WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND IN THE 17TH CENTURY.
The accession of James I., a professed demonologist, and an expert in
all matters relating to witchcraft, gave a great impulse to the
persecution of witches in England. 'Poor old women and girls of tender
age were walked, swum, shaved, and tortured; the gallows creaked and
the fires blazed.' In accordance with the well-known economic law,
that the demand creates the supply, it was found that, in proportion
as trials and tortures increased, so did the number of witches, until
half the old hags in England supposed themselves, or were supposed by
others, to have made compacts with the devil. Legislation then
augmented its severity, and Parliament, in compliance with the wishes
of the new King, passed an Act by which sorcery and witchcraft were
made felony, without benefit of clergy. For some years the country was
witch-ridden, and it is appalling to think of the hundreds of hapless,
ignorant, and innocent creatures who were cruelly done to death under
the influence of this extraordinary mania.
A remarkable case tried at King's Lynn in 1606 is reported in
Howell's 'State Trials.' I avail myself of the summary furnished by
Mr. Inderwick.
Marie, wife of Henry Smith, grocer, confessed, under examination,
that, being indignant with some of her neighbours because they
prospered in their trade more than she did, she oftentimes cursed
them; and that once, while she was thus engaged, the devil appeared in
the form of a black man, and willed that she should continue in her
malice, envy, and hatred, banning and cursing, and then he would see
that she was revenged upon all to whom she wished evil. There was, of
course, a compact insisted upon: that she should renounce God, and
embrace the devil and all his works. After this he appeared
frequently--once as a mist, once as a ball of fire, and twice he
visited her in prison with a pair of horns, advising her to make no
confession, but to rely upon him.
The evidence of the acts of witchcraft was as follows:
John Oakton, a sailor, having struck her boy, she cursed him roundly,
and hoped his fingers would rot off, which took place, it was said,
two years afterwards.
She quarrelled with Elizabeth Hancock about a hen, alleging that
Elizabeth had stolen it. When the said Elizabeth denied the theft, she
bade her go indoors, for she would repent it; and that same night
Elizabeth had pains all over her body, and her bed jumped up and down
for the space of an hour or more. Elizabeth then consulted her father,
and was taken by him to a wizard named Drake, who taught her how to
concoct a witch-cake with all the nastiest ingredients imaginable, and
to apply it, with certain words and conjurations, to the afflicted
parts. For the time Elizabeth was cured; but some time afterwards,
when she had been married to one James Scott, a great cat began to go
about her house, and having done some harm, Scott thrust it twice
through with his sword. As it still ran to and fro, he smote it with
all his might upon its head, but could not kill it, for it leaped
upwards almost a yard, and then crept down. Even when put into a bag,
and dragged to the muck-hill, it moved and stirred, and the next
morning was nowhere to be found. And this same cat, it was afterwards
sworn, sat on the chest of Cicely Balye, and nearly suffocated her,
because she had quarrelled with the witch about her manner of sweeping
before her door; and the said witch called the said Cicely 'a
fat-tailed sow,' and said her fatness would shortly be abated, as,
indeed, it was.
Edmund Newton swore that he had been afflicted with various
sicknesses, and had been banged in the face with dirty cloths, because
he had undersold Marie Smith in Dutch cheeses. She also sent to him a
person clothed in russet, with a little bush beard and a cloven foot,
together with her imps, a toad, and a crab. One of his servants took
the toad and put it into the fire, when it made a groaning noise for a
quarter of an hour before it was consumed, 'during which time Marie
Smith, who sent it, did endure (as was reported) torturing pains,
testifying the grief she felt by the outcries she then made.'
Upon this evidence--such as it was--and upon her own confession, Marie
Smith was convicted and sentenced to death. On the scaffold she humbly
acknowledged her sins, prayed earnestly that God might forgive her the
wrongs she had done her neighbours, and asked that a hymn of her own
choosing--'Lord, turn not away Thy face'--might be sung. Then she died
calmly. It is, no doubt, a curious fact--if, indeed, it _be_ a fact,
but the evidence is by no means satisfactory--that she confessed to
various acts of witchcraft, and to having made a compact with the
devil; but even this alleged confession cannot receive our credence
when we reflect on the inherent absurdity and impossibility of the
whole affair.
* * * * *
In 1619, Joan Flower and her two daughters, Margaretta and Philippa,
formerly servants at Belvoir Castle, were tried before Judges Hobart
and Bromley, on a charge of having bewitched to death two sons of the
sixth Earl of Rutland, and found guilty. The mother died in prison;
the two daughters were executed at Lincoln.
THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES.
My chronological survey next brings me to the famous case of the
Lancashire witches.
I have already told the story of the Dundikes and the Chattoxes, and
their exploits in Pendle Forest. In the same locality, two-and-twenty
years later, lived a man of the name of Robinson, to whom it occurred
that the prevalent belief in witchcraft might be turned to account
against his neighbours. In this design he made his son--a lad about
eleven years old--his instrument. After he had been properly trained,
he was instructed by his father, on February 10, 1633, to go before
two justices of the peace, and make the following declaration:
That, on All Saints' Day, while gathering wild plums in Wheatley Lane,
he saw a black greyhound and a brown scamper across the fields. They
came up to him familiarly, and he then discovered that each wore a
collar shining like gold. As no one accompanied them, he concluded
that they had broken loose from their kennels; and as at that moment a
hare started up only a few paces from him, he thought he would set
them to hunt it, but his efforts were all in vain; and in his wrath he
took the strings that hung from their collars, tied both to a little
bush, and then whipped them. Whereupon, in the place of the black
greyhound, started up the wife of a man named Dickinson, and in that
of the brown a little boy. In his amazement, young Robinson (so he
said) would have run away, but he was stayed by Mistress Dickinson,
who pulled out of her pocket 'a piece of silver much like unto a fine
shilling,' and offered it to him, if he promised to be silent. But he
refused, exclaiming: 'Nay, thou art a witch!' Whereupon, she again put
her hand in her pocket, and drew forth a string like a jingling
bridle, which she put over the head of the small boy, and, behold, he
was turned into a white horse, with a change as quick as that of a
scene in a pantomime. Upon this white horse the woman placed, by
force, young Robinson, and rode with him as far as the Hoar-Stones--a
house at which the witches congregated together--where divers persons
stood about the door, while others were riding towards it on horses of
different colours. These dismounted, and, having tied up their horses,
all went into the house, accompanied by their friends, to the number
of threescore. At a blazing fire some meat was roasting, and a young
woman gave Robinson flesh and bread upon a trencher, and drink in a
glass, which, after the first taste, he refused, and would have no
more, saying it was nought. Presently, observing that certain of the
company repaired to an adjoining barn, he followed, and saw six of
them on their knees, pulling at six several ropes which were fastened
to the top of the house, with the result that joints of meat smoking
hot, lumps of butter, and milk 'syleing,' or straining from the said
ropes, fell into basins placed underneath them. When these six were
weary, came other six, and pulled right lustily; and all the time they
were pulling they made such foul faces that they frightened the
peeping lad, so that he was glad to steal out and run home.
No sooner was his escape discovered than a party of the witches,
including Dickinson's wife, the wife of a man named Loynds, and Janet
Device, took up the pursuit, and over field and scaur hurried
headlong, nearly overtaking him at a spot called Boggard Hole, when
the opportune appearance of a couple of horsemen induced them to
abandon their quarry. But young Robinson was not yet 'out of the
wood.' In the evening he was despatched by his father to bring home
the cattle, and on the way, in a field called the Ollers, he fell in
with a boy who picked a quarrel with him, and they fought together
until the blood flowed from his ears, when, happening to look down, he
saw that his antagonist had cloven feet, and, much affrighted, set off
at full speed to execute his commission. Perceiving a light like that
of a lantern, he hastened towards it, in the belief it was carried by
a neighbour; but on arriving at the place of its shining he found
there a woman whom he recognised as the wife of Loynds, and
immediately turned back. Falling in again with the cloven-footed boy,
he thought it prudent to take to his heels, but not before he had
received a blow on the back which pained him sorely.
