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Religious tensions in England were high during the life of William Shakespeare, and throughout the 16th and 17thn centuries, England introduced several penalties for witchcraft, which then, as today, was seen as strongly sacrilegious by both Protestants and Christians. The first act to define witchcraft as a felony came under Henry VIII, with his Act of 1542 (33 Hen. VIII c. 8) his punishment called for death and subsequent forfeiture of property. Queen Elizabeth I would elaborate on this law during her reign when she established An Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts (5 Eliz. I c. 16), which was among her first official acts as Queen. Her Act actually allowed some mercy on the death penalty for accussed witches, enacting capital punishment only when the accused had caused harm, but still the Act called for imprisonment. Significantly under Elizabeth, anyone accused and found guilty of witchcraft would not only face punishment, but were denied the benefit of a clergy, which meant, under Elizabethan thinking, that the accused was irrevocably doomed to hell.
When Shakespeare was 39 years old, in 1603, King James of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth after her death, and he brought with him a famous repugnancy, and some call it outright fear, of witches during his reign. In Scotland, where James was dually King at this time, witchcraft had been considered a capital offense since 1563. The King brought this perspective to his management of witchcraft in England, as well. In 1604, just one year after his accession as King, James removed the mercy from Elizabeth’s Act by making it a certain death penalty without clergy for anyone who invoked evil spirits or communed with what were known then as “familiars” (a general term for supernatural spirits). Jacobean England saw the creation of an official position in the English government called the Witch-Finder General, whose job as you might expect from the title was to find witches and enforce the required punishment.
One of the first trials in England to test the new and broadened laws on witchcraft under James I was the mysterious case of Anne Gunter. In 1604, Anne Gunter became sick with an illness that confounded physicians. They concluded her illness must be the result of supernatural influence, and a trial ensued to try and find the suspected witchcraft. During the trial, Anne experienced a theatrical fit of vomiting and other convulsions during which she accused 3 local women of being witches. This caused a flurry of debate over whether Anne was suffering from real witchcraft, or if she was putting on a show to try and deceive the court. Our guest this week tested this theory himself in a college classroom when he, along with his students, decided to re-create the trial of Anne Gunter and the early modern experience of witch trials in a legal courtroom. We are delighted to welcome Todd Butler to the show this week to tell us about the trial of Anne Gunter and the results of his experiment.
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Todd Butler holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Todd first taught at the University of Tennessee-Martin before picking up and heading west to Washington State University in Pullman, WA. He’s studied and taught there for the last 17 years, including two terms as head of the Department of English and now positions as both Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and the founding director of WSU’s Center for Arts and Humanities. Along with studying Shakespeare and 17th English literature, he’s also an expert on political theory and law during the period, as well as law and literature more generally. He’s a past president of both the Modern Language Associations Law and Literature group and its Association of Departments of English.
In this episode, I’ll be asking Todd Butler about :
- Who were the three women she accused during her convulsions?
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In his paper, Bedeviling Spectacle: Law, Literature, and Early Modern Witchcraft, Todd describes Anne’s fits and convulsions by saying “Anne indeed appeared possessed, often vomiting pins…” (Source) Todd, what other actions did Anne take during her trial to try and present herself as a woman possessed?
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We are often told that King James had a fear of witches, and many sources I’ve read give the impression that, out of this fear, witchcraft trials were often swift, even unreasonable in their methods of establishing guilt as well as their enactment of punishment. And yet as the story goes, the accused witches in this case were found not guilty, and the whole affair became subject to skepticism and inquiries from the King and other London authorities.Todd, What prompted this initial result of not guilty, and what brought on the additional investigation of Anne’s claims?
… and more!
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An image of a witch and her familiar spirits taken from a publication that dealt with the witch trials of Elizabeth Stile, Mother Dutten, Mother Devell and Mother Margaret in Windsor, 1579. Unknown author, public domain. Source
Anne Gunter and the Three Women Accused of Witchcraft
In their small town, Anne Gunter became something of a spectacle. She came down with an illness that could not be explained by modern medicine of the time period. Confounded doctors came to suspect witchcraft. Todd explains,
Anne becomes a source of generalized gossip. Brian Gunter, her father, seeks experts to assess [the situation]. There were two trials.Anne was tried and she also testified against the women who were tried.
