One of the oldest monuments in St Mary’s church, Kintbury is a brass situated to the right of the altar commemorating John and Alice Gunter. John died in 1598 and according to the inscription on the brass, there is a similar monument in Sisister ( the old name for Cirencester in Gloucestershire ) where Alice died.
For all we know, John and Alice lived a quiet life when they were in Kintbury. However, the same cannot be said for other family members who achieved a certain notoriety during their lifetime.
Anne Gunter, the youngest child of Brian Gunter, had been baptised in Hungerford in 1584. By 1598, Brian was lay rector at North Moreton, in the Vale of the White Horse.
There are several versions of what happened next but the main events of the story go something like this:
Some time in 1598, a football match was held in North Moreton. Back then, the sport did not enjoy the rules or regulations that we have today – a match could involve any number of people and take place over a very wide area, not a specified pitch. However, one aspect we are still familiar with today was the occasional outbreak of associated violence. It seems that, during the game, two brothers, John and Richard Gregory, along with Brian Gunter’s son, William, were involved in some sort of fight. Brian Gunter intervened, hitting Richard and John with the pommel of a dagger. As a result of the injuries caused by this, both brothers died.
Not surprisingly, the deaths of the brothers resulted in animosity between the Gregory and Gunter families. When Anne Gunter became ill in 1604 and then again the following year, Brian Gunter tried to blame Elizabeth Gregory along with Agnes Pepwell and her daughter Mary for causing Anne’s illness. This was, of course, at a time when many people believed in witches and witchcraft and it was not uncommon for certain women to be blamed when unexplained illnesses or deaths occurred in a village.
The wide range of symptoms which Anne was experiencing, including vomiting and fits, Brian Gunter maintained, were the result of her being bewitched. It is more likely, however, that these symptoms were the result of the toxic mixture including wine and salad oil which he had made his daughter drink.
Elizabeth Gregory and Mary Pepwell were tried for witchcraft at Abingdon in 1605. They were found not guilty.
Brian Gunter was not happy with this verdict and managed to take his grievance to the king, James I. James referred the case to the Archbishop of Canterbury who in turn referred it to Samuel Harsnett, an Anglican cleric who was later to become the Archbishop of York and someone known to be skeptical about the popular belief in witchcraft. The case was eventually heard in the Star Chamber, a court of appeal that sat in the Palace of Westminster.
When she was cross questioned, Anne admitted that her illness had been faked and that her father had persuaded her to play out the deception. It is thought that she was eventually acquitted since she had been coerced into cooperating with her father’s plot to discredit the Gregory family.
It is possible that Harsnett and other members of the church became involved in this case, taking it to the higher court, as they wanted to see an end to those profiting from exorcisms in which non existing “daemons” were “driven out” of gullible victims.
Further reading:
The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Football, Witchcraft, Murder and the King of England By James Sharp
Kintbury and Beyond 