Witchcraft & the Nobility

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Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. Witchcraft has a long and often dark history. It became more prominent after the medieval period when witch hunts and witch trials became more commonplace.

But a charge of witchcraft in the Middle Ages could still be fatal. Using magic to bring about a death was often considered the same as sticking a knife in. Using it to summon evil was a heresy that could see the guilty burned at the stake. I'm joined today by Gemma Holman. to talk about another aspect of the history of witchcraft, and that's its use as a political weapon against women. And in the cases explored in Gemma's book, Royal Witches,

how it was used against those at the pinnacle of society. Thank you very much for joining us today, Gemma. Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to have a chat. What made you want to write about royal women who were accused of witchcraft in particular?

So it was sort of something I came across by chance, really. It was back when I was at university. I was doing a module about England's empire in France and in the medieval period. And we were doing a seminar about the three princes who kind of helped.

to keep this empire together in the early 15th century. And we were meant to be reading up about these princes and I got given Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was one of the brothers of Henry V. And whilst I was reading his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography page, there were a couple of sentences at the end that were sort of saying...

Oh, and also his wife was accused of witchcraft and there was a big trial and she got sentenced away and then it kind of led to his downfall and then he died. And I was a bit like, what? That sounds quite big and something that should probably be a few more than a few sentences. And that got me thinking back to a book that I'd been reading when I was back at school, which many people know the White Queen books, obviously very famous. And I'd remembered that in that book, although it was fiction.

Jaquetta and Elizabeth Woodville had been using magic and obviously they were around just a few years after this case against Eleanor and so I started to wonder whether there was any historical basis in that or if it was just a bit of fiction sort of

of liberty taking and then I saw that actually they were accused of witchcraft and that there was another woman that century who was the Queen of England who had also been accused and so suddenly I was confronted by these four cases and I just thought

This is just a bit mind-blowing, really. I didn't really know anything at all about magic in the medieval period. Everyone kind of hears about the early modern witch trials and Salem and all of that. And I had no idea that it sort of went earlier than that.

And it hits such a high level of society, you know, witch hunts in general are obviously fascinating. But I just found that it had that extra level of fascination to me that, you know, queens and members of the royal family were being accused because these are people that you normally... think you can't touch them and they were being accused of witchcraft and so that really drew me in to want to have a look at their cases lovely and

It's probably a conversation for another day, but Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, is someone who fascinates me, and I don't think there's enough out there about him. Very, very interesting man. Oh, yes, yes. Quite a character.

So we're talking kind of the 15th century here, really, aren't we? Coming towards the end of the medieval period. So what was the view of witchcraft during the lives of these women that you considered? I mean, witchcraft is probably something that we sneer at today. But did people believe in witches?

this time so the century that these cases happened in is actually a really interesting century for the development of ideas of magic and witchcraft although obviously ideas of magic has been around for thousands of years

In the earlier medieval period, it wasn't really a concern in sort of Christendom. You know, people didn't ever really think about it that much. And it was sort of towards the end of the medieval period that concerns about magic started to grow. And the previous century... over in the continent so sort of in France in the papal courts they really started to get worried about magic and there was quite a few plots

court that were uncovered in various places. And so England was kind of lagging behind a little bit. And as you get into the 15th century, they start to pick up on some of these ideas that have been developing.

And at the start of the century, the word witch wasn't really even a word. You know, the concept of a witch that you could look at someone and say, they're a witch because they do this and they look like that and they do this kind of magic. That wasn't a concept. And it's during this century.

that people really start to develop these ideas. What is a witch? What kind of magic can people do? What kind of magic can't they do? What kind of magic is bad? Magic is all magic bad. And right at the end of the century, you have a book published called The Hammer of Witches. which is like this witch hunting manual, basically. And it was this fellow decided to write down that...

This is what a witch is. He overwhelmingly believed it was women who were witches and particularly loose women. So if they had been an adulteress, a mistress, if they had had sex outside of wedlock, those kinds of women were more likely to be witches as well.

That sort of progressed from the start of the century where the word witch doesn't exist to the end of the century where you have manuals of how to find witches. And that really does kind of develop during the century. So, yeah, as you say, people did really believe that.

witches did exist, but there was definitely a level of scepticism. You have this idea, particularly coloured from these later hysterical witchcraft trials, that people just got a bit crazy and started pointing the finger at everybody and all of this.

but actually although people did believe that magic was a thing and people could wield it they were also quite sensible in their beliefs particularly at the end of the medieval period just because someone was accused of being a witch it didn't mean that everyone was like yeah okay you're right that's

fine they would have trials they would weigh up the evidence and also they were quite lenient on the use of witchcraft if people hadn't used witchcraft in a harmful way you know if they hadn't been trying to kill someone then a lot of the time they just got let off with a slap on the wrist and said, don't do it again. And it was only if they then did it again that you start to see people being burnt at the stake for heresy because they're seen to have turned their back on God by doing this.