In support of this extraordinary story, the elder Robinson deposed
that he had certainly sent his son to bring in the kine; that,
thinking he was away too long, he had gone in search of him, and
discovered him in such a distracted condition that he knew neither his
father nor where he was, and so continued for very nearly a quarter of
an hour before he came to himself.
The persons implicated by the boy Robinson were immediately arrested,
and confined in Lancaster Castle. Some of them--for he told various
stories, and in each introduced new characters--he did not know by
name, but he protested that on seeing them he should recognise them,
and for this purpose he was carried about to the churches in the
surrounding district to examine the congregations. The method adopted
is thus described by Webster: 'It came to pass that this said boy was
brought into the church of Kildwick, a large parish church, where I
(being then curate there) was preaching in the afternoon, and was set
upon a stall (he being but about ten or eleven years old) to look
about him, which moved some little disturbance in the congregation for
awhile. And, after prayers, I inquiring what the matter was, the
people told me it was the boy that discovered witches, upon which I
went to the house where he was to stay all night, where I found him
and two very unlikely persons that did conduct him and manage his
business. I desired to have some discourse with the boy in private,
but they utterly refused. Then, in the presence of a great many
people, I took the boy near me and said: "Good boy, tell me truly, and
in earnest, didst thou see and hear such strange things of the meeting
of witches as is reported by many that thou dost relate, or did not
some person teach thee to say such things of thyself?" But the two
men, not giving the boy leave to answer, did pluck him from me, and
said he had been examined by two able justices of the peace, and they
did never ask him such a question; to whom I replied, the persons
accused therefore had the more wrong.'
In all, some eighteen women, married and single--the charge was
generally made against women, as probably less capable of
self-defence, and more impressionable than men--were brought to trial
at Lancaster Assizes. There was really no evidence against them but
the boy Robinson's, and to sustain it his unfortunate victims were
examined for the _stigmata_, or devil-marks, which, of course, were
found in ample quantity. Against seventeen a verdict of guilty was
returned, one or two being convicted on their own confessions--the
most perplexing incident in the whole case, for as these confessions
were unquestionably false, they who made them were really _lying away
their own lives_. By what impulse of morbid vanity, or diseased
craving for notoriety, or strange mental delusion, were they inspired?
And whence came the wild and even foul ideas which formed the staple
of their delirious narratives? How did these quiet, stolid, unlettered
Lancashire peasant-women become possessed of inventions worthy of the
grimmest of German tales of _diablerie_? It is easier to ask these
questions than to answer them; but when the witch mania was once
kindled in a neighbourhood it seems, like a pestilential atmosphere,
to have stricken with disease every mind that was predisposed to the
reception of unwholesome impressions.
The confession of Margaret Johnson, made on March 9, 1613, has been
printed before, but it has so strong a psychological interest that I
cannot omit it here. It may be taken as a type of the confessions made
by the victims of credulity under similar circumstances:
'Betweene seven or eight yeares since, shee being in her
house at Marsden in greate passion and anger, and
discontented, and withall oppressed with some want, there
appeared unto her a spirit or devill in the similitude and
proportion of a man, apparelled in a suite of black, tied
about with silke pointes, whoe offered her, yff shee would
give him her soule, hee would supply all her wantes, and
bring to her whatsoever shee wanted or needed, and at her
appointment would helpe her to kill and revenge her either of
men or beastes, or what she desired; and, after a
sollicitation or two, shee contracted and condicioned with
the said devill or spiritt for her soule. And the said devill
bad her call him by the name of Memillion, and when shee
called hee would bee ready to doe her will. And she saith
that in all her talke and conference shee called the said
Memillion her god.
'And shee further saith that shee was not at the greate
meetinge of the witches at Hare-stones in the forest of
Pendle on All Saintes Day last past, but saith shee was at a
second meetinge the Sunday after All Saintes Day at the place
aforesaid, where there was at that time betweene thirty and
forty witches, which did all ride to the same meetinge. And
thead of the said meetinge was to consult for the killing and
hunting of men and beastes; and that there was one devill or
spiritt that was more greate and grand devill than the rest,
and yff anie witch desired to have such an one, they might
have such an one to kill or hurt anie body. And she further
saith, that _such witches as have sharpe boanes are generally
for the devill to prick them with which have no papps nor
duggs, but raiseth blood from the place pricked with the
boane, which witches are more greate and grand witches than
they which have papps or dugs (!)_. And shee being further
asked what persons were at their last meetinge, she named one
Carpnell and his wife, Rason and his wife, Pickhamer and his
wife, Duffy and his wife, and one Jane Carbonell, whereof
Pickhamer's wife is the most greate, grand, and anorcyent
witch; and that one witch alone can kill a beast, and yf they
bid their spiritt or devill to goe and pricke or hurt anie
man in anie particular place, hee presently will doe it. And
that their spiritts have usually knowledge of their bodies.
And shee further saith the men witches have women spiritts,
and women witches have men spiritts; that Good Friday is one
of their constant daies of their generall meetinge, and that
on Good Friday last they had a meetinge neere Pendle
water-side; and saith that their spirit doeth tell them where
their meetinge must bee, and in what place; and saith that if
a witch desire to be in anie place upon a soddaine, that, on
a dogg, or a tod, or a catt, their spiritt will presently
convey them thither, or into anie room in anie man's house.
'But shee saith it is not the substance of their bodies that
doeth goe into anie such roomes, but their spiritts that
assume such shape and forme. And shee further saith that the
devill, after hee begins to sucke, will make a papp or a dug
in a short time, and the matter hee sucketh is blood. And
further saith that the devill can raise foule wether and
stormes, and soe hee did at their meetinges. And shee further
saith that when the devill came to suck her pappe, he came to
her in the likeness of a catt, sometimes of one collour, and
sometimes of another. And since this trouble befell her, her
spirit hath left her, and shee never saw him since.'
Happily, the judge who presided at the trial of these deluded and
persecuted unfortunates was dissatisfied with the evidence, and
reprieved them until he had time to communicate with the Privy
Council, by whose orders Bridgman, Bishop of Chester, proceeded to
examine into the principal cases. Three of the supposed criminals,
however, had died of anxiety and suffering before the work of
investigation began, and a fourth was sick beyond recovery. The cases
into which the Bishop inquired were those of Margaret Johnson, Frances
Dicconson, or Dickinson, Mary Spencer, and Mrs. Hargrave. Margaret
Johnson the good Bishop describes as a widow of sixty, who was deeply
penitent. 'I will not add,' she said, 'sin to sin. I have already done
enough, yea, too much, and will not increase it. I pray God I may
repent.' This victim of hallucination had confessed herself to be a
witch, as we have seen, and was characterized by the Bishop as 'more
often faulting in the particulars of her actions.' Frances Dicconson,
however, and Mary Spencer, absolutely denied the truth of the
accusations brought against them. Frances, according to the boy
Robinson, had changed herself into a dog; but it transpired that she
had had a quarrel with the elder Robinson. Mary Spencer, a young woman
of twenty, said that Robinson cherished much ill-feeling against her
parents, who had been convicted of witchcraft at the last assizes, and
had since died. She repeated the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles'
Creed, and declared that she defied the devil and all his works. A
story had been set afloat that she used to call her pail to follow her
as she ran. The truth was that she often trundled it down-hill, and
called to it in jest to come after her if she outstripped it. She
could have explained every circumstance in court, 'but the wind was so
loud and the throng so great, _that she could not hear the evidence
against her_.'
