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Saturday 17 October 2015

Bideford witch trial

The Bideford witch trial resulted in hangings for witchcraft in England. Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards were tried in 1682 in the town of Bideford in Devon. Much of the evidence against them was hearsay, although there was a confession by Lloyd, which she did not fully recant even with her execution imminent. They often get labelled as the 'last' witches to be hanged in England but there are several not so well documented cases after this.
It is sometimes said that Alice Molland was the last person to be hanged for witchcraft in England; the only evidence for this comes from a single book, Side-lights on the Stuarts by J Inderwick; although Molland was sentenced to hang, there is no evidence that the sentence was carried out.

Investigation of Temperance Lloyd

On Saturday, July 1682, Thomas Eastchurch, a Bideford shopkeeper, complained to some of the town’s constables that Temperance Lloyd had been practising witchcraft. The constables arrested Temperance Lloyd and locked her in the old chapel at the end of the bridge, where she remained until taken before the justices, Thomas Gist, Mayor of Bideford, and John Davie, Alderman, on the Monday morning.[1] The charges were: "suspicion of having used some magical art, sorcery or witchcraft upon the body of Grace Thomas and to have had discourse or familiarity with the devil in the likeness or shape of a black man." Grace Thomas thought that Temperance Lloyd was responsible for her illness, because the previous September, Lloyd had wept with joy and expressed pleasure in seeing that Thomas had regained her health.READ MORE ON WIKI LINK-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bideford_witch_trial

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