Somersetshire was sorely afflicted at this time. On the 2nd of March still
in the year of grace, 1664, Christian Green, aged about thirty-three, and
wife of Robert Green of Brewham, was taken before Robert Hunt, Esq., to be
examined and induced to confess. She did confess, without torture as it
would appear; at all events without more than the ordinary torture of
"pricking" and sleeplessness always applied to witches. She said that
about a year and a half ago, she being in great poverty, was induced by
one Catherine Green (her husband's sister?) to give her body and soul to
the devil on condition that he would give her clothes, victuals, and
money, as she might desire. She was to keep his secrets, and suffer him to
suck her once in the twenty-four hours; to which at last she consented,
the devil giving her fourpence-halfpenny as earnest money wherewith to buy
bread in Brewham. Since this time he came to her ever at five o'clock in
the morning, much in the likeness of a hedgehog bending, and sucked her
left breast: a painful process, though she was generally in a kind of
trance at the time. Christian Green gave no new particulars relative to
the devil and his works. He was always as a man in black clothes; and he
charmed pictures to the undoing of those for whom they were designed; and
when he vanished he left an ill smell behind him; and he spake them very
low when they arrived; and they did three horses to death by saying
simply, "A Murrain on them Horses to death;" and they bewitched unlikely
sinners by mere word or look: all of which processes we have read of
twenty times before. Nor was there much more to be got out of "the
villainous Feats of that rampant hag Margaret Agar," of Brewham, tried
also in 1664, whom poor hysterical Christian Green had delated, for she
did nothing beyond curse her enemies and those who offended her, whereupon
they died "as if stabbed with daggers," or were "consumed and pined away;"
some with one disease, some with another; but all dying without reprieve
because of her curse. She also, in company with many others, was proved to
have met "a little man in black clothes," whom they called "Robin," and to
whom they all made obeisance, the little man putting his hand to his head,
saying, "How do ye?" speaking low, but big. And they made "pictures" of
wax into which the little black man stuck thorns, one in the crown,
another in the breast, and a third in the side, which then Margaret would
fling down saying, "This is Cornish's figure with a murrain to it," and
Elizabeth Cornish would languish and die; or "This is Bess Hill's;" or any
other person's whom it was desired to "forespeak" and destroy; who of
course were forespoken and destroyed from that hour. Margaret Agar was a
"rampant hag" indeed in one sense, being evidently an ill-conditioned old
woman, quick at a curse, and passionately eager to avenge herself, but her
magical arts appear to have been of the lowest possible order, and pale
and lifeless compared with the more highly-coloured doings of others.
Anything, however, was sufficient for the worshipful Master Robert Hunt
and his fellow justices, and curses did as well as the rest; so poor old
Margaret Agar was taken to the tree whereon grew the fatal fruit of death,
to meditate there on Christian charity and the wise compassionateness of
men, before learning by what steps the weary soul passes from earth to
immortality. She was probably no great loss to the community, but her
death placed her among the martyrs to superstition, and left her for ever
as an object of historic pity.