And there's always been a sense that witchcraft and witches get tied in with medicine in this period. So women who were able to use medicine may be often accused of witchcraft. Is that fair, do you think? Yeah, that's another really interesting aspect that I sort of explore in my book, really, is this kind of intersection of magic, religion and science in this period. And lots of things that we today might see as blurring from one to another.

were viewed as quite separate in the medieval period. People were exploring things under science that we would see as witchcraft. So the idea that you could... turn lead into gold would say that's a fanciful magical notion today of course you can't turn lead into gold but they had the sort of leading scientific minds looking into this as something that you might actually physically be able to do with science

And then you had aspects of religion where people would pray to the saints and they would take objects related to saints to try and help them with health care. So, for example, a girdle of a female saint might be worn by a noblewoman when she was giving birth.

to try and give her protection and again you might kind of see that as something a bit more on the magical side and people were using magic for similar things so you could have an object imbued with magic to protect you against poison so everything is kind of blurred

around this period and as you say because of these blurred lines it can lead to some of these accusations so astrology is another example obviously some people do still believe in astrology today but i would say the vast majority of people think it's either a bit of fun or just a load

of nonsense but in the medieval period a lot of people thought it was a strict science that you could look at the stars you can analyze it and see what's going to happen and so for this reason doctors did have to know astrology because different star signs where the moon was in the sky it would affect the humours in the body and so if you bled someone when it was in the wrong sign then the moon would encourage their blood to flow and they'd bleed too much so you needed to know all of that

But during the century, you start getting witches using astrological charts for their spells. So if you've got an astrological chart, it can be really difficult to say, oh no, I was using it for this legitimate scientific purpose, or actually I was using it for this nefarious magic.

purpose and that's when you do start to get a lot of these cases coming in where you've got these items and it can be difficult to prove what your intentions were with those items. Lots of blurred lines which I guess suited some people's agendas which might be where we...

going to get to in a little while what do you think these charges of witchcraft that you detail in your books tell us about the women who were accused of witchcraft but also about the men who leveled these accusations at them well i think the key thing it tells us really is that women at court at this time were powerful.

And although they weren't always as powerful as the men, obviously, depending on their status, they could hold a great deal of influence and power and wealth. There's no point targeting someone with accusations if they're not... doing anything if they're not a threat to you if you don't get anything to gain from it you know people generally aren't too cruel to just accuse a random person for no good reason so it definitely shows that these women were in positions of power and it also shows that

there wasn't really any other way that the men who attacked them could attack them. Because the women at court at this time were in a really... weird position where they held lots of power you know if they were a queen they held the power because they were married to the king and they could influence the king and they could talk to people in government and get things done.

But they didn't have an official role. You know, you didn't have women at court who were working in the government. They were just there. So they were influencing things behind the scenes. So all of the things that you could normally do to attack a man by saying, oh, he's working in the Treasury.

meaning he's stealing money or he was on that war council and that war went really badly and it was his fault because he suggested we do that you can't say any of that against women so if you want to attack them there's not really much that you can say and that's where this idea of witchcraft starts to come in real handy because it's again back to those behind the scenes conversations you know

Women are at court. If it's a queen, she's sleeping with the king. If it's, you know, a wife of a noble, she's able to influence him when they're having dinner at night and then he can go on and do something in the government. And witchcraft has that same kind of thing. You know, it's done behind clothes.

doors it's done in secret and so it's this idea that it's a kind of womanly thing to do that she might be using magic to spell the man in her life to be doing bad things so again it's this idea of the kind of soft power that women had And I guess the fact that it happens behind closed doors is something that also makes it difficult to prove, but also almost impossible to disprove. So it's an allegation that you can throw out there and how do you prove that you're not a witch?

Exactly. Yes. And that's something that the women in the book come across really is that, you know, even if you kind of prove that it didn't happen.

There's always going to be that doubt in people's minds. It's one of those things that you flung that mud and it stayed there. It's always going to remind people, oh yeah, there was that thing. Do we really know that she didn't do it? And as you say, at the time, the burden of proof was on... the accused you know if you had managed to find a couple of people who said yeah she did some witchcraft I saw her how do you prove that you didn't because

They're saying that you did and you can't prove that you didn't because how do you prove you didn't do something? It's very difficult to do that. So it does make them really useful accusations, really. I think it plays into that long history throughout the medieval period, really, of men struggling to know how to deal with women, especially powerful women. If they're confronted with a man, they know what to do and most often it's draw your sword and start a fight.

But how do you deal with a woman who you can't fight with? So they throw all these accusations of often infidelity, but also things like witchcraft. It kind of becomes part of the arsenal of men to attack women with, doesn't it? Definitely. And it's also a bit of that sort of...

dual expectation of women in power as well where people did want women in power in some form the usefulness of having a queen was that she could temper her husband's policies so he didn't have to be this really ruthless medieval king who

executes anyone who goes against him you know you have the excuse of the feminine influence where she might say oh no please don't execute him and he goes oh all right honey you know and then that sort of happens and it's another format for people to connect to the monarchy

is that if they need a favour, if they want to be appointed in government, they can talk to the women at court and say, oh, will you put in a good word for me? So women at court were really useful. It's why they were there. Even just beyond the queens and princesses, there were lots of women at court doing things.

But at the same time, as you say, there's a lot of suspicion of women in power because they're not as emotionally strong as men and they're very willful and they don't have the same intelligence as men. And so if a woman is seen to have too much power...

