Witches of Belvoir

The mother, Joan Flower, died on the way to her trial after apprehension 'around Christmas' of 1618, while Philippa and Margaret were executed by hanging on 11 March 1619.

[7] Three years after Henry's death, on 16 July 1616, nine women were hanged as witches in Leicestershire for having bewitched a young boy and, in charges similar to those in the Flowers' case, were said to have kept cats as familiars.

[10] The women admitted that they stole the glove of Lord Ros and gave it to their mother, who had dipped it in boiling water, stroked it along Rutterkin's back, and pricked it.

[10] During the examination, they revealed the names of other women who had aided them: Anne Baker of Bottesford; Joan Willimot of Goadby; and Ellen Greene of Stathern.

Margaret and Philippa Flower were tried before Henry Hobart, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Edward Bromley, a Baron of the Exchequer, and found guilty.

It reads, in part: In 1608 he married ye lady Cecila Hungerford, daughter to ye Honorable Knight Sir John Tufton, by whom he had two sons, both of which died in their infancy by wicked practises and sorcerye[4]In 1953, Hilda Lewis published a historical romance, The Witch and the Priest, which consists of a series of conversations between Samuel Fleming, the clergyman who oversaw the Flowers' examinations, and the ghost of Joan Flower.

[5] In 2013, historian Tracy Borman suggested that the Flower women may have been framed by a favourite of King James I, the Leicestershire born George Villiers, who was created Duke of Buckingham in 1623.

[2] Borman's theory is that Villiers had plans to marry the Rutland's daughter Katherine and, with her two brothers dead, inherit the title.