More than twenty years earlier, Matthew Hopkins, a young man from the village of Manningtree on the banks of the River Stour in Essex County, had begun his wicked hunt for witches. Aided by the Earls of Warwick and Manchester, he became the witch-finder general, and was paid a lordly amount for sending women to their deaths. What made for a witch was in his hands, as if he alone could see through the spectral curtain and pluck out the evidence of evil. A mark on a woman’s hand or cheek, a bird at her window, a dog or cat or some other creature that would not leave her side, a book of magic found in a cupboard or discovered beneath a straw mattress, an embittered neighbor with a grudge and a story to tell. Such was the manner of proof, especially when it came to poor women without a family or a champion.

In the time of the witch-finder, it was believed a witch could be ensnared by nailing her steps to the ground so that she could not flee, and iron traps made to catch fox were set out, for it was well known that a witch’s powers decreased when she was near metal. Some witch-hunters actually nailed women’s feet to the ground and left them to try to escape. If they were able to evade their captors, they then needed to dab rosemary oil on the spot where the nail had entered them while invoking a spell of protection and vengeance: This cannot harm you on this day. When you walk, you walk away. When you return, all your enemies will burn.