Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on
Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the World
of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir
Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in Court--Two
Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in 1682--The last
Witches judicially executed in England--Uniformity of the
Evidence adduced at the Trials--Webster's Attack upon the
Witch-Creed in 1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of
the Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the
Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden.
The bold licentiousness and ill-concealed scepticism of Charles
II. and his Court, whose despotic prejudices, however, supported
by the zeal of the Church, prosecuted dissenters from a form of
religion which maintained 'the right divine of kings to govern
wrong,' might be indifferent to the prejudice of witchcraft. But
the princes and despots of former times have seldom been more
careful of the lives than they have been of the liberties, of
their subjects. The formal apology for the reality of that crime
published by Charles II.'s chaplain-in-ordinary, the Rev.
Dr. Joseph Glanvil, against the modern Sadducees (a very
inconsiderable sect) who denied both ghosts and witches, their
well-attested apparitions and acts, has been already noticed.
His philosophic inquiry (so he terms it) into the nature and
operations of witchcraft (_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Sadduceeism
Vanquished, or 'Considerations about Witchcraft'), was occasioned
by a case that came under the author's personal observation--the
'knockings' of the demon of Tedworth in the house of a Mr.
Mompesson. The Tedworth demon must have been of that sort of
active spirits which has been so obliging of late in enlightening
the spiritual _seances_ of our time.
Glanvil traces the steps by which a well-meaning student may
unwarily be involved in _diablerie_. This philosophical inquirer
observes:--'Those mystical students may, in their first address
to the science [astrology], have no other design than the
satisfaction of their curiosity to know remote and hidden things;
yet that in the progress, being not satisfied within the bounds
of their art, doth many times tempt the curious inquirer to use
worse means of information; and no doubt those mischievous
spirits, that are as vigilant as the beasts of prey, and watch
all occasions to get us within their envious reach, are more
constant attenders and careful spies upon the actions and
inclinations of such whose genius and designs prepare them for
their temptations. So that I look on judicial astrology as a fair
introduction to sorcery and witchcraft; and who knows but it was
first set on foot by the infernal hunters as a lure to draw the
_curiosos_ into those snares that lie hid beyond it. And yet I
believe it may be innocently enough studied.... I believe there
are very few among those who have been addicted to those strange
arts of wonder and prediction, but have found themselves attacked
by some unknown solicitors, and enticed by them to the more
dangerous actions and correspondencies. For as there are a sort
of base and sordid spirits that attend the envy and malice of the
ignorant and viler sort of persons, and betray them into compacts
by promises of revenge; so, no doubt, there are a kind of more
airy and speculative fiends, of a higher rank and order than
those wretched imps, who apply themselves to the curious....
Yea, and sometimes they are so cautious and wary in their
conversations with more refined persons, that they never offer to
make any _express_ covenant with them. And to this purpose, I
have been informed by a very reverend and learned doctor that one
Mr. Edwards, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, in Cambridge,
being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his repentance that
the demon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion, and
never required any compact from him: and no doubt they sort
themselves agreeably to the rate, post, and genius of those with
whom they converse.'[149]
[149] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, section xvi.
The sentiments of the royal chaplain on demonology are curious.
'Since good men,' he argues, 'in their state of separation are
said to be [Greek: isangeloi], why the wicked may not be supposed
to be [Greek: isodaimones] (in the worst sense of the word), I
know nothing to help me to imagine. And if it be supposed that
the imps of witches are sometimes wicked spirits of our own kind
and nature, and possibly the same that have been witches and
sorcerers in this life: this supposal may give a fairer and more
probable account of many of the actions of sorcery and witchcraft
than the other hypothesis, that they are always devils. And to
this conjecture I will venture to subjoin another, which hath
also its probability, viz. that it is not improbable but the
familiars of witches are a vile kind of spirits of a very
inferior constitution and nature; and none of those that
were once of the highest hierarchy now degenerated into the
spirits we call devils.... And that all the superior--yea, and
inferior--regions have their several kinds of spirits, differing
in their natural perfections as well as in the kinds and degrees
of their depravities; which being supposed, 'tis very probable
that those of the basest and meanest sorts are they who submit to
the servilities.'[150] It is a curious speculation how the old
apologists of witchcraft would regard the modern 'curiosos'--the
adventurous _spirit-media_ of the present day, and whether the
consulted spirits are of 'base and sordid rank,' or are 'a kind
of airy and more speculative fiends.' It is fair to infer,
perhaps, that they are of the latter class.
