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Show Notes
Join us this week as Dr. Danny Buck explores astrology and the witchcraft trial of Mark Prynne, a tenant farmer accused of witchcraft in the 17th century by Great Yarmouth town clerk Miles Corbett. The discussion considers the perception of astrology during the golden age of astrology and how it influenced the outcomes of witchcraft accusations in Great Yarmouth during the English Civil War. Learn about the intriguing behaviors of local figures like Miles Corbett, John Taylor and Matthew Brooks during the Great Yarmouth witch trials of 1645 and 1646 and other notable historical men like astrologer William Lilly and infamous Witch Finder Matthew Hopkins. The episode addresses the peak and decline of the fear of witchcraft beliefs, reflecting a notable shift in societal attitudes at the end of the trial.
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Transcript
Josh Hutchinson: Hello, and welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that explores historic witchcraft trials and modern witch hunts in search of an end to witch hunting in all forms. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: We're descendants of people accused of witchcraft.
Sarah Jack: And we're here to tell stories of people like them.
Josh Hutchinson: We cover the past, present, and future of witch hunting.
Sarah Jack: Witch hunting dates back thousands of years.
Josh Hutchinson: The practice occurred all across the ancient world.
Sarah Jack: And continued through the classical era and the medieval period.
Josh Hutchinson: In Europe, witch trials ramped up in the early modern period and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands.
Sarah Jack: But witch hunts also have occurred in other parts of the world, and they've [00:01:00] never stopped anywhere.
Josh Hutchinson: Witch hunts, now mostly unsanctioned, occur in all corners of the globe today, killing thousands per year.
Sarah Jack: As historian Wolfgang Behringer has stated, 'there have never been so many witch hunts as we see in today's world.'
Josh Hutchinson: Today's guest is Danny Buck, who introduces us to the witch trials of astrologer Mark Prynne of Great Yarmouth, England.
Sarah Jack: Along the way, we'll meet an interesting cast of characters and learn about astrology's role in 17th century England.
Josh Hutchinson: Danny tells us about the golden age of astrology and the great astrologers of England in the 17th century.
Sarah Jack: He shares the different perspectives on astrology, including the impact of Puritan beliefs on the perception of astrology.
Josh Hutchinson: We'll learn what astrological products exist and what their uses are.
Sarah Jack: Today, we focus on the intriguing figure of Mark Prynne, who was an amateur astrologer who was [00:02:00] involved in locating lost goods and helping his neighbors determine the future.
Josh Hutchinson: We'll also learn about the antagonist to Mark Prynne, a MP named Miles Corbett. We'll learn about his leading role in the witch hunts and the accusations specifically against Mark Prynne. We'll also learn how he was satirized by poet John Taylor, who wrote a book called A Brief Relation of the Idiotisms and Absurdities of Miles Corbett, Esquire, Counselor at Law, Recorder, and Burgess for Great Yarmouth.
Sarah Jack: This is the podcast's second visit to the witch hunt of 1645 in Great Yarmouth. Dr. Buck is going to give us an overview of the witch hunt where Mark Prynne faced allegations of practicing sorcery and using witchcraft. We will also hear about a second round of accusations in the spring of 1646.
Josh Hutchinson: And we'll conclude [00:03:00] by learning the aftermath of the witch hunt, including the fates of both Mark Prynne and Miles Corbett.
Sarah Jack: Welcome, the first guest of Witch Hunt, returning favorite, Dr. Danny Buck, a Norfolk research historian specializing in the connection between witch hunting, politics, and religious division. In his previous appearance, he kicked off Episode 6 with a discussion on witch hunting during the English Civil War in Great Yarmouth, the place where William and Joanna Towne began their family relocating to the New World and settling in Salem Village. Make sure to revisit that fantastic episode. In this discussion, Dr. Buck delves further into the religious and political conflicts that shape the Great Yarmouth witch trial of amateur astrologer Mark Prynne.
Josh Hutchinson: How was astrology perceived in early modern Great Yarmouth? And why was it important?
Danny Buck: There's the three elements which I find very interesting about how astrology was perceived. At one level, it's something that seems very [00:04:00] useful to ordinary people. We've got records going back as far as the 16th century of a man called William Wicherly, who admitted he did conjure in a great circle with a sword and ring consecrated, and Thomas Owldring of Yarmouth, who was a conjurer and had good books of conjuring, who people were going to visit.
