Witches of Essex - Professor Alice Roberts Interview

Witches of Essex is lifting the lid on the dark and troubled history of the area – home to the murder of hundreds of people accused of witchcraft.

Rylan Clark is now joining forces with Professor Alice Roberts to show just how much the trials have affected not just the area, but British and global history.

Spurred on by the work of James I, The Chelmsford Witch Trials started in 1566, Rylan and Professor Alice track the hundred years that follow, and just how far people would go to rid the world of “witches” – and who exactly they would target.

What they discover is something far more brutal and tragic than either could have expected.

Speaking ahead of the series, the historical presenter and academic shares what it was like forming an unlikely pairing with Rylan, what shocked her about discovering this unknown part of British history, and how she feels the stories of those involved are still relevant today.

I've been interested in witch trials for a while. I think it's a really fascinating story - it's social - but it's also political. I really wanted to have a chance to understand why it happened. That’s what we’re trying to do over this three-part series: obviously document three stories, one based around a particular family, one about a community tearing itself apart, and another following the early career of the dreadful Matthew Hopkins, the ‘Witchfinder General’. I wanted to understand the wider context and try to understand what was really happening.

I've always been interested in history. When I was a kid I was a member of the local museum club. I've always had a really strong, passionate interest in history, particularly in archaeology - the physical nature of it. I like the way that the history we’re looking at in this series is very much physically embedded in the landscape.

I'm fascinated by all periods of history - the more time you spend with it, the more fascinating it gets. It's like travel - when you travel to other cultures, you learn about the diversity of human experience. Travel broadens the mind and exposes you to other cultures. It makes you look at your own situation, your own culture in a different way as well, which I think is very healthy.

I think history does the same thing. It's time-travelling. You're meeting people from other cultures, understanding the processes by which we've come to where we are today, but also using history as something to give you perspective on your own situation today: a lens to look at the modern world with, as well.

We combine drama reconstruction with expert interviews and a ‘forensic’ investigation in our incident room. I think bringing all of those different aspects together is part of what makes the show different. And then this unlikely pairing of Rylan and I, which I think works so well. We’re delving into a fascinating - and chilling - period of history, but also exploring new ways of engaging people with that history.

That's an essential part of the investigation that we embark on in this series. We talk to specialists in medical and forensic history, and experts in the broader historical context - and it’s almost like interrogating witnesses.

We have the story of the trials themselves as a starting point, but then there’s the investigative element where we're actually going out and collecting evidence from witnesses in the 21st century to try to understand what happened. It’s almost like putting the trials on trial.

This is serious, grim and troubling history, and we approach it in a respectful way. These are terrible episodes in history. We are talking about misogyny. We're talking about torture. We're talking about state-sponsored violence against women.

There are moments of levity between me and Rylan, of course, as we're going about our investigations, but essentially we approach the history in a serious way.

I wanted to understand how society could go so badly wrong - and I think that there are lessons for us today. If you can understand processes in the past, perhaps you have a better chance of understanding processes in the present. I wanted to understand how that society ended up scapegoating vulnerable people who really had no voice, or had an inadequate voice, when presented with people who were highly educated and very good at constructing arguments against them.

I was also interested in how much the whole process involved superstition. I suppose we would call it fake news today, and propaganda playing on people's fears. And so the series is also an investigation into how you stoke fear and division within a society. I think there are lessons to be learned in terms of what was happening politically and socially at the time.

And obviously, the wider context is terribly important. The context of the earlier witch trials, the fact that it's all playing out against the background of the reformation where there are political, religious factions vying for power. A lot of the antipathy towards witches seems to come from that clash between supporters of Catholicism and Protestantism. Those two political factions were vying to outdo each other, and how horrible they could be to women.

The different political factions were trying to encourage in-group loyalty while trying to encourage suspicion and fear of the others. And these poor women end up being the scapegoats. It's shocking.

We hadn’t met before this project, but we just hit the ground running. We had fun making this series - even though it's such a serious subject. We each brought different perspectives on these stories. I think we make a good team.

We had a brief chat, and then we were straight into filming. But when you're doing this kind of filming, you've got a job to do in terms of finding things out, and I think we're both quite curious. We're not presenting something scripted - we are genuinely investigating - that’s how we made the series. As an academic, working like this still makes me a little bit nervous. I have to work with people that I really know and trust very well - like series writer and director Paul Olding.

Keeping myself in the dark is not something which I'm used to doing as an academic. My natural tendency would be to brief myself very well before I set off. But I think that television documentaries work best when they’re as authentic as possible - and for me, that means not knowing in advance what I’m going to learn in the process of making a series. I want to make authentic, honest and engaging television where I am genuinely exploring leads.

I was trying to explain to Rylan what working with Paul Olding was like. First of all, it's fun, and secondly, he will put you in situations which are weird and wonderful. It’s like an escape room. Paul, with his team, constructed quite a complex escape room for me and Rylan to try and find our way out of. And finding our way out of it involves that whole process of interviewing various experts and drawing those threads together.

Well, I didn't know the geography of Essex at all, so it was good to have someone with local knowledge. Wherever we went, Rylan would have little stories and anecdotes about various different places. But Rylan’s also passionately interested in history and very curious. I think that kind of combined curiosity is probably what made it really work.

You always learn something from working with other people. I like watching how other presenters approach an interview because it's quite a technical skill - a learned craft. I trained as a doctor originally and I’ve always thought that interviewing people is very much like taking a medical history from a patient - it’s important to put contributors at ease, and give them space to express themselves - to see them at their best.