These experts were unable to produce a reason for her symptoms which included convulsions, vomiting, and talking incoherently. During one of Anne's convulsions, she accuses three women by name of having placed a hex on her. Those women were
Agnes Pepwell, her daughter, Mary Pepwell, (she was illegitimate, so she was already stained socially), and the main witch accusation was against Elizabeth Gregory, villager, well established family, and known as a “scold” (quarrelsome,highly unpopular) kept from coming to communion with everyone else. Low class women,and had a reputation for being a witch already. [There was] Bad blood. [a] fued, years long in the village between Brian Gunter and members of Elizabeth Gregory’s extended family (can be dated to 6 years before the trial). [The fued is traced back to a] 1598 village soccer match, [where a ] fist fight breaks out, near riot, between villages and team members. Brian Gunter [is] involved, trying to break it up, hits two members of the Gregory family with the pommel of his dagger.They died. Gregory family seeks murder indictment, no charges against Gunter.
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In 1604, there was an update made to Elizabeth's Witch Act under the newly crowned King James I. The man in this portrait, Edward Coke, broadened the Witch Act to include the penalty of death without the benefit of clergy (effectively damning to hell) anyone who invoked evil spirits or communed with familiar spirits. This portrait has an unknown author, but is thought to be a copy of work attributed to Thomas Athow, after Unknown artist, after Cornelius Johnson. The date shown on the portrait indicates it was done in 1593 (top right). The portrait also shows the date 1804 at the bottom, leading some scholars to speculate this portrait may be a 19th century copy of the 16th century original. Public Domain. Image Source
Physical Evidence of Being Possessed by an Evil Spirit
Witchcraft was considered both real, and very serious, an offense in Protestant England of Shakespeare's lifetime and well before. Elizabeth I had instituted several laws against witchcraft, but where her laws stopped short of actually sending to Hell anyone practicing witchcraft, the Witchcraft Act of 1604 (The same year as Anne Gunter's trial), was expanded by a Edward Coke, a member of Pariliament, barrister, and jurist under James I. Coke added an addendum to the act to say that anyone accused of invoking evil spirits, or communing with what was then known as familiar spirits, would be sentenced to death without the benefit of clergy, an action which effectively damned to Hell anyone convicted of this crime, as the Last Rights given by a clergyman before death were considered neccessary for passage into Heaven by many in the country at the time. (This is a conflation of Protestant and Catholic beliefs happening during Shakespeare's lifetime, and if you would like to learn more about Protestant/Catholicism in Shakespeare's lifetime, you can check out this Episode with David Bevington where we discuss what that mixed reality was like.)
Considering the climate at the time, Anne Gunter and her father Brian, were playing a very dangerous game. To accuse someone of witchcraft brought serious consequences in Shakespeare's England. It wouldn't be until the mid 18th-century, a full two hundred years later, that society began to consider witchcraft an “impossible crime.” For this time period, it was very real, and came at a high cost.
Being very serious meant that there were also very specific methods developed for determining whether someone was really a witch or not. Many of these apsects appear to have been studied by the Gunters ahead of the trial because Anne Gunter specifically behaves in ways that were considered specific attributes of one under the influences of a supernatural curse.
In his paper, Bedeviling Spectacle: Law, Literature, and Early Modern Witchcraft, Todd describes Anne’s fits and convulsions by saying “Anne indeed appeared possessed, often vomiting pins…” (Source) Todd explains that she also exhibited other attributes and that they specifically tested Anne for the influence of witchcraft:
Vomited pins, bodice unlaced itself, and when the case goes to trial, local justices of the peace examine Anne, and seek to have her replicate these symptoms, and the records we have and taken out of the spectacular situation, her performance is less than convincing. People start to suspect she’s faking the issues…They conducted tests for witches. If you burn fat from the roof of someone impacted by witchcraft, it provided relief. They did that without telling Anne, and she didn’t react.
When she did not react to the hidden test, is when authorities began to suspect a farse.
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Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch,
And straightway give thy soul to him thou servest.
This 19th century painting is based on the late 17th century Salem Witch Trials. The woman in the center is being examined physically by those in attendance to determine whether she is a witch. The portrait is by T. H. Matteson and titled “Examination of a Witch” Public Domain. Source
Testing for Witchcraft
One of the tests performed on Anne Gunter to discover whether she was really a witch included burning fat from the roof of someone impacted by witchcraft. The theory was, that if they were impacted by witchcraft, the symptoms would be allieviated by burning the fat. Without telling Anne, the team of scholars and doctors brought in to examine Anne (and I do not have records of whom, precisely, these men were), they burned fat over the roof of Anne's house while she was in it and they saw no change in her behavior. At this point, the team began to suspect Anne was only pretending to be a victi of witchcraft.
