William Mompesson, a retired old rector is dying. He’s
visited by a strange old Moor who returns a ledger kept by
Mompesson during his time as minister at a remote village
parish in northern England.
Fifty years earlier Mompesson had taken over the post of
rector of Eyam from the elderly puritan Thomas Stanley who,
despite the ‘five mile act’ which forbade non conformist
preachers from living within five miles from where they had
formerly officiated, was still living in the village due to
the love and kindness of the villagers.
​
When Mompesson arrives in Eyam, the villagers were preparing
for the harvest festival celebrated with singing, dancing and
feasting. Emmott Sydall (20), a local girl from a middling family, had
been secretly seeing Rowland Toar an Afro/Spanish Moor living
in nearby village Stony Middleton, much to the displeasure of
Emmott’s Mother. Emmott’s father agrees to buy her a new
dress, like all her friends, for the Harvest festival, to be
created by the local tailor. But when the cloth for the new
dress arrives at the tailors the villagers are unaware it
contains infected flees from plague infested London.
The Mompesson‘s settle in to their new home at the Parsonage
but it soon becomes apparent that the villagers are reluctant
to accept Mompesson as their new minister as their trust
still lies at Thomas Stanley’s door. Mompesson is rudely
ignored, curtly rebuffed and with what seems like Stanley’s
encouragement, very quickly disliked by the locals.
When Emmott is asked for her hand in marriage by the rich
local Squire John Bradshaw of Bradshaw Hall, a wealthy
socialite who owns half of Eyam and the mines he works
beneath, Rowland is broken. The colour of his skin along with
a series of events culminates with Rowland being branded a
witch.
When the villagers mysteriously begin to die Rowland is
blamed for bringing the wrath of God onto the village and
banished from returning.
​