Danny Buck: They were seeking to understand the future. And also search for lost property. For others it was actually a way of looking for their, using predictions, to look at their medical health. So find a diagnosis and seek medical treatment. As we're going to look at, for some people this element of astrology cutting into conjuring, the act of charms and raising spirits for advice is cutting into witchcraft, that you're not just looking to do a predictable science, understanding God's plan for the universe with the stars, but in fact actually asking the dead for [00:05:00] advice, or even devils. Finally, there were some people rather cynical about this, even by the middle of the 17th century. People who were thinking that astrology is nothing but a con trick, a way for illiterate peasants or gullible guests to seek lost things from someone who could tell them what they wanted to hear, probably closer to our idea of cold reading,someone who can speak the names of the constellations enough to seem educated or have some secret knowledge over the rest of them.
Sarah Jack: What was the golden age of astrology?
Danny Buck: This is a difficult question. Obviously, astrology has been something that we can go all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, if not earlier. People have always looked to the stars and tried to seek meaning in them. We think of things like Halley's Comet being seen just before the Battle of Hastings as an ill omen for the Saxons. But the 17th century introduced a couple of elements that made astrology more accurate, or at least to [00:06:00] those who believed in it. Accurate clocks meant that birth dates would not be a vague day, but be put down right to the hour. Increasingly accurate telescopes and astronomical, as opposed to astrological, equipment was being invented that meant that stars could be understood in ever greater clarity and purpose.
Danny Buck: Think it was Bernard Capp who said that the last of the astrologers were the first of the astronomers. I think a very famous astrologer for the court in Poland, Copernicus, started off as the court astrologer. This meant that you could ask for a birth chart from an astrologer and you could put it down to the minute and therefore get what would seem to be an increasingly accurate diagnosis.
Danny Buck: But also, because of the printing press, astrology became ever more accessible to the ordinary person. The astrologer I want to talk about today, Mark Prynne, started his career with basically like a dummy's first guide [00:07:00] of how to look at the stars. Something, a brief of Moulsons Almanac. So again, as opposed to the full book, it's a brief, so it's been shortened and made more accessible for the ordinary reader, as opposed to the larger original, I think it's originally a 15th century French almanac.
Josh Hutchinson: What other products did astrologers create?
Danny Buck: The most obvious one is the element of prediction, which is by casting a chart. This isn't a particularly visual medium, but you can often see them survive in this period, often with a square with a circle inside, or some pattern of that, which is then used to reflect the houses of the stars and their positions and how that therefore interacts with the balance of the humours and health, as well as a person's personality. Again, today art forms tend to be a bit more circular, but they still are used by people. You also have the almanac itself. So the almanac is an interesting [00:08:00] product. Obviously, we still produce almanacs for people. Some of them are not astrological, just to tell us what's happened in a year.Cricketing almanacs, etc. But for the 17th century almanacs, these are being produced annually, often being used to record dates which are important for people to know and how far we are from the creation of the world or the birth of Christ, etc. But they're also used to look at conjunctions. What are the weird
Danny Buck: astronomical phenomena that are going to occur?
Danny Buck: And actually these take on quite a political element. I was just catching up today in preparation for this, and there's a wonderful piece by Imogen Peck called 'A Chronology of Some Memorable Accidents, the Representation of the Recent Past in English Almanacs,' which looks at how in the aftermath of the Civil War,people were still looking and looking at the past through almanacs in a way that reflected their own political biases.
Danny Buck: However, this was a lot more [00:09:00] complex during the Civil War itself, when there were a variety of rival almanacs. In particular, William Lilly is famous because he produced an almanac that showed how the stars were showing that Parliament's victory was imminent, but he did have a Royalist rival producing his own, believing evidence of Royalist victory, which unsurprisingly he fell into obscurity while Lilly, with a somewhat more accurate prognosis, continued to thrive.
Danny Buck: These, weren't, particularly expensive objects. They're almost mass produced, what we refer to often as ephemera. So relatively cheap paper, but were being produced through the stationers companies. They'd often rely on family names, families of astrologers, so in particular in Great Yarmouth we haveGeoffrey La Neve, starting in 1604. On his death in 1613, his nephew Jeffrey, with a J, continued the almanacs until he was dismissed for being a bit dodgy in the local corporation. And his cousin John Neve took over, continuing the almanac from [00:10:00] 1626 until 61. So these reliable names meant that people could trust them. And again, it's something that continues until at least the 18th century. I think Franklin got, Benjamin Franklin of the American Revolutionary fame got his start faking an almanac, claiming the original author had died and he was replacing him in his usual, slightly trollish way. And then on top of this we get some bigger publications. So we've mentioned, Lilly's Christian Astrology, but also these different guides how to, and evolvement.
Danny Buck: It's quite interesting because again, some of these do bring up witchcraft and the ways that astrology can be used against them. Finally, we've got that medical product that this ability to accurately understand people's maladies was quite important. In particular, I find it quite interesting a reference in the Great Yarmouth corporation book to Mark Prynne helping a distracted man in the town's bridewell. So this is the poor relief, the precursor to the workhouse. And again, [00:11:00] distracted, it's a very vague term, but suggests some kind of mental illness. That somehow this astrological conjunction, and again, it fits into our sort of later idea of things like lunacy and that connection between the stars and mental health that still remains current into the 19th century.
