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Matthew Hopkins

"Witchfinder General" redirects here. For other uses, see Witchfinder General (disambiguation).
"The Discovery of Witches" redirects here. Not to be confused with A Discovery of Witches.

Black and white image of Hopkins. He holds a stick in one hand and has the other placed on his hip, and wears a large hat and wide boots.
A portrait of Matthew Hopkins, 'The Celebrated Witch-finder', from the 1837 edition of The Discovery of Witches.

Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620 – 12 August 1647) was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War. He was mainly active in East Anglia and claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament.[1]

The son of a Puritan minister, Hopkins began his career as a witch-finder in March 1644[a] and lasted until his retirement in 1647. Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne sent more accused people to be hanged for witchcraft than all the other witch-hunters in England of the previous 160 years,[2][3][4] and were solely responsible for the increase in witch trials during those years.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

  1. ^ Robbins, Rossell Hope (1959). "Hopkins, Matthew". The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York Crown Publishers. After Essex, he turned to Norfolk and Suffolk. By the next year, he had extended his operations with a team of six - himself, John Stearne, and four prickers - to the counties of Cambridge, Northampton, Huntingdon, and Bedford. He had become indeed the Witch Finder General.
  2. ^ Notestein 1911: p. 195
  3. ^ Russell 1981: pp. 97–98
  4. ^ Thomas 1971: p. 537, ... in Essex there were no executions after 1626 until 1645.
  5. ^ Deacon 1976: p. 41
  6. ^ Notestein 1911: p. 164
  7. ^ Thomas 1971: p. 528
  8. ^ Sharpe 2002, p. 3
  9. ^ Notestein 1911: p. 194, quoting Stearne who "boasted that he knew of 200"
  10. ^ Notestein 1911: p. 195, quoting James Howell Familiar Letters, II 551, dates February 3, 1646/7 of "near 300"
  11. ^ Thomas 1971: pp. 544, 537,"... when the campaign of Matthew Hopkins and his associates resulted in the execution of several hundred witches ..."


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