Matthew Hopkins, Witch Finder Generall

From The Discovery of Witches, published by Matthew Hopkins in 1647 “For the Benefit of the Whole KINGDOM” Hopkins made his money and reputation out of terrorising the old and vulnerable. He even got local people to do the hard work for him so he didn’t have to stay up all night watching for familiars. Nice man.

Hopkins is wearing a short tabbed doublet which would have been pretty low fashion by 1647. He did live in a backwater of the country though. I know, I live there today! He found several “witches” in my village. The stiff standing collar is also very old hat, though I believe this woodcut must have been made for the publication.

This old woman seems to be sporting one of those odd pointy coifs on her head with a smallish neckerchief, bodice and petticote.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: