Im curious to know, how well does this film represent what Matthew Hopkins really got up to in the middle of the English Civil War? or is it pure fiction but based on a real person?
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When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk
I am in no way an authority on the English Civil War, (and hopefully someone will come along who knows a lot more about it than I), but my understanding is that Mathew Hopkins was indeed appointed Witchfinder General by Cromwell. He went about the country in search of witches, tortured, held trials, and executed the victims... I wonder if he came about a similar end as what is portrayed in the movie?
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Trying not to sound too pedantic here and no doubt failing miserably, pictures are hung, people are hanged.
The Long Walk stops every year, just once.
This film has a lot of truth to it and a lot of fiction. Hopkin's may have given himself the title Witchfinder General or the Puritan Parliament gave it to him.
He had more people working for him than in the movie (I think two men and two women) though John Stearne was indeed his assistant. The parts about John Lowes are based in fact though the love plot was added and Lowes was a lot older (in his 70s). The death of Hopkins in the film is fictitious as he died of an illness (though legends say he was subjected to his own witch trials and survived....thus making him a Witch!)
Regards,
The Count
Hopkins was a much younger man than Price was when he played that part.I think it's Vinnie's best performance.If he did indeed die of TB-which is likely,then his death was probably pretty long and drawn out and horrible-especially with the lack of decent treatment and pallitives back then.
The question that hangs around Hopkin's witchfinding career is-did he really believe in what he was doing,or was he just a ruthless chancer who had found a better way to make money than being a lawyer.The existence of witches was largely accepted and there were laws against it.Only in the eighteenth century did the "witch business" become a bad joke to the "age of reason".
For a wonderful account of Matthew Hopkins, read the book 'WITCHFINDERS A Seventeenth -Century English Tragedy' by Malcolm Gaskill.(John Murray publishers ISBN 0-7195-6121-3 )
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