[150] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Part I. sect. 4. Affixed to
this work is a _Collection of Relations_ of
well-authenticated instances. Glanvil was one of the first
Fellows of the recently established Royal Society. He is the
author of a philosophical treatise of great merit--the
_Scepsis Scientifica_--a review of which occupies several
pages of _The Introduction to the Literature of Europe_, and
which is favourably considered by Hallam. Not the least
unaccountable fact in the history and literature of
witchcraft is the absurd contradiction involved in the
unbounded credulity of writers (who were sceptical on almost
every other subject) on the one subject of demonology.
The author of the 'Saints' Everlasting Rest,' the moderate and
conscientious Baxter, was a contemporary of the Anglican divine.
In another and later work this voluminous theological writer more
fully developed his spiritualistic ideas. 'The Certainty of the
World of Spirits fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of
Apparitions, Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c., proving the
Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Misery of Devils and the
Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the
Conviction of Sadducees and Infidels,' was a formidable
inscription which must have overawed, if it did not subdue, the
infidelity of the modern Sadducees.[151]
[151] It would not be an uninteresting, but it would be a
melancholy, task to investigate the reasoning, or rather
unreasoning, process which involved such honest men as
Richard Baxter in a maze of credulity. While they rejected
the principle of the ever-recurring ecclesiastical miracles
of Catholicism (so sympathetic as well as useful to ardent
faith), their devout imagination yet required the aid of a
present supernaturalism to support their faith amidst the
perplexing doubts and difficulties of ordinary life, and
they gladly embraced the consoling belief that the present
evils are the work of the enmity of the devil, whose
temporary sovereignty, however, should be overthrown in the
world to come, when the faith and constancy of his victims
shall be eternally rewarded.
The sentence and execution of two old women at Bury St. Edmund's,
in 1664, has been already noticed. This trial was carried on with
circumstances of great solemnity and with all the external forms
of justice--Sir Matthew Hale presiding as Lord Chief Baron: and
the following is a portion of the evidence which was received two
hundred years ago in an English Court of Justice and under the
presidency of one of the greatest ornaments of the English Bench.
One of the witnesses, a woman named Dorothy Durent, deposed that
she had quarrelled with one Amy Duny, immediately after which her
infant child was seized with fits. 'And the said examinant
further stated that she being troubled at her child's distemper
did go to a certain person named Doctor Job Jacob, who lived at
Yarmouth, who had the reputation in the country to help children
that were bewitched; who advised her to hang up the child's
blanket in the chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put
the child to bed to put it into the said blanket; and if she
found anything in it she should not be afraid, but throw it into
the fire. And this deponent did according to his direction; and
at night when she took down the blanket with an intent to put the
child therein, there fell out of the same a great toad which ran
up and down the hearth; and she, having a young youth only with
her in the house, desired him to catch the toad and throw it into
the fire, which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with
the tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire it made a great and
terrible noise; and after a space there was a flashing in the
fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a
pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard. It was
asked by the Court if that, after the noise and flashing, there
was not the substance of the toad to be seen to consume in the
fire; and it was answered by the said Dorothy Durent that after
the flashing and noise there was no more seen than if there had
been none there. The next day there came a young woman, a
kinswoman of the said Amy, and a neighbour of this deponent, and
told this deponent that her aunt (meaning the said Amy) was in a
most lamentable condition, having her face all scorched with
fire, and that she was sitting alone in her house in her smock
without any fire. And therefore this deponent went into the house
of the said Amy Duny to see her, and found her in the same
condition as was related to her; for her face, her legs, and
thighs, which this deponent saw, seemed very much scorched and
burnt with fire; at which this deponent seemed much to wonder,
and asked how she came in that sad condition. And the said Amy
replied that she might thank her for it, for that she (deponent)
was the cause thereof; but she should live to see some of her
children dead, and she upon crutches. And this deponent further
saith, that after the burning of the said toad her child
recovered and was well again, and was living at the time of the
Assizes.' The accused were next arraigned for having bewitched
the family of Mr. Samuel Pacy, merchant, of Lowestoft. The witch
turned away from their door had at once inflicted summary
vengeance by sending some fearful fits and pains in the stomach,
apparently caused by an internal pricking of pins; the children
shrieking out violently, vomiting nails, pins, and needles, and
exclaiming against several women of ill-repute in the town;
especially against two of them, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender.
