Fascinating and vivid. New StatesmanThoroughly researched. The SpectatorIntriguing. BBC History MagazineVividly told. BBC History RevealedA timely warning against persecution. Morning StarAstute and thoughtful. History TodayAn important work. All About HistoryWellresearched. The TabletOn the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682 a magpie came rasping rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance his servants and members of his family had within a matter of hours convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford it was said was a place of witches.Though pretty much worn away the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn ignored reviled and extinguished but never more than halfforgotten it seems that the memory of these three women and of their deeds and sufferings both real and imagined was transformed from canker to regret and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates in 1951 that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed and their names were chanted as both inspiration and incantation by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common.In this book John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.