Jane Stretton and her parents lived at Ware in the year 1669, Jane being
then a young maid of about twenty, generally out at service. It chanced
that Thomas, her father, lost a Bible, and must needs go to a cunning man
to ask where it was, and who had it--a thing which, as a good Christian,
he should have been ashamed of: to which the cunning man replied darkly,
"he could tell him if he would." Whereupon Stretton, not in the least
grateful for such a doubtful reply, broke out with, "Then thou must be
either a witch or a devil, seeing thou canst neither read nor write." This
was all that passed, and it seems but scant substance for a deadly
quarrel; but a few days afterwards this cunning man's wife went slily to
Stretton's, and asked daughter Jane for a pot of drink. This was to
establish direct communication. "Innocency dreads no danger: the child
will play with the Bee for his gaudy Coat, and mistrusts not his sting,"
says this flowery tract; but soon after Jane had thus committed herself to
transfers and communication with the witch, the "devil, who is a sly
thief, and though he keeps his servants poor, yet indues them, with a
plentifull stock of malice, revenge, and dissimulation," suffered this bad
woman, or this cunning man, to afflict Jane, but not so grievously as they
were suffered to do hereafter. In about a week's time the cunning man's
wife went and desired a pin of her, which Jane, granting, became suddenly
beset with fits, most terrible to behold. "But her misery ends not here:
the squib is not run out to the end of the rope. When the Devil has an
inch given to him he will take an ell;" so poor Jane was not only troubled
with fits, but must needs have her mouth stopped so that she ate nothing
for weeks and months, and was forced to live like a chameleon, on air.
Besides this, she was made to perpetually vomit flax and hair and
thread-ends and crooked pins; while blue, white, and red flames came in
the intervals out of her mouth, and her body was continually slashed and
cut with a knife, and imps in the shape of frogs, and toads, and mice, and
the like, for ever haunted her; and the wise man's wife was the cause of
all. Then the neighbours took some of the foam which Jane had always
hanging round her mouth, and burnt it for a counter charm, and to hurt the
besetting witch; and chancing to light on the woman, they told her they
would take her to the maid to be scratched. To which she made answer,
"That if they had not come she could not have stayed any longer from her:"
so great was the potency of the burnt foam. For nine months did this girl
befool her world, and then--the cunning man and his wife being probably
put to death--she managed to get well of all her ailments, and to find
meat and milk more sustaining diet than crooked pins, hair, or wool;
though, indeed, the meat and milk had never been wanting in the dark hours
undiscovered, for Jane had taken care to live as usual when the night had
blinded prying eyes, and there was no one to count off the tale of slices
cut and devoured.
Fortunately for the sanity of society, every one did not believe these
monstrous stories. Webster's book, published about this time, was one of
those brave few which openly discredited the truth of the witch stories
afloat in the world, and made as great a sensation, or even greater, than
the grand old work of Reginald Scot. Like him, Webster doubted the truth
of the witch of Endor's enchantments, which the upholders of the faith
rested on as the very keystone of their position. The witch herself he
calls "a cozening quean," "a crafty subtile quean," "an idolatrous,
wicked, and couzening witch:" for they understood the value of forcible
language in those days: Saul is "a drowned puppet"--to Glanvil's intense
wrath at this rude mishandling of a "noble prince;" Samuel but "a
confederate knave," or "but a lying phantasie;" in the conjurations the
witch, "casting herself into a feigned Trance, lay grovelling upon the
Earth with her face downwards, and so changing her voice did mutter, and
murmur, and peep, and chirp, like a bird coming forth of the shell;" with
other knockdown assertions of common sense not afraid, by which the curate
of Kildwick demolished the whole argument of supernaturalism, and left the
poor witch of Endor and Saul himself not an inch of ground to stand on. So
with all the other stories that came into his hands; so with the special
points of faith, peculiar to the creed of witchcraft, such as communion
and covenant with the devil, transportation through the air on sticks,
straws, or bedstaves; transformation into the shapes of cat, dog, wolf,
raven, &c.; intercourse with imps and familiars; witches' sabbaths;
charms; conjurations; weeping the prescribed three tears with the left eye
only, or not weeping at all; swimming on the surface of the water, because
of the Christian character of that element, which refused to admit a
devil-devoted soul within its bosom; apparitions, or spectres of witches
troubling the afflicted--souls quitting their bodies, but taking with them
the spiritual substance even of woven garments; with the whole course of
lies and delusions belonging to the subject, from the devil's baptism to
the imps' bigges. All this seemed but so much delusion to plain John
Webster, with his unidealising common sense and kindly heart; yet a
delusion so fraught with sin and danger as to make it a Christian man's
first duty to combat and destroy it. Wherefore was he most barbarously and
evilly entreated by Glanvil in his "Saducismus Triumphatus"--the answer to
the "Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft"--and a mighty pretty quarrel, full
of the choicest amenities, was the result. But as Glanvil had error and
credulity, and Webster reason and right judgment on his side, it mattered
little who was assumed to have the best of it for the moment. Time and
education gradually settled the question, and buried it for a time out of
sight; yet it has sprung up anew of late, and now needs settling again.