It is a jump of seventeen years from Bernard of Batcombe to John Gaule.

It cannot be said that Gaule marks a distinct step in the progress of

opinion beyond Bernard. His general position was much the same as that

of his predecessor. His warnings were perhaps more earnest, his

skepticism a little more apparent. In an earlier chapter we have

observed the bold way in which the indignant clergyman of

Huntingdonshire took up Hopkins's challenge in 1646. It was the Hopkins

crusade that called forth his treatise.[32] His little book was in large

part a plea for more caution in the use of evidence. Suspicion was too

lightly entertained against "every poore and peevish olde Creature."

Whenever there was an extraordinary accident, whenever there was a

disease that could not be explained, it was imputed to witchcraft. Such

"Tokens of Tryall" he deemed "altogether unwarrantable, as proceeding

from ignorance, humor, superstition." There were other more reliable

indications by which witches could sometimes be detected, but those

indications were to be used with exceeding caution. Neither the evidence

of the fact--that is, of a league with the Devil--without confession

nor "confession without fact" was to be accounted as certain proof. On

the matter of confession Gaule was extraordinarily skeptical for his

time. It was to be considered whether the party confessing were not

diabolically deluded, whether the confession were not forced, or whether

it were not the result of melancholy. Gaule went even a little further.

Not only was he inclined to suspect confession, but he had serious

doubts about a great part of witch lore. There were stories of

metamorphoses, there were narratives of "tedious journeys upon broomes,"

and a hundred other tales from old authors, which the wise Christian

would, he believed, leave with the writers. To believe nothing of them,

however, would be to belittle the Divine attributes. As a matter of fact

there was a very considerable part of the witch theory that Gaule

accepted. His creed came to this: it was unsafe to pronounce such and

such to be witches. While not one in ten was guilty, the tenth was still

to be accounted for.[33] The physician Cotta would have turned the

matter over to the physicians; the clergyman Gaule believed that it

belonged to the province of the "Magistracy and Ministery."[34]

During the period of the Commonwealth one would have supposed that

intellectual men would be entirely preoccupied with more weighty

matters than the guilt of witches. But the many executions that followed

in the wake of Hopkins and Stearne had invested the subject with a new

interest and brought new warriors into the fray. Half a dozen writers

took up the controversy. On the conservative side three names deserve

mention, two of them not unknown in other connections, Henry More and

Meric Casaubon. For the defence of the accused witches appeared two men

hardly so well known in their time, Robert Filmer and Thomas Ady.

More was a young Cambridge scholar and divine who was to take rank among

the English philosophers of the seventeenth century. Grounded in Plato

and impregnated with Descartes, he became a little later thoroughly

infected with the Cabalistic philosophy that had entered Europe from the

East. It was the point of view that he acquired in the study of this

mystic Oriental system that gave the peculiar turn to his witchcraft

notions, a turn which through his own writings and those of Glanvill

found wide acceptance. It was in 1653 that More issued _An Antidote to

Atheisme_. The phenomena of witchcraft he reckoned as part of the

evidence for the reality of the spirit world and used them to support

religion, quite in the same manner as Sir Oliver Lodge or Professor

Hyslop would today use psychical research to establish immortality. More

had made investigations for himself, probably at Maidstone. In his own

town of Cambridge there was a story--doubtless a college joke, but he

referred to it in all seriousness--of "Old Strangridge," who "was

carried over Shelford Steeple upon a black Hogge and tore his breeches

upon the weather-cock."[35] He believed that he had absolute proof of

the "nocturnal conventicles" of witches.[36] He had, however, none of

that instinct for scientific observation that had distinguished Scot,

and his researches did not prevent his being easily duped. His

observations are not by any means so entertaining as are his theories.

His effort to account for the instantaneous transportation of witches is

one of the bright spots in the prosy reasonings of the demonologists.

More was a thoroughgoing dualist. Mind and matter were the two separate

entities. Now, the problem that arose at once was this: How can the

souls of witches leave their bodies? "I conceive," he says, "the Divell

gets into their body and by his subtile substance more operative and

searching than any fire or putrifying liquor, melts the yielding

Campages of the body to such a consistency ... and makes it plyable to

his imagination: and then it is as easy for him to work it into what

shape he pleaseth."[37] If he could do that, much more could he enable

men to leave their bodies. Then arose the problem: How does this process

differ from death? The writer was puzzled apparently at his own

question, but reasoned that death was the result of the unfitness of the

body to contain the soul.[38] But no such condition existed when the

Devil was operating; and no doubt the body could be anointed in such

fashion that the soul could leave and return.

Meric Casaubon, son of the eminent classical scholar and himself a well

known student, was skeptical as to the stories told about the aerial

journeys of witches which More had been at such pains to explain. It was

a matter, he wrote in his _Treatise concerning Enthusiasme_,[39] of much

dispute among learned men. The confessions made were hard to account

for, but he would feel it very wrong to condemn the accused upon that

evidence. We shall meet with Casaubon again.[40]

Nathaniel Homes, who wrote from his pastoral study at Mary Stayning's in

London, and dedicated his work[41] to Francis Rous, member of

Parliament, was no halfway man. He was a thoroughgoing disciple of

Perkins. His utmost admission--the time had come when one had to make

some concessions--was that evil spirits performed many of their wonders

by tricks of juggling.[42] But he swallowed without effort all the

nonsense about covenants, and was inclined to see in the activities of

the Devil a presage of the last days.[43]

The reader can readily see that More, Casaubon, and Homes were all on

the defensive. They were compelled to offer explanations of the

mysteries of witchcraft, they were ready enough to make admissions; but

they were nevertheless sticking closely to the main doctrines. It is a

pleasure to turn to the writings of two men of somewhat bolder stamp,

Robert Filmer and Thomas Ady. Sir Robert Filmer was a Kentish knight of

strong royalist views who had written against the limitations of

monarchy and was not afraid to cross swords with Milton and Hobbes on

the origin of government. In 1652 he had attended the Maidstone trials,

where, it will be remembered, six women had been convicted. As Scot had

been stirred by the St. Oses trials, so Filmer was wrought up by what he

had seen at Maidstone,[44] and in the following year he published his

_Advertisement to the Jurymen of England_. He set out to overturn the

treatise of Perkins. As a consequence he dealt with Scripture and the

interpretation of the well known passages in the Old Testament. The

Hebrew witch, Filmer declared, was guilty of nothing more than "lying

prophecies." The Witch of Endor probably used "hollow speaking." In this

suggestion Filmer was following his famous Kentish predecessor.[45] But

Filmer's main interest, like Bernard's and Gaule's before him, was to

warn those who had to try cases to be exceedingly careful. He felt that

a great part of the evidence used was worth little or nothing.

Thomas Ady's _Candle in the Dark_ was published three years later.[48]

Even more than Filmer, Ady was a disciple of Scot. But he was, indeed, a

student of all English writers on the subject and set about to answer

them one by one. King James, whose book he persistently refused to

believe the king's own handiwork, Cooper, who was a "bloudy persecutor,"

Gifford, who "had more of the spirit of truth in him than many,"

Perkins, the arch-enemy, Gaule, whose "intentions were godly," but who

was too far "swayed by the common tradition of men,"[47] all of them

were one after another disposed of. Ady stood eminently for good sense.

It was from that point of view that he ridiculed the water ordeal and

the evidence of marks,[48] and that he attacked the cause and effect

relation between threats and illness. "They that make this Objection

must dwell very remote from Neighbours."[49]

Yet not even Ady was a downright disbeliever. He defended Scot from the

report "that he held an opinion that Witches are not, for it was neither

his Tenent nor is it mine." Alas, Ady does not enlighten us as to just

what was his opinion. Certainly his witches were creatures without

power.[50] What, then, were they? Were they harmless beings with

malevolent minds? Mr. Ady does not answer.

A hundred years of witchcraft history had not brought to light a man who

was willing to deny in a printed work the existence of witches.

Doubtless such denial might often have been heard in the closet, but it

was never proclaimed on the housetop. Scot had not been so bold--though

one imagines that if he had been quietly questioned in a corner he might

have denied the thing _in toto_--and those who had followed in his steps

never ventured beyond him.

The controversy, indeed, was waged in most of its aspects along the

lines laid down by the first aggressor. Gifford, Cotta, and Ady had

brought in a few new arguments to be used in attacking superstition, but

in general the assailants looked to Scot. On the other side, only

Perkins and More had contributed anything worth while to the defence

that had been built up. Yet, the reader will notice that there had been

progress. The centre of struggle had shifted to a point within the outer

walls. The water ordeal and the evidence of marks were given up by most,

if not all. The struggle now was over the transportation of witches

through the air and the battle was going badly for the defenders.

We turn now to the incidental indications of the shifting of opinion. In

one sense this sort of evidence means more than the formal literature.

Yet its fragmentary character at best precludes putting any great stress

upon it.

