Bideford witch trial

The Bideford witch trial resulted in hangings for witchcraft in England. Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards were tried in 1682 in the town of Bideford in Devon. Much of the evidence against them was hearsay, although there was a confession by Lloyd, which she did not fully recant even with her execution imminent. They often get labelled as the 'last' witches to be hanged in England but there are several not so well documented cases after this.

On Saturday, July 1682, Thomas Eastchurch, a Bideford shopkeeper, complained to some of the town’s constables that Temperance Lloyd had been practising witchcraft. The constables arrested Temperance Lloyd and locked her in the old chapel at the end of the bridge, where she remained until taken before the justices, Thomas Gist, Mayor of Bideford, and John Davie, Alderman, on the Monday morning. The charges were: "suspicion of having used some magical art, sorcery or witchcraft upon the body of Grace Thomas and to have had discourse or familiarity with the devil in the likeness or shape of a black man." Grace Thomas thought that Temperance Lloyd was responsible for her illness, because the previous September, Lloyd had wept with joy and expressed pleasure in seeing that Thomas had regained her health.

Another woman, Anne Wakely, had seen a magpie fly to Thomas's chamber window. Suspecting witchcraft, she questioned Lloyd, and found her in the company of another. They found "in her secret parts two teats hanging nigh together like unto a piece of flesh that a child had sucked. And that each of the teat was about an inch in length."

All the other evidence against Lloyd was hearsay, mostly claims to have overheard confessions by her. There were six such statements, including a claim by Anne Wakely that Lloyd was visited by the "black man" in the form of a bird. Wakely also said that Lloyd told her the black man had sucked at her extra teats.

Thomas Eastchurch’s statement was held to be important, as he was a respected town gentleman; however, again his evidence was simply that he overheard Lloyd confess while she was in Bideford lock-up the previous day. He stated that she confessed to meeting "something in the likeness of a black man" who tempted her to go and torment Grace Thomas. Eastchurch claimed that at first she refused but then agreed, following him to Thomas's home where the black man told her to pinch Thomas several times. She is then said, on leaving the house, to have seen a tabby cat go into Eastchurch's shop; she believed it to be the Devil.

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