It's then, as you say, what do you do with her? How can we control her? Because we can't. There's nothing we can do. We can't put any official restraints on her. So, yeah, it's definitely this really grey area that these women held. And you especially see that in the 15th century.

you know with the Wars of the Roses there are women at the front line the whole time Margaret of Anjou does a lot on Henry VI's behalf and you have Elizabeth Woodville and her mother and so women are really at the forefront of power at this time and it's

Just a bit confusing for people, really. Yeah. So the first person that you deal with in your book is Joan of Navarre, who was Queen of England. Can you just tell us a little bit about who Joan was and where she fits? into the century. Yeah, so Joan was born around 1370. She was a princess of a small territory called Navarre in northern Spain, sort of on the border with France.

And her father was king of Navarre, but he actually owned loads of land in northern France because that was where his family had kind of been based. And so she was born and grew up in France. So she got married, first of all, when she was a teenager to the Duke of Brittany. And this was a political alliance for her father. They were both sort of...

Dukes and kings, the small territories that were caught in the middle between England and France in the Hundred Years' War and they wanted alliances with each other. But her husband was about 30 years older than her, so he dies when she's still quite young. She's just on the cusp of 30. And for her second husband, she catches the eye of the King of England, Henry IV. And at this time, he's only just claimed the throne.

he's just taken the throne off of Richard II and he'd already met Joan prior to this because they're both sort of nobles in the Western Hemisphere and they've been meeting at feasts.

things like that. So they already knew each other and they start writing letters to each other. And it seems to be quite a love match between the two. They seem to have really gotten on with each other. Marrying Joan didn't necessarily bring lots of benefits to Henry. You know, she didn't bring lots of land or money. with her and actually England and Brittany had sort of been warring on and off so if anything it was a bit of a politically unwise move.

But they get married anyway, and Joan comes over to England and becomes Queen of England. And she's treated really well. She's given loads of money. She's given the biggest dower of any Queen of England up to that point. And she gets on really well with her stepchildren, including Henry V. who becomes the next king of England once her husband dies. And in fact she gets on so well with them that after her husband dies she decides to stay in England.

And she's been treated with the utmost respect. She's called My Dearest Mother by Henry V, you know, even though she is a stepmother. And he lets her use his castles when he's away. And he lets her bring in goods free of charge through the ports. And so it seems like everything's going really well with him until obviously it suddenly doesn't. So what charges were laid against Joan? Where did it all start to go off the rails?

So Joan's very interesting in that because her case is so early in the century, she's accused in 1419. So as I said, this is right at the time where people are still trying to figure out what magic is and what people can do. And the charges against her are really vague. So she's accused by her friar, who was her personal confessor. And he goes on the parliament rolls and he says that Joan had tried to kill the king. And he says really vaguely,

And that's it. And you think, gosh, that's so juicy. But what does it mean? And it's only through sort of chronicle accounts that you start to get this mention in the chronicles that she was accused of using witchcraft. So she's accused of trying to kill her stepson, Henry V of England, using magic, which, as I said, absolutely extraordinary accusation for a queen of England and stepmother of the king. So she gets arrested, but crucially, she never... gets put on trial.

They just send her off to a variety of castles and she spends most of her time at Leeds Castle in Kent. And she's basically in honourable confinement. So she's allowed servants with her. They give her money so that she can buy robes. Come and see her. So her other stepson, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who we mentioned, he comes for dinner. Her previous husband's half-brother, Bishop Beaufort, he comes for dinner. The Archbishop of Canterbury comes over one time.

So it's very strange that for this woman who's accused of trying to kill the king with witchcraft, she's having all of the most powerful men coming to have dinner with her and she's not put on trial. And so it's very, very strange.

It doesn't sound like anyone was particularly frightened of her or desperate to avoid her or concerned about being seen in her company. Exactly. And the other thing that's interesting is that... actually not all of the chronicles even mention it one or two of them just have a line oh yeah and then the queen was imprisoned and then lots of them don't even mention it and you know as you say you'd think

Gosh, if the Queen of England's been accused of trying to kill the king with witchcraft, you'd think everybody would be talking about it and really concerned. And that's just not the case. And once you dig into it, the reason seems to be quite clear that this has all been set up as... as a political accusation to try and get money off of Joan. So as I said, when she'd become queen, she'd been given this huge dower from Henry IV.

She was given around a tenth of the annual income of the entire English crown. per year to live on. And so, you know, that's a huge amount of money. And once Henry V had come to the throne, he decided to restart the wars with France.

And suddenly he needs lots of money to pay all of his soldiers. Suddenly a tenth of that income looks very attractive. Exactly. But, you know, unfortunately his dad hadn't left him much money because his father had claimed the throne off of Richard II. He'd spent a lot of his reign...

fighting within England to keep hold of his crown so the coffers were already empty and Henry starts this really expensive war and there's just no money and as you say suddenly having an extra tenth of your income a year is very crucial and there's a very interesting reference from Agnes Strickland who is a Victorian historian and she references this

document that she found which I wasn't able to retrace but she says that at the start of the year when Joan was accused there's this document from Henry where he's talking to his servants at court and he's saying see if we can borrow from Joan's dower. And then suddenly at the end of the year, she's accused of witchcraft and all of her lands and income are seized. And so it seems very clear if indeed this document...

did exist that he's already having an eye on her money at the start of the year. So it seems that the plan may have even originated from Henry himself and if it wasn't from him it was someone at court with his full knowledge and he said yeah go ahead. And yeah, by accusing her of witchcraft and of treason, he's able to take all of her land, all of her income for himself.

