Discovery Channel - Bloody Britain (2004) Part 6 The Witchfinder General
Discovery Channel - Bloody Britain (2004) Part 6 The Witchfinder General
When History Was Really Horrible! Rory McGrath presents an entertaining history series that uses animation to shed light on some of the goriest events in Britain's past.
Fresh, innovative, entertaining and revelatory, Bloody Britain combines strong historical research and storytelling with hands-on historical experiments (such as building and firing a trebuchet), an entertaining but extremely passionate presenter and atmospheric and innovative animation.
Bloody Britain examines key historical events from ground level – looking at the lives and perspectives of all those involved in these events – king and commoner alike. Action and information-packed, each show is a fascinating and at times squeamish journey through some of Britain's most gruesome and awful, but momentous, historical events.
In each episode of Bloody Britain Rory McGrath examines a key event from British history. Whether it's battles, rebellions, wars, plagues, social unrest, betrayal, executions, injustice or mass insanity, we'll concentrate on the mad, sad and bad moments from our past. In short, we'll zoom in on when the past was truly horrible and ask why, when and how these events came to be part of our history.
From learning the tactics of the siege, through to troop formations and allegiances of the people, Bloody Britain demonstrates that history is always more interesting when it was horrible.
Part 6 The Witchfinder General
Rory McGrath finds out about the savage witch-hunts of the 1640s, learning how to test for a witch and how to protect himself from witchcraft.
The largest witch-hunt in English history was held between 1645 and 1647, led by the self-appointed Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins. Hopkins was a failed lawyer with no real legal qualifications, who made it his mission to rid East Anglia of witches. Witch-hunting really took off in England after Henry VIII passed a statute against witchcraft in 1542. Over the next 200 years, around 1000 people, mostly women, were hanged for practising witchcraft. Across the border in Scotland, they were even more witch-hunt crazy, finding 4000 witches guilty. Unlike their English cousins, these unfortunates were burnt at the stake.
See Also
Wikipedia Reference
You want more information on this!…. just click. (Matthew Hopkins)
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Snippet from Wikipedia: Matthew Hopkins
Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620 – 12 August 1647) was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War. He was mainly active in East Anglia and claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament.
The son of a Puritan minister, Hopkins began his career as a witch-finder in March 1644 and lasted until his retirement in 1647. Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne sent more accused people to be hanged for witchcraft than all the other witch-hunters in England of the previous 160 years, and were solely responsible for the increase in witch trials during those years.
Early life
Little is known of Matthew Hopkins before 1644, and there are no surviving contemporary documents concerning him or his family. He was born in Great Wenham, Suffolk, and was the fourth son of six children. His father, James Hopkins, was a Puritan clergyman and vicar of St John's of Great Wenham, in Suffolk. The family at one point held title "to lands and tenements in Framlingham 'at the castle'". His father was popular with his parishioners, one of whom in 1619 left money to purchase Bibles for his then three children James, John and Thomas.
Thus Matthew Hopkins could not have been born before 1619, and could not have been older than 28 when he died, but he may have been as young as 25.
You want more information on this!…. just click. (Witch-hunt)
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Snippet from Wikipedia: Witch hunt
A witch hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place from about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 60,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia, Cameroon and South Africa today.
In contemporary English, "witch-hunt" metaphorically means an investigation that is usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive activity, disloyalty, and so on, but with the real purpose of harming opponents. It can also involve elements of moral panic, as well as mass hysteria.
Anthropological causes
The wide distribution of the practice of witch hunts in geographically and culturally separated societies (Europe, Africa, New Guinea) since the 1960s has triggered interest in the anthropological background of this behaviour. The belief in magic and divination, and attempts to use magic to influence personal well-being (to increase life, win love, etc.) are universal across human cultures.
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