Witch Hunter John Stearne

John Stearne was a key associate of the notorious Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled 'Witchfinder General', and played a pivotal role in the 17th-century Bury St Edmunds witch hunts and beyond.

He was born in Lawshall, a small village just a few miles from Bury St Edmunds. 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.

Stearne is often overshadowed by Matthew Hopkins, but he was an essential part of the witch-hunting machine. 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 claimed the title “Witchfinder General,” it is understood that Stearne often did much of the investigative work on the ground. Hopkins and Stearne were paid very well for obtaining convictions.

Together, they were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of accused witches in East Anglia. Their methods were brutal, relying on sleep deprivation, 'witch marks', and dubious confessions.

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 did his doctoral thesis on Stearne and his work since it was a unique text that had not yet received sustained study. Post-PhD, he continued the project, and published a book  'John Stearne’s Confirmation and discovery of witchcraft, Context and Afterlife' (Routledge) on Stearne and the history of his text.

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.