The First English Witch?: Agnes Mylles and the Death of William Bayntun
Witchcraft: witches and devils dancing in a circle. Woodcut, 1720. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
In the spring of 1564, as Queen Elizabeth I's reign was still finding its footing, a tragedy unfolded in the Wiltshire countryside. A baby died and three women became implicated in his alleged ‘murder’ by supernatural means. Among them was Agnes Mylles, a widow from the village of Stanley, near Chippenham, who was to become the first recorded person to be executed for the crime of witchcraft in England. This is not a story found in popular histories of witchcraft. There are no flying broomsticks, no demonic pacts, no familiars. Instead, this is something far more human—a tale of toxic family relationships, female precarity, and the deadly intersection of new laws with old prejudices.
The Family
Agnes Bayntun, Bromham Church, Wiltshire. Photograph Louise Ryland-Epton
The Bayntuns had done very well from Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, acquiring estates including Stanley Abbey in north Wiltshire which they were transforming into a mansion set among elaborate gardens. But like many families, before and since, below the surface the Bayntuns were a family riven.
When Sir Andrew Bayntun died in February 1564, he left behind a likely forged will, the latest episode in twenty years of financial mismanagement and chaos that had followed him since he had inherited a fortune from his father. His brother Edward, to whom the estates were supposed to be entailed, inherited on Andrew’s death not a fortune but rather a legal mess, along with the pressure to produce a male heir, for only a male heir was allowed to inherit the Bayntun fortune. It was the only way, as Henry VIII had believed before him, that Edward’s own legacy could be secured.
Edward's wife Agnes Rice brought her own complications. Granddaughter of the Duke of Norfolk and cousin to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, daughter of a traitor, before her marriage she had a scandalous affair with a married man twenty years her senior. Agnes was an assertive woman who had fought for the inheritance bequeathed by her lover, once barring the gates of his mansion threatening death to anyone who tried to enter. But, now wed, the success of her marriage depended on her having a male heir. After ten years of marriage to Edward, with only daughters, a longed-for son, William, was finally born.
As the spring progressed, the stakes couldn't have been higher for Edward and Agnes Bayntun.
Death and Accusation
Just before Easter 1564, William Bayntun died. Infant mortality was tragically common and rarely mysterious. But in Tudor England, particularly for a family under such pressure, a supernatural explanation became plausible.
The timing was crucial. Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury had recently preached a sermon before the Queen calling for action against witches, declaring that ‘this kind of people...are marvellously increased within this your grace's realm.’ Parliament had lately passed a new witchcraft act in 1563—only the second such law in English history, and the first to be seriously enforced.
Agnes Mylles was everything that made someone vulnerable to witchcraft accusations: a widow, economically marginal, and somehow connected to the family (possibly as a servant or local healer). The surviving court records tell us frustratingly little about her background, but we can piece together something of her story from manorial documents. Her husband William had been a tenant of the Bayntuns. After his death, Agnes struggled to maintain their property. The records are then broken, but it appears she became obliged to earn her living.
Shortly after William Bayntun’s death, focus turned to Agnes Mylles’ role, and following an accusation, likely made by the child’s grief-stricken parents, that she had caused his death by witchcraft and the use of charms, she was taken many miles from her home to the county gaol at Fisherton just outside Salisbury.
The Bishop's Role
Bishop Jewel of Salisbury. Image Public Domain.
What makes this case particularly fascinating and perplexing to me is the involvement of Bishop Jewel himself. As both a church leader and secular justice, he heard Agnes's confession. This was the same man who had likely influenced the creation of England's witchcraft legislation, who believed even common healing charms were an abuse of ‘the word of God.’
But Jewel wasn't satisfied with a simple confession. Perhaps doubting the case, or influenced by his complex relationships with the Bayntun family (his friend Henry Sharington was in a legal battle with Edward Bayntun over inheritance), the Bishop called in a professional: Jane Marshe, a Somerset widow with a reputation as a ‘witchfinder.’
Professional witch hunters were rare in 16th-century England—this predates the more famous Matthew Hopkins by decades. Yet somehow Jane had built a reputation that stretched across county boundaries.
The Witchfinder's Dilemma
Jane Marshe's investigation only complicated matters. Before even visiting the scene of William’s death, she declared that Agnes Mylles had indeed murdered the baby—but at the ‘procurement and enticement’ of Dorothy Bayntun, the child's aunt. This accusation pointed to the real motive: if William died without Edward and Agnes having more sons, Dorothy's own sons would inherit the Bayntun estates.
The Bishop's reaction to Jane's testimony was extraordinary. Instead of proceeding with gathering evidence for an expanded case, he had the witchfinder imprisoned in his own jail for six months. Whether he thought her a witch, a charlatan or was frustrated by her inconvenient accusations against a family member is unclear, but his actions seem deeply problematic.
Meanwhile, Agnes Mylles, whose guilt was then deemed proven by the judges of the summer Assize court at Salisbury, was hanged.
A Cover-Up Unravels
The story didn't end with Agnes's execution. Dorothy Bayntun and her husband, Edward’s brother Henry launched a legal challenge, claiming the trial had been unjust. In prison, under what she claimed were threats and intimidation, from the Bishop’s bailiff and the friends of Dorothy Bayntun, Jane Marshe changed her story, and now alleged that Agnes Bayntun (the baby's mother) had paid her to implicate Dorothy.
This led to another legal battle, this time in the Court of Chancery, brought by Agnes and Edward Bayntun. Eventually, Jane returned to her original testimony, but the damage was done.
Dorothy was not punished, but she was tarnished. When The King of Arms came to record the family's genealogy in 1565, Henry Bayntun's marriage and children were conspicuously omitted—a form of social erasure that would echo through the centuries.
Significance
Agnes Mylles's case has been largely overlooked by historians, partly because the evidence survives in unusual sources like Chancery records rather than the standard Assize documents. It is a pity- this case is helpful to our understanding of how early witchcraft accusations actually worked in Tudor England. Agnes Mylles died not because of flying ointments or demonic pacts, but because she was poor, vulnerable, and convenient. This case wasn't simply about supernatural beliefs run wild, but about very earthly concerns: inheritance, family rivalry, and the vulnerability of marginal women in times of crisis. Her story reminds us that behind the sensational tales of supernatural evil, there were real women whose lives were destroyed by the deadly combination of superstition, law, and power. But there is more to her story. Agnes’ trial predates the first English ‘witchcraft pamphlet’ in 1566, The Examination and Confession of Certaine Wytches, which includes the case of Agnes Waterhouse, sometimes called the first person to be executed in England for witchcraft. Another woman, Elizabeth Lowys from Essex was also convicted in the summer of 1564, but, as she was pregnant, she was not executed until 1565. She too is cited as the first. Therefore, Agnes Mylles's execution following the summer assize in Salisbury 1564 is significant far beyond Wiltshire. Agnes Mylles deserves to be remembered not just as a historical first, but as a woman whose voice was silenced by those who held power over her - exactly the kind of story that needs telling.