WITCHCRAFT IN NONINGTON AND NEARBY EAST KENT PARISHES.

Witches, a woodcut from The History of Witches and Wizards, 1720

Ecclesiastical laws condemning witchcraft in England were first issued in the seventh century by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, but the belief in and fear of witchcraft reached its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries with Kent second only to Essex in indictments for witchcraft. Witchcraft Acts were passed by the English Parliament under Henry VIII in 1542,  Elizabeth I in 1562 and 1563, and James I in 1604.
In 1590 King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, became convinced that he and Queen Anne, his Danish wife, had been the target of witchcraft when witches called up fierce storms in order to kill the  royal couple during crossings of the North Sea.

James held onto this conviction and shortly after becoming monarch of both England and Scotland in 1603 he published ‘Daemonologie’, an exploration of witchcraft and demonic magic, and soon after its publication the English Parliament passed the Witchcraft Statute of 1604 which made witchcraft a crime punishable by death.

Contrary to popular belief English witches were not burned at the stake or tortured in the manner popular on the Continental. Death by burning at the stake was a fate generally reserved for traitors and heretics and under the Witchcraft Act of 1563 death by hanging was reserved for those found guilty of murder by sorcery. Women could still be burnt for certain offences, such as “coining” [counterfeiting, which was considered to be a form of treason] or murder until burning as a form of capital punishment was abolished in 1790. Catherine Murphy was the last women to be burnt, her crime being that of “coining”, her husband and six other accomplices were hung.

Pricking was the most common test once a person was accused of witchcraft. The belief was that all witches had a mark made by the Devil that was insensitive to pain and the discovery of such a spot, usually a large mole or a birthmark, was seen as a sign of witchcraft and was  usually followed by ‘swimming’.
“Swimming” was the practice of tying up and throwing the accused into a body of water to determine whether they sank or floated. Sinking to the bottom indicated that the accused was innocent whilst floating indicated their guilt. In proving their “innocence” many of those accused of being a witch drowned!

Above left: Hanging witches in Essex, a 1589 woodcut. Above right: Trial by water, a 1613 woodcut.

The fear of and belief in witchcraft reached its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries with Kent second only to Essex in indictments. In most cases personal malice was behind accusations of witchcraft, either for revenge or personal gain.
Sandwich town records of 1631 tell of Goodwife Reynold being “swum for a witch” and subsequently hanged, and in 1645 the Sandwich town records record a similar fate befalling Widow Drewin. The Widow Drewin’s “swimming” was recorded as costing cost two shillings and  that after her execution her goods were sold at auction, apparently to help defray the costs of her ordeal.
During the 1640’s and 1650’s the turmoil of the English Civil War and subsequent Commonwealth led to many parishes having no Church of England vicar or curate to oversee the parishioners. This allowed Puritan fundamentalists who supported the Parliamentarian cause to become dominant and wield a great deal of religious and civil authority which subsequently enabled them to impose their strict version of Protestantism on the everyday life of a generally superstitious and largely illiterate rural population. Accusations of witchcraft were one way of silencing any opposition to these fundamentalist Puritans as obviously, at least to them and their followers, any person opposing  their strict and oppressive beliefs must be against the rule of God and therefore in league with the Devil and therefore should be punished accordingly.

Witch hunting in Kent reached a peak between 1640 and 1660, a time when increasingly fundamentalist Puritans and Puritanism held sway during the English Civil War and more so after the overthrow and execution of Charles I and the introduction of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. During this time the Kent assize records show that secular courts tried  48 people for witchcraft: 10 men, 14 widows, and 24 spinsters or married women. These were the lucky ones as they actually received a proper trial, many others were less fortunate and died during their “swimming”.

In the 1640’s Nell Garlinge, a probable relative of mine through my Garlinge paternal great-grandmother, was accused of being a witch and “swum” into the village pond at Coldred where she apparently drowned, so proving her innocence.

Southern England and East Anglia  became notorious during this period for witch-hunts by self-appointed fanatical Puritan “witch finders” such as Matthew Hopkins of Suffolk. The self-appointed Hopkins charged for his services at the rate of  twenty shillings [£1} per town, and appears to have made a good living from providing his services to fearful townsfolk. Hopkins even wrote a short pamphlet detailing his witch-hunting methods: ‘The Discovery of Witches’, published in 1647. The witchfinder and his immediate associates are believed to have been responsible for the deaths of some 300 or more “witches” from early 1644 until Hopkins death in 1647.

