Delve into the chilling Witches of Essex trials. Join Rylan Clark and Professor Alice Roberts as they investigate these injustices.
Essex resident Rylan Clark teams up with Professor Alice Roberts to investigate one of the darkest, most harrowing chapters in British history. This involves the state-sanctioned murder of hundreds of innocent women on charges of witchcraft. The series focuses on three notorious witch trials in Essex during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In each episode, our hosts reopen a cold case investigation. They aim to discover the reasons for the victimisation and persecution of these women in England.
GUIDED BY ORIGINAL COURT DOCUMENTS
Guided by original court documents plus a team of historians, psychologists, and medical experts, they visit the towns and villages in Essex where the women lived and died. Each story is brought to life through scenes of premium scripted drama. They ask why authorities convicted these women of witchcraft and what motivated their persecution. Our hosts start with the Chelmsford Witch Trial of 1566. Alice and Rylan examine the case of a family of poor women forced to answer to the Queen’s Attorney General. This served as the first test of the newly enacted law that classifies witchcraft as a felony, punishable by death.
SECOND AND THIRD EPISODES
In the second episode, Rylan and Alice explore the 1582 St Osyth witch hunt. A petty feud between two peasant women grew to engulf an entire village. Healer and “cunning woman” Ursley Kempe falls out with her friend Grace Thurlowe over a cure for her feverish child. With the ambitious local magistrate whipping up anti-witch hysteria, one of the largest witch hunts of the Elizabethan era ensues.
Finally, the pair explore the rise and fall of the self-styled Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins. In 1645, amid the turbulence of England’s Civil War, he started his reign of terror. In the town of Manningtree, disabled local woman Bess Clarke suffers abuse and torture at Hopkins’s hands. She and her young friend Rebecca West fall victim to the corrosive spread of puritanical misogyny throughout the land.
EPISODE 1
The early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I were a time when people believed in magic and the supernatural. So much so that an Act of Parliament made witchcraft a felony punishable by death. Rylan and Alice open a cold case investigation into the first Essex Witch Trial. This trial took place in Chelmsford in 1566. Their investigation centres on a family of poor women from the nearby village of Hatfield Peveril. Agnes Waterhouse (Carli Norris), her daughter Joan Waterhouse (Maia Avery), and her sister Elizabeth 2 (Jessica Boyde) face the Queen’s Attorney.
This trial tests the newly passed Witchcraft Act. The women are accused of having demonic animal spirits and causing death by dark magic. As the trial unfolds, Alice and Rylan explore how Elizabeth helps fuel the allegations by cursing her abusive boyfriend. They also examine how Agnes’ Catholic faith is seen as witchery. Additionally, they discover how the fanciful testimony of a young neighbour, Agnes Browne (Ottilie Keel), against Joan. This eventually leads to her mother’s false confession and death.
EPISODE 2
Rylan and Alice open a cold case from 1582, where state-sponsored violence against witchcraft sweeps through Elizabethan England. Rylan and Alice explore the village of St Osyth. Here, a petty feud between two peasant women grows to engulf an entire village. Healer Ursley Kempe (Angela Bull) falls out with friend Grace Thurlowe (Susie Amy) over payment for her services. The disagreement is then whipped up by ambitious local magistrate Brian Darcey (Gareth David-Lloyd). Consequently, the first mass witch hunt of the Elizabethan era takes hold.
Accusations fly as neighbour turns against neighbour. Alice and Rylan discover how Ursley is accused of murder by witchcraft when Grace’s daughter dies in mysterious circumstances. Ursley buckles under coercive questioning by the ruthless Darcey. She starts deflecting blame onto others while Grace helps whip up hysteria. Grace then turns on lesbian Elizabeth Bennet (Laura Southall) as having unnatural, devil-driven carnal desires.
EPISODE 3
Eighty years after the first Essex witch trial, England is in the midst of a bloody Civil War and a resurgence of witchcraft hysteria. Rylan and Alice open their investigation into the rise of the self-styled Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins (Felix Uff), who, in 1645, starts his reign of terror in the coastal town of Manningtree. Driven by his fanatical Puritanical beliefs and triggered by the death of his nephew, Hopkins starts targeting women on the fringes of society.
Disabled woman Bess Clarke (Philippa Cole) suffers abuse and torture along with her young friend Rebecca West (Aimee Goodall) as Matthew and his associates seek to rid Essex of witches by any means possible. Alice and Rylan explore Hopkins’ motivations and his anti-witch zealotry, the abusive techniques he used to extract confessions, and how these techniques were even exported out of Essex to the rest of the world.
Witches of Essex premieres Tuesday 14 October at 9 pm on Sky HISTORY and HISTORY Play
Introducing Carl! As the News Editor at Future of the Force, Carl has been an invaluable member of our team since early 2016. His expertise and dedication have made him an integral part of our editorial staff. Beyond his professional role, Carl is a fervent supporter of Liverpool F.C. and an avid follower of pop culture. He has a deep passion for Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the iconic movie franchises Star Wars and Star Trek.
He can be found either at his neighborhood cinema, enjoying the latest releases on the big screen, or at home streaming the newest blockbuster movies.
