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Witches of Essex (2025) Season 1 Episode 1 - Hatfield Peverel
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00:00I've always been interested in history and I am fascinated by the supernatural but I had no idea
00:08that Essex is steeped in horrific stories of persecution and death all down to the pursuit
00:15of witches. Beyond the sunny beaches and mock Tudor streets of my beloved backyard
00:22there are dark and violent secrets waiting to be uncovered. I've teamed up with anthropologist
00:28professor Alice Roberts. Look at this. To investigate what happened and why. Never call you a cat
00:36saver. Never call you a cat saver. During the 16th and 17th centuries hundreds of women were tried
00:43and executed for witchcraft. We want to know how did these witch trials come about who or what was
00:49the driving force behind them and how Essex's dark past is still linked to the present. His truth
00:54I cursed him. In this episode we're investigating how it all began. In the early years of Queen
01:04Elizabeth I's reign a whole family of Essex women are put on trial for witchcraft. Accusations of dark
01:12magic plus a new law against witchcraft combine to bring these women in front of the Queen's attorney.
01:18A demonic spirit. In our incident room we'll put the pieces of the puzzle together. I feel like I just
01:25want to grab her and go lie. And reveal why three Essex women faced the death penalty on a charge of
01:34witchcraft. Our cold case is now open.
01:38To kick off our investigation we're paying a visit to Chelmsford. Witch trial ground zero.
01:51It was here about 30 miles from London that one case fired the start gun for the infamous Essex witch
01:59trials. A case that ended in a brutal execution. So babe welcome to Chelmsford. Thank you. I've never
02:07been to Chelmsford before. Well this is my old stomping ground. Is it? I used to work here as a
02:11makeup artist years ago. Yeah. And Sunday night was the best night out of the week in Chelmsford.
02:16Okay. So what about witches though? Did you know that this is where the first witch trial was held
02:21in Essex? No but I mean on a Sunday night there were a couple of witches.
02:24The 16th century court where our witchcraft suspects were tried stood in front of this
02:32newer Georgian era courthouse. Oh wow look. I feel like I've done something wrong.
02:39It's quite intimidating. It really is. It's a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be.
02:45It is. Yeah. It feels very um very intimate. The women accused of witchcraft wouldn't have
02:53been in anything like such a polished or discreet courtroom. I think it would have been a lot
02:59rowdier than your average courtroom in the 21st century. The bottom of the building's open to the
03:04market square so there would have been animals around. It would have been noisy. So you could have
03:08been getting tried for the death penalty and there could have been a cow in the background mooing.
03:12Possibly. Yeah. So it would have been very very different but an incredibly serious case because
03:17you are looking at this crime which is punishable by by hanging. Women were maybe dragged kicking and
03:25screaming into this place. Yeah. To defend themselves against death. The women tried at Chelmsford for
03:34witchcraft come from a little village six miles away called Hatfield Peverell. They're a family living
03:41in poverty on the edges of their community. Eighteen-year-old Joan Waterhouse.
03:51Just take the weight off. Her mother Agnes who is 64. Charity for a poor widow. Don't go falling down.
04:00Don't break your ankle.
04:01John? Sister? You look well. And Agnes's younger sister, Elizabeth Francis.
04:10Well enough. And before you ask, no we ain't got no spare flower. Two males will feed here.
04:17How's my cat? Cat's fine. What you luck has it? Luck enough.
04:23There might be a penny or two to scrounged up at the church. Yeah. If anyone's giving alms. Help me up.
04:32Half the church, Joan. Right? We'll stop off at Widow Goodies on the way. Got a bone to pick with her.
04:41In our incident room, we're going to investigate why these women were targeted and why one of them ended up
04:51dead. So here are the characters at the centre of our cold case. This is Agnes Waterhouse.
04:58Agnes? And this is her sister, Elizabeth Francis. Now these are very poor women. They're both
05:07widowed and they have no real source of income. Agnes has also got to look after her daughter Joan.
05:14And they live in Hatfield Peverell. There's the church at the centre of the village.
05:25So three dirt poor women from a tiny village got swept up in a massive witch trial.
05:32What was going on in the world to make that happen?
05:36Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was eight years into her reign when the Essex witch trials kicked
05:44off. One of the things about women and accusations of witchcraft, I think, is always about anxiety,
05:52about power held by women. At this time, vicious rumours spread about the Queen's own mother,
05:59Anne Boleyn, and her marriage to Henry VIII. The people who didn't like Anne thought that she
06:05might have bewitched Henry. And that was because she was very beautiful, apparently. And it was
06:10because she had possibly a sick finger on one of her hands.
06:14This atmosphere of suspicion went right through Elizabethan society.
06:19There was a problem around social cohesion. Large swathes of the English population suffered
06:27extraordinary poverty. And so when your even poorer neighbour comes round and begs you
06:34for some food or for some money, you're much more likely to turn them away.
06:39You get this increasing sense of worry about what people might be doing behind closed doors.
06:48Agnes, Joan and Elizabeth are single women living without a male protector,
06:54and they're facing hostility from their village.
06:56It wouldn't be just because they're widowed. It wouldn't be just because they're single parent
07:02mothers. And it wouldn't be just because they were poor. But if all of those were combined,
07:07then they might become ostracised. You were dependent on your neighbour's charity,
07:12but you were also vulnerable to their anger, their anxiety, their paranoia.
07:19In July 1566, Hatfield Peverell is struck by a series of tragic and unexplained events.
07:26A man dies, a baby is paralysed, and a child sees a nightmarish vision.
07:34Looking for people to blame, the villagers turn on the local beggar women.
07:38What are you doing? Get off me.
07:56We're investigating the Elizabethan cold case of three Essex women who were threatened with the death
08:03penalty for witchcraft. They've all been arrested, right? Yeah.
08:07Then they're taken to the Chelmsford asides. Yeah, it's getting really serious.
08:12So you recognise this place, but obviously the original building would have been in front of them.
08:17Did the villagers accusing Agnes, Elizabeth and Joan really believe they had dark powers?
08:24Or was there an ulterior motive behind their arrests?
08:27I'm taking Alice to Colchester Castle. Curator Ben Pates has evidence of how the fear of witches
08:36revealed itself in the 16th century.
08:42We have some images here of things called witch marks.
08:45These are things that were carved into buildings.
08:48And was this to mark where they believed a witch was?
08:51Actually, it was to ward off witches. Oh, it sounds like a protection thing.
08:54Exactly. They were so terrified of witches getting inside their buildings, whether that's
08:59houses, pubs, wherever, they would mark those buildings with those marks.
09:03Like garlic to a vampire. Yes. The W or WV, it could also have been VV, which means Virgo
09:10Virginum, which is Latin for virgin of virgins. Virgin Mary. Virgin Mary, exactly.
09:17Ben has some other, even stranger ways to ward off witches.
09:21These are all objects that were buried inside buildings. This is a beer bottle.
09:25Why has a beer bottle got anything to do with witches then?
09:27Everyone was afraid of witches, whether you're rich, poor, whatever. So everyone needed the ability
09:33to be able to protect themselves. So they recycled bottles like this and filled them
09:37with some assortment of objects. Here we have some iron nails that were rusted inside another jar.
09:44So you can see how they kind of ended up. That's strange, isn't it?
09:46What? And they also added urine. What, someone had a quick widow in it?
09:49Yeah. And the idea was that horrible things would repel horrible things,
09:53I think. It's that idea of sympathetic magic. And a bottle full of urine,
09:57you wouldn't really want that inside your house unless there was a good reason to keep it.
10:00Or you got caught short on the M25. Well, possibly.
10:04It's looking like the mob from Hatfield Peverell were genuinely terrified of witches.
10:10I think there's a bit of an elephant in the room here, though,
10:11because we're seeing all of these things which look quite ritualistic, for want of a better term.
10:18Yes, they are.
10:18Is this not a version of these people practicing their own type of witchcraft?
10:23Well, this is the entire irony of the whole situation is that people were so terrified of
10:27witches back then that they had to resort to magic themselves to protect themselves.