A friend of the family appeared in court, and deposed: 'At some
times the children would see things run up and down the house in
the appearance of mice, and one of them suddenly snapt one with
the tongs and threw it into the fire, and it screeched out like a
bat. At another time the younger child, being out of her fits,
went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a
little thing like a bee flew upon her face and would have gone
into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door
to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible
manner. Whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her; but
before she could get to her the child fell into her swooning fit,
and at last, with much pain and straining herself, she vomited up
a twopenny nail with a broad head; and being demanded by this
deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee
brought this nail and forced it into her mouth. And at other
times the elder child declared unto this deponent that during the
time of her fits she saw flies come unto her and bring with them
in their mouths crooked pins; and after the child had thus
declared the same she fell again into violent fits, and
afterwards raised several pins. At another time the said elder
child declared unto this deponent, and sitting by the fire
suddenly started up and said she saw a mouse; and she crept under
the table, looking after it; and at length she put something in
her apron, saying she had caught it. And immediately she ran to
the fire and threw it in; and there did appear upon it to this
deponent like the flashing of gunpowder, though she confessed she
saw nothing in the child's hands.' Another witness was the mother
of a servant girl, Susanna Chandler, whose depositions are of
much the same kind, but with the addition that her daughter was
sometimes stricken with blindness and dumbness by demoniacal
contrivance at the moment when her testimony was required in
court. 'Being brought into court at the trial, she suddenly fell
into her fits, and being carried out of the court again, within
the space of half an hour she came to herself and recovered her
speech; and thereupon was immediately brought into the court, and
asked by the Court whether she was in condition to take an oath
and to give evidence. She said she could. But when she was sworn
and asked what she could say against either of the prisoners,
before she could make any answer she fell into her fits,
shrieking out in a miserable manner, crying "Burn her! burn her!"
which was all the words she could speak.' Doubts having been
hazarded by one or two of the less credulous of the origin of the
fits and contortions, 'to avoid this scruple, it was privately
desired by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon,
and Mr. Serjeant Keeling and some other gentlemen there in court,
would attend one of the distempered persons in the farthest part
of the hall whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one
of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did
accordingly.' Some of the possessed, having been put to the proof
by having their eyes covered, and being touched upon the hand by
one of those present, fell into contortions as if they had been
touched by the witches.
The suspicion of imposture thus raised was quickly silenced by
fresh proof. Robert Sherringham, farmer, deposed that 'about two
years since, passing along the street with his cart and horses,
the axle-tree of his cart touched her house and broke down some
part of it; at which she was very much displeased, threatening
him that his horses should suffer for it. And so it happened; for
all those horses, being four in number, died within a short time
after. Since that time he hath had great losses by sudden dying
of his other cattle. So soon as his sows pigged, the pigs would
leap and caper, and immediately fall down and die. Also, not long
after, he was taken with a lameness in his limbs that he could
neither go nor stand for some days.'[152]
[152] This witness finished his evidence by informing the
Court that 'after all this, he was very much vexed with a
great number of lice, of extraordinary bigness; and although
he many times shifted himself, yet he was not anything the
better, but would swarm again with them. So that in the
conclusion he was forced to burn all his clothes, being two
suits of apparel, and then was clear from
them.'--_Narratives of Sorcery_, &c., from the most
authentic sources, by Thomas Wright.
The extreme ridiculousness, even more than the iniquity, of the
accusations may be deemed the principal characteristic of such
procedures: these _childish_ indictments were received with
eagerness by prosecutors, jury, and judge. After half an hour's
deliberation the jury returned a unanimous verdict against the
prisoners, who were hanged, protesting their innocence to the
end. The year before, a woman named Julian Coxe was hanged at
Taunton on the evidence of a hunter that a hare, which had taken
refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found on the opposite side
in the likeness of a witch, who had assumed the form of the
animal, and taken the opportunity of her hiding-place to resume
her proper shape. In 1682 three women were executed at Exeter.
Their witchcraft was of the same sort as that of the Bury
witches. Little variety indeed appears in the English witchcraft
as brought before the courts of law. They chiefly consist in
hysterical, epileptic, or other fits, accompanied by vomiting of
various witch-instruments of torture. The Exeter witches are
memorable as the last executed judicially in England.
