Elizabeth Sawyer (died 1621) was a convicted witch during the reign of James I of England.
She lived in Winchmore Hill. She was rumoured to be a witch long before she was charged. Her penchant for oaths and blasphemies had made her suspect, and was claimed to have provided the Devil with his first access to her.
She was married, and had children. She was "pale faced with a stoop which left her body 'bending together'." (due to Reverend Henry Goodcole, sig. A4v). She had one eye, which Goodcole states she shared with at least one of her unknown parents. [1]
She was accused of having caused the death of Agnes Ratcleife by use of magic, after Ratcleife had struck one of Sawyer's sows that was eating her soap.
It was said that a demon, in the form of a dog named Tom, had appeared before her and seduced her into serving Satan. The Devil was sometimes black and sometimes white, and visited her three times a week as a familiar. [2]
Women were enlisted by the court to search for the witch's mark, and claimed to have found it near Sawyer's anus. [2] This evidently had a strong effect in swinging the jury to conviction. She was judged guilty and hanged for witchcraft in 1621. No records of the trial survive.
The story was the inspiration for Thomas Dekker's play, The Witch of Edmonton . [3]
Her case inspired now lost ballads, and as her trial was one of the most well-publicized witch trials in early-seventeenth-century England, it has been described in a famous pamphlet by the Reverend Henry Goodcole: The Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch (1621). [4]
The play and pamphlet now reveal much about women like Elizabeth Sawyer, who was poor, elderly, and living on the fringes of her community. They say much about how such women might have been often seen in early modern England.
Inspired by her, in 2023 Elizabeth Hand wrote A Haunting on the Hill . [5]
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