10:32That's very interesting.
10:33Ben's shown us that witchcraft was deathly real to these people. We can be sure that the fears and
10:40superstitious beliefs of the women's neighbors nudged them ever closer to the gallows.
10:48The supernatural was always all around you in Tudor England.
10:53People had a sense of a world around them thronging with spirits. The good spirits are angels sent by God,
11:03and the bad spirits are demons in the service of Satan.
11:09The devil and angels and demons, but also fairies and goblins and all sorts of wild supernatural creatures.
11:18What becomes really important as the period progresses is this association of Satan with unexplained occurrences.
11:30And that's the breeding ground for accusations of witchcraft if you then suffer uncanny bad luck.
11:40While the magistrates investigate the villagers' accusations, the frightened women languish in prison.
11:48They got you too.
11:53Bastards come and grab me in the night, accusing me of bewitching William Walker's boy.
11:59A sickly child at the best of times. You don't need no curse to make him decrepit.
12:03That's what I told him. But then that reverend coal pipes up, says I've renounced God and I can summon devil spirits.
12:13We need to be careful what we say.
12:18Agnes, Elizabeth and Joan are in shock at their arrests.
12:22But with the benefit of history, we can see that there's a pattern here.
12:27About 75 to 90 percent of the people accused in witchcraft trials are women.
12:34The negative ideas about women being the harbingers of original sin.
12:39All of that misogyny, if you like, could then be applied to those women.
12:44The Elizabethan conduct manuals all stress the natural inferiority of the female sex
12:51and the duty of men to lead them, rule them and control them.
12:55They tended to be looked on as people who would be seduced by lures of either money or companionship
13:06or simply the most basic lure of all, revenge.
13:10So the people of Hatfield Peverell think they've caught three witches.
13:17But what identified you as a witch?
13:20The first ever image of what we think of as a stereotypical witch kind of ugly old woman on a
13:26broom comes from an artist called Albrecht Durer who makes something called the witch.
13:31And everyone thinks, oh, that's a banging image and that's like really scary.
13:34I bet it catches on.
13:35It kind of goes viral.
13:37This isn't about subtlety.
13:39You're trying to sell a book.
13:40You're trying to sell a piece of art.
13:41So you go, yeah, demon, cauldron, old woman, here we go.
13:46And then everyone goes, oh, that's a witch.
13:47The problem with that is, is that if you are an old woman with a big nose.
13:52Maybe a broomstick.
13:53Having a little sweep up outside while the old stew's having a stew.
13:58Witch.
13:59It goes out of the sphere where this is just art,
14:01where we are trying to communicate something,
14:03to becoming a real threat for actual people trying to live their lives.
14:07On the subject of broomsticks, Eleanor thinks we're missing something.
14:12Broomsticks.
14:13That's kind of a dick joke.
14:15Really?
14:16Yeah, it's like, yeah, so you're riding a broomstick.
14:19Ah.
14:19Oh, I see.
14:20Ah, so it's like, yeah, on the way to shag the devil, basically.
14:25No.
14:26Not a euphemism.
14:27So it takes us back to the idea that there's a promiscuity
14:30here, that witches just love having sex all the time.
14:34And the idea here is that the reason there are more women witches than men is because
14:39women are more sexual.
14:40You're being sold the idea of what a witch is and who is dangerous.
14:44And you're buying it.
14:47The three supposedly dangerous women are called before the Chelmsford Court in a major case.
14:54Interrogating them is the Queen's attorney, Gilbert Gerrard.
14:58At his side, the Archdeacon of Essex, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Cole.
15:10Elizabeth Francis, Agnes and Joan Waterhouse.
15:15The Bible commands us, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
15:20Amen.
15:24By the laws of this country, as passed by our sovereign queen,
15:30if found guilty of these crimes of maleficium, punishment shall be death by hanging.
15:38Now, this is where we meet two very interesting characters.
15:45Do you know who this is?
15:47That is Gilbert Gerrard.
15:49It is indeed.
