What happened
On Christmas Day 1660 Florence Newton, an old woman of Youghal, came to the house of John Pyne and asked for a piece of salted beef. The servant, Mary Longdon (or Langdon), refused, and Florence went away muttering threats. A few days later she met the girl and kissed her violently. Soon Mary began to suffer fits, to vomit needles, pins, straw and wool, and stones were said to fall on her before witnesses and then vanish. She also claimed that Florence stood by her bed with the Devil, urging her to become a witch. On 24 March 1661 the mayor of Youghal had Florence jailed. When in April the jailer David Jones, who had let her kiss his hand, died, his widow testified that on his deathbed he had blamed the prisoner. On 11 September 1661 Florence was tried at the Cork assizes; the prosecution was led by Ireland’s attorney general, Sir William Domvile, before Sir William Aston. “Tests” were carried out: her hand was pricked with an awl and she was made to recite the Lord’s Prayer. No verdict survives.
Witnesses
Mary Longdon, John Pyne, Elenor Jones and other witnesses at the Cork assizes; a record of the trial made by Judge Aston and published by Joseph Glanvill in “Saducismus Triumphatus” (1681).
Explanations and hypotheses
Historians see in the case the classic pattern of witchcraft accusations: refused charity, guilt and fear, followed by fits resembling hysteria or possession in a young servant. It was long assumed that Florence Newton was convicted and hanged under Ireland’s 1586 Witchcraft Act, but the historian Andrew Sneddon, analysing the full trial record, believes she died in prison before she could be executed. It is one of the few well-documented Irish witch trials – in Ireland, unlike Scotland or England, such cases were rare.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Irish Legal News – Irish Legal Heritage: The Witch of Youghal (2019)
- St John D. Seymour, Irish Witchcraft and Demonology (1913; sacred-texts.com)
- Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
More: Wikipedia (en)