Hopkins was not the only one of his trade in England, for Ralph Gardner,
in his "England's Grievance Discovered" (1655), speaks of two prickers,
Thomas Shovel and Cuthbert Nicholson, who, in 1649 and 1650, were sent by
the Newcastle magistrates into Scotland, there to confer with a very able
man in that line, and bring him back to Newcastle. They were to have
twenty shillings, but the Scotchman three pounds, per head of all they
could convict, and a free passage there and back. When these wretches got
to any town--for they tried all the chief market towns of the
district--the crier used to go round with his bell, desiring "all people
that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they
should be sent for and tryed by the person appointed." As many as thirty
women were brought at once into the Newcastle town-hall, stript, pricked,
and twenty-seven set aside as guilty. This said witch-finder told
Lieut.-Colonel Hobson that "he knew women, whether they were witches or
no, by their looks; and when the said person was searching of a personable
and good-like woman, the said Colonel replyed and said, Surely this woman
is none, and need not be tried; but the Scotchman said she was, for all
the Town said she was, and therefore he would try her: and presently, in
sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the Waste, with her
cloaths over her head, by which Fright and Shame all her bloud contracted
into one part of her body, and then he ran a Pin into her Thigh, and then
suddenly let her Coats fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of
his in her body, but did not bleed, but she, being amazed, replied little,
and then he put his hand up her coats and pulled out the pin and set her
aside as a guilty person and child of the Devil, and fell to try others,
whom he made guilty. Lieut.-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of
the foresaid woman by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that
woman to be brought again, and her cloaths pulled up to her Thigh, and
required the Scot to run the pin in the same place, and then it gushed out
of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of
the Devil."
If this Scotch witch-finder had not been stopped he would have found half
the women in the north country witches; at last Henry Ogle got hold of
him, and "required Bond of him to answer the Sessions;" but he got away to
Scotland, and so escaped for the time. Fifteen women lay in prison,
charged by him, and were executed--all protesting their innocence; and
"one of them, by name Margaret Brown, beseeched God that some remarkable
sign might be seen at the time of their execution, to evidence their
innocency; and as soon as ever she was turned off the Ladder her blood
gushed out upon the people to the admiration of the beholders." Which
touching little history we must relegate to the realms of fable and
delusion, like others just as sad and supernatural. This precious wretch
(was it John Kincaid?) was hung in Scotland, when the magistrates and
people had got tired of him and his cruelty, and at "the gallows he
confessed that he had been the death of two hundred and twenty men and
women in England and Scotland, simply for the sake of the twenty
shillings a head blood-money." Truly it was time for brave Ralph Gardner
to write his bold and scorching "England's Grievance Discovered," when
such monstrous crimes as these might be done without even the colour of a
monstrous law.
In "Sykes's Local Records" mention is made of a curious little entry in
the parish books of Gateshead, near Newcastle: "Paid as M{ris} Watson's
when the Justices call to examine witches, 3{s} 4{d}; for a graue for a
witch, 6{d}; for trying the witches, L1. 5." This was in 1649, in which
year Jean Martin, "the myller's wyfe of Chattim," was executed for a
witch, and the authorities of Berwick sent for the witch-finder to come
and try witches there, promising that no violence should be done him by
the townspeople. In the parish register of Hart, under the date of July
28, 1582, the office of Master Chancellor against Allison Lawe, of Hart,
was brought into requisition. Allison was "a notourious sorcerer and
enchanter," but was pulled up in the midst of her evil career, and
sentenced to a milder punishment than she would have had a century later.
Notorious witch and enchanter as she was, all she had to suffer was open
penance once in the market-place at Durham, with a paper on her head
setting forth her offences, once in Hart church, and once in Norton
church; but what was the award to Janet Bainbridge and Jannet Allinson, of
Stockton, "for asking counsell of witches, and resorting to Allison Lawe
for the cure of the sicke," we are not told. The madness which possessed
all men's minds in the next century had not then begun to rage: the storm
that was to burst over the world was then giving forth only its warning
mutterings, and it was reserved for a later age, with all its progress in
art and science and freedom of thought and religious knowledge, to lay
the coping-stone to the most monstrous temple of iniquity which fear has
ever raised to ignorance. It is a humiliating thought; humiliating, too,
the milder phases of this same fury which have so often possessed society;
but it must be remembered that, though each wave of the tide recedes, each
succeeding wave dashes farther over the reach, and the long lines of
sea-wrack mark the point of progress as well as the point of declension.