How You Could Hire a Magician to Find Lost Stuff 400 Years Ago—and the Real Danger if They Failed
A search brought serious risk
In 1629, widow Christabel Robyns sought help finding spoons and a pewter jug. She is thought to have turned to magic, but was accused of witchcraft and faced the possibility of hanging.
Historian Mark Stoyle of the University of Southampton found that the chief justice of the Court of King’s Bench intervened and sent Robyns’s case to a higher court outside Exeter. She survived, while other people accused on hearsay did not.
A failed search, an accusation
John Blachett was hired in 1666 to locate a lost hood. He said it was in a neighbor’s house, but a search found nothing, and the client reported him.
Blachett was tried for “certain devilish and hateful arts,” but was not convicted. Stoyle’s research suggests that even service magicians, often considered harmless elsewhere, faced danger in Exeter when their magic failed.
Women faced suspicion
Poor women living alone were especially vulnerable to accusations. Edwards, Lloyd and Trembles relied on parish relief and scraps, and were unmarried, widowed or abandoned. Even an illness such as smallpox after someone met one of these women could bring suspicion and imprisonment.
In 1642, Anne King was hired to identify who had stolen a purse. She balanced a sieve on shears and recited names; when the sieve turned at Marie Matthews’s name, King was reported and arrested for witchcraft. She was released on bail and survived.
Exeter’s grim record
Stoyle wrote that Exeter was the last place in England where people are known to have been executed for witchcraft. His archival research found court records marking convictions “culpabilis,” or guilty, and “susp.,” an abbreviation for hanged; burial records sometimes supported those accounts.
Thomasin Short was repeatedly arrested as a “scold,” a woman accused of being unruly and quarrelsome. After she reportedly threatened a family that later suffered several deaths, she was convicted of witchcraft. Her court record carries the notation “susp.”
Key points
- Cunning folk were hired to find stolen or missing belongings in 17th-century Exeter.
- A failed search could bring a witchcraft accusation, as John Blachett’s case showed.
- Women living alone and relying on parish relief faced particular suspicion.
- Court and burial records document witchcraft convictions and executions in Exeter.