Attacks upon the superstition of varying degrees of merit were
not wanting during any period of the seventeenth century.
Webster, who, differing in this respect from most of his
predecessors, declared his opinion that the whole of witchcraft
was founded on natural phenomena, credulity, torture, imposture,
or delusion, has deserved to be especially commemorated among the
advocates of common sense. He had been well acquainted in his
youth with the celebrated Lancashire Witches' case, and enjoyed
good opportunities of studying the absurd obscenities of the
numerous examinations. His meritorious work was given to the
world in 1677, under the title of 'The Displaying of Supposed
Witchcraft.' Towards the close of the century witch-trials still
occur; but the courts of justice were at length freed from the
reproach of legal murders.
The great revolution of 1688, which set the principles of
Protestantism on a firmer basis, could not fail to effect an
intellectual as well as a political change. A recognition of the
claims of common sense (at least on the subject of diabolism)
seemed to begin from that time; and in 1691, when some of the
criminals were put upon their trial at Frome, in Somersetshire,
they were acquitted, not without difficulty, by the exertion of
the better reason of the presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice
Holt. Fortunately for the accused, Lord Chief Justice Holt was a
person of sense, as well as legal acuteness; for he sat as judge
at a great number of the trials in different parts of the
kingdom. Both prosecutors and juries were found who would
willingly have sent the proscribed convicts to death. But the age
was arrived when at last it was to be discovered that fire and
torture can extinguish neither witchcraft nor any other heresy;
and the princes and parliaments of Europe seemed to begin to
recognise in part the philosophical maxim that, 'heresy and
witchcraft are two crimes which commonly increase by punishment,
and are never so effectually suppressed as by being totally
neglected.'
In France, until about the year 1670, there was little abatement
in the fury or number of the prosecutions. In that year several
women had been sentenced to death for frequenting the _Domdaniel_
or Sabbath meeting by the provincial parliament of Normandy.
Louis XIV. was induced to commute the sentence into banishment
for life. The parliament remonstrated at so astonishing an
interference with the due course of justice, and presented a
petition to the king in which they insist upon the dread reality
of a crime that 'tends to the destruction of religion and the
ruin of nations.'[153]
[153] 'Your parliament,' protest these legislators, 'have
thought it their duty on occasion of these crimes, the
greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted with
the general and uniform feelings of the people of this
province with regard to them; it being moreover a question
in which are concerned the glory of God and the relief of
your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from
the threats and menaces of this sort of persons, and who
feel the effects of them every day in the mortal and
extraordinary maladies which attack them, and the surprising
damage and loss of their possessions.' They then review the
various laws and decrees of Church and State from the
earliest times in support of their convictions: they cite
the authority of the Church in council and in its most
famous individual teachers. Particularly do they insist upon
the opinions of St. Augustin, in his _City of God_, as
irrefragable. 'After so many authorities and punishments
ordained by human and divine laws, we humbly supplicate your
Majesty to reflect once more upon the extraordinary results
which proceed from the malevolence of this sort of people;
on the deaths from unknown diseases which are often the
consequence of their menaces; on the loss of the goods and
chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt
continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon
the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one
place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal
assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony
of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many
eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of
people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of
truth, and confirmed moreover by the confessions of the
accused parties themselves, and that, Sire, with so much
agreement and conformity between the different cases, that
the most ignorant persons convicted of this crime have
spoken to the same circumstances and in nearly the same
words as the most celebrated authors who have written about
it; all of which may be easily proved to your Majesty's
satisfaction by the records of various trials before your
parliaments.'--Given in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular
Delusions_. Louis XIV., with an unaccustomed care for human
life, resisting these forcible arguments, remained firm, and
the condemned were saved from the stake.
While most of the Governments of Europe were now content to leave
sorcerers and witches to the irregular persecutions of the
people, tacitly abandoning to the mob the right of proceeding
against them as they pleased, without the interference of the
law, in a remote kingdom of Europe a witch-persecution commenced
with the ordinary fury, under express sanction of the Government.
