Bideford witch trial

Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards from the town of Bideford in Devon were tried in 1682 at the Exeter Assizes at Rougemont Castle.

[a] 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.

[2] 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."

They found "in her secret parts two teats hanging nigh together like unto a piece of flesh that a child had sucked.

There were six such statements, including a claim by Anne Wakely that Lloyd was visited by the "black man" in the form of a bird.

Thomas Eastchurch’s statement was held to be important, as he was a respected town gentleman; however, again his evidence was simply that he overheard Lloyd confess while she was in Bideford lock-up the previous day.

Although she confessed to turning into a cat, stealing a doll and placing it in Thomas's bedchamber, she denied using image magic despite specific questioning by Ogilby.

The following day, in prison she admitted killing William Herbert, Lydia Burman and Anne Fellow, and blinding Jane Dallyn in one eye.

At the execution, she tried to give a reason for her actions: "the Devil met me in the street, and bid me kill her, and because I would not he beat me about the head and back."

At the inquiry, Grace Barnes’s husband John spoke first, accusing Trembles of hurting his wife by witchcraft.

The following day, Wednesday 19 July, Anthony Jones was sufficiently recovered from his fit to make his own statement, giving a report of the previous morning’s events.

Later that day, Mary and Susanna were both searched for any suspicious marks on their bodies, then they were sent to Exeter to join Temperance Lloyd while awaiting their trial.

Grace Barnes in her statement repeated the story and added that she had some suspicion of Susanna Edwards because she would often call on her husband’s house for frivolous reasons, or sometimes none at all.