It was interesting to see how Rylan approached interviews - he’s charming and a consummate professional. We also had a lot of fun working together. He does have a tendency to burst into song the whole time – off-camera – like you're in some kind of cockney musical. And of course I joined in!

I kept myself in the dark as much as I possibly could, so I didn't know the details of these trials at all. I knew the kind of broad overview, the historical background, and the fact that there was a level of superstition about witches running through every layer of society all the way up to King James I. He even wrote his own book, “Daemonology”, about it. And I knew of Matthew Hopkins, but I didn't know the specifics of the trials. So it was really interesting to dig into the details.

I think what surprised me most about the series was how men in powerful positions manipulated people to create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. There's a lot of naked ambition in there as well for some of these men, undoubtedly.

I don't think they all believed in what they're doing - they may not have believed that the women that they're interrogating were actually witches, even - but they believe in the benefit to them of creating scapegoats in those communities. And it’s chilling that there was just nothing stopping them.

I found that surprising and yet not surprising, because obviously you knew this had happened. I constantly found myself asking, why didn't someone stop them at that point? Why didn't someone turn around and say, don't be ridiculous, of course these women aren’t witches; of course we’re not going to hang this woman?

It's all upsetting, especially reading the details of what was actually done to the women, in prison, at their trials and their executions. Records of the trials were published in chapbooks, which are like little gossipy magazines - people were enjoying reading about them. You've got the details of the trial, and you can see the way that it's almost like a spider weaving a web around these women; you can see the way that they're becoming entrapped.

There are very clever accusers who create a trap for them to walk into. And then sometimes you've got women who are admitting to witchcraft - including one particular mother who's trying to protect her daughter. There's a nightmarish element to it - that there is no authority that they can turn to help them.

In lots of different ways. Shakespeare was quite influential with his characterisation of witches in Macbeth. James I’s Daemonology is essentially about how to spot a witch - and what to do when you find one. There are suggestions that witches will have familiars with them - animals that are doing their bidding as well; that they are casting spells, and meeting in darkness.

When you look at the women who were being accused, they're generally poor, and they're not well educated. They were more likely to be targeted if they were single - if they didn't have a man to speak for them or protect them, or if they were lesbians.

There’s the popular caricature of witches, and then the reality - the people who are actually being accused of witchcraft are vulnerable and marginalised people in society. They are people who were not fitting in with a perfect ideal of what society should be in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - and were therefore disposable. It's shocking.

Superstition is important. When you look at what's being discussed, what's being written down in these centuries, it is quite superstitious. It's bizarre, of course, because the seventeenth century is also when you have the Enlightenment. Just look at James I - on the one hand, he is creating the Royal Society and very much interested in sponsoring the advancement of science - but on the other hand, he's writing a book about witches.

But I don’t think superstition is enough on its own. I think politics are absolutely crucial: the fact that you've got those different political, religious factions vying for power, and that one way of doing that is to find scapegoats in society. Perhaps we can still see that today. There are still quite big structural problems with society today - we still have plenty of inequality and poverty.

Definitely - the victims in Essex were mainly women. It's poor women. It's single women. It's lesbians. It is misogyny writ large. What made you pick these three cases for the series? The team chose three quite different stories - to help us understand the reasons for this phenomenon. We wanted to explore different aspects in each of those trials - and the focus shifts from the victims to the perpetrators as well.

I think it was important to look at how whole families could be involved and could be accused. We looked at the people who were actually doing the accusing and explored potential motives. One famous accuser was of course Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed ‘Witchfinder General’. He was a relatively young man who seemed to have quite a deep-seated hatred of women.

He would sit in pubs listening to people talking, writing it all down, collecting his ‘evidence’ against women he would accuse of being witches. And no-one stopped him.

Oh, that's an interesting question. I think the common theme is people who are vying for power and preying on a vulnerable minority as a way of accruing more power to themselves. This was the common thread that I can see running through it all.

I suppose you can look back on it and think - they were much more superstitious than we are today, but then we still have plenty of superstitions today. We can see the divisiveness of society back then, at a time when people could be killed for not following the right religion, as the state flip-flopped between Protestantism and Catholicism. And I think that these divisions in society can be nurtured by powerful people who want more power.

I would argue that we've got a lot better. I think we have come a long way; we've had amazing rights revolutions over the last 150 years. We shouldn't talk ourselves into that position where we say, oh, we’re just the same. It's massively better today, largely because we are better protected by the law.

Our laws have improved so that we have much better protection for women, better protection for children, and for LGBT rights. But we also see how easy it is to roll back human rights advances, unfortunately. We mustn't be complacent. We must continue pressing forward.

I think we’d both like to work together again. We both finished this series thinking there's a lot more to do on witches and witch trials. I understand the witch hunts and the witch trials much better, and I understand the background to them.

I think that burning question I had at the start of why it happened - that’s resolved by the end of the three programmes. But I still think there's more, especially with Matthew Hopkins' book going off to Massachusetts. There might be a road trip to Salem at some point.

I've just published a new book, Domination, and I’m on tour with it through October and November. Domination is about another historical question that I had, which was, how did Christianity spread through the Roman Empire quite so quickly? Who was spreading it? And why?

It's a big investigative journey exploring the end of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. It takes readers on a trip from South Wales to Gaul, Constantinople and ancient Alexandria.

I’m starting to write a new book and putting the final touches to a few more TV documentaries, including Roman Empire by Train for Channel 4 - which is shaping up to be an epic series. Watch out for that in 2026!