Frances Dickonson, Mary Spencer, and the others, could they have known
it, owed their lives in all probability to the intellectual independence
of William Harvey. There is a precious story about Harvey in an old
manuscript letter by an unknown writer, that, if trustworthy, throws a
light on the physician's conduct in the case. The letter seems to have
been written by a justice of the peace in southwestern England about
1685.[32] He had had some experience with witches--we have mentioned
them in another connection--and he was prompted by them to tell a story
of Dr. Harvey, with whom he was "very familiarly acquainted." "I once
asked him what his opinion was concerning witchcraft; whether there was
any such thing. Hee told mee he believed there was not." Asked the
reasons for his doubt, Harvey told him that "when he was at Newmercat
with the King [Charles I] he heard there was a woman who dwelt at a lone
house on the borders of the Heath who was reputed a Witch, that he went
alone to her, and found her alone at home.... Hee said shee was very
distrustful at first, but when hee told her he was a vizard, and came
purposely to converse with her in their common trade, then shee easily
believed him; for say'd hee to mee, 'You know I have a very magicall
face.'" The physician asked her where her familiar was and desired to
see him, upon which she brought out a dish of milk and made a chuckling
noise, as toads do, at which a toad came from under the chest and drank
some of the milk. Harvey now laid a plan to get rid of the woman. He
suggested that as fellow witches they ought to drink together, and that
she procure some ale. She went out to a neighboring ale-house, half a
mile away, and Harvey availed himself of her absence to take up the toad
and cut it open. Out came the milk. On a thorough examination he
concluded that the toad "no ways differed from other toades," but that
the melancholy old woman had brought it home some evening and had tamed
it by feeding and had so come to believe it a spirit and her familiar.
When the woman returned and found her "familiar" cut in pieces, she
"flew like a Tigris" at his face. The physician offered her money and
tried to persuade her that her familiar was nothing more than a toad.
When he found that this did not pacify her he took another tack and told
her that he was the king's physician, sent to discover if she were a
witch, and, in case she were, to have her apprehended. With this
explanation, Harvey was able to get away. He related the story to the
king, whose leave he had to go on the expedition. The narrator adds: "I
am certayne this for an argument against spirits or witchcraft is the
best and most experimentall I ever heard."
Who the justice of the peace was that penned this letter, we are unable
even to guess, nor do we know upon whose authority it was published. We
cannot, therefore, rest upon it with absolute certainty, but we can say
that it possesses several characteristics of a _bona fide_ letter.[33]
If it is such, it gives a new clue to Harvey's conduct in 1634. We of
course cannot be sure that the toad incident happened before that time;
quite possibly it was after the interest aroused by that affair that the
physician made his investigation. At all events, here was a man who had
a scientific way of looking into superstition.
The advent of such a man was most significant in the history of
witchcraft, perhaps the most significant fact of its kind in the reign
of Charles I. That reign, in spite of the Lancashire affair, was
characterized by the continuance and growth of the witch skepticism,[34]
so prevalent in the last years of the previous reign. Disbelief was not
yet aggressive, it did not block prosecutions, but it hindered their
effectiveness. The gallows was not yet done away with, but its use had
been greatly restrained by the central government. Superstition was
still a bird of prey, but its wings were being clipped.[35]
[1] The writer of the _Collection of Modern Relations_ (London, 1693)
speaks of an execution at Oxford, but there is nothing to substantiate
it in the voluminous publications about Oxford; a Middlesex case rests
also on doubtful evidence (see appendix C, 1641).
[2] _Cal. St. P., Dom._, 1634-1635, 152.
[3] _Ibid._, 141.
[4] This is of course theory; _cf._ Daudet's story of his childhood in
"_Le Pape est mort_."
[5] There seem to be five different sources for the original deposition
of young Robinson. Thomas D. Whitaker, _History ... of Whalley_ (3d ed.,
1818), 213, has an imperfect transcript of the deposition as given in
the Bodleian, Dodsworth MSS., 61, ff. 45-46. James Crossley in his
introduction to Potts, _Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the countie
of Lancaster_ (Chetham Soc.), lix-lxxii, has copied the deposition given
by Whitaker. Thomas Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, II,
112-114, has given the story from a copy of this and of other
depositions in Lord Londesborough's MSS. Webster prints a third copy,
_Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 347-349. A fourth is in Edward
Baines, _History of the ... county ... of Lancaster_, ed. of 1836, I,
604, and is taken from Brit. Mus., Harleian MSS., cod. 6854, f. 26 b. A
fifth is in the Bodleian, Rawlinson MSS., D, 399, f. 211. Wright's
source we have not in detail, but the other four, while differing
slightly as to punctuation, spelling, and names, agree remarkably well
as to the details of the story.
[6] _Cal. St. P., Dom._, 1634-1635, 152.
[7] John Stearne, _A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft ...
together with the Confessions of many of those executed since May 1645_
(London, 1648), 11, says that in Lancashire "nineteene assembled."
Robinson's deposition as printed by Webster, _Displaying of Supposed
Witchcraft_, gives nineteen names.
[8] Webster, _op. cit._, 277.
[9] The boy, in his first examinations at London, said he had made up
the story himself.
[10] It is a curious thing that one of the justices of the peace was
John Starchie, who had been one of the bewitched boys of the Starchie
family at Cleworth in 1597. See above, ch. IV. See Baines, _Lancaster_,
ed. of 1868-1870, I, 204.
[11] This incident is related by Webster, _op. cit._, 276-278. Webster
tells us that the boy was yet living when he wrote, and that he himself
had heard the whole story from his mouth more than once. He appends to
his volume the original deposition of the lad (at Padiham, February 10
1633/4).
[12] These are given in the same deposition, but the deposition probably
represents the boy's statement at the assizes.
[13] The father had been a witness at the Lancashire trials in 1612. See
Baines, _Lancaster_, ed. of 1868-1870, I, 204-205.
[14] That is, of course, so far as we have evidence. It is a little
dangerous to hold to absolute negatives.
[15] Webster, _op. cit._, 277. Pelham on May 16, 1634, wrote: "It is
said that 19 are condemned and ... 60 already discovered." _Cal. St. P.,
Dom._, 1634-1635, 26.
[16] It had been reported in London that witches had raised a storm from
which Charles had suffered at sea. Pelham's letter, _ibid._
[17] _Ibid._, 77. See also Council Register (MS.), Charles I, vol. IV,
p. 658.
[18] _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, XII, 2, p. 53. The chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster wrote in the meantime that the judges had been to see
him. What was to be done with the witches?
[19] See _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, X, 2, p. 147; and _Cal. St. P.,
Dom., 1634-1635_, 98.
[20] _Cal. St. P., Dom._, 1634-1635, 98, 129. See also Council Register
(MS.), Chas. I, vol. V, p. 56.
[21] _Cal. St. P., Dom._, 1634-1635, 129.
[22] Webster, _op. cit._, 277, says that they were examined "after by
His Majesty and the Council."
[23] See Council Register (MS.), Charles I, vol. IV, p. 657.
[24] _Cal. St. P., Dom., 1634-1635_, 141.
[25] _Ibid._, 152.
[26] _Farington Papers_ (Chetham Soc, no. 39, 1856), 27.
[27] _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, XII, 2, p. 77.
[28] _Ibid._, p. 80.
[29] Baines, _Lancaster_, ed. of 1868-1870, II, 12. Utley, who was a
professed conjurer, was alleged to have bewitched to death one Assheton.
[30] _Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and
Ireland, 1634-1635, by Sir William Brereton, Bart._ (Chetham Soc., no.
1. 1844), 33.
[31] (London, 1635.) As to Heywood see also chapter X.
[32] The correspondent who sent a copy of the MS. to the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ signs himself "B. C. T." I have been unable to identify him.
For his account of the MS. and for its contents see _Gentleman's
Magazine_, 1832, pt. I, 405-410, 489-492.
[33] John Aubrey, _Letters written by Eminent Persons_ (London, 1813),
II, 379, says that Harvey "had made dissections of froggs, toads and a
number of other animals, and had curious observations on them." This
fits in well with the story, and in some measure goes to confirm it.
[34] For example, in 1637 the Bishop of Bath and Wells sent Joice
Hunniman to Lord Wrottesley to examine her and exonerate her. He did so,
and the bishop wrote thanking him and abusing "certain apparitors who go
about frightening the people." See _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, II, app.,
p. 48. For a case of the acquittal of a witch and the exposure of the
pretended convulsions of her accuser, see _Cal. St. P., Dom., 1635_,
477. For example of suits for slander see North Riding Rec. Soc, IV,
182, session July 9, 1640.
[35] A solitary pamphlet of this period must be mentioned. It was
entitled: _Fearefull Newes from Coventry, or A true Relation and
Lamentable Story of one Thomas Holt of Coventry a Musitian who through
Covetousnesse and immoderate love of money, sold himselfe to the Devill,
with whom he had made a contract for certaine yeares--And also of his
Lamentable end and death, on the 16 day of February 1641_ (London,
1642). The "sad subject of this little treatise" was a musician with
nineteen children. Fearing that he would not be able to provide for
them, he is alleged to have made a contract with the Devil, who finally
broke his neck.
CHAPTER VIII.
MATTHEW HOPKINS.
In the annals of English witchcraft Matthew Hopkins occupies a place by
himself. For more than two years he was the arch-instigator in
prosecutions which, at least in the numbers of those executed, mark the
high tide of the delusion. His name was one hardly known by his
contemporaries, but he has since become a figure in the annals of
English roguery. Very recently his life has found record among those of
"Twelve Bad Men."[1]
What we know of him up to the time of his first appearance in his
successful role about March of 1644/5 is soon told. He was the son of
James Hopkins, minister of Wenham[2] in Suffolk. He was "a lawyer of but
little note" at Ipswich, thence removing to Manningtree. Whether he may
have been the Matthew Hopkins of Southwark who complained in 1644 of
inability to pay the taxes[3] is more than doubtful, but there is reason
enough to believe that he found the law no very remunerative profession.
He was ready for some new venture and an accidental circumstance in
Manningtree turned him into a wholly new field of endeavor. He assumed
the role of a witchfinder and is said to have taken the title of
witchfinder-general.[4]
He had made little or no preparation for the work that now came to his
hand. King James's famous _Daemonologie_ he was familiar with, but he may
have studied it after his first experiences at Manningtree. It seems
somewhat probable, too, that he had read, and indeed been much
influenced by, the account of the Lancashire witches of 1612, as well as
by Richard Bernard's _Advice to Grand Jurymen_. But, if he read the
latter book, he seems altogether to have misinterpreted it. As to his
general information and education, we have no data save the hints to be
gained from his own writings. His letter to John Gaule and the little
brochure which he penned in self-defence reveal a man able to express
himself with some clearness and with a great deal of vigor. There were
force of character and nervous energy behind his defiant words. It is no
exaggeration, as we shall see in following his career, to say that the
witch crusader was a man of action, who might in another field have made
his mark.
To know something of his religious proclivities would be extremely
interesting. On this point, however, he gives us no clue. But his fellow
worker, John Stearne, was clearly a Puritan[5] and Hopkins was surely of
the same faith. It can hardly be proved, however, that religious zeal
prompted him in his campaign. For a time of spiritual earnestness his
utterances seem rather lukewarm.
It was in his own town that his attention was first directed towards the
dangers of witchcraft. The witches, he tells us, were accustomed to hold
their meetings near his house. During one of their assemblies he
overheard a witch bid her imps to go to another witch. The other witch,
whose name was thus revealed to him--Elizabeth Clarke, a poor one-legged
creature--was promptly taken into custody on Hopkins's charge.[6] Other
accusations poured in. John Rivet had consulted a cunning woman about
the illness of his wife, and had learned that two neighbors were
responsible. One of these, he was told, dwelt a little above his own
home; "whereupon he beleeved his said wife was bewitched by ...
Elizabeth Clarke, ... for that the said Elizabeth's mother and some
other of her kinsfolke did suffer death for witchcraft." The justices
of the peace[7] accordingly had her "searched by women who had for many
yeares known the Devill's marks," and, when these were found on her,
they bade her custodians "keep her from sleep two or three nights,
expecting in that time to see her familiars."[8]
Torture is unknown to English law; but, in our day of the "third
degree," nobody needs to be told that what is put out at the door may
steal in at the window. It may be that, in the seventeenth century, the
pious English justices had no suspicion that enforced sleeplessness is a
form of physical torture more nerve-racking and irresistible than the
thumb-screw. Three days and nights of "watching" brought Elizabeth
Clarke to "confess many things"; and when, on the fourth night, her
townsmen Hopkins and Stearne dropped in to fill out from her own lips
the warrants against those she had named as accomplices, she told them
that, if they would stay and do her no hurt, she would call one of her
imps.
Hopkins told her that he would not allow it, but he stayed. Within a
quarter of an hour the imps appeared, six of them, one after another.
The first was a "white thing in the likeness of a Cat, but not
altogether so big," the second a white dog with some sandy spots and
very short legs, the third, Vinegar Tom, was a greyhound with long legs.
We need not go further into the story. The court records give the
testimony of Hopkins and Stearne. Both have related the affair in their
pamphlets.[9] Six others, four of whom were women, made oath to the
appearances of the imps. In this respect the trial is unique among all
in English history. Eight people testified that they had seen the
imps.[10] Two of them referred elsewhere to what they had seen, and
their accounts agreed substantially.[11] It may be doubted if the
supporting evidence offered at any trial in the seventeenth century in
England went so far towards establishing the actual appearance of the
so-called imps of the witches.
How are we to account for these phenomena? What was the nature of the
delusion seemingly shared by eight people? It is for the psychologist to
answer. Two explanations occur to the layman. It is not inconceivable
that there were rodents in the gaol--the terrible conditions in the
gaols of the time are too well known to need description--and that the
creatures running about in the dark were easily mistaken by excited
people for something more than natural. It is possible, too, that all
the appearances were the fabric of imagination or invention. The
spectators were all in a state of high expectation of supernatural
appearances. What the over-alert leaders declared they had seen the
others would be sure to have seen. Whether those leaders were themselves
deceived, or easily duped the others by calling out the description of
what they claimed to see, would be hard to guess. To the writer the
latter theory seems less plausible. The accounts of the two are so
clearly independent and yet agree so well in fact that they seem to
weaken the case for collusive imposture. With that a layman may be
permitted to leave the matter. What hypnotic possibilities are inherent
in the story he cannot profess to know. Certainly the accused woman was
not a professed dealer in magic and it is not easy to suspect her of
having hypnotized the watchers.
