Coming out from these purely legendary times, we find ourselves on the
more solid ground of an actual legal record--the 'Abbreviatio
Placitorum;'[93] which informs us that in the tenth year of King John's
reign, "Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant, accused Gideon of sorcery (de
sorceria), and she was acquitted by the judgment of the (hot) iron." This
is the earliest historic trial to be found in any legal document in
England. Nothing more appears until 1324, when two Coventry men,[94]
specially appointed out of twenty-seven implicated, undertook the slaying
of the King, Edward II., the two Dispensers his favourites, the Prior of
Coventry, his caterer and his steward, because they had oppressed the
town, and dealt unrighteously with its inhabitants. These two men went to
a famous necromancer then living in Coventry, called Master John of
Nottingham, whom, with his servant Robert Marshall of Leicester, they
engaged to perform the work required. But Robert Marshall proved
faithless, and betrayed his master to the authorities; telling them how
they had received a sum of money for the work in hand, with which sum of
money they had bought seven pounds of wax and two yards of canvas, to make
seven images--six for the six already enumerated, the seventh for one
Richard de Lowe, who had done no one any harm, but on whom they wished to
try the effect of the spell, as a modern anatomist would try his
experiments on cats, or dogs, or rabbits. He told them how he and Master
John of Nottingham had been to a ruined house under Shorteley Park, about
half a league from Coventry, where they remained at work from the Monday
after the Feast of Saint Nicholas to the Saturday after the Feast of
Ascension, making these images of wax and canvas by which they were to
bewitch their noble enemies to death. And first, to try the potency of the
charm, Master John took a long leaden pin, and struck it two inches deep
into the forehead of the image representing Richard de Lowe, upon which
Richard was found writhing and in great pain, screaming "harrow!" and
having no knowledge of any man; and so he languished for some days. Then
Master John drew out the leaden pin from the brow, and struck it into the
heart of the image, when immediately Richard de Lowe died, as any number
of witnesses could testify. The necromancer and his man, and the
twenty-seven Coventry men implicated in this bit of sorcery, were tried
at common law, and acquitted for want of evidence.
That same year, too, occurred one of the most picturesque trials for
witchcraft known: the trial of Dame Alice Kyteler, which Mr. Wright, with
so much industry and learning, has exhumed from the dusty old records
where it was buried, and set out into the light of present knowledge and
apprehension. But Dame Alice was an Irishwoman, and so does not rightly
come into a book on English witches; else it would be a pleasant, if sad,
labour to tell how she was arrested on the charge of holding nightly
conferences with her spirit or familiar, Artisson, who was sometimes a
cat, and sometimes a black shaggy dog, and sometimes a black man with two
tall black companions, each carrying an iron rod in his hand--to which
fiendish Proteus she had sacrificed, in the highway, nine red cocks, and
nine peacocks' eyes; and also for having, between complines and twilight,
raked all the filth of Kilkenny streets to the doors of her son-in-law
William Outlawe, murmuring to herself--
"To the house of William, my sonne,
Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie towne."
Of how, too, she blasphemously travestied the holy sacrament, having a
wafer with the Devil's name stamped on it instead of Christ's; and how she
had a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased a staff "upon which she
ambolled and gallopped thorough thicke and thin, when and what manner she
listed." But it does not belong to my present subject: nor to tell how one
of her accomplices, poor weak Petronilla de Meath, was burnt at Kilkenny,
not having strength or courage to resist the monstrous confession forced
upon her; but how the other, Basil, escaped, according to the natural law
by which the strongest always come off the best. Perhaps the fact that
Dame Alice took refuge in England may give her a slight claim to a place
in these pages; but the question is doubtful, so we must let her go--as
also her son-in-law, William Outlawe, whose strict imprisonment of nine
weeks led to no bad result, and, let us hope, cooled his blood, which was
a trifle too near to boiling point.
Then we stumble over the threshold of the chamber where Friars Bacon and
Bungay are sleeping, while stupid Miles is watching the Brazen Head whose
brief solemn words were spoken in vain; going forward just a few paces
until we come to the death-beds of Bungay and Vandermast, and Friar
Bacon's clever cheating of the Devil at last. But we are still on the
outskirts of legendary land, and must go on to the middle of the
fourteenth century before we get a firm hold. About this time the subject
of witchcraft occupied much of the attention and thought of the Church,
but the priests had not yet quite closed their fingers round it; for in
1371 a man was arrested for sorcery, and "brought before the justices of
the King's Bench, by whom he was acquitted for want of evidence, which
shows that it was still looked upon merely as an offence against common
law."[95] It was only when it became the superstition which some men are
pleased to call "religion" that it got stained with its deepest dyes.