If one were to include all the references to witchcraft in the drama of

the period, this discussion might widen out into a long chapter. Over

the passages in the playwrights we must pass with haste; but certain

points must be noted. Shakespeare, in _Macbeth_, which scholars have

usually placed at about 1606, used a great body of witch lore. He used

it, too, with apparent good faith, though to conclude therefrom that he

believed in it himself would be a most dangerous step.[51] Thomas

Middleton, whose _Witch_ probably was written somewhat later, and who is

thought to have drawn on Shakespeare for some of his witch material,

gives absolutely no indication in that play that he did not credit those

tales of witch performances of which he availed himself. The same may be

said of Dekker and of those who collaborated with him in writing _The

Witch of Edmonton_.[52]

We may go further and say that in none of these three plays is there any

hint that there were disbelievers. But when we come to Ben Jonson we

have a different story. His various plays we cannot here take up.

Suffice it to say, on the authority of careful commentators, that he

openly or covertly ridiculed all the supposedly supernatural phenomena

of his time.[53] Perhaps a search through the obscurer dramatists of the

period might reveal other evidences of skepticism. Such a search we

cannot make. It must, however, be pointed out that Thomas Heywood, in

_The late Lancashire Witches_[54] a play which is described at some

length in an earlier chapter, makes a character say:[55] "It seemes then

you are of opinion that there are witches. For mine own part I can

hardly be induc'd to think there is any such kinde of people."[56] The

speech is the more notable because Heywood's own belief in witchcraft,

as has been observed in another connection, seems beyond doubt.

The interest in witchcraft among literary men was not confined to the

dramatists. Three prose writers eminent in their time dealt with the

question. Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_[57] admits that "many

deny witches at all, or, if there be any, they can do no harm." But he

says that on the other side are grouped most "Lawyers, Divines,

Physitians, Philosophers." James Howell, famous letter-writer of the

mid-century, had a similar reverence for authority: "I say ... that he

who denies there are such busy Spirits and such poor passive Creatures

upon whom they work, which commonly are call'd Witches ... shews that he

himself hath a Spirit of Contradiction in him."[58] There are, he says,

laws against witches, laws by Parliament and laws in the Holy Codex.

Francis Osborne, a literary man whose reputation hardly survived his

century, but an essayist of great fame in his own time,[59] was a man

who made his fortune by sailing against rather than with the wind. It

was conventional to believe in witches and Osborne would not for any

consideration be conventional. He assumed the skeptical attitude,[60]

and perhaps was as influential as any one man in making that attitude

fashionable.

From these lesser lights of the literary world we may pass to notice the

attitude assumed by three men of influence in their own day, whose

reputations have hardly been dimmed by time, Bacon, Selden, and Hobbes.

Not that their views would be representative of their times, for each of

the three men thought in his own way, and all three were in many

respects in advance of their day. At some time in the reign of James I

Francis Bacon wrote his _Sylva Sylvarum_ and rather incidentally touched

upon witchcraft. He warned judges to be wary about believing the

confessions of witches and the evidence against them. "For the witches

themselves are imaginative and believe oft-times they do that which they

do not; and people are credulous in that point, and ready to impute

accidents and natural operations to witchcraft. It is worthy the

observing, that ... the great wonders which they tell, of carrying in

the air, transporting themselves into other bodies, &c., are still

reported to be wrought, not by incantations, or ceremonies, but by

ointments, and anointing themselves all over. This may justly move a man

to think that these fables are the effects of imagination."[61]

Surely all this has a skeptical sound. Yet largely on the strength of

another passage, which has been carelessly read, the great Bacon has

been tearfully numbered among the blindest leaders of the blind.[62] A

careful comparison of his various allusions to witchcraft will convince

one that, while he assumed a belief in the practice,[63] partly perhaps

in deference to James's views,[64] he inclined to explain many reported

phenomena from the effects of the imagination[65] and from the operation

of "natural causes" as yet unknown.[66]

Bacon, though a lawyer and man of affairs, had the point of view of a

philosopher. With John Selden we get more directly the standpoint of a

legal man. In his _Table Talk_[67] that eminent jurist wrote a paragraph

on witches. "The Law against Witches," he declared, "does not prove

there be any; but it punishes the Malice of those people that use such

means to take away mens Lives. If one should profess that by turning his

Hat thrice and crying Buz, he could take away a man's life (though in

truth he could do no such thing) yet this were a just Law made by the

State, that whosoever should turn his Hat thrice and cry Buz, with an

intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death."[68] As to

the merits of this legal quip the less said the better; but it is

exceedingly hard to see in the passage anything but downright skepticism

as to the witch's power.[69]

It is not without interest that Selden's point of view was exactly that

of the philosopher Hobbes. There is no man of the seventeenth century,

unless it be Oliver Cromwell or John Milton, whose opinion on this

subject we would rather know than that of Hobbes. In 1651 Hobbes had

issued his great _Leviathan_. It is unnecessary here to insist upon the

widespread influence of that work. Let it be said, however, that Hobbes

was not only to set in motion new philosophies, but that he had been

tutor to Prince Charles[70] and was to become a figure in the reign of

that prince.[71] Hobbes's work was directed against superstition in many

forms, but we need only notice his statement about witchcraft, a

statement that did not by any means escape his contemporaries. "As for

Witches," he wrote, "I think not that their witchcraft is any reall

power; but yet that they are justly punished for the false beliefe they

have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it

if they can."[72] Perhaps the great philosopher had in mind those

pretenders to diabolic arts who had suffered punishment, and was so

defending the community that had rid itself of a preying class. In any

case, while he defended the law, he put himself among the disbelievers

in witchcraft.

From these opinions of the great we may turn to mark the more trivial

indications of the shifting of opinion to be found in the pamphlet

literature. It goes without saying that the pamphlet-writers believed in

that whereof they spoke. It is not in their outspoken faith that we are

interested, but rather in their mention of those opponents at whose

numbers they marvelled, and whose incredulity they undertook to shake.

Nowhere better than in the prefaces of the pamphleteers can evidence be

found of the growing skepticism. The narrator of the Northampton cases

in 1612 avowed it his purpose in writing to convince the "many that

remaine yet in doubt whether there be any Witches or no."[73] That

ardent busybody, Mr. Potts, who reported the Lancaster cases of 1612,

very incidentally lets us know that the kinsfolk and friends of Jennet

Preston, who, it will be remembered, suffered at York, declared the

whole prosecution to be an act of malice.[74] The Yorkshire poet and

gentleman, Edward Fairfax, who made such an ado about the sickness of

his two daughters in 1622 and would have sent six creatures to the

gallows for it, was very frank in describing the opposition he met. The

accused women found supporters among the "best able and most

understanding."[75] There were, he thought, three kinds of people who

were doubters in these matters: those who attributed too much to natural

causes and who were content to call clear cases of bewitchment

convulsions, those who when witchcraft was broached talked about fairies

and "walking ghosts," and lastly those who believed there were no

witches. "Of this opinion I hear and see there be many, some of them men

of worth, religious and honest."[76]

The pamphlet-writers of James's reign had adjusted themselves to meet

opposition. Those of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth were prepared

to meet ridicule.[77] "There are some," says the narrator of a Yorkshire

story, "who are of opinion that there are no Divells nor any witches....

Men in this Age are grown so wicked, that they are apt to believe there

are no greater Divells than themselves."[78] Another writer, to bolster

up his story before a skeptical public, declares that he is "very chary

and hard enough to believe passages of this nature."[79]

We have said that the narrators of witch stories fortified themselves

against ridicule. That ridicule obviously must have found frequent

expression in conversation, but sometimes it even crept into the

newspapers and tracts of the day. The Civil Wars had developed a regular

London press. We have already met with expressions of serious opinion

from it.[80] But not all were of that sort. In 1654 the _Mercurius

Democritus_, the _Punch_ of its time, took occasion to make fun of the

stories of the supernatural then in circulation. There was, it declared,

a strange story of a trance and apparition, a ghost was said to be

abroad, a woman had hanged herself in a tobacco pipe. With very broad

humor the journal took off the strange reports of the time and concluded

with the warning that in "these distempered times" it was not safe for

an "idle-pated woman" to look up at the skies.[81]

The same mocking incredulity had manifested itself in 1648 in a little

brochure entitled, _The Devil seen at St. Albans, Being a true Relation

how the Devill was seen there in a Cellar, in the likeness of a Ram; and

how a Butcher came and cut his throat, and sold some of it, and dressed

the rest for himselfe, inviting many to supper, who did eat of it_.[82]

The story was a clever parody of the demon tracts that had come out so

frequently in the exciting times of the wars. The writer made his point

clear when he declared that his story was of equal value with anything

that "Britannicus" ever wrote.[83] The importance of these indications

may be overestimated. But they do mean that there were those bold enough

to make fun. A decade or two later ridicule became a two-edged knife,

cutting superstition right and left. But even under the terribly serious

Puritans skepticism began to avail itself of that weapon, a weapon of

which it could hardly be disarmed.

