I must admit it's a new one on me - not that I'm claiming to be a Matthew Hopkins expert or anything.

What's strikes me as being peculiar though is, if this has any foundation at all or was even widely believed to be true, I'm fairly sure the 'oh noes! Never again the Burning Times!!!1' crowd would have been all over it. Hopkins had some serious detractors towards the end of his career, I'm pretty sure that they'd similarly jumped at the chance to point the finger. I'm sure in the God-fearing environment that Hopkins exploited, accusations of child buggery were frowned upon as much as witchcraft.

Also, the idea that he'd rape young boys and threaten accuse them of witchcraft if they spoke out - which appears to a pretty vile variation on what appears to be a common paedophile tactic - creates a weird problem.

I'm happy to stand corrected but I'm not aware of Matthew Hopkins actually accusing young boys of witchcraft, which perhaps suggests they didn't speak out denouncing Hopkins. However, if they didn't speak out, how do people know he was having sex with young boys in the first place?