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Ok, inspired by recent chats with Vyxen, here is a piece of unfinished research, a quest that I havent had time to pursue. If anyone can add to it; make suggestions, or even run with it… GREAT.
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ROBERT HUNTINGTON and Godstow.
1991 (Monday 19th August) I woke up after a very strange and heady dream, which I knew had been triggered by recent questing activities with my friend Richard Ward… (Three Crowns Quest at Godstow, near Oxford; 11th August.)
The dream…
… In the dream I had time-traveled back in time (I knew this even as I was dreaming (not an experience I have ever repeated in the 14 years since)) It was England, in the 1600’s but I wasn’t sure where I was. I found myself looking down onto a village (A birds eye view) looking at the rooftops of rustic buildings and the people going about their business.
In the main square of the village a wedding was about to take place. I saw the Bride all dressed in white but then the atmosphere felt very wrong. The bride screamed and ran off, with all the villagers chasing after her! She was running for her life out of the village.
From my ‘birds eye view’ I watched her run out of the village (to the western entrance) She came to a horrific sight; at the crossroads, next to a wood, which lead into her village, there was a real-life crucifixion scene! Outside the village, crucified upon a cross was the limp and lifeless body of a woman in a black dress (the yin to the brides’ yang) the bride fell down at the foot of the crucifixion and all the villagers surrounded her. Then, to my horror, the villagers started to attack the bride in a most sickening way, hacking at her with rural and agricultural implements! They massacred her in a fever of violence.
From the woods beyond the crucifixion came the sounds of soldiers approaching on horseback. This incoming noise startled the villagers and so they started running back to the village. I found myself no longer ‘in the air’ but standing on the ground, with the peasants running towards me, as they ran from the soldiers.
As one of the people ran past me I grabbed his arm and said ‘Why had this happened?’ and his response was “For Huntington, Robert Huntington!”
I then found myself back in the modern day, looking in a book of Witchcraft and found a series of old illustrations that depicted all the above……so ended the dream; one of my weirdest.
I told Richard about my dream but it didn’t seem to relate in anyway what so ever with any of our avenues of research so it was written down and filed away and forgotten. Forgotten until the following year. Back in the Godstow area (15th April 1992) Richard and I were looking at surrounding places to Godstow; we’d gone to a place called Stanton Harcourt because Richard had felt a pull towards a local feature called the ‘Pope’s Tower’. Whilst we were there we also took time to check out the local church. As we were doing so Richard declared “Oh my god, Yuri, come over here!”
Cemented into the wall, inside Stanton Harcourt church, is an ornate marble memorial to Sir Robert Huntington who died in 1685… I felt knocked off my feet.Still to this day this ‘Huntington’ thing has never been resolved. The statement “For Huntington, Robert Huntington!” is unclear as to whether the ‘for’ means that Huntington requested the killing took place or whether the ‘for’ meant that the deed was done as a protest or punishment to hurt Huntington. I still can’t decide.
I have never found a book on Witchcraft that depicts the scenes I dreamt of.
I was able to confirm a bit about Huntington’s life. He used to be an officer in Cromwell’s New Model Army and fought under Fairfax at the Battle of Naseby; but he later resigned from the New Model Army, disappointed by the Parliamentary view for the ‘new England’ Interestingly, it was Fairfax’s men (which likely included Huntington) who are responsible for destroying the Nunnery at Godstow… (They also went on to destroy (amongst many other sacred places) the church of St. Michael (at Burrow Mump, on the St. Michael Line; the nose of the Girt Dog of Langport.)Godstow was trashed in 1645, which was the year of all years for witchcraft mania. Matthew Hopkins started his 14-month reign of terror this year in which it is estimated that he had around 400 people slaughtered. Hopkins wasn’t the only witch-hunter in the country, there were others elsewhere too.
Godstow was trashed in May of 1645, three weeks later, at the Battle of Naseby, The Puritans went nuts; ‘slaughtered and/or mutilated about 1000 women from the King’s train. This atrocity had never been known in England before. The Puritans considered the slain women as ‘Battle-Sluts’ and Witches, yet in fact, they were simply the women-folk; wives and daughters of the Royalist army; in the Parliamentarian propaganda their deaths were justified by a certain ‘John Vicars’ who wrote,
“…Prince Rupert, or rather Prince Robber, had brought into the field many Irish women, inhuman whores, with skeans or Long Irish Knives, to cut the throats of our wounded men, and of such prisoners as they pleased, to whom our soldiers would grant no quarter, about a hundred were slain on the ground, and most of the rest of the whores, and Campsluts, that attended that wicked army, were marked on their faces or noses with slashes and cut, and some cut off; just rewards for such wicked Strumpets…”***************
So there you have it. I believe that Oliver Cromwell and his followers were up to all sorts of pseudo esoteric activities but cant go into any of them here; but nothing else I have been interested in has linked with this ‘Huntington’ material… I’ll answer or responses.
Yuri.
Very interesting Yuri! And illustrates perfectly the need to journal. I actually teach the Craft and I’m very big on it – more from a personal development standpoint really. When people initially get involved with paganism so many changes occur. The awareness of self shifts, portents and synchronicities come to the fore and a dream which occurred and made no sense at the time can have a whole new meaning months or even years later. Sorry ’bout that, slightly off-topic!
So Huntingdon existed and had a ‘real’ basis in the Civil War. And then a year or so later you walk into the church and find his name. Amazing! The scene of crucifixion appears anachronous almost.. I have never heard of women being killed in that way. Here’s a thought which strikes me. You are seeing two parts of the same event. However one is symbolic and one is actual.
Thus, the part about the crucifixion and the beating.. perhaps its more symbolic of the Witch frenzy that was being brought at that time? Women and sometimes men literally killed in the name of Christianity (of course we all know that God had nothing to do with it and it was actually more about secular power, law and order as well as social unrest and upheaval).
Then the second part of the dream – do I have this right? That the women were killed in the name or the orders of Huntingdon? It could be either, i.e an act of revenge against him, or he ordered it himself?
Perhaps now is to see if there is a link to any specific witch trial? That information may once have been held by the abbey that was trashed… and may now be held somewhere in Oxford? By the council perhaps?
From an esoteric level, I would hazard a guess that these women want this to be known and that’s why you dreamt it. Have you checked if the date of your dream was significant –such as an anniversary of one of the atrocities?
Other than ‘general purpose’ Civil war history books I was never able to find time to look into local Oxfordshire history. (At the time all this happened to me I was living in Cornwall (and Richard in Essex) so our days to Godstow were ‘one-off’ day trips.) There was never enough time to get deeply involved and we were soon dragged off on to other quests.
Yes, the two women, one in black and another in white; seem to be metaphoric images rather than literal events (sometimes I see them as archtypes Elen & Morrighan).. but who knows. The research Richard and I were doing at Godstow, involved settling down ‘troubled energies’ but not in anyway specific to witchcraft or the Civil War period; if anything, our minds were towards the Victorian era… so?
I find it very interesting that Huntington and co were trashing Godstow just 3 weeks before the massacre of ‘Campsluts and whores’… who knows what madness went on for that three week period, between Godstow and Naseby ?
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