Witchcraft didn’t happen in Britain like it did on the European continent. We didn’t have an inquisition actively searching for the emissaries of Satan. Instead, we relied on the good people of the England, Scotland and Wales to spot witches within their own communities and report the offenders to the powers-that-be. In Great Britain, neighbours accused neighbours. The authorities were not required for the job of sniffing out a witch. The very concept of the Protestant commonweal required God fearing Christians to monitor their surrounding environment for any evidence of a corruption of Christ’s divinely ordained order.

The story of the Bideford Witches fits very comfortably within the tradition of British witchcraft accusations and prosecutions. The entire narrative is predicated on the notion of accusations from within a community. The affair commenced in July 1682 when a man by the name of Thomas Eastchurch accused a local woman, Temperance Lloyd, of communing with the Devil and practicing witchcraft against her neighbours.Thomas Eastchurch was a respected local trader and in an age in which men were always right, this accusation was enough to see Temperance Lloyd incarcerated under suspicion of witchcraft.

The basis of the accusation against Lloyd appears to have been that she caused the illness of another local woman, Grace Tomas. According to the court papers, the accused was alleged to have met with the devil several times with the Devil taking the form of black man each time. Grace Thomas testified that Lloyd had appeared overcome by joy on hearing that Thomas had survived a near-fatal illness, leading Thomas and her supporters to suspect Lloyd’s involvement.

Leaving aside the racism that seems so obvious in 2018,  the description of Lloyd’s diabolic practices show just how flimsy witchcraft accusations could be. Neither Grace Thomas nor Thomas Eastchurch had any real evidence of Lloyd’s witchcraft other than heresay and supposition. Despite this, Lloyd ended up being paraded in front of the local magistrates, forced to prove how she was not a witch in a justice system that is supposed to hold the accused to be innocent until proven guilty.

It seems that Temperance Lloyd was not the only witch active in the area of Bideford in the 1680s. Local records also record investigations of two other women – Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards – which took place in the same year and month as the trial of Temperance Lloyd. As with Lloyd’s prosecution, Trembles and Edwards first came to the attention of the authorities following an accusation from a man. John Barnes accused Trembles and Edwards of having caused his wife, Grace, to become ill after she refused food to the pair. The accused were condemned further by the testimony of several other locals, each of which asserted their grounds for Trembles’ and Edwards’ diabolism. 

Trembles’ and Edwards’ prosecution did not rest on testimonial evidence alone. According to sources, Trembles is recorded as having verbally placed a curse upon one of her accusers mid-hearing. She told him that she would make him fit. Later the same day, when the accuser left the courtroom he was overcome by convulsions and spasms, causing him to leap and hop erratically. The good people of Bideford could be in no doubt that this was the Devil’s work.

Read More – The Bideford Witches – Devon

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