Danny Buck: Finally, there's this element of what they could do for you. Well, they can find the things you've lost. So in particular, we know that Mark Prynne found a variety of objects, and it's been satirised by poets afterwards that he could find anything from a calf to a windmill or a millstone, but certainly there's evidence of finding things like a particular, a man called John Sparke, a sailor nearby who had a lost hat, a cushion, and I think a gold ring, so these are an interesting variety of small items that could be easily lost. Again we don't know how much this is cold reading, that he somehow being able to talk to them, is able to deduce what's going on. Or, again, if he's being consulted, he's not necessarily successful.
Josh Hutchinson: It's interesting, you mentioned William [00:12:00] Lilly, and I just want to point out that one of his books showed up in Connecticut in a witch trial of Katherine Harrison and was used as evidence against her.
Danny Buck: That is fascinating. I find that astrologers are still, they are the more acceptable side of magic. At least, your official names, your Lillies,and they've got a high status. They're protected by, they've got connections. William Lilley, he claimed that he'd spoken to King Charles and advised him to not try and escape Carisbuck Castle. it's easy to say after the event, but he also advised parliamentarian generals. And again, there doesn't need to be anything therefore incompatible for some people with astrology.
Danny Buck: But there was also a fear. William Lilly, as well, mentioned there was fear he was accused of being a juggling wizard and imposter. There's a fear about them being compared to necromancers, so being able to somehow predict [00:13:00] using the dead. And again, there's an earlier generation there responding to men like John Dee and John Lamb, who were certainly in this box of people who are engaging in dark magic and dark practice that was unacceptable. Judith Bonzol, in her guide to William Lilly's life, mentioned that he is someone who is afraid of this line, and in particular he offers anti-witchcraft medical treatments, which actually is quite interesting because it's very much linked to the kind of witch bottles, which obviously we've looked at before, where he mentions the need to boil the patient's urine together with pins, nail parings, and the hair of the victim as a remedy against witchcraft.
Danny Buck: But he gave the example that's a relatively scientific explanation. These are natural experiments and work by sympathy, in order to torment the witch and draw her out of hiding, which then, in theory, brought relief to the victim.
Danny Buck: Of course, the most recent volume of Lilly's publications came out in the 1680s, so in time to be influencing the [00:14:00] beliefs of people in Salem.
Sarah Jack: Who was Mark Prynne?
Danny Buck: I've mentioned him a couple of times now. I've found him a wonderful figure. He's one of these people that just jumps out of the records in a really interesting way. Again, I'm very grateful to Peter Elmer, the excellent historian of witchcraft, who's certainly retired now, and getting a chance to speak to him when I was at UEA. And he brought this to attention. He, again, in his index to his wonderful Politics and Witchcraft, he brought up a lot of the details I'm going to rely on. We are always able to see so far because we're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Danny Buck: But he is a fascinating figure. He's definitely an amateur astrologer. Unlike La Neve, unlike Lilly, it isn't his full time job. He's mostly a tenant farmer. In the town, he's renting land from the local ministry at one point and using that. So this is almost like a sideline, as the Americans say a side hustle, to provide a little bit of extra income. So we don't know much about his family, where [00:15:00] he's come from. We do know he's educated, because he's noted as having a very large collection of books for the time, of theological, historical, and philosophical books. Again, he particularly mentions Moulsons Almanac, who we've described as a brief of the famed Shepherds. And we know he's being employed by local residents. So we've got hats, pillows, are definitely being searched for. John Taylor claims a lost cow, calf, horse or cart, silver spoon or bodkin, knife or ring, millstone, windmill, cork. But I think he, again, is being a little bit ridiculous. We know he's being paid 30 shillings, which is quite a lot of money, for curing one Tills, the distracted man who I mentioned earlier.
Danny Buck: And we know that this medical treatment is already current with people like La Neve. This all suggests he is in demand, he is someone who's being employed quite regularly, even if this isn't his full time career.
Josh Hutchinson: What do we need to know about his landlord, the minister?
Danny Buck: We're very lucky that there's an interesting connection here.[00:16:00] Prynne is renting land from Matthew Brooks. Matthew Brooks, as we mentioned a little bit last time, was a veryLaudian minister in a town that was very Puritan, so they did not get on well. So he arrives at the town in 1630 in the middle of a crisis, where they're trying to handle the presence of the town's Puritan minister, who's being pushed to one side by the Dean and Chapter of Norwich, the more Laudian authorities. And he starts making a splash pretty early. By December 1631, he marches into the church and reads the 1627 injunctions against the Puritan minister, which means he's then arrested by the town's corporation. So in particular, Henry Davy, Thomas Green, Ezekiel Harris, and a man who we're definitely going to come back to later, Miles Corbett.
