England’s last condemned witch may have escaped execution

The last person in England thought to have been executed for witchcraft may in fact have been released from jail and avoided the gallows, according to research by a University of Southampton historian.

Professor Mark Stoyle believes a spelling error by a court official could mean scholars have overlooked evidence that suggests the accused woman wasn’t actually hanged, as history records, but instead lived on for years.

Alice Molland was sentenced at Exeter Castle, Devon in 1685 for ‘bewitching’ three of her neighbours. She was assumed to have been executed in the city’s Heavitree area in the same year.

For over a century, historians have largely agreed that Alice was indeed England’s last executed witch and a plaque commemorating her dubious honour, and the fate of three other women – the so called ‘Bideford witches’ – who were definitely hanged in Exeter in 1682,  can now be found near the spot where she was condemned.

However, Alice is an elusive, mysterious character. All we know about her is the fact that she was sentenced to death and now, newly uncovered evidence suggests it may not have been ‘Alice’ Molland who was condemned to execution at all, but actually a woman called ‘Avis’ Molland.

Professor Stoyle thinks a clerical error could have caused this confusion. He explains: “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.”

After a painstaking search of local court records, registers of births, deaths and marriages, and tax documents, Professor Stoyle uncovered several references to Avis. She was married to a man named Cornelius Molland in Exeter Cathedral in 1663 and went on to have several children. One was a baby girl named Elizabeth, born in 1667. In the same year, the couple 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,” comments Professor Stoyle.

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.

Avis died in 1693, with the parish register recording her passing on the 26 November – outliving her unintended alias by eight years. If Alice was a simple misspelling of Avis, this means neither were England’s last executed witch and that this title instead falls to one of the Bideford three – Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards or Mary Trembles – executed in 1682.

“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!” says Professor Stoyle. “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 – the UK’s voice for history.