Agnes Waterhouse
Agnes Waterhouse
1502 — 1566
royaume d'Angleterre
Agnes Waterhouse was the first woman executed for witchcraft in England, hanged in 1566 in Chelmsford. Her trial, one of the earliest documented witchcraft trials in England, illustrates the rise of persecution driven by fear of black magic during the Tudor period.
Key Facts
- 1566: First major documented witchcraft trial in England, held at Chelmsford (Essex)
- 1566: Agnes Waterhouse is hanged, becoming the first woman executed for witchcraft in England
- Accused of using a familiar (a cat named Satan) to harm her neighbors
- Her trial was made possible by the Witchcraft Act of 1563, enacted under Elizabeth I
- Her daughter Joan Waterhouse was also accused during the same trial but was acquitted
Works & Achievements
The first printed English pamphlet dedicated to a witchcraft trial, it recounts the confessions and prosecution of Agnes Waterhouse, Elizabeth Francis, and Joan Waterhouse. A foundational document in the history of witch persecutions in England.
The legislation that formally criminalized witchcraft in England and made the trial of Agnes Waterhouse possible. It provided the legal framework for English witch persecutions for forty years.
A pamphlet recounting a second trial at Chelmsford that retrospectively cites the Agnes Waterhouse case as a precedent. It demonstrates the lasting presence of her case in English judicial memory.
Anecdotes
Agnes Waterhouse was the first person executed for witchcraft under the Witchcraft Act of 1563, enacted during the reign of Elizabeth I. The trial at Chelmsford, in the county of Essex, marked a turning point in the legal repression of witchcraft in England, introducing for the first time a formal documented judicial procedure.
At her trial, Agnes Waterhouse reportedly confessed to possessing a familiar — an evil spirit taking the form of a white cat named Satan — which she claimed to have received from her neighbor Elizabeth Francis. She was said to have the power to harm neighbors, kill livestock, and cause illness through this animal.
Her daughter Joan Waterhouse was also arrested and tried at the same Chelmsford trial in 1566. Accused of sending the familiar against a child, Joan was acquitted — a stark contrast to her mother's fate that illustrates the inconsistencies of verdicts in such trials.
Agnes Waterhouse was hanged on 29 July 1566 at Chelmsford. Contemporary accounts describe her as a woman of around sixty years of age, reflecting the tendency of witch persecutions to target poor, elderly, and socially vulnerable women.
The 1566 Chelmsford trial was quickly printed and distributed as a pamphlet — The Examination and Confession of certaine Wytches — helping to shape the image of the witch in English public opinion, an image that would be recycled throughout two centuries of persecutions.
Primary Sources
Agnes Waterhouse of Hatfilde Peverell, of the age of lxiii yeres or there about [...] confessed that she had a whyte spotted Catte, and that she called it Sathan.
If any person or persons [...] use, practise, or exercise any Witchcrafte, Enchantment, Charme, or Sorcerie, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed, that then every such Offendor [...] shall suffer paines of deathe.
Agnes Waterhouse [...] confessed at the barre that shee had bin a Witche and used suche execrable Sorcerie this xviii yeares, and that she had sent the said Sathan to one Wardol of Braintree.
Key Places
Agnes Waterhouse's birthplace and home village. A small rural community in Essex, it was the setting for the alleged misdeeds for which she was accused.
The county town of Essex where the 1566 trial was held. Chelmsford became notorious as the epicenter of English witch trials, with several waves of prosecutions between 1566 and 1645.
Where the Witchcraft Act of 1563 was passed under Elizabeth I — the law that made Agnes Waterhouse's trial possible and legally binding.
A neighboring village mentioned in Agnes Waterhouse's confessions, to which she allegedly sent her familiar to harm a local resident named Wardol.
Gallery
Agnes Waterhouse
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