Witchfinder General (film) - Historical Accuracy

Historical Accuracy

While some reviewers have praised the film for its ostensible "historical accuracy", others have strongly questioned its adherence to historical fact. Dr. Malcolm Gaskill, Fellow and former Director of Studies in history at Churchill College, Cambridge, and author of Witchfinders: A 17th-Century English Tragedy, critiqued the film for the Channel 4 History website, calling it "a travesty of historical truth." While acknowledging that "there is much to be said in favour of Witchfinder General–but as a film, not as history", based purely on its level of historical accuracy Gaskill gave the film "3 stars" on a scale of 0–10.

Gaskill had several complaints regarding the film's "distortions and flights of fancy". While Hopkins and his assistant John Stearne really did torture, try and hang John Lowes, the vicar of Brandeston, Gaskill notes that other than those basic facts the film's narrative is "almost completely fictitious." In the movie, the fictional character of Richard Marshall pursues Hopkins relentlessly to death, but in reality the "gentry, magistrates and clergy, who undermined his work in print and at law" were in pursuit of Hopkins throughout his (brief) murderous career, as he was never legally sanctioned to perform his witch hunting duties. And Hopkins wasn't axed to death, he "withered away from consumption at his Essex home in 1647". Vincent Price was 56 when he played Hopkins, but "the real Hopkins was in his 20s". According to Gaskill, one of the film's "most striking errors is its total omission of court cases: witches are simply tortured, then hanged from the nearest tree."