Magical sleuths battled with law over witch claims
BBCFears around witchcraft gripped people in the 16th and 17th Centuries with many trials leading to the deaths of those accused of casting spells and curses.
Mass executions spread throughout Europe from the early 1500s as "witchcraft panic" took hold of the public and historians say tens of thousands, mostly women, were executed.
But research has shown it was not just "bad witches" who made a pact with the devil to use supernatural powers for evil deeds who ended up in the dock.
So-called service magicians, also known as "cunning folk", would earn their money by using "good magic" to carry out tasks such as solving a crime or finding lost items.
Mark Stoyle, a professor of early modern history at the University of Southampton and author of Witchcraft in Exeter - 1558-1666, said the amateur sleuths - who could be a witch or a wizard - were their era's equivalent to Magnum PI and Miss Marple.
"There were no private investigators back then, but if you suspected someone, or a group had stolen your purse or made off with your silver spoons, you could go to a local service magician and give them the name of the suspects," Stoyle said.
He said the magicians than used their occult art to say who they believed had committed the crime.
'Rebellion' concerns
Stoyle said some service magicians got into trouble with the law in Exeter.
In the 1680s, the Devon city was the last place to execute people for witchcraft in England.
Stoyle said it was unclear why witch trials continued for a longer period in Exeter, compared to other parts of the country, but evidence suggested the city's people were very concerned about witchcraft.
"The popular clamour and the anger in the streets against these alleged witches was so great that the judges feared if they reprieved them, there might be some sort of mutiny or rebellion," he said.
The cases included Exeter magistrate Ignatius Jurdain's attempt in 1629 to prosecute a widow called Christabel Robyns who was accused of using witchcraft to find missing silver spoons and a pewter jug.
The efforts of Jurdain, who Stoyle said was known to be a "man of unbending religious zeal", were eventually quashed by Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench - one of the highest legal officers in England at the time.
Another case involved a man called John Blachett who was trying to trace a hood lost at The Bull Inn in the St Paul's area of Exeter in 1666.
He told his client, Peter Pitts, the hood was in a neighbour's house, but a search of the property found nothing.
It led to Blachett to be put in front of magistrates accused of "certain devilish and hateful arts", but the evidence did not convince the jury to convict him.
Stoyle said: "The plight of the service magicians underlines just how deeply rooted these feelings ran and the lengths to which some local authority figures would go to tackle witchcraft in their city."
According to Jersey Heritage, from 1500 to 1660, between 50,000 and 80,000 people believed to be witches were executed, with about 80% of them women.
Eventually the idea of these trials faded away with judges urging juries to acquit those who stood before them accused of being witches - but some carried on with the legal procedure.
Jersey Heritage said the Channel Islands had been described as the "witch hunting capital of Atlantic Europe" proportionate to their size.
"Between the 1560s and 1660s, when the island had a population of around 10,000, there were at least 65 witch trials that came before Jersey's Royal Court with 33 leading to execution and eight to banishment," the charity said.
Among the trials included a case involving five people accused of sorcery between October and December 1591, with four of the defendants executed.
Accounts of the trial say Symon Vauldin of St Brelade, one of the defendants, confessed to the crimes which included having familiar communications with the devil in the forms of a cat and crow.
Mike Lowe from Guernsey Museums said there were a number of stories from the island related to witches.
These included the "witch of Cobo", who haunted a cottage by flying down the chimney and causing all sorts of grief.
He said many of the stories around witchcraft had a similar formula.
"It quite often starts with someone encountering an old person or beggar - not necessarily always a women," Lowe said.
"They get turned down and told they can't have a share of my milk, then later bad things start happening to them and they believe they've been hexed or cursed by this person."
'Special and powerful'
Stoyle said right up until World War Two, witches were seen by most people as being "absolutely evil and bad", but there had been a turnaround.
"In the media, if you think of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Hermione Grainger from Harry Potter, these are very much witches as heroines and I think that's the modern imagining of the witch," he added.
Events including the Cornwall Witch Fest, held on 24 October at the Eden Project, are also being held to bring people who identify as witches or enjoyed the culture.
Meghan Field, who hosted workshops at Cornwall Witch Fest, said the community was strong and she was "really grateful" to be part of it.
"It's not something that happen everywhere in the world and there's still probably people who can't be out and proud as a witch, so it is something incredibly special and powerful," Field said.