Todd explains that Anne and her father would have had ample resources available to be able to fake demon possession.
Popular culture vs print culture. Knowledge of possession of witchcraft affliction was widely defined. Impact or harm on an inflicted individual (fits, convulsions, and vomiting pins) at the same time, the growth of print culture at this time in history. At least at one point Anne reports after she confesses that she got at least some of her guide for how to act like she was afflicted by witchcraft from published accounts of witchcraft trials.
One possible source of information could have been James I's book, Daemonology, which was essentially a dictionary/encyclopedia of witchcraft and the dark spritiual world.
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“Illustration of witches, perhaps being tortured before James VI, from his Daemonologie (1597)” Public Domain. Source
King James Gets Suspicious
We are often told that King James had a fear of witches, and many sources I have read give the impression that, out of this fear, witchcraft trials were often swift, even unreasonable in their methods of establishing guilt, as well as potentially rash in their enactment of punishment (Throughout the 17th century tens of thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of people were killed for witchcraft). And yet as the story goes, the accused witches in this case were found not guilty, and the whole affair was not only meticulously handled, but became subject to skepticism and inquiries from the King himself as well as other London authorities. When I asked Todd about what prompted the authorities to investigate at this technical level, he shared that some of our assumptions about how witchcraft was handled may be skewed towards a harsher perspective than was always applied:
It was an incredibly serious charge that could have resulted in execution. England tended to have a substantially high acquittal rate in the early 1600s in cases of witchcraft. James Sharp, when he went to trial had less than a 50% chance of getting a conviction. There was a clear skepticism from the professional justices from the outset.
[King] James was deeply invested in witchcraft. Visits Oxford, and Gunter gets an audience with the King (We don’t know how or why) but it seems reasonable he was seeking recognition of what they had endured and the King was curious, but that means he was also skeptical. James cultivated a reputation of wisdom (like Solomon) an dhe was interested in disproving false claims of witchcraft as much as he was interested in prosecuting real witchcraft. James and his court increasingly investigated Anne Gunter (who had been put into the royal household for observation) and some people think that she ultimately confessed to the deception.The records indicate she fell in love with a servant in Richard Bancroft’s household, who along with two other women convinced her to confess. She seeks permission to marry the servant, and by Oct 1605 (two months later) has made a full confession her father coached her to act like she had been afflicted with witchcraft, and taught her how to perform.
Books & Resources Todd Butler Recommends
Additional Resources on this Topic Cassidy Cash thinks you might enjoy:
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Hi, Cassidy & Todd
I enjoyed this podcast and Todd’s exercise in reproducing the trial with his students, very much. The potential association of the case with Shakespeare via his son-in-law is what attracted me to the case some years ago when I came across a copy of Sharpe’s book in Blackwell’s in Oxford. I wrote quite extensively about this in my 2011, revised 2018, book Shakespeare’s Country Families, which I sent you a pdf of prior to my own appearance on your podcasts some time ago, Cassidy. I am adding the gist of this here in case you, Todd or other listeners would be interested. Regards, John.
John Hall and the Case of Anne Gunter:
An interesting reference to a doctor John Hall has emerged quite recently in the research carried out by James Sharpe of York University in the course of writing a book on an early seventeenth century witchcraft case. Sharpe assumed that this John Hall was Shakespeare’s future son-in-law, though he does not pursue this assumption evidentially. So little of any substance has emerged of Hall’s ‘missing years’ that this possible new clue as to his whereabouts is worthy of further examination.
The story of Anne Gunter was published in 1999 in James Sharpe’s The Bewitching of Anne Gunter. In brief, this tells of an early seventeenth century alleged witchcraft case in which three women of North Moreton, a rural village then in Berkshire, now Oxfordshire, were accused of bewitching Anne Gunter, the youngest daughter of Brian Gunter, gentleman. The accused were Agnes Pepwell, already with a reputation as a witch, her illegitimate daughter Mary, and Elizabeth Gregory, wife of a local farmer Walter Gregory. There was bad blood between the Gregorys and Brian Gunter dating back to an incident that had occurred at a football match in May 1598, as a result of which two young Gregory brothers died. The blame for these deaths was squarely laid at Gunter’s door, but as the most influential man in the neighbourhood, the Gregorys were unable to successfully pursue a case at law against him.