In following the history of opinion we must needs mention again some of

the incidents of certain cases dealt with in earlier chapters, incidents

that indicate the growing force of doubt. The reader has hardly

forgotten the outcome of the Lancashire cases in 1633. There Bishop

Bridgeman and the king, if they did not discredit witchcraft,

discredited its manifestation in the particular instance.[84] As for

William Harvey, he had probably given up his faith in the whole business

after the little incident at Newmarket.[85] When we come to the time of

the Civil Wars we cannot forget that Stearne and Hopkins met

opposition, not alone from the Huntingdon minister, but from a large

party in Norfolk, who finally forced the witchfinder to defend himself

in court. Nor can we forget the witch-pricker of Berwick who was sent

a-flying back to his native northern soil, nor the persistent Mrs.

Muschamp who tramped over Northumberland seeking a warrant and finding

none.

The course of opinion is a circuitous one. We have followed its windings

in and out through more than half a century. We have listened as

respectfully as possible to the vagaries of country parsons and

university preachers, we have heard from scholars, from gentlemen, from

jurists and men of affairs, from physicians and philosophers. It matters

little now what they thought or said, but it did matter then. We have

seen how easy a thing it was to fall into the error that a middle course

was nearest truth. Broad was the way and many there were that walked

therein. Yet even those who travelled that highway found their direction

shifting. For there was progress in opinion. With every decade the

travellers, as well those who strayed aside as those who followed the

crowd, were getting a little nearer to truth.

[1] "Printed by Cantrel Legge, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge"

(1608, 1610).

[2] See _Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft_, ch. VII, sect. I.

[3] His literary executor, Thomas Pickering, late of Emmanuel College,

Cambridge, and now "Minister of Finchingfield in Essex," who prepared

the _Discourse_ for the press (both in its separate form and as a part

of Perkins's collected works), and who dedicates it to Sir Edward Coke,

is, however, equally silent as to James, though in his preface he

mentions Scot by name.

[4] _Ibid._, ch. IV, sect. I. See also ch. II.

[5] _Ibid._, ch. VII, sect. II.

[6] _Ibid._, ch. VI.

[7] _Ibid._, ch. VII, sect. II.

[8] _Ibid._, ch. VII, sect. II.

[9] James Mason, "Master of Artes," whose _Anatomie of Sorcerie_

("printed at London by John Legatte, Printer to the Universitie of

Cambridge," 1612), puts him next to Perkins in chronological order,

needs only mention in passing. He takes the reality of sorcery for

granted, and devotes himself to argument against its use.

[10] _... Shewing the True and Right Methode of the Discovery._ Cotta

was familiar with the more important trials of his time. He knew of the

Warboys, Lancaster, and York trials and he probably had come into close

contact with the Northampton cases. He had read, too, several of the

books on the subject, such as Scot, Wier, and Perkins. His omission of

King James's work is therefore not only curious but significant. A

second edition of his book was published in 1625.

[11] See _Triall of Witchcraft_, ch. XIV.

[12] See _ibid._, p. 48.

[13] _Ibid._, 66-67.

[14] See _ibid._, ch. VI. Cotta speaks of the case as six years earlier.

[15] _Ibid._, 62, 66.

[16] _A Short Discoverie_, 70.

[17] _Triall of Witchcraft_, 83-84.

[18] _A Short Discoverie_, 51-53.

[19] _Triall of Witchcraft_, 70.

[20] Roberts's explanation of the proneness of women to witchcraft

deserves mention in passing. Women are more credulous, more curious,

"their complection is softer," they have "greater facility to fall,"

greater desire for revenge, and "are of a slippery tongue." _Treatise of

Witchcraft_, 42-43.

[21] "In Cheshire and Coventry," he tells us. "Hath not Coventrie," he

asks (p. 16), "beene usually haunted by these hellish Sorcerers, where

it was confessed by one of them, that no lesse than three-score were of

that confedracie?... And was I not there enjoyned by a necessity to the

discoverie of this Brood?"

[22] For the whole case see Howell, _State Trials_, II.

[23] See article on Bernard in _Dict. Nat. Biog._

[24] See below, appendix C, list of witch cases, under 1626.

[25] See _Guide to Grand-Jurymen_, Dedication.

[26] _Ibid._, 11-12.

[27] _Ibid._, 53.

[28] _Ibid._, 214.

[29] This he did on the authority of a repentant Mr. Edmonds, of

Cambridge, who had once been questioned by the University authorities

for witchcraft. _Ibid._, 136-138.

[30] _Guide to Grand-Jurymen_, 22-28.

[31] He was "for the law, but agin' its enforcement."

[32] _Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcraft_

(London, 1646).

[33] _Ibid._, 92.

[34] _Ibid._, 94, 97. That Gaule was a Puritan, as has been asserted,

appears from nothing in his book. If he dedicated his _Select Cases_ to

his townsman Colonel Walton, a brother-in-law of Cromwell, and his

_Mag-astro-mancer_ (a later diatribe against current superstitions) to

Oliver himself, there is nothing in his prefatory letters to show him of

their party. Nor does the tone of his writings suggest a Calvinist. That

in 1649 we find Gaule chosen to preach before the assizes of Huntingdon

points perhaps only to his popularity as a leader of the reaction

against the work of Hopkins.

[35] _Antidote to Atheisme_, 129.

[36] _Ibid._, 127-130.

[37] _Ibid._, ch. VIII, 134.

[38] _Ibid._, 135.

[39] See p. 118. This _Treatise_ was first published in 1655. Four years

later, in 1659, he published _A True and faithful Relation of what

passed ... between Dr. John Dee, ... and some spirits_. In the preface

to this he announced his intention of writing the work which he later

published as _Of Credulity and Incredulity_.

[40] In passing we must mention Richard Farnworth, who in 1655 issued a

pamphlet called _Witchcraft Cast out from the Religious Seed and Israel

of God_. Farnworth was a Quaker, and wrote merely to warn his brethren

against magic and sorcery. He never questioned for a moment the facts of

witchcraft and sorcery, nor the Devil's share in them. As for the

witches, they were doomed everlastingly to the lake of fire.

[41] _Daemonologie and Theologie. The first, the Malady ..., The Second,

The Remedy_ (London, 1650).

[42] _Ibid._, 42.

[43] _Ibid._, 16.

[44] See the Introduction to the _Advertisement_.

[45] Filmer noted further that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew word

for witch as "an Apothecary, a Druggister, one that compounds poysons."

[46] London, 1656.

[47] In Ady's second edition, _A Perfect Discovery of Witches_ (1661),

134, Gaule's book having meanwhile come into his hands, he speaks of

Gaule as "much inclining to the Truth" and yet swayed by traditions and

the authority of the learned. He adds, "Mr. Gaule, if this work of mine

shall come to your hand, as yours hath come to mine, be not angry with

me for writing God's Truth."

[48] "... few men or women being tied hand and feet together can sink

quite away till they be drowned" (_Candle in the Dark_, 100); "... very

few people in the World are without privie Marks" (_Ibid._, 127).

[49] _Ibid._, 129.

[50] In giving "The Reason of the Book" he wrote, "The Grand Errour of

these latter Ages is ascribing power to Witches."

[51] See a recent discussion of a nearly related topic by Professor

Elmer Stoll in the _Publications_ of the Modern Language Association,

XXII, 201-233. Of the attitude of the English dramatists before

Shakespeare something may be learned from Mr. L. W. Cushman's _The Devil

and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare_

(Halle, 1900).

[52] About 1622 or soon after.

[53] See, for instance, Mr. W. S. Johnson's introduction to his edition

of _The Devil is an Ass_ (New York, 1905).

[54] 1634. This play was written, of course, in cooperation with Brome;

see above, pp. 158-160. For other expressions of Heywood's opinions on

witchcraft see his _Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels_, 598, and his

[Greek: GYNAIKEION]: _or Nine Books of Various History concerning Women_

(London, 1624), lib. viii, 399, 407, etc.

[55] Act I, scene 1.

[56] In another part of the same scene: "They that thinke so dreame,"

_i. e._ they who believe in witchcraft.

[57] First published in 1621--I use, however, Shilleto's ed. of London,

1893, which follows that of 1651-1652; see pt. I, sect. II, memb. I,

sub-sect. 3.

[58] James Howell, _Familiar Letters_, II, 548.

[59] His _Advice to a Son_, first published in 1656-1658, went through

edition after edition. It is very entertaining. His strongly enforced

advice not to marry made a sensation among young Oxford men.

[60] _Works of Francis Osborne_ (London, 1673), 551-553.

[61] _Works of Bacon_ (ed. Spedding, London, 1857-1858), II, 642-643.

[62] "The ointment that witches use is reported to be made of the fat of

children digged out of their graves; of the juices of smallage,

wolf-bane, and cinque-foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat; but I

suppose that the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it." See _Sylva

Sylvarum_, cent. X, 975, in _Works_, ed. Spedding, II, 664. But even

this passage shows Bacon a skeptic. His suggestion that the soporiferous

medicines are likest to do it means that he thinks the delusions of

witches subjective and produced by drugs. For other references to the

subject see _Works_, II, 658, 660; VII, 738.

[63] _De Argumentis_, bk. II, ch. II, in _Works_, IV, 296; see also

_ibid._, III, 490.

[64] _Advancement of Learning_, bk. II; _ibid._, III, 490.