Danny Buck: Because of this, he sends a petition to the king. He's supported to the hilt and in response those people [00:17:00] arrested him were arrested in turn for a while. The king sides with Brooks, he gets authority from it. Brooks works very closely with the bishop of Norwich, Wren, from 1645 onwards, and he carries out a campaign that's really aggressively anti-Puritan. He makes the church look nice. He brings in stained glass windows, he gets rid of the raised seating used by the Puritan authorities so they could look down on the folk of Yarmouth and keep an eye on them, make sure they're behaving properly in church. And this feud between Brooks and Corbett deepens in 1637, when Corbett is accused of harbouring two émigré nonconformist ministers, so some real religious radicals, who'd come over to Great Yarmouth, smuggled in a lot of anti-Laudian books and hidden, pretending to be soldiers who'd been fighting in the Netherlands, and they take dinner in Miles Corbett's house, allegedly.
Danny Buck: Brooks is very diligent about investigating it, like a [00:18:00] little detective. This gets worse from 1640 as Wren, his bishop protégé, has moved on to Ely and, obviously with the collapse of the royal government and the collapse of the episcopate, the Church of England, there's a lot of tension for locals. And we are helped by what for me is a lovely document, a very fascinating document from the Parliamentary Archives, as he writes a petition to the House of Lords saying, 'can you stop them bullying me?' It's not great stuff for, Brooks. Brooks, sadly, I think at one point he mentioned he's being threatened by the wife of the alderman that she's going to throw lime and blind him, lime in his eyes, along with sand. His assistant, Thomas Cheshire, who we're going to come back to, is being, when he's walked through the very narrow streets in Great Yarmouth, which are called rows that go up and down to allow easy fishing in [00:19:00] the town, he's jostled, he's got people slamming their elbows into his back, and he's forced to leave in 1638.
Danny Buck: The saddest example, if you'll forgive my tangent, because this is such a rich colour, that while Brooks has gone to London to defend himself about attempts to try and remove him, there's a large group of angry, drunken locals get together. They have a big bonfire outside his house. They go to Ezekiel Harris, who obviously holds this grudge against Brooks, and they get roaring drunk. He provides them with massive beer. They then turn up to this bonfire. There's supposedly three of them in disguise as the three most important people in the kingdom. Considering this is 1640, I think it's likely you've got the Archbishop Canterbury, William Laud, because it gets mentioned later, the King, and probably Black Tom Strafford, the Earl of Wentworth. They're having this massive party. They, obviously Brooks isn't there. Instead it's just his housemate and his poor, [00:20:00] heavily pregnant wife and their eight children, terrified. And these mass mob comes out knocking on the door, demanding entry in the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury, presumably the man in costume. So again, there's a real tension already, this desire to purge the town of people they see as dangerous and too lenient and not Puritan enough. And it's this crowd that Prynne is hanging out with, so again it's one of the things that's going to be a black spot against him with the Puritan authorities.
Josh Hutchinson: You mentioned Miles Corbett. Can you introduce us to him?
Danny Buck: Miles is a fascinating figure in his own right. So he's the second son of Sir John Corbett, a baronet from Sprowston. That probably means very little to you. Hopefully, there's a Sprowston somewhere in America amongst the other many English renamed settlements, but this one is a slightly unimpressive outskirts of Norwich today, but again, it's [00:21:00] not an unpleasant place.
Danny Buck: He's a well-educated man. He goes to Christ's College, Cambridge in 1612. He attends Lincoln Inn. He's training as a lawyer before being called to the bar in 1623. In 1625, he becomes the town recorder for Great Yarmouth, so that's a role which encompasses both your town's legal expert, lawyer, but also having a role acting as a judge in court cases.
Danny Buck: Obviously it's very important we're coming back to the witch hunt. His brother was the MP for the town and was arrested by King Charles, as well, the five members who resisted his call for a loan to try and sponsor the war against Spain and France,and sadly dies in prison, which again, likely one of the reasons why Corbett is so anti-government and so angry with the Church of England there, as well as his time in Cambridge.
Danny Buck: He also undertook the role for King's Lynn and Aldeburgh recorder, which again is quite interesting, because both of those towns are towns that are touched by the [00:22:00] witch hunt. And again, one of the things I've always wanted to do is to really get into depth and look at some of these communities, because also Southwold is well connected to Corbett.
Danny Buck: Is he someone who's helping to persuade Matthew Hopkins to come along the East Anglian coast, that all these towns are towns which he's connected to? This is something thathopefully Marion will find the answer for that. I'm looking forward to that as part of her wonderful Seven Counties project, but he's definitely someone to keep an eye on for that.
