to the neighbouring churches, where he placed him standing on a bench
after service, and bade him look round and see what he could observe.
The device, however clumsy, succeeded; and no less than seventeen
persons were apprehended at the boy's election, and conducted, as
witches, to Lancaster Castle. These seventeen persons were tried at the
assizes and found guilty; but the judge, whose name has unfortunately
been lost, unlike Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, saw something
in the case that excited his suspicion, and, though the juries had not
hesitated in any one instance, respited the convicts, and sent up a
report of the affair to the government. Twenty-two years had not elapsed
since the former case, in vain. Four of the prisoners were, by the
judge's recommendation, sent for to the metropolis, and were examined,
first by the king's physician, and then by Charles the First, in person.
The boy's story was strictly scrutinised, and in the end, he confessed
that it was all an imposture, in which he had been instructed by his
father; and the whole seventeen prisoners received the royal pardon.
So late as the year 1679, several unfortunate persons were tried and
executed at Borrostowness in Scotland, for witchcraft, four of them
being poor widows. The following is a literal copy of the indictment
upon which they were arraigned--
"Annaple Thomsone, widow in Borrostowness, Margaret Pringle, relect of
the deceast John Campbell, seivewright there, &c. &c.
"Aye, and ilk ane of you, are indigtted and accused, that, whereas,
notwithstanding the law of God particulurlie sett down in the 20th
chapter of Leveticus and the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy, and be the
lawes and actes of parliament of this kingdome and constant practis
thereof, particularlie to the 27 act, 29 parliament Q. Marie, the cryme
of witchcraft is declaired to be one horreid, abominable, and capitall
cryme, punishable with the pains of death and confiscatiown of
moveables:--nevertheless it is of veritie, that you have comitted and
are gwyltie of the said crime of witchcraft, in awa far ye have entered
in practicion with the devile, the enemie of your salvatiown, and have
renownced our blessed Lord and Savior, and your baptizme, and have given
yoursellfes, both soulles and bodies, to the devile, and swyndrie wyth
witches, in divers places. And particularlie ye, the said Annaple
Thompsone, had a metting with the devile the time of your weidowhood,
before you were married to your last husband, in your coming betwixt
Linlithgow and Borrostowness, where the devile, in the lykeness of one
black man, told you, that you was one poor puddled bodie, and had one
lyiff and difficulties to win throu the world; and promesed iff ye wald
followe him, and go alongst with him, you should never want, but have
one better lyiff; and about fyve wekes thereafter the devile appeared to
you, when you was going to the coal-hill, abowt sevin a-clock in the
morning. Having renewed his former temtatiown, you did condeshend
thereto and declared yourselff content to follow him and become his
servant; whereupon the devile * * * and ye and each persone of you wis
at several metting with the devile, in the linkes of Borrostowness, and
in the house of you, Bessie Vicker; and ye did eate and drink with the
devile, and with one another, and with witches in her howss in the night
tyme; and the said Wm. Crow brought the ale, which ye drank, extending
about sevin gallons, from the howss of Elizabeth Hamilton; and you, the
said Annaple, had another metting about fyve wekes ago, when you wis
goeing to the coal-hill of Grange, and he inveitted you to go alongst
and drink with him in the Grange farmes; and you, the said Margaret
Pringle, have bein one witch this many yeeres by gone, hath renownced
your baptizme and becum the devile's servant, and promeis to follow him;
and the devile took you by the right hand, whereby it was for eight days
greivowslie pained, but, having it twitched new again, it immedeatelie
became haill; and you, the said Margaret Hamilton has bein the devile's
servant these eight or nine years by gone, and he appeared and conversed
with you at the town well of Borrostowness, and several times at your
owin howss, and drank several choppens of ale with you. * * and the
devile gane you ane fyne merk piece of gold, which a lyttle after becam
are skleite stone; and you, the said Margaret Hamilton, relict of James
Pullevart, has been ane witch, and the devile's servant, thertie yeres
since, hath renounced your baptisme, as said is
* * * * *
And ye, and ilk of you, was at a meeting with the devile and other
witches, at the croce of Murestain, above Renneil, upon the threttein of
October last, where you all danced, and the devile acted the piper, and
where you endevored to have destroyed Androw Mitchell, sone to John
Mitchell, elder in dean of Kenneil."