[65] _Works_, IV, 400-401.

[66] _Ibid._, IV, 296.

[67] Selden, _Table Talk_ (London, 1689). The book is supposed to have

been written during the last twenty years of Selden's life, that is,

between 1634 and 1654.

[68] Selden, _Table Talk_, _s. v._ "Witches."

[69] Nor did Selden believe in possessions. See his essay on Devils in

the _Table Talk_.

[70] See article on Hobbes in _Dict. Nat. Biog._

[71] See, for example, Bishop Burnet's _History of his Own Time_

(Oxford, 1823), I, 172, 322-323.

[72] _Leviathan_ (1651), 7. See also his _Dialogue of the Common Laws of

England_, in _Works_ (ed. of London, 1750), 626: "But I desire not to

discourse of that subject; for, though without doubt there is some great

Wickedness signified by those Crimes, yet have I ever found myself too

dull to conceive the nature of them, or how the Devil hath power to do

many things which Witches have been accused of." See also his chapter on

Daemonology in the _Leviathan_, in _Works_, 384.

[73] He continues, "Some doe maintaine (but how wisely let the wiser

judge) that all Witchcraft spoken of either by holy writers, or

testified by other writers to have beene among the heathen or in later

daies, hath beene and is no more but either meere Cousinage [he had been

reading Scot], or Collusion, so that in the opinion of those men, the

Devill hath never done, nor can do anything by Witches." _The Witches of

Northamptonshire, ..._ A 4.

[74] Potts, _The Wonderfull Discoverie ..._, X 4 verso.

[75] Fairfax, _A Discourse of Witchcraft_ (Philobiblon Soc.), 12.

[76] _Ibid._, 20.

[77] One notable instance must be mentioned. "H. F.," the narrator of

the Essex affair of 1645 (_A true and exact Relation_) not only

recognized the strong position of those who doubted, but was by no means

extreme himself. "I doubt not," he wrote, "but these things may seeme as

incredible unto some, as they are matter of admiration unto others....

The greatest doubt and question will be, whether it be in the power of

the Devil to perform such asportation and locall translation of the

bodies of Witches.... And whether these supernaturall works, which are

above the power of man to do, and proper only to Spirits, whether they

are reall or only imaginary and fained." The writer concludes that the

Devil has power to dispose and transport bodies, but, as to changing

them into animals, he thinks these are "but jugling transmutations."

[78] _The most true and wonderfull Narration of two women bewitched in

Yorkshire; ..._ (1658).

[79] "Relation of a Memorable Piece of Witchcraft at Welton near

Daventry," in Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (London, 1681), pt.

ii, 263-268.

[80] See above, pp. 179-180, for an expression about the persecution in

1645.

[81] _Mercurius Democritus_, February 8-15, 1654.

[82] 1648. This must be distinguished from _The Divels Delusion ..._,

1649, (see above, ch. IX, note 8), which deals with two witches executed

at St. Alban's.

[83] The truth is that the newspapers, pamphlets, etc., were full of

such stories. And they were believed by many intelligent men. He who

runs through Whitelocke's _Memorials_ may read that the man was

exceeding superstitious. Whether it be the report of the horseman seen

in the air or the stories of witches at Berwick, Whitelocke was equally

interested. While he was merely recording the reports of others, there

is not a sign of skepticism.

[84] See above, pp. 152-157.

[85] See above, pp. 160-162.

CHAPTER XI.

WITCHCRAFT UNDER CHARLES II AND JAMES II.

No period of English history saw a wider interest in both the theory and

the practice of witchcraft than the years that followed the Restoration.

Throughout the course of the twenty-eight years that spanned the second

rule of the Stuarts, the Devil manifested himself in many forms and with

unusual frequency. Especially within the first half of that regime his

appearances were so thrilling in character that the enemies of the new

king might very well have said that the Evil One, like Charles, had come

to his own again. All over the realm the witches were popping up. If the

total number of trials and of executions did not foot up to the figures

of James I's reign or to those of the Civil War, the alarm was

nevertheless more widely distributed than ever before. In no less than

twenty counties of England witches were discovered and fetched to court.

Up to this time, so far at any rate as the printed records show, the

southwestern counties had been but little troubled. Now Somerset, Devon,

and Cornwall were the storm centre of the panic. In the north Yorkshire

began to win for itself the reputation as a centre of activity that had

long been held by Lancashire. Not that the witch was a new criminal in

Yorkshire courts. During the Civil Wars and the troubled years that

followed the discoverers had been active. But with the reign of Charles

II their zeal increased mightily. Yet, if they had never before fetched

in so many "suspected parties" to the court of the justice of the

peace, they had never before been so often baffled by the outcome. Among

the many such cases known to us during this time there is no mention of

a conviction.[1] In Kent there was a flickering revival of the old

hatred of witches. In the year that Charles gained the throne the city

of Canterbury sent some women to the gibbet. Not so in Essex. In that

county not a single case during this period has been left on record. In

Middlesex, a county which from the days of Elizabeth through to the

Restoration had maintained a very even pace--a stray conviction now and

then among many acquittals--the reign of Charles II saw nothing more

serious than some commitments and releases upon bail. In the Midland

counties, where superstition had flourished in the days of James I,

there were now occasional tales of possession and vague charges which

rarely reached the ears of the assize judges. Northampton, where an

incendiary witch was sentenced, constituted the single exception. In

East Anglia there was just enough stir to prove that the days of Matthew

Hopkins had not been forgotten.

It needs no pointing out that a large proportion of the cases were but a

repetition of earlier trials. If a difference is discernible, it is in

the increased number of accusations that took their start in strange

diseases called possessions. Since the close of the sixteenth century

and the end of John Darrel's activities, the accounts of possession had

fallen off sensibly, but the last third of the seventeenth century saw a

distinct revival of this tendency to assign certain forms of disease to

the operation of the Devil. We have references to many cases, but only

in exceptional instances are the details given. Oliver Heywood, one of

the eminent Dissenters of northern England, fasted and prayed with his

co-workers over the convulsive and hysterical boys and girls in the West

Riding. Nathan Dodgson was left after long fastings in "a very sensible

melting frame,"[2] but the troubles returned and led, as we shall see in

another connection, to very tragic results. The Puritan clergymen do not

seem, however, to have had any highly developed method of exorcism or to

have looked upon cases of possession in a light very different from that

in which they would have looked upon ordinary illnesses.

Among the Baptists of Yorkshire there was a possession that roused wide

comment. Mary Hall of Little Gaddesden in Hertfordshire, daughter of a

smith, was possessed in the fall of 1663 with two spirits who were said

to have come to her riding down the chimney upon a stick. The spirits

declared through the girl that Goodwife Harwood had sent them, and when

that suspected woman was brought into the girl's presence the spirits

cried out, "Oh, Goodwife Harwood, are you come?--that is well; ... we

have endeavored to choak her but cannot," and, when Mistress Harwood

left, the spirits begged to go with her.[3]

In Southwark James Barrow, the son of John Barrow, was long possessed,

and neither "doctors, astrologers, nor apothecaries" could help him. He

was taken to the Catholics, but to no purpose. Finally he was cast among

a "poor dispirited people whom the Lord owned as instruments in his hand

to do this great work."[4] By the "poor dispirited people" the Baptists

were almost certainly meant.[5] By their assistance he seems to have

been cured. So also was Hannah Crump of Warwick, who had been afflicted

by witchcraft and put in a London hospital. Through prayer and fasting

she was entirely recovered.

Mary Hall had been taken to Doctor Woodhouse of Berkhampstead, "a man

famous for curing bewitched persons." Woodhouse's name comes up now and

again in the records of his time. He was in fact a very typical specimen

of the witch doctor. When Mary Hall's case had been submitted to him he

had cut off the ends of her nails and "with somewhat he added" hung them

in the chimney over night before making a diagnosis.[6] He professed to

find stolen goods as well and fell foul of the courts in one instance,

probably because the woman who consulted him could not pay the shilling

fee.[7] He was arraigned and spent a term in prison. No doubt many of

the witch physicians knew the inside of prisons and had returned

afterwards to successful practice. Redman, "whom some say is a

Conjurer, others say, He is an honest and able phisitian," had been in

prison, but nevertheless he had afterwards "abundance of Practice" and

was much talked about "in remote parts," all this in spite of the fact

that he was "unlearned in the languages."[8]

Usually, of course, the witch doctor was a poor woman who was very happy

to get a penny fee now and then, but who ran a greater risk of the

gallows than her male competitors. Her reputation, which brought her a

little money from the sick and from those who had lost valuables, made

her at the same time a successful beggar. Those whom she importuned were

afraid to refuse her. But she was in constant peril. If she resented ill

treatment, if she gave in ill wishes as much as she took, she was sure

to hear from it before a stern justice of the peace. It can hardly be

doubted that a large proportion, after the Restoration as in every other

period, of those finally hanged for witchcraft, had in fact made claims

to skill in magic arts. Without question some of them had even traded on

the fear they inspired. Not a few of the wretched creatures fetched to

York castle to be tried were "inchanters."

Very often, indeed, a woman who was nothing more than a midwife, with

some little knowledge of medicine perhaps, would easily be classed by

the public among the regular witch doctors and so come to have a bad

name. Whether she lived up to her name or not--and the temptation to do

so would be great--she would from that time be subject to suspicion, and

might at length become a prey to the justice of the peace. Mrs. Pepper

was no more than a midwife who made also certain simple medical

examinations, but when one of her patients was "strangely handled" she

was taken to court.[9] Margaret Stothard was probably, so far as we can

piece together her story, a woman who had been successful in calming

fretful children and had so gained for herself a reputation as a witch.

Doubtless she had acquired in time a few of the charmer's tricks that

enhanced her reputation and increased her practice. This was all very

well until one of her patients happened to die. Then she was carried to

Newcastle and would probably have suffered death, had it not been for a

wise judge.[10]

These are typical cases. The would-be healer of the sick ran a risk, and

it was not always alone from failure to cure. If a witch doctor found

himself unable to bring relief to a patient, it was easy to suggest that

some other witch doctor--and such were usually women--was bewitching the

patient. There are many instances, and they are not confined to the

particular period with which we are dealing, in which one "good witch"

started the run on the other's reputation. Even the regular physician

may sometimes have yielded to the temptation to crush competition.

Of course, when all the cases are considered, only a very small part of

the "good witches" ever fell into the clutches of the law. The law

prescribed very definite penalties for their operations, but in most

instances no action was taken until after a long accumulation of

"suspicious circumstances," and, even if action was taken, the chances,

as we have seen, were by this time distinctly in favor of the accused.

This is not to say, by any means, that the judges and juries of England

had come over to the side of the witch. The period with which we are

dealing was marked by a variety of decision which betrays the perplexity

of judges and juries. It is true, indeed, that out of from eighty to one

hundred cases where accusations are on record less than twenty witches

were hanged. This does not mean that six times out of every seven the

courts were ruling against the fact of witchcraft. In the case of the

six released there was no very large body of evidence against them to be

considered, or perhaps no strong popular current to be stemmed. In

general, it may be said that the courts were still backing up the law of

James I.

To show this, it is only necessary to run over some of the leading

trials of the period. We shall briefly take up four trials conducted

respectively by Justice Archer, Chief Baron Hale, Justice Rainsford, and

Justice Raymond.

Julian Cox, who was but one of the "pestilent brood" of witches ferreted

out in Somerset by the aggressive justice, Robert Hunt, was tried in

1663 at Taunton before Justice Archer.[11] The charges against her

indeed excited such interest all over England, and elicited, upon the

part of disbelievers, so much derision, that it will be worth our while

to go over the principal points of evidence. The chief witness against

her was a huntsman who told a strange tale. He had started a hare and

chased it behind a bush. But when he came to the bush he had found

Julian Cox there, stooped over and quite out of breath. Another witness

had a strange story to tell about her. She had invited him to come up on

her porch and take a pipe of tobacco with her. While he was with her,

smoking, he saw a toad between his legs. On going home he had taken out

a pipe and smoked again and had again seen what looked to be the same

toad between his legs. "He took the Toad out to kill it, and to his

thinking cut it in several pieces, but returning to his Pipe the Toad

still appeared.... At length the Toad cryed, and vanish'd." A third

witness had seen the accused fly in at her window "in her full

proportion." This tissue of evidence was perhaps the absurdest ever used

against even a witch, but the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. It is

not unpleasant to know that Justice Archer met with a good deal of

criticism for his part in the affair.

In the following year occurred the trials at Bury St. Edmunds, which

derive their interest and importance largely from the position of the

presiding judge, Sir Matthew Hale, who was at this time chief baron of

the exchequer, and was later to be chief justice of the king's bench. He

was allowed, according to the admission of one none too friendly to him,

"on all hands to be the most profound lawyer of his time."[12] Hale had

been a Puritan from his youth, though not of the rigid or theologically

minded sort. In the Civil Wars and the events that followed he had

remained non-partisan. He accepted office from Cromwell, though without

doubt mildly sympathizing with the king. One of those who had assisted

in recalling Charles II, he rose shortly to be chief baron of the

exchequer. Famous for his careful and reasoned interpretation of law, he

was to leave behind him a high reputation for his justice and for the

exceptional precision of his judgments. It is not too much to say that

he was one of the greatest legal figures of his century and that his

decisions served in no small degree to fix the law.

We should like to know how far he had been brought into contact with the

subject of witchcraft, but we can do no more than guess. His early

career had been moulded in no small degree by Selden, who, as has been

noted in an earlier chapter, believed in the punishment of those who

claimed to be witches. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the

Puritans with whom he had been thrown were all of them ready to quote

Scripture against the minions of Satan. We know that he had read some of

the works of Henry More,[13] and, whether or not familiar with his

chapters on witchcraft, would have deduced from that writer's general

philosophy of spirits the particular application.

The trial concerned two women of Lowestoft, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender.

The first had been reputed a witch and a "person of very evil

behaviour." She was in all probability related to some of those women

who had suffered at the hands of Hopkins, and to that connection owed

her ill name. Some six or seven years before the date of the trial she

had got herself into trouble while taking care of the child of a

tradesman in Lowestoft. It would seem that, contrary to the orders of

the mother, she had suckled the child. The child had that same night

been attacked by fits, and a witch doctor of Yarmouth, who was

consulted, had prescribed for it. The reader will note that this

"suspicious circumstance" happened seven years earlier, and a large part

of the evidence presented in court concerned what had occurred from five

to seven years before.

We can not go into the details of a trial which abounded in curious bits

of evidence. The main plot indeed was an old one. The accused woman,

after she had been discharged from employment and reproved, had been

heard to mutter threats, close upon which the children of those she

cursed, who were now the witnesses against her, had fallen ill. Two of

the children had suffered severely and were still afflicted. They had

thrown up pins and even a two-penny nail. The nail, which was duly

offered as an exhibit in court, had been brought to one of the children

by a bee and had been forced into the child's mouth, upon which she

expelled it. This narrative was on a level with the other, that flies

brought crooked pins to the child. Both flies and bee, it will be

understood, were the witches in other form. A similar sort of evidence

was that a toad, which had been found as the result of the witch

doctor's directions, had been thrown into the fire, upon which a sharp

crackling noise ensued. When this incident was testified to in the court

the judge interrupted to ask if after the explosion the substance of the

toad was not to be seen in the fire. He was answered in the negative. On

the next day Amy Duny was found to have her face and body all scorched.

She said to the witness that "she might thank her for it." There can be

no doubt in the world that this testimony of the coincident burning of

the woman and the toad was regarded as damning proof, nor is there any

reason to believe that the court deemed it necessary to go behind the

mere say-so of a single witness for the fact. Along with this sort of

unsubstantial testimony there was presented a monotonous mass of

spectral evidence. Apparitions of the witches were the constant

occasions for the paroxysms of the children. In another connection it

will be observed that this form of proof was becoming increasingly

common in the last part of the seventeenth century. It can hardly be

doubted that in one way or another the use of such evidence at Bury

influenced other trials and more particularly the Salem cases in the New

World, where great importance was attached to evidence of this sort.

The usual nauseating evidence as to the Devil's marks was introduced by

the testimony of the mother of one of the children bewitched. She had

been, a month before, a member of a jury of matrons appointed by a

justice of the peace to examine the body of the accused. Most damning

proof against the woman had been found. It is very hard for us to

understand why Hale allowed to testify, as one of the jury of examining

matrons, a woman who was at the same time mother of one of the bewitched

children upon whom the prosecution largely depended.

So far the case for the prosecution had been very strong, but it was in

the final experiments in court, which were expected to clinch the

evidence, that a very serious mishap occurred. A bewitched child, eleven

years old, had been fetched into court. With eyes closed and head

reclining upon the bar she had remained quiet until one of the accused

was brought up, when she at once became frantic in her effort to scratch

her. This was tried again and again and in every instance produced the

same result. The performance must have had telling effect. But there

happened to be present at the trial three Serjeants of the law. One of

them, Serjeant John Kelyng, a few years later to become chief justice of

the king's bench, was "much dissatisfied." He urged the point that the

mere fact that the children were bewitched did not establish their claim

to designate the authors of their misfortune. There were others present

who agreed with Kelyng in suspecting the actions of the girl on the

stand. Baron Hale was induced, at length, to appoint a committee of

several gentlemen, including Serjeant Kelyng, to make trial of the girl

with her eyes covered. An outside party was brought up to her and

touched her hand. The girl was expecting that Amy Duny would be brought

up and flew into the usual paroxysms. This was what the committee had

expected, and they declared their belief that the whole transaction was

a mere imposture. One would have supposed that every one else must come

to the same conclusion, but Mr. Pacy, the girl's father, offered an

explanation of her mistake that seems to have found favor. The maid, he

said, "might be deceived by a suspicion that the Witch touched her when

she did not." One would suppose that this subtle suggestion would have

broken the spell, and that Mr. Pacy would have been laughed out of

court. Alas for the rarity of humor in seventeenth-century court rooms!

