Lady Jennings and her young daughter Elizabeth, of thirteen, lived at
Thistlewood in the year 1622. One day an old woman, coming no one knew
whence, perhaps from the bowels of the earth, appeared suddenly before the
girl, demanding a pin. The child was frightened, and had fits soon
after--fits of the usual hysteric character, but quite sufficiently severe
to alarm Lady Jennings. A doctor was sent for; but also, as well as the
doctor, came a clever shrewd woman called Margaret Russill, or "Countess,"
a bit of a doctress in her way, perhaps a bit of a white witch too, who
thought she could do the afflicted child some good, and had beside a love
of putting her fingers into everybody's pie. At the end of one of her fits
the child began to cry out wildly, then mentioned Margaret and three
others as the persons who had bewitched her. And then she went on,
incoherently, "These have bewitched all my mother's children--east, west,
north, and south all these lie--all these are witches. Set up a great
sprig of rosemary in the middle of the house--I have sent this child to
speak, to show all these witches--Put Countess in prison, this child will
be well--If she had been long ago, all together had been alive--Them she
bewitched with a cat-stick--Till then I shall be in great pain--Till
then, by fits, I shall be in great extremity--They died in great misery."
No mother's heart could resist the appeal contained in these wild words;
poor Countess was arrested, and taken before Mr. Slingsby, a magistrate.
When there she said, though heaven knows what prompted her to tell such
falsehoods, "Yesterday she went to Mrs. Dromondbye in Black-and-White
Court, in the Old Baylye; and told her that the Lady Jennings had a
daughter strangely sicke, whereuppon the said Dromondbye wished her to goe
to inquire at Clerkenwell for a minister's wiffe that cold helpe people
that were sicke, but she must not aske for a witch or a cunning woman, but
for one that is a phisition woman; and then this examinate found her and a
woman sitting with her and told her in what case the child was, and shee
said shee wold come this day, but shee ought her noe service, and said
shee had bin there before and left receiptes there, but the child did not
take them. And she said further that there was two children that her Lady
Jennins had by this husband, that were bewitched and dead, for there was
controversie betweene two howses, and that as long as they dwelt there,
they cold not prosper, and that there shold be noe blessing in that howse
by this man." When asked what was this "difference," she answered,
"Between the house of God and the house of the world:" but when told that
this was no answer, and that she must explain herself more clearly, she
said that "she meant the apothecary Higgins and my Lady Jennings." "And
shee further confessed that above a moneth agoe she went to Mrs. Saxey in
Gunpouder Alley, who was forespoken herself, and that had a boke that cold
helpe all those that were forespoken, and that shee wold come and shewe
her the booke and help her under God. And further said to this examinate,
that none but a seminary priest cold cure her." So here again we have the
constantly recurring element of sectarianism, without which, indeed, we
should be at a loss how to understand much that meets us. "Countess" was
committed to Newgate, and the bewitched child cried out more and more
against her, making new revelations with each fit, when the pitiful farce
was brought to a close by the minister's wife, Mrs. Goodcole, who, when
confronted with Countess, denied point blank the more important parts of
her evidence. And then all this evil--this much ado about nothing--was
found to have arisen from a private quarrel; and when Dr. Napier was sent
for, he unbewitched the possessed child with some very simple remedies,
and the great balloon burst and fell to the ground in hopeless collapse.