This last touch, as Mr. S. R. Gardiner remarks, completes the tragedy
of the situation. 'History,' as he says, 'occupies itself perforce
mainly with the sorrows of the educated classes, whose own peers have
left the records of their wrongs. Into the sufferings of the mass of
the people, except when they have been lashed by long-continued
injustice into frenzy, it is hard to gain a glimpse. For once the veil
is lifted, and we see, as by a lightning flash, the forlorn and
unfriended girl, to whom the inhuman laws of her country denied the
services of an advocate, baffled by the noisy babble around her in her
efforts to speak a word on behalf of her innocence. The very Bishop
who examined her was under the influence of the legal superstition
that every accused person was the enemy of the King. He had heard, he
said, that the father of the boy Robinson had offered, for forty
shillings, to withdraw his charge against Frances Dicconson, "but such
evidence being, as the lawyers speak, against the King," he "thought
it not meet without further authority to examine."'
The Bishop, however, like the judge, was dissatisfied with the
evidence; and the accused persons were eventually sent up to London,
where they were examined by the King's physicians, the Bishops, the
Privy Council, and by King Charles himself. Some medical men and
midwives reported that Margaret Johnson was deceived in her idea that
she bore on her body a sign or mark that her blood had been sucked.
Doubts as to the truth of the boy Robinson's story being freely
entertained, he was separated from his father, and he then revealed
the whole invention to the King's coachman. He had heard stories told
of witches and their doings, and out of these had concocted his
ghastly fiction to save himself a whipping for having neglected to
bring home his mother's cows. His father, perceiving at once how much
might be made out of the tale, took it up and expanded it; manipulated
it so as to serve his feelings of revenge or avarice, and then taught
the boy how to repeat the enlarged and improved version. It was all a
lie--from beginning to end. The day on which he pretended to have been
carried to the Witches' Sabbath at the Hoar-Stones, he was a mile
distant, gathering plums in a farmer's orchard. The accused were then
admitted to the King's presence, and assured that their lives were
safe. Further than this Charles seems to have been unable to go; for
as late as 1636 these innocent and ill-treated persons were still
lying in Lancaster Castle. It is satisfactory to state, however, that
both the boy Robinson and his father were thrown into prison.
Fresh cases of witchcraft sprang up in the Pendle district, and early
in 1636 four more women were condemned to death at the Lancaster
Assizes. Bishop Bridgman, who was again directed to make inquiries,
found that two of them had died in gaol, and that of the two others,
one had been convicted on a madman's evidence, and that of a woman of
ill fame; while the only proof alleged against the other was that a
fleshy excrescence of the size of a hazel-nut grew on her right ear,
and the end of it, being bloody, was supposed to have been sucked by a
familiar spirit. The two women seem to have been pardoned; but, as in
the former case, public opinion set too strongly against them to admit
of their being released.
THE WITCHES OF SALMESBURY.
The singular circumstances connected with the supposed outbreak of
witchcraft in Pendle Forest have, to a great extent, obscured the
strange case of the witches of Salmesbury, though it presents several
features worthy of consideration.
Three persons were accused--Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane
Southworth--and their supposed victim was one Grace Sowerbutts. In the
language of Mr. Thomas Potts, they were led into error by 'a subtle
practice and conspiracy of a seminary priest, or Jesuit, whereof this
county of Lancaster hath good store, who by reason of the general
entertainment they find, and great maintenance they have, resort
hither, being far from the eye of Justice, and, therefore, _procul a
fulmine_.' At their trial, which took place before Mr. Justice Bromley
at Lancaster, on Wednesday, August 19, the evidence of Grace
Sowerbutts was to the following effect:
That for the space of _some years past_ (at the time of the trial she
was only fourteen) she had been haunted and vexed by four women,
namely, Jennet Bierley, her grandmother, Ellen Bierley, wife to Henry
Bierley, Jane Southworth, and a certain Old Dorwife. Lately, these
four women drew her by the hair of her head, and laid her on the top
of a hay-mow in the said Henry Bierley's barn. Not long after, Jennet
Bierley met her near her house, first appearing in her own likeness,
and after that as a black dog, and when she, Grace Sowerbutts, went
over a stile, she picked her off. However, she was not hurt, and,
springing to her feet, she continued her way to her aunt's at
Osbaldeston. That evening she told her father what had occurred. On
Saturday, April 4, going towards Salmesbury Butt to meet her mother,
she fell in, at a place called the Two Briggs, with Jennet Bierley,
first in her own shape, and afterwards in the likeness of a two-legged
black dog; and this dog kept close by her side until they came to a
pool of water, when it spake, and endeavoured to persuade her to
drown herself therein, saying it was a fair and an easy death.
Whereupon, she thought there came to her one in a white sheet, and
carried her away from the pool, and in a short space of time both the
white thing and the black dog departed; but after Grace had crossed
two or three fields, the black dog re-appeared, and conveyed her into
Hugh Walshman's barn close at hand, laid her upon the floor, covered
her with straw on her body and hay on her head, and lay down on the
top of the straw--for how long a time Grace was unable to determine;
because, she said, her speech and senses were taken from her. When she
recovered her consciousness, she was lying on a bed in Walshman's
house, having been removed thither by some friends who had found her
in the barn within a few hours of her having been taken there. As it
was Monday night when she came to her senses, she had been in her
trance or swoon, according to her marvellous story, for about
forty-eight hours.
On the following day, Tuesday, her parents fetched her home; but at
the Two Briggs Jennet and Ellen Bierley appeared in their own shapes,
and she fell down in another trance, remaining unable to speak or walk
until the following Friday.
All this was remarkable enough, but Grace Sowerbutts--or the person
who had tutored her--felt it was not sufficiently grim or gruesome to
make much impression on a Lancashire jury, accustomed in witch trials
to much more harrowing details. She proceeded, therefore, to recall an
incident of a more attractive character. A good while, she said,
before the trance business occurred, she accompanied her aunt, Ellen
Bierley, and her grandmother, Jennet Bierley, to the house of one
Thomas Walshman. It was night, and all the household were asleep, but
the doors flew open, and the unexpected visitors entered. Grace and
Ellen Bierley remained below, while Jennet made her way to the
sleeping-room of Thomas Walshman and his wife, and thence brought a
little child, which, as Grace supposed, must have been in bed with its
father and mother. Having thrust a nail into its navel, she afterwards
inserted a quill, and sucked for a good while(!); then replaced the
child with its parents, who, of course, had never roused from their
sleep. The child did not cry when it was thus abused, but thenceforth
languished, and soon afterwards died. And on the night after its
burial, the said Jennet and Ellen Bierley, taking Grace Sowerbutts
with them, went to Salmesbury churchyard, took up the body, and
carried it to Jennet's house, where a portion of it was boiled in a
pot, and a portion broiled on the coals. Of both portions Jennet and
Ellen partook, and would have had Grace join them in the ghoul-like
repast, but she refused. Afterwards Jennet and Ellen seethed the bones
in a pot, and with the fat that came from them said they would anoint
their bodies, so that they might sometimes change themselves into
other shapes.
The next story told by this abandoned girl is too foul and coarse for
these pages, and we pass on to the conclusion of her evidence. On a
certain occasion, she said, Jane Southworth, a widow, met her at the
door of her father's house, carried her to the loft, and laid her upon
the floor, where she was found by her father unconscious, and
unconscious she remained till the next day. The widow Southworth then
visited her again, took her out of bed, and placed her upon the top of
a hayrick, three or four yards from the ground. She was discovered in
this position by a neighbour's wife, and laid in her bed again, but
remained speechless and senseless as before for two or three days. A
week or so after her recovery, Jane Southworth paid her a third visit,
took her away from her home, and laid her in a ditch near the house,
with her face downwards. The usual process followed: she was
discovered and put to bed, but continued unconscious--this time,
however, only for a day and a night. And, further, on the Tuesday
before the trial, the said Jane Southworth came again to her father's
house, took her and carried her into the barn, and thrust her head
amongst 'a company of boards' which were standing there, where she was
soon afterwards found, and, being again placed in a bed, remained in
her old fit until the Thursday night following.