Not only was the explanation received seriously, but it was, says the

court reporter, afterwards found to be true.

In the mean time expert opinion had been called in. It is hard to say

whether Dr. Browne had been requisitioned for the case or merely

happened to be present. At all events, he was called upon to render his

opinion as a medical man. The name of Thomas Browne is one eminent in

English literature and not unknown in the annals of English medicine and

science. More than twenty years earlier he had expressed faith in the

reality of witchcraft.[14] In his _Commonplace Book_, a series of

jottings made throughout his life, he reiterated his belief, but uttered

a doubt as to the connection between possession and witchcraft.[15]

We should be glad to know at what time Browne wrote this deliverance;

for, when called upon at Bury, he made no application of his principles

of caution. He gave it as his opinion that the bewitchment of the two

girls was genuine. The vomiting of needles and nails reminded him very

much of a recent case in Denmark. For the moment the physician spoke,

when he said that "these swounding Fits were Natural." But it was the

student of seventeenth-century theology who went on: they were

"heightened to a great excess by the subtilty of the Devil, co-operating

with the Malice of these which we term Witches, at whose Instance he

doth these Villanies."

No doubt Browne's words confirmed the sentiment of the court room and

strengthened the case of the prosecution. But it will not be overlooked

by the careful reader that he did not by any means commit himself as to

the guilt of the parties at the bar.

When the judge found that the prisoners had "nothing material" to say

for themselves he addressed the jury. Perhaps because he was not

altogether clear in his own mind about the merits of the case, he

refused to sum up the evidence. It is impossible for us to understand

why he did not carry further the tests which had convinced Kelyng of the

fraud, or why he did not ask questions which would have uncovered the

weakness of the testimony. One cannot but suspect that North's criticism

of him, that he had a "leaning towards the Popular" and that he had

gained such "transcendent" authority as not easily to bear

contradiction,[16] was altogether accurate. At all events he passed over

the evidence and went on to declare that there were two problems before

the jury: (1) were these children bewitched, (2) were the prisoners at

the bar guilty of it? As to the existence of witches, he never doubted

it. The Scriptures affirmed it, and all nations provided laws against

such persons.

On the following Sunday Baron Hale composed a meditation upon the

subject. Unfortunately it was simply a dissertation on Scripture texts

and touched upon the law at no point.

It is obvious enough to the most casual student that Sir Matthew Hale

had a chance to anticipate the work of Chief Justice Holt and missed it.

In the nineties of the seventeenth century, as we shall see, there was a

man in the chief justiceship who dared to nullify the law of James I. It

is not too much to say that Matthew Hale by a different charge to the

jury could as easily have made the current of judicial decisions run in

favor of accused witches all over England. His weight was thrown in the

other direction, and the witch-triers for a half-century to come invoked

the name of Hale.[17]

There is an interesting though hardly trustworthy story told by Speaker

Onslow[18]--writing a century later--that Hale "was afterwards much

altered in his notions as to this matter, and had great concern upon him

for what had befallen these persons." This seems the more doubtful

because there is not a shred of proof that Hale's decisions occasioned a

word of criticism among his contemporaries.[19] So great, indeed, was

the spell of his name that not even a man like John Webster dared to

comment upon his decision. Not indeed until nearly the middle of the

eighteenth century does anyone seem to have felt that the decision

called for apology.

The third noteworthy ruling in this period anent the crime of witchcraft

was made a few years later in Wiltshire by Justice Rainsford. The story,

as he himself told it to a colleague, was this: "A Witch was brought to

Salisbury and tried before him. Sir James Long came to his Chamber, and

made a heavy Complaint of this Witch, and said that if she escaped, his

Estate would not be worth any Thing; for all the People would go away.

It happen'd that the Witch was acquitted, and the Knight continued

extremely concern'd; therefore the Judge, to save the poor Gentleman's

Estate, order'd the Woman to be kept in Gaol, and that the Town should

allow her 2s. 6d. per Week; for which he was very thankful. The very

next Assizes, he came to the Judge to desire his lordship would let her

come back to the Town. And why? They could keep her for 1s. 6d. there;

and, in the Gaol, she cost them a shilling more."[20] Another case

before Justice Rainsford showed him less lenient. By a mere chance we

have a letter, written at the time by one of the justices of the peace

in Malmesbury, which sheds no little light on this affair and on the

legal status of witchcraft at that time.[21] A certain Ann Tilling had

been taken into custody on the complaint of Mrs. Webb of Malmesbury. The

latter's son had swooning fits in which he accused Ann of bewitching

him. Ann Tilling made voluble confession, implicating Elizabeth Peacock

and Judith Witchell, who had, she declared, inveigled her into the

practice of their evil arts. Other witches were named, and in a short

time twelve women and two men were under accusation. But the alderman

of Malmesbury, who was the chief magistrate of that town, deemed it wise

before going further to call in four of the justices of the peace in

that subdivision of the county. Three of these justices of the peace

came and listened to the confessions, and were about to make out a

mittimus for sending eleven of the accused to Salisbury, when the fourth

justice arrived, the man who has given us the story. He was, according

to his own account, not "very credulous in matters of Witchcraft," and

he made a speech to the other justices. "Gentlemen, what is done at this

place, a Borough remote from the centre of this large County, and almost

forty miles from Salisbury, will be expended [_sic_] both by the

Reverend Judges, the learned Counsayle there ..., and the Gentry of the

body of the County, so that if anything be done here rashly, it will be

severely censured." He went on to urge the danger that the boy whose

fits were the cause of so much excitement might be an impostor, and that

Ann Tilling, who had freely confessed, might be in confederacy with the

parents. The skeptical justice, who in spite of his boasted incredulity

was a believer in the reality of witchcraft, was successful with his

colleagues. All the accused were dismissed save Tilling, Peacock, and

Witchell. They were sent to Salisbury and tried before Sir Richard

Rainsford. Elizabeth Peacock, who had been tried on similar charges

before, was dismissed. The other two were sentenced to be hanged.[22]

Ten years later came a fourth remarkable ruling against witchcraft, this

time by Justice Raymond at Exeter. During the intervening years there

had been cases a-plenty in England and a few hangings, but none that had

attracted comment. It was not until the summer of 1682, when three

Devonshire women were arraigned, tried, and sent to the gallows by

Justice Raymond,[23] that the public again realized that witchcraft was

still upheld by the courts.

The trials in themselves had no very striking features. At least two of

the three women had been beggars; the other, who had been the first

accused and who had in all probability involved her two companions, had

on two different occasions before been arraigned but let off. The

evidence submitted against them consisted of the usual sworn statements

made by neighbors to the justice of the peace, as well as of hardly

coherent confessions by the accused. The repetition of the Lord's Prayer

was gone through with and the results of examinations by a female jury

were detailed _ad nauseam_. The poor creatures on trial were remarkably

stupid, even for beings of their grade. Their several confessions

tallied with one another in hardly a single point.

Sir Thomas Raymond and Sir Francis North were the judges present at the

Exeter assizes. Happily the latter has left his impressions of this

trial.[24] He admits that witch trials worried him because the evidence

was usually slight, but the people very intent upon a verdict of guilty.

He was very glad that at Exeter his colleague who sat upon the "crown

side" had to bear the responsibilities.[25] The two women (he seems to

have known of no more) were scarce alive as to sense and understanding,

but were "overwhelm'd with melancholy and waking Dreams." Barring

confessions, the other evidence he considered trifling, and he cites the

testimony of a witness that "he saw a cat leap in at her (the old

woman's) window, when it was twilight; and this Informant farther saith

that he verily believeth the said Cat to be the Devil, and more saith

not." Raymond, declares his colleague, made no nice distinctions as to

the possibility of melancholy women contracting an opinion of themselves

that was false, but left the matter to the jury.[26]

We have already intimated that the rulings of the courts were by no

means all of them adverse to the witches. Almost contemporaneous with

the far-reaching sentence of Sir Matthew Hale at Bury were the trials in

Somerset, where flies and nails and needles played a similar part, but

where the outcome was very different. A zealous justice of the peace,

Robert Hunt, had for the last eight years been on the lookout for

witches. In 1663 he had turned Julian Cox over to the tender mercies of

Justice Archer. By 1664 he had uncovered a "hellish knot" of the wicked

women and was taking depositions against them, wringing confessions from

them and sending them to gaol with all possible speed.[27] The women

were of the usual class, a herd of poor quarrelsome, bickering females

who went from house to house seeking alms. In the numbers of the accused

the discovery resembled that at Lancaster in 1633-1634, as indeed it did

in other ways. A witch meeting or conventicle was confessed to. The

county was being terrified and entertained by the most horrible tales,

when suddenly a quietus was put upon the affair "by some of them in

authority." A witch chase, which during the Civil Wars would have led to

a tragedy, was cut short, probably through the agency of a privy council

less fearful of popular sentiment than the assize judges.

