The Devil's Neighbours, a New History of the East Anglian Witch-Hunt, Is Out Now

The Devil's Neighbours: Fear, Betrayal and the Witchfinder General: The East Anglian Witch-Hunt, Matthew Hopkins and the Witch Trials of 1645–1647 was published on 1 October 2026 by Histories and Castles. It is the latest book from Simon A. Williams, and it is available now on Amazon UK as a Kindle edition at £4.99 and a paperback at £11.99.

The book follows the East Anglian witch-hunt from one accusation in Essex in March 1645 to a campaign that reached Suffolk, Norfolk, the Isle of Ely and Huntingdonshire. More people stood trial together at Chelmsford that summer than at any earlier English witch trial. It draws on court records, legal archives and primary sources to ask how the hunt happened, who gained from it, and why it stopped. It looks at the wartime collapse of ordinary legal authority, at Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, who worked without any official legal office, and at the neighbours, magistrates and clergy who let them continue. It also follows the vicar John Gaule, whose sermons and 1646 book argued against the hunt.

"The accused in this story were real people, most of them poor women, and the people who named them were often their own neighbours," said Simon A. Williams. "I wanted to show how a hunt like this depends on ordinary parishes going along with it, and how much of what we think we know about Hopkins comes from a title he never held in any official capacity."

The book also takes on the legend of the Witchfinder General, including the story that Hopkins was swum and hanged as a witch himself. In fact he died in 1647. Students will find a timeline, a cast of characters and essay practice questions in the back matter, with a page mapping each chapter to Edexcel A-level History Option 33, The Witch Craze in Britain, Europe and North America. Readers who want the earlier chapter in the same story can also read Williams's book on the 1612 trials, The Pendle Witch Conspiracy, or his study of medieval justice, No Law for the Poor.

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