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Title: THE LAST WITCHFINDER |  |
It is 1688 and Walter Stearne is the master pricker and Witchfinder-General for Mercia and East Anglia, a title he has given himself with visions of it becoming the Witchfinder-Royal. His fervour for the task is beyond question and it is only time, he feels, before his letter writing campaign bears fruit. William has taken his son Dunstan with him for his first hunt and so leaves his daughter, Jennet, in the care of her aunt, Isobel Mowbray.
Aunt Isobel has her own quest, to use the New Philosophy to give Witchfinding a rational basis, and teaches Jennet and her other charge, the daughter of a local minister, Newton's laws and tries to use Van Leeuwenhoek's new microscope design to search out signs of devilment that will provide incontrovertible proof of witchcraft. Her attempts to discover the evidence required in the flesh of witches' familiars runs foul of the preacher and Isobel herself is accused of witchcraft. Even worse, her experiments lead her to believe that there is no rational basis for the pricker's art.
William is not a man to let familial ties get in the way of his duty and he tries Isobel and uses his tried and true methods for testing for witchcraft, the pricking needle, the recital of the Pater Noster, watching for signs of a familiar, and of course dunking the accused in a river. William is convinced and despite his daughter's concerns, and her futile attempt to get Sir Isaac Newton to intervene on Reason's side, Isobel is tried and found guilty. Before her execution, Isobel extracts from Jennet her promise to build the argumentum grande against witchcraft.
And so begins the roller coaster ride as Jennet tries to realise her promise to her aunt, and grows from the young girl through womanhood in the process, struggling against superstition and her gender to be taken seriously.
THE LAST WITCHFINDER is at its core a story of the clash of Reason and Religion in the dawning of the Enlightenment with the witch trials and the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act as the most visible aspects of the old theology. While such a story could be dry and boring, James Morrow has used a number of clever artifices to bring the story to life and make it utterly fascinating.
The novel use of Newton's Principia Mathematica as the narrator to the improbable events of Jennets life, including being captured by Indians and marooned on a Caribbean island with Ben Franklin, makes THE LAST WITCHFINDER a sometimes bawdy, sometimes thoughtful but always entertaining and even enlightening tale. Thoroughly enjoyable and recommended reading for any lover of history, science, religion or just a damn good book.