In 1603, Mary Glover, a merchant's daughter in Thames Street, gave herself
out as bewitched, and said that Mother Jackson had done it. A little
glimmering of reason made the physician Dr. Boncraft tell the Lord Chief
Justice Anderson that Mother Jackson was wrongfully accused, and the girl
was counterfeiting. So the Lord Chief Justice caused the Recorder of
London, Sir John Crook, have her to him in his chambers in the Temple. The
maid went with her mother and some neighbours, and in an hour's time came
Mother Jackson, disguised like a country market woman, with a muffler
hiding her face, an old hat, and a short cloak bespattered with mire. As
soon as she entered the maid fell backward on the floor; "her Eyes drawn
into her Head, her Tongue toward her Throat, her Mouth drawn up to her
Ear, her Bodie became stiff and senseless, Her Lips being shut closs a
plain and audible Voice came out from her Nostrils saying 'Hang her, hang
her.'" The Recorder, willing to try her, called for a candle at which to
light a sheet of paper, then held the burning paper to her hand till a
blister came, rising and breaking and the water running down on the floor.
But still the maid lay as if dead, with the Voice coming out of her
Nostrils, saying, "Hang her, hang her." Not satisfied with the trial of
burning, the Recorder got a long pin, which he made hot and thrust up her
nostrils to see if she would "neese," wink, bend her brows, or stir her
head; but still she lay as before, stiff, senseless, and as one dead. The
minister, one Lewis Hughes, who tells this story which Sinclair quotes,
told the Recorder that he had often prayed with the maid, and that when
he concluded with the Lord's Prayer and came to "but deliver us from all
evil," the maid would be tost and shaken as a mastiff might shake a cur.
Then the Recorder bade the witch say the Lord's Prayer, but she could not
say it: she kept on all right until the clause "deliver us from evil," and
this she skipped over; neither would she confess that Jesus Christ was our
Lord in the Articles of the Christian Faith. When Mary was in her fits, if
the witch but so much as laid her hand upon her she was tost and shaken
fearfully. This the Recorder wished to verify: so he bade first one, then
another, of the neighbours come forward and touch her; which they did; but
she never stirred till Mother Jackson touched her, when she was shaken as
before. Then the Recorder said, "Lord, have mercy upon the woman!" for he
was now fully convinced; and sent poor old Mother Jackson off to Newgate.
As soon as she was sent off the maid came to herself, the voice ceased out
of her nostrils, and she went home with her mother. Three weeks or more
after the witch was condemned, the maid had the same fits, strange and
fearful to behold, and the Recorder told the minister, and all the
ministers of London, "that we might be ashamed to see a Child of God in
the Claws of the Devil without any hope of deliverance but by such means
as God had appointed--Fasting and Prayer." Then five ministers, all good
Christians and sound believers, assembled and prayed from morning to
candle-light, when Mary suddenly started out of her chair--they crying
"Jesus help, Jesus save!"--and came up to Lewis Hughes, in a state of
wildness and dismay. As he stood behind her holding her by the arms, she
lifted both herself and him off the ground, foaming at the mouth and
struggling thus all over the chamber; and then her strength gave way, and
she fell as if dead, her head hanging down and her limbs, which had been
so stiff and frozen, now supple and limber. In a short time her eyes came
back into their place and her tongue came out of her throat, and she
looked round and said cheerfully, "Oh! he is come, he is come! The
Comforter is come! the Comforter is come! I am delivered, I am delivered!"
Her father hearing these words wept and said, "These were her
grandfather's words when he was at the stake, the fire crackling about
him," for he died a martyr to the Reformed Faith in Queen Mary's time.
Then she prayed and thanked God till her voice was weak, and so the
company separated, and Mary went home. Afterwards she was put with Lewis
Hughes for a year, lest Satan should assault her again, and Mr. John Swan
wrote the most canting and nauseating book on her "case" that ever fanatic
penned or the duped and the gulled believed. But poor old Mother Jackson
was dead: and those who mourned for her, mourned in secret and silence and
shame.
There was another case of possession, this same year--Thomas Harrison, the
Boy of Norwich--chiefly remarkable for having procured such attention from
the ecclesiastical authorities that seven persons were formally licensed
to have private prayers and fasting for his deliverance. But the bishop
and commissioners who had seen his fits thought him an impostor, so his
case died out for want of public support.[112]
And now we have the master of kingcraft on the throne, with his mania
against witches, his private vices, and public follies, treacherous,
cruel, narrow-minded, and cowardly beyond anything that has ever
disgraced the English throne before or since. And one of the first trials
for witchcraft during his reign was that disgraceful affair in which
Somerset and his wife, Foreman, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Mrs. Turner were
all mixed up together.