And now the reign of Matthew Hopkins, of Mannington, gent., begins--that
most infamous follower of an infamous trade--the witch-finder general of
England. It was Hopkins who first reduced the practice of witch-finding to
a science, and established rules as precise as any to be made for
mathematics or logic. His method of proceeding was to "walk" a suspected
witch between two inquisitors, who kept her from food and sleep, and
incessantly walking, for four-and-twenty hours; or if she could not be
thus walked she was cross-bound--her right toe fastened to her left thumb,
and her left toe to her right thumb--care being taken to draw the cords as
tightly as possible, and to keep her as uneasily, and in this state she
was placed on a high stool or chair, kept without food or sleep for the
prescribed four-and-twenty hours, and vigilantly watched. And Hopkins
recommended that a hole be made in the door, through which her imps were
sure to come to be fed, and that her watchers be careful to kill
everything they saw--fly, spider, lice, mouse, what not; for none knew
when and under what form her familiars might appear; and if by any chance
they missed or could not kill them, then they might be sure that they were
imps, and so another proof be indisputably established. If neither of
these ways would do, then, still cross-bound, she was to be "swum." If she
sank, she was drowned; if she floated--and by putting her carefully on the
water she generally would float--then she was a witch, and to be taken out
and hung. For water, being the sacred element used in baptism, thus
manifestly refused to hold such an accursed thing as a witch within its
bosom; so that, when she swam, it was a proof that this "sacred element"
rejected her for the more potent keeping of the fire. This was the
explanation which, it seemed to King James the First, was a rational and
religious manner of accounting for a certain physical fact.
This, then, was the wise and liberal manner in which an impossible sin was
discovered, and judgment executed, in those fatal years when Matthew
Hopkins ruled the mind of England; yet years wherein Harvey was patiently
at work on his grand physiological discovery, and when Wallis, and
Wilkins, and Boyle were founding the Royal Society of liberal art and free
discussion. It was only a piece of poetical justice that in the future he
should be "swum" cross-bound in his own manner, and found to float
according to the hydrostatics of witches. The shame and fear of this trial
hastened the consumption to which he was hereditarily predisposed; and
after this stringent test we hear no more of this vile impostor and
impudent deceiver, this canting hypocrite, who cloaked his cruelty and
covetousness under the garb of religion, and professed to be serving God
and delivering man from the power of the devil when he was pandering to
the worst passions of the time, and sacrificing to his own corrupt heart.
The blood money, for which he sent so many hapless wretches to the gallows
(he charged twenty shillings a town for his labours), though not an
exceeding bribe, as he himself boasts, was money pleasantly earned and
pleasantly spent; for what man would object to travel through a beautiful
country, surrounded by friends, and carrying influence and importance
wherever he went, and have all his expenses paid into the bargain?
In 1664[130] we find him at Yarmouth, accusing sixteen women in a batch,
among whom was an old woman easily got to confess. She said she used to
work for Mr. Moulton, a stocking merchant and alderman of the town; but
one day, going for work, she found him from home, and his man refused to
let her have any till his return, which would not be for a fortnight. She,
being exasperated against the man, applied to the maid to let her have
some knitting to do, but the maid gave her the like answer: upon which she
went home sorely discontented with both. In the middle of the night some
one knocked at the door: on her rising to open it she saw a tall black
man, who told her that she should have as much work from him as she would,
if she would write her name in his book. He then scratched her hand with a
penknife, and filled the pen with her blood--guiding her hand while she
made her mark. This done, he asked what he could do for her: but when she
desired to have her revenge on Mr. Moulton's man, he told her he had no
power over him, because he went constantly to church to hear Whitfield and
Brinsley, and said his prayers morning and evening. The same of the maid;
but there was a young child in the house more easy to be dealt with, for
whom he would make an image of wax which then they must bury in the
churchyard, and as the waxen image wasted and consumed, so would the
child; which was done, and the child thrown into a languishing condition
in consequence; so bad, indeed, that they all thought it was dying. But as
soon as the witch confessed, the little one lifted up its head and
laughed, and from that instant began to recover. The waxen image was found
where she said she and the devil had buried it, and thus the whole of the
charm was destroyed, and the child was saved; but the poor old crazy woman
with her blackbird imp, and her fifteen compeers with their whole
menagerie of imps, were hung at Yarmouth, amid the rejoicings of the
multitude.
At Edmonsbury, that same year, another witch had a little black smooth imp
dog, which she sent to play with the only child of some people she hated.
At first the child refused to play with its questionable companion, but
soon got used to its daily appearance, and lost all fear. So the dog-imp,
watching its opportunity, got the boy one day to the water, when it
dragged him underneath and drowned him. The witch was hanged: could they
do less in such a clear case as this?
Another woman was hanged at Oxford for a story as wild as any to be found
in Grimm or Mother Bunch. There were two sisters, left orphans but well
provided for. The eldest, somewhat prodigal, married a man as bad or
worse than herself, who spent her money and afterwards deserted her,
leaving her with one child and in extreme poverty. The younger, being very
serious and religious, waited for two or three years before she settled
herself, then married a good, honest, sober farmer, with whom she lived
well and prosperously; her gear increasing yearly, and herself the happy
mother of a pretty child. Her sister was moved to envy to see all this
prosperity and contentment, and in her passion made a compact with the
devil, by which she became a witch for the purpose of killing her sister's
child as the greatest despite she could do them. For this purpose she used
to mount a bedstaff, which, by the uttering of certain magical words,
carried her to her sister's room; but she could never harm the child,
because it was so well protected by the prayers of its parents. Her own
daughter, a little one of about seven, watched her mother in her antics
with the bedstaff, and from watching took to imitating--going through the
air one night after its dame, and in like fashion. However, it chanced
that she was left behind in her uncle's house; so presently she fell
a-crying, her powers being apparently limited to going, not including the
magic words that insured the return. Her uncle and aunt, hearing a child
cry where never a child should be, took a candle and discovered the whole
matter. Next day the child was taken before the magistrate, to whom it
told its tale, and the mother was apprehended. On the trial this little
creature of seven years old was admitted as the chief evidence against her
mother; and after they had made the poor woman mad among them, she
confessed, and was hanged quite quietly. These were only two out of the
hundreds whom that miserable man, Matthew Hopkins, gent., contrived to
send to the gallows. Beaumont, in his Treatise on Spirits, mentions that
"thirty-six were arraigned at the same time before Judge Coniers, An.
1645, and fourteen of them hanged, and an hundred more detained in several
prisons in Suffolk and Essex." But the most celebrated and the saddest of
all the trials in which Hopkins played a part was that of