Witches of Belvoir

The Witches of Belvoir were three women, a mother and her two daughters, accused of witchcraft in England around 1618. The mother, Joan Flower, died while in prison, and the two daughters, Margaret and Philippa, were hanged at Lincoln.

Joan, Margaret and Philippa Flowers were 'known to be herbal healers' and came from a local family which 'had fallen on hard times'. They accepted employment as servants with the 6th Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle near Grantham, Lincolnshire, when additional staff were needed for an upcoming visit by King James I. But the sisters, and their mother, were unpopular with the other staff, and there were suggestions of theft, and misdemeanors. All three were dismissed and only Joan was given a payment of severance amounting to '40 shillings, a bolster (pillow), and a mattress of wool'.

After the sisters were dismissed, the Earl and Countess fell ill, suffering from 'vomiting and convulsions'. Their son and heir, Henry, Baron de Ros, died, and was buried on 26 September 1613. Their younger children, Francis, and daughter Katherine, suffered similarly and Francis, also, later died, in 1620, and was buried on 7 March 1619 old style (1620 new style)

Three years after Henry's death, on 16 July 1616, nine women were hanged as witches in Leicestershire for having bewitched a young boy and, in charges similar to those in the Flowers' case, were said to have kept cats as familiars. But it was to be five years after the Flowers were dismissed from Belvoir Castle, and following the death of their second son, Francis, that the Rutlands had the Flowers arrested, before Christmas of 1618. After initial examinations, in February 1619, by the Earl of Rutland, Francis Lord Willoughby de Eresby, Sir George Manners, Sir William Pelham, Sir Henry Hastings, clergyman Samuel Fleming and others, the women were to be taken to Lincoln gaol.

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