Upon Elizabeth Clarke's confessions five other women--"the old beldam"
Anne West, who had "been suspected as a witch many yeers since, and
suffered imprisonment for the same,"[12] her daughter Rebecca,[13] Anne
Leech, her daughter Helen Clarke, and Elizabeth Gooding--were arrested.
As in the case of the first, there was soon abundance of evidence
offered about them. One Richard Edwards bethought himself and remembered
that while crossing a bridge he had heard a cry, "much like the shrieke
of a Polcat," and had been nearly thrown from his horse. He had also
lost some cattle by a mysterious disease. Moreover his child had been
nursed by a goodwife who lived near to Elizabeth Clarke and Elizabeth
Gooding. The child fell sick, "rowling the eyes," and died. He believed
that Anne Leech and Elizabeth Gooding were the cause of its death. His
belief, however, which was offered as an independent piece of
testimony, seems to have rested on Anne Leech's confession, which had
been made before this time and was soon given to the justices of the
peace. Robert Taylor charged Elizabeth Gooding with the death of his
horse, but he too had the suggestion from other witnesses. Prudence Hart
declared that, being in her bed in the night, "something fell down on
her right side." "Being dark she cannot tell in what shape it was, but
she believeth Rebecca West and Anne West the cause of her pains."
But the accusers could hardly outdo the accused. No sooner was a crime
suggested than they took it upon themselves. It seemed as if the witches
were running a race for position as high criminal. With the exception of
Elizabeth Gooding, who stuck to it that she was not guilty, they
cheerfully confessed that they had lamed their victims, caused them to
"languish," and even killed them. The meetings at Elizabeth Clarke's
house were recalled. Anne Leech remembered that there was a book read
"wherein shee thinks there was no goodnesse."[14]
So the web of charges and counter-charges was spun until twenty-three or
more women were caught in its meshes. No less than twelve of them
confessed to a share in the most revolting crimes. But there was one
who, in court, retracted her confession.[15] At least five utterly
denied their guilt. Among them was a poor woman who had aroused
suspicion chiefly because a young hare had been seen in front of her
house. She was ready to admit that she had seen the hare, but denied
all the more serious charges.[16] Another of those who would not plead
guilty sought to ward off charges against herself by adding to the
charges accumulated against her mother. Hers was a damning accusation.
Her mother had threatened her and the next night she "felt something
come into the bed about her legges, ... but could not finde anything."
This was as serious evidence as that of one of the justices of the
peace, who testified from the bench that a very honest friend of his had
seen three or four imps come out of Anne West's house in the moonlight.
Hopkins was not to be outshone by the other accusers. He had visited
Colchester castle to interview Rebecca West and had gained her
confession that she had gone through a wedding ceremony with the Devil.
But why go into details? The evidence was all of a kind. The female
juries figured, as in the trials at Lancaster in 1633, and gave the
results of their harrowing examinations. What with their verdicts and
the mass of accusations and confessions, the justices of the peace were
busy during March, April, and May of 1645. It was not until the
twenty-ninth of July that the trial took place. It was held at
Chelmsford before the justices of the peace and Robert Rich, Earl of
Warwick. Warwick was not an itinerant justice, nor was he, so far as we
know, in any way connected with the judicial system. One of the most
prominent Presbyterians in England, he had in April of this year, as a
result of the "self-denying ordinance," laid down his commission as head
of the navy. He disappears from view until August, when he was again
given work to do. In the mean time occurred the Chelmsford trial. We can
only guess that the earl, who was appointed head of the Eastern
Association less than a month later[17] (August 27), acted in this
instance in a military capacity. The assizes had been suspended. No
doubt some of the justices of the peace pressed upon him the urgency of
the cases to be tried. We may guess that he sat with them in the quarter
sessions, but he seems to have played the role of an itinerant justice.
No narrative account of the trial proper is extant. Some one who signs
himself "H. F." copied out and printed the evidence taken by the
justices of the peace and inserted in the margins the verdicts. In this
way we know that at least sixteen were condemned, probably two more, and
possibly eleven or twelve more.[18] Of the original sixteen, one was
reprieved, one died before execution, four were hanged at Manningtree
and ten at Chelmsford.
The cases excited some comment, and it is comment that must not be
passed over, for it will prove of some use later in analyzing the causes
of the outbreak. Arthur Wilson, whom we have mentioned as an historian
of the time, has left his verdict on the trial. "There is nothing," he
wrote, "so crosse to my temper as putting so many witches to death." He
saw nothing, in the women condemned at Chelmsford, "other than poore
mellenchollie ... ill-dieted atrabilious constitutions, whose fancies
working by grosse fumes and vapors might make the imagination readie to
take any impression." Wilson wrestled long with his God over the matter
of witches and came at length to the conclusion that "it did not consist
with the infinite goodnes of the Almightie God to let Satan loose in so
ravenous a way."
The opinion of a parliamentary journal in London on the twenty-fourth of
July, three days before the Essex executions, shows that the Royalists
were inclined to remark the number of witches in the counties friendly
to Parliament: "It is the ordinary mirth of the Malignants in this City
to discourse of the Association of Witches in the Associated Counties,
but by this they shall understand the truth of the old Proverbe, which
is that where God hath his Church, the Devill hath his Chappell." The
writer goes on, "I am sory to informe you that one of the cheifest of
them was a Parsons Wife (this will be good news with the Papists)....
Her name was Weight.... This Woman (as I heare) was the first
apprehended."[19] It seems, however, that Mrs. "Weight" escaped. Social
and religious influences were not without value. A later pamphleteer
tells us that the case of Mrs. Wayt, a minister's wife, was a "palpable
mistake, for it is well knowne that she is a gentle-woman of a very
godly and religious life."[20]
Meantime Hopkins had extended his operations into Suffolk. Elizabeth
Clarke and Anne Leech had implicated certain women in that county. Their
charges were carried before the justices of the peace and were the
beginning of a panic which spread like wildfire over the county.
The methods which the witchfinder-general used are illuminating. Four
searchers were appointed for the county, two men and two women.[21] "In
what Town soever ... there be any person or persons suspected to be
witch or Witches, thither they send for two or all of the said
searchers, who take the partie or parties so suspected into a Roome and
strip him, her, or them, starke naked."[22] The clergyman Gaule has
given us further particulars:[23] "Having taken the suspected Witch,
shee is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool, or Table,
crosse-legg'd, or in some other uneasie posture, to which if she submits
not, she is then bound with cords; there is she watcht and kept without
meat or sleep for the space of 24 hours.... A little hole is likewise
made in the door for the Impe to come in at; and lest it might come in
some lesse discernible shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and
anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or flyes, to kill
them. And if they cannot kill them, then they may be sure they are her
Impes."[24] Hutchinson tells a story of one woman, who, after having
been kept long fasting and without sleep, confessed to keeping an imp
called Nan. But a "very learned ingenious gentleman having indignation
at the thing" drove the people from the house, gave the woman some food,
and sent her to bed. Next morning she knew of no Nan but a pullet she
had.
The most sensational discovery in Suffolk was that John Lowes, pastor of
Brandeston, was a witch. The case was an extraordinary one and throws a
light on the witch alarms of the time. Lowes was eighty years old, and
had been pastor in the same place for fifty years. He got into trouble,
undoubtedly as a result of his inability to get along with those around
him. As a young man he had been summoned to appear before the synod at
Ipswich for not conforming to the rites of the Established Church.[25]
In the first year of Charles's reign he had been indicted for refusing
to exhibit his musket,[26] and he had twice later been indicted for
witchcraft and once as a common imbarritor.[27] The very fact that he
had been charged with witchcraft before would give color to the charge
when made in 1645. We have indeed a clue to the motives for this
accusation. A parishioner and a neighboring divine afterwards gave it as
their opinion that "Mr. Lowes, being a litigious man, made his
parishioners (too tenacious of their customs) very uneasy, so that they
were glad to take the opportunity of those wicked times to get him
hanged, rather than not get rid of him." Hopkins had afforded them the
opportunity. The witchfinder had taken the parson in hand. He had caused
him to be kept awake several nights together, and had run him backwards
and forwards about the room until he was out of breath. "Then they
rested him a little and then ran him again, and this they did for
several days and nights together, till he was weary of his life and
scarce sensible of what he said or did."[28] He had, when first accused,
denied all charges and challenged proof, but after he had been subjected
to these rigorous methods he made a full confession. He had, he said,
sunk a sailing vessel of Ipswich, making fourteen widows in a quarter of
an hour. The witchfinder had asked him if it did not grieve him to see
so many men cast away in a short time, and he answered: "No, he was
joyfull to see what power his Impes had."[29] He had, he boasted, a
charm to keep him out of gaol and from the gallows. It is too bad that
the crazed man's confidence in his charm was misplaced. His whole wild
confession is an illustration of the effectiveness of the torture. His
fate is indicative of the hysteria of the times and of the advantages
taken of it by malicious people. It was his hostility to the
ecclesiastical and political sympathies of his community that caused his
fall.
The dementia induced by the torture in Lowes's case showed itself in the
case of others, who made confessions of long careers of murder. "These
and all the rest confessed that cruell malice ... was their chiefe
delight." The accused were being forced by cruel torture to lend their
help to a panic which exceeded any before or after in England. From one
hundred and thirty to two hundred people[30] were soon under accusation
and shut up in Bury gaol.
News of this reached a Parliament in London that was very much engrossed
with other matters. We cannot do better than to quote the Puritan
biographer Clarke.[31] "A report was carried to the Parliament ... as
if some busie men had made use of some ill Arts to extort such
confession; ... thereupon a special Commission of Oyer and Terminer was
granted for the trial of these Witches." Care was to be used, in
gathering evidence, that confessions should be voluntary and should be
backed by "many collateral circumstances." There were to be no
convictions except upon proof of express compact with the Devil, or upon
evidence of the use of imps, which implied the same thing. Samuel
Fairclough and Edmund Calamy (the elder), both of them Non-Conformist
clergymen of Suffolk,[32] together with Serjeant John Godbolt and the
justices of the peace, were to compose this special court. The court met
about the end of August, a month after the sessions under Warwick at
Chelmsford, and was opened by two sermons preached by Mr. Fairclough in
Bury church. One of the first things done by the special court, quite
possibly at the instigation of the two clergymen, was to put an end to
the swimming test,[33] which had been used on several of the accused,
doubtless by the authority of the justices of the peace. This was of
course in some sense a blow at Hopkins. Nevertheless a great deal of the
evidence which he had gathered must have been taken into account.
Eighteen persons, including two men,[34] were condemned to be
hanged.[35] On the night before their execution, they were confined in a
barn, where they made an agreement not to confess a word at the gallows
the following day, and sang a psalm in confirmation. Next day they
"dyed ... very desperately."[36] But there were still one hundred and
twenty others in gaol[37] awaiting trial. No doubt many forthwith would
have met the same end, had it not been for a lucky chance of the wars.
The king's forces were approaching and the court hastened to adjourn its
sessions.[38]
But this danger was soon over, and within three weeks' time the court
seems to have resumed its duties.[39] Of this second session we know
nothing at all, save that probably forty or fifty more witches were
condemned, and doubtless executed.[40] What became of the others we can
only guess. Perhaps some were released, some left in gaol indefinitely.
These things were not done in a corner. Yet so great was the distraction
in England that, if we can trust negative evidence, they excited not a
great deal of notice. Such comments as there were, however, were
indicative of a division of opinion. During the interval between the two
sessions, the _Moderate Intelligencer_, a parliamentary organ that had
sprung up in the time of the Civil War, came out in an editorial on the
affair. "But whence is it that Devils should choose to be conversant
with silly Women that know not their right hands from their left, is the
great wonder.... They will meddle with none but poore old Women: as
appears by what we received this day from Bury.... Divers are condemned
and some executed and more like to be. Life is precious and there is
need of great inquisition before it is taken away."[41]
This was the sole newspaper reference of which we know, as well as the
only absolutely contemporary mention of these trials. What other
expressions of opinion there were came later. James Howell, a popular
essayist of his time, mentioned the trials in his correspondence as new
proof of the reality of witchcraft.[42] The pious Bishop Hall saw in
them the "prevalency of Satan in these times."[43] Thomas Ady, who in
1656 issued his _Candle in the Dark_, mentioned the "Berry Assizes"[44]
and remarked that some credulous people had published a book about it.
He thought criticism deserved for taking the evidence of the gaoler,
whose profit lay in having the greatest possible number executed.[45]
We have already described Hopkins as a man of action. Nothing is better
evidence of it than the way in which he hurried back and forth over the
eastern counties. During the last part of May he had probably been
occupied with collecting the evidence against the accused at Bury. Long
before they were tried he was busy elsewhere. We can trace his movements
in outline only, but we know enough of them to appreciate his tremendous
energy. Some time about the beginning of June he must have gone to
Norfolk. Before the twenty-sixth of July twenty witches had been
executed in that county.[46] None of the details of these trials have
been left us. From the rapidity with which they were carried to
completion we may feel fairly certain that the justices of the peace,
seeing no probability of assize sessions in the near future, went ahead
to try cases on their own initiative.[47] On the fifteenth of August the
corporation of Great Yarmouth, at the southern extremity of the Norfolk
coast line, voted to send for Mr. Hopkins, and that he should have his
fee and allowance for his pains,[48] "as he hath in other places." He
came at two different times, once in September and once in December.
Probably the burden of the work was turned over to the four female
assistants, who were granted a shilling a day apiece.[49] Six women were
condemned, one of whom was respited.[50] Later three other women and one
man were indicted, but by this time the furor against them seems to
have abated, and they probably went free.[51]
Hopkins's further course can be traced with some degree of certainty.
From Yarmouth he probably went to Ipswich, where Mother Lakeland was
burned on September 9 at the instance of the justices of the peace.[52]
Mother Lakeland's death by burning is the second instance we have,
during the Hopkins panic,[53] of this form of sentence. It is explained
by the fact that it was the law in England to burn women who murdered
their husbands. The chief charge against Mother Lakeland, who, by the
way, was a woman quite above the class from which witches were
ordinarily recruited,[54] was that she had bewitched her husband to
death.[55] The crime was "petty treason."
It is not a wild guess that Hopkins paused long enough in his active
career to write an account of the affair, so well were his principles of
detection presented in a pamphlet soon issued from a London press.[56]
But, at any rate, before Mother Lakeland had been burned he was on his
way to Aldeburgh, where he was already at work on the eighth of
September collecting evidence.[57] Here also he had an assistant, Goody
Phillips, who no doubt continued the work after he left. He was back
again in Aldeburgh on the twentieth of December and the seventh of
January, and the grand result of his work was summarized in the brief
account: "Paid ... eleven shillings for hanging seven witches."[58]
From Aldeburgh, Hopkins may have journeyed to Stowmarket. We do not know
how many servants of the evil one he discovered here; but, as he was
paid twenty-three pounds[59] for his services, and had received but six
pounds in Aldeburgh, the presumption is that his work here was very
fruitful in results.
