WALKERN, which anciently belonged to the Lords Fitz-Walter, by inheritance from the De Burghs and Lanvalleis, and descended through the Mareschals, by the marriage of an heiress, to the Lords Morley, is one of the most ancient possessions of the Capels, Earls of Essex, in this county; it having been purchased by Sir William Capel, Knt. in the twenty-first of Henry the Seventh, from Sir Edward Howard, Knt. and Alice, his wife, sister and heiress of Henry, Lord Morley. The Bury, or Manor-house, is surrounded by a moat, and is now occupied as a farm. In the Church, beneath an arch on the south wall, is a defaced effigy of a Knight Templar.

This parish, and its neighbourhood, were greatly agitated about the commencement of the last century by an alarm of Witchcraft, reputed to have been exercised on the persons of two servant maids and a boy, by a poor woman called Jane Wenham, and who was tried for the said crime at the Hertford Assizes, before Judge Powel. Some time before her trial, the culprit had the weakness to confess herself guilty of the alleged crime; and though she afterwards accounted for this confession, as arising from fear it appears to have had a considerable influence on the minds of the jurymen, who pronounced a verdict of guilty, notwithstanding the endeavours of the benevolent Judge to explain the evidence brought against her, and which evidence was clearly the result of a strong prejudice, operating on weak and superstitious minds. The Judge reprieved her; and she afterwards had a free pardon, and lived several years on a small allowance from the parish.