The charges thus made against the "poor puddled bodies," Annaple
Thomsone and her associates, however ludicrous they may seem, were
substantiated to the satisfaction of a jury; and for so meeting, and
dancing, and drinking, and frolicking with his satanic majesty (who
condescended to act the piper), the unfortunate defendants were solemnly
condemned, "to be taken to the west end of Borrostowness, the ordinary
place of execution there, upon Tuesday, the 23rd day of December
current, betwixt two and four in the afternoon, and then to be wirried
at a steack [that is, like a bull or a badger, by dogs in human shape]
till they be dead, and thereafter to have their bodies burned to ashes."
The strange and eventful history of the Witches of New England is,
perhaps, generally known to the educated and informed; still there must
be many who are not aware of all its melancholy details. As a story of
witchcraft, without any poetry in it, without anything to amuse the
imagination, or interest the fancy, it, perhaps, surpasses everything
upon record. The prosecutions for witchcraft in New England were
numerous, and they continued, with little intermission, principally at
Salem, during the greater part of the year 1692. The accusations were of
the most vulgar and contemptible sort--invisible pinchings and blows,
fits, with the blastings and mortality of cattle, and wains stuck fast
in the ground, or losing their wheels. A conspicuous feature in nearly
the whole of these stories, was what they named "the spectral sight,"
or, in other words, that the profligate accusers first feigned, for the
most part, the injuries they received, and next saw the figures and
action of the persons who inflicted them, when they were invisible to
every one else. Hence the miserable prosecutors gained the power of
gratifying the wantonness of their malice, by pretending that they
suffered by the hand of any one against whom they had an ill will. The
persons so charged, though unseen by any one but the accuser, and who in
their corporal presence were at a distance of miles, and were doubtless
wholly unconscious of the mischief that was hatching against them, were
immediately taken up, and cast into prison. And what was more monstrous
and incredible, there stood the prisoner on trial for his life, while
the witnesses were permitted to swear that his spectre had haunted them,
and afflicted them with all manner of injuries!
The first specimen of this sort of accusation was given by one Paris, a
minister of a church at Salem, in the end of the year 1691, who had two
daughters, one nine years old, the other eleven, who were afflicted with
fits and convulsions. The first person fixed on as the mysterious author
of these evils, was Tituba, a female slave in the family, and she was
harassed by her master into a confession of unlawful practices and
spells. The girls then fixed on Sarah Good, a female, known to be the
victim of a morbid melancholy, and Osborne, a poor man who had for a
considerable time been bed-ridden, as persons whose spectres had
perpetually haunted and tormented them, and Good was, twelve months
afterwards, hanged on this accusation.
A person, who was one of the first to fall under the imputation, was one
George Burroughs, also a minister of Salem. He had, it seems, buried two
wives, both of whom the busy gossips said he had used ill in their
life-time, and, consequently, it was whispered he had murdered them. He
was accustomed, foolishly, to vaunt that he knew what people said of him
in his absence, and this was brought as a proof that he dealt with the
devil. Two women, who were witnesses against him, interrupted their
testimony with exclaiming that they saw the ghosts of the murdered wives
present (who had promised them they would come), though no one else in
the court saw them; and this was taken in evidence. Burroughs conducted
himself in a very injudicious way on his trial; but, when he came to be
hanged, made so impressive a speech on the ladder, with fervent
protestations of innocence, as melted many of the spectators into tears.
The accusations, founded upon such stories as these, spread, with
wonderful rapidity. In Salem, many were seized with fits, exhibited
frightful contortions of their limbs and features, and became a fearful
spectacle to the bystanders. They were asked to assign the cause of all
this; and pretended to suppose, that they saw some neighbour, already
solitary and afflicted, and on that account in ill odour with the
townspeople, scowling upon, threatening, and tormenting them. Presently
persons, specially gifted with the 'spectral sight,' formed a class by
themselves, and were sent about at the public expense from place to
place, that they might see what no one else could see. The prisons were
filled with the persons accused, and the utmost horror was entertained,
as of a calamity which in such a degree had never before visited that
part of the world. It happened, most unfortunately, that Baxter's
"Certainty of the World of Spirits" had been published but the year
before, and a number of copies had been sent out to New England. There
seemed a strange coincidence and sympathy between vital christianity in
its most honourable sense, and the fear of the devil, who appeared to be
"come down unto them, with great wrath." Mr. Increase Mather, and Mr.
Cotton Mather, his son, two clergymen of the highest reputation in the
neighbourhood, by the solemnity and awe with which they treated the
subject, and the earnestness and zeal which they displayed, gave a
sanction to the lowest superstition and virulence of the ignorant. All
the forms of justice were brought forward on this occasion. There was no
lack of judges, and grand juries, and petty juries, and executioners,
and still less of prosecutors and witnesses. The first person that was
hanged was on the 10th of June, five more on the 19th of July, five on
the 19th of August, and eight on the 22nd of September. Multitudes
confessed that they were witches; for this appeared the only way for the
accused to save their lives. Husbands and children fell down on their
knees, and implored their wives and mothers to own their guilt. Many
were tortured by being tied neck and heels together, till they confessed
whatever was suggested to them. It is remarkable, however, that not one
persisted in her confession at the place of execution.