15:50Now, he's attorney general to Queen Elizabeth I.
15:53Quite an important man.
15:55Yeah.
15:55And sat alongside him, we have got Reverend Thomas Cole.
16:00And you've got the most senior judge in the country.
16:04Somebody really senior from the church as well, coming to try these three poor women from Hatfield Peverell.
16:13Well, now, there's a big reason why these two are here.
16:16Because three years previous, in 1563, this act came about.
16:22Now, this basically says anyone who's done murder by witchcraft will be sentenced to death by hanging.
16:29So, for these two, this is a really big case.
16:31Because this is pretty much one of the first test cases out there.
16:35Before this act of parliament, alleged witches had been tried under heresy or treason laws.
16:43Now, with this law against witchcraft, it's been weaponised by men like Gilbert Gerrard and Thomas Cole.
16:50So, there are some really significant things happening here.
16:53First of all, we've got a law, which means that something supernatural...
16:58Israel.
16:58..can be punishable by execution.
17:01Yeah.
17:03And these women are among the first to be accused under this new law, then.
17:08Hence the reason why we've got Billy Big and Billy Bigger.
17:14It's powerful evidence that our women are victims of a high-stakes test case.
17:19But why pass a law against dark magic?
17:27Elizabeth comes to the throne and very soon she becomes aware that various people are trying to kill her.
17:35And one of the ways in which they're alleged to be doing so is by using magic.
17:39So, in 1563, her parliament obligingly produces a government-sponsored bill.
17:50Murder by witchcraft was now a capital offence.
17:53The persecution of witches is absolutely state-sanctioned.
18:01I think it's in the interest of the state to have a group of people to attack.
18:05And I think we see this even today.
18:07In our 1566 trial, under interrogation, Elizabeth Francis starts to reveal incriminating details.
18:16Your grandmother, Eve, was a known witch.
18:21You must have learnt from her.
18:24Well, she gave me a cat.
18:28Name of Satan.
18:30Said it could make my life better.
18:32A demonic spirit, no less.
18:35I don't have him anymore.
18:37I gave him away.
18:38To Mother Waterhouse.
18:45Tell me of your lewd affair with one Andrew Biles.
18:51It wasn't lewd.
18:53I desired him to be my husband.
18:56You used your wicked powers to seduce a man of wealth.
19:03He refused to marry me.
19:06And he beat me.
19:10So I willed the cat to waste his goods and...
19:13And what?
19:15And he died.
19:29We're investigating the 1566 witch trial held in Chelmsford, Essex.
19:35Details are emerging of the apparent victims of defendant Elizabeth Francis.
19:41One of them is a man she had a lewd relationship with.
19:45So this is Andrew Biles.
19:48Apparently, she's using witchcraft to curse him to the point that he dies.
19:55Via a cat.
19:57Via a cat?
19:59Called Satan.
20:00Yeah, that was a silly thing to do.
20:02Just stupid.
20:02Never call you a cat Satan.
20:03Never call you a cat Satan.
20:05To be fair to Elizabeth, it was her nan who came up with the cat's name.
20:11But this family link won't have helped her case.
20:15The idea of demonic animal spirits is quite an English thing.
20:21A lot of people would have thought about it as a real life animal that the devil had somehow got inside.
20:27It was a devil, but it was also an animal at the same time.
20:32Elizabeth has already told the court she had the opportunity, the means by way of her cat,
20:41and the motive to kill her boyfriend.
20:44This is what I don't understand.
20:45Look, if Elizabeth's being beaten by this man, of course she's going to wish you all upon him or wish him death, whatever.
20:51But why on earth would she stand up in a court of law when she's on trial for witchcraft and say,
20:57Oh yeah, by the way, I did curse him, I did pretty much wish him dead, and I sent me cat called Satan.
21:04I mean, she's not helping herself, is she?
21:06I'm looking at her and thinking, she's a poor and educated woman.
21:09She's being interrogated by these two.
21:11It must have been absolutely terrifying.
21:14She's under duress.
21:15Maybe she's just coming up with this in the moment, or actually maybe she feels guilty.