After Grace Sowerbutts had finished her evidence, Thomas Walshman was
called, who proved that his child died when about a year old, but of
what disease he knew not; and that Grace Sowerbutts had been found in
his father's barn, and afterwards carried into his house, where she
lay till the Monday night 'as if she had been dead.' Then one John
Singleton's deposition was taken: That he had often heard his old
master, Sir John Southworth, say, touching the widow Southworth, that
she was, as he thought, an evil woman and a witch, and that he was
sorry for her husband, who was his kinsman, for he believed she would
kill him. And that the said Sir John, in coming or going between
Preston and his own house at Salmesbury, mostly avoided passing the
old wife's residence, though it was the nearest way, entirely _out of
fear of the said wife_. (Brave Sir John!)
This evidence, it is clear, failed to prove against the prisoners a
single direct act of witchcraft; but so credulous were judge and jury
in matters of this kind, that, notwithstanding the vague and
suspicious character of the testimony brought forward, it would have
gone hard with the accused, but for an accidental question which
disclosed the fact that the girl, Grace Sowerbutts, had been prompted
in her incoherent narrative, and taught to sham her fits of
unconsciousness, by a Roman priest or Jesuit, named Thompson or
Southworth, who was actuated by motives of fanaticism.
'How well this project,' exclaims the indignant Potts, 'to take away
the lives of these innocent poor creatures by practice and villainy,
to induce a young scholar to commit perjury, to accuse her own
grandmother, aunt, etc., agrees either with the title of a Jesuit or
the duty of a religious Priest, who should rather profess sincerity
and innocency than practise treachery. But this was lawful, for they
are heretics accursed, to leave the company of priests, to frequent
churches, hear the word of God preached, and profess religion
sincerely.' The horrors which he taught his promising pupil, Thompson
probably gathered from the pages of Bodin and Delrio, or some of the
other demonologists. Potts continues:
'Who did not condemn these women upon this evidence, and hold them
guilty of this so foul and horrible murder? But Almighty God, who in
His providence had provided means for their deliverance, although the
priest, by the help of the Devil, had provided false witnesses to
accuse them; yet God had prepared and placed in the seat of justice an
upright judge to sit in judgment upon their lives, who after he had
heard all the evidence at large against the prisoners for the King's
Majesty, demanded of them what answer they could make. They humbly
upon their knees, with weeping tears, desired him for God's cause to
examine Grace Sowerbutts, who set her on, or by whose means this
accusation came against them.'
The countenance of Grace Sowerbutts immediately underwent a great
change, and the witnesses began to quarrel and accuse one another. The
judge put some questions to the girl, who, for the life of her, could
make no direct or intelligible answer, saying, with obvious
hesitation, that she was put to a master to learn, but he had told her
nothing of this.
'But here,' continues Potts, 'as his lordship's care and pains was
great to discover the practices of those odious witches of the Forest
of Pendle, and other places, now upon their tribunal before him; so
was he desirous to discover this damnable practice to accuse these
poor women and bring their lives in danger, and thereby to deliver the
innocent.
'And as he openly delivered it upon the bench, in the hearing of a
great audience: That if a Priest or Jesuit had a hand in one end of
it, there would appear to be knavery and practice in the other end of
it. And that it might better appear to the whole world, examined
Thomas Sowerbutts what [the] Master taught his daughter: in general
terms, he denied all.
'The wench had nothing to say, but her Master told her nothing of
this. In the end, some that were present told his lordship the truth,
and the prisoners informed him how she went to learn with one
Thompson, a Seminary Priest, who had instructed and taught her this
accusation against them, because they were once obstinate Papists, and
now came to Church. Here is the discovery of this Priest, and of his
whole practice. Still this fire increased more and more, and one
witness accusing another, all things were laid open at large.
'In the end his lordship took away the girl from her father, and
committed her to Mr. Leigh, a very religious preacher, and Mr.
Chisnal, two Justices of the Peace, to be carefully examined.'
The examination was as follows:
'Being demanded whether the accusation she laid upon her grandmother,
Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, of witchcraft,
namely, of the killing of the child of Thomas Walshman with a nail in
the navel, the boiling, eating, and oiling, thereby to transform
themselves into divers shapes, was true; she doth utterly deny the
same: or that ever she saw any such practices done by them.
'She further saith, that one Master Thompson, which she taketh to be
Master Christopher Southworth, to whom she was sent to learn her
prayers, did persuade, counsel, and advise her, to deal as formerly
hath been said against her said Grandmother, Aunt, and Southworth's
wife.
'And further she confesseth and saith, that she never did know, or saw
any Devils, nor any other Visions, as formerly by her hath been
alleged and informed.
'Also she confesseth and saith, that she was not thrown or cast upon
the hen-ruff and hay-mow in the barn, but that she went up upon the
Mow herself by the wall-side.
'Being further demanded whether she ever was at the Church, she saith,
she was not, but promised hereafter to go to the Church, and that very
willingly.'
The three accused were also examined, and declared their belief that
Grace Sowerbutts had been trained by the priest to accuse them of
witchcraft, because they 'would not be dissuaded from the Church.'
'These examinations being taken, they were brought into the Court, and
there openly in the presence of this great audience published and
declared to the jury of life and death; and thereupon the gentlemen of
their jury required to consider of them. For although they stood upon
their Trial, for matter of fact of witchcraft, murther, and much more
of the like nature: yet in respect all their accusations did appear to
be practice, they were now to consider of them and to acquit them.
Thus were these poor innocent creatures, by the great care and pains
of this honourable Judge, delivered from the danger of this
conspiracy; this bloody practice of the Priest laid open: of whose
fact I may lawfully say, _Etiam si ego tacuero clamabunt lapides_.
'These are but ordinary with Priests and Jesuits: no respect of blood,
kindred, or friendship can move them to forbear their conspiracies;
for when he had laboured treacherously to seduce and convert them, and
yet could do no good, then devised he this means.
'God of His great mercy deliver us all from them and their damnable
conspiracies: and when any of his Majesty's subjects, so free and
innocent as these, shall come in question, grant them as honourable a
trial, as reverend and worthy a judge to sit in judgment upon them,
and in the end as speedy a deliverance.
'And for that which I have heard of them, seen with my eyes, and taken
pains to read of them, my humble prayer shall be to God Almighty, _Vt
convertantur ne pereant. Aut confundantur ne noceant._'[43]
* * * * *
I pass on to a remarkable trial for witchcraft which took place at
Taunton Assizes in August, 1626, one Edward Ball and Joan Greedie
being charged with having practised upon a certain Edward Dinham.
It seems that the complainant, when under the witch-spell, possessed
no fewer than three voices--namely, his own natural voice, and two
artificial voices, of which one was shrill and pleasant, the other
deadly and hollow. These two voices belonged respectively to the good
and evil spirits which alternately prevailed over him. As it is said
that they spoke without any movement of the lips or tongue, it is
probable the man was a natural ventriloquist, and made use of his gift
to imperil the lives of Ball and Greedie, against whom he may have
entertained a hostile feeling. He gave the following specimen of the
conversation which took place between him and his spirits:
GOOD SPIRIT. How comes this man to be thus tormented?
BAD SPIRIT. He is bewitched.
GOOD. Who hath done it?
BAD. That I may not tell.
GOOD. Aske him agayne.
DINHAM. Come, come, prithee, tell me who hath bewitched me.
