What Drove the Witch-Hunters' Cruel Crusade?

They tortured, tricked and terrorised suspects into confessions - often with undisguised relish. So, asks Marion Gibson, should the witchfinders of 16th and 17th-century Europe be dismissed as sadists and charlatans?

- By Marion Gibson. Photographs by Getty Images, Mr John Gallagher, Bridgman, TopFoto, Alamy

Plumbing the depths Suspected witch Mary Sutton is swum in a Bedfordshire millpond in 1612, as shown in a contemporary illustration. It was widely believed that, when subjected to a water test, anti-Christian witches would float. Sutton floated like a plank and was changed

Once every six weeks during the winter of 1644, a young man from Manningtree in Essex woke up in terror in the night. It was always on a Friday, and his terror quickly turned to irritation. Somewhere outside, he could hear people talking. He began to listen carefully, and one night he heard a female voice speaking about her familiar spirits – devils in animal form. Clearly a “horrible sect of witches” was active in Manningtree. This must be, the young man thought, “their meeting”, and they must be holding “solemn sacrifices there offered to the devil”.

The man listened as the Friday night reveller told her pet spirits that they must go to the house of Bess Clarke, who lived close by. Bess Clarke was already suspected of witchcraft by several townspeople as well as by the wakeful young man. And in March 1644 she was arrested by the local magistrate after these accusers reported her to him as a witch.