The most interesting story that occurred in this affair, was of Giles
Cory, and Martha, his wife. The woman was tried on the 9th of September,
and hanged on the 22nd. In the interval, on the 16th, the husband was
brought up for trial. He said he was not guilty; but being asked how he
would be tried, he refused to go through the customary form, and say,
"By God, and my country." He observed that, of all that had been tried,
not one had as yet been pronounced not guilty; and he resolutely refused
in that mode to undergo a trial. The judge directed, therefore, that
according to the barbarous mode prescribed in the mother country, he
should be laid on his back, and pressed to death with weights gradually
accumulated on the upper surface of his body, a proceeding which had
never yet been resorted to by the English in North America. The man
persisted in his resolution, and remained mute till he expired.
The whole of this dreadful tragedy, says Mr. Godwin, in his "Lives of
the Necromancers," was kept together by a thread. The spectre-seers, for
a considerable time, prudently restricted their accusations to persons
of ill repute, or otherwise of no consequence in the community.
By-and-bye, however, they lost sight of this caution, and pretended they
saw the figures of some persons well connected, and of unquestioned
honour and reputation, engaged in acts of witchcraft. Immediately the
whole fell through in a moment. The leading inhabitants presently saw
how unsafe it would be to trust their reputations and their lives to the
mercy of these profligate accusers. Of fifty-six bills of indictment
that were offered to the grand jury on the 3rd of January, 1693,
twenty-six only were found true bills, and thirty thrown out. On the
twenty-six bills that were found, three persons only were pronounced
guilty by the petty jury, and these three received their pardon from the
government. The prisons were thrown open; fifty confessed witches,
together with two hundred persons imprisoned on suspicion, were set at
liberty, and no more accusations were heard of. The "afflicted," as they
were technically termed, recovered their health; the "spectral sight"
was universally scouted; and men began to wonder how they could ever
have been the victims of so horrible a delusion.
Dr. Cook, in his General and Historical Review of Christianity, gives a
melancholy description of the condemnation of a woman for witchcraft, by
a tribunal at Geneva, about the middle of the seventeenth century. An
enumeration of some of the particulars of this case will afford a
tolerably correct notion of the horrible cruelty, which, in almost all
proceedings against witchcraft, was practised in different parts of
Europe. The woman was accused of having sent devils into two young
women, and of having brought distempers upon several others,--a charge
sufficiently vague. To substantiate the accusation, the members of the
tribunal availed themselves of an opinion, that the devil imprinted
certain marks upon his chosen disciples, the effect of which was, that
no pain could be produced by any application to the parts of the body
where these marks were. They sent two surgeons to examine whether such
marks could be discovered in the accused; who reported, not much to the
credit of their medical skill and philosophy, that they had found a
mark, and that, having thrust a needle into it, the length of a finger,
she had felt no pain, and that no blood had issued from the wound. Being
brought to the bar, the prisoner denied the statement of the surgeons;
upon which she was examined by three more, with whom were joined two
physicians. It might have been expected that a body of men, who had
received a liberal education, and who must have had some acquaintance
with the nature and construction of the human frame, would have
presented a report, showing the absurdity of the examination upon which
they were employed. This, however, did not occur to them; for they
gravely proceeded to thrust sharp instruments into the mark already
mentioned, and into others which they thought they had found out; but,
as the miserable patient gave plain indication that she suffered from
their operations, they were staggered, and satisfied themselves with
declaring, that there was something extraordinary in the marks, and that
they were not perfectly like those commonly to be seen in witches. She
was, notwithstanding, doomed to another investigation, the result of
which was, that after some barbarous experiments, she felt no pain, and
hence it was inferred that the marks were satanical. She had previously
to this last inquiry, been actually put to the rack; but she retained
her fortitude and presence of mind, firmly maintaining that she had sent
no devils into the persons whom it was alleged she had thus injured. She
was again threatened with the torture; and, from dread of undergoing it,
made a confession, which it is painful to think was not at once
discerned to be the raving of insanity. Similar proceedings were
continued; and the conclusion of the whole was, that she was condemned
to be hanged and burned, for giving up herself to the devil, and for
bewitching two girls!
We conclude this article by the well-known case of the trial and
acquittal of Lady Fowlis.