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The parish of Nonington did not escape the horror and injustice of the “witch-hunts” in Puritan Kent. In his book “Those Superstitions”, published in 1932, Sir Charles Iggleston tells the sad story of the persecution and death of Esther, a “witch” who lived and supposedly practiced her “craft” somewhere in Nonington. Unfortunately neither Esther’s surname nor the location of her house was recorded and the date of Esther’s ordeal and subsequent death in unclear, but most likely occurred between 1640 and 1660.
Esther was an elderly woman who apparently enveigled superstitious inhabitants of Nonington into believing that they had acted in a sacrilegious manner that had led them into Satan’s clutches and thereby causing their everyday misfortunes. Esther told these misfortuned villagers that the only way to restore their good fortune was to visit her house for a consultation and cross her palm with silver. In the course of time the bedeviled parishioners appear to have concluded that it was in fact Esther herself “influencing the Evil One” to bring about their ill luck and misfortune for her financial gain, and that she was in reality perpetrating a devilish protection racket.
Upon this realisation a vengeful mob of deceived villagers seized Esther and carried her some three miles or so to a large pond in the neighbouring parish of Adisham to confirm her guilty of “witchcraft” by “swimming” her.  

Adisham Pond, where the wretched Esther was “tried” and subsequently stoned to death by a superstitious Nonington mob. The church is just a few yards away.

When  Esther and her captors arrived at Adisham Pond the hapless Esther was bound hand and foot in the prescribed way and summarily thrown into its waters by the  vengeful accusatory mob of Nonington parishioners for a divine judgement and the “swimming” appears to have proved her guilt to their satisfaction.  
With Esther’s guilt proven beyond all doubt, at least to her accusers, Igglesden goes on to describe how the righteously enraged mob punished the hapless old woman : “Yelling and mad with wrath, they pelted the poor old creature with stones until ‘a farmer called upon his men to rescue her’, but she died, and so her persecutors said she must be a witch!”
Justice had indeed been done!

Although the parish of Nonington was well supplied with ponds at this time it would appear that none were thought suitable by the vengeful inhabitants of the parish to administer “justice” to a witch. The large pond in the neighbouring parish of Adisham which was directly in front of the parish church was well known for being deep and dangerous.  Some 140 years after this awful event William Hasted wrote of Adisham and its pond: “The village, consisting of about ten houses, is situated, not very pleasantly, in a bottom, having a large and dangerous pond, through which the road leads, in the middle of it; near it, on a hill, stand the church and court lodge”.
The pond was only completely filled in in the 1960’s and now lies under the modern road junction of Adisham Street with the Canterbury road.

At present the date of Esther’s ordeal and subsequent death in unclear, but it most likely occurred between 1640 and 1660. There is no record in the Nonington parish burial records of any Esther or Ester being interred in St. Mary’s churchyard during the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, but if she Esther had been interred in St. Mary’s churchyard Esther would almost certainly have been buried in an unmarked grave, probably with no record kept of the burial or grave because of her alleged crimes and how her death occurred.
Alternatively, Esther’s body may have been buried in unconsecrated ground because of her alleged crimes and cause of death, although during this period Nonington parishioners who took their own lives had their causes of death listed in the records and appear to have been buried in consecrated ground, not in unconsecrated ground as was the custom elsewhere for suicides. Those found guilty of witchcraft were often buried under heavy rocks or slabs to prevent them rising from the grave.

The actual reason for the absence of any entry for an interment may be that after the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 any “respectable” parishioners of “some standing” in the parish of Nonington who were either involved in Esther’s extrajudicial “trial and execution”, did not actually participate but allowed it to take place, or who did not act afterwards to report or record it with the judicial authorities would not want any record of that event.
Nonington appears only to have had three recorded vicars during the 17th century, the first two recorded are James Hathway in 1611 and Samuel Wells in 1652, it’s therefore possible that the event occurred prior to Samuel Wells taking office. In the absence of a vicar the parish records and annual returns to Church authorities were kept and prepared by members of the Parish Vestry, some of whom may have been involved in the death of Esther, or at the very least must have been aware of it as the “trial” was well attended and took place out in the open.
It should also be asked what were the Nonington and Adisham parish constables doing at the time? The parish constable was appointed yearly by the local magistrates and was usually a member of the Vestry.

