What happened
Gwen ferch Ellis was born around 1552 in the parish of Llandyrnog in Denbighshire. She married three times – most recently, in 1592, John ap Morrice of Betws-yn-Rhos – and made her living by spinning and by healing people and animals with herbs, salves and charms. She was often paid in kind, and neighbours came to her when cattle or children fell sick. Her downfall came through an affair she was drawn into by her association with Jane Conway, a widow at odds with the powerful Thomas Mostyn of Gloddaeth. In Mostyn’s parlour a paper charm attributed to Gwen was found, written backwards – taken as proof that it was meant to harm rather than heal. In June 1594, on the orders of the Bishop of St Asaph, William Hughes, Gwen was arrested and held in Flint jail. The case began in the church court at Llansanffraid and then passed to the secular Court of Great Sessions at Denbigh. Old gossip resurfaced: bailiffs to whom she had once given ale swore they had seen a huge black fly hovering over the drink – her devil, or familiar. She faced three indictments: for bewitching Robert Evans, who broke his arm, for bewitching Lowri ferch John ap Ieuan, who lost the use of her limbs, and for murdering Lewis ap John by witchcraft. She was convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1563, and in October 1594 Gwen, aged about 42, was hanged on a gallows set up in Denbigh’s town square, where the library now stands.
Witnesses
The records of the Court of Great Sessions and the Denbigh gaol files of 1594, held by the National Library of Wales; the testimony of the accused woman’s neighbours and clients.
Explanations and hypotheses
Historians, above all Richard Suggett, stress that Wales was a comparatively safe place to be accused of witchcraft: records survive of just 35 trials, and only five ended in execution. Healers and “cunning folk” were widely respected; what doomed Gwen was not her practice as such but her entanglement in a feud between two gentry families. As the Aberystwyth University researcher Mari Ellis Dunning points out, the charm that started it all was never even produced in court as evidence – but Gwen had crossed a social boundary by meddling in the affairs of a powerful justice of the peace.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Lisa Cowan, Gwen ferch Ellis (c. 1552–1594) (Dictionary of Welsh Biography, 2024)
- Mari Ellis Dunning, Curses, whispers and a demon fly: this is the story of the first Welshwoman executed for witchcraft (The Conversation / Aberystwyth University, 2025)
- Richard Suggett, A History of Magic and Witchcraft in Wales (The History Press, 2008)
More: Wikipedia (en)