Kirkby Malzeard & Laverton

The Trial of Janet Burniston 1639

Because Kirkby Malzeard lay in the Peculiar of Masham, certain cases of law, and records of marriages and wills, were dealt with by a local court, which met sometimes in Masham and sometimes in Kirkby.
On December 16th 1639, many were summoned to a court in St Andrew’s Church. One of these was Janet Burniston who was accused of having removed a dead man’s skull from the churchyard and laying it under Christopher Head ‘thinking to charm him to sleep’. The judge, in dismissing her, ‘abmonished her to bring the skull back into the churchyard again’.
This was shortly before the Civil War, when serious charges were brought against ‘recusants’ who did not observe the new services properly, and who were fined heavily or imprisoned.
Janet’s case was not concerned with the religious and political problems of the day, but with the age old problem of witchcraft. She was lucky to escape so lightly, for at the time witches were taken very seriously and even hounded to death by water or fire in the worst cases.
Two hundred years later such dreadful things would not have happened here, but belief in witches lingered on after a fashion. Things we buy from the chemist as beauty aids or medicines were concocted by old women with a knowledge of herbs, aroused suspicions. Perhaps this was a case with whoever was buried in ‘The Witches Grave’ on the north side of the churchyard, the part usually reserved for those who did not die in a state of grace. Or perhaps it is the odd shape of the gravestone, like a witches hat, that gave rise to the idea.
No one seems to know who was buried there in 1885, or why she was called a witch, but many people know that a witches grave is what it is, and you must walk across it thrice or else….
Text taken from a booklet printed in 1983 for a church fete, and written by Kate Bumstead.