It is curious that at the last moments of its existence as a
legal crime, one of the last fires of witchcraft should have been
lighted in Sweden, a country which, remote from continental
Europe, seems to have been up to that period exempt from the
judicial excesses of England, France, or Germany. The story of
the Mohra witches is inserted in an appendix to Glanvil's
'Collection of Relations,' by Dr. Anthony Horneck. The epidemic
broke out in 1669, in the village of Mohra, in the mountainous
districts of Central Sweden. A number of children became
affected with an imaginative or mischievous disease, which
carried them off to a place called Blockula, where they held
communion and festival with the devil. These, numbering a large
proportion of the youth of the neighbourhood, were incited, it
seems, by the imposture or credulity of the ministers of Mohra
and Elfdale, to report the various transactions at their
spiritual _seances_. To such a height increased the terrified
excitement of the people, that a commission was appointed by the
king, consisting of both clergy and laity, to enquire into the
origin and circumstances of the matter. It commenced proceedings
in August 1670. Days for humiliation and prayer were ordered, and
a solemn service inaugurated the judicial examinations. Agreeably
to the dogma of the most approved foreign authorities, which
allowed the evidence of the greatest criminals and of the
youngest age, the commission began by examining the children,
three hundred in number, claiming to be bewitched, confronting
them with the witches who had, according to the indictment,
been the means of the devil's seduction. They were strictly
interrogated whether they were certain of the fact of having been
actually carried away by the devil in his proper person. Being
answered in the affirmative, the royal commissioners proceeded to
demand of the accused themselves, 'Whether the confessions of
those children were true, and admonished them to confess the
truth, that they might turn away from the devil unto the living
God. At first most of them did very stiffly, and without shedding
the least tear, deny it, though much against their will and
inclination. After this the children were examined every one by
themselves, to see whether their confessions did agree or no; and
the commissioners found that all of them, except some very little
ones, which could not tell all the circumstances, did punctually
agree in their confessions of particulars. In the meanwhile, the
commissioners that were of the clergy examined the witches, but
could not bring them to any confession, all continuing steadfast
in their denials, till at last some of them burst out into tears,
and their confession agreed with what the children said; and
these expressed their abhorrence of the fact, and begged pardon,
adding that the devil, whom they called _Locyta_, had stopped the
mouths of some of them, so loath was he to part with his prey,
and had stopped the ears of others. And being now gone from them,
they could no longer conceal it, for they had now perceived his
treachery.' The Elfdale witches were induced to announce--'We of
the province of Elfdale do confess that we used to go to a
gravel-pit which lies hard by a cross-way, and there we put on a
vest over our heads, and then danced round; and after this ran to
the cross-way and called the devil thrice, first with a still
voice, the second time somewhat louder, and the third time very
loud, with these words, "Antecessor, come and carry us to
Blockula." Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in
different habits; but for the most part we saw him in a grey
coat and red and blue stockings.[154] He had a red beard, a
high-crowned hat with linen of divers colours wrapt about it, and
long garters about upon his stockings. Then he asked us whether
we would serve him with soul and body. If we were content to do
so, he set us on a beast which he had there ready, and carried us
over churches and high walls, and after all he came to a green
meadow where Blockula lies [the Brockenberg in the Hartz forest,
as Scott conjectures]. We procured some scrapings of altars and
filings of church clocks, and then he gave us a horn with a salve
in it, wherewith we do anoint ourselves, and a saddle, with a
hammer and a wooden nail thereby to fix the saddle. Whereupon we
call upon the devil, and away we go.'
[154] Accommodating himself to modern refinement, the devil
usually discards the antiquated horns, hoofs, and tail; and
if, as Dr. Mede supposed, 'appearing in human shape, he has
always a deformity of some uncouth member or other,' such
inconvenient appendages are disguised as much as possible.
As Goethe's Mephistopheles explains to his witch:
'Culture, which renders man less like an ape,
Has also licked the devil into shape.'
