Marching through history – the innocents: of the persecution of witches

There’s a huge, huge blot on the history of Europe. It starts spreading in the late 15th century and stains the years all the way up to the early 18th century. Years and years of women being persecuted, tortured and often executed-for being a witch. We, in this day and age, know there are no such things as witches. I bet – and I suspect Helen Hollick agrees -that most of the men back in those times knew that as well. In Helen’s fabulous series about pirate Jesamiah Acorne and his beloved ship, Sea Witch, our charming pirate meets the love of his life, Tiola. But what exactly is Tiola? And how does she tie in to the superstitious beliefs that cost so many innocent women their lives? Let Helen tell you!

The Reality of the Witch

To be frank, the blatant misogyny within the history of the Christian church has a lot to answer for where women are concerned. Particularly in the matter of witchcraft. Thousands of innocents suffered purely because they were old, lived on their own, had a knowledge of what we would, today, call ‘natural remedies’ and possibly had a goat for milk, and a cat to keep the mice away. Unless for the persecution of religious beliefs, it was rare for a man with these same ‘qualities’ to be tortured and cruelly executed. The familiar Hallowe-en figure of a woman in a pointy black hat, hook nose, bubbling cauldron and riding a broomstick stems from this perception of evil women out to commit malevolent mischief.

Before modern TV and movie entertainment brought us the likes of Bewitched, Charmed, and Harry Potter, witches were perceived as evil women in league with the devil, the bottom line being that the men of the Church didn’t like women who knew more about life than they did.

The accusations of witchcraft was (still is!) worldwide, and is rooted in superstitious ignorance dating from ancient antiquity, but the hysteria about witches took off in Europe during the 1400s particularly after the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) was published in 1486, written by two German Dominicans. In modern terms, the book ‘went viral’. The gist of its content was that witchcraft was heresy and the book became the main authority for Protestants and Catholics on how to identify, hunt, interrogate and destroy witches … well, women.
Anna: I just have to slip in and add that the Protestants were far more fervent witch hunters than the Catholics ever were… 

Between the 1500s – late 1600s, almost 80,000 witches were put to death in Europe. Most were female, although about 20% were men. By the 1600s, women throughout Europe and North America had been hanged or burned at the stake for heretical witchcraft, the most famous trials remembered today being the Salem Witch Trials in the US and that of the Lancashire Pendle witches in 1612. Whatever their fate of death, thousands of innocent women were accused, tortured and murdered for nothing more than biased, ignorant superstition. Single women, old women, widows and the poor were particularly targeted. One can’t help thinking that behind this persecution was the desire to be rid of those who were an inconvenient nuisance on society.

Bideford in Devon in 1682 is noted for what is believed to have been the last witch trials and executions in England. Two other women were from well-to-do families and were acquitted, but the unfortunate three, Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards, had no such advantage and were arrested, tortured, tried, convicted and hanged.

Temperance Lloyd came to Devon from Wales after the Civil War and living in poverty, sold apples to get by. A child stole an apple and some time later fell ill, then a shopkeeper claimed that he’d heard Temperance saying that the devil had instructed her to kill his sister-in-law. More Bideford people gave various witness statements and she was arrested, questioned, and eventually admitted to witchcraft. Two further destitute women were accused of assisting her, Mary Trembles, unmarried and on her own following the deaths of her parents, and Susanna Edwards born illegitimate and widowed young. All three were tried and hanged at Exeter.

Traditionally, witchcraft means using magic, or supernatural powers to cause harm to others. It is widely connected to the occult, malevolence, black magic (maleficium) communication with evil beings and therefore, an enemy of the Church. Midwives were widely persecuted, usually because of births that went wrong.

I can’t help thinking why not even one of the persecutors of the time did not query that if their victims really did have such powers, why did they not save themselves?

In contrast, ‘white magic’ is believed to be helpful or protective, tolerated and accepted. Practitioners could dispel any effect of malevolent witchcraft, heal and find lost or stolen goods (or people!). These are known as Wise Women or Cunning Folk.

Wicca, or The Craft is a pagan, earth-centred belief developed in England during the first half of the twentieth-century by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Variations of his original idea have evolved over time, and broadly speaking, are based around the Mother Goddess, Moon Culture, Stone Age hunter-gatherer Sun Worship, Nature and the pre-Roman Celtic religion. As with the superstitious ‘witch-hunting’, Christian religions, especially the more evangelical sects, condemn Wicca as Pagan, and therefore, anything from supernaturally dangerous to devil-worship.