In the autumn of 1604 the twenty-year-old Anne Gunter began to suffer from fits and other strange manifestations, such as vomiting pins. She had first been taken ill in the summer, but had recovered. Her father, Brian, appears to have seized upon the idea of using Anne’s illness to revenge himself on the Gregory family and persuaded, or forced, her to feign the fits she began in the autumn. This she did so convincingly that her case attracted much attention. Her sister, Susan, had married Thomas Holland, a notable member of Oxford University, and Brian Gunter used his son-in-law’s influence there to build up a substantial body of support for his case against the three accused. Anne claimed Elizabeth Gregory, already unpopular in the village, was the main source, through sorcery, of her ailments, with the unfortunate Pepwell women being accused to strengthen the case as ‘known’ witches.
Several doctors were called in, or otherwise took it upon themselves to examine Anne. Amongst these were Roger Bracegirdle, Bartholomew Warner and a John Hall, whom Sharpe speculates was the same John Hall who became William Shakespeare’s son-in-law in 1607 when he married Susanna Shakespeare. Whilst most witnesses to Anne’s fits seemed to believe they were genuinely caused by her bewitchment – several doctors, Bracegirdle and Hall, amongst them – other witnesses were more sceptical. In particular, Thomas Hinton, a Wiltshire gentleman related to the Gunters, was especially concerned that a miscarriage of justice was about to take place. The trial of Elizabeth Gregory and Mary Pepwell, Agnes having made herself scarce, took place at Abingdon on 1 March 1605. Unusually, both judges on the Oxford circuit, Sir Christopher Yelverton and Sir David Williams, were present at the Gunter trial, perhaps reflecting the interest the case had raised. Yelverton was from a legal family, Williams of more humble background, but a highly respected and distinguished lawyer nonetheless. David Williams, born c.1536, son of a yeoman farmer in Brecknockshire, had entered the Middle Temple in 1568 and was called to the bar in 1576. Subsequently, he was queen’s attorney general for a Welsh circuit, recorder for Brecknock between 1587 and 1604, and served as MP for Brecknock four times between 1584 and 1598, before being knighted in 1603.
Hinton was paramount in the case because, whilst he was kin to the Gunters, he was also related to judge Williams and persuaded Williams and Yelverton of his doubts about Anne’s supposed illness and his concerns for the accused, to such an extent that the judges agreed to her being requestioned at her lodgings in Abingdon. The report the three justices who interrogated Anne presented to Williams and Yelverton was therefore fresh in their minds when the trial itself commenced. Brian Gunter’s performance at the trial appears to have been somewhat confrontational, challenging the judges at one point that ‘he had not that justice Mr. Throckmorton had’, a reference to an earlier witchcraft trial. Anne’s behaviour at the trial was also rather bizarre, with her enacting a fit and swooning to the floor. All of this was insufficient to convince the judges of the guilt of the accused and they were acquitted.
Dissatisfied with the outcome of the trial and unhappy at his loss of face in North Moreton society, Brian Gunter resolved to take the matter to a higher authority, none other than the king himself, James I. James was at Oxford in late August 1605 and Gunter somehow managed, possibly through his son-in-law, Thomas Holland, to obtain an audience for Anne with the king, though it is also possible that James, whose own interest in witchcraft was widely known, may have instigated the meeting himself. In fact, Anne had three further audiences with the king in September and October that year. Whatever Gunter had hoped to benefit from Anne’s meeting with the king, he was to be disappointed. James seems to have been sceptical of Anne’s bewitchment from his first meeting with her and put the case in the hands of his archbishop, Richard Bancroft, a noted sceptic of sorcery cases such as the Gunter affair. With Anne no longer under the direct influence of her father, she began to lose resolve in her pretence of bewitchment and despite her reluctance to betray her father she eventually revealed that she had feigned her illness. This confession may have been obtained to an extent as part of a ‘honey trap’ set by Bancroft with his servant, Asheley, as Anne seems to have amorously pursued this gentleman ‘most importunately and immodestly’. However, at this point more serious affairs diverted the king and his advisors with the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605 and it was not until the following February that the king’s attorney general, Sir Edward Coke, formally instigated the proceedings that were to raise the case against Brian Gunter and Anne in the Star Chamber.
