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Ep 143: 1604 Witch Trial with Todd Butler
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Todd Butler recreated a real trial of witchcraft from 1604, & the results confirmed some of the wild tales about the original.
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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!