Halloween Special: Margery Jourdemayne, the Witch of Eye next Westminster

The conjuration from Henry VI (Act 1, Scene 4)
Wikimedia Commons

In 1441, three days before Halloween,  an elderly woman was convicted of witchcraft and burned alive at the stake. Known as 'The Witch of Eye',  Margery Jourdemayne had been found guilty of making a wax image of the king.

Margery Jourdemayne had spent several months in the cells of Windsor Castle for the crime of curing the sick with herbal potions, which earned her a reputation as a 'wise woman'. but was released when she promised to stop using her 'witches' charms and incantations.

I first met her while researching her unusual friendship with the Duchess of Gloucester, the subject of my book The Secret Diary of Eleanor Cobham.

Duke Humphrey of Gloucester had enemies, as he was the king's uncle and therefore the heir presumptive, if anything were to happen to King Henry.

In June 1441, three of Eleanor's servants, were accused of 'compassing the death of the king' by using astrology to forecast the date of his death.

Eleanor was also accused of employing the talents of Margery Jourdemayne to bewitch her husband the duke into loving her, and of making an effigy of the king:

How she in waxe by counsel of the witch,

An image made, crowned like a king,

… which dayly they did pytch

Against a fyre, that as the wax did melt,

So should his life consume away unfelt.

Margery Jourdemayne was condemned by a church court presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and burned at the stake at Smithfield. This was not a legal sentence at the time, as the crime of witchcraft was not officially recognised in 1441, although predicting the death of the king was treason.

Lady Eleanor's three servants were also convicted. Roger Bolingbroke was hanged, drawn, and quartered, while Thomas Southwell died suddenly in prison of suspected poisoning, perhaps to escape a worse fate. The third, named John Home, was allowed a royal pardon for confessing to witnessing the witchcraft.

Lady Eleanor was imprisoned for life at Beaumaris Castle on the Welsh island of Anglesey, which is where she wrote her secret diary.... discovered by me centuries later.

Tony Riches