BAD. A woman in greene cloathes and a black hatt, with a
large poll; and a man in a gray suite, with blue stockings.
GOOD. But where are they?
BAD. She is at her house, and hee is at a taverne in Yeohall
[Youghal] in Ireland.
GOOD. But what are their names?
BAD. Nay, that I will not tell.
GOOD. Then tell half of their names.
BAD. The one is Johan, and the other Edward.
GOOD. Nowe tell me the other half.
BAD. That I may not.
GOOD. Aske him agayne.
DINHAM. Come, come, prithee, tell me the other half.
BAD. The one is Greedie, and the other Ball.
This information having been obtained, a messenger is sent to a
certain house, where the unfortunate Joan is straightway arrested. The
conversation, if this absurd rigmarole can be so called, was
afterwards resumed, the man conveniently going into one of his 'fits'
for the purpose:
GOOD. But are these witches?
BAD. Yes; that they are.
GOOD. Howe came they to bee soe?
BAD. By discent.
GOOD. But howe by discent?
BAD. From the grandmother to the mother, and from the mother
to the children.
GOOD. But howe aree they soe?
BAD. They aree bound to us, and wee to them.
GOOD. Lett mee see the bond.
BAD. Thou shalt not.
GOOD. Lett mee see it, and if I like I will seale alsoe.
BAD. Thou shalt, if thou wilt not reveale the contentes
thereof.
GOOD. I will not.
As usual, the Good Spirit gets its way, and the bond is produced,
drawing from the Good Spirit an exclamation of anguish: 'Alas! oh,
pittifull, pittifull, pittifull! What? eight seales, bloody
seales--four dead, and four alive? Ah, miserable!'
DINHAM. Come, come, prithee, tell me, Why did they bewitch
me?
BAD. Because thou didst call Johane Greedie witche.
DINHAM. Why, is shee not a witche?
BAD. Yes; but thou shouldest not have said soe.
GOOD. But why did Ball bewitche him?
BAD. Because Greedie was not stronge enough.
A messenger is now sent after Ball; but on reaching his hiding-place,
he finds that the poor man has just escaped, and he meets with people
who had seen his flight. Dinham and his voices then join in a
discourse, from which it appears that before they bewitched Dinham
they had been guilty of various 'evil practices,' and had compassed
the death of, at least, one of their victims. Six days afterwards
Dinham has another 'fit,' and a second unsuccessful effort is made to
track and arrest Ball. Disgusted with this failure, the Good Spirit
strenuously opposes the Evil Spirit in his resolve to secure Dinham's
soul:
BAD. I will have him, or else I will torment him eight tymes
more.
GOOD. Thou shalt not have thy will in all thinges; thou shalt
torment him but four times more.
BAD. I will have thy soule.
GOOD. If thou wilt answer me three questions, I will seale
and goe with thee.
BAD. I will.
GOOD. Who made the world?
BAD. God.
GOOD. Who created mankynde?
BAD. God.
GOOD. Wherefore was Christ Jesus His precious blood shed?
BAD. I'le no more of that.
Here the patient was seized with the most violent convulsions, foaming
at the mouth, and struggling with clenched hands and contorted limbs.
Another fit came off a few days afterwards, and in this Dinham was
exposed to a double temptation:
BAD. If thou wilt give me thy soule, I will give thee gold
enough.
GOOD. Thy gold will scald my fingers.
BAD. If thou wilt give me thy soule, I will give thee dice,
and thou shalt winne infinite somes of treasure by play.
GOOD. If thou canst make every letter in this booke [a
Prayer-book which Dinham held in his hand] a die, I will.
BAD. That I cannott.
GOOD. Laudes, laudes, laudes!
BAD. Thou shalt have _ladies_ enough--ladies, ladies,
ladies!...
GOOD. If thou canst make every letter in this book a ladie, I
will.
Here the Bad Spirit made an attempt to cast away the book, but, after
a violent struggle, was defeated; and then the Good Spirit celebrated
his victory in 'the sweetest musicke that ever was heard.' Eventually
Ball was captured, and Dinham then declared that his 'two voices'
ceased to trouble him. Greedie and Ball were both committed for trial,
but no record exists of their execution, and we may hope that they
were acquitted of charges supported by such absurd and fallacious
evidence.
* * * * *
Edward Fairfax, a man of ability and culture--the refined and
melodious translator of Tasso's Christian epic--prosecuted six of his
neighbours at York Assizes, in 1622, for practising witchcraft on his
children. The grand jury found a true bill against them, and the
accused were brought to trial. But the judge, who had been privately
furnished with a certificate of their 'sober behaviour,' contrived so
to influence the jury as to obtain a verdict of acquittal. The poet
afterwards published an elaborate defence of his conduct. His folly
may be excused, perhaps, since even such men as Raleigh and Bacon
inclined towards a belief in witchcraft; and the judicious Evelyn
makes it one of his principal complaints against solitude that it
created witches. Hobbes, in his 'Leviathan,' takes, however, a more
enlightened view: 'As for witches,' he says, 'I think not that their
witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished
for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined
with their purpose to do it if they can.'
* * * * *
Even the stir and tumult of the Civil War did not suspend the
persecuting activity of a degraded superstition. In 1644 eight witches
of Manningtree, in Essex, were accused of holding witches' meetings
every Friday night; were searched for teats and devils' marks,
convicted, and, with twenty-nine of their fellows, hung. In the
following year there were more hangings in Essex; and in Norfolk a
score of witches suffered. In 1650 a woman was hung at the Old Bailey
as a witch. 'She was found to have under her armpits those marks by
which witches are discovered to entertain their familiars.' In April,
1652, Jean Peterson, the witch of Wapping, was hung at Tyburn; and in
July of the same year six witches perished at Maidstone.
In 1653 Alice Bodenham, a domestic servant, was tried at Salisbury
before Chief Justice Wilde, and convicted. It is not certain, however,
that she was executed.
In 1658 Jane Brooks was executed for practising witchcraft on a boy of
twelve, named Henry James, at Chard, in Somersetshire; in 1663 Julian
Cox, at Taunton, for a similar offence.
FOOTNOTE:
[43] Potts, 'Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of
Lancaster' (1613).
THE WITCH-FINDER: MATTHEW HOPKINS.
The severe legislation against witchcraft had thus the effect--which
invariably attends legislation when it becomes unduly repressive--of
increasing the offence it had been designed to exterminate. It was
attended, also, by another result, which is equally common--bringing
to the front a number of informers who, at the cost of many innocent
lives, turned it to their personal advantage. Of these witch-finders,
the most notorious was Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, in Essex. When
he first started his infamous trade, I cannot ascertain, but his
success would seem to have been immediate. His earliest victims he
found in his own neighbourhood. But, as his reputation grew, he
extended his operations over the whole of Essex; and in a very short
time, if any case of supposed witchcraft occurred, the neighbours sent
for Matthew Hopkins as an acknowledged expert, whose skill would
infallibly detect the guilty person.
His first appearance at the assizes was in the spring of 1645, when he
accused an unfortunate old woman, named Elizabeth Clarke. To collect
evidence against her, he watched her by night in a room in a Mr.
Edwards's house, in which she was illegally detained. At her trial he
had the audacity to affirm that, on the third night of his watching,
after he had refused her the society of one of her imps, she confessed
to him that, some six or seven years before, she had given herself
over to the devil, who visited her in the form of 'a proper gentleman,
with a hazel beard.' Soon after this, he said, a little dog came
in--fat, short-legged, and with sandy spots besprinkled on the white
ground-colour of its tub-like body. When he prevented it from
approaching the woman--who declared it was Jacmara, one of her
imps--it straightway vanished. Next came a greyhound, which she called
Vinegar Tom; and next a polecat. Improving in fluent and fertile
mendacity, Hopkins went on to assert that, on returning home that
night, about ten of the clock, accompanied by his own greyhound, he
saw his dog give a leap and a bound, and hark away as if hunting a
hare; and on following him, he espied a little white animal, about the
size of a kitten, and observed that his greyhound stood aloof from it
in fright; and by-and-by this imp or kitten danced about the dog, and,
as he supposed, bit a piece from its shoulder, for the greyhound came
to him shrieking and crying, and bleeding from a great wound. Hopkins
further stated that, going into his yard that same night, he saw a
Black Thing, shaped like a cat, but thrice as big, sitting in a
strawberry-bed, with its eyes fixed upon him. When he approached it,
the Thing leaped over the pale towards him, as he thought, but, on the
contrary, ran quite through the yard, with his greyhound after it, to
a great gate, which was underset 'with a pair of tumbril strings,'
threw it wide open, and then vanished, while his dog returned to him,
shaking and trembling exceedingly.
In these unholy vigils of his, Hopkins was accompanied by one 'John
Sterne, of Manningtree, gentleman,' who, as a matter of course,
confirmed all his statements, and added the interesting detail that
the third imp was called Sack-and-Sugar. The two wretches forced their
way into the house of another woman, named Rebecca West, from whom
they extracted a confession that the first time she saw the devil, he
came to her at night, told her he must be her husband, and finally
married her! The cruel tortures to which these and so many other
unhappy females were exposed must undoubtedly have told on their
nervous systems, producing a condition of hysteria, and filling their
minds with hallucinations, which, perhaps, may partly have been
suggested by the 'leading questions' of the witch-finders themselves.
It is to be observed that their confessions wore a striking
similarity, and that all the names mentioned of the so-called imps or
familiars were of a ludicrous character, such as Prick-ear, Frog,
Robin, and Sparrow. Then the excitement caused by these trials so
wrought on the public mind that witnesses were easily found to
testify--apparently in good faith--to the evil things done by the
accused, and even to swear that they had seen their familiars. Thus
one man declared that, passing at daybreak by the house of a certain
Anne West, he was surprised to find her door open. Looking in, he
descried three or four Things, like black rabbits, one of which ran
after him. He seized and tried to kill him, but in his hands the Thing
seemed a mere piece of wool, which extended lengthwise without any
apparent injury. Full speed he made for a neighbouring spring, in
which he tried to drown him, but as soon as he put the Thing in the
water, he vanished from his sight. Returning to the house, he saw Anne
West standing at the door 'in her smock,' and asked her why she sent
her imp to trouble him, but received no answer.
His experiments having proved successful, Hopkins took up
witch-finding as a vocation, one which provided him with the means of
a comfortable livelihood, while it gratified his ambition by making
him the terror of many and the admiration of more, investing him with
just that kind of power which is delightful to a narrow and
commonplace mind. Assuming the title of 'Witch-finder-General,' and
taking with him John Sterne, and a woman, whose business it was to
examine accused females for the devil's marks, he travelled through
the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Huntingdon, and Sussex.
He was at Bury, in Suffolk, in August, 1645, and there, on the 27th,
no fewer than eighteen witches were executed at once through his
instrumentality. A hundred and twenty more were to have been tried,
but the approach of the royal troops led to the adjournment of the
Assize. In one year this wholesale murderer caused the death of sixty
poor creatures. The 'test' he generally adopted was that of
'swimming,' which James I. recommends with much unction in his
'Demonologie.' The hands and feet of the accused were tied together
crosswise, the thumb of the right hand to the big toe of the left
foot, and _vice versâ_. She was then wrapped up in a large sheet or
blanket, and laid upon her back in a pond or river. If she sank, she
was innocent, but established her innocence at the cost of her life;
if she floated, which was generally the case, as her clothes afforded
a temporary support, she was pronounced guilty, and hanged with all
possible expedition.
Another 'test' was the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, which, it was
believed, no witch could accomplish. Woe to the unfortunate creature
who, in her nervousness, faltered over a syllable or stumbled at a
word! Again she was forced into some awkward and painful attitude,
bound with cords, and kept foodless and sleepless for four-and-twenty
hours. Or she was walked continuously up and down a room, an attendant
holding each arm, until she dropped with fatigue. Sometimes she was
weighed against the church Bible, obtaining her deliverance if she
proved to be heavier. But this last-named test was too lenient for the
Witch-finder-General, who preferred the swimming ordeal.
One of his victims at Bury was a venerable clergyman, named Lowes, who
had been Vicar of Brandeston, near Framlingham, for fifty years.
'After he was found with the marks,' says Sterne, 'in his
confession'--when made, to whom, or under what circumstances, we are
not informed--'he confessed that in pride of heart to be equal, or
rather above God, the devil took advantage of him, and he covenanted
with the devil, and sealed it with his blood, and had those familiars
or spirits which sucked on the marks found on his body, and did much
harm both by sea and land, especially by sea; for he confessed that
he, being at Lungar Fort [Landguard Fort], in Suffolk, where he
preached, as he walked upon the wall or works there, he saw a great
sail of ships pass by, and that, as they were sailing by, one of his
three imps, namely, his yellow one, forthwith appeared to him, and
asked him what he should do, and he bade him go and sink such a ship,
and showed his imp a new ship among the middle of the rest (as I
remember), one that belonged to Ipswich; so he confessed the imp went
forthwith away, and he stood still and viewed the ships on the sea as
they were a-sailing, and perceived that ship immediately to be in more
trouble and danger than the rest; for he said the water was more
boisterous near that than the rest, tumbling up and down with waves,
as if water had been boiled in a pot, and soon after (he said), in a
short time, it sunk directly down into the sea as he stood and viewed
it, when all the rest sailed down in safety; then he confessed he made
fourteen widows in one quarter of an hour. Then Mr. Hopkins, as he
told me (for he took his confession), asked him if it did not grieve
him to see so many men cast away in a short time, and that he should
be the cause of so many poor widows on a sudden; but he swore by his
Maker he was joyful to see what power his imps had: and so likewise
confessed many other mischiefs, and had a charm to keep him out of the
jail and hanging, as he paraphrased it himself; but therein the devil
deceived him, for he was hanged that Michaelmas time, 1645, at Bury
St. Edmunds.' Poor old man! This so-called confession has a very
dubious air about it, and reads as if it had been invented by Matthew
Hopkins, who, as Sterne naïvely acknowledges, 'took the confessions,'
apparently without any witness or reporter being present.
The Witch-finder-General, when on his expeditions of inquiry, assumed
the style of a man of fortune. He put up always at the best inns, and
lived in the most luxurious fashion, which he could well afford to do,
as, when invited to visit a town, he insisted on payment of his
expenses for board and lodging, and a fee of twenty shillings. This
sum he claimed under any circumstances; but if he succeeded in
detecting any witches, he demanded another fee of twenty shillings for
each one brought to execution. Generally his pretensions were admitted
without demur; but occasionally he encountered a sturdy opponent, like
the Rev. Mr. Gaul, of Great Staughton, in Huntingdonshire, who
attacked him in a briskly-written pamphlet as an intolerable nuisance.
Hopkins replied by an angry letter to one of the magistrates of the
town, in which he said: 'I am to come to Kimbolton this week, and it
shall be ten to one but I will come to your town first; but I would
certainly know afore whether your town affords many sticklers for such
cattle [_i.e._ witches], or [is] willing to give and afford us good
welcome and entertainment, as other where I have been, else I shall
waive your shire (not as yet beginning in any part of it myself), and
betake me to such places where I do and may persist without control,
but with thanks and recompense.'
Neither Mr. Gaul nor the magistrates of Great Staughton showed any
anxiety in regard to the witch-finder's threat. On the contrary, Mr.