21:23And perhaps she then thinks that she's got some kind of power.
21:26Maybe she believes it.
21:27We're going to need more intel about why Elizabeth made this confession.
21:34But first, we need to investigate how the account of the trial was recorded over 450 years ago.
21:41There's something called a chat book.
21:43Chat book.
21:44Not chat.
21:45No.
21:45Oh.
21:46But it's kind of like those chat magazines now, right?
21:49Like this is kind of a tabloid sort of publication.
21:52And someone claims that they were at the trial,
21:56and that this is the actual transcript and they publish it.
22:01It's super sensationalistic.
22:03Everyone wants to get their hands on this.
22:05It's like the heat magazine of its day.
22:07Absolutely.
22:09Queen Elizabeth's government normally loved a bit of censorship.
22:12So why did they let this witch trial gossip rag spread across England?
22:18So you have a way of kind of like producing a mass hysteria where you're like, oh, okay,
22:23well, this works.
22:23The word is getting out that it's bad to be a witch.
22:26That suits the aims of the state at the time.
22:28It's more evidence that the fingerprints of the state are all over our cold case.
22:36Not only did Elizabeth's government bring in the death sentence for witches,
22:40they also turned a blind eye to anti-witchcraft propaganda spreading across the country.
22:46The state is demonstrating that when it comes to witchcraft allegations, there's no smoke without fire.
22:56In court, Gilbert Gerrard piles pressure on Elizabeth, eager to make her crack.
23:02The noose is tightening.
23:03And what of yeoman Christopher Francis, the man you eventually married?
23:11What curse did you place on him?
23:14We lived not so quietly.
23:18He was moved to swear and punch him.
23:24Given your past lascivious behavior, the husband has every right to discipline his unruly wife.
23:35But this time there was an infant from the union.
23:39My daughter.
23:44Barely six months old.
23:47But then...
23:48Go on.
23:51But then I cursed my husband.
23:54I cursed him.
23:57And my child.
23:58You used a satanic beast to end the life of a blameless infant.
24:11Just to get back at your husband.
24:15Something strange is going on.
24:21Elizabeth isn't on trial for murder.
24:23She's charged with putting a curse on a boy who became paralyzed.
24:28And yet here she is, confessing to cursing her husband Christopher and murdering her own daughter with dark magic.
24:37For me personally, I feel like I just want to grab her and go, lie.
24:41You haven't got to say this.
24:43Now, infant mortality was incredibly high.
24:46It was rife.
24:47In the 16th century.
24:49But what the court is hearing, or what the court wants to hear, I think, is that these are not natural deaths.
24:56They're not unnatural deaths.
24:59They're supernatural deaths.
25:00They're supernatural deaths.
25:02The motivation for Elizabeth Francis to confess to these killings is really puzzling.
25:08Is there an underlying issue at play?
25:11So, Elizabeth is clearly a really quite disturbed person with a thoroughly unfortunate past.
25:18It would have been really easy for her to have felt guilty about all of those relationships.
25:23And some people have suggested that postnatal depression might play a role in women confessing
25:29to hurting or killing their own children.
25:31We don't know how much of it was Elizabeth's reworking of a tragic personal history with a new
25:41demonic spin on it. We don't even know whether she actually did curse people.
25:47Now it's the turn of Elizabeth's sister, Agnes, to face the prosecution.
25:51But unlike Elizabeth, Agnes is going in fighting.
25:57Mother Waterhouse, you stand accused that in October last year, you bewitched your neighbour,
26:06William Fine, causing him to suffer a bloody flux and subsequent untimely death.
26:15Old Man Fine was a tight old bastard. Never gave a grain to any of us needy folk.
26:22We also have testimony from your sister, Elizabeth Francis, that you took possession of her demonic spirit.
26:33I took in a cat, if that's what you mean.
26:36Cat keeps mice and rats, I'd be.
26:37A cat, the good Christian people of Hatfield Peverell, have seen you feeding with your own blood.
26:50People need to mind their own business.
