The wonders of the invisible world in Bury St. Edmunds

In my mid-teens I attended Herringswell Manor School, an international boarding school in the depths of East Anglia in England.  I have wonderful memories of the place and the people, basically 120 third-culture kids, children of expatriate executives from around the world.  

I came across a reference to a book, A Tryal of Witches, at the Assizes Held at Bury St. Edmonds for the County of Suffolk; on the Tenth day of March, 1664. Before Sir Matthew Hale Kt. Lord Chief Baron of His Majesties Court of Exchequer.

Click to enlarge.

That led me to the Bury St Edmunds Witch Trials.

The Bury St Edmunds witch trials were a series of trials conducted intermittently between the years 1599 and 1694 in the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England.

Two specific trials in 1645 and 1662 became historically well known. The 1645 trial "facilitated" by the Witchfinder General saw 18 people executed in one day. The judgment by the future Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Sir Matthew Hale in the 1662 trial acted as a powerful influence on the continuing persecution of witches in England and similar persecutions in the American Colonies.

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This case became a model for, and was referenced in, the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. Clergyman Cotton Mather in a book promoting the on-going trials in 1692 [circular reference] The Wonders of the Invisible World, specifically draws attention to the Suffolk trial:

We may see the witchcrafts here most exactly resemble the witchcrafts there;... And it is here the rather mentioned, because it was a trial much considered by the judges of New England .

Cotton Mather's father, Clergyman Increase Mather was President of Harvard College during the trials at Salem (he was awarded Harvard's first doctorate during this time) and he also mentions the trials at Bury as a precedent in a work dated 3 October 1692.

Clergyman John Hale, writing five years after the Salem trials, notes that the Salem area clergy and judges consulted and referenced seven different works including an earlier (1689) work by Cotton Mather Memorable Providences and Sir Matthew Hale's description of the Suffolk trials A Tryal of Witches.

Bury St Edmunds is a short ten miles from Herringswell and we often were deposited there on a Saturday as our once a week contact with the outside world.  While I knew of the witch trials in England and East Anglia, I am not certain I was ever aware of the role of Bury St. Edmunds.  

Given that I visited historic churches and museums on those long ago Saturdays, I do not recall ever seeing any mention of witch trials.  However, as interesting as those might have been from an historical angle, I suppose I can understand why the City elders might not have chosen to make it a mainstay of any sort of tourist scheme.