Catherine Ross, Lady Fowlis, was the daughter of Ross of Balnagown, and
second wife of the fifteenth Baron of Fowlis. The object of her crimes
was to destroy her step-sons, Robert and Hector Monro, with about thirty
of their principal kinsmen, in order that her own children might succeed
to the possessions of their father, which were considerable, and lay in
the counties of Ross, Sutherland, and Inverness. Her brother, George
Ross, seems to have been in league with her for the accomplishment of
this diabolical purpose, and his wife, the young Lady Balnagown, was
marked out as a victim, whose removal, with that of the rest of the
family, might pave the way for his marriage with the wife of Robert
Monro, the young laird. Their schemes were brought into active operation
in the summer of 1577. Towards the end of that year, four of their
accomplices, Agnes Roy, Christian Ross, of Canorth, William
M'Gillievoricdam, and Thomas M'Kane More M'Allan M'Evoch, were arraigned
in a justice court, held in the Cathedral Kirk of Ross, convicted, and
burnt. One of the judges who presided at this trial, was Robert Monro,
the husband of the principal instigator of the crimes, and father of the
family whose lives were practised against. Lady Fowlis, upon the
discovery of her wickedness, fled into the county of Caithness, and,
after remaining there for the space of three quarters of a year, her
husband was persuaded to receive her home again; and she seems to have
lived unmolested during the rest of the life of the old baron; and even
the young laird, for whose destruction she had perseveringly laboured,
made no exertion to bring her to justice. His brother Hector, however,
on succeeding him in 1590, procured a commission for the punishment of
certain witches and sorcerers, which was understood to be aimed at his
step-mother; but before he had time to act upon the power thus granted,
she had influence enough to obtain a suspension of the commission; and
it was not till July 1591 that she was brought to trial. The evidence
mainly rested upon, was that of the notoriety of the facts, and the
confession of the accomplices; each count of the indictment closed with
a reference to the record of the process before the provincial court,
with the occasional addition of "as is notour," "as is manifest be the
haill countie of Roiss," or words to that effect. The verdict was
favourable to the accused; but Mr. Pitcairn is of opinion, that her
escape was owing to her powerful influence. "The inquest," he says,
"bears all the appearance of a selected or packed jury, being very
inferior in rank and station of life, contrary to the usual custom." The
dittory or indictment is the only part of the proceedings that is
preserved; indeed, the reading of it seems to have constituted the whole
case of the prosecutor, and the simple denial of the "samin and the
haill poyntis thereof," the whole case for the accused; after which the
jury retired to consider their verdict.
The first method adopted to compass the deaths of the persons who stood
in the way of her ambition, was to form figures to represent the young
Laird of Fowlis and the young Lady Balnagown, which were to be shot at
with elf-arrows, in conformity with the belief, that, if these charmed
weapons struck the typical bodies, the wounds would be felt in the real
bodies, and produce invisibly the desired effect. For the performance of
the necessary rites, a meeting of three witches took place in the house
of Christian Ross, at Canorth, Christian herself being one of them, Lady
Fowlis another, and Marjory M'Allester, a hag of peculiar eminence,
distinguished also by the name of Loskie Loncart, the third. Having
constructed two images of clay, they placed them on the north side of
the western chamber, and Loskie, producing two elf-arrows, delivered one
to Christian Ross, who stood by with it in her hand, while, with the
other, Lady Fowlis shot twice at the figure of Lady Balnagown, and
Loskie three times at that of Robert Monro, without success. In the mean
time, the images not having been properly compacted, crumbled to pieces;
and their purpose being thus thwarted for the present, the unhallowed
convocation broke up, Loskie having engaged, at the command of Lady
Fowlis, to make two other figures. M'Gillievoricdam seems now to have
been taken into their counsels; and by his advice, an image in butter of
the young Laird of Fowlis was placed by the side of the wall in the same
western chamber of Canorth, and shot at eight times with an elf-arrow by
Loskie, without effect. This was on the 2nd of July, 1577; and nothing
discouraged by repeated failures, a clay figure of the same person was
constructed on the 6th, when the indefatigable Loskie discharged the
elf-arrow twelve times, sometimes reaching the image, but never wounding
it. The other two hags stood by, anxiously watching for a successful
shot, Christian Ross having provided three quarters of fine linen cloth,
to be bound about the typical corpse, which was to be interred opposite
the gate of the Stank of Fowlis, in order to complete the enactment by a
full representation of every circumstance which they were desirous of
producing as its consequence. The main part of the rite, however,
consisted in the infliction of a wound; and this not having been
accomplished, they desisted from the vain labour.