Danny Buck: His allies might say he's a very rigorous man, legally trained, has a very important role to play in the Long Parliament, and he remains as MP up until 1660, so obviously proves himself loyal. He's involved in Ireland, as well, during the Commonwealth, trying to sort out land there. But for his enemies, Taylor describes him as a stiff cathedral hater, a utopian of no religion, and whose [00:23:00] fired zeal led him to be cruel to toothless aged ministers. Even crueler, newspapers in the 1650s were comparing him to the devil, saying he was very dark, which again, I always wonder again, he's someone from Sprowston. Is he quite swarthy? We don't know. There's a couple of lovely prints of him, where he looks he's doing all right for himself in the 1650s, he looks quite prosperous.
Danny Buck: And one of the lovely things we've got in the Norfolk archives is this little paper, it's like a two pieces of A5 folded together to form a little booklet. Which is rather touching, because it notes the date when he was married, and it notes the exact date to the hour his children were born. And obviously this is something he kept with him, which I find very sweet. He's a very human figure despite all this. So his role in the witch hunt? Obviously then we've said that he's the recorder. He's the one gathering the evidence. He's also, in his role as town clark, he's keeping an eye on the papers, and he's likely the person who sent the [00:24:00] invitation to Hopkins to come to Great Yarmouth in the first place. So he's deeply enmeshed.As we look, there's accusations he took a much deeper personal interest in the case against Mark Prynne.
Sarah Jack: What kind of charges were brought against Mark Prynne?
Danny Buck: So in 1638 he's first accused of using charms to locate the lost goods of one John Sparke, a sailor. But in 1645, he faced the much more serious allegations of practicing sorcery, so using witchcraft to locate lost goods belong to Anne Can and John Ringer, who's a mason. He's also indicted for using witchcraft on John Howlett, a goldsmith, and his son also named John, conveniently, who were both sick at the time of the trial.
Josh Hutchinson: Since it's been a while since we spoke about the 1645 witch hunt, can you refresh our memories with a brief overview of that?
Danny Buck: So it starts in the 22nd of April in [00:25:00] 1645, with Howlett and his son John being some of the first people to make their accusations of witchcraft. This leads to eventually ten people being accused, six convicted, of which five are hanged for the crime. There's also a second round of accusations in the spring of 1646, six are made, but all six of them are found not guilty.
Sarah Jack: And how did the community respond to the allegations against Prynne?
Danny Buck: As far as we can tell, early on there seems to be this support, the growing support after this, that there's increasing numbers of accusations that follow this. So we have a few more people, as we noted accusers being brought, not just Howlett and his son. But the trial itself, we have an account of Thomas Cheshire, so the man who'd been the assistant to Brooks, arriving and giving testimony, defending,it's the kind of defense where this man isn't a witch, [00:26:00] he's just a con man, but it's still better than being hanged. So there does seem to be some people willing to rally in his support, and obviously he's found not guilty, so obviously the jury are convinced that he isn't someone who's engaged in witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: What kind of evidence would they have presented against him?
Danny Buck: So from the collection, from the account we've got, obviously we have the trial records, and we know people are speaking in evidence for and against. But in particular, we have an account, a hostile account to Miles Corbett that mentions that the evidence being brought in front of the jury included Prynne's collection of astrological books.
Danny Buck: So we've mentioned Molson's Almanac, we've also got a book of merry fortune telling with the forms of dice and stars. Also, something which is referred to as a book of circles, so again, presumably these are different forms of charts being used. I've spoken to some people upon this, and they suggest possibly the [00:27:00] Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon or something called the Picatrix, which are being brought in front of them as official texts. The allegation is that the names of constellations and the names of the astrological forms sound quite demonic. Col Quintinta, Asaf Petita, Zazara Phila, and the allegation is that Miles Corbett is so ill educated he believes them bitter, stinking, and poxy devils, rather than obviously the form of the stars. He names Alabazama, Copernicus, Rombolax, and Mestopheles. So Copernicus the astrologer being treated as a demonic figure.
Josh Hutchinson: How did Puritan beliefs influence the witch hunt and the perception of astrology?
Danny Buck: Certainly there's an element of Puritan beliefs being used to interpret astrological evidence. Obviously, we've talked about William Lilly. William Lilly [00:28:00] had to directly write a book called Christian Astrology, trying to seek to show this connection between astrological formations as a way to determine the future, as opposed to other forms. It's a very strict and narrow vision of what astrology could be.
Danny Buck: Previous people involved in this, obviously, we've mentioned at the start those two controversial 16th century figures. So they've mentioned the sword and ring consecrated as magical elements that could use to foretell the future. Similar to Debora Moretti when she was talking about the carafe that you could look into the crystal, you could look into the glass, you could see images, which is slightly more dangerous as opposed to just looking plainly at the stars. Again, compare that to our classic image of the fortune teller with the crystal ball, that these things are more dodgy. Similarly, I think John Dee allegedly had an obsidian mirror [00:29:00] taken from the Aztecs that he could use to communicate with angels. This is where it crossed over the line. So there is the possibility of that.