26:52We also have sworn testimony from an eyewitness that you have been heard in church saying our Lord's Prayer in Latin.
27:07The illegal language of Papists and Catholics, the most abhorrent traitors to our sovereign queen and the devil's own tongue.
27:24So now the court turns its attention to Agnes.
27:35So she's being accused of killing this man by witchcraft, William Fiennes, who she doesn't much like.
27:43She admits to that, but she's not admitting to the charge.
27:47However, the court are also then accusing her of a sin which is perhaps as bad as being a witch.
27:56They are saying that she's been overheard saying the Lord's Prayer in Latin, the Pater Noster, and that that means that she is potentially a Catholic.
28:08The religion is marrying up with the law.
28:11Yeah.
28:11But Agnes, unlike her sister, ain't taking it lying down.
28:16She self-admittedly says, but that's how I learned it when I was young.
28:19Mary I, you would have said the Lord's Prayer in Latin.
28:22So how did Latin prayers become such a taboo in Elizabethan England?
28:29There were some people in England who feared that Elizabeth I would not survive.
28:36Would the Pope bless a Catholic nation to invade England and remove the heretical Elizabeth from the throne?
28:45How long would England remain sovereign?
28:47The Queen passes laws against Catholicism around the same time as she passes laws against witchcraft.
28:55And many people come to conflate the two.
28:59If you look at the accusations against both of those, there are multiple things that resonate with each other.
29:06One of them is the emphasis on obscure rituals.
29:10The other is language.
29:12So Agnes is in a very difficult position when she's using Latin.
29:16She sounds Catholic and she sounds magical too.
29:21Agnes's testimony is being used to cast her as an enemy of the state.
29:26She's making herself incredibly vulnerable.
29:30Next to endure Gilbert Gerard's scrutiny is Agnes's teenage daughter, Joan.
29:37And Gerard has an ace up his sleeve.
29:40Joan Waterhouse, you are accused of summoning your mother's demonic spirit to attack your neighbour.
29:53The court calls Agnes Brown.
30:04What is your age, my dear?
30:07Twelve, I think.
30:10Tell me what happened.
30:13Joan came to our house.
30:14She asked for bread and cheese.
30:16But I told her we had none.
30:18Heard her muttering as she walked off.
30:20And then, what appeared before you?
30:24A black dog appeared.
30:26With a face like an ape.
30:28With a pair of horns on its head.
30:31And a silver whistle round its neck.
30:33From the mouths of babes.
30:36Such innocence and honesty.
30:40Now, Joan's not been, you know, accused of killing anyone.
30:46However, a 12-year-old girl, another Agnes, Agnes Brown, gets called in.
30:54Agnes B, I think.
30:56Yeah.
30:56And her testimony's just bizarre, isn't it?
30:59It is really, really ridiculous.
31:01You know, Joan goes round to ask for some bread and cheese.
31:04Agnes turns round and says that this little fella, a black dog...
31:10With an ape's face.
31:11...and horns, appears.
31:13I mean, I can't believe that her evidence, such as it is, is admissible in court.
31:19It's just extraordinary.
31:20Well, you say that, but in those times, from the mouth of babes, that was a very key line.
31:25Because back then, people would believe what children would say.
31:30They thought that they were pure, they were honest.
31:32Why would a child need to lie?
31:33So they're using this really to drive home that idea that this whole family are witches.
31:40Like a coven.
31:41Yeah.
31:43The Elizabethan cultural belief in the honesty of kids is a key clue in our cold case.
31:49Young Agnes Brown's evidence pushes our women closer to execution.
31:55So why does she say it?
31:56Is it possible Agnes was hallucinating?
32:00Our medical consultant, Jonathan Goddard, has a theory on this.
32:04So, Jonathan, what I really want to know is, why have you brought your breakfast in?
32:08I wouldn't eat that.
32:10Why is it?
32:11Is this a mould growing on cereal?
32:14Yeah, it's fungus.
32:16And so on the cereals that you would then make into your bread, and this mould, this ergot, it can cause you to be really ill.
32:25So there is one theory.