Early in 1406 Henry IV. gave instructions to the Bishop of Norwich to
search for the sorcerers, witches, and necromancers reported to be rather
rife in that respectable diocese, and if he could not convert them from
the evil of their ways, he was to bring them to speedy punishment; and in
1432 the Privy Council ordered to be seized and examined a Franciscan
friar of Worcester, by name Thomas Northfield; another friar, John
Ashwell; John Virley "a clerk;" and Margery Jourdemaine--the same Margery
generally called the Witch of Eye, who, nine years later, was burnt at
Smithfield for her complicity in the treasonable practices of Dame Eleanor
of Gloucester. In 1441 Dame Eleanor herself was arrested, and "put in
holt, for she was suspecte of treason;" and with her the Witch of Eye, who
was burnt; and Roger, a clerk "longing to her," who was placed on a high
scaffold against St. Paul's Cross on the Sunday, and there "arraied like
as he should never thrive in his garnementys;" while heaped up round about
were all his instruments taken with him, to be showed among the people,
and create a proper fear and horror in their mind. The end of poor Roger
the clerk was, that he was dragged from the Tower to Tyburn, there hanged,
beheaded, and quartered; his head set on London Bridge, and his four
quarters sent--one to Hereford, and one to Oxenford, another to York, and
the fourth to Cambrigge. As for Dame Eleanor, that proud, dark,
unscrupulous heroine of romance, every one knows the story of her disgrace
and shame; how she came from London to Westminster, and walked through the
streets of the city barefooted and bareheaded, carrying the waxen taper of
two pounds' weight, and doing penance before all the crowd of citizens
assembled to see her "on her foot and hoodles;" and how she offered up her
taper on the high altar of "Poules;" and when all was done, was sent to
Chester prison, "there to byde while she lyveth."
After her, in 1478, comes "the high and noble princesse Jaquet," Duchess
of Bedford, charged with having, by the aid of "an image of lede, made
lyke a man of arms, conteyning the length of a mannes fynger, and broken
in the myddes, and made fast with a wyre," turned the love of King Edward
IV. from one Dame Elianor Butteler daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury,
to whom he was affianced, unto her own child, Elizabeth Grey, sometime
wife to Sir John Grey, knight; and in 1483 poor Jane Shore was bound to do
penance, walking bareheaded and barefooted, clad only in her kirtle,
carrying a wax taper, and acknowledging her sins, because Richard of
Gloucester had a withered arm, and wanted to put a few enemies out of the
way of that arm and its desires. He employed the same accusation against
many of those enemies, but so patently for political motives and without
even the semblance of reason, that these attainders can scarcely be set
down in any manner to the charge of witchcraft. Then in 1484 came the bull
of Innocent VIII., which gave authority to the inquisitors to "convict,
imprison, and punish" the unfortunate servants of the Devil, who thus
found themselves a mark for every one's shaft.
In Henry the Eighth's time treasure-seeking was the most fashionable phase
of necromancy. There was Neville of Wolsey's household, who consulted
Wood--gentleman, magician, and treasure-seeker extraordinary--but only for
a charm or magic ring which should bring him into favour with his prince,
saying that his master the Cardinal had such an one, and he would fain
participate; and he did at last get Wood to make him one that would bring
him the love of women. Wood could find treasures wherever hidden, and was
sure of the philosopher's stone; nay, he would "chebard" (jeopard) his
life but that he could make gold as he listed, and offered to remain in
prison till he had accomplished it, "twelve months on silver and twelve
and a half on gold." In this same reign, too, was arrested William
Stapleton for sorcery. William[96] was a monk of St. Benet in the Holm,
Norfolk, and William loved not his monkish life; so he got out, seeking
money to buy his dispensation. And not having the money at hand himself,
nor knowing how to get it, he took to treasure-seeking as the easiest
manner open to him of making a fortune. But his conjurations and his magic
staff only led him to some Roman remains, and nothing more; so he borrowed
of a friend instead, then settled in Norfolk, and turned to
treasure-seeking again, uselessly; got into intrigues that did him no
good; and had three spirits, Andrea Malchus, Inchubus, and Oberion--the
last a dumb devil who would not speak, being in the service of my Lord
Cardinal.
In 1521 the Duke of Buckingham died on the scaffold, led into some
imprudent actions by the predictions of his familiar magician, one friar
Hopkins; and Hopkins, to make amends, died broken-hearted shortly after.
And there was the Maid of Kent (1534), Elizabeth Barton, who had trances
and gave revelations, and was on intimate terms with Mary Magdalen and the
Virgin, and who was probably a "sensitive" made use of by the Catholics to
try and frighten the King from his marriage with the "gospel eyes;" but
poor Elizabeth Barton came to a sad pass with her revelations and trances;
and Mary Magdalen, who had given her a letter written in heaven and all of
gold, forgot to forewarn or shield her from her cruel and shameful end at
Tyburn that cloudy fitful day of April, with the gallows standing out
against the flecked sky, and the poor raving nun, half-enthusiast
half-impostor, praying bareheaded at its foot--she and her accomplices
waiting for the moment to die.
In 1541 we find a nobler name on the scaffold--Lord Hungerford--"beheaded
for procuring certain persons to conspire that they might know how long
Henry VIII. would live;" and that same year an Act was passed against
false prophecies, and another against conjurations, witchcraft, and
sorcery, making it felony without benefit of clergy. But six years later
Edward VI. abrogated that statute; not for any tenderness to witches, but
because with it was bound up a prohibition against pulling down crosses.
