Witch trials in the Channel Islands
Witch trials in Jersey and Guernsey from 1562 to 1661.
Last updated
The Channel Islands Witch Trials were a series of witch trials that took place in Jersey and Guernsey between 1562 and 1661. These trials are notable for their use of torture to extract confessions and for the severe punishments inflicted on those convicted, including execution by burning.
Quick Facts
- Location
- Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey)
- Period
- 1562–1661
- First trial in jersey
- Ann of St Brelade in 1562
- Notable execution
- Marie de Callais, burnt at the stake on 17 October 1617
Facts from the source article.
Background
The Reformation, beginning with the English Church’s break from Rome under Henry VIII between 1529 and 1537, triggered religious upheaval. In France, John Calvin’s ideas, published in 1536, led to his exile in Geneva and Strasbourg, where Calvinism took root in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Guernsey. Catholic persecution of non-believers drove Huguenots, members of the French Reformed Church, to seek refuge in the Channel Islands. These islands kept Roman Catholic priests for several reasons: their churches answered to the Catholic Diocese of Coutances, there was a lack of French-speaking Protestant clergy, and Mary I, a Catholic, ruled England from 1553 to 1558.
During her reign, some Protestants left the islands. Thomas Bertran, a Jersey minister, fled in 1556, and Guillaume de Beauvoir, a Guernsey merchant, became a Dean of the English Church in Geneva that same year, where John Knox and Christopher Goodman served as pastors. The influential Geneva Bible was first printed there in 1557. In Geneva, Calvin ordered arrests, torture, and executions; suspected witches were tortured and burned by Protestant leaders, though banishment was more common.
In 1556, under Mary I’s Marian persecutions, three women—sisters Guillemine Gilbert and Perotine Massey, along with their mother Catherine Cauchés—were tried for theft and acquitted. However, Perotine was married to a Calvinist minister, and all three were convicted of holding religious views opposed to church authorities. They were burned at the stake, with Perotine delivering a baby boy in the flames. These women became known as the Guernsey Martyrs.
When Mary I died and Elizabeth I took the throne, Huguenots arrived in the islands, bringing French-speaking Protestant Calvinist priests. The Bishop of Coutances lost authority when the Bishop of Winchester was appointed over the island churches, ending Catholic influence entirely.
Witch Trials
Between 1550 and 1650, Guernsey saw at least a hundred individuals accused of witchcraft. Authorities used torture to extract confessions, and those found guilty faced flogging, banishment, hanging, strangulation, or burning at the stake. In Jersey, historian George Reginald Balleine documented the witch trials, pointing to the Witches' Rock at St. Clement, though his credibility is doubted for being too trusting of torture-induced confessions. In Guernsey, those who confessed described the devil taking the form of a cat, dog, hare, rat, weasel, goat, or even a masked man in broad daylight.
Jersey's first recorded witch trial involved Ann of St Brelade in 1562. Paquette Le Vesconte, a Jersey native, had been arrested for witchcraft and banished, but she returned and continued using diabolical devices and spells. Rearrested, she admitted to partnering with the devil and committing countless crimes and homicides with his aid. Jean Morant, also from Jersey, confessed to a contract with the devil, sealed by a mark and pact, through which he had performed endless mischiefs, crimes, and homicides.
Symon Vaudin of Jersey confessed to frequent familiar intercourse and conversations with the devil, who appeared first as a cat and later as a crow. Marie Tougis, another Jersey woman, confessed to causing a child's death and bewitching a woman. In 1597, Peronelle Chevallier, wife of Robert Falla, was sentenced to be strangled at the execution post, then burned until her body was reduced to ash, with all her property confiscated for Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth Grandin of Jersey was arrested for witchcraft but released with a warning not to gad about the island.
Marie de Callais, from Calais Lane in St Martin, Guernsey, was convicted as a witch, part of a coven at Le Châté Rocquôine, and burned at the stake on 17 October 1617; two of her relatives were banished. Mary Blanche, from a respectable family in Les Blanches, St Martin, Guernsey, was condemned as a witch by Bailiff Amice de Carteret and died in October 1622.
More in Witch Trials in England
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Witch trials in the Channel Islands (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced