Legend has it Pex Hill was named after a lady many regarded as a witch who rambled around the area. Her name was apparently Peg, so it started as Pegs Hill eventually morphing into Pex Hill. The legend has it that the young maiden, called Margaret Pusey was rejected by her lover. In despair farmers daughter Peg went to see her lover who lived at Cronton Hall, and he slammed the door in her face. She went mad, and spent the rest of her days rambling around the hill that bears her name, regarded as some as a witch. All this happened around 1700, and it is said the ghost of poor old Peg still haunts Pex Hill. Another version is that Peg was enticed to the top of the hill by the young chap from Cronton Hall, who flung her down to her death. I was thinking of poor Peg and claims she was a witch earlier today as a penned an article about an event taking place in Devon this weekend.... This is a copy of that article:- New Campaign launched to clear the last three witches to be hanged in England Modern day witches will gather in England’s West Country on Sunday (August 31) to campaign to clear the names of the last three women to be hanged in Great Britain for the crime of witchcraft. Those public executions took place in 1682, but the fact it was more than three centuries ago has not dampened the enthusiasm among today’s witches for justice. Known as the Bideford Witches, the three women, Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles, were held as prisoners in terrible conditions in Rougemont Castle in the town of Exeter before being taken outside to a large tree where they were executed by hanging. Historians and a number of politicians – including the local Member of Parliament Ben Bradshaw (MP for Exeter) accept the three women were guilty of nothing more than being old and senile- and should be cleared of the crime. Lloyd was the first of the three to be arrested by the local constable in the Devon town of Bideford after she was accused of ‘communicating with the devil and using witchcraft to cause a woman to fall ill’. The other two ladies lived in the same house and were also arrested. They were convicted mainly on hearsay evidence after awaiting their trial for over a month until the justices arrived at Exeter. By then a baying mob were protesting outside the castle and demanding the women be hanged. Records show even the justices did not believe they were guilty, but were forced to respond to the demands of the angry mob. An appeal against the convictions was ruled out by the a government minister because the authorities feared civil unrest if the women were freed. They died just as the 17th century witch-hunts came to an end in England, making them the last three people hanged in the country for witchcraft. This Sunday’s event, the Grand Witches Tea Party, will take place at Rougemont Gardens in Exeter to commemorate the anniversary of the hangings. The organisers of the tea party, Jackie Juno who holds the title of the Grand Bard of Exeter and Selkie Shell hope the event will set a new world record for a gathering of witches. The current record is 765. A short solemn ceremony will take place around a plaque commemorating the deaths of the three witches, and flowers will be laid before the tea party gets underway. The new campaign for the trio to be legally pardoned follows an earlier bid two years ago when a petition was started. But that bid failed. Tea party organiser Jackie Juno, 51, hopes the campaign will persuade the authorities to take them seriously and reconsider the calls for a pardon. Juno said: By getting them pardoned we are making a statement that this bigoted behaviour should not be tolerated nowadays. It would prove that humanity could change for the better. It would also be laying the women to rest in a way that resolves the mistakes of history. In those times if you were unmarried or childless or sometimes simply owned a cat you were regarded with suspicion. To qualify for the official world record bid attendees at the Grand Tea Party are told to wear a black pointy witches hat, black cloak and carry a broom. And to show modern day witches have a sense of fun, Juno adds: ladies, gentlemen and children, tis time to rev up your broomsticks, dust off your hats and lets get together and beat the record!” As long ago as 1604 the law in England was altered to replace hanging as a penalty for witchcraft instead of witches being ‘burned at the stake’, and in 1735 a new Witchcraft Law was introduced, with fines or prison as the most severe penalty. The last conviction for witchcraft was in the mid 20th century with the imprisonment for nine months of a lady in Scotland. That conviction led in the 1950s to the scrapping of the 1735 act.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 17:11:38 +0000
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