Walter Thirsk
Usually the protagonist of a novel is one of the main characters in it; Walter Thirsk differs from most protagonists in this way. His chief role in the book is as its narrator and everything that happens is documented from his perspective, so that we feel that we are getting an eye-witness account of what has gone on.
Because he is injured at the beginning of the book, Walter's current role in the village is confined to non-physical duties, such as showing the new cartographer, Mr Quill, around and acting as village host. He enjoys Quill's company and begins to dream of going to the city with him after he has finished making the maps of the village, perhaps working for him and starting afresh somewhere more urban.
Walter is a popular man in the village who shares the villagers' opinions about the negative impact of Jordan's scheme. He is somewhat passive aggressive in that his protests about Jordan all take place after the man himself has actually left town. It is not surprising that he feels resentment; everyone has left the village except for him and he is obliged to stay because he has been used as a bargaining chip by Master Kent in order to facilitate the release of the three young women held on suspicion of participating in witchcraft. To spite the anti-crop planting Jordan he ploughs the fields and plants crops in them, and when he leaves, sets fire to the manor house, so that the Master has nothing left to come home to.
Master Kent
Master Kent is the Lord of the Manor and unlike his ruthless cousin Edmund Jordan is fairly well liked and respected by the villagers whom he is generally benevolent towards. He seems in awe of and also frightened of his cousin and this has probably been the case since childhood since he never makes any attempt to stand up to him at all. Instead of ordering Jordan to release the young women from prison he feels he needs to wait for him to be in an approachable mood, and then make a trade to negotiate their release, rather than just releasing them himself. Kent is a weak man, but not a bad one. He leaves the village with Jordan at the end of the novel.
Edmund Jordan
Every now and then a Landlord would see the Inclosure Act not as a positive step towards improving the agricultural yield of the area, but as a way in which he could feather his own nest at the expense of the villagers who live there. Edmund Jordan is just such a landlord. He is greedy, boorish and a bully, who has plans to have only sheep shepherding on his lands and no arable farming at all. This is a great thing for him but a terrible thing for the residents of the village who will not be able to feed themselves from the harvest. He does not care about this at all. What he does care about is money, and also making sure that paganism is stamped out of the rural areas that he owns. He is determined to weed out witches hence his arrest of the three young women suspected of practicing witchcraft.
Jordan is one of the prime suspects in the murder of Mr Quill, and it is likely he killed him because he is openly critical of his plan to change the village boundaries and the way in which the land is used.
Mr Quill
Otherwise known as Phillip Earle, Mr Quill is given his nickname by the villagers because the tools of the trade of his chart making - he uses a quill pen to draw up maps and charts showing land ownership and boundaries. He is older, and crippled, and has been brought to the village by Master Kent so that he can make up two maps - one that shows the village in its present state and a second that shows Jordan's proposed boundary and land us changes. He is opposed to these changes once he finds out how badly they will impact the village and is vocal in his opposition, earning the ire of Jordan.
Quill is a smart and wily man who devises a plan to catch the escaped Mistress Beldam. He befriends the woman's husband whilst he is still in the pillory and then lies in wait for her to return with food and water for him. He is blamed for being the leader of the local witches' covern, being the first name that came to Lizzie Carr's mind when she was interrogated. Although he is liked he is a stranger and strangers are innately suspicious to the villagers. He meets a violent end when he is stabbed to death and then his body hidden in a trunk in the attic room.
Mistress Beldam
Mistress Beldam is believed by the villagers to be a witch, hence the moniker they give her. She is one of the trio of traveling strangers who arrives in the village from a town that has already suffered as a result of the Inclosure Act. She is punished for her believed role in burning down the stables by having her head shaved and being ordered to submit to the will of the men in the village but escapes into the woods where she lives for a few days without being discovered. She is married to another of the travelers and brings him food and water every night whilst he is chained to the pillory.
Mistress Beldam does appear to have madness in her veins and it is not hard to imagine that she may also have been the person who kills Mr Quill. She and her husband ransack the manor house and break what they don't steal. She also sets fire to every building in the village before leaving.
Lizzie Carr
One of the prettiest young women in the village, Lizzie Carr is selected to act as Gleaning Queen at the annual village festival. She is also one of the girls imprisoned on suspicion of practicing witchcraft, something that she admits to, but something that she also tries to pass off as an act that was influenced by her covern leader Mr Quill. She accuses him because he is a stranger and because she does not want to identify the real leader of the group. She escapes her fate of being burned at the stake after Master Kent negotiates her release, and she leaves with Kent and his cousin at the end of the book.