We now lose track of the witchfinder's movements for a while. Probably
he was doubling on his track and attending court sessions. In December
we know that he made his second visit to Yarmouth. From there he may
have gone to King's Lynn, where two witches were hanged this year, and
from there perhaps returned early in January to Aldeburgh and other
places in Suffolk. It is not to be supposed for a moment that his
activities were confined to the towns named. At least fifteen other
places in Suffolk are mentioned by Stearne in his stories of the
witches' confessions.[60] While Hopkins's subordinates probably
represented him in some of the villages, we cannot doubt that the
witchfinder himself visited many towns.
From East Anglia Hopkins went westward into Cambridgeshire. His arrival
there must have been during either January or February. His reputation,
indeed, had gone ahead of him, and the witches were reported to have
taken steps in advance to prevent detection.[61] But their efforts were
vain. The witchfinder found not less than four or five of the detested
creatures,[62] probably more. We know, however, of only one execution,
that of a woman who fell under suspicion because she kept a tame
frog.[63]
From Cambridgeshire, Hopkins's course took him, perhaps in March of
1645/6, into Northamptonshire. There he found at least two villages
infested, and he turned up some remarkable evidence. So far in his
crusade, the keeping of imps had been the test infallible upon which the
witchfinder insisted. But at Northampton spectral evidence seems to have
played a considerable part.[64] Hopkins never expresses his opinion on
this variety of evidence, but his co-worker declares that it should be
used with great caution, because "apparitions may proceed from the
phantasie of such as the party use to fear or at least suspect."
But it was a case in Northamptonshire of a different type that seems to
have made the most lasting impression on Stearne. Cherrie of Thrapston,
"a very aged man," had in a quarrel uttered the wish that his neighbor's
tongue might rot out. The neighbor thereupon suffered from something
which we should probably call cancer of the tongue. Perhaps as yet the
possibilities of suggestion have not been so far sounded that we can
absolutely discredit the physical effects of a malicious wish. It is
much easier, however, to believe the reported utterance imagined after
its supposed effect. At all events, Cherrie was forced to confess that
he had been guilty and he further admitted that he had injured Sir John
Washington, who had been his benefactor at various times.[65] He was
indicted by the grand jury, but died in gaol, very probably by suicide,
on the day when he was to have been tried.[66]
From Northamptonshire Hopkins's course led him into Huntingdonshire,[67]
a county that seems to have been untroubled by witch alarms since the
Warboys affair of 1593. The justices of the peace took up the quest
eagerly. The evidence that they gathered had but little that was
unusual.[68] Mary Chandler had despatched her imp, Beelzebub, to injure
a neighbor who had failed to invite her to a party. An accused witch who
was questioned about other possible witches offered in evidence a
peculiar piece of testimony. He had a conversation with "Clarke's sonne
of Keiston," who had said to him (the witness): "I doe not beleeve you
die a Witch, for I never saw you at our meetings." This would seem to
have been a clever fiction to ward off charges against himself. But,
strangely enough, the witness declared that he answered "that perhaps
their meetings were at severall places."
Hopkins did not find it all smooth sailing in the county of Huntingdon.
A clergyman of Great Staughton became outraged at his work and preached
against it. The witchfinder had been invited to visit the town and
hesitated. Meantime he wrote this blustering letter to one of John
Gaule's parishioners.
"My service to your Worship presented, I have this day received a
Letter, &c.--to come to a Towne called Great Staughton to search
for evil disposed persons called Witches (though I heare your
Minister is farre against us through ignorance) I intend to come
(God willing) the sooner to heare his singular Judgment on the
behalfe of such parties; I have known a Minister in Suffolke preach
as much against their discovery in a Pulpit, and forc'd to recant
it (by the Committee) in the same place. I much marvaile such evill
Members[69] should have any (much more any of the Clergy) who
should daily preach Terrour to convince such Offenders, stand up to
take their parts against such as are Complainants for the King, and
sufferers themselves with their Families and Estates. I intend to
give your Towne a Visite suddenly, I am to come to Kimbolton this
weeke, and it shall bee tenne to one but I will come to your Town
first, but I would certainely know afore whether your Town affords
many Sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to give and afford us
good welcome and entertainment, as other where I have beene, else I
shall wave your Shire (not as yet beginning in any part of it my
selfe) And betake me to such places where I doe and may persist
without controle, but with thankes and recompence."[70]
This stirred the fighting spirit of the vicar of Great Staughton, and he
answered the witchfinder in a little book which he published shortly
after, and which he dedicated to Colonel Walton of the House of Commons.
We shall have occasion in another chapter to note its point of view.
In spite of opposition, Hopkins's work in Huntingdonshire prospered. The
justices of the peace were occupied with examinations during March and
April. Perhaps as many as twenty were accused.[71] At least half that
number were examined. Several were executed--we do not know the exact
number--almost certainly at the instance of the justices of the
peace.[72] It is pleasant to know that one was acquitted, even if it was
after she had been twice searched and once put through the swimming
ordeal.[73]
From Huntingdonshire it is likely that Hopkins and Stearne made their
next excursion into Bedfordshire. We know very little about their
success here. In two villages it would seem that they were able to track
their prey.[74] But they left to others the search which they had
begun.[75]
The witchfinder had been active for a little over a year. But during the
last months of that time his discoveries had not been so notable. Was
there a falling off in interest? Or was he meeting with increased
opposition among the people? Or did the assize courts, which resumed
their proceedings in the summer of 1646, frown upon him? It is hard to
answer the question without more evidence. But at any rate it is clear
that during the summer and autumn of 1646 he was not actively engaged in
his profession. It is quite possible, indeed, that he was already
suffering from the consumption which was to carry him off in the
following year. And, with the retirement of its moving spirit, the witch
crusade soon came to a close. Almost a twelvemonth later there was a
single[76] discovery of witches. It was in the island of Ely; and the
church courts,[77] the justices of the peace,[78] and the assize
courts,[79] which had now been revived, were able, between them, to hang
a few witches.[80]
We do not know whether Hopkins participated in the Ely affair or not. It
seems certain that his co-worker, Stearne, had some share in it. But, if
so, it was his last discovery. The work of the two men was ended. They
had been pursuing the pack of witches in the eastern counties since
March of 1644/5. Even the execrations of those who opposed them could
not mar the pleasure they felt in what they had done. Nay, when they
were called upon to defend themselves, they could hardly refrain from
exulting in their achievements. They had indeed every right to exult.
When we come to make up the roll of their victims, we shall see that
their record as witch discoverers surpassed the combined records of all
others.
It is a mistake to suppose that they had acted in any haphazard way. The
conduct of both men had been based upon perfectly logical deductions
from certain premises. King James's _Daemonologie_ had been their
catechism, the statute against the feeding of imps their book of rules.
Both men started with one fundamental notion, that witchcraft is the
keeping of imps. But this was a thing that could be detected by marks on
the bodies.[81] Both were willing to admit that mistakes could be made
and were often made in assuming that natural bodily marks were the
Devil's marks. There were, however, special indications by which the
difference between the two could be recognized.[82] And the two
witchfinders, of course, possessed that "insight"[83] which was
necessary to make the distinction. The theories upon which they worked
we need not enter into. Suffice it to say that when once they had
proved, as they thought, the keeping of imps, the next step was to watch
those accused of it.[84] "For the watching," says Stearne,[85] "it is
not to use violence or extremity to force them to confesse, but onely
the keeping is, first to see whether any of their spirits, or familiars
come to or neere them." It is clear that both Hopkins and Stearne
recognized the fact that confessions wrung from women by torture are
worthless and were by this explanation defending themselves against the
charge of having used actual torture. There seems to be no adequate
reason for doubting the sincerity of their explanation. Stearne tells us
that the keeping the witches separate is "also to the end that Godly
Divines might discourse with them." "For if any of their society come to
them to discourse with them, they will never confesse."[86] Here,
indeed, is a clue to many confessions. Several men arrayed against one
solitary and weak woman could break her resolution and get from her very
much what they pleased.
As for starving the witches and keeping them from sleep, Stearne
maintained that these things were done by them only at first. Hopkins
bore the same testimony. "After they had beat their heads together in
the Gaole, and after this use was not allowed of by the Judges and other
Magistrates, it was never since used, which is a yeare and a halfe
since."[87] In other words, the two men had given up the practice
because the parliamentary commission had compelled them to do so.
The confessions must be received with great caution, Hopkins himself
declared.[88] It is so easy to put words into the witch's mouth. "You
have foure Imps, have you not? She answers affirmatively. 'Yes'.... 'Are
not their names so and so'? 'Yes,' saith she. 'Did you not send such an
Impe to kill my child'? 'Yes,' saith she." This sort of thing has been
too often done, asserted the virtuous witchfinder. He earnestly did
desire that "all Magistrates and Jurors would, a little more than ever
they did, examine witnesses about the interrogated confessions." What a
cautious, circumspect man was this famous witchfinder! The confessions,
he wrote, in which confidence may be placed are when the woman, without
any "hard usages or questions put to her, doth of her owne accord
declare what was the occasion of the Devil's appearing to her."[89]
The swimming test had been employed by both men in the earlier stages of
their work. "That hath been used," wrote Stearne, "and I durst not goe
about to cleere my selfe of it, because formerly I used it, but it was
at such time of the yeare as when none tooke any harme by it, neither
did I ever doe it but upon their owne request."[90] A thoughtful man was
this Stearne! Latterly he had given up the test--since "Judge Corbolt"
stopped it[91]--and he had come to believe that it was a way of
"distrusting of God's providence."
It can be seen that the men who had conducted the witch crusade were
able to present a consistent philosophy of their conduct. It was, of
course, a philosophy constructed to meet an attack the force of which
they had to recognize. Hopkins's pamphlet and Stearne's _Confirmation_
were avowedly written to put their authors right in the eyes of a public
which had turned against them.[92] It seems that this opposition had
first shown itself at their home in Essex. A woman who was undergoing
inquisition had found supporters, and, though she was condemned in spite
of their efforts, was at length reprieved.[93] Her friends turned the
tables by indicting Stearne and some forty others of conspiracy, and
apparently succeeded in driving them from the county.[94] In Bury the
forces of the opposition had appealed to Parliament, and the Commission
of Oyer and Terminer, which, it will be noticed, is never mentioned by
the witchfinders, was sent out to limit their activities. In
Huntingdonshire, we have seen how Hopkins roused a protesting clergyman,
John Gaule. If we may judge from the letter he wrote to one of Gaule's
parishioners, Hopkins had by this time met with enough opposition to
know when it was best to keep out of the way. His boldness was assumed
to cover his fear.
But it was in Norfolk that the opposition to the witchfinders reached
culmination. There most pungent "queries" were put to Hopkins through
the judges of assize. He was charged with all those cruelties, which, as
we have seen, he attempts to defend. He was further accused of fleecing
the country for his own profit.[95] Hopkins's answer was that he took
the great sum of twenty shillings a town "to maintaine his companie with
3 horses."[96] That this was untrue is sufficiently proved by the
records of Stowmarket where he received twenty-three pounds and his
traveling expenses. At such a rate for the discoveries, we can hardly
doubt that the two men between them cleared from three hundred to a
thousand pounds, not an untidy sum in that day, when a day's work
brought six pence.
What further action was taken in the matter of the queries "delivered to
the Judges of assize" we do not know. Both Hopkins and Stearne, as we
have seen, went into retirement and set to work to exonerate themselves.
Within the year Hopkins died at his old home in Manningtree. Stearne
says that he died "peaceably, after a long sicknesse of a Consumption."
But tradition soon had it otherwise. Hutchinson says that the story, in
his time, was that Hopkins was finally put to the swimming test himself,
and drowned. According to another tale, which seems to have lingered in
Suffolk, he offered to show the Devil's roll of all the witches in
England and so was detected.[97] Butler, in his _Hudibras_, said of him:
"Who after proved himself a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech."
Butler's lines appeared only fifteen years after Hopkin's death, and his
statement is evidence enough that such a tradition was already current.
The tradition is significant. It probably means, not that Hopkins really
paid such a penalty for his career--Stearne's word is good enough proof
to the contrary--but that within his own generation his name had become
an object of detestation.
John Stearne did not return to Manningtree--he may have been afraid
to--but settled down near Bury, the scene of his greatest successes.
If the epitaphs of these two men were to be written, their deeds could
be compressed into homely statistics. And this leads us to inquire what
was the sum of their achievement. It has been variously estimated. It is
not an uncommon statement that thirty thousand witches were hanged in
England during the rule of Parliament, and this wild guess has been
copied by reputable authors. In other works the number has been
estimated at three thousand, but this too is careless guesswork. Stearne
himself boasted that he knew of two hundred executions, and Stearne
ought to have known. It is indeed possible that his estimate was too
high. He had a careless habit of confusing condemnations with executions
that makes us suspect that in this estimate he may have been thinking
rather of the number of convictions than of the hangings. Yet his
figures are those of a man who was on the ground, and cannot be lightly
discounted. Moreover, James Howell, writing in 1648, says that "within
the compass of two years, near upon three hundred Witches were arraign'd
and the major part executed in Essex and Suffolk only."[98] If these
estimates be correct--or even if they approach correctness--a remarkable
fact appears. Hopkins and Stearne, in fourteen months' time, sent to the
gallows more witches than all the other witch-hunters of England can be
proved--so far as our present records go--to have hung in the hundred
and sixty years during which the persecution nourished in England. It
must occur to the reader that this crusade was extraordinary. Certainly
it calls for explanation.
So far as the writer is aware, but one explanation has been offered. It
has been repeated until it has become a commonplace in the history of
witchcraft that the Hopkins crusade was one of the expressions of the
intolerant zeal of the Presbyterian party during its control of
Parliament. This notion is largely due to Francis Hutchinson, who wrote
the first history of English witchcraft. Hutchinson was an Anglican
clergyman, but we need not charge him with partisanship in accusing the
Presbyterians. There was no inconsiderable body of evidence to support
his point of view. The idea was developed by Sir Walter Scott in his
_Letters on Demonology_, but it was left to Lecky, in his classic essay
on witchcraft, to put the case against the Presbyterian Parliament in
its most telling form.[99] His interpretation of the facts has found
general acceptance since.