Danny Buck: The contemporary astrologer John Gadbury blamed pretenders for critics connecting astrology to magicians and necromancers.You have the astrologer's club, the educated types who could be reliable, and you have those slipping on the other side into magic, so being magicians and necromancers.
Danny Buck: Also, William Lilly himself sought to reject the dark sentence of oracles. So again, you're not seeking to commune with the dead or commune with devils to tell the future. You are just doing a nice scientific analysis of the stars, certainly in the context of the very favored imagination of the 1640s, where omens seem to be everywhere, and the devil's influence everywhere, looking instead of the heavens to more otherworldly and demonic forces. What's the risk? And as we saw that, John Taylor's [00:30:00] account there with that fear of constellations and devils, the two seeming interchangeable for those who don't know quite what's going on there. Then that astrology witchcraft could seem quite similar or close enough, despite the protestations by those people who wanted to prove it otherwise.
Sarah Jack: With Miles Corbett, he was a Puritan.
Sarah Jack: I'm thinking about the war that's happening, this antagonism that's between Brooks and Corbett, and then you've got this amateur astrologist, the devil in the community, I'm used to hearing how the Puritan ministers are seeing the devil in their people, butthey're seeing the devil from the other side right now in this situation?
Danny Buck: So Miles Corbett is a fascinating figure for that. So we said he's a Puritan, but he's not a Presbyterian Puritan. He's not someone who's seeking to build a new Church of England that's going to be Puritan. [00:31:00] He's instead closer in opinion to the kind of American congregational churches. He becomes a leading member of Great Yarmouth's Congregational Church, and that is a source of tension within the town. He writes letters to the corporation saying, 'why are you trying to exclude the Congregational Church from being part of our Puritan community?' Again, this split in the godly is something that's causing increasing tension. One of the fears of the devil is that he appears as angels in raiments of light, and there we have also groups of Anabaptists in Great Yarmouth at the same time.
Danny Buck: How much conformity can you have? In some ways, seeking someone who is obviously outside the pale you can unite around is something important, but this is something that goes way back. The first accusations are in 1638. While Corbett already has, we'd say, congregational leanings, he's communicating with congregationalists, people looking to build a new church the New England way, that divide is only [00:32:00] caused when there's an actual congregational church there. In this way, his role in promoting the witch hunt, in trying to seek to remove the devil, it provides a mirror to how ministers are, as well, I feel. The ministers in Great Yarmouth are involved in other accusations, particularly against Elizabeth Bradwell, a poor woman. We can see Corbett's crusade here as something that feels very personal, but again, we have reasons for thinking so, because of the way it's being treated as such, that it's used as something to ridicule Corbett later, for his superstition, his foolishness to get involved. But I feel, from the fact that he's so intertwined with these accusations, that it's something he takes seriously.
Danny Buck: And this man, who's been sitting there connected to the old regime and all its corruption provides a useful [00:33:00] vehicle to try and engage in this process of reformation and to reunite these two different kinds of godly people to make them move in the right direction. But again, it's one of those tragedies that, despite all this death that he's willing to engage in, it doesn't work really in the long term.
Sarah Jack: What is the outcome of criticism of this astrology being used by a farmer? As we know, Miles becomes a joke to some about this. What other outcomes were there?
Danny Buck: So this is particularly interesting for me. This is what brings it to life, is that this is used as part of a campaign. There's a wonderful poet, who I think we can describe in detail, John Taylor, who is in London during the 1630s. He's originally a waterboatman. He basically just travels across the river in his little [00:34:00] boat, creates ditties and witticisms, and is a very sharp wit. And now he feels a loyalty to the crown, but he also has a particular enmity against Miles Corbett and Corbett's role in London. The Civil War radicalizes him, so he starts producing political squibs in support of the king and against Parliament. But Taylor was arrested by Corbett and the Lord Mayor of London for seditious words against the five members, the people who the King tried to arrest in 1642, precipitating the Civil War. So Corbett becomes a particularly good example for him of someone he can satirize. He sees him as the classic example of the Parliamentarian elite. These people are officious, they're cynical, they are untrustworthy, and as the wonderfully titled poem, [00:35:00] A Brief Relation of the Idiotisms and Absurdities of Miles Corbett, Esquire, Council at Law, Recorder and Burgess for Great Yarmouth, they're idiots. He creates a wonderful 18 page pamphlet poem which lists 11 idiotisms in total.
Sarah Jack: And you're going to recite the 18 pages.