In 1549 Ket's rebellion was troublesome; its vigour due partly to the old
prophecy repeated through the plains of Norfolk--
"Hob, Dic, and Hic, with Clubs and clouted Shoon,
Shall fill up Duffin-dale with slaughtered Bodies soon."
And then we come to nothing more until 1559, when Elizabeth "renewed the
same article of inquiry for sorcerers," but punishing the first conviction
only with the pillory. The following year eight men were taken up for
conjurations and sorcery, and tried at Westminster, where they had to
purge themselves by confession, penitence, and a repudiating oath. In 1562
the Earl and Countess of Lennox, Anthony Pool, Anthony Fortescue, and some
others, were condemned for treason and meddling with sorcerers; though,
indeed, Elizabeth herself was not free from either the superstition or its
practice; for did she not patronize Dr. Dee and his "skryer" John Kelly,
with his ranting about Madimi in her gown of "changeable sey," and all the
other spirits who came in and out of the "show-stone," and talked just the
same kind of rubbish as spirits talk now in modern circles? But the poor
"figure-flinger, with his tin pictures," was a sorcerer not to be
protected, so got tried and condemned--poor figure-flinger!
In 1562, the year of Lady Lennox's business, a new Act against witchcraft
was passed; and in 1589 one Mrs. Deir practised conjuration against the
Queen, for which she was tried, but acquitted for want of evidence; but
the Queen had excessive anguish in her teeth that year, by night and by
day. When Ferdinand Earl of Derby died, about this time, of perpetual and
unceasing sickness, a waxen image was found in his chamber stuffed with
hair the exact colour of his; which sufficiently accounted for his illness
and the mysterious manner of his death, though a Sadducee and sceptic
might have whispered of poison, or a physician have spoken of cholera;
from which disease indeed, by the minute symptoms so carefully detailed,
the poor earl's death seems to have been--if not from poison, which might
have produced the same effects. Still, the accusation of sorcery was so
convenient--such a cloak for viler sins! The latter half of Elizabeth's
reign was disgraced by many witch persecutions, for the subject was
beginning to attract painful notice now; and, though it was not till James
I. had set the smouldering fragments all a-blaze that the worst of the
evils were done, still enough was doing now for the philosopher to deplore
and the humanitarian to lament. In 1575 many were hanged at Barking; in
1579 three were executed at Chelmsford, four at Abingdon, and two at
Cambridge. In 1582 thirteen at St. Osith's, the evidence against one being
that she had been heard to talk to something when alone in her house;
while of the other, a woman swore that she looked through her window one
day, when she was out, and there "espied a spirite to looke out of a
potcharde from under a clothe, the nose thereof being browne like unto a
ferret." In 1585 one was hanged at Tyburn and one at Stanmore; 1589 saw
three sent into eternity at Chelmsford; in 1593 we have the witches of
Warbois; and two years later (1595) three at Barnet and Brainford; in 1597
several at Derby and Stafford; so that by degrees the thing came to be a
notorious matter of social life; and the poor and the aged and the
disliked lived in fear and peril, daily increasing. At this time, too,
possessions were many and ghosts walked abroad without let or hindrance.
Richard Lee saw one at Canterbury (1575), and Master Gaymore and others
saw another at Rye two years after. "But," says Reginald Scot, "certainely
some one knave in a white sheet hath cosened and abused many thousands
that way, specially when Robin Goodfellow kept such a coile in the
Country. For you shall understand that these bugs specially are spied and
feared of sicke folke, children, women, and cowards, which, through
weaknesse of minde and body, are shaken with vain dreames and continuall
fear. The Scythians, being a stout and a warlike nation, as divers writers
report, never see any vaine sights, or spirits. It is a common saying, a
Lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our mothers' maids have so
terrified us with an ugly devil having hornes on his head, fire in his
mouth, and a taile at his back, eyes like a bason, fanges like a dog,
clawes like a beare, a skinne like a Niger, and a voice roring like a
Lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough; they
have so fraied us with bullbeggars, spirits, urchens, elves, hags,
fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns, sylens (syrens?), kit with the cansticke,
tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcats, conjurors, nymphes,
changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the mare, the man in
the oke, the hell-waine, the firedrake, the puckle, Tom thombe,
hob-gobbin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid
of our own shadowes; insomuch as some never fear the devil, but in a dark
night; and then a polled sheep is a perillous beast, and many times is
taken for our father's soul, specially in a churchyard, where a right
hardy man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand
upright. For right grave writers report, that spirits most often and
specially take the shape of women, appearing to monks, &c., and of beasts,
dogs, swine, horses, goats, cats, haires, of fowles, as crowes, night
owles and shreek owles; but they delight most in the likenesse of snakes
and dragons." All of which "wretched and cowardly infidelity" was rampant
in England when good Queen Bess ruled the land--rampant doubly, so that
there was no holding in of this furious madness after James I. had got his
foot in the stirrup, and was riding a race neck and neck with the Devil.
But I must turn back a few years, and tell of