It is not hard to understand how this explanation grew up. At a time
when Hutchinson was making his study, Richard Baxter, the most eminent
Puritan of his time, was still a great name among the defenders of
witchcraft.[100] In his pages Hutchinson read how Puritan divines
accompanied the witch-magistrates on their rounds and how a "reading
parson" was one of their victims. Gaule, who opposed them, he seems to
have counted an Anglican. He clearly put some faith in the lines of
_Hudibras_. Probably, however, none of these points weighed so much with
him as the general fact of coincidence in time between the great witch
persecution and Presbyterian rule. It was hard to escape the conclusion
that these two unusual situations must in some way have been connected.
Neither Hutchinson nor those who followed have called attention to a
point in support of their case which is quite as good proof of their
contention as anything adduced. It was in the eastern counties, where
the Eastern Association had flourished and where Parliament, as well as
the army, found its strongest backing--the counties that stood
consistently against the king--in those counties it was that Hopkins and
Stearne carried on their work.[101]
It may seem needless in the light of these facts to suggest any other
explanation of the witch crusade. Yet the whole truth has not by any
means been told. It has already been noticed that Hutchinson made some
mistakes. Parson Lowes, who was hanged as a witch at the instance of his
dissatisfied parishioners, was not hanged because he was an
Anglican.[102] And the Presbyterian Parliament had not sent down into
Suffolk a commission to hang witches, but to check the indiscriminate
proceedings that were going on there against witches. Moreover, while it
is true that East Anglia and the counties adjacent, the stronghold of
the Puritans, were the scene of Hopkins's operations, it is quite as
true that in those counties arose that powerful opposition which forced
the witchfinders into retirement. We have noticed in another connection
that the "malignants" were inclined to mock at the number of witches in
the counties friendly to Parliament, but there is nothing to show that
the mockers disbelieved the reality of the witchcrafts.[103]
It is easy enough to turn some of Hutchinson's reasoning against him, as
well as to weaken the force of other arguments that may be presented on
his side. But, when we have done all this, we still have to face the
unpleasant facts that the witch persecution coincided in time with
Presbyterian rule and in place with Puritan communities. It is very hard
to get around these facts. Nor does the writer believe that they can be
altogether avoided, even if their edge can be somewhat blunted. It was a
time of bitter struggle. The outcome could not yet be forecast. Party
feeling was at a high pitch. The situation may not unfairly be compared
with that in the summer of 1863 during the American civil war. Then the
outbreaks in New York revealed the public tension. The case in 1645 in
the eastern counties was similar. Every energy was directed towards the
prosecution of the war. The strain might very well have shown itself in
other forms than in hunting down the supposed agents of the Devil. As a
matter of fact, the apparitions and devils, the knockings and strange
noises, that filled up the pages of the popular literature were the
indications of an overwrought public mind. Religious belief grew
terribly literal under the tension of the war. The Anglicans were
fighting for their king, the Puritans for their religion. That
religious fervor which very easily deepens into dementia was highly
accentuated.[104]
Nevertheless, too much importance may have been given to the part played
by Presbyterianism. There is no evidence which makes it certain that the
morbidity of the public would have taken the form of witch-hanging, had
it not been for the leadership of Hopkins and Stearne. The Manningtree
affair started very much as a score of others in other times. It had
just this difference, that two pushing men took the matter up and made
of it an opportunity. The reader who has followed the career of these
men has seen how they seem the backbone of the entire movement. It is
true that the town of Yarmouth invited them of its own initiative to
take up the work there, but not until they had already made themselves
famous in all East Anglia. There is, indeed, too much evidence that
their visits were in nearly every case the result of their own
deliberate purpose to widen the field of their labors. In brief, two
aggressive men had taken advantage of a time of popular excitement and
alarm. They were fortunate in the state of the public mind, but they
seem to have owed more to their own exertions.
But perhaps to neither factor was their success due so much as to the
want of government in England at this time. We have seen in an earlier
chapter that Charles I and his privy council had put an end to a witch
panic that bade fair to end very tragically. Not that they interfered
with random executions here and there. It was when the numbers involved
became too large that the government stepped in to revise verdicts.
This was what the government of Parliament failed to do. And the reasons
are not far to seek. Parliament was intensely occupied with the war. The
writer believes that it can be proved that, except in so far as
concerned the war, the government of Parliament and the Committee of
Both Kingdoms paid little or no attention to the affairs of the realm.
It is certainly true that they allowed judicial business to go by the
board. The assizes seem to have been almost, if not entirely, suspended
during the last half of the year 1645 and the first half of 1646.[105]
The justices of the peace, who had always shown themselves ready to hunt
down witches, were suffered to go their own gait.[106] To be sure, there
were exceptions. The Earl of Warwick held a court at Chelmsford, but he
was probably acting in a military capacity, and, inexperienced in court
procedure, doubtless depended largely upon the justices of the peace,
who, gathered in quarter sessions, were assisting him. It is true too
that Parliament had sent down a Commission of Oyer and Terminer to Bury,
a commission made up of a serjeant and two clergymen. But these two
cases are, so far as we can discover, the sole instances during these
two years when the justices of the peace were not left to their own
devices. This is significant. Except in Middlesex and in the chartered
towns of England, we have, excepting during this time of war, no records
that witches were ever sentenced to death, save by the judges of assize.
To put it in a nutshell, England was in a state of judicial
anarchy.[107] Local authorities were in control. But local authorities
had too often been against witches. The coming of Hopkins and Stearne
gave them their chance, and there was no one to say stop.
This explanation fits in well with the fact, to which we shall advert in
another chapter, that no small proportion of English witch trials took
place in towns possessing separate rights of jurisdiction. This was
especially true in the seventeenth century. The cases in Yarmouth,
King's Lynn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick, and Canterbury, are all
instances in point. Indeed, the solitary prosecution in Hopkins's own
time in which he had no hand was in one of those towns, Faversham in
Kent. There the mayor and "local jurators" sent not less than three to
the gallows.[108]
One other aspect of the Hopkins crusade deserves further attention. It
has been shown in the course of the chapter that the practice of torture
was in evidence again and again during this period. The methods were
peculiarly harrowing. At the same time they were methods which the
rationale of the witch belief justified. The theory need hardly be
repeated. It was believed that the witches, bound by a pact with the
Devil, made use of spirits that took animal forms. These imps, as they
were called, were accustomed to visit their mistress once in twenty-four
hours. If the witch, said her persecutors, could be put naked upon a
chair in the middle of the room and kept awake, the imps could not
approach her. Herein lay the supposed reasonableness of the methods in
vogue. And the authorities who were offering this excuse for their use
of torture were not loth to go further. It was, they said, necessary to
walk the creatures in order to keep them awake. It was soon discovered
that the enforced sleeplessness and the walking would after two or three
days and nights produce confessions. Stearne himself describes the
matter graphically: "For the watching," he writes, "it is not to use
violence or extremity to force them to confesse, but onely the keeping
is, first, to see whether any of their spirits or familiars come to or
neere them; for I have found that if the time be come, the spirit or
Impe so called should come, it will be either visible or invisible, if
visible, then it may be discerned by those in the Roome, if invisible,
then by the party. Secondly, it is for this end also, that if the
parties which watch them, be so carefull that none come visible nor
invisible but that may be discerned, if they follow their directions
then the party presently after the time their Familiars should have
come, if they faile, will presently confesse, for then they thinke they
will either come no more or have forsaken them. Thirdly it is also to
the end, that Godly Divines and others might discourse with them, for if
any of their society come to them to discourse with them, they will
never confesse.... But if honest godly people discourse with them,
laying the hainousnesse of their sins to them, and in what condition
they are in without Repentance, and telling them the subtilties of the
Devil, and the mercies of God, these ways will bring them to Confession
without extremity, it will make them break into confession hoping for
mercy."[109]
Hopkins tells us more about the walking of the witches. In answer to the
objection that the accused were "extraordinarily walked till their feet
were blistered, and so forced through that cruelty to confesse," "he
answered that the purpose was only to keepe them waking: and the reason
was this, when they did lye or sit in a chaire, if they did offer to
couch downe, then the watchers were only to desire them to sit up and
walke about."
Now, the inference might be drawn from these descriptions that the use
of torture was a new feature of the witchcraft persecutions
characteristic of the Civil War period. There is little evidence that
before that time such methods were in use. A schoolmaster who was
supposed to have used magic against James I had been put to the rack.
There were other cases in which it is conjectured that the method may
have been tried. There is, however, little if any proof of such trial.
Such an inference would, however, be altogether unjustified. The
absence of evidence of the use of torture by no means establishes the
absence of the practice. It may rather be said that the evidence of the
practice we possess in the Hopkins cases is of such a sort as to lead us
to suspect that it was frequently resorted to. If for these cases we had
only such evidence as in most previous cases has made up our entire sum
of information, we should know nothing of the terrible sufferings
undergone by the poor creatures of Chelmsford and Bury. The confessions
are given in full, as in the accounts of other trials, but no word is
said of the causes that led to them. The difference between these cases
of 1645 and other cases is this, that Hopkins and Stearne accused so
large a body of witches that they stirred up opposition. It is through
those who opposed them and their own replies that we learn about the
tortures inflicted upon the supposed agents of the Devil.
The significance of this cannot be insisted upon too strongly. A chance
has preserved for us the fact of the tortures of this time. It is
altogether possible--it is almost probable--that, if we had all the
facts, we should find that similar or equally severe methods had been
practised in many other witch cases.
We have been very minute in our descriptions of the Hopkins crusade, and
by no means brief in our attempt to account for it. But it is safe to
say that it is easily the most important episode in that series of
episodes which makes up the history of English witchcraft. None of them
belong, of course, in the larger progress of historical events. It may
seem to some that we have magnified the point at which they touched the
wider interests of the time. Let it not be forgotten that Hopkins was a
factor in his day and that, however little he may have affected the
larger issues of the times, he was affected by them. It was only the
unusual conditions produced by the Civil Wars that made the great
witchfinder possible.
[1] See J. O. Jones, "Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder," in Thomas
Seccombe's _Twelve Bad Men_ (London, 1894).
[2] See _Notes and Queries_, 1854, II, 285, where a quotation from a
parish register of Mistley-cum-Manningtree is given: "Matthew Hopkins,
son of Mr. James Hopkins, Minister of Wenham, was buried at Mistley
August 12, 1647." See also John Stearne, _A Confirmation and Discovery
of Witchcraft_, 61 (cited hereafter as "Stearne").
[3] _Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Advance of Money,
1642-1656_, I, 457. _Cf. Notes and Queries_, 1850, II, 413.
[4] The oft-repeated statement that he had been given a commission by
Parliament to detect witches seems to rest only on the mocking words of
Butler's _Hudibras_:
"Hath not this present Parliament
A Ledger to the Devil sent,
Fully empower'd to treat about
Finding revolted Witches out?"
(_Hudibras_, pt. ii, canto 3.)
To these lines an early editor added the note: "The Witch-finder in
Suffolk, who in the Presbyterian Times had a Commission to discover
Witches." But he names no authority, and none can be found. It is
probably a confusion with the Commission appointed for the trial of the
witches in Suffolk (see below, p. 178). Even his use of the title
"witch-finder-general" is very doubtful. "Witch-finder" he calls himself
in his book; only the frontispiece has "Witch Finder Generall." Nor is
this title given him by Stearne, Gaule, or any contemporary record. It
is perhaps only a misunderstanding of the phrase of Hopkins's
title-page, "for the benefit of the whole kingdome"--a phrase which, as
the punctuation shows, describes, not the witch-finder, but his book.
Yet in _County Folk Lore, Suffolk_ (Folk Lore Soc., 1893), 178, there is
an extract about John Lowes from a Brandeston MS.: "His chief accuser
was one Hopkins, who called himself Witchfinder-General." But this is of
uncertain date, and may rest on Hutchinson.
[5] This is evident enough from his incessant use of Scripture and from
the Calvinistic stamp of his theology; but he leaves us no doubt when
(p. 54) he describes the Puritan Fairclough as "an able Orthodox
Divine."
[6] Matthew Hopkins, _The Discovery of Witches_ (London, 1647), 2--cited
hereafter as "Hopkins."
[7] One of them was Sir Harbottle Grimston, a baronet of Puritan
ancestry, who had been active in the Long Parliament, but who as a
"moderate man" fell now somewhat into the background. The other was Sir
Thomas Bowes. Both figure a little later as Presbyterian elders.
[8] Hopkins, 3.
[9] Hopkins, 2; Stearne, 14-16.
[10] It must, however, be noted that the oaths of the four women are put
together, and that one of the men deposed merely that he confirmed
Stearne's particulars.
[11] Although Hopkins omitted in his testimony the first animal seen by
Stearne. He mentioned it later, calling it Holt. Stearne called it
Lought. See Hopkins, 2; Stearne, 15. But Stearne calls it Hoult in his
testimony as reproduced in the _True and exact Relation of the severall
Informations, Examinations and Confessions of the Late Witches ... at
Chelmesford ..._ (London, 1645), 3-4.
[12] Despite this record Anne West is described by Stearne (p. 39) as
one of the very religious people who make an outward show "as if they
had been Saints on earth."
[13] The confession of Rebecca West is indeed dated "21" March 1645, the
very day of Elizabeth Clarke's arrest; but all the context suggests that
this is an error. In spite of her confessions, which were of the most
damaging, Rebecca West was eventually acquitted.
[14] It must not for a moment, however, be forgotten that these
confessions had been wrung from tortured creatures.
[15] Richard Carter and Henry Cornwall had testified that Margaret Moone
confessed to them. Probably she did, as she was doubtless at that time
under torture.
[16] The evidence offered against her well suggests on what slender
grounds a witch might be accused. "This Informant saith that the house
where this Informante and the said Mary did dwell together, was haunted
with a Leveret, which did usually sit before the dore: And this
Informant knowing that one Anthony Shalock had an excellent Greyhound
that had killed many Hares; and having heard that a childe of the said
Anthony was much haunted and troubled, and that the mother of the childe
suspected the said Mary to be the cause of it: This Informant went to
the said Anthony Shalock and acquainted him that a Leveret did usually
come and sit before the dore, where this Informant and the said Mary
Greenleife lived, and desired the said Anthony to bring downe his
Greyhound to see if he could kill the said Leveret; and the next day the
said Anthony did accordingly bring his Greyhound, and coursed it, but
whether the dog killed it this Informant knows not: But being a little
before coursed by Good-man Merrils dog, the dog ran at it, but the
Leveret never stirred, and just when the dog came at it, he skipped over
it, and turned about and stood still, and looked on it, and shortly
after that dog languished and dyed."
[17] See Bulstrode Whitelocke, _Memorials of English Affairs ..._
(London, 1682; Oxford, 1853), ed. of 1853, I, 501.
