The last person in England thought to have been sentenced to death for witchcraft may have survived, a historian has said.
Records show that Alice Molland was sentenced at Exeter Castle in Devon in 1685 for ‘bewitching’ three of her neighbours.
She was thought to have been executed the same year, following the execution of three other alleged witches – the ‘Bideford Three’ – in Exeter in 1682.
But Professor Mark Stoyle, a historian at the University of Southampton, says that he’s uncovered evidence that ‘Alice’ was never ‘Alice’ at all – and the real woman survived.
Professor Stoyle said: “Court records from the 17th century were written in Latin, and in this form it would only have taken a single mis-stroke of the clerk of the court’s pen to transform ‘Avicia’ (Avis) into ‘Alicia’ (Alice).
“Almost nothing is known about Alice’s life and attempts to illuminate it have failed. So when I saw reference to an ‘Avis’ Molland in local archives – knowing Molland was an unusual name in Exeter – I was struck by its close resemblance. I immediately asked myself; did ‘Alice’ Molland ever exist? Is Alice, in fact, Avis?
“Independent of my investigations, fellow historian Peter Elmer also noted this possibility in an article footnote, which spurred me on to try and find out more.”
Through studying local records, Professor Stoyle has found out more about Avis’ life. She married Cornelius Molland at Exeter Cathedral in 1663. The couple had several children. In 1667, they were brought before city magistrates accused of enticing a boy to steal tobacco, but the case was dismissed.
It's possible this alleged crime was due to the family struggling to make ends meet, because although Cornelius was a freeman of the city, the family were listed among the poorest. Sadly, over a period of ten years, three of their children died and at some point, Cornelius also died, leaving Avis a widow.
“By the time of the 1685 trial, Avis Molland was a poor, middle aged widow, who was burdened with loss – precisely the kind of woman who was likely to be accused of witchcraft in early modern England,” Professor Stoyle said.
There is also circumstantial evidence connecting Avis with imprisonment at Exeter Castle. She is noted in court records in 1685 testifying against a woman accused of predicting an uprising of 2,500 weavers in a civil rebellion spreading across the West Country. It is possible Avis overheard this woman boasting about the insurrection while visiting her husband who was imprisoned in the castle for rioting. If this is the case, then it places Avis in jail there around the time of ‘Alice’s’ trial.
If ‘Alice’ was Avis, then the sentence of death was not carried out. Parish registers show that Avis Molland died in 1693. This would make the Bideford Three – Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles – the last people executed for witchcraft in England.
Professor Stoyle said: “The lack of records for Alice’s life, and the circumstantial evidence in support of the case for Avis being our condemned woman points to a witch that lived! But the truth is, despite all my diligent searching, we may never know for sure whether history has got it wrong.”
Professor Mark Stoyle’s full article ‘In Search of Alice Molland: An English Witchcraft Will o’ the Wisp’ is due for publication in the November edition of The Historian, the magazine of the Historical Association.
