“It is well known that the devil Adultery opens the door to the devil Murder. Adultery is not a private sin but a crime against the common weal,” declared Coke. “Obedience, subjection and propriety are the attributes of a godly woman.” He raised his eyebrows at the jury, as if they were his partners at tennis. “And now to your role as sorcerer.” The crowd quietened, anxious to miss nothing.

“I put it to you, Mistress Turner, that you conspired with one ‘Dr.’ Forman, a notorious necromancer, conjuror of devils and caster of false horoscopes, to bewitch Sir Arthur Waring into acting in accordance with your own cupidity and lust. When Sir Arthur failed to marry you after your husband’s death, you asked Dr. Forman to conjure devils to torment your lover until he submitted to your will. What say you?”

Coke was telling the jury that I was a witch, no different from those hanged in Pendle. My body felt too heavy for me to keep upright. I needed a chair, a hand to hold, a friend or a lawyer to put my case so I need not speak. Here were only hostile or curious onlookers at a show better than anything playing at the Globe.

I shook my head. All I could do now for myself, for Frankie and for my children, was to maintain my silence.

“Again, denials! If we believed every depraved person who denied their crime, our gallows would be dismantled and our state with it. Crimes of the nature you have committed are grievous not only unto their innocent victims but also unto the very fabric of England; they strike at the heart of all we hold dear and would bring us to barbarity and lawlessness were we to let them go unpunished, such that virtue and prosperity would leave these shores and render us no better than animals. You, who would deceive your husband, who would have another man’s children without shame, who would conjure devils to torment your lover—you are a whore, a sorcerer, and I put it to you that you are also a witch!”

Lord Coke punctuated his accusations with violent shakes of his outstretched arm, as if ridding himself of some foul creature gripping onto his hand. It was clear to all assembled that this case had inspired him to greater wrath than any he had dealt with before, greater even than that of Guy Fawkes and the Powder Plotters, for here was evil hidden among the petticoats of a woman.

The crowd was alive with excitement. They hushed only when Lord Coke indicated that a witness was to be brought in. From behind a wooden screen entered Simon Forman’s widow who, with great hesitation, approached the Bench when invited.

“State your name,” said Coke gently.

“Mistress Anne Forman.”

“What have you to relate of the Widow Turner?”

Anne Forman spoke with great show of humility and timidity.