Gaul returned to the charge in a second pamphlet, entitled 'Select
Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,' in which, while
admitting the existence of witches--for he was not above the
superstition of his age and country--he vigorously attacked Hopkins
for accusing persons on insufficient evidence, and denounced the
atrocious cruelties of which he and his associates were guilty. I have
no doubt that this manly language helped to bring about a wholesome
change of public opinion. In the eastern counties so bitter a feeling
of resentment arose, that Hopkins found it advisable to seek fresh
woods and pastures new. In the spring of 1647 he was at Worcester,
where four unfortunates were condemned on the evidence of himself and
his associates. But the indignation against him deepened and extended,
and he hastily returned to his native town, trembling for his wretched
life. There he printed a defence of his conduct, under the title of
'The Discovery of Witches, in answer to several queries lately
delivered to the Judge of Assize for the county of Norfolk; published
by Matthew Hopkins, witch-finder, for the benefit of the whole
kingdom.' His death occurred shortly afterwards. According to Sterne,
he died the death of a righteous man, having 'no trouble of conscience
for what he had done, as was falsely reported for him.' But the more
generally accepted account is an instance of 'poetical justice'--of
Nemesis satisfied--which I heartily hope is authentic. It is said that
he was surrounded by a mob in a Suffolk village, and accused of being
himself a wizard, and of having, by his tricks of sorcery, cheated the
devil out of a memorandum-book, in which were entered the names of all
the witches in England. 'Thus,' cried the populace, 'you find out
witches, not by God's name, but by the devil's.' He denied the charge;
but his accusers determined that he should be subjected to his
favourite test. He was stripped; his thumbs and toes were tied
together; he was wrapped in a blanket, and cast into a pond. Whether
he was drowned, or whether he floated, was taken up, tried, sentenced,
and executed, authorities do not agree; but they agree that he never
more disturbed the peace of the realm as a witch-finder.
Butler has found a niche for this knave, among other knaves, in his
'Hudibras':
'Hath not this present Parliament
A lieger to the Devil sent,
Fully empowered to set about
Finding revolted witches out?
And has he not within a year
Hanged threescore of them in one shire?
Some only for not being drowned,
And some for sitting above ground
Whole days and nights upon their breeches,
And, feeling pain, were hanged for witches ...
Who proved himself at length a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech'--
the engineer hoist with his own petard--happily a by no means
infrequent mode of retribution.
Sterne, the witch-finder's colleague, not unnaturally shared in the
public disfavour, and in defence of himself and his deceased partner
gave to the world a 'Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft,' in
which he acknowledges to have been concerned in the detection and
condemnation of some 200 witches in the counties of Essex, Suffolk,
Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Norfolk and Cambridge, and the Isle
of Ely. He adds that 'in many places I never received penny as yet,
nor any like, notwithstanding I have bonds for satisfaction, except I
should sin; but many rather fall upon me for what hath been received,
but I hope such suits will be disannulled, and that when I have been
out of moneys for towns in charges and otherwise, such course will be
taken that I may be satisfied and paid with reason.' One can hardly
admire sufficiently the brazen effrontery of this appeal!
* * * * *
The number of persons imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft grew so
large as to excite the alarm of the Government, who issued stringent
orders to the country magistrates to commit for trial persons brought
before them on this charge, and forbade them to exercise summary
jurisdiction. Eventually a commission was given to the Earl of
Warwick, and others, to hold a gaol-delivery at Chelmsford. Lord
Warwick, who had done good service to the State as Lord High Admiral,
was sagacious and fair-minded. But with him went Dr. Edmund Calamy,
the eminent Puritan divine, to see that no injustice was done to the
parties accused. This proved an unfortunate choice; for Calamy, who,
in his sermon before the judges, had enlarged on the enormity of the
sin of witchcraft, sat on the bench with them, and unhappily
influenced their deliberations in the direction of severity. As a
result, sixteen persons were hanged at Yarmouth, fifteen at
Chelmsford, besides some sixty at various places in Suffolk.
* * * * *
Whitlocke, in his 'Memorials,' speaks of many 'witches' as having been
put upon their trial at Newcastle, through the agency of a man whom he
calls 'the Witch-finder.' Another of the imitators of Hopkins, a Mr.
Shaw, parson of Rusock, came to condign humiliation (1660). Having
instigated some bucolic barbarians to put an old woman, named Joan
Bibb, to the water-ordeal, she swam right vigorously in the pool, and
struggled with her assailants so strenuously that she effected her
escape. Afterwards she brought an action against the parson for
instigating the outrage, and obtained £20 damages.
* * * * *
In 1664, Elizabeth Styles, of Bayford, Somersetshire, was convicted and
sentenced to death, but died in prison before the day fixed for her
execution. It is said that she made a voluntary confession--without
inducement or torture--in the presence of the magistrates and several
divines--another case (if it be true) of the morbid self-delusion which
in times of popular excitement makes so many victims.
* * * * *
One feels the necessity of speaking with some degree of moderation
respecting the credulity of the ignorant and uneducated classes, when
one finds so sound a lawyer and so admirable a Christian as Sir
Matthew Hale infected by the mania. No other blot, I suppose, is to be
found on his fame and character; and that he should have incurred this
indelible stain, and fallen into so pitiable an error, is a problem by
no means easy of solution.
At the Lent Assize, in 1664, at Bury St. Edmunds, two aged women,
named Rose Cullender and Amy Duny were brought before him on a charge
of having bewitched seven persons. The nature of the evidence on which
it was founded the reader will appreciate from the following examples:
Samuel Pacey, of Lowestoft, a man of good repute for sobriety and
other homely virtues, having been sworn, said: That on Thursday,
October 10 last, his younger daughter Deborah, about nine years old,
fell suddenly so lame that she could not stand on her feet, and so
continued till the 17th, when she asked to be carried to a bank which
overlooked the sea, and while she was sitting there, Amy Duny came to
the witness's house to buy some herrings, but was denied. Twice more
she called, but being always denied, went away grumbling and
discontented. At this instant of time the child was seized with
terrible fits; complained of a pain in her stomach, as if she were
being pricked with pins, shrieking out 'with a voice like a whelp,'
and thus continuing until the 30th. This witness added that Amy Duny,
being known as a witch, and his child having, in the intervals of her
fits, constantly exclaimed against her as the cause of her sufferings,
saying that the said Amy did appear to her and frighten her, he began
to suspect the said Amy, and accused her in plain terms of injuring
his child, and got her 'set in the stocks.' Two days afterwards, his
daughter Elizabeth was seized with similar fits; and both she and her
sister complained that they were tormented by various persons in the
town of bad character, but more particularly by Amy Duny, and by
another reputed witch, Rose Cullender.
Another witness deposed that she had heard the two children cry out
against these persons, who, they said, threatened to increase their
torments tenfold if they told tales of them. 'At some times the
children would see Things run up and down the house in the appearance
of mice; and one of them suddenly snapped one with the tongs, and
threw it in the fire, and it screeched out like a bat. At another
time, the younger child, being out of her fits, went out of doors to
take a little fresh air, and presently a little Thing like a bee flew
upon her face, and would have gone into her mouth, whereupon the child
ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, shrieking
out in a most terrible manner; whereupon this deponent made haste to
come to her, but before she could reach her, the child fell into her
swooning fit, and, at last, with much pain and straining, vomited up a
twopenny nail with a broad head; and after that the child had raised
up the nail she came to her understanding, and being demanded by this
deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought
this nail and forced it into her mouth.'
