Glimpses of the Obscure: The Witch Trials of the Channel Islands

Abstract

The Channel Islands have been characterised as having ‘the dubious distinction of being, proportionate to their size, the witch-hunting capital of Atlantic Europe’.2 The figures bear this out: the main islands, Jersey and Guernsey, have areas of about 118 and sixty-four square kilometres respectively. Jersey has twelve parishes; Guernsey, ten. In the sixteenth century, the larger island probably had a population of 10,000 or more; the smaller something well under that number.3 Yet G.R. Balleine listed no fewer than sixty-five witch trials coming before Jersey’s Royal Court between the 1560s and 1660s, and although several trials proceeded no further than the indictment stage, thirty-three led to execution, while the Court condemned another eight people to perpetual banishment. Fifty-seven of the Jersey trials were of women.4 For Guernsey, notably the smaller island, the figures are still more shocking: Carey Curtis found record there in the period 1563–1649 of as many as seventy-six women and twenty-seven men brought before its Royal Court accused of witchcraft, resulting in fifty executions, and twenty-six banishments, for terms ranging from a period of years to life.5