Danny Buck: Sadly, the last couple of pages have been damaged, but I will have to bring up some wonderful passages on the Corbett trial. This isn't the first time he attacks, Corbett. He does create a satirical parliamentary speech, which is allegedly by Corbett, which again shows his gullibility and his cruelty. And there's another one, 1641, which brings up the witchcraft case again, allegedly about the sort of things that Corbett's done in the year 1641. In the Idiotisms, we have, supposedly, allegedly Corbett presents a dog to the sessions for the crime of stealing some meat and accuses a man of stealing his own goods, even sort of him [00:36:00] getting drunk in the sand dunes outside the town. In particular, by Corbett's credulousness, his ill education, that means he sees Prynne as such a threat. It is a really good way to show the recorder's supposed injustice, credulity, and ignorance. So again, he can ridicule the recorder, he can ridicule puritism.
Danny Buck: Again, it's something that we can come back to because it's a theme that develops later, particularly after the Restoration, and about how people view witch hunting in general, which is part of the sort of end of that. But in this case, it's particularly useful, because he spends so much local detail trying to explain this case and explain why Corbett is useless.
Danny Buck: But he also does it in a way that feels quite modern, that what he ridicules isn't that somehow Prynne is a particularly skilled astrologer. He's just a con man. And it's part of the [00:37:00] expression of the idiotism of Corbett, is that he falls for this common man and sees him as a real danger, so just this sort of part time crook.
Danny Buck: 'There was a juggling, cunning man of fame, a nickname conjurer, Mark Prynne by name, whose skill was in astrology so great, that by that art he many folks did cheat. This Mark, pray mark me now that what here I write, could many fiends and planets recite, and more strange magic words from him would drop, there are in an apothecary shop.'
Danny Buck: Lovely bit where he describes where Thomas Cheshire has proven that Prynne is innocent. 'The substance of the book did straight explain to be as far from Master Corbett's talk as oatmeal is from eggs or cheese from chalk. And by that book's virtue we dare both to swear that no man can ever be a conjurer. They therefore, prayed the jury to conceive [00:38:00] the law cannot this man of life bereave. By their verdict, Prynne not guilty found and escaped a Popham check twixt sky and ground, and there the learned recoverer gained much credit, as some said, if they did not lie that said it.'
Danny Buck: So yeah, it's stirring stuff you could imagine around a pub after a few drinks.
Josh Hutchinson: What ultimately happens with Mark Prynne?
Danny Buck: This is the thing that, again, intrigues me with so much of this, that ultimately I don't know. He's found not guilty, he disappears from the record. Obviously we know that La Neve's almanacs continue into 1661. But we don't really hear much more about Prynne. Doesn't help that I've seen about four or five different spellings of his last name, anywhere from Pryne to Prince. And I know that Marion Gibson's new book is going to go from the ground up. I'm sure she has some tasty titbits for us about his life and career, but sadly this is where his story [00:39:00] ends, obviously a court case triumph for him, but sadly no further details on that.
Sarah Jack: Which I mean, we find that over and over, we hear, we have these court cases, they're intriguing, there's some details, we find, we get a look into a life and then that's the last word.
Danny Buck: Just lucky to have this much snapshots of him and Elizabeth Bradwell that mean we can build the sort of picture of their life and their beliefs, and again how these beliefs are changing, which I think is the most fascinating thing. I think one of the interesting elements in England is how this represents the peak of witchcraft beliefs and how already some of the themes of cynicism and rejection of witchcraft are starting to drop in. Obviously, there's still people like Joseph Glanville talking about witchcraft into the [00:40:00] 1680s. But by 1660s, we have Hudibras, the great epic poem about the life of the Restoration, but also looking back at what has happened in England during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth. And again, one of the first mentions we get of Hopkins and his reputation, along with the myth that he himself was hanged as a witch.
Danny Buck: So certainly that spirit of seeing the Puritan enthusiasm as being falling for fraudsters or an overenthusiasm about this is already coming out of Taylor's work in the middle of the 1640s, that these themes of how puritism is seen as an overreaction, it's interesting how this story is having much wider resonances.
Josh Hutchinson: What happened to Corbett with the Restoration?
Danny Buck: [00:41:00] He's elected to Parliament, and then people remember he's one of the regicides. He's the last person to sign the king's death warrant. So there's a general pardon, apart from the regicide, so he escapes to the Netherlands. So he's there with a group of regicides, and he's eventually caught in a daring raid by George Downing. If you want to know some of this detail, Charles Spencer's Kiss the King has a very vivid account of this. He's brought back. He has a rather touching last meal with his wife. We talked about he's obviously kept a record of her life alongside his, and is then executed for treason. So hanged, drawn, quartered, as you'd expect. So rather a grim end.
Josh Hutchinson: Is there anything else you wanted to touch on today?
