Thank you and welcome to new members Nancy, Alex, Merryl, April, Ashley, Anabelle, Emma and Pam, who have joined in the past week to help me make Broad History – and can listen to this hourlong conversation with the great historian Marion Gibson. Join them as a member and listen to Marion Gibson, Eleanor Janega or Malcolm Gaskill right now. You'll get the full series early and make this show possible!
Witchcraft historian Marion Gibson, author of the just-released Witchland, guides us through the chaotic 1640s in England, a civil war out of which the country's bloodiest witch hunts arose. Would you have been an accused witch... or would you have accused your neighbours?
In this episode
- A primer on the English civil war of the 1640s and how it bred the witch hunts
- The role of James VI of Scotland and I of England (that's the same man) in bringing the witch hunts south
- Why communities invited the witchfinders in and how accusations surfaced
- The baker who volunteered himself for inspection – and landed on the gallows
- What's a witch mark anyway?
- When upstanding men ended up in the crosshair too
- How confessions were extracted with torture and sleep deprivation
- Why you could be found innocent – and still left to die in jail
- The infamous role of Puritans and how they took witch hunting from England to New England
- The brave souls who stood up to defend the accused and what we can learn about witch hunts were stopped