And she doesn't need that much money when she's in prison, although she is allowed servants and robes. It's a fraction of the cost of what they'd been paying her already. So it's a real money-saving way for them to suddenly be able to pay their soldiers. It sounds like Joan was kind of doomed by the way that she came to be married to Henry's father. So the idea that it was a love match, that she was gifted this huge dower, that she didn't bring any...

particular political benefit or financial benefit to the English crown meant that Henry V, I guess, has no one to worry about upsetting other than his stepmother and she kind of becomes an easy and attractive target for him politically. But do you think...

Henry believed any of this or do you think this was just purely an effort to get money? Well, so there's a very interesting thing that we have from Henry's own mouth. which is she was imprisoned from 1419 until just before his death in 1422. So she's imprisoned for three years without trial. And as Henry gets sick and it's clear that he's dying...

He's obviously started to get very guilty about how he's treated Joan because, as I said beforehand, they had a really excellent relationship. They were very close. And now he's faced with his own mortality and he's gone, oh my goodness, I've locked up my stepmother for three years. That's pretty horrible.

I don't have to explain that to God when I get up to the pearly gates. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How do you explain that? And so his conscience really takes over. And so he makes this proclamation in Parliament, written down in the Parliament rolls, that he's gathered his Lords around.

and he said that joan is to be freed and again he kind of steps around the issue of what exactly she was accused of so he doesn't say oh yeah so you know how she tried to use witchcraft to kill me well in fact he says you know she's been imprisoned

for causes as you know so he's kind of mentioning it without mentioning it and he says right she's to be completely restored give her all of her lands back i'm going to pay for some new dresses for her i'll pay for her horses so that she can go wherever she wants to lest she be a charge on our conscience and those are the words he says and if you need any clearer thing to see the regrets of a dying man I think that's it really and that again really highlights that these were completely

fabricated accusations you know she was never put on trial and now that he's dying he goes oh gosh my conscience is really bad let her go free put her back to how she was and let's never speak of it again so it's really interesting that you do get to see that insight into his thinking. And I think particularly if we think about

Henry is dying unexpectedly and young, and he's leaving a nine-month-old baby behind him, so a pretty insecure kingdom as it is. So if he really thought that there was a witch out there who was trying to kill kings... you would think he would want to deal more ruthlessly with Joan rather than let her go. So for me, all of that kind of does point to this being just a political stunt to get money from Joan's dower. Definitely, definitely.

The lack of trial is also another big pointer to the fact that it was political and this is because It protects both Joan and Henry by not putting her on trial. So obviously, if Henry puts her on trial and she's found guilty, then she's found guilty as a witch who's tried to kill the king. You know, she could be executed. Now, obviously, he's the king.

he could mitigate her execution things like that but still he's basically put death sentence on his stepmother and he doesn't want to do that he might be ruthless enough to imprison her for her money but he doesn't actually want to see her come to harm But the other issue is if she's put on trial and she's found innocent, they have to give her back all of her lands and her money and they have to give a compensation for all of the money she lost while she was imprisoned.

So in fact, it would end up costing them a lot of money. So by not putting her on trial, she doesn't have that formal thing of, yes, she is a convicted witch, and they don't have to give her her money back. And so once she's released in 1422, they don't have to give her back any of the money or any compensation for the three years that she's been imprisoned. So it's this kind of perfect middle ground by leaving her in limbo. They get the money and she is kind of protected.

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What happens to Joan after 1422? She is fully restored. They do let her go. She's able to leave as she wishes. Interestingly, she still decides to stay in England despite all that. And despite the fact that she had children back in Brittany and they were writing to her saying, Mum, come home. They've been imprisoning you for years. Come back to us and we'll look after you.

And she still decides to stay, which I think is really interesting. And whether that's a romantic notion of her wanting to stay in the land of her husband, Henry IV. Whether it was more a pragmatic thing of, if I leave, they could easily take away my English lands and money and I won't see them again. So whether it was a bit of that as well. But yeah, she stays in England and she lives until 1437.

you know she lives a good sort of 15 years after she's released and she's treated with all dignity of a queen dowager as the infant henry the sixth grows up he's very fond of her and he gives her presents and then when she dies she's buried in canterbury cathedral alongside Henry IV with the full honours of an English queen. So she gets completely restored to her position and there doesn't seem to have been any issues.

with her since you know there was no other hint of scandal no other accusations against her she basically goes back to her old life

Fascinating story. The next lady that you cover in your book is the first one that you mentioned brought this subject to light for you, Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. What can you tell us about Eleanor? Where does she fit again into the century and who was she? So Eleanor was the daughter of a knight. She was born probably about 1400. And although she was the daughter of a knight, her family sort of came from slightly higher stations. So the previous century, they'd been quite powerful.

they'd been knights of the garter and they'd slipped down the rungs a little bit but they were still quite well off for themselves and she finds her way to court when she's in her 20s and she enters the household of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, so the brother of Henry V, who we mentioned earlier. He had married a foreign bride, Jacqueline of Hainault, and so as a woman at court, she needed women to serve her, and Eleanor joined the household to look after Jacqueline.

And basically Humphrey's marriage to Jacqueline doesn't go very well. He's married her to try and claim her lands over in Holland and the war doesn't go too well and he starts irritating some of England's allies who they need for the wars in France.