[18] "H. F."'s publication is the _True and exact Relation_ cited above
(note 11). He seems to have written it in the last of May, but inserted
verdicts later in the margin. Arthur Wilson, who was present, says that
18 were executed; Francis Peck, _Desiderata Curiosa_ (London, 1732-1735;
1779), ed. of 1779, II, 476. But Hopkins writes that 29 were condemned
at once and Stearne says about 28; quite possibly there were two trials
at Chelmsford. There is only one other supposition, _i. e._, that
Hopkins and Stearne confused the number originally accused with the
number hanged. For further discussion of the somewhat conflicting
evidence as to the number of these Essex witches and the dates of their
trial see appendix C, under 1645.
[19] _A Diary or an Exact Journall_, July 24-31, 1645, pp. 5-6.
[20] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches at St.
Edmundsbury ..._ (London, 1645), 9.
[21] _Ibid._, 6.
[22] _Ibid._
[23] John Gaule, _Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and
Witchcrafts_ (London, 1646), 78, 79.
[24] Queries 8 and 9 answered by Hopkins to the Norfolk assizes confirm
Gaule's description. See Hopkins, 5. "Query 8. When these ... are fully
discovered, yet that will not serve sufficiently to convict them, but
they must be tortured and kept from sleep two or three nights, to
distract them, and make them say anything; which is a way to tame a
wilde Colt, or Hawke." "Query 9. Beside that unreasonable watching, they
were extraordinarily walked, till their feet were blistered, and so
forced through that cruelty to confess." Hopkins himself admitted the
keeping of Elizabeth Clarke from sleep, but is careful to insert "upon
command from the Justice." Hopkins, 2-3. On p. 5 he again refers to this
point. Stearne, 61, uses the phrase "with consent of the justices."
[25] Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, _Proceedings_, X, 378. Baxter
seems to have started the notion that Lowes was a "reading parson," or
Anglican.
[26] _Ibid._
[27] See _A Magazine of Scandall, or a heape of wickednesse of two
infamous Ministers_ (London, 1642), where there is a deposition, dated
August 4, 1641, that Lowes had been twice indicted and once arraigned
for witchcraft, and convicted by law as "a common Barrettor" at the
assizes in Suffolk. Stearne, 23, says he was charged as a "common
imbarritor" over thirty years before.
[28] This account of the torture is given, in a letter to Hutchinson, by
a Mr. Rivet, who had "heard it from them that watched with him." It is
in some measure confirmed by the MS. history of Brandeston quoted in
_County Folk Lore, Suffolk_ (Folk Lore Soc.), 178, which adds the
above-quoted testimony as to his litigiousness.
[29] Stearne, 24.
[30] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches_, 5;
_Moderate Intelligencer_, September 4-11, 1645.
[31] See Samuel Clarke, _Lives of sundry Eminent Persons ..._ (London,
1683), 172. In writing the life of Samuel Fairclough, Clarke used
Fairclough's papers; see _ibid._, 163.
[32] Fairclough was a Non-Conformist, but not actively sympathetic with
Presbyterianism. Calamy was counted a Presbyterian.
[33] Hopkins, 5-6; Stearne, 18.
[34] One of these was Lowes.
[35] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches._
[36] Stearne, 14.
[37] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches_, 5.
[38] _Ibid._; Stearne, 25.
[39] Hutchinson speaks of repeated sessions. Stearne, 25, says: "by
reason of an Allarum at Cambridge, the gaol delivery at Burie St.
Edmunds was adjourned for about three weeks." As a matter of fact, the
king's forces seem not to have got farther east than Bedford and
Cambridge. See Whitelocke, _Memorials_, I, 501.
[40] Stearne, 11, speaks of 68 condemnations. On p. 14 he tells of 18
who were executed at Bury, but this may have referred to the first group
only. A MS. history of Brandeston quoted in _County Folk Lore, Suffolk_
(Folk Lore Soc.), 178, says that Lowes was executed with 59 more. It is
not altogether certain, however, that this testimony is independent.
Nevertheless, it contains pieces of information not in the other
accounts, and so cannot be ignored.
[41] _Moderate Intelligencer_, September 4-11, 1645.
[42] Howell, _Familiar Letters_ (I use the ed. of Joseph Jacobs, London
1890-1892) II, 506, 515, 551. The letters quoted are dated as of Feb.,
1646 (1647), and Feb., 1647 (1648 of our calendar); but, as is well
known, Howell's dates cannot be trusted. The first was printed in the
volume of his letters published in 1647, the others in that published in
1650.
[43] Joseph Hall, _Soliloquies_ (London, 1651), 52-53.
[44] Thomas Ady, _Candle in the Dark_ (London, 1656), 101-105.
[45] The Rev. John Worthington attended the trial. In mentioning it in
his diary, he made no comment. _Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John
Worthington_, I (Chetham Soc., no. 13, 1847), 22.
[46] So, at least, says Whitelocke, _Memorials_, I, 487.
[47] J. G. Nall, _Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft_ (London, 1867), 92,
note, quotes from the Yarmouth assembly book. Nall makes very careless
statements, but his quotations from the assembly book may be depended
upon.
[48] _Ibid._
[49] _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, IX, pt. i, 320.
[50] The _Collection of Modern Relations_ says that sixteen were hanged,
but this compilation was published forty-seven years after the events:
the number 6 had been changed to 16. One witch seems to have suffered
later, see Stearne, 53. The statement about the 16 witches hanged at
Yarmouth may be found in practically all accounts of English witchcraft,
_e. g._, see the recent essay on Hopkins by J. O. Jones, in Seccombe's
_Twelve Bad Men_, 60. They can all be traced back through various lines
to this source.
[51] H. Manship, _History of Great Yarmouth_, continued by C. J. Palmer
(Great Yarmouth, 1854-1856), where the Yarmouth records about Hopkins
are given in full. See also H. Harrod, in _Norfolk Archaeology_ (Norfolk
and Norwich Arch. Soc., 1847-1864), IV, 249.
[52] _The Lawes against Witches and Conjuration ..._ (London, 1645), 4.
J. O. Jones, in his account of Hopkins, _loc. cit._, says that "many
were hanged or burned in Ipswich." I believe that no authority can be
cited for this statement.
[53] The first is in, _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene
Witches_, 5. We of course do not know that the sentence was carried out.
[54] The master of a ship had been "sutor" for her grandchild; _The
Lawes against Witches_, 8. She was a "professour of Religion, a constant
hearer of the Word for these many years."
[55] _Ibid._
[56] _I. e., The Lawes against Witches_ (London, 1645). See below,
appendix A, Sec. 4.
[57] N. F. Hele, _Notes or Jottings about Aldeburgh_ (Ipswich, 1890),
43-44.
[58] This was doubtless the fee to the executioner. Mr. Richard Browne
and Mr. Newgate, who were either the justices of the peace or the local
magistrates, received L4 apiece for their services in trying the
witches.
[59] A. G. Hollingsworth, _History of Stowmarket_ (Ipswich, 1844), 170.
[60] For a list of these towns, see below, appendix C, under 1645,
Suffolk.
[61] Stearne, 45, two instances.
[62] _Ibid._, 37, 39, 45.
[63] Thomas Ady, _A Candle in the Dark_, 135.
[64] Stearne, 39.
[65] His whole confession reads like the utterance of a tortured man.
[66] He had previously been found with a rope around his neck. This was
of course attributed to witchcraft. Stearne, 35.
[67] _Ibid._, 11.
[68] John Wynnick and Joane Wallis made effective confessions. The
first, when in the heat of passion at the loss of a purse, had signed
his soul away (Stearne, 20-21; see also the pamphlet, the dedication of
which is signed by John Davenport, entitled, _The Witches of Huntingdon,
their Examinations and Confessions ..._ London, 1646, 3). The latter
maintained a troop of imps, among whom Blackeman, Grissell, and
Greedigut figured most prominently. The half-witted creature could not
recall the names on the repetition of her confessions, but this failing
does not seem to have awakened any doubt of her guilt. Stearne could not
avoid noticing that some of those who suffered were very religious. One
woman, who had kept an imp for twenty-one years, "did resort to church
and had a desire to be rid of her unhappy burden."
[69] _I. e._, witches.
[70] This letter is printed by Gaule at the opening of his _Select Cases
of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts_.
[71] Stearne, 11; _cf._ below, appendix C, 1646 (pp. 405-406).
[72] That it was done by the justices of the peace is a probable
conclusion from Stearne's language. See his account of Joane Wallis, p.
13, also his account of John Wynnick, pp. 20-21. That the examinations
were in March and April (see John Davenport's account, _The Witches of
Huntingdon_) and the executions in May is a fact confirmatory of this;
see Stearne, 11. But it is more to the point that John Davenport
dedicates his pamphlet to the justices of the peace for the county of
Huntingdon, and says: "You were present, and Judges at the Tryall and
Conviction of them."
[73] The swimming ordeal was perhaps unofficial; see Stearne, 19.
Another case was that of Elizabeth Chandler, who was "duckt"; _Witches
of Huntingdon_, 8.
[74] Tilbrooke-bushes, Stearne, 11; Risden, _ibid._, 31.
[75] This may be inferred from Stearne's words: "but afterward I heard
that she made a very large confession," _ibid._, 31.
[76] Thomas Wright, John Ashton, J. O. Jones, and the other writers who
have dealt with Hopkins, speak of the Worcester trials, in 1647, in
which four women are said to have been hanged. Their statements are all
based upon a pamphlet, _The Full Tryals, Examination, and Condemnation
of Four Notorious Witches at the Assizes held at Worcester on Tuseday
the 4th of March.... Printed for I. W._ What seems to have been the
first edition of this brochure bears no date. In 1700 another edition
was printed for "J. M." in Fleet Street. Some writer on witchcraft
gained the notion that this pamphlet belonged in the year 1647 and dealt
with events in that year. Wright, John Ashton, and W. H. Davenport Adams
(_Witch, Warlock, and Magician_, London, 1889), all accept this date. An
examination of the pamphlet shows that it was cleverly put together from
the _True and Exact Relation_ of 1645. The four accused bear the names
of four of those accused at Chelmsford, and make, with a few
differences, the same confessions. See below, appendix A, Sec. 4, for a
further discussion of this pamphlet. It is strange that so careful a
student as Thomas Wright should have been deceived by this pamphlet,
especially since he noticed that the confessions were "imitations" of
those in Essex.
[77] A. Gibbons, ed., _Ely Episcopal Records_ (Lincoln, 1891), 112-113.
[78] Stearne, 37.
[79] That there were assizes is proved by the statement that "Moore's
wife" confessed before the "Judge, Bench, and Country," _ibid._, 21-22,
as well as by the reference in the _Ely Episcopal Records_, 113, to the
"assizes."
[80] Stearne, 17, 21-22.
[81] For a clear statement of this point of view, see _ibid._, 40-50.
[82] Stearne, 46-47.
[83] _Ibid._, 50.
[84] _Ibid._, 17.
[85] _Ibid._, 13.
[86] _Ibid._, 14.
[87] Hopkins, 5. But Hopkins was not telling the exact truth here. When
he was at Aldeburgh in September (8th) the accused were watched day and
night. See chamberlain's accounts, in N. F. Hele, _Notes or Jottings
about Aldeburgh_, 43.
[88] Hopkins, 7.
[89] Hopkins, 9.
[90] Stearne, 18. Hopkins did not attempt to deny the use of the ordeal.
He supported himself by quoting James; see Hopkins, 6.
[91] Stearne, 18. He means, of course, Serjeant Godbolt.
[92] See Stearne, in his preface to the reader, also p. 61; and see also
the complete title of Hopkins's book as given in appendix A (p. 362).
[93] A similar case was that of Anne Binkes, to whom Stearne refers on
p. 54. He says she confessed to him her guilt. "Was this woman fitting
to live?... I am sure she was living not long since, and acquitted upon
her trial."
[94] Not until after Stearne was already busy elsewhere. Stearne, 58.
[95] It would seem, too, that Stearne was sued for recovery of sums paid
him. "Many rather fall upon me for what hath been received; but I hope
such suits will be disannulled." Stearne, 60.
[96] Hopkins, 11.
[97] _County Folk Lore, Suffolk_ (Folk Lore Soc.) 176, quoting from J.
T. Varden in the _East Anglian Handbook_ for 1885, p. 89.
[98] James Howell, _Familiar Letters_, II, 551. Howell, of course, may
easily have counted convictions as executions. Moreover, it was a time
when rumors were flying about, and Howell would not have taken the pains
to sift them. Yet his agreement with Stearne in numbers is remarkable.
Somewhat earlier, (the letter is dated February 3, 1646/7) Howell had
written that "in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hundred indicted
within these two years and above the one half executed" (_ibid._, 506).
But, as noted above, his dates are not to be trusted.
[99] See his _History of Rationalism_.
[100] A name no greater, however, than that of Glanvill, who was a
prominent Anglican.
[101] It does not belong in this connection, but it should be stated,
that one of the strongest reasons for supposing the Presbyterian party
largely responsible for the persecution of witches lies in the large
number of witches in Scotland throughout the whole period of that
party's ascendancy. This is an argument that can hardly be successfully
answered. Yet it is a legitimate question whether the witch-hunting
proclivities of the north were not as much the outcome of Scottish laws
and manners as of Scottish religion.
[102] The _Magazine of Scandall_, speaking of Lowes and another man,
says: "Their Religion is either none, or else as the wind blows: If the
ceremonies be tending to Popery, none so forward as they, and if there
be orders cleane contrary they shall exceed any Round-head in the Ile of
great Brittain." See also above, pp. 175-177.
[103] Yet it must not be overlooked that Stearne himself, who must have
known well the religious sympathies of his opponents, asks, p. 58, "And
who are they that have been against the prosecution ... but onely such
as (without offence I may speak it) be enemies to the Church of God?" He
dares not mention names, "not onely for fear of offence, but also for
suits of Law."
[104] Scott has pictured this very well in _Woodstock_. For a good
example of it see _The [D]Ivell in Kent, or His strange Delusions at
Sandwitch_ (London, 1647).
[105] See below, note 107.
[106] The witches of Aldeburgh were tried at the "sessions," N. F. Hele,
_op. cit._, 43-44. Mother Lakeland was probably condemned by the
justices of the peace; see _The Lawes against Witches_. The witches of
Huntingdon were tried by the justices of the peace; see above, note 73.
As for the trials in Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and
Cambridgeshire, it is fairly safe to reason that they were conducted by
the justices of the peace from other evidence which we have that there
were no assizes during the last half of 1645 and the first five months
of 1646; see Whitelocke, _Memorials_, II, 31, 44, 64.
[107] For a few of the evidences of this situation during these years
see James Thompson, _Leicester_ (Leicester, 1849), 401; _Hist. MSS.
