7 Alyce Boyle, the ballad singer who performed for a queen

1 Elizabeth Stile, the condemned witch Elizabeth Stile was a witch - at least, in the minds of many of her contemporaries. She was 65 years old, widowed, and living in Windsor when she was accused of witchcraft. Together with her associates, she was accused of killing several people and bringing harm to many others, with the help of familiars including a rat, a black cat and a toad.

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CAM A witch feeds her familiars in this illustration from the 1579 pamphlet about Windsor woman Elizabeth Stile

 

All of the accused women were poor. Some of their alleged victims had been targeted, it was said, because they had refused to hand out charity, or had been responsible for some other small injustice against these already marginalised women. We might think that these alleged witches were just scapegoats, picked upon because they were already vulnerable, in an attempt to explain misfortunes for which there was no other explanation. Certainly, the one man implicated - who had rather better social standing - does not seem to have been brought to trial.

It was more complicated than that, though, because Stile herself appears to have believed in her own magical powers. While in prison in Reading, she seemingly had a change of heart, confessed all her crimes, and repented her association with the devil - in the process incriminating the three other women with whom she was, in due course, hanged. Her confession formed the basis of a pamphlet, A Rehearsal Both Strange and True, published in 1579, that both told her story - most likely with the intention of titillating its readers and also delivered a heavy-handed dose of pious moralising on the evils of witchcraft.

Elizabethan England was full of uncertainties, fears of the supernatural, and tensions within communities. Concerns about invasion from abroad could combine with fears of heresy or conspiracy at home to create a febrile atmosphere in which even the Privy Council was anxious about witchcraft cases. Stile was caught up in this web of anxiety.