M. Henri Gelin tells a good story of a witch who transformed herself into a dog.[68]
- Date of account
- Published 1915
- Source
- Human Animals
- Reference
- Human Animals · selected passage 127
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Matthew Hopkins of Manningtree, Essex, a witch-finder of ill-fame, was the cause of bringing thousands of supposed witches to judgment and so to the stake
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyMatthew Hopkins of Manningtree, Essex, a witch-finder of ill-fame, was the cause of bringing thousands of supposed witches to judgment and so to the stake. He was paid 20s. in each town he visited and managed to rid of its suspicious characters, and he appears to have found his profession extraordinarily lucrative. In 1644 he was commissioned by Parliament to make a circuit through several counties with a view to discovering witches. He travelled in the company of several boon companions for three years and was instrumental in having sixteen persons hanged at Yarmouth, forty at Bury and at least sixty in other parts of Suffolk, Norfolk and Huntingdonshire.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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