At the Star Chamber hearing over sixty witnesses were called, of whom most spoke in support of Brian Gunter, including John Hall. Unfortunately, the outcome of the Star Chamber’s review of the case is unknown as the documents for the relevant period are lost. Sharpe is of the view that Anne’s confession of her role at her father’s insistence would have resulted in little in the way of punishment for her, and that Brian himself was probably found innocent, though this may have been only partially without some retribution. He most probably spent some time incarcerated as correspondence in early 1608 refers to obtaining his ‘liberty upon surety’. After his release, Gunter returned to North Moreton and lived out his life there, though he seems to have remained confrontational even into his eighties. However, he died while at Oxford, possibly visiting his daughter, Susan Holland, and his burial is recorded at St. Mary the Virgin on 17 November 1628. As for Anne herself, her destiny is less clear. Released from her father’s attentions she may have married her Asheley and found happiness – Sharpe is not sure. Brian Gunter’s will gives tantalising clues that may in fact be red herrings, so her fate has to be left something of a mystery. Her five minutes of fame passed with the end of the Star Chamber proceedings.
The case is of interest, naturally, because of its possible Shakespearian connection. If, as it seems possible, the John Hall who gave evidence in the Star Chamber proceedings was to become Susanna Shakespeare’s husband in 1607, then this is the first mention of him after his entry, together with his brother Dive, at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Examining Hall’s evidence to the Star Chamber as delivered on 6 May 1606 may give an insight into Hall’s whereabouts before he appears in the parish record at Stratford in 1607. The clerk began his recording of Hall’s statement by describing the witness as ‘Mr of arte of the universitie of Oxford’ and in his evidence, Hall, described as a ‘physician’, claims to have known the Gunters for ‘3 or 4 yeres past or thereabouts’. Also the signature for Hall appended to his evidence, whilst written in full rather than the abbreviated versions he was later better known to use, does bear particular similarities to the later versions, though in the hand of a man in his prime rather than the sometimes shaky hand of the older Hall. A point, which Sharpe does not mention, is that Sir David Williams was acquainted, probably through his Middle Temple background, to William Combe I of Warwick, a close member of the wider Combe family that had such firm associations with Stratford and Shakespeare. Williams is left £20 and named as an overseer to William Combe’s will in 1610.
Another coincidence regarding the fact that Roger Bracegirdle or Brasegirdle, an octogenarian physician, was involved in the case is that John Bretchgirdle or Bracegirdle was the vicar of Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, who most probably, baptised William Shakespeare on 26 April 1564. He was another Oxford man, originally from Cheshire, who took his degrees some years before his medical namesake. In his 1609 will, Roger Bracegirdle leaves £10 to his brother John of ‘Moberley Cheshire’ to be used towards the preferment of his daughter in marriage, as well as £5 to the parish church of Moberley towards the purchase of a bell, from which it may be deduced that Roger himself was also from Cheshire. Whether there was any connection between these two Oxford men is not known and it is probably unlikely that they were closely related, but as the Bracegirdle name and derivatives was particularly localised in the Cheshire area at this period, it is quite possible that they were kinsmen. However, Roger Bracegirdle’s appearance as a witness to the will of Anthony Bonner of Chipping Campden in 1580 suggests that he was possibly his physician. Bonner was married to Bridget Savage of the Worcestershire Savages and through them connected to the Sheldons and Russells, of whom Thomas Russell was an overseer to the will of Shakespeare. Bonner’s daughter Mary, married at the time of his death to William Young, was married, secondly, to Thomas Combe I of Stratford, the nephew of William Combe mentioned above, who was himself the half brother of John a Combe, friend of William Shakespeare. Thomas Combe’s son, also Thomas, was the recipient of Shakespeare’s sword from the Poet’s will. Yet another Shakespeare connection in the Gunter case comes about through the involvement another doctor, Bartholomew Warner, who became regius professor of medicine at Oxford in 1597. In 1594, Warner witnessed the will of Hillary Nash a younger son of Michael Nash of Old Woodstock. The Woodstock Nashes were the same family from whom Thomas Nash who married Shakespeare’s granddaughter descended, a pedigree examined in the next chapter. Through these relationships, together with the Combe family connections to Shakespeare, and John Hall’s own connections at Oxford with men such as Bracegirdle, Shakespeare’s future son-in-law may have been invited to take a personal interest in the Gunter case. Bracegirdle gave his evidence to the Star Chamber the day before Hall and it is probable that the two accompanied one another on the journey to the capital.
Given the hiatus in our knowledge of John Hall between his mention in the Alumni Cambrigienses and his marriage at Stratford in 1607, his possible appearance in the Gunter case is interesting and may provide a basis for further research into the relationships described above.
Hello John! I do remember you, and I enjoyed your book. John visits with us on That Shakespeare Life inside Ep59 to talk about New Place. You can listen to that story here: https://www.cassidycash.com/episode-59-john-taplin-and-the-story-of-new-place/
John, this is immense information. Thank you for sharing, and for listening to the show! It’s great to hear from you!