The St Osyth Witches is a common reference to the accusations of witchcraft surrounding Essex in 1582. A village near Brightlingsea in Essex, St Osyth was home to fourteen women who were put on trial for witchcraft. The incident that sparked these accusations of witchcraft, as was commonly the cause, was a village disagreement which was blown out of proportion and exaggerated to a large enough scale to end in the death of a portion of the accused.
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As it was like in many cases the persons accused were people who were loners or didn't run parallel with the expectations of society. The first to be accused was a woman called Ursula Kemp, a woman of local origins, who made a living through her skills as a midwife and a healer. It was through her reputation of being able to undo curses that had been placed upon people by the means of witchcraft that lead to her own accusation of witchcraft by Grace Thurlowe.
These trials in particular are renowned for their use of child witnesses who were under the official age that a person can be allowed to give evidence at. This was a trait that did catch on and continued after these trials. An example of this was Ursula Kempe's eight year old son, partly because of her son's testimony and partly because of the court's promise to treat her with clemency, she confessed to the art of witchcraft, and in this confession as was often the case she implicated others that she knew.
The accusations ranged from minor effects such as preventing beer from brewing to serious cases such as causing a death through the means of sorcery, usually ending in execution.
When the trial ended Kempe was executed by hanging along with Elizabeth Bennet, who was found guilty of murdering four people through witchcraft and confessed to having two familiars.