And so his older brother sort of says to him, you've got to stop this. We can't afford to lose these allies. So you've got to stop your wars. And so suddenly his wife isn't quite so attractive anymore. And there's this very beautiful lady who's part of her household called Eleanor. who he started a relationship with. So Eleanor became his mistress at some point in the 1420s. Now eventually, Humphrey's marriage to Jacqueline actually gets annulled by the Pope.

because their marriage had been contracted under sort of dodgy circumstances because she already had a husband and she hadn't liked her husband. And so she'd got a bit of a dubious annulment from him. But this is at a time where you've got two different popes competing.

and one sort of says okay and one says i'm not too sure and she marries humphrey anyway and so after the disaster of this war the pope rules no you were never annulled from your first husband so any subsequent marriage you had wasn't legal were basically divorced essentially and Humphrey of course isn't too upset about this because he's got Eleanor and so he marries Eleanor instead which again is another love marriage which is quite interesting because again you know Eleanor as I said

of the entirety of society Eleanor came from quite a well-off family you know daughter of a knight but in terms of marrying into the Prince of England, she was not anywhere near the sort of status that would be expected for a bride for him. And again, she didn't come with any lands, she didn't come with any money. So they definitely have this love marriage and suddenly she's found herself as Duchess of Gloucester.

and one of the most powerful women in the kingdom fascinating and yeah i think the other ladies that we're going to talk about as well the love match is a really common theme that seems to run through it i don't know if that's coincidence or if it's at all related to them being accused of witchcraft but it is definitely there

So what was Eleanor accused of? So basically she'd been married to Humphrey for a little over 10 years and by this time he has become...

basically one of the most powerful people in the country. So Henry VI is still quite young. You know, he's still only a teenager. There's still kind of a bit of Regency ruling going on. And all of Humphrey's older brothers have died. Henry VI isn't married, so he doesn't have... any children so humphrey is the heir to the throne if anything were to happen to henry the sixth then humphrey would become king

Now, by this time, Jones died, the mother of the kings died. So Eleanor is the most senior lady in the entire land. You know, she could become queen if something went wrong with Henry VI. And basically, Humphrey's enemies at court play upon this. And Eleanor is accused of hiring magicians and witches to try and bring about the death of Henry VI so that she could become queen.

Again, very serious accusations. They're saying that she's tried to kill the king, which is treason and is punishable by death. And again, maybe playing on the ideas of ambitious women. driving men to do bad things yes definitely it's a bit of a social upstart at court she's been as you say working behind the scenes trying to do this trying to further her husband by underhand means

And in a way, this kind of acts as a bit of a saviour for her in some ways. So she manages to flee to sanctuary. So she's not put on a normal trial. But because witchcraft is a matter for the church, she is... on a trial in the church by the bishops now her supposed accomplices had all been put on trial and they said yep she made us do these things to try and kill the king you know we got these wax figurines that we melted and did things with to represent the king

Now, Eleanor is very aware that she's in a very bad position and simply denying the accusations is probably not going to save her. There's about four or five people who are all saying that she hired them. So in the face of that, you know. How do you go against four or five people who are all saying that you did it and incriminating themselves in the process?

And so she actually uses another form of magic to her defence. So this is 1441, her trial. And by this time, there starts to be a bit of an idea of the existence of love magic, which is seen as a very feminine thing. that women could use magic to make men fall in love with them, to try and help them conceive, to try and have babies, and basically manipulate emotions. Because they were seen as emotional beings, they were more likely to resort to this kind of magic.

and so Eleanor actually uses this magic to her defense and so when she's shown these figurines that she's meant to have tried to kill the king with she says oh no that represents me and my husband and I was just trying to make him fall in love with me and I was just that witch to get some potions so that we could have a baby together because the couple had never had children so she's saying no no no no I wasn't trying to kill the king I was just trying to have a baby

So she sort of tries to defend herself by saying, I was doing magic, but not the bad kind. I was doing the kind that's okay. Exactly. Exactly. Because doing love magic was not something that you could be killed for. It wasn't seen as that.

harmful at all and you know what the only female who was accused alongside her she's called the witch of eye and she had actually been accused of witchcraft about 10 years previously and again it wasn't seen as anything too serious so she'd been let off you know I think there was maybe a minor fine but even then you know she was just put back in the custody of her husband and her husband was told right

keep an eye on her make sure she doesn't do any witchcraft so Eleanor was banking on this kind of thing that she could say oh I'm really sorry yeah I did some magic but it wasn't anything bad and I won't do it again and then that she could get let off so she does try to use it to her defense

Interesting. So what happens to Eleanor in the end? She found guilty of witchcraft? So basically, because she wasn't put on an official trial, we don't have the sort of official verdict.

so much and we have to rely on chronicles of the time. Now I mentioned earlier about when Joan was accused how the chronicles were quite quiet about it. The chronicles are certainly very loud when it comes to Eleanor. Every single chronicle written in England at this time mentions the case often in quite great detail and Eleanor has to do a penance

So she has to walk through London on three separate market days. So when London is the absolute busiest, she has to walk right through the middle of it, through different market squares, and she has to make offerings at three different churches. And she has to do this all on foot.

Which in itself is quite a punishment because a lady of her station would not walk on foot. They'd be on horseback or in carriages. And so it's a very, very public, humiliating penance for her to do. So that is part of her punishment. Now, unfortunately, another part of her punishment is where her defense of love magic sort of backfires because her marriage to Humphrey is annulled by the bishops.

