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8 - Matthew Hopkins and the panic about witches
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
As a contemporary pamphlet tells it, some soldiers searching for food before the first battle of Newbury had a strange encounter with an old woman, spotted in the act of crossing a river on a raft. The old woman was not merely floating on the raft, but manipulating it unnaturally. Somehow she was able to turn it from side to side, changing direction at will, oblivious of the current, ignoring the laws of nature. Her power over the water terrified the soldiers, and they immediately concluded it was supernatural. Worse was to follow. The soldiers struggled to kill the old woman, who proved impervious to their efforts. After shooting at her:
One [s]et his carbine close unto her breast, where discharging, the bullet back rebounded like a ball, and narrowly he missed it in his face that was the shooter; this so enraged the gentlemen, that one drew out his sword and manfully run at her with all the force his strength had power to make, but it prevailed no more than did the shot, the woman still though speechless, yet in a most contemptible way of scorn, still laughing at them which did the more exhaust their fury against her life.
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- Literature, Gender and Politics During the English Civil War , pp. 210 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005