- The Manningtree Witches, by A.K Blakemore. Granta, $34.99.
In 1643, as Civil War raged in England, Matthew Hopkins moved to Manningtree in Essex, buying the Thorn Inn in nearby Mistley. Little is known of Hopkins before this but, as the self-styled Witch-finder General, he would become notorious.
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Between 1644 and 1647, Hopkins, together with John Stearne, interrogated and sent to trial for witchcraft over 100 women.
Stearne in his Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft (1648) put the number at 200. All were executed.
The search for witches by Hopkins and Stearne focused on East Anglia, where Puritan and Parliamentarian sentiments predominated. According to his book, The Discovery of Witches, Hopkins began his career as a witch-finder after hearing women discuss meeting the Devil, in March, 1644, in Manningtree.
In her debut novel, A.K. Blakemore brings to life the women Hopkins persecuted and follows them on their harrowing journey to the gallows. Manningtree in 1643 is "a few dozen houses hunched along in various states of disrepair and flake, all mouldy thatch and tide-marked, half tended gardens and smalls drying on lines that hang window to window across the muddy street".
On the edge of town, Rebecca West and her widowed mother, who is known as Beldam West, eke out a living through sewing and taking in washing. Beldam West is notorious for her drinking and slovenly ways. Rebecca is withdrawn and considered "unusual", but hopes to find a way out of her life of drudgery by learning to read and write from a local scholar, John Edes.
Many women in town have lost their husbands to the war, while others have grown old and neglected live in poverty. There are "too many women . . . too short on employment".
One night, when Beldam West and a group of widows meet to console each other and gossip, a boy taunts them. When later he has a seizure and raves about covens and the devil, Hopkins suspicions grow into charges of witchcraft.
The Manning Tree Witches is a dark and angry novel. Blakemore, however, is an award-winning poet and her prose reflects her poet's skill: a hen "her head held askew" is "like a woman in marvellous skirts", while "a nice big cream of clouds settles on the horizon".
Blakemore, in her afterword, believes the witch trials "offer an invaluable insight . . . into the fears, hopes, desires and insecurities of the women who scratched out their existence on the very edges of society, and who otherwise have gone voiceless".
Her novel reveals proud women whose characters can be discovered in the record of their trial and death. It's a remarkable achievement.
