Born: Unknown, Ireland (assumed)
Died: 1661 (possibly)
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Elaine Murphy. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Newton, Florence (d. 1661?), alleged witch, was tried for witchcraft in Youghal, Co. Cork, in 1661. By order of Richard Myre, mayor of Youghal, she was arrested on 24 March 1661 and committed to Youghal prison. She was accused of bewitching Mary Langdon, a servant at the home of John Pyne in the town. Described as an old woman, she was tried on 11 September 1661 at the Cork assizes, where the presiding judge was Sir William Aston. The case excited an extraordinary amount of interest, with Sir William Domvile, the recently appointed Irish attorney general, conducting the prosecution. The trial proceeded with the prisoner pleading not guilty and the alleged victim, having been sworn, acknowledging that she had known Newton for at least three or four years. Langdon claimed she was bewitched shortly after she had refused to give the accused some of her employer’s beef at Christmas time. In January 1661, when the accused kissed her and claimed she wished to forget the earlier trouble between them, Langdon maintained she became subject to fits or trances of such violence that three or four men could not hold her down. During the fits she experienced bouts of vomiting needles, straw and pins, and reported having small stones fall on her, which immediately vanished. She claimed these episodes ceased when the accused was secured in bolts in prison.
A number of witnesses from the town testified in support of Langdon’s accusations. These included her employer, John Pyne, a bailiff of Youghal, who most fully corroborated her story. Another witness, Nicholas Pyne, also a native of Youghal, was possibly Nicholas Pyne (d. 1670), the father of Sir Richard Pyne (1644–1709), who was appointed chief justice of the Irish court of common pleas in 1691. He visited Newton in prison and gave evidence that she denied having bewitched Langdon, though she admitted that she may have ‘overlooked’ her but maintained that this would not have harmed her. ‘Overlooking’ was comparable to what was known in parts of Ireland as a ‘fairy stroke’, and Newton named two other women in the town who were capable of this. She also confirmed to Pyne that she was visited by her spirit, or familiar, in the shape of a greyhound.
When the mayor suggested subjecting all three women to a water test to establish if they were witches, Newton then admitted to having caused harm to the servant by ‘overlooking’. She was visited in prison by Valentine Greatrakes, the healer, who also undertook various tests to determine if she was a witch. While she was in prison, in April 1661 Newton was alleged to have bewitched and caused the death of David Jones who, together with a friend, had visited her one night in prison. As it was believed witches could not recite the Lord’s Prayer, Jones tried unsuccessfully to teach her, for which Newton claimed, in gratitude, she kissed his hand through the prison grate. On his return home, he took ill, and he died twelve days later.
An account of the trial was published in Sudducasmus triumphatics, or a full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions, by Joseph Glanville, chaplain to Charles II. A report of the proceedings was communicated to Glanville by Valentine Greatrakes, who obtained the judge’s notes and was himself a witness at the trial. The outcome remains unknown but, in view of the weight of evidence against her, Newton was probably convicted and punished by either hanging or burning, though no details of her execution have come to light. The case achieved some notoriety at the time, evidenced by the presence of the attorney general, the interest of Glanville and the reports of Greatrakes telling of the case at Lord Fingal’s house in Dublin.