that he conducted further interrogations and here that many of them perished before trial.
It wasn’t difficult to see why.
The dungeons felt subterranean. I wasn’t sure if they were, as there was virtually no natural light. An artificial yellow haze amplified the sinister atmosphere.
We stepped down into an antechamber, which formed the entrance to the cells. It was full of information boards about torture and crime, with some interactive pieces for kids, attempting on one hand to be educational and bright, and on the other to thrill and horrify with grimly salacious details.
On one side of the wall was a feature about the Witchfinder General and the women he had sent to this place. A paragraph mentioned young Rebecca West who was indicted in March 1645. Another sentence told of how, in their village, the Wests were thought of as ‘saintly’, pious and devoted to God. Rebecca was only fifteen at the time. The plaque detailed that on the 18th of April she was interrogated alone by Hopkins. One could only wonder what happened to her when the Witchfinder took her from the communal prison into some other godforsaken part of the gaol.
Whatever occurred, Hopkins managed to bring about a heart-breaking betrayal: Rebecca West turned on her own mother.
How awful for them both, I thought. To be suckered into that trumped-up charge. It was almost like becoming an accomplice to an act of mass murder. And for the daughter it was matricide.
Some writers speculated that Hopkins may have developed a relationship with Rebecca West – she was at the time only eight or nine years his junior and probably the prettiest of the witches. If there was a sexual element motivating his persecution of the women, I shuddered to think of what she must have gone through, all alone with the Witchfinder.
Separated from those she knew, locked up in some dark corner of the castle with that man, Rebecca confessed she had joined a satanic coven on her mother’s insistence. But unlike so many of the witches’ hallucinatory declarations, this wasn’t an orgiastic witch group. No, Rebecca’s testimony began in a fluffy, teenage manner – a whimsical fantasy in which she kissed and cuddled the witches’ imps, which, funnily enough, appeared in the form of adorable kittens.
After she had pledged allegiance to the Devil, he popped up in the form of a little black dog and jumped playfully onto her lap. So, as most teenage girls would, Rebecca stroked and petted it.
Hopkins must have been so frustrated to hear of such an innocent encounter with the demonic. So on he went, drawing out more.
A fifteen-year-old pauper, isolated from her mother, questioned by a higher-ranking gentleman, frightened, alone, damned; either Rebecca’s instinct for survival kicked in or perhaps she was tortured into confessing or Hopkins’ authority induced her to please him. Whatever occurred in that interview, something changed in the girl and soon her tale took on a more sensational tone as the Witchfinder retold her confession: that night however the ‘Divel’ came to her in the form of a handsome young man and pledged to marry her. When asked by the worked-up inquisitor if she had had carnal copulation with the Devil, Rebecca admitted she had. He must have wet himself. It was just what he needed.
In her later trial Rebecca told the court, amidst heckles and jeers, that she was asked ‘divers questions by a Gentleman that did speake severall times with her before and afterward (giving her godly and comfortable instructions) she affirmed that so soone as one of the said Witches was in prison, she was very desirous to confess all she knew, which accordingly she did’.
She, surely, could not have recovered from her treachery? It would have been too great a burden to bear. Like most of the women, no one knew what happened to her after the trial. Only that she was freed.
And her mother? One can only speculate what she felt. To see her daughter turn against her like that must have been more devastating than the torture she endured. Or perhaps she was prepared to sacrifice herself to see her daughter escape the noose?
I jotted down some of the details with a sigh.
The cell in which Rebecca and the witches had been held first was in front of me, through a low, arched doorway fastened with a heavy wooden door. It was wedged open with a block of wood. An iron grid was embedded at head height. I touched its metal and chilled. Part