The Manningtree Witches: 'the best historical novel... since Wolf Hall'

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This is a fictionalised account of a dark period in English history – the actions of the so-called “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, who for a brief period in an East Anglia convulsed by the Civil War, effectively revised the idea of witchcraft trials, widely quoted as being responsible in just 2-3 years for as many executions from witchcraft as seen in England in the previous 150 years. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I (Act 2 Scene 4), Flastaff is referred to as “that roasted Manningtree ox“. [11] This was marked in 2000 with a sculpture of an ox in the town centre. [12]

The Manningtree Witches is a book set in England in 1643, where witch hunters were quite popular and many women were killed after being accused of witchcraft. This book is actually inspired by true events that happened in history. The focus was more on the historical aspect and bringing life to the characters, rather than the supernatural elements. Alison: "If you want to bring an accusation against somebody, you would go to a Justice of the Peace (JP) and bring the charge. They would then start investigating it, and it’s at that point that John Stearne is brought into the procedure. Local people here asked John Stearne, who lived in Manningtree, to take their complaints to the JPs. The JPs asked Steame to help some of the investigations and then Matthew Hopkins got involved as well. It’s almost certain that Hopkins, Stearne, the accusers and the JPs met in pubs, because that’s where men of standing got together - in a meeting room in an inn. So I think any kind of local-ish pub that would have been around in the 17th century, you could probably make that case for." Manningtree is part of the electoral ward called Manningtree, Mistley, Little Bentley and Tendring. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 4,603. [10] Geography [ edit ] River Stour near ManningtreeThe novel dramatises brilliantly how the civil war created social tensions, breeding suspicions among previously amicable neighbours. It also tells how political tensions combined with famine to create a strain on community bonds. The elderly widow who relies on her neighbours for survival becomes an unwanted burden, and is transformed by their guilt into a perceived threat. Diverse fears coalesce around the character of Matthew Hopkins. Recently arrived in Manningtree, Hopkins is burying his own sense of weakness and failure beneath a desire to play God and to punish unruly women. He believes himself to be the servant of God, but it is he who brings evil to Manningtree. Seventeenth-century England was a world turned upside down. Arguments over religion erupted in violence. Calvinists wanted a stripped-down Christianity wholly determined by literal readings of the Bible. The Church of England had adopted Protestant doctrines but still incorporated Catholic rites. Calvinists believed in the equality of believers but not women, whom they saw as responsible for original sin. The novel unfolds primarily through Rebecca’s first-person point of view. But it shifts sporadically to third person to describe scenes and events in which Rebecca is not present. These unnecessary shifts can be jarring and confusing. Rebecca’s diction is detailed and evocative. Replicating the idioms of 17th century England, it is replete with graphic descriptions, pungent odors, and immersive imagery. The diction is generally effective but can occasionally veer toward being too flowery and obscure.

One other recent witch novel, Rivka Galchen’s “ Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch,” wrestles with some of these same questions, turning on the intellectual battle between early scientist Johannes Kepler and those who had arrested his mother. Galchen sought to give a voice to a woman whose true nature can only be gleaned in occasional spaces in the court records. AK Blakemore is also a poet, and The Manningtree Witches has been praised for its “poetic” writing style. And the author does a brilliant job, principally by the wonderful character of Rebecca in capturing their voices – their (again her words) “character, humour and pride”. As he wrote in his book, The Discovery of Witches, published in 1647, Hopkins reported to the Judges of the Assize Court that a cabal of “witches” met regularly close to his house making sacrifices to the Devil (although he does not specify what this entailed). He reported that he had overheard one of the women instruct her “imp” – a demon in animal form – to fetch another witch. This woman, he said, was then seized, stripped naked and searched for marks of the Devil.

But what the book is really about (as the author says in the Afterword) is the “fears, hopes, desires and insecurities of the women who scratched out their existence on the very edges of society, and who have otherwise gone voiceless, or else been muted by victimhood.” The author is a poet and the language in the book is superbly and lyrically crafted – studded with quite beautiful writing, I have started and ended my review with two examples, but there are many more phrases ( “the grass a hard enameled green in the low rays of sunshine, already a crust of young moon visible over the treetops”)