By Wicked Practises: Witchcraft, Power, and the Fall of Belvoir
Finbarre Snarey
- Region:
- Anywhere
- Notice Period:
- Regular (more than one month's notice)
- Type:
- Professional speaker / journalist and researcher
- Fee:
- Paid: From £75, plus agreed travel expenses where applicable. Online talks by arrangement.
- Category:
- History
- Updated:
- 12th August 2026
- Tagged:
- History | Witchcraft | Witches
In the early seventeenth century, Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Philippa became caught at the centre of one of England's most extraordinary witchcraft cases.
The women had connections to the household of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle. When illness and death struck the Manners family, accusations followed that the Flowers had used witchcraft against them.
Finbarre Snarey, a distant member of the Manners family, returns to the events surrounding Belvoir more than four centuries later. The talk follows the accusations, the deaths within the Rutland household, the fate of the Flower women and the surviving accounts of the case.
It also asks a more difficult question: what happens when stories of witchcraft are shaped by enormous differences in wealth, status and power?
Separating contemporary accusation from historical evidence, By Wicked Practises explores witchcraft, grief, class and authority in Jacobean England, and how the story became permanently entwined with Belvoir and the Manners family.
Views: 16 | Enquiries: 0About Finbarre Snarey
Finbarre Snarey is an arts and culture journalist, producer and tarot researcher based in Nottinghamshire. He is the founder of the British Tarot Archive and creator of Tarot Interviews, an interview project that uses tarot cards and chance to create unusual conversations with writers, musicians, artists and other cultural figures.
His research explores tarot as cultural history and living heritage, including the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, the work of artist Pamela Colman Smith, the preservation and circulation of tarot decks, and the changing place of tarot in British culture.
Finbarre has presented his tarot research at Goldsmiths, University of London, and works across journalism, podcasts, archives and festivals.
His talks explore unusual aspects of tarot, cultural history, interviewing and creative technology, combining original research with his experience of building independent arts and cultural projects.
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