Grimstone likes the idea of Satan's horde working evil in his village even less, The Royalists would raise a fine cry of stinking fish. Their neighbours would never let them hear the end of it!

Hopkins, Stearne and Martin Lacey, the gaoler of Manningtree and gravedigger of St. Mary on the Heath, abduct poor, one-legged Elizabeth from her hovel, drag her to the jailhouse to be stripped, deprived of food, water and sleep until she confesses all. For the sake of "decency," Hopkins has recruited sadistic woman-hater Goody Phillips as his expert pricker and blemish locator. For all her suffering, the old woman refuses to confess to something she's not done, but everyone has their breaking point. When Lacey rapes her, Elizabeth puts up a fight and claws his face. Lacey explains away the scratches as injuries sustained in battling her six familiars. Hopkins is delighted. Proof at last! But he still needs a confession. And names, lots of names of the old sleeper's confederates. Finally she cracks and implicates every female she knows, including a child. The Witch finder vindicated! By the time his work in Manningtree is concluded, twenty-eight women are sentenced to the gallows.

Word of the his exploits spreads throughout Essex and East Anglia. Hopkins professional services are in demand.

In other news. Ralph Margery of the Suffolk Horses so distinguishes himself in a skirmish with superior Royalists numbers that he is promoted to captain.

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Hopkins, Stearne and Mary Phillips ride to Hadleigh to interview Mistress Hovey, denounced as a cunning woman of the blackest stripe by two of those awaiting execution in Chelmsford prison. The old woman turns the tables on Hopkins, revealing that it was she who sent to the dimwitted Rivel to 'The White Hart' to inform on Elizabeth Clarke who was no more witch than a bucket of sheep dip. "There's a lot of things I know, Master Hopkins, that could put a hempen collar around your neck." In return for her silence, Hovey expects a paltry £10 from the small fortune he earned at Manningtree. Her life expectancy is shortened to zero with that rash demand.

Captain Ralph Margery pays a brief visit to his home village, Branderston, in the Deben valley, to see his sweetheart, Sara Prentice, an orphan raised by the parish vicar of fifty years, Reverend John Lowes. The Vicar has a hard won reputation as a foul-tempered old tyrant, but deep down he's a big softie at heart, at least where Sara is concerned. Much to Margery's surprise - and delight - the fearsome octogenarian agrees to their betrothal on condition that, when the war is done, Ralph builds their home elsewhere in the country. "My remaining time in this world must be short, Master Margery. I do not fear the manner of my going, but first I would see Sara married to a good man and taken far from this place, which promises only unhappiness for her. Give me your word on it, and you may ask her consent tonight."

Margery learns from his bride-to-be that Rev. Thomas Folke, vicar of a neighbouring parish has stirred up hatred against her uncle as a King-loving Papist who deserves to be sat in the pillory to have his ears removed. As does she. The church wall is regularly daubed with vile threats.

Before rejoining his unit, Captain Margery pays Folke a visit and promises to nail him to the door of his own chancel should he encourage further hostility toward John Lowes. Several other persons are likewise threatened with dire punishment should he learn of further outrages.

Prince Rupert is defeated in the bloody battle of Marston Moor.

When Hopkins arrives in Branderston he is met by a delegation of solemn-faced villagers complaining of a Satanic vicar in their midst ...

TBC