Such evidence as this failing to satisfy Serjeant Keeling, and
several magistrates who were present, of the guilt of the accused, it
was resolved to resort to demonstration by experiment. The persons
bewitched were brought into court to touch the two old women; and it
was observed (says Hutchinson) that when the former were in the midst
of their fits, and to all men's apprehension wholly deprived of all
sense and understanding, closing their fists in such a manner as that
the strongest man could not force them open, yet, at the least touch
of one of the supposed witches--Rose Cullender, by name--they would
suddenly shriek out, opening their hands, which accident would not
happen at any other person's touch. 'And lest they might privately see
when they were touched by the said Rose Cullender, they were blinded
with their own aprons, and the touching took the same effect as
before. There was an ingenious person that objected there might be a
great fallacy in this experiment, and there ought not to be any stress
put upon this to convict the parties, for the children might
counterfeit this their distemper, and, perceiving what was done to
them, they might in such manner suddenly alter the erection and
gesture of their bodies, on purpose to induce persons to believe that
they were not natural, but wrought strangely by the touch of the
prisoners. Wherefore, to avoid this scruple, it was privately desired
by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, and Mr.
Serjeant Keeling, and some other gentleman then in court, would attend
one of the distempered persons in the farthest part of the hall
whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one of the witches to
try what would then happen, which they did accordingly; and Amy Duny
was brought from the bar, and conveyed to the maid. They then put an
apron before her eyes; and then one other person touched her hand,
which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the
court. Whereupon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting that they
did believe the whole transaction of the business was a mere
imposture.' As, in truth, it was.
It is remarkable that Sir Matthew Hale was still unconvinced. He
invited the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a man of great learning and
ability--the author of the 'Religio Medici,' and other justly famous
works--who admitted that the fits were natural, but thought them
'heightened by the devil co-operating with the malice of the witches,
at whose instance he did the villanies.' Sir Matthew then charged the
jury. There were, he said, two questions to be considered: First,
whether or not these children were bewitched? And, second, whether the
prisoners at the bar had been guilty of bewitching them? _That there
were such creatures as witches, he did not doubt_; and he appealed to
the Scriptures, which had affirmed so much, and also to the wisdom of
all nations, which had enacted laws against such persons. Such, too,
he said, had been the judgment of this kingdom, as appeared by that
Act of Parliament which had provided punishment proportionable to the
quality of the offence. He desired them to pay strict attention to the
evidence, and implored the great God of heaven to direct their hearts
in so weighty a matter; for to condemn the innocent, and set free the
guilty, was 'an abomination to the Lord.'
After a charge of this description, the jury naturally brought in a
verdict of 'Guilty.' Sentence of death was pronounced; and the two
poor old women, protesting to the last their innocence, suffered on
the gallows. Who will not regret the part played by Sir Matthew Hale
in this judicial murder? It is no excuse to say that he did but share
in the popular belief. One expects of such a man that he will rise
superior to the errors of ordinary minds; that he will be guided by
broader and more enlightened views--by more humane and generous
sympathies. Instead of attempting an apology which no act can render
satisfactory, it is better to admit, with Sir Michael Foster, that
'this great and good man was betrayed, notwithstanding the rectitude
of his intentions, into a great mistake, under the strong bias of
early prejudices.'
Gradually, however, a disbelief in witchcraft grew up in the public
mind, as intellectual inquiry widened its scope, and the relations of
man to the Unseen World came to be better understood. Among the
educated classes the old superstition expired much more rapidly than
among the poorer; and so we find that though convictions became rarer,
committals and trials continued tolerably frequent until the closing
years of the eighteenth century. To the ghastly roll of victims,
however, additions continued to be made. Thus in August, 1682, three
women, named Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards, and Mary Trembles,
were tried at Exeter before Lord Chief Justice North and Mr. Justice
Raymond, convicted of various acts of witchcraft, and sentenced to
death. Before their trial they had confessed to frequent interviews
with the devil, who appeared in the shape of a black man as long (or
as short) as a man's arm; and one of them acknowledged to have caused
the death of four persons by witchcraft. Some portion of these
monstrous fictions they recanted under the gallows; but even on the
brink of the grave they persisted in claiming the character of
witches, and in asserting that they had had personal intercourse with
the devil.
In March, 1684, Alicia Welland was tried before Chief Baron Montague
at Exeter, convicted, and executed.
To estimate the extent to which the belief in witchcraft, during the
latter part of the seventeenth century, operated against the lives of
the accused, Mr. Inderwick has searched the records of the Western
Circuit, from 1670 to 1712 inclusive, and ascertained that out of
fifty-two persons tried in that period on various charges of
witchcraft, only seven were convicted, and one of these seven was
reprieved. 'What occurred on the Western,' he remarks, 'probably went
on at each of the several circuits into which the country was then
divided; and one cannot doubt that in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex,
Huntingdon, and Lancashire, where the witches mostly abounded, the
charges and convictions were far more numerous than in the West. The
judges appear, however, not to have taken the line of Sir Matthew
Hale, but, as far as possible, to have prevented convictions. Indeed,
Lord Jeffreys--who, when not engaged on political business, was at
least as good a judge as any of his contemporaries--and Chief Justice
Herbert, tried and obtained acquittals of witches in 1685 and 1686 at
the very time that they were engaged on the Bloody Assize in
slaughtering the participators in Monmouth's rebellion. It is also a
remarkable fact that, from 1686 to 1712, when charges of witchcraft
gradually ceased, charges and convictions of malicious injury to
property in burning haystacks, barns, and houses, and malicious
injuries to persons and to cattle, increased enormously, these being
the sort of accusations freely made against the witches before this
date.'
I think there can be little doubt that many evil-disposed persons
availed themselves of the prevalent belief in witchcraft as a cover
for their depredations on the property of their neighbours, diverting
suspicion from themselves to the poor wretches who, through accidental
circumstances, had acquired notoriety as the devil's accomplices. It
would also seem probable that not a few of the reputed witches
similarly turned to account their bad reputation. It is not
impossible, indeed, that there may be a certain degree of truth in the
tales told of the witches' meetings, and that in some rural
neighbourhoods the individuals suspected of being witches occasionally
assembled at an appointed rendezvous to consult upon their position
and their line of operations. The practices at these gatherings may
not always have been kept within the limits of decency and decorum;
and in this way the loathsome details with which every account of the
witches' meetings are embellished may have had a real foundation.
* * * * *
That the judges at length began persistently to discourage convictions
for witchcraft is seen in the action of Lord Chief Justice Holt at the
Bury St. Edmunds Assize in 1694. An old woman, known as Mother
Munnings, of Harks, in Suffolk, was brought before him, and the
witnesses against her retailed the village talk--how that her
landlord, Thomas Purnel, who, to get her out of the house she had
rented from him, had removed the street-door, was told that 'his nose
should lie upward in the churchyard' before the following Saturday;
and how that he was taken ill on the Monday, died on the Tuesday, and
was buried on the Thursday. How that she had a familiar in the shape
of a polecat, and how that a neighbour, peeping in at her window one
night, saw her take out of her basket a couple of imps--the one black,
the other white. And how that a woman, named Sarah Wager, having
quarrelled with her, was stricken dumb and lame. All this
tittle-tattle was brushed aside in his charge by the strong
common-sense of the judge; and the jury, under his direction,
returned a verdict of 'Not guilty.' Dr. Hutchinson remarks: 'Upon
particular inquiry of several in or near the town, I find most are
satisfied that it is a very right judgment. She lived about two years
after, without doing any known harm to anybody, and died declaring her
innocence. Her landlord was a consumptive-spent man, and the words not
exactly as they swore them, and the whole thing seventeen years
before.... The white imp is believed to have been a lock of wool,
taken out of her basket to spin; and its shadow, it is supposed, was
the black one.'
In the same year (1694) a woman, named Margaret Elmore, was tried at
Ipswich; in 1695 one Mary Gay at Launceston; and in 1696 one Elizabeth
Hume at Exeter; but in each case, under the direction of Chief Justice
Holt, a verdict of acquittal was declared. Thus the seventeenth
century went its way in an unaccustomed atmosphere of justice and
humanity.