The Mompesson case[28] was of no less importance in its time, although

it belongs rather in the annals of trickery than in those of

witchcraft. But the sensation which it caused in England and the

controversy waged over it between the upholders of witchcraft and the

"Sadducees," give the story a considerable interest and render the

outcome of the trial significant. The only case of its sort in its time,

it was nevertheless most typical of the superstition of the time. A

little town in Wiltshire had been disturbed by a stray drummer. The

self-constituted noise-maker was called to account by a stranger in the

village, a Mr. Mompesson of Tedworth, who on examining the man's license

saw that it had been forged and took it away from him. This, at any

rate, was Mr. Mompesson's story as to how he had incurred the ill will

of the man. The drummer took his revenge in a singular way. Within a few

days the Mompesson family at Tedworth began to be annoyed at night by

strange noises or drummings on the roofs. All the phenomena and

manifestations which we associate with a modern haunted-house story were

observed by this alarmed family of the seventeenth century. The little

girls were knocked about in their beds at night, a stout servant was

forcibly held hand and foot, the children's shoes were thrown about, the

chairs glided about the room. It would seem that all this bold

horse-play must soon have been exposed, but it went on merrily. Whenever

any tune was called for, it was given on the drum. The family Bible was

thrown upside down into the ashes. For three weeks, however, the spirits

ceased operations during the lying-in of Mrs. Mompesson. But they

sedulously avoided the family servants, especially when those retainers

happened to be armed with swords. Well they might, for we are told that

on one occasion, after a pistol shot had been fired at the place where

they were heard, blood was found on the spot. In another instance,

according to Mr. Mompesson's own account, there were seen figures, "in

the shape of Men, who, as soon as a Gun was discharg'd, would shuffle

away together into an Arbour."

It is clear enough that a somewhat clumsy fraud was being imposed upon

Mr. Mompesson. A contemporary writer tells us he was told that it was

done by "two Young Women in the House with a design to scare thence Mr.

Mompesson's Mother."[29] From other sources it is quite certain that the

injured drummer had a hand in the affair. A very similar game had been

played at Woodstock in 1649, and formed a comedy situation of which

Scott makes brilliant use in his novel of that name. Indeed, it is quite

possible that the drummer, who had been a soldier of Cromwell's, was

inspired by a memory of that affair.

But there was no one to detect the fraud, as at Woodstock. Tedworth

became a Mecca for those interested in the supernatural. One of the

visitors was Joseph Glanvill, at this time a young man of twenty-seven,

later to become a member of the Royal Society and chaplain in ordinary

to the king. The spirits were less noisy; they were always somewhat

restrained before visitors, but scratched on bed sheets and panted in

dog fashion, till Glanvill was thoroughly taken in. For the rest of his

life this psychic experimenter fought a literary war over this case with

those who made fun of it. While we cannot prove it, we may guess with

some confidence that this episode was the beginning of the special

interest in the supernatural upon Glanvill's part which was later to

make him the arch-defender of the witchcraft superstition in his

generation.

How wide an interest the matter evoked may be judged from the warm

discussions upon it at Cambridge, and from the royal interest in it

which induced Charles to send down a committee of investigation.

Curiously enough, the spirits were singularly and most extraordinarily

quiet when the royal investigators were at work, a fact to which

delighted skeptics pointed with satisfaction.

One wonders that the drummer, who must have known that his name would be

connected with the affair, failed to realize the risk he was running

from the witch hunters. He was indicted on minor felonies of another

sort, but the charges which Mompesson brought against him seem to have

been passed over. The man was condemned for stealing and was

transported. With his departure the troubles at Tedworth ceased. But the

drummer, in some way, escaped and returned to England. The angry

Mompesson now brought him to the assizes as a felon on the strength of

the statute of James I. Unhappily we have no details of this trial, nor

do we know even the name of the judge; but we do know that the jury gave

a verdict of acquittal.

In 1671 Cornwall was stirred up over a witch whose crimes were said to

be directed against the state. She had hindered the English fleet in

their war against the Dutch, she had caused a bull to kill one of the

enemies in Parliament of the Non-Conformists, she had been responsible

for the barrenness of the queen. And for all these political crimes the

chief evidence was that some cats had been seen playing ("dancing") near

her house. She was committed, along with several other women who were

accused. Although at the assizes they were all proved to have had cats

and rats about them, they went free.[30]

In 1682, the same year in which the three women of Devonshire had been

condemned, there was a trial at Southwark, just outside of London, which

resulted in a verdict of acquittal. The case had many of the usual

features, but in two points was unique. Joan Butts was accused of having

bewitched a child that had been taken with fits.[31] Nineteen or twenty

witnesses testified against the witch. One of the witnesses heard her

say that, if she had not bewitched the child, if all the devils in hell

could help her, she would bewitch it. Joan admitted the words, but said

that she had spoken them in passion. She then turned on one of the

witnesses and declared that he had given himself to the Devil, body and

soul. Chief Justice Pemberton was presiding, and he called her to order

for this attack on a witness, and then catechized her as to her means of

knowing the fact. The woman had thoughtlessly laid herself open by her

own words to the most serious suspicion. In spite of this, however, the

jury brought her in not guilty, "to the great amazement of some, ... yet

others who consider the great difficulty in proving a Witch, thought the

jury could do no less than acquit her."

This was, during the period, the one trial in or near London of which we

have details. There can be no doubt that the courts in London and the

vicinity were beginning to ignore cases of witchcraft. After 1670 there

were no more trials of the sort in Middlesex.

The reader will remember that Justice North had questioned the equity of

Justice Raymond's decision at Exeter. He has told us the story of a

trial at Taunton-Dean, where he himself had to try a witch.[32] A

ten-year-old girl, who was taking strange fits and spitting out pins,

was the witness against an old man whom she accused of bewitching her.

The defendant made "a Defence as orderly and well expressed as I ever

heard spoke." The judge then asked the justice of the peace who had

committed the man his opinion. He said that he believed the girl,

"doubling herself in her Fit, as being convulsed, bent her Head down

close to her Stomacher, and with her Mouth, took Pins out of the Edge of

that, and then, righting herself a little, spit them into some

By-stander's Hands." "The Sum of it was Malice, Threatening, and

Circumstances of Imposture in the Girl." As the judge went downstairs

after the man had been acquitted, "an hideous old woman" cried to him,

"My Lord, Forty Years ago they would have hang'd me for a Witch, and

they could not; and now they would have hang'd my poor Son."

The five cases we have cited, while not so celebrated as those on the

other side, were quite as representative of what was going on in

England. It is to be regretted that we have not the records by which to

compute the acquittals of this period. In a large number of cases where

we have depositions we have no statement of the outcome. This is

particularly true of Yorkshire. As has been pointed out in the earlier

part of the chapter, we can be sure that most of these cases were

dismissed or were never brought to trial.

When we come to the question of the forms of evidence presented during

this period, we have a story that has been told before. Female juries,

convulsive children or child pretenders, we have met them all before.

Two or three differences may nevertheless be noted. The use of spectral

evidence was becoming increasingly common. The spectres, as always,

assumed weird forms. Nicholas Rames's wife (at Longwitton, in the north)

saw Elizabeth Fenwick and the Devil dancing together.[33] A sick boy in

Cornwall saw a "Woman in a blue Jerkin and Red Petticoat with Yellow and

Green patches," who was quickly identified and put in hold.[34]

Sometimes the spectres were more material. Jane Milburne of Newcastle

testified that Dorothy Stranger, in the form of a cat, had leaped upon

her and held her to the ground for a quarter of an hour.[35] A "Barber's

boy" in Cambridge had escaped from a spectral woman in the isle of Ely,

but she followed him to Cambridge and killed him with a blow. "He had

the exact mark in his forehead, being dead, where the Spiritual Woman

did hit him alive."[36] It is unnecessary to multiply cases. The

_Collection of Modern Relations_ is full of the same sort of evidence.

It has been seen that in nearly every epoch of witch history the

voluntary and involuntary confessions of the accused had greatly

simplified the difficulties of prosecution. The witches whom Matthew

Hopkins discovered were too ready to confess to enormous and unnatural

crimes. In this respect there is a marked change in the period of the

later Stuarts. Elizabeth Style of Somerset in 1663 and the three

Devonshire witches of 1682 were the only ones who made confessions.

Elizabeth Style[37] had probably been "watched," in spite of Glanvill's

statement to the contrary, perhaps somewhat in the same torturing way as

the Suffolk witches whom Hopkins "discovered," and her wild confession

showed the effect. The Devonshire women were half-witted creatures, of

the type that had always been most voluble in confession; but such were

now exceptions.

This means one of two things. Either the witches of the Restoration were

by some chance a more intelligent set, or they were showing more spirit

than ever before because they had more supporters and fairer treatment

in court. It is quite possible that both suppositions have in them some

elements of truth. As the belief in the powers of witches developed in

form and theory, it came to draw within its radius more groups of

people. In its earlier stages the attack upon the witch had been in part

the community's way of ridding itself of a disreputable member. By the

time that the process of attack had been developed for a century, it had

become less impersonal. Personal hatreds were now more often the

occasion of accusation. Individual malice was playing a larger role. In

consequence those who were accused were more often those who were

capable of fighting for themselves or who had friends to back them. And

those friends were more numerous and zealous because the attitude of the

public and of the courts was more friendly to the accused witch. This

explanation is at best, however, nothing more than a suggestion. We have

not the material for confident generalization.