Comm. Reports, Various_, I, 109-110, 322; XIII, 4, p. 216 (note gaps in
the records); Whitelocke, _Memorials_, I, 436; II, 31, 44, 64, 196; III,
152. Innumerable other references could be added to prove this point. F.
A. Inderwick in his _Interregnum_ (London, 1891), 153, goes so far as to
say that "from the autumn of 1642 to the autumn of 1646 no judges went
the circuits." This seems rather a sweeping statement.
[108] See _The Examination, Confession_, etc. (London, 1645). Joan
Williford, Joan Cariden, and Jane Hott were tried. The first two quickly
confessed to the keeping of imps. Not so Jane Hott, who urged the others
to confess and "stoode to it very perversely that she was cleare." When
put to the swimming test she floated, and is said to have then declared
that the Devil "had sat upon a Cross beame and laughed at her."
Elizabeth Harris was examined, and gave some damaging evidence against
herself. She named several goodwives who had very loose tongues.
[109] Stearne, 13, 14.
CHAPTER IX.
WITCHCRAFT DURING THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE.
We have, in the last chapter, traced the history of witchcraft in
England through the Hopkins episode of 1645-1647. From the trials at Ely
in the autumn of 1647 to the discoveries at Berwick in the summer of
1649 there was a lull in the witch alarms. Then an epidemic broke out in
the north of England. We shall, in this chapter, describe that epidemic
and shall carry the narrative of the important cases from that time to
the Restoration. In doing this we shall mark off two periods, one from
1649 to 1653, when the executions were still numerous, and a second from
1653 to 1659 when there was a rapid falling off, not only in death
penalties for witchcraft, but even in accusations. To be sure, this
division is somewhat artificial, for there was a gradual decline of the
attack throughout the two periods, but the year 1653 more nearly than
any other marks the year when that decline became visible.
The epidemic of 1649 came from Scotland. Throughout the year the
northern kingdom had been "infested."[1] From one end of that realm to
the other the witch fires had been burning. It was not to be supposed
that they should be suddenly extinguished when they reached the border.
In July the guild of Berwick had invited a Scotchman who had gained
great fame as a "pricker" to come to Berwick, and had promised him
immunity from all violence.[2] He came and proceeded to apply his
methods of detection. They rested upon the assumption that a witch had
insensible spots on her body, and that these could be found by driving
in a pin. By such processes he discovered thirty witches, who were sent
to gaol. Some of them made confessions but refused to admit that they
had injured any one.[3] On the contrary, they had assisted Cromwell, so
some of the more ingenious of them claimed, at the battle of Preston.[4]
Whether this helped their case we do not know, for we are not told the
outcome. It seems almost certain, however, that few, if any, of them
suffered death. But the pricker went back to Scotland with thirty
pounds, the arrangement having been that he was to receive twenty
shillings a witch.
He was soon called upon again. In December of the same year the town of
Newcastle underwent a scare. Two citizens, probably serjeants, applied
the test with such success that in March (1649/50) a body of citizens
petitioned the common council that some definite steps be taken about
the witches. The council accepted the suggestion and despatched two
serjeants, doubtless the men already engaged in the work, to Scotland to
engage the witch-pricker. He was brought to Newcastle with the definite
contract that he was to have his passage going and coming and twenty
shillings apiece for every witch he found. The magistrates did
everything possible to help him. On his arrival in Newcastle they sent
the bellman through the town inviting every one to make complaints.[5]
In this business-like way they collected thirty women at the town hall,
stripped them, and put them to the pricking test. This cruel, not to say
indelicate, process was carried on with additions that must have proved
highly diverting to the base-minded prickers and onlookers.[6] Fourteen
women and one man were tried (Gardiner says by the assizes) and found
guilty. Without exception they asserted their innocence; but this
availed not. In August of 1650 they were executed on the town moor[7] of
Newcastle.[8]
The witchfinder continued his activities in the north, but a storm was
rising against him. Henry Ogle, a late member of Parliament, caused him
to be jailed and put under bond to answer the sessions.[9] Unfortunately
the man got away to Scotland, where he later suffered death for his
deeds, probably during the Cromwellian regime in that country.[10]
We have seen that Henry Ogle had driven the Scotch pricker out of the
country. He participated in another witch affair during this same period
which is quite as much to his credit. The children of George Muschamp,
in Northumberland, had been troubled for two years (1645-1647) with
strange convulsions.[11] The family suspected Dorothy Swinow, who was
the wife of Colonel Swinow. It seems that the colonel's wife had, at
some time, spoken harshly to one of the children. No doubt the sick
little girl heard what they said. At any rate her ravings began to take
the form of accusations against the suspected woman. The family
consulted John Hulton, "who could do more then God allowed," and he
accused Colonel Swinow's wife. But unfortunately for him the child had
been much better during his presence, and he too was suspected. The
mother of the children now rode to a justice of the peace, who sent for
Hulton, but not for Mistress Swinow. Then the woman appealed to the
assizes, but the judge, "falsely informed," took no action. Mrs.
Muschamp was persistent, and in the town of Berwick she was able, at
length, to procure the arrest of the woman she feared. But Dorothy
Swinow was not without friends, who interfered successfully in her
behalf. Mrs. Muschamp now went to a "counsellor," who refused to meddle
with the matter, and then to a judge, who directed her to go to Durham.
She did so and got a warrant; but it was not obeyed. She then procured a
second warrant, and apparently succeeded in getting an indictment. But
it did her little good: Dorothy Swinow was not apprehended.
One can hardly refrain from smiling a little at the unhappy Mrs.
Muschamp and her zealous assistants, the "physician" and the two
clergymen. But her poor daughters grew worse, and the sick child, who
had before seen angels in her convulsions, now saw the colonel's wife
and cried out in her ravings against the remiss judge.[12] The case is
at once pathetic and amusing, but it has withal a certain significance.
It was not only Mrs. Swinow's social position that saved her, though
that doubtless carried weight. It was the reluctance of the
north-country justices to follow up accusations. Not that they had done
with trials. Two capital sentences at Durham and another at Gateshead,
although perhaps after-effects of the Scotch pricker's activity, showed
that the witch was still feared; but such cases were exceptions. In
general, the cases resulted in acquittals. We shall see, in another
chapter, that the discovery which alarmed Yorkshire and Northumberland
in 1673 almost certainly had this outcome; and the cases tried at that
time formed the last chapter in northern witchcraft.
But, if hanging witches was not easy in the north, there were still
districts in the southwest of England where it could be done, with few
to say nay. Anne Bodenham,[13] of Fisherton Anger in Wiltshire, had not
the social position of Dorothy Swinow, but she was the wife of a
clothier who had lived "in good fashion," and in her old age she taught
children to read. She had, it seems, been in earlier life an apt pupil
of Dr. Lambe, and had learned from him the practice of magic lore. She
drew magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous
charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book.
She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure
disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances.
Now, Mistress Bodenham did all these things for money and roused no
antagonism in her community until she was unfortunate enough to have
dealings with a maid-servant in a Wiltshire family. It is impossible to
get behind the few hints given us by the cautious writer. The members of
the family, evidently one of some standing in Wiltshire, became involved
in a quarrel among themselves. It was believed, indeed, by neighbors
that there had been a conspiracy on the part of some of the family to
poison the mother-in-law. At all events, a maid in the family was
imprisoned for participation in such a plot. It was then that Anne
Bodenham first came into the story. The maid, to judge from the few data
we have, in order to distract attention from her own doings, made a
confession that she had signed a book of the Devil's with her own blood,
all at the instigation of Anne Bodenham. Moreover, Anne, she said, had
offered to send her to London in two hours. This was communicated to a
justice of the peace, who promptly took the accused woman into custody.
The maid-servant, successful thus far, began to simulate fits and to lay
the blame for them on Mistress Anne. Questioned as to what she conceived
her condition, she replied, "Oh very damnable, very wretched." She could
see the Devil, she said, on the housetop looking at her. These fancies
passed as facts, and the accused woman was put to the usual
humiliations. She was searched, examined, and urged to confess. The
narrator of the story made effort after effort to wring from her an
admission of her guilt, but she slipped out of all his traps. Against
her accuser she was very bitter. "She hath undone me ... that am an
honest woman, 'twill break my Husband's heart, he grieves to see me in
these Irons: I did once live in good fashion."
The case was turned over by the justices of the peace to the assizes at
Salisbury, where Chief Baron John Wylde of the exchequer presided.[14]
The testimony of the maid was brought in, as well as the other
proofs.[15] All we know of the trial is that Anne was condemned, and
that Judge Wylde was so well satisfied with his work that he urged
Edmund Bower, who had begun an account of the case, but had hesitated to
expose himself to "this Censorious Age," to go on with his booklet. That
detestable individual had followed the case closely. After the
condemnation he labored with the woman to make her confess. But no
acknowledgment of guilt could be wrung from the high-spirited Mistress
Bodenham, even when the would-be father confessor held out to her the
false hope of mercy. She made a will giving gifts to thirty people,
declared she had been robbed by her maids in prison, lamented over her
husband's sorrow, and requested that she be buried under the gallows.
Like the McPherson who danced so wantonly and rantingly beneath the
gallows tree, she remained brave-hearted to the end. When the officer
told her she must go with him to the place of execution, she replied,
"Be you ready, I am ready." The narrator closes the account with some
moral reflections. We may close with the observation that there is no
finer instance of womanly courage in the annals of witchcraft than that
of Anne Bodenham. Doubtless she had used charms, and experimented with
glasses; it had been done by those of higher rank than she.
As for the maid, she had got herself well out of trouble. When Mistress
Bodenham had been hanged, the fits ceased, and she professed great
thankfulness to God and a desire to serve him.
The case of Joan Peterson, who was tried at the Old Bailey in 1652, is
another instance of the struggle of a spirited woman against too great
odds. Joan, like Mistress Bodenham, kept various kinds of powders and
prescribed physic for ailing neighbors.[16] It was, however, if we may
believe her defender, not on account of her prescriptions, but rather on
account of her refusal to swear falsely, that her downfall came. One
would be glad to know the name of the vigorous defender who after her
execution issued _A Declaration in Answer to severall lying Pamphlets
concerning the Witch of Wapping_. His narrative of the plot against the
accused woman offers a plausible explanation of the affair and is not
improbably trustworthy. As he tells the story, there were certain
relatives of Lady Powell who had been disappointed that her estate had
been bequeathed to Mrs. Anne Levingston. They conspired to get rid of
the heiress, went to a cunning woman, and offered to pay her liberally
if she would swear that Mrs. Levingston had used sorcery to take away
the life of Lady Powell. Unfortunately for the conspirators, the cunning
woman betrayed their schemes. Not discouraged, however, they employed
another woman, who, as their representative, went to Joan Peterson and
offered her a hundred pounds to swear that Mrs. Levingston had procured
from her "certain powders and bags of seeds." Joan refused the
proposition, and the plotters, fearing a second exposure of their plans,
determined that Mistress Peterson should also be put out of the way.
They were able to procure a warrant to have her arrested and searched.
Great pressure was put upon her to confess enough to implicate Mrs.
Levingston and she was given to understand that if she would do so she
would herself be spared. But Joan refused their proffers and went to her
trial. If the narrative may be at all trusted there was little effort to
give her a fair hearing. Witnesses against her were purchased in
advance, strangers were offered money to testify against her, and those
who were to have given evidence on her side were most of them
intimidated into staying away from the trial. Four physicians and two
surgeons signed a certificate that Lady Powell had died from perfectly
natural causes. It was of no avail. Joan was convicted and died bravely,
denying her guilt to the end.[17] Her defender avers that some of the
magistrates in the case were involved in the conspiracy against her. One
of these was Sir John Danvers, a member of Cromwell's council. In the
margin of his account the pamphleteer writes: "Sir John Danvers came and
dined at the Sessions house and had much private discourse with the
Recorder and many of the Justices and came and sate upon the Bench at
her Trial, where he hath seldom or never been for these many years."
In July of 1652 occurred another trial that attracted notice in its own
time. Six Kentish women were tried at the assizes at Maidstone before
Peter Warburton.[18] We know almost nothing of the evidence offered by
the prosecution save that there was exhibited in the Swan Inn at
Maidstone a piece of flesh which the Devil was said to have given to one
of the accused, and that a waxen image of a little girl figured in the
evidence. Some of the accused confessed that they had used it in order
to kill the child. Search was instituted for it, and it was found, if
the narrator may be trusted, under the door where the witches had said
it would be.[19] The six were all condemned and suffered execution.
Several others were arraigned, but probably escaped trial.
If the age was as "censorious" of things of this nature as Edmund Bower
had believed it to be, it is rather remarkable that "these proceedings,"
which were within a short distance of London, excited so little stir in
that metropolis. Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford and delver in astrology, attended the trials, with John
Tradescant, traveller and gardener.[20] He left no comments. The
_Faithful Scout_, in its issue of July 30-August 7, mentioned the trial
and the confessions, but refrained from any expression of opinion.
There were other trials in this period; but they must be passed over
rapidly. The physicians were quite as busy as ever in suggesting
witchcraft. We can detect the hand of a physician in the attribution of
the strange illness of a girl who discharged great quantities of stones
to the contrivance of Catherine Huxley, who was, in consequence, hanged
at Worcester.[21] In a case at Exeter the physician was only indirectly
responsible. When Grace Matthews had consulted him about her husband's
illness, he had apparently given up the case, and directed her to a wise
woman.[22] The wise woman had warned Mistress Matthews of a neighbor
"tall of stature and of a pale face and blinking eye," against whom it
would be well to use certain prescribed remedies. Mrs. Matthews did so,
and roused out the witch, who proved to be a butcher's wife, Joan Baker.
When the witch found her spells thwarted, she turned them against Mrs.
Matthews's maid-servant, who in consequence died. This was part of the
evidence against Joan, and it was confirmed by her own kinsfolk: her
father-in-law had seen her handling toads. She was committed, but we
hear no more of the case.
That random accusations were not feared as they had been was evidenced
by the boldness of suspected parties in bringing action against their
accusers, even if boldness was sometimes misjudged. We have two actions
of this sort.
Joan Read of Devizes had been reported to be a witch, and on that
account had been refused by the bakers the privilege of using their
bakeries for her dough.[23] She threw down the glove to her accusers by
demanding that they should be brought by warrant to accuse her. No doubt
she realized that she had good support in her community, and that her
challenge was not likely to be accepted. But a woman near Land's End in
Cornwall seems to have overestimated the support upon which she could
count. She had procured a warrant against her accusers to call the case
before the mayor. The court sided with the accusers and the woman was
brought to trial. Caught herself, she proceeded to ensnare others. As a
result, eight persons were sent to Launceston,[24] and some probably
suffered death.[25]
We have already seen what a tangled web Mrs. Muschamp wove when she set
out to imprison a colonel's wife. It would be easy to cite cases to show
the same reluctance to follow up prosecution. Four women at Leicester
searched Ann Chettle and found no evidence of guilt.[26] In Durham a
case came up before Justice Henry Tempest.[27] Mary Sykes was accused.