Danny Buck: I also would recommend Bernard Capp. Bernard Capp is a really excellent writer in general on Stuart culture, but in particular in this account. He's [00:42:00] written.a very good biography of John Taylor and his fascinating life but also on astrologymore generally, definitely worth a check if you want to find out more of this stuff.
Sarah Jack: And now for a Minute with Mary.
Mary-Louise Bingham: November 23, 2023 was the last time that I visited Salem for at least one year. It was a special visit, because I went to Proctor's Ledge, not only to pay my respects to the 19 men and women who were hanged there in 1692, I also memorialized 19 men and women who were wrongfully accused and murdered for practicing sorcery and black magic as recent as October of 2023. These innocent women and men named came from countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, India, and the United States of America. I also tell the listener when that person died and the [00:43:00] circumstances of their brutal deaths. I urge you to watch this video on YouTube titled 'End Witch Hunts at Proctor's Ledge.' The link to the video will be in the show notes. Thank you.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Sarah has End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunt News, a non profit organization, Weekly News Update. Thank you for joining us again this new year in unraveling obscure yet familiar witch hunt stories, true stories that persistently unfold in violence and the death of vulnerable and innocent society members today. We anticipate engaging with you each week as we navigate diverse and nuanced perspectives on magic, witchcraft, and the spiritual and supernatural across time, governments, cultures, and religions.
Sarah Jack: We must all respond to the destructive role of witchcraft fear driven actions. Exploring the intricacies of both historical witch trials and the ongoing [00:44:00] crisis of witch hunting alongside experts provides us with the necessary insights to take meaningful action. Witch hunts are a disturbing reality that persist, and as part of our podcast community, you play a crucial role in the collective advocacy. Thank you for tuning in, sharing our episodes, continuing the conversation with your sphere of influence, and asking leaders to take action.
Sarah Jack: Very recently in Malawi, there has been a heartbreaking incident of an elderly woman nearly buried alive after being accused of witchcraft. Recent podcast guest and Malawi advocate, Wonderful Mkhutche, reported that the sister of the accused witch passed away suddenly after a headache. The accusers then spread rumors attributing the death to magical harm caused by the accused. The victim was rescued just in time by the police, but all the perpetrators must be brought to justice.
Sarah Jack: A statement from Advocacy for Alleged Witches reads, 'we urge the Government of Malawi to take all necessary measures to [00:45:00] combat witchcraft accusations and witch persecution. Authorities should ensure that alleged witches are protected and witchcraft accusers, including those who aid and abet witch hunting in the communities, are punished.'
Sarah Jack: But this isn't isolated to Africa. There were individuals burned and killed just a few weeks before the end of 2023 in India, as well. In one incident, in Assam's Sonitpur district, a 30-year-old woman was brutally assaulted and set ablaze by a neighbor and accomplices. The motive behind the tragic attack was reportedly rooted in accusations of witchcraft harm against the accuser.
Sarah Jack: While attacks are still happening, there are advocates and organizations working to intervene. Please learn about these efforts and support them in any way you are able to. Take the action that you can. We must continue to cultivate societal values of compassion, understanding, and justice. It is our collective responsibility as a world community to unite against the inhumane treatment [00:46:00] of every innocent individual anywhere in the world, such as these women falsely accused of causing harm with witchcraft. Spread awareness. Share this information with your friends, family, and on social media. Use your voice to let others know about the urgency of combating witchcraft accusations and persecution.
Sarah Jack: Support advocacy groups. Organizations like the Advocacy for Alleged Witches are on the front line, fighting against such atrocities. Consider supporting them and similar groups dedicated to ending witch hunting. Contact authorities. Raise your voice by reaching out to relevant authorities and leadership. Urge them to take swift and decisive action to ensure justice for victims and accountability for all involved.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts actively supports exoneration and memorial efforts that aim to honor victims and raise witch hunt awareness. Take a stand for justice. Sign our petition at change.org/witchtrials to urge the state of Massachusetts to amend legislation, ensuring the inclusion of [00:47:00] all those wrongfully executed for witchcraft in the Massachusetts colony. Five women faced unjust executions for witchcraft in 17th century Boston, and it's time to clear their names. Let's persist in elevating the voices of both historical and contemporary victims of witch hunts.
Sarah Jack: Unlock the power of supporting our podcast by becoming a monthly donor. Our monthly donors are our Super Listeners. As a Super Listener, your monthly contributions make a significant impact. Visit our website and easily sign up for any donation amount that suits you. Your generosity fuels the content you love.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to the first episode of Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Witch Hunt can't wait to meet with you next week.
Josh Hutchinson: So subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Sarah Jack: Be sure to visit at our new website, aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell all your friends, families, and anybody you meet on the street all about Witch [00:48:00] Hunt, your favorite podcast.
Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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