Florence Newton

Florence Newton (died 1661) was an alleged Irish witch, known as the "Witch of Youghal", who died during what St John Seymour said was one of the most important examples of Irish witch trials.

Witch trial

Florence Newton was described as an old beggar woman in the town of Youghal. She was arrested and imprisoned on 24 March 1661. She was put on trial on 11 September 1661 at the summer Assizes for County Cork held in Cork city, for two offences under the Witchcraft Act 1586 (28 Eliz. 1. c. 2 (I)). Newton was accused of having enchanted Mary Longdon and employing sorcery to cause the death of David Jones.

The presiding judge was Sir William Aston, whose transcript of the trial survives and is the primary source for the affair. The Crown appears to have regarded the trial as one of some importance, as evidenced by the fact that Sir William Domville, the Attorney General for Ireland, travelled from Dublin to Cork to prosecute her in person. Witch trials were not common in Ireland: when Newton was put on trial, no witch trial had taken place in southern Ireland since the execution of two women in Kilkenny in 1578.

According to accounts of her trial, at Christmas of 1660, Newton was heard to mumble curses after she was denied a piece of beef at the house of John Pyne. Afterwards, she met an employee of Pyne, the maidservant Mary Longdon, on the street and bewitched her by "violently" kissed her. Longdon then became sick, and experienced fits, cramps, and visions. She also allegedly vomited horse nails, needles, pins, straw and wool and was pelted by stones that vanished when they hit the ground.

Sorcery was suspected, and a coven of witches was claimed to exist in the area. Longdon claimed that Newton was responsible for her illness. Newton was also accused of causing the death of her gaoler, David Jones, by sorcery, after he attempted to teacher her the Lords prayer. At Newton's trial, Jones' widow said that Newton had kissed the hand of Jones through the bars of a prison gate, and afterwards, he had become sick and died after having screamed the name of Newton on his death bed.

While Seymour in 1913 believed Newton had probably been convicted and executed, Andrew Sneddon in 2019 published proof that she had in fact died before the trial could be concluded.

See also

• Islandmagee witch trial
• Alice Kyteler

Sources

• Sneddon, Andrew (15 May 2013). Possessed By the Devil: The Real History of the Islandmagee Witches and Ireland's Only Mass Witchcraft Trial. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-8087-9.
• Sneddon, Andrew (November 2019). "Select document: Florence Newton's trial for witchcraft, Cork, 1661: Sir William Aston's transcript". Irish Historical Studies. 43 (164): 298–319. doi:10.1017/ihs.2019.55. S2CID 197849651.