32:27Someone in the 1970s was looking at the Salem witches, and she thought it could be to do with something called ergotism, or ergot poisoning.
32:36There are two major things it can cause. It can cause you to have horrible gangrene and sores, but also it can have mental effects as well. It can cause hysteria, mania, psychoses, so you can hear things and you see things that aren't there.
32:52Almost like a hallucinogenesis.
32:54It's like LSD.
32:55Right. So we're living in a world where potentially young Agnes Brown may have just eaten some dodgy bread.
33:01You know, maybe she truly believes that she saw this dog with horns in the face of an ape.
33:07So Agnes Brown could have been tripping on ergot, but alternatively, she could have been plain old lying.
33:16About 90% of witchcraft accusations in Tudor and Stuart England are neighbourhood feuds that have now reached a tragic level.
33:27And the testimony of 12-year-old Agnes Brown is a classic case.
33:33And the court is eagerly devouring her testimony.
33:39That wasn't the only time the devil beast came.
33:42No, he came again last Wednesday. This time he had a knife in his mouth.
33:49He threatened you?
33:52Said he would thrust his dagger knife into my heart.
33:55I asked him who he belonged to, and he wagged his head to your house, Mother Waterhouse.
34:00She lies. I'm no such dagger.
34:03Be quiet.
34:06Joan Waterhouse.
34:09You were angry with your neighbour, and so you conjured your mother's devil beast.
34:17I called for it, as I'd see my mother do, and the dog appeared.
34:21And sent it to kill Agnes Brown.
34:25It's true. The beast Joan speaks of.
34:29It's mine.
34:30We're investigating the 1566 Chelmsford Witch Trial, and under duress, Agnes Waterhouse has made a shock confession.
34:46What's really, really interesting is Agnes has been so strong up until this point.
34:53She has fought her corner.
34:54Unlike her sister Elizabeth, she's not folded.
34:56But the second that Joan admits to, yeah, I've maybe conjured this up like my mum has, she stands up and she goes, no, I'm not having that.
35:09That's my daughter.
35:10And it's a mother's love for her daughter that ultimately lands Agnes in it.
35:16It's awful, Rylan.
35:17I mean, you know, at this point, I'm looking at these two men and thinking they're planning all of this.
35:23They know that Agnes is holding out against them, that she's not admitting to anything.
35:29And I think they have worked out that the way to get her to confess is to implicate her daughter.
35:37Is she just going along with what the magistrate wants?
35:48We have no idea of how these confessions were exacted, but we do not know what pressures, bribes, persuasions, promises have been made to Joan to persuade her to cooperate.
36:03Is there some sort of collective delusion going on here?
36:05I really don't know.
36:07But it's at that moment the trial kind of flips over.
36:09You might actually think these women are both witches.
36:11It's becoming clear how expertly the state played their suspects, both behind the scenes and in court.
36:20Now that Gerard has found Agnes will say anything to protect her daughter, he piles on the accusations.
36:27We're nearing the endgame.
36:30Agnes Waterhouse, on the charge of witchcraft, you wish to confess?
36:41Agnes Waterhouse, on the charge of witchcraft, I confess, I do have a devil beast.
36:49He comes as a white cat, but I sometimes change him to a toad or a black dog.
37:00And you've used this beast?
37:03I have.
37:04I sent it to kill Master Cursey's hogs.
37:12It caused Widow Goody's cow to drown.
37:15I willed it to give William Fine the bloody flux.
37:19And...
37:19And...
37:23And nine years past, I sent it to kill my husband.
37:27If you can bring the beast before us now, I will dispatch you from prison.
37:38I cannot.
37:41For in faith, I no longer have power over it.
37:44Tell me, when did it last feed from you?
37:49Never.
37:51Never?
37:53Really?
37:54Take off your kercher.
38:02I see devil marks as clear as day.
38:07Proof you feed your demon spirits and proof you are a witch.
38:16In our incident room, we have a new clue.
38:19The court's interest in the marks on Agnes' face and neck.
38:22They're hidden under her kerchief, under her hat, aren't they?
