John Stearne: The Suffolk Witch Hunter Who Worked with Matthew Hopkins

Often overshadowed by Matthew Hopkins, John Stearne was an important figure in the East Anglian witch hunts of the 1640s. Born in Suffolk and later based at Lawshall near Bury St Edmunds, Stearne worked alongside Hopkins during a period of intense witch-hunting across East Anglia.

Stearne was involved in the 1645 witch-hunt that brought around 140 people from across Suffolk to Bury St Edmunds for examination and trial. Eighteen people were executed on 27 August 1645, making it one of the largest witch-hunting episodes recorded in England.

The events formed part of a wider wave of witch-hunting across East Anglia, in which Stearne and Hopkins played prominent roles.

Little is known about his early life, but by the 1640s he had become a professional witch hunter, operating during a period of intense superstition and social unrest in East Anglia.

Alongside Matthew Hopkins, Stearne investigated, interrogated, and accused dozens of women (and some men) of witchcraft. He details the witches' confessions in a publication he wrote called 'A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft' published in 1648. Their methods included prolonged questioning, searching for supposed “witch marks” and recording alleged confessions.

He began as an independent witch-hunter in Suffolk, later collaborating with Hopkins. He was involved in gathering accusations, interrogating suspects, and documenting 'evidence' of witchcraft. While Hopkins became known as the ‘Witchfinder General’, Stearne was also closely involved in investigating accusations and questioning suspects. Hopkins and Stearne were paid for their work as witch-hunters, providing them with a financial incentive to continue their investigations.

Their activities contributed to a wider wave of witch-hunting across East Anglia, during which large numbers of people were accused and many were executed.

After the height of his witch-hunting career with Matthew Hopkins in the 1640s, Stearne largely retreated from public witch-finding. Unlike Hopkins, who died young (likely of tuberculosis in 1647), Stearne survived the intense period of witch trials.

Records suggest he returned to a more ordinary life in Suffolk, possibly continuing as a landowner or farmer near Lawshall.

Historian Scott Eaton has carried out extensive research into Stearne and his 1648 publication. His doctoral research developed into the book John Stearne’s Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft: Text, Context and Afterlife, published by Routledge in 2020.

In an interview with History Journal, Eaton highlights that "Stearne was supported by local communities and was acting out of a sense of religious duty – rather than for more personal reasons – the monograph sheds a new light on his motives for witch-finding, and indeed why the witch-hunt spread so rapidly in the eastern counties. In this regard, the mechanics of the witch-hunt in East Anglia could be relevant to understanding, and perhaps preventing, modern witch-hunts that occur in the likes of Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Papua New Guinea."

Eaton also discovered that some of the few remaining copies of Stearne's 'A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft' are in American repositories.