Many interrogatories were put. Amongst others, how it was
contrived that they could pass up and down chimneys and through
unbroken panes of glass (to which it was replied that the devil
removes all obstacles); how they were enabled to transport so
many children at one time? &c. They acknowledged that 'till of
late they had never power to carry away children; but only this
year and the last: and the devil did at that time force them to
it: that heretofore it was sufficient to carry but one of their
own children or a stranger's child with them, which happened
seldom: but now he did plague them and whip them if they did not
procure him many children, insomuch that they had no peace or
quiet for him. And whereas that formerly one journey a week would
serve their turn from their own town to the place aforesaid, now
they were forced to run to other towns and places for children,
and that they brought with them some fifteen, some sixteen
children every night.' As to their means of conveyance, they were
sometimes men; at other times, beasts, spits, and posts: but a
preferable mode was the riding upon goats, whose backs were made
more commodious by the use of a magical ointment whenever a
larger freight than usual was to be transported. Arrived at
Blockula, their diabolical initiation commenced. First they were
made to deny their baptism and take an oath of fealty to their
new master, to whom they devoted soul and body to serve
faithfully. Their new baptism was a baptism of blood: for their
lord cut their fingers and wrote their names in blood in his
book. After other ceremonies they sit down to a table, and are
regaled with not the choicest viands (for such an occasion and
from such a host)--broth, bacon, cheese, oatmeal. Dancing and
fighting (the latter a peculiarity of the Northern Sabbath) ensue
alternately. They indulge, too, in the debauchery of the South:
the witches having offspring from their intercourse with the
demons, who intermarry and produce a mongrel breed of toads and
serpents. As interludes, it may be supposed, to the serious part
of the entertainment the fiend would contrive various jokes,
affecting to be dead; and, a graver joke, he would bid them to
erect a huge building of stone, in which they were to be saved
upon the approaching day of judgment. While engaged at this work
he threw down the unfinished house about their ears, to the
consternation, and sometimes injury, of his vassals.[155] Some of
the witnesses spoke of a great dragon encircled with flames, and
an iron chair; of a vision of a burning pit. The minister of the
district gave his evidence that, having been suffering from a
painful headache, he could account for the unusual severity of
the attack only by supposing that the witches had celebrated one
of their infernal dances upon his head while asleep in bed: and
one of them, in accordance with this conjecture, acknowledged
that the devil had sent her with a sledge-hammer to drive a nail
into the temples of the obnoxious clergyman. The solidity of his
skull saved him; and the only result was, as stated, a severe
pain in his head.
[155] Le Sage's _Diable Boiteux_, who so obligingly
introduces the Spanish student to the secret realities of
human life, is, it may be observed, of both a more rational
and more instructive temperament than the ordinary demons
who appear at the witches' revels to practise their
senseless and fantastic rites.
All the persuasive arguments of the examiners could not induce
the witches to repeat before them their well-known tricks:
because, as they affirmed, 'since they had confessed all they
found all their witchcraft was gone: and the devil at this time
appeared very terrible with claws on his hands and feet, with
horns on his head and a long tail behind, and showed them a pit
burning with a hand out; but the devil did thrust the person down
again with an iron fork, and suggested to the witches that if
they continued in their confession he would deal with them in the
same manner.' These are some of the interesting particulars of
this judicial commission as reported by contemporaries. Seventy
persons were condemned to death. One woman pleaded (a frequent
plea) in arrest of judgment that she was with child; the rest
perseveringly denying their guilt. Twenty-three were burned in a
single fire at the village of Mohra. Fifteen children were also
executed; while fifty-six others, convicted of witchcraft in a
minor degree, were sentenced to various punishments: to be
scourged on every Sunday during a whole year being a sentence of
less severity. The proceedings were brought to an end, it seems,
by the fear of the upper classes for their own safety. An edict
of the king who had authorised the enquiry now ordered it to be
terminated, and the history of the commission was attempted to be
involved in silent obscurity. Prayers were ordered in all the
churches throughout Sweden for deliverance from the malice of
Satan, who was believed to be let loose for the punishment of the
land.[156] It is remarkable that the incidents of the Swedish
trials are chiefly reproductions of the evidence extracted in the
courts of France and Germany.
[156] _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, by Thomas Wright, who
quotes the authorised reports. Sir Walter Scott refers to
'An account of what happened in the kingdom of Sweden in the
years 1669, 1670, and afterwards translated out of High
Dutch into English by Dr. Anthony Horneck, attached to
Glanvil's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. The translation refers
to the evidence of Baron Sparr, ambassador from the court of
Sweden to the court of England in 1672, and that of Baron
Lyonberg, envoy-extraordinary of the same power, both of
whom attest the confessions and execution of the witches.
The King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of
the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His judges and
commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and
children to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence
as was brought before them; but whether the actions
confessed and proved against them were real, or only the
effect of a strong imagination, he was not as yet able to
determine."'