Kent On Sunday “Kent Remembered” - 17th August 2003 - “Day the Devil came down to Faversham”
The first English legislation against witchcraft was enacted in 668 AD by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, but it wasn’t until the 15th century that countrywide witch hunts began in earnest.
From 1400 to 1800 it’s estimated that between 30,000 to 50,000 witches were executed by burning, hanging, strangulation or beheading.
William Godfrey wasn’t the first man to be accused of witchcraft, not by a long chalk.
In fact, probably 20 percent of trials involved male defendants but the brunt of the hysteria mostly fell upon women.
Most defendants admitted their crimes following ‘examination’ - otherwise known as torture - despite the fact that it was expressly forbidden.
In Kent, the hand of the witchfinder was much less felt that in other countries but in the same century of the Godfrey’s trial, three women were executed together in Faversham, six women hanged in Maidstone and one in Sandwich.
The trial of Joan Williford, Joan Cariden and Jane Hott at Faversham in 1645 before Robert Greenstreet, ‘Major of Feversham’ and other aldermen was largely a reading out of their confessions.
Jane Hott, a widow, confessed: “At first comming into the gaol she had spake very much to those that were apprehended before her, to confess if they were guilty: and stood to it very perversely that she was cleare of any such thing, and that if they put her in the water to try her she should certainly sink (a sign of innocence).
“But when she was put into the water and it was apparent that she did flote upon the water, being taken forth, a gentleman to whom before she had so confidently spake, and with whom she offered to lay 20 shillings to one that she could not swim, asked her why she perswaded the others to confesse: to whom she answered that the Divell went with her all the way, and told her that she should sinke but when she was in the water he sat upon a crosse-beame and laughed at her.”
Joan Williford confessed that the devil had appeared to her in the shape of a dog, and bid her to forsake God and lean to him. She said the Devil promised her money and she had it to her she knew not whence, sometime one shilling, sometimes eight pennies. She called her Devil Bunne and said that Bunne had “carried a Thomas Gardier out of a window, and fell” causing him injury and pain.
When she came to the place of execution she was asked if she thought she deserved death: to whom she answered, that she did, and that all good people should take warning by her and not to suffer themselves to be deceived by the Devil, not for lucre, malice or any other thing else as she had done but to stick fact to God, for if she had not first forsaken God, then God would not have forsaken her.
The third defendent, Joan Cariden said the devil came to her in the shape of a black dog which crept into her bed and spoke to her in a mumbling language.
The next night it came again and said if she would deny God he would revenge her of anyone who had done her ill, and she promised the Devil her soul.
She also confessed that there had been a meeting at Goodwife Pantery’s house but one of the women who should have been there failed to arrive, so instead “the Divell sat at the upper end of the table”.
CURSES IN KINGSDOWN
(Source:Rev William Hill - A History of Three Villages of Kingsdown, Lynsted and Norton)
In 1593 there was a trial at Kingsdown of one, Nicholas Hardwyn, accused of witchcraft. According to the evidence he had prayed one night that one of his neighbours named Seks might not live until Saturday night. This prayer, he claimed, had been taught him by a woman. Because of this charge his house was searched for incriminating articles by William Amys. Nicholas’ wife took exception to this behaviour and according to local belief indulged in a little spell-casting on her own account. This was because shortly afterwards Amys’ cow began ‘grinding her teeth and foaming at the mouth’. As is so often the case with old records the rest of the trial report is missing so we do not know if Nicholas (or his wife of both) were ever condemned.”
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