The Boys of Fredville and the Hammonds of St. Alban’s Court were then the two main land-owning families within the parish of Nonington and members of these two families along with lesser land-owners and other prominent parishioners must have been aware of Esther’s “trial” and subsequent death, certainly at the very least after the event.
The Boys family were very prominent in local politics and Sir Edward Boys and Major John Boys both held positions of authority before and during the Civil War and Commonwealth periods. Both families also acted as magistrates, as did other prominent land-owners in the parishes surrounding Nonington and Adisham. The Archbishop of Canterbury also owned the Curleswood Park estate, now mainly covered by the village of Aylesham, to which the the Nonington parishioners and their prisoner would have passed close by.
Were any of the land-owners complicate in the trial? Probably not, but the lack of any record of the death or legal action afterwards would indicate they allowed it to be concealed. It would appear to be a conspiracy shrouded by the mists of time of which the true facts may one day come to light!

Fortunately during the Civil War and Commonwealth period superstitious ignorance did not always triumph over good sense and enlightenment! When in 1641 some villagers in the parish of Barham, a couple of miles to the south-west of Nonington, accused “Goodwife” Gilnot of witchcraft she was defended by Henry Oxinden (1609-1670) of Great Maydekin House in Denton. In addition to being a local land-owner and a grand-son of Sir Henry Oxinden of Dene near Wingham Henry Oxinden was a noted poet and also a prolific letter writer. He wrote on “Goodwife” Gilnot’s behalf to Dean Isaac Bargrave at Canterbury Cathedral, the judge in the proceedings, describing her as a woman “religiously disposed” and of a dutiful mother who “hath taken noe small care to have them instructed up in the feare of God”.
His letter must have achieved the desired result as there is no known record of a prosecution.

The death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and subsequent restoration of King Charles II in 1660 led to the speedy re-establishment of the  authority of a generally  more benign Church of England, but the persecution of witches  continued  on into the eighteenth century.
The last execution for witchcraft in Kent took place in 1685 but witch-hunting continued in East Kent. Hanna Baker of Elham was found guilty of “inchanting cattell” in 1703 and was punished with a years imprisonment with the additional punishment of being put in the Elham pillory on “the day after Ladyday, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas for the space of six hours” [25th March,  24th June , 29th September, & 25th December respectively]

The Elizabethan laws against witchcraft were eventually superseded by the much more enlightened Witchcraft Act of 1735 which was a complete reversal of previous attitudes in that people could no longer be hanged for consorting with evil spirits, but a person who pretended to have the power to call up spirits, or foretell the future, or cast spells, or discover the whereabouts of stolen goods was to be punished as a vagrant and a trickster,  and be subject to fines and imprisonment.
Even after the introduction of the Witchcraft Act of 1735 old beliefs and prejudices still lived on in the East Kent countryside. In West Langdon in 1762 only a timely intervention by a local magistrate prevented the the near murder of John Pritcher’s wife. The poor woman was accused of bewitching a thirteen year old local boy and her accusers dragged her for nearly a mile along a lane to the home of the boy she was accused of bewitching. Once there her accusers “pricked” Mrs. Pritcher and satisfied themselves that she was indeed a witch and that she should be “swum”. Only the intervention of a local magistrate prevented her being “swum”, and intervention that almost certainly saved her life. Two of the perpetrators of this potentially lethal assault were tried and convicted, but whether by the same magistrate who had intervened or at his behest is not known.
So deeply ingrained were superstitious beliefs regarding witches and witchcraft in the some of the population in parts of rural England that the persecution, and sometimes the murder of,  supposed witches continued sporadically until well into the twentieth century. The murder of seventy-four years old Charles Walton in the village of Meon Hill in Warwickshire as late as 1945 was believed to have been, at least in part, caused by a belief in witchcraft.  The last prosecution under the 1735 Act  was of Jane Rebecca York in 1944, and the 1735 Act was  superseded by the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951.

 Even after the introduction of the Witchcraft Act of 1735 old beliefs and prejudices still lived on in the East Kent countryside. In West Langdon in 1762 only a timely intervention by a local magistrate prevented the the near murder of John Pritcher’s wife. The poor woman was accused of bewitching a thirteen year old local boy and her accusers dragged her for nearly a mile along a lane to the home of the boy she was accused of bewitching. Once there her accusers “pricked” Mrs. Pritcher and satisfied themselves that she was indeed a witch and that she should be “swum”. Only the intervention of a local magistrate prevented her being “swum”, and intervention that almost certainly saved her life. Two of the perpetrators of this potentially lethal assault were tried and convicted, but whether by the same magistrate who had intervened or at his behest is not known.