Jane Wenham was the witch of Walkerne, a little village in the north of
Hertford. She had long lived under ill fame, and her neighbours were
resolved to get rid of her at the earliest opportunity. That opportunity
presented itself in the person of John Chapman's man, one Matthew Gilson,
whom Jane sent into a daft state by asking him for a pennyworth of straw,
which he refused to give her. The old woman went away, muttering and
complaining, whereupon Matthew, impelled by he knew not what impulse, ran
out of the barn for a distance of three miles, asking as he went for
pennyworths of straw. Not getting any, he went on to some dirt heaps, and
gathered up straw from them, which he put in his shirt and brought home. A
witness testified that he had seen Gilson come back with his shirt stuffed
full of straw, that he moved along quickly, and walked straight through
the water, instead of passing over the bridge like any other decent man.
For this odd behaviour of his servant, John Chapman, who had all along
suspected Jane of more cunning than was good for him or her--called her a
witch the next time he saw her; and Jane took him before the magistrate,
Sir Herbert Chauncey, to answer to the charge of defamation. But the
magistrate recommended them to go to Mr. Gardiner the minister, and a
great believer in witchcraft, and get their matter settled without more
trouble or vexation. Mr. Gardiner was too zealous to be just. He scolded
poor old Jane roundly, and advised her to live more peaceably with her
neighbours--which was just what she wanted to do--and gave as his award
that Chapman do pay the fine of one shilling. While this bit of one-sided
justice was going on, Anne Thorne, Mr. Gardiner's servant, was sitting by
the fire with a dislocated knee. Jane, not able to compass her wicked will
on Chapman, and angry that Mr. Gardiner had spoken so harshly to her,
turned her malice on the girl, and bewitched her, so that as soon as they
all left the kitchen Anne felt a strange "Roaming in her Head, and she
thought she must of Necessity run somewhere." In spite then of her
dislocated knee, she started off and ran up the close, and away over a
five-barred gate "as nimbly as a greyhound," along the highway and up a
hill. And there she met two of John Chapman's men, who wanted her to go
home with them; and one took her hand; but she was forced away from them,
speechless, and not of her own volition, and so was driven on, on, towards
Cromer, where the great sea would have either stopped or received her. But
when she came to Hockney Lane, she met there a "little Old Woman muffled
up in a Riding-Hood," who asked her whither she was going. "To Cromer,"
says Anne, "for sticks to make me a fire." "There be no sticks at Cromer,"
says the little old woman in the riding hood: "here be sticks enow; go to
that oak tree and pluck them there." Which Anne did, laying them on the
ground as they were gathered. Then the old woman bade her pull off her
gown and apron, and wrap the sticks in them; asking her if she had ne'er a
pin about her; but finding that she had not, she gave her a large crooked
pin, with which she bade her pin her bundle, then vanished away. So Anne
Thorne ran home half naked, with her bundle of leaves and sticks in her
hand, and sat down in the kitchen, crying out "I am ruined and undone!"
When Mrs. Gardiner had opened the bundle, and seen all the twigs and
leaves, she said they would burn the witch, and not wait long about it; so
they flung the twigs and leaves into the fire; and while they were burning
in came Jane Wenham, asking for Anne's mother, for she had, she said, a
message to her, how that she was to go and wash next day at Ardley Bury,
Sir Herbert Chauncey's place: which on inquiry turned out to be a
falsehood: consequently Jane Wenham was set down doubly as a witch, the
charm of burning her in the sticks having proved so effectual. John
Chapman and his men then told their tale. Mr. Gardiner was not slow in
fanning the flame into a fire, and poor old Jane was examined, searched
for marks but none found, and committed to gaol, there to wait her trial
at the next assizes. She earnestly entreated not to go to prison;
protested her innocence, and appealed to Mrs. Gardiner to help her,
woman-like, and not to swear against her; offering to submit to be
swum--anything they would--so that she might be kept free of jail. But Sir
Herbert Chauncey was just manly and rational enough not to allow of this
test, though the Vicar of Ardeley tried her with the Lord's Prayer, which
she could not repeat: and terrified and tortured her into a kind of
confession, wherein she implicated three other women, who were
immediately put under arrest, though they came to no harm in the end. When
she was brought to trial, sixteen witnesses, including three clergymen,
were standing there ready to testify against her, how that she had
bewitched this one's cattle, and that one's sheep; and taken all the power
from this one's body, and all the good from that one's gear; and
slaughtered this child, and that man, by her evil eye and her curses; and
in fact how that she had done all the mischief that had happened in the
neighbourhood for years past. And there was Matthew Gilson, who had been
sent mad, and forced to wander about the country with his shirt stuffed
full of straw like a scarecrow; and Anne Thorne, who had had fits ever
since her marvellous journey with the dislocated knee; and another Anne,
very nearly as hardly holden as the first; and others beside, whom her
malice had rendered sick and lame, and unfit for decent life: moreover,
two veracious witnesses deposed positively to her taking the form of a cat
when she would, and to hearing her converse with the devil when under the
form of a cat, he also as a cat; together with Anne Thorne's distinct
accusation that she was beset with cats--tormented exceedingly--and that
all the cats had the face and the voice of Jane Wenham.
The lawyers, who believed little in the devil and less in witchcraft,
refused to draw up the indictment on any other charge save that of
"conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of a cat." But in spite
of Mr. Bragge's earnest appeals against such profanation, and the ridicule
which it threw over the whole matter, the jury found the poor old creature
guilty, and the judge passed sentence of death against her. The evidence
was too strong. Even one of the Mr. Chaunceys deposed that a cat came
knocking at his door, and that he killed it--when it vanished away, for it
was no other than one of Jane Wenham's imps; and all Mr. Gardiner's house
went mad, some in one way and some in another: and credible witnesses
deposed that they had seen pins come jumping through the air into Anne
Thorne's mouth, and when George Chapman clapped his hand before her mouth
to prevent them skipping in, he felt one stick against his hand, as sharp
as might be; and every night Anne's pincushion was left full, and every
morning found empty, and who but Jane could have conveyed them all from
the pincushion into her mouth, where they were to be found all crooked and
bent? But though the jury could not resist the tremendous weight of all
this evidence, and the judge could not resist the jury, he managed to get
a reprieve which left the people time to cool and reflect, and then he got
a pardon for her--quietly and kindly done. And Colonel Plummer, of
Gilston, took her under his protection, and gave her a small cottage near
his house, where she lived, poor soul, in peace and safety for the end of
her days, doing harm to no one and feared by none. As for Anne Thorne, the
doctor, who had ordered her, as part of his remedy, to wash her hands and
face twice a day in fair water, and who, as another part, had her watched
and sat with by a "lusty young fellow" who asked nothing better, managed
matters so well, that in a short time Anne and her brisk bachelor were
married; and from that time we hear no more of her vomiting crooked pins,
or being tormented with visions of cats wearing Jane Wenham's face, and
speaking with Jane Wenham's voice. But though all the rest got well off
with their frights and follies, no public compensation was given to poor
old Jane for the brutal attacks of the mob upon her, for the hauling and
maiming and scratching and tearing, by which they proved to their own
satisfaction that she was a witch, and deserved only the treatment
accorded to witches.