Many Wiccans believe that there are different deities, not just one god, and that ‘magic’ is simply making full use of the senses, and understanding the healing powers of natural remedies. The circle is sacred, and priority is for healing, protection, fertility, or to banish negative influences. To do harm is forbidden – what is sent out will return three-fold. I personally think that peaceful Wicca is a way of redressing the balance against the persecution of women, by bringing to the fore our strengths of motherhood, healing and caring for each other and the environment. What is scary about that?

In developing my female lead in the Sea Witch Voyages, set during the Golden Age of piracy in the early 1700s, I wanted a woman who was a midwife, a healer – and a White Witch, for no other reason than I had envisioned a scene where she saved my main protagonist, pirate captain Jesamiah Acorne, from certain death by using her supernatural powers. (No spoilers, here, you’ll have to read the books!) My (now ex) agent at the time insisted I dropped the supernatural elements and wrote a plain nautical adventure, but Tiola Oldstagh (an anagram of all that is good) had already ‘come alive’ for me, and I refused. The same agent also insisted that adults would not want to read about pirates. I followed my instinct of what I wanted to write, went my own way and have now written several ‘Voyages’ in the series. And despite her name, Tiola (say it teeo-la, not tee-oh-la) is not always what she seems. She cannot do harm to others unless to protect herself, but when necessary, she is very powerful indeed.

My only regret (annoyance?) is that a rogue of a pirate, who can be charming but formidable when angry, is one for the ladies, and has a few choice adult expressions and habits, is accepted by most readers, yet Tiola, a witch is not. But as she says in Sea Witch, the first of the series, while tending a seriously wounded, but recovering Jesamiah…

“I am a witch,” Tiola stated blandly, riding over Jesamiah’s silence. Finishing her bandaging she took the bowl Jenna proffered, dipped a wooden spoon into the broth and fed it to him. “What you would call a white witch, of course. I am not permitted to do harm, even to shameless pirates. A pirate, in fact, is probably more dangerous than am I.” She talked as if she were speaking of something as ordinary as the direction of the wind, although he realised she was teasing him.

Swallowing the good-tasting broth, Jesamiah grinned, playing along with her. “Too pretty to be a witch.”

“I thank you for the compliment, though I am sure it is not deserved,” Tiola responded, still spooning. “White witches are not obliged to boast the appearance of hook-nosed hags, and we use only helpful spells – even those we keep to a minimum. We perform on high days and holy days. The occasional Saturday.”

Jesamiah responded to her absurdity, although beneath the frivolity he had an uncomfortable feeling – somewhere among all this nonsense she was being serious.

So, why this character? Why a white witch whose whole nature is that of caring kindness? I think because this is my way of apologising to all those thousands of innocent women who suffered so abominably in the past.
******

Anna: Haven’t met Jesamiah Acorne yet? What are you waiting for, do so NOW!

Sea Witch – the first book

Escaping the bullying of his elder half-brother, from the age of fifteen Jesamiah Acorne has been a pirate with only two loves – his ship and his freedom. But his life is to change when he and his crewmates unsuccessfully attack a merchant ship off the coast of South Africa.
He is to meet Tiola Oldstagh an insignificant girl, or so he assumes – until she rescues him from a vicious attack, and almost certain death, by pirate hunters. And then he discovers what she really is; a healer, a midwife – and a white witch.
Tiola and Jesamiah become lovers, but the wealthy Stefan van Overstratten, a Cape Town Dutchman, also wants Tiola as his wife and Jesamiah’s jealous brother, Phillipe Mereno, is determined to seek revenge for resentments of the past, a stolen ship and the insult of being cuckolded in his own home.
When the call of the sea and an opportunity to commandeer a beautiful ship – the Sea Witch – is put in Jesamiah’s path he must make a choice between his life as a pirate or his love for Tiola. He wants both, but Mereno and van Overstratten want him dead.

Buy it HERE 

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen Hollick became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she writes a nautical adventure/supernatural series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She has also branched out into the quick read novella, ‘Cosy Mystery’ genre with her Jan Christopher Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant. The fifth in the series, A Memory Of Murder, was published in May 2024, with more to follow!

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler. Latest on her writing list is a book about the ghosts of North Devon, and Jamaica Gold the seventh Sea Witch Voyage.

She lives with her family in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon with their dogs and cats, while on the farm there are showjumper horses, fat Exmoor ponies, an elderly Welsh pony, geese, ducks and  hens. And several resident ghosts.

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helen.hollick

Blog: supporting authors & their books

https://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com/

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Start Here: January 2024

Check out the previous Marching Through History HERE!