Sara Rodes, a child, awakening from sleep in a fright, had declared to
her mother that "Sikes' wife" had come in "att a hole att the bedd
feete" and taken her by the throat. Of course Sara Rodes fell ill.
Moreover, the witch had been seen riding at midnight on the back of a
cow and at another time flying out of a "mistall windowe." But the
woman, in spite of the unfavorable opinion of the women searchers, went
free. There were cases that seem to have ended the same way at York, at
Leeds, and at Scarborough. They were hints of what we have already
noticed, that the northern counties were changing their attitude.[28]
But a case in Derbyshire deserves more attention because the justice,
Gervase Bennett, was one of the members of Cromwell's council. The case
itself was not in any way unusual. A beggar woman, who had been
liberally supported by those who feared her, was on trial for
witchcraft. Because of Bennett's close relation to the government, we
should be glad to know what he did with the case, but the fact that the
woman's conviction is not among the records makes it probable that she
was not bound over to the assizes.[29]
We come now to examine the second of the sub-periods into which we have
divided the Interregnum. We have been dealing with the interval between
the war and the establishment of the Protectorate, a time that shaded
off from the dark shadows of internecine struggle towards the high light
of steady peace and security. By 1653 the equilibrium of England had
been restored. Cromwell's government was beginning to run smoothly. The
courts were in full swing. None of those conditions to which we have
attributed the spread of the witch alarms of the Civil Wars were any
longer in operation. It is not surprising, then, that the Protectorate
was one of the most quiet periods in the annals of witchcraft. While the
years 1648-1653 had witnessed thirty executions in England, the period
of the Protectorate saw but half a dozen, and three of these fell within
the somewhat disturbed rule of Richard Cromwell.[30] In other words,
there was a very marked falling off of convictions for witchcraft, a
falling off that had indeed begun before the year 1653. Yet this
diminution of capital sentences does not by any means signify that the
realm was rid of superstition. In Middlesex, in Somerset and Devon, in
York, Northumberland, and Cumberland, the attack upon witches on the
part of the people was going on with undiminished vigor. If no great
discoveries were made, if no nests of the pestilent creatures were
unearthed, the justices of the peace were kept quite as busy with
examinations as ever before.
To be sure, an analysis of cases proves that a larger proportion of
those haled to court were light offenders, "good witches" whose healing
arts had perhaps been unsuccessful, dealers in magic who had aroused
envy or fear. The court records of Middlesex and York are full of
complaints against the professional enchanters. In most instances they
were dismissed. Now and then a woman was sent to the house of
correction,[31] but even this punishment was the exception.
Two other kinds of cases appeared with less frequency. We have one very
clear instance at Wakefield, in York, where a quarrel between two tenant
farmers over their highway rights became so bitter that a chance threat
uttered by the loser of the lawsuit, "It shall be a dear day's work for
you," occasioned an accusation of witchcraft.[32] In another instance
the debt of a penny seems to have been the beginning of a hatred between
two impecunious creatures, and this brought on a charge.[33]
The most common type of case, of course, was that where strange disease
or death played a part. In Yorkshire, in Hertfordshire, and in Cornwall
there were trials based upon a sort of evidence with which the reader is
already quite familiar. It was easy for the morbid mother of a dead
child to recall or imagine angry words spoken to her shortly before the
death of her offspring. It was quite as natural for a sick child to be
alarmed at the sight of a visitor and go into spasms. There was no fixed
rule, however, governing the relation of the afflicted children and the
possible witches. When William Wade was named, Elizabeth Mallory would
fly into fits.[34] When Jane Brooks entered the room, a bewitched youth
of Chard would become hysterical.[35] It was the opposite way with a
victim in Exeter,[36] who remained well only so long as the witch who
caused the trouble stayed with him.[37]
Closely related to these types of evidence was what has been denominated
spectral evidence, a form of evidence recurrent throughout the history
of English witchcraft. In the time of the Protectorate we have at least
three cases of the kind. The accused woman appeared to the afflicted
individual now in her own form, again in other shapes, as a cat, as a
bee, or as a dog.[38] The identification of a particular face in the
head of a bee must have been a matter of some difficulty, but there is
no ground for supposing that any objection was made to this evidence in
court. At all events, the testimony went down on the official records in
Yorkshire. In Somerset the Jane Brooks case,[39] already referred to,
called forth spectral evidence in a form that must really have been very
convincing. When the bewitched boy cried out that he saw the witch on
the wall, his cousin struck at the place, upon which the boy cried out,
"O Father, Coz Gibson hath cut Jane Brooks's hand, and 'tis bloody."
Now, according to the story, the constable proceeded to the woman's
house and found her hand cut.
As to the social status of the people involved in the Protectorate
trials there is little to say, other than has been said of many earlier
cases. By far the larger number of those accused, as we have already
pointed out, were charmers and enchanters, people who made a penny here
and twopence there, but who had at best a precarious existence. Some of
them, no doubt, traded on the fear they inspired in their communities
and begged now a loaf of bread and now a pot of beer. They were the same
people who, when begging and enchanting failed, resorted to
stealing.[40] In one of the Yorkshire depositions we have perhaps a hint
of another class from which the witches were recruited. Katherine Earle
struck a Mr. Frank between the shoulders and said, "You are a pretty
gentleman; will you kisse me?" When the man happened to die this
solicitation assumed a serious aspect.[41]
Witchcraft was indeed so often the outcome of lower-class bickering that
trials involving the upper classes seem worthy of special record. During
the Protectorate there were two rather remarkable trials. In 1656
William and Mary Wade were accused of bewitching the fourteen-year-old
daughter of Elizabeth Mallory of Studley Hall. The Mallorys were a
prominent family in Yorkshire. The grandfather of the accusing child had
been a member of Parliament and was a well known Royalist colonel. When
Mistress Elizabeth declared that her fits would not cease until Mary
Wade had said that she had done her wrong, Mary Wade was persuaded to
say the words. Elizabeth was well at once, but Mary withdrew her
admission and Elizabeth resumed her fits, indeed "she was paste
holdinge, her extreamaty was such." She now demanded that the two Wades
should be imprisoned, and when they were "both in holde" she became well
again. They were examined by a justice of the peace, but were probably
let off.[42]
The story of Diana Crosse at Exeter is a more pathetic one. Mrs. Crosse
had once kept a girls' school--could it be that there was some
connection between teaching and witchcraft?[43]--had met with
misfortune, and had at length been reduced to beggary. We have no means
of knowing whether the suspicion of witchcraft antedated her extreme
poverty or not, but it seems quite clear that the former school-teacher
had gained an ill name in the community. She resented bitterly the
attitude of the people, and at one time seems to have appealed to the
mayor. It was perhaps by this very act that she focussed the suspicion
of her neighbors. To go over the details of the trial is not worth
while. Diana Crosse probably escaped execution to eke out the remainder
of her life in beggary.[44]
The districts of England affected by the delusion during this period
have already been indicated. While there were random cases in Suffolk,
Hertfordshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Cumberland, and Northumberland, by
far the greatest activity seems to have been in Middlesex, Cornwall, and
Yorkshire. To a layman it looks as if the north of England had produced
the greater part of its folk-lore. Certain it is that the witch stories
of Yorkshire, as those of Lancaster at another time, by their mysterious
and romantic elements made the trials of the south seem flat, stale, and
unprofitable. Yet they rarely had as serious results.
To the historian the Middlesex cases must be more interesting because
they should afford some index of the attitude of the central government.
Unhappily we do not know the fate of the Yorkshire witches, though it
has been surmised, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that they
all escaped execution.[45] In Middlesex we know that during this period
only one woman, so far as our extant records go, was adjudged guilty.
All the rest were let go free. Now, this may be significant and it may
not. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the Middlesex quarter
sessions were in harmony with the central government. Yet this can be no
more than a guess. It is not easy to take bearings which will locate the
position of the Cromwellian government. The protector himself was
occupied with weightier matters, and, so far as we know, never uttered a
word on the subject. He was almost certainly responsible for the pardon
of Margaret Gyngell at Salisbury in 1655,[46] yet we cannot be sure that
he was not guided in that case by special circumstances as well as by
the recommendation of subordinates.
We have but little more evidence as to the attitude of his council of
state. It was three years before the Protectorate was put into operation
that the hesitating sheriff of Cumberland, who had some witches on his
hands, was authorized to go ahead and carry out the law.[47] But on the
other hand it was in the same period that the English commissioners in
Scotland put a quietus on the witch alarms in that kingdom. In fact, one
of their first acts was to take over the accused women from the church
courts and demand the proof against them.[48] When it was found that
they had been tortured into confessions, the commission resolved upon
an enquiry into the conduct of the sheriff, ministers, and tormentors
who had been involved. Several women had been accused. Not one was
condemned. The matter was referred to the council of state, where it
seems likely that the action of the commissioners was ratified. Seven or
eight years later, in the administration of Richard Cromwell, there was
an instance where the council, apparently of its own initiative, ordered
a party of soldiers to arrest a Rutlandshire witch. The case was,
however, dismissed later.[49]
To draw a definite conclusion from these bits of evidence would be rash.
We can perhaps reason somewhat from the general attitude of the
government. Throughout the Protectorate there was a tendency, which
Cromwell encouraged, to mollify the rigor of the criminal law. Great
numbers of pardons were issued; and when Whitelocke suggested that no
offences should be capital except murder, treason, and rebellion, no one
arose in holy horror to point out the exception of witchcraft,[50] and
the suggestion, though never acted upon, was favorably considered.[51]
When we consider this general attitude towards crime in connection with
what we have already indicated about the rapid decline in numbers of
witch convictions, it seems a safe guess that the Cromwellian
government, while not greatly interested in witchcraft, was, so far as
interested, inclined towards leniency.
[1] Whitelocke, _Memorials_, III, 63, 97, 99, 113.
[2] See an extract from the Guild Hall Books in John Fuller, _History of
Berwick_ (Edinburgh, 1799), 155-156.
[3] Thomas Widdrington's letter to Whitelocke (Whitelocke, _Memorials_,
III, 99). Widdrington said the man professed himself "an artist that
way." The writer was evidently somewhat skeptical.
[4] _Ibid._
[5] Ralph Gardiner, _England's Grievance Discovered in Relation to the
Coal Trade_ (London, 1655), 108.
[6] _Ibid._
[7] See John Brand, _History and Antiquities of ... Newcastle_ (London,
1789), II, 478, or the _Chronicon Mirabile_ (London, 1841), 92, for an
extract from the parish registers, giving the names. A witch of rural
Northumberland was executed with them.
[8] The witches of 1649 were not confined to the north. Two are said to
have been executed at St. Albans, a man and a woman; one woman was tried
in Worcestershire, one at Gloucester, and two in Middlesex. John Palmer
and Elizabeth Knott, who suffered at St. Albans, had gained some
notoriety. Palmer had contracted with the Devil and had persuaded his
kinswoman to assist him in procuring the death of a woman by the use of
clay pictures. Both were probably practitioners in magic. Palmer, even
when in prison, claimed the power of transforming men into beasts. The
woman seems to have been put to the swimming test. Both were condemned.
Palmer, at his execution, gave information about a "whole colledge of
witches," most of them, no doubt, practisers like himself, but his
random accusations were probably passed over. See _The Divels Delusions
or A faithfull relation of John Palmer and Elizabeth Knott ..._ (1649).
[9] Ralph Gardiner, _op. cit._, 109.
[10] See _ibid._ At his execution, Gardiner says, he confessed that he
had been the death of 220 witches in Scotland and England. Either the
man was guilty of unseemly and boastful lying, which is very likely, or
Scotland was indeed badly "infested." See above, note 1.
[11] This narrative is contained in _Wonderfull News from the North, Or
a True Relation of the Sad and Grievous Torments Inflicted upon ...
three Children of Mr. George Muschamp ..._ (London, 1650).
[12] The story of the case was sent down to London and there published,
where it soon became a classic among the witch-believing clergy.
[13] See the two pamphlets by Edmond Bower described below in appendix
A, Sec. 5, and Henry More, _Antidote against Atheisme_, bk. III, ch. VII.
[14] Wylde was not well esteemed as a judge. On the institution of the
protectorate he was not reappointed by Cromwell.
[15] Aubrey (who had it from an eye-witness) tells us that "the crowd of
spectators made such a noise that the judge could not heare the
prisoner, nor the prisoner the judge; but the words were handed from one
to the other by Mr. R. Chandler and sometimes not truly repeated." John
Aubrey, _Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme ..._ (ed. J. Britten, _Folk
Lore Soc. Publications_, IV, 1881), 261.
[16] For the case see _The Tryall and Examinations of Mrs. Joan Peterson
..._; _The Witch of Wapping, or an Exact ... Relation of the ...
Practises of Joan Peterson ..._; _A Declaration in Answer to severall
lying Pamphlets concerning the Witch of Wapping ..._, (as to these
pamphlets, all printed at London in 1652, see below, appendix A, Sec. 5);
_French Intelligencer_, April 6-13, 1652; _Weekly Intelligencer_, April
6-13, 1652; _The Faithful Scout_, April 9-16, 1652; _Mercurius
Democritus_, April 7-17, 1652.
[17] The _French Intelligencer_ tells us the story of her execution:
"She seemed to be much dejected, having a melancholy aspect; she seemed
not to be much above 40 years of age, and was not in the least outwardly
deformed, as those kind of creatures usually are."
[18] For an account of this affair see _A Prodigious and Tragicall
History of the ... Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone ..._
(London, 1652).
[19] It was "supposed," says the narrator, that nine children, besides a
man and a woman, had suffered at their hands, L500 worth of cattle had
been lost, and much corn wrecked at sea. Two of the women made
confession, but not to these things.
[20] See Ashmole's diary as given in Charles Burman, _Lives of Elias
Ashmole, Esq., and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves ..._
(London, 1774), 316.
[21] In his _Certainty of the World of Spirits_ (London, 1691), 44, 45,
Richard Baxter, who is by no means absolutely reliable, tells us about
this case. It should be understood that it is only a guess of the writer
that the physician was to blame for the accusation; but it much
resembles other cases where the physician started the trouble.
[22] William Cotton, _Gleanings from the Municipal and Cathedral Records
Relative to the History of the City of Exeter_ (Exeter, 1877), 149-150.
[23] _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various_, I, 127.