38:26And it obviously looks like it's bled.
38:31So something must have been drinking her blood.
38:34And she's giving a drop of blood to one of her imps
38:36to ask it to go and do an evil thing.
38:39But we all have blemishes.
38:41You know, we all have...
38:42Well, apart from you, obviously.
38:43But we all have skin blemishes.
38:46And so if you look hard enough, you'll find something.
38:51Isn't that awful, though?
38:52Because if you think about it from her perspective,
38:54you know, maybe she has got a blemish or a sore on her face,
38:58which she is trying to cover up...
39:00Yeah.
39:00..just because she doesn't want people to see it.
39:02Absolutely.
39:03And then that's being taken as being suspicious.
39:05These marks were used as hard evidence against Agnes.
39:10But what were they?
39:12So all of these things, you would say,
39:15oh, this is a witch's mark.
39:16This is a proof that you are a witch.
39:18Really?
39:19Absolutely.
39:20If you see me in the morning without any make-up,
39:21you'd definitely be able to prove it.
39:24I mean, that's just a blood brister.
39:26Bit of pigmentation here.
39:28Some sort of nevus, bit of pigmentation, completely normal.
39:31What's this, a skin tag?
39:32It looks like it's a little skin tag there.
39:34What's extraordinary, though,
39:36is that the men that are interrogating Agnes
39:38believe in the existence of imps,
39:40but they also believe that the imps are feeding off her.
39:42And they also think that they've got physical evidence.
39:46Absolutely.
39:47And often this is really helpful to them
39:49because in English law, you have to have proof
39:52before you can convict somebody.
39:55At the trial, the accused women discover their fate.
40:0218-year-old Joan is acquitted.
40:07Elizabeth is sentenced to one year in prison.
40:12But poor Agnes is convicted of murder by witchcraft
40:16and the full force of the law is brought down on her.
40:20On the 29th of July, 1566,
40:25just days after the trial,
40:27Agnes is led to the gallows.
40:29I see devil marks as clear as day.
40:33It's true.
40:34The beast Joe speaks of.
40:36It's mine.
40:37Truth, you are a witch.
40:48Patna Nostra.
40:50Quiesc in Kylis.
40:52Sanctificator Nomentuum.
40:54It's really interesting
41:11when you look
41:13at the three accused.
41:15Agnes was the strong one.
41:17She was the one
41:19that wasn't having any of this.
41:21Yet Agnes
41:22is the one
41:23who faces her end.
41:25I think at the beginning
41:26when we were getting into the story,
41:28I thought that
41:29Gilbert Gerard
41:30actually might be
41:33the most sinister character
41:35here.
41:36I still think he is
41:38quite sinister.
41:39But it's much bigger
41:41than these two men.
41:44I mean, this is
41:44state-sanctioned,
41:47state-sponsored violence.
41:49It's the outcome
41:51that they want in.
41:53This act has come in
41:54three years previous.
41:56Elizabeth I
41:56wants people
41:58to be frightened of this act.
41:59They want people
42:01to be frightened of this.
42:03And this is the result
42:04that it culminates in.
42:07Agnes and her family
42:09were victims
42:10of misogyny
42:11and superstition.
42:13They were stigmatized
42:14for begging,
42:15had their prayers
42:16conflated with dark magic
42:17and their bodies
42:18probed for marks.
42:21But one reason
42:23for Agnes' execution
42:24stands above the others.
42:27She was a victim
42:28of a brutal conspiracy
42:30of control
42:30that went right to the top
42:32to the Queen of England
42:34herself.
42:36And the persecution
42:38was just getting started.
42:41Next time
42:42on Witches of Essex.
42:44A petty feud
42:45between former friends
42:47triggers one of the most
42:48devastating witch hunts
42:49in English history.
42:50Someone might think
42:51you're cursing me.
42:52And we'll investigate
42:53how one man's ambition
42:55threatens to rip
42:56an entire community apart.
42:58Sorcerers, wizards,
43:00witches
43:01will be rigorously punished.
43:04To be continued...
43:07To be continued...
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