This is the seventh in the Friends of West Hunsbury Parks series of monthly Fun Facts about the local area. Thank  you for your comments on the previous Fun Facts. Please keep them coming if you find this one interesting.

The Northamptonshire Witch trials in 1612 pre-dated the more famous trials in Pendle, Lancashire, by several months. 1 man and 4 women stood trial in Northampton and were subsequently executed. The trials are notable for being one of the first known uses in Britain of ‘water dunking’ as a Trial By Ordeal (in which if you sink, you are innocent, but if you float then you are a witch). A ducking stool was commonly used for this Trial, although if one was not available then the accused would simply be tied to a rope and thrown into a pond or river, so that the body could be retrieved after the trial was concluded.

Some argued that witches floated because they had renounced baptism when entering the Devil’s service. King James VI of Scotland argued that water was so pure an element that it repelled the guilty, while others claimed that witches were supernaturally light and recommended weighing them as an alternative to dunking them. This procedure and its status as an alternative to dunking were parodied in the 1975 film ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’.

Although there is no known connection to Hunsbury Hill Iron Age Hillfort, one of 7 other women accused in 1612 of witchcraft (but not known to have been executed or trialled) was one Joan Lucas. As Fun Fact followers will recall, a Mrs. Lucas was burnt at the stake in the Hillfort in 1631 for allegedly poisoning her husband.

Is this coincidence, or was Mrs. Lucas the same Joan Lucas who was accused of witchcraft in 1612 ?