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Witches
by Tracy Borman
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In 1613 illness and death struck the children of Francis Manners at Belvoir Castle. Suspicion fell on Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Philippa, former servants accused of using familiar spirits and harmful magic against the family. Their examinations and deaths became one of the most notorious English witchcraft cases of the Jacobean period.
Tracy Borman places the Belvoir accusations within the wider European witch craze, a culture of religious fear and a court society shaped by patronage and faction. Confession, hearsay and political interest complicate the surviving evidence, raising the possibility that the women were convenient targets in a larger struggle around the Manners household. The book treats the case as both a witch-trial narrative and an investigation of coercion, scandal and injustice.
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