[24] _Mercurius Politicus_, November 24-December 2, 1653. One of these
witches was perhaps the one mentioned as from Launceston in Cornwall in
R. and O. B. Peter, _The Histories of Launceston and Dunheved_
(Plymouth, 1885), 285: "the grave in w^ch the wich was buryed."
[25] Richard Burthogge, _An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits_
(London, 1694), 196, writes that he has the confessions in MS. of "a
great number of Witches (some of which were Executed) that were taken by
a Justice of Peace in Cornwall above thirty Years agoe." It does not
seem impossible that this is a reference to the same affair as that
mentioned by the Launceston record.
[26] _Leicestershire and Rutland Notes and Queries_ (Leicester, 1891,
etc.), I, 247.
[27] James Raine, ed., _A Selection from the Depositions in Criminal
Cases taken before the Northern Magistrates, from the Originals
preserved in York Castle_ (Surtees Soc., no. 40, 1861), 28-30. Cited
hereafter as _York Depositions_.
[28] Yet in 1650 there had been a scare at Gateshead which cost the rate
payers L2, of which a significant item was 6 d. for a "grave for a
witch." _Denham Tracts_ (Folk Lore Soc.), II, 338. At Durham, in 1652,
two persons were executed. Richardson, _Table Book_ (London, 1841), I,
286.
[29] J. C. Cox, _Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals_ (London, 1890),
II, 88. Cox, however, thinks it probable that she was punished.
[30] It is of course not altogether safe to reason from the absence of
recorded executions, and it is least safe in the time of the Civil Wars
and the years of recovery.
[31] _Middlesex County Records_, ed. by J. C. Jeaffreson (London, 1892),
III, 295; _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various_, I, 129.
[32] _York Depositions_, 74.
[33] _Hertfordshire County Sessions Rolls_, compiled by W. J. Hardy
(Hertford, 1905), I, 126. It is not absolutely certain in the second
case that the committal was to the house of correction.
[34] _York Depositions_, 76-77.
[35] Joseph Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (London, 1681), pt. ii,
122.
[36] Cotton, _Gleanings ... relative to the History of ... Exeter_, 152.
[37] In the famous Warboys case of 1593 it was the witch's presence that
relieved the bewitched of their ailments.
[38] _York Depositions_, 64-67.
[39] Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, pt. ii, 120-121.
[40] _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various_, I, 120.
[41] _York Depositions_, 69.
[42] _Ibid._, 75-78.
[43] See the story of Anne Bodenham.
[44] Cotton, _Gleanings ... Relative to the History of ... Exeter_,
150-152.
[45] James Raine, editor of _York Depositions_, writes that he has found
no instance of the conviction of a witch. Preface, xxx. _The Criminal
Chronology of York Castle, with a Register of Criminals capitally
Convicted and Executed_ (York, 1867), contains not a single execution
for witchcraft.
[46] Inderwick, _Interregnum_, 188-189.
[47] _Cal. St. P., Dom._, 1650, 159.
[48] There are several secondary accounts of this affair. See F. Legge
in _Scottish Review_, XVIII, 267. But a most important primary source is
a letter from Clarke to Speaker Lenthall, published by the Scottish
History Society in its volume on _Scotland and the Commonwealth_
(Edinburgh, 1895), 367-369. See also a tract in Brit. Mus. Thomason
collection, _Two Terrible Sea Fights_ (London, 1652). See, too, the
words of Thomas Ady, _A Candle in the Dark_, 105.
[49] _Cal. St. P., Dom., 1658-1659_, 169.
[50] When the council of state, however, in 1652 had issued an act of
general pardon, witchcraft had been specifically reserved, along with
murder, treason, piracy, etc. _Cal. St. P., Dom., 1651-1652_, 106.
[51] Inderwick, _Interregnum_, 231.
CHAPTER X.
THE LITERATURE OF WITCHCRAFT FROM 1603 TO 1660.
No small part of our story has been devoted to the writings of Scot,
Gifford, Harsnett, and King James. It is impossible to understand the
significance of the prosecutions without some acquaintance with the
course of opinion on the subject. In this chapter we shall go back as
far as the opening of the reign of James and follow up to the end of the
Commonwealth the special discussions of witchcraft, as well as some of
the more interesting incidental references. It will be recalled that
James's _Daemonologie_ had come out several years before its author
ascended the English throne. With the coming of the Scottish king to
Westminster the work was republished at London. But, while James by
virtue of his position was easily first among those who were writing on
the subject, he by no means occupied the stage alone. Not less than four
other men gained a hearing within the reign and for that reason deserve
consideration. They were Perkins, Cotta, Roberts, and Cooper.
William Perkins's _Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft_ came first
in order, indeed it was written during the last years of Elizabeth's
reign; but it was not published until 1608, six years after the author's
death.[1] William Perkins was a fellow of Christ's College at Cambridge
and an eminent preacher in that university. He holds a high place among
Puritan divines. His sermons may still be found in the libraries of
older clergymen and citations from them are abundant in commentaries. It
was in the course of one of his university sermons that he took up the
matter of witchcraft. In what year this sermon was preached cannot
definitely be said. That he seems to have read Scot,[2] that however he
does not mention King James's book,[3] are data which lead us to guess
that he may have uttered the discourse between 1584 and 1597. His point
of view was strictly theological and his convictions grounded--as might
be expected--upon scriptural texts. Yet it seems not unfair to suppose
that he was an exponent of opinion at Cambridge, where we have already
seen evidences of strong faith in the reality of witchcraft. It seems no
less likely that a perusal of Reginald Scot's _Discoverie_ prompted the
sermon. Witches nowadays, he admitted, have their patrons. His argument
for the existence of witches was so thoroughly biblical that we need not
go over it. He did not, however, hold to all current conceptions of
them. The power of the evil one to transform human beings into other
shapes he utterly repudiated. The scratching of witches[4] and the
testing of them by water he thought of no value.[5] In this respect it
will be seen that he was in advance of his royal contemporary. About
the bodily marks, the significance of which James so emphasized, Perkins
seems to have been less decided. He believed in the death penalty,[6]
but he warned juries to be very careful as to evidence.[7] Evidence
based upon the accusations of "good witches," upon the statements of the
dying, or upon the charges of those who had suffered ill after threats,
he thought ought to be used with great caution. It is evident that
Perkins--though he doubtless would not have admitted it himself--was
affected by the reading of Scot. Yet it is disappointing to find him
condoning the use of torture[8] in extreme instances.[9]
A Cambridge man who wrote about a score of years after Perkins put forth
opinions a good deal farther advanced. John Cotta was a "Doctor in
Physicke" at Northampton who had taken his B. A. at Cambridge in 1595,
his M. A. the following year, and his M. D. in 1603. Nine years after
leaving Cambridge he had published _A Short Discoverie of the Unobserved
Dangers_, in which he had devoted a very thoughtful chapter to the
relation between witchcraft and sickness. In 1616 he elaborated his
notions in _The Triall of Witchcraft_,[10] published at London. Like
Perkins he disapproved of the trial by water.[11] He discredited, too,
the evidence of marks, but believed in contracts with the Devil, and
cited as illustrious instances the cases of Merlin and "that infamous
woman," Joan of Arc.[12] But his point of view was of course mainly that
of a medical man. A large number of accusations of witchcraft were due
to the want of medical examination. Many so-called possessions could be
perfectly diagnosed by a physician. He referred to a case where the
supposed witches had been executed and their victim had nevertheless
fallen ill again.[13] Probably this was the case of Mistress Belcher, on
whose account two women had been hanged at Northampton.[14]
Yet Cotta believed that there were real witches and arraigned Scot for
failing to distinguish the impostors from the true.[15] It was indeed,
he admitted, very hard to discover, except by confession; and even
confession, as he had pointed out in his first work, might be a "meane,
poore and uncertain proofe," because of the Devil's power to induce
false confession.[16] Here the theologian--it was hard for a
seventeenth-century writer not to be a theologian--was cropping out. But
the scientific spirit came to the front again when he made the point
that imagination was too apt to color observations made upon bewitched
and witch.[17] The suggestion that coincidence explained many of the
alleged fulfillments of witch predictions[18] was equally in advance of
his times.
How, then, were real cases of bewitchment to be recognized? The best
assurance on such matters, Cotta answered, came "whensoever ... the
Physicion shall truely discover a manifest transcending power."[19] In
other words, the Northampton physician believed that his own profession
could best determine these vexed matters. One who has seen the sorry
part played by the physicians up to this time can hardly believe that
their judgment on this point was saner than that of men in other
professions. It may even be questioned if they were more to be depended
upon than the so superstitious clergy.
In the same year as Cotta's second book, Alexander Roberts, "minister of
God's word at King's Lynn" in Norfolk, brought out _A Treatise of
Witchcraft_ as a sort of introduction to his account of the trial of
Mary Smith of that town and as a justification of her punishment. The
work is merely a restatement of the conventional theology of that time
as applied to witches, exactly such a presentation of it as was to be
expected from an up-country parson who had read Reginald Scot, and could
wield the Scripture against him.[20]
The following year saw the publication of a work equally theological,
_The Mystery of Witchcraft_, by the Reverend Thomas Cooper, who felt
that his part in discovering "the practise of Anti-Christ in that
hellish Plot of the Gunpowder-treason" enabled him to bring to light
other operations of the Devil. He had indeed some experience in this
work,[21] as well as some acquaintance with the writers on the subject.
But he adds nothing to the discussion unless it be the coupling of the
disbelief in witchcraft with the "Atheisme and Irreligion that overflows
the land." Five years later the book was brought out again under another
title, _Sathan transformed into an Angell of Light, ... [ex]emplified
specially in the Doctrine of Witchcraft_.
In the account of the trials for witchcraft in the reign of James I the
divorce case of the Countess of Essex was purposely omitted, because in
it the question of witchcraft was after all a subordinate matter. In the
history of opinion, however, the views about witchcraft expressed by the
court that passed upon the divorce can by no means be ignored. It is not
worth while to rehearse the malodorous details of that singular affair.
The petitioner for divorce made the claim that her husband was unable to
consummate the marriage with her and left it to be inferred that he was
bewitched. It will be remembered that King James, anxious to further the
plans of his favorite, Carr, was too willing to have the marriage
annulled and brought great pressure to bear upon the members of the
court. Archbishop Abbot from the beginning of the trial showed himself
unfavorable to the petition of the countess, and James deemed it
necessary to resolve his doubts on the general grounds of the
divorce.[22] On the matter of witchcraft in particular the king wrote:
"for as sure as God is, there be Devils, and some Devils must have some
power, and their power is in this world.... That the Devil's power is
not so universal against us, that I freely confess; but that it is
utterly restrained _quoad nos_, how was then a minister of Geneva
bewitched to death, and were the witches daily punished by our law. If
they can harm none but the papists, we are too charitable for avenging
of them only." This was James's opinion in 1613, and it is worthy of
note that he was much less certain of his ground and much more on the
defensive about witchcraft than the author of the _Daemonologie_ had
been. It can hardly be doubted that he had already been affected by the
more liberal views of the ecclesiastics who surrounded him. Archbishop
Bancroft, who had waged through his chaplain the war on the exorcists,
was not long dead. That chaplain was now Bishop of Chichester and soon
to become Archbishop of York. It would be strange if James had not been
affected to some degree by their opinions. Moreover, by this time he had
begun his career as a discoverer of impostors.
The change in the king's position must, however, not be overrated. He
maintained his belief in witches and seemed somewhat apprehensive lest
others should doubt it. Archbishop Abbot, whom he was trying to win over
to the divorce, would not have denied James's theories, but he was
exceedingly cautious in his own use of the term _maleficium_. Abbot was
wholly familiar with the history of the Anglican attitude towards
exorcism. There can be little doubt that he was in sympathy with the
policy of his predecessor. It is therefore interesting to read his
carefully worded statement as to the alleged bewitchment of the Earl of
Essex. In his speech defending his refusal and that of three colleagues
to assent to the divorce, he wrote: "One of my lords (my lord of
Winchester) hath avowed it, that he dislikes that _maleficium_; that he
hath read Del Rio, the Jesuit, writing upon that argument, and doth hold
him an idle and fabulous fellow.... Another of my lords (my lord of Ely)
hath assented thereunto, and _maleficium_ must be gone. Now I for my
part will not absolutely deny that witches by God's permission may have
a power over men, to hurt all, or part in them, as by God they shall be
limited; but how shall it appear that this is such a thing in the person
of a man." This was not, of course, an expression of disbelief in the
reality or culpability of witchcraft. It was an expression of great
reluctance to lay much stress upon charges of witchcraft--an expression
upon the part of the highest ecclesiastical authority in England.
In the reign of Charles I prior to the Civil Wars we have to analyze but
a single contribution to the literature of our subject, that made by
Richard Bernard. Bernard had preached in Nottinghamshire and had gone
from there to Batcombe in Somerset. While yet in Nottinghamshire, in the
early years of James's reign, he had seen something of the
exorcizers.[23] Later he had had to do with the Taunton cases of 1626;
indeed, he seems to have had a prominent part in this affair.[24]
Presumably he had displayed some anxiety lest the witches should not
receive fair treatment, for in his _Guide to Grand-Jurymen ... in cases
of Witchcraft_, published in 1627, he explained the book as a "plaine
countrey Minister's testimony." Owing to his "upright meaning" in his
"painstaking" with one of the witches, a rumor had spread that he
favored witches or "were of Master Scots erroneous opinion that Witches
were silly Melancholikes."[25] He had undertaken in consequence to
familiarize himself with the whole subject and had read nearly all the
discussions in English, as well as all the accounts of trials published
up to that time. His work he dedicated to the two judges at Taunton, Sir
John Walter and Sir John Denham, and to the archdeacon of Wells and the
chancellor of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The book was, indeed, a
truly remarkable patchwork. All shades of opinion from that of the
earnestly disbelieving Scot to that of the earnestly believing Roberts
were embodied. Nevertheless Bernard had a wholesome distrust of
possessions and followed Cotta in thinking that catalepsy and other
related diseases accounted for many of them.[26] He thought, too, that
the Devil very often acted as his own agent without any
intermediary.[27] Like Cotta, he was skeptical as to the water
ordeal;[28] but, strange to say, he accepted the use of a magical glass
to discover "the suspected."[29] He was inclined to believe that the
"apparition of the party suspected, whom the afflicted in their fits
seem to see," was a ground for suspicion. The main aim of his discourse
was, indeed, to warn judges and jurors to be very careful by their
questions and methods of inquiring to separate the innocent from the
guilty.[30] In this contention, indeed in his whole attitude, he was
very nearly the mouthpiece of an age which, while clinging to a belief,
was becoming increasingly cautious of carrying that belief too far into
judicial trial and punishment.[31]