WitchFamous
The Witchfinder's Vicar
Eighty years old, sleepless, and accused of sinking ships.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Village church and a sign showing the hanged vicar
- Legend from
- Civil War, 1645
- Tone
- Dark history
Brandeston: the vicar here was eighty when the Witchfinder came. They kept him awake until he confessed to sinking a ship.
John Lowes became vicar of Brandeston in 1596 and served for half a century, but quarrelled with his parishioners. When Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witchfinder General, came to Suffolk, the old man, now about eighty, was accused of witchcraft. He was swum in the moat at Framlingham Castle and kept awake for days and nights on end until he confessed to sinking a ship off Harwich by sorcery. At Bury St Edmunds he was condemned with dozens of others. Denied a minister, he is said to have read his own burial service on the way to the gallows. His hanging figure is shown on the village sign.