And there's no kind of clear reasoning given to this, but it seems very likely that because she said she had used love magic to make Humphrey fall in love with her, they had viewed this as a form of coercion, which was one of the few ways you could get a marriage annulled.

in the medieval period was if someone had been forced into it and so they were sort of arguing that because he had had a spell put on him to make him fall in love with her he wasn't in his right mind and so he'd been forced into this marriage and that seems to be what has happened. So she's had her marriage annulled from Humphrey. She's had to do these horrible penances right through London. And then it's a bit quiet for a while.

And the start of the next year, she gets sent off to a castle outside of London. And she basically spends the rest of her life in imprisonment in various castles that sort of become increasingly more remote as time goes on. And the only hint we have is from a poem that was composed not too long afterwards. That's all about Eleanor's downfall. And in this poem, it says that she was saved by Henry VI.

And this does seem to be a fairly logical solution that her accomplices had been found guilty. Several of them had been executed for this. And it does seem reasonable that Henry VI... did step in to save his aunt who he had loved very much up to that point you know he'd given her lots of gifts they were very close they spent lots of time together and so although he did seem to believe that Eleanor had truly tried to kill him with magic

still had enough affection for her to want to save her life if her life was indeed in danger so yeah she's sort of as I said sent off into perpetual imprisonment and she stays in prison for the rest of her life which is another 10 years or so I guess Humphrey falls into an awkward situation as well when it's claimed that...

she's got him by nefarious means casting a love spell on him or whatever and the more he says no that's not true i really love her the more everyone will go well see see she really has exactly and that is something that is an issue for women in this period is you know if you get accused of love magic

As you say, the proof is in the pudding. Well, he married her. So therefore, the spell must have worked because, you know, why else would the Prince of England marry a knight's daughter? It must be that she put a spell on him. And so, yeah, it seems to all make perfect sense.

And do you think in this case they were particularly going for Eleanor as a woman who maybe they felt didn't deserve the position that she was in? Or was this really an attack on her husband through Eleanor, so to discredit him?

So some people have sort of argued that it was... in some ways an attack on her that she had become really greedy and prideful in her position and she was lording it over everyone but actually when I dug into the sources I couldn't find a single negative comment about her until after her trial everything that's written about her beforehand is very complimentary of her and says how wonderful she is so I do think that some of those arguments are coloured by the later comments about her

But it certainly does seem to have been a way to target Humphrey. Although he was the heir to the throne, he was sort of becoming a bit of an old-fashioned person at court. He had grown up at the height of his brother's wars. France. He fought at Agincourt when he was a teenager and he saw that huge victory and he saw all of the huge gains and when his brother had died he promised him on his deathbed that he would continue the war in France for Henry's son.

only had he witnessed all these victories in the past he'd made a deathbed promise to his brother to continue them but by the 1440s the ideas of the wars with france were becoming very unpopular with newer people at court you know they'd been going on for decades

They weren't really winning. In fact, the tide was starting to change and they were starting to lose some of their land. It was very expensive. They had no money and lots of people wanted to start making peace. And Humphrey was one of the people saying, no way should we make peace.

champion it and because he was so popular in the kingdom you know everybody loved him apart from his enemies at court but you know all of the common people of the land absolutely adored him and so he still held a lot of power And he held a lot of personal power over Henry. You know, he was his uncle. He'd seen him grow up. And as I said, Henry was very close to Humphrey and Eleanor. And so he would have his ear bent by Humphrey to sort of go over on his side.

And this did cause him to have lots of enemies at court from people who wanted their own influence over the king, who wanted their own policies to go through. But, you know, he's a prince of England. He's the heir to the throne. You can't attack him directly. It would never work. You know, you would only... lose that battle and so by attacking his wife

You're not attacking him directly, you're attacking his wife. But as you say, it suddenly will cast a lot of dispersions on him. You know, he's been married to this woman who's tried to kill the king. What are his motives like? You know, maybe he's plotting against the king as well. And it's suddenly cast. all of this doubt on his own character. Yeah.

The time of my life. I never felt this way before. From building timelines to assigning the right people and even spotting risks across dozens of projects. Monday Sidekick knows your business. Things ahead and take. One click on the star and consider it done. And I owe it all to you. Try Monday Sidekick, AI you'll love to use, on Monday.com. History has made this world of ours. I'd like to tell you about my show, Dan Snow's History Hit, that really explains

Well, everything that's ever happened. The origin stories of the cities we inhabit or of what's in our kitchen cupboards. Why we've always been drawn to dictators. The greatest discoveries, inventions and mistakes.

ever made for curious stories check out dan snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts The other two women that feature in the book are actually a mother and daughter who people may well know from the White Queen, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, and that's Jaquetta Woodville.

and her daughter, Elizabeth Woodville. Can you just give us a quick little bit of background about the two of them, please? Yeah, so Chiquetta of Luxembourg, as she was originally known, she was, again, this sort of medieval... princess really you know born into a very powerful noble family who were part of luxembourg and she also had links to the french royal family so she sort of had royal blood running through her veins

And when she was young, she was actually married off to Humphrey's brother, John Duke of Bedford. So she married into the English royal family through that way and came over to England. But again, you know, she had a much older groom and he died not too long after. their marriage so suddenly she's a young widow in England and is

now quite a desirable bride and so she kind of comes under control of the English government. Although she'd only been married to her husband for about two years, they didn't have any children, she is seen officially as being part of the English royal family. And so you don't want her getting married to just anybody. Suddenly she's a very important prospective bride.

So she's allowed all of her lands and inheritance basically from her husband, but on the strict condition that she's not allowed to marry without the king's consent. Now, she very swiftly breaks this rule. and marries to, again, a lowly knight, Richard Woodfill. And this is a huge scandal. So although, obviously, Humphrey had married Eleanor, who was of a lower station, it was seen as more acceptable for men to marry women of a lower status.

But for a woman, she wasn't to marry someone like that. You know, again, if things have been different, she could have become Queen of England if she was married to the oldest brother of Henry V. the child, Henry VI, had died, which, you know, lots of children did die during the medieval period, she would have been queen. So this woman who could have been queen is now married to a knight. So it's a big scandal. And as you say, again, another love marriage, another theme.

of the women in the book and they have a daughter called Elizabeth. And they are sort of at court right as the Wars of the Roses are starting. And they've been loyal to the Lancastrians, to Henry VI and to his wife. They've been serving at court and they served them for decades.

But as the war starts to turn and Edward IV becomes king, they eventually have to give up their allegiance and move over to his side because it's either that or they have to leave the country. And they've got lots and lots of children. And they can't afford to do that. So they sort of swap sides to the Yorkists. And within a couple of years of Edward becoming king, suddenly, again, another shock marriage. And he's married Elizabeth, Jaquetta's daughter.

And although I said it was more acceptable for men to marry women of lower status, it certainly was not acceptable for a king to marry the daughter of a knight. So although she was Jaquetta's daughter, who did have royal blood in her veins... people tended to take their status from their father. So she was seen more as the daughter of a knight rather than the daughter of someone who could have become queen. So a very shocking marriage and again, this kind of possible ideas of maybe love magic.

working behind the scenes yeah

And so where did the accusations of witchcraft come from for these two women? Was it roughly the same time or was it a different occasion? So interestingly they actually happened quite far apart and this kind of links back to what we were saying earlier about once the accusations are out there. and never get them back again. So the first accusations come against Jaquetta.

And they come at a time where England is again experiencing some turbulence. So Edward IV is still king. And he has a very close advisor, Warwick, who's known as the kingmaker because he'd helped Edward become king. And they were cousins and Warwick had been really instrumental in the first few years of Edward's reign. He'd really helped him, you know, keep a hold on his throne. But now that things were settling down and Edward was getting older and he had his wife and family.

he started to want to take control of government himself. And so more and more, he wasn't listening to what Warwick was saying. And this started to frustrate Warwick. Obviously, he's had all of these years at the reins of government and suddenly he's being sidelined.

A lot of the policies that Edward is starting to choose are the policies of his wife's family, the Woodvilles. And she's got a very big family. She's one of 14 children. And so there's a lot of other people whose opinions are starting to drown out Warwick's. And he ends up rebelling against Edward and he actually manages to capture Edward and holds him captive for quite a few weeks.

And during this time, he decides he's going to get rid of some of the wood fills because he thinks that they're the problem. If he can get rid of the wood fills, then Edward will listen to him again and everything will be OK. So during this time, he actually captures Jaquetta's husband and one of her sons, and he has both of them executed without a proper trial. And then he comes for Jaquetta herself. So I kind of think that he realizes that... these hasty executions.

were not quite a wise decision and the country is starting to rebel against him. He's kind of realising that maybe he's made a bit of a mistake and that things are going to go quite wrong with Edward because he's now just executed some of his in-laws. And so I think he kind of gets this idea that if he can prove that Jaquetta was doing something wrong, then that would lead credence to his...

accusations against the rest of the Woodvilles. So one of his followers accuses Jaquetta of witchcraft and he says that these images have been found, that she used. And again, the actual accusation is a bit vague. It doesn't quite say... what these figures were meant to have been for but judging on the later accusations against her daughter

He seems to have probably been suggesting that Jaquetta had used love magic to make Edward fall in love with her daughter and that also he had possibly used some of these figurines to try and hurt Warwick and even kill him.

So because Edward... is imprisoned at this time there's nothing that he can do to help save her so he has to have her arrested and he assigns a committee of lords to look into the accusations against her and assess whether they're true so it's like i said They still put them on trial, even though there were accusations it wasn't just blindly accepted.

Now, luckily for Chiquetta, this actually times quite well, because by this point, Edward's been captive for so long that the country's starting to fall apart. There's loads of infighting, barons are fighting their own private wars against each other, and the country's...

completely losing control and Warwick realises okay I need to free the king now otherwise everything's going to collapse. So Edward is freed he gets control of the country back and now that he's back in power he can finally help his mother-in-law.

