Killed Stone Dead By Witchcraft

First beset by total amnesia, then dead...

Apr 29, 2026

People don’t muck about in England.
If somebody riles them…
well…

The year was 1324. Some citizens of the English city of Coventry in the delightful county of Warwickshire had suffered at the hands of a local prior, who had a lot of clout due to his pals being administrators (dispensers) of King Edward II.

The prior, being fond of money, extracted all he could from these citizens, not to mention giving them horrible grief when they tried to resist what can only be described as extortion.

In the end, they’d had enough.

It was time for revenge…

So the oppressed citizens sought the assistance of a well-known conjurer (sorcerer) in the area — one Master John of Nottingham, along with his trusty assistance Robert Marshall of Leicester.

The citizens told the two they wanted not just the death of the prior, but also the demise of the two administrators and even the King himself!

A tall order perhaps.

But John of Nottingham and Robert Marshall got to it.

They made images of the targets out of wax and canvas, sculpting them to fit the appearance of the victims.

Before unleashing the hex they had been commissioned to do, however, they decided to do a test run of the death-hex.

For some reason the target they selected was one Richard de Lowe, who according to the historical records appeared uninvolved with the oppression of the local citizens.

Clearly neither conjurer was concerned about “collateral damage”!

They welcomed the idea.

Once the test-hex was in place, the two adjourned to an old ruined house outside Coventry, where they continued working on the main targets of the hex-work.

A day or so later, Master John gave Robert a sharp-pointed branch and told him to thrust it into the forehead of the image that represented Richard de Lowe, the test case.

The very next day, Master John sent his servant to Lowe’s house to inquire after his condition.

Apparently Lowe had been found screaming and had completely lost his memory.

Some days later, Master John removed the pointed branch from the forehead of the image of Lowe, then thrust it into the heart. Not long afterwards the unfortunate Lowe died.

Master John ended up in court over it — seemingly because his assistant Robert had shopped him to the authorities. In the end, after several adjournments, the judges gave up on the case.

Had it been a hundred or so years later, during the time of the witch-hunts, it’s likely Master John would have met an untimely end. But in the 14th century, they simply didn’t know what to do with the case.