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10. A Deadly Conman
In a stretch that lasted for fourteen months, Matthew Hopkins got more people convicted and executed than all English witch hunters of the previous 160 years. Indeed, Hopkins is responsible for about a fifth of all English witchcraft executions from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Witches and sorcerers supposedly neither felt pain nor bled when pricked. In of itself, that was not conclusive proof that an accused was a witch or sorcerer. However, pricking was circumstantial evidence that could be used along other evidence and testimony to tip the scales towards conviction. Because everything about witch hunts was terrible, it is perhaps no surprise that witch-finders used trickery. As seen below, Hopkins was a master of brazen flim-flam.