But in fact, it seems that he doesn't even need to have helped her in any case, because when the Lords started investigating this, the original man had said, oh, yes, this guy in this village found them and he can vouch for me, you know, that they were from Jaquette. and she did all of this so they go and find this man they interview him and he goes

I've got no idea what you're talking about. I never said that Chiquetta had anything to do with it. You know, they were found in this house after some soldiers left. They got passed around a load of people in the village and it ended up with me. And I never heard anything to do with Chiquetta at all. And then he even went on to...

incriminate this other man and said yeah he told me to say that there were more figurines and that it was to do with Jaquetta but I wouldn't because there weren't so suddenly these accusations are completely broken open and shown that

not only was it not true that they had actively been fabricated against Jaquetta. So Edward has her, you know, declared... completely clear she didn't do anything and in fact Jaquetta had learnt from Eleanor's case because she was at court when Eleanor had been accused and she'd seen how damaging this was and she went even further and she had it written down in the parlour

roles in front of all the laws of the land and they even say Jaquette has asked us to do this so you know it's her who's wanted this on the official record and they say you know we are putting this here for posterity so that in the future everyone will know she didn't do anything. So she's really trying to do everything she can to quash these rumours. It sounds a little bit like Warwick was desperately kind of backfilling on a hurried execution of Jacketta's...

husband by looking for an excuse in blaming her around witchcraft. And so when did their daughter Elizabeth Woodville fall foul of accusations of witchcraft? So she's accused over a decade later. And it's not too long after the death of Edward IV. So Edward IV dies very suddenly. He's quite young. He's only about 40. He was completely fit and healthy. There was no sign of illness. And then he just sort of suddenly dies.

And his son and heir is only a teenager, well, barely a teenager, really. And so you've got this prospect of a child king and a regency. And basically, as her son is on his way to London to get crowned, he gets taken into the custody of the future Richard III. And again, some of Elizabeth's family members are arrested when this happens and they're sort of imprisoned.

and so Elizabeth is sort of starting to recognise that something's going on here. So she fleece to Sanctuary in Westminster with her children whilst her son is brought back to London. Now, when he is brought back to London for a while, Richard says, yeah, yeah, we'll still crown him. He's just going to the tower to get ready for the coronation. But we need his brother because we can't have a coronation without his brother. You know, what would that look like to the whole world?

So he sort of gets custody of the second prince, Prince Richard. And this is when things start to turn. And he sends a message up to York and says, I need you to send men. We need some help down here because Queen Elizabeth and her family are trying to kill me. and within this sort of letter he makes mention

that seems to suggest that they're using witchcraft to do this. He says that they foretold the same, you know, as if they were using that sort of foretelling magic like Eleanor's witches supposedly did, that you can use that to do it. And then more and more rumours circulate. You have one of the Tudor chronicles tells a story, which is not very clear if it's true, but it certainly shows the rumours that were circulating.

that at a meeting of the council Richard accuses again Elizabeth of using witchcraft against him to cause his withered arm and that she was actually working with one of Edward's mistresses who was also a witch so he's saying that these two women around Edward they were witches they tried to kill him, they withered his arm.

And there's all of these accusations that go on. And eventually Richard does become king and the princes mysteriously disappear with the infamous princes in the tower, which we won't go into today. But he becomes king, and after he becomes king, Parliament issues this decree that sort of explains why he's become king instead of Edward's children. And there's this big long list of items, and they kind of focus on the idea...

that Edward and Elizabeth's marriage wasn't valid. And if their marriage wasn't valid, then their children were illegitimate and they can't inherit the throne. And that would leave Richard to be king as his brother. And in this big long list of reasons why, they say, well, as everybody knows, Elizabeth and her mum, Jaquetta, used witchcraft to make him fall in love with her.

And so they're calling back to this case against Eleanor from decades before, where Eleanor gets her marriage to Humphrey annulled because she's used magic against him. And so it seems they're calling back to this idea that if she had used magic to...

Edward fall in love with her then their children are illegitimate because he was coerced into the marriage and so it wasn't legitimate so you have this whole sort of slew of small accusations here and there against her as justification for why Richard

has taken power and so do you think running through all of these accusations do you think there was ever anything more than a political tool used by men against women either to attack the woman or to attack the woman's husband do you think there was ever Any serious belief amongst any of these charges that there was witchcraft going on or was it just a political attack? So in terms of those accusing them, obviously it was sort of...

Quite well known to them that they were sort of making it up. The only sort of question mark we have really is Eleanor, because she does admit to having used some love magic. And although we can say she used it for her defence, you know, she may very well have done that.

that women at court did sort of turn to things like that. And she didn't have any children and she would have been mindful of that. So she may well have used some love magic to try and have children. And she does seem to have been involved in astrology and astrological predictions.

But whether that was for nefarious deeds or not, you can never know. As we said, it's something that's done in private. So certainly these women could have indulged in magic of some form that we would never know of. But part of what's important is... that belief that they could have. And certainly in some of the cases, certainly with Eleanor against Henry VI, Henry VI genuinely does seem to believe that Eleanor had tried to kill him with magic. You know, just before her trial.

He pays for prayers to be said across the country for his protection from evil wizards and necromancers. And, you know, although you could say that's perhaps a bit of political propaganda from the government. It could very equally be Henry was genuinely fearful for his life and he did believe that people were trying to kill him with witchcraft. And so that kind of what lies at the heart of why these were so successful is that...

It was believable. There's so much to think about there. And I can't recommend Gemma's book strongly enough if you want to learn a little bit more about all of the details around these accusations and the women that were forced to face them.

Don't forget to subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts and tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. I would like to give a quick mention to an episode of Not Just the Tudors with Susanna Lipscomb, which is also from History Hit.

The Witches of Lorraine examines six decades of persecution and neighbours reporting neighbours and considers how witchcraft was viewed by the society around them. It fits quite nicely with today's episode. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history. history hits.