Northamptonshire Witch Trials

The Northamptonshire witch trials mainly refer to five executions carried out on July 22, 1612 at Abington Gallows, Northampton. In 1612 at the Lent Assizes held in Northampton Castle a number of women and a man were tried for witchcraft of various kinds, from murder to bewitching of pigs. There are two main accounts of these witches being tried. However they differ on how many witches were tried, who they were and exactly what they were supposed to have done.

This was a significant event, not because of the accusations themselves, but because it was one of the earlier documented cases in which the "dunking" method was used in Britain. It was also a case in which more than one person was singled out; rather, an entire group was accused.

One account is a manuscript of unknown authorship referenced as B.L. (British Library) Sloane 972 (f. 7) in which the writer shows an interest in the two witches' victims, Mistress Elizabeth Belcher and her brother Master William Avery. It names Agnes Browne and daughter Joan Browne (or Vaughan), Jane Lucas, Alce Harrys, Catherine Gardiner, and Alce Abbott and states they were jointly indicted for harming Belcher and Avery. Arthur Bill, Helen Jenkenson and Mary Barber are not mentioned, but does mention three women of the Wilson family. The text of the manuscript is reproduced here in full

The second source comes from a pamphlet of 1612 titled The Witches of Northamptonshire (London, 1612) also an unknown author reproduced here. Who details the immoral lives of the witches and the godliness of their victims and misses out a few facts of the Belcher/Avery story and recants gossip rather than having a personal acquaintance with the trial. The pamphlet focuses on Agnes Browne and her daughter Joan Browne(or Vaughan), Arthur Bill, Helen Jenkenson and Mary Barber. Bill, Jenkenson and Barber were unconnected to the murder case of Belcher/Avery and came from a different part of Northamptonshire.

It is possible that the witches were arraigned on different days, by different juries, and that each writer was only present at some of the trials. The Belcher/Avery cases was quite sensational at the time with its well-born but strangely afflicted victims, whilst other witch trials being secondary. This was because their cases were everyday or because they were less directly involved. Some witches may have been acquitted and so less important to reporters and readers.

They may have been a precursor to the Pendle witch trials, which began some weeks later and ended with executions in August of the same year.