One other form of evidence must be mentioned. The town of Newcastle,

which in 1649 had sent to Scotland for a witchfinder, was able in 1673

to make use of home-grown talent. In this instance it was a woman, Ann

Armstrong, who implicated a score of her neighbors and at length went

around pointing out witches. She was a smooth-witted woman who was

probably taking a shrewd method of turning off charges against herself.

Her testimony dealt with witch gatherings or conventicles held at

various times and places. She told whom she had seen there and what they

had said about their crimes. She told of their feasts and of their

dances. Poor woman, she had herself been compelled to sing for them

while they danced. Nor was this the worst. She had been terribly

misused. She had been often turned into a horse, then bridled and

ridden.[38]

It would not be worth while to go further into Ann Armstrong's stories.

It is enough to remark that she offered details, as to harm done to

certain individuals in certain ways, which tallied closely with the

sworn statements of those individuals as to what had happened to them at

the times specified. The conclusion cannot be avoided that the female

witchfinder had been at no small pains to get even such minute details

in exact form. She had gathered together all the witch stories of that

part of Northumberland and had embodied them in her account of the

confessions made at the "conventicles."

What was the ruling of the court on all this evidence we do not know. We

have only one instance in which any evidence was ruled out. That was at

the trial of Julian Cox in 1663. Justice Archer tried an experiment in

that trial, but before doing so he explained to the court that no

account was to be taken of the result in making up their verdict. He had

heard that a witch could not repeat the petition in the Lord's Prayer,

"Lead us not into temptation." The witch indeed failed to meet the

test.[39]

In the course of this period we have two trials that reveal a connection

between witchcraft and other crimes. Perhaps it would be fairer to say

that the charge of witchcraft was sometimes made when other crimes were

suspected, but could not be proved. The first case concerned a rich

farmer in Northamptonshire who had gained the ill will of a woman named

Ann Foster. Thirty of his sheep were found dead with their "Leggs broke

in pieces, and their Bones all shattered in their Skins." A little later

his house and barns were set on fire. Ann Foster was brought to trial

for using witchcraft against him, confessed to it, and was hanged.[40]

The other case was at Brightling in Sussex, not far from London. There a

woman who was suspected as the one who had told a servant that Joseph

Cruther's house would be burned--a prophecy which came true very

shortly--was accused as a witch. She had been accused years before at

the Maidstone assizes, but had gone free. This time she was "watched"

for twenty-four hours and four ministers kept a fast over the

affair.[41]

These cases are worth something as an indication that the charge of

witchcraft was still a method of getting rid of people whom the

community feared.

At the beginning of this chapter the years 1660 to 1688 were marked off

as constituting a single epoch in the history of the superstition. Yet

those years were by no means characterized by the same sort of court

verdicts. The sixties saw a decided increase over the years of the

Commonwealth in the number of trials and in the number of executions.

The seventies witnessed a rapid dropping off in both figures. Even more

so the eighties. By the close of the eighties the accounts of witchcraft

were exceedingly rare. The decisions of the courts in the matter were in

a state of fluctuation. Two things were happening. The justices of the

peace were growing much more reluctant to send accused witches to the

assize courts; and the itinerant judges as a body were, in spite of the

decisions of Hale and Raymond, more careful in witch trials than ever

before, and more likely to withstand public sentiment.

The changes of opinion, as reflected in the literature of the time,

especially in the literature of the subject, will show the same

tendencies. We shall take them up in the next chapter.

[1] See Raine, ed., _York Depositions_ (Surtees Soc.), preface, xxx.

[2] Joseph Hunter, _Life of Heywood_ (London, 1842), 167, and Heywood's

_Diaries_, ed. J. H. Turner (Brighouse, 1881-1885), I, 199; III, 100.

Heywood, who was one of the leading Dissenters of his time, must not be

credited with extreme superstition. In noting the death of a boy whom

his parents believed bewitched, he wrote, "Oh that they saw the lords

hand." _Diary_, I, 287.

[3] William Drage, _Daimonomageia_ (London, 1665), 32-38.

[4] _The Lord's Arm Stretched Out, ... or a True Relation of the

wonderful Deliverance of James Barrow ..._ (London, 1664).

[5] Compare Drage, _op. cit._, 36, 39, 42, with _The Lord's Arm

Stretched Out_, 17. Mary Hall, whose cure Drage celebrates, had friends

among the Baptists. Drage seems to connect her case with those of Barrow

and Hannah Crump, both of whom were helped by that "dispirited people"

whom the author of _The Lord's Arm Stretched Out_ exalts.

[6] Drage, _op. cit._, 34.

[7] _Yorkshire Notes and Queries_, I (Bradford, 1885), 26. But a

physician in Winchester Park, whom Hannah Crump had consulted, had asked

five pounds to unbewitch her.

[8] Drage, _op. cit._, 39.

[9] _York Depositions_, 127.

[10] See E. Mackenzie, _History of Northumberland_ (Newcastle, 1825),

II, 33-36. We do not know that the woman was excused, but the case was

before Henry Ogle and we may fairly guess the outcome.

[11] Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, pt. ii, 191-209.

[12] This is the estimate of him by North, who adds: "and he knew it."

Roger North, _Life of the Rt. Hon. Francis North, Baron of Guilford ..._

(London, 1742), 62-63.

[13] _Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington_, II, pt. I

(Chetham Soc., no. 36, 1855), 155.

[14] In his _Religio Medici_. See _Sir Thomas Browne's Works_ (ed. S.

Wilkin, London, 1851-1852), II, 43.

[15] _Ibid._, IV, 389.

[16] Roger North, _op. cit._, 61.

[17] Inderwick has given a good illustration of Hale's weakness of

character: "I confess," he says, "to a feeling of pain at finding him in

October, 1660, sitting as a judge at the Old Bailey, trying and

condemning to death batches of the regicides, men under whose orders he

had himself acted, who had been his colleagues in parliament, with whom

he had sat on committees to alter the law." _Interregnum_, 217-218.

[18] _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, XIV, 9, p. 480.

[19] Bishop Burnet, in his _Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale_ (London,

1682), does not seem to have felt called upon to mention the Bury trial

at all. See also Lord Campbell, _Lives of the Chief Justices_ (London,

1849), I, 563-567.

[20] Roger North, _op. cit._, 130, 131. The story, as here told,

ascribes the event to the year preceding Lord Guilford's first western

circuit--_i. e._, to 1674. But this perhaps need not be taken too

exactly, and the witch was probably that Elizabeth Peacock who was

acquitted in 1670 and again in the case of 1672 described above. At

least the list of "Indictments for witchcraft on the Western Circuit

from 1670 to 1712," published by Inderwick in his _Sidelights on the

Stuarts_ (London, 1888), shows no other acquittal in Wiltshire during

this decade.

[21] For this letter see the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1832, pt. I,

405-410, 489-402. The story is confirmed in part by Inderwick's finds in

the western Gaol Delivery records. As to the trustworthiness of this

unknown justice of the peace, see above, pp. 160, 162, and notes.

[22] That the judge was Sir Richard Rainsford appears from Inderwick's

list, mentioned above, note 20.

[23] _A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against ...

Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards_ (London, 1682).

And _The Tryal, Condemnation and Execution of Three Witches ..._

(London, 1682). See also below, note 26, and appendix A, Sec. 6.

[24] Roger North, _op. cit._, 130.

[25] At a trial at the York assizes in 1687 Sir John Reresby seems to

have played about the same part that North played at Exeter. Serjeant

Powell, later to be chief justice, was presiding over the case. "An old

woman was condemned for a witch. Those who were more credulous in points

of this nature than myself, conceived the evidence to be very strong

against her. The boy she was said to have bewitched fell down on a

sudden before all the court when he saw her, and would then as suddenly

return to himself again, and very distinctly relate the several injuries

she had done him: but in all this it was observed the boy was free from

any distortion; that he did not foam at the mouth, and that his fits did

not leave him gradually, but all at once; so that, upon the whole, the

judge thought it proper to reprieve her." _Memoirs and Travels of Sir

John Reresby_ (London, 1813), 329.

[26] There is indeed some evidence that Raymond wished not to condemn

the women, but yielded nevertheless to public opinion. In a pamphlet

published five years later it is stated that the judge "in his charge to

the jury gave his Opinion that these three poor Women (as he supposed)

were weary of their Lives, and that he thought it proper for them to be

carryed to the Parish from whence they came, and that the Parish should

be charged with their Maintainance; for he thought their oppressing

Poverty had constrained them to wish for Death." Unhappily the neighbors

made such an outcry that the women were found guilty and sentenced. This

is from a later and somewhat untrustworthy account, but it fits in well

with what North says of the case. _The Life and Conversation of

Temperance Floyd, Mary Lloyd_ [sic], _and Susanna Edwards: ..._ (London,

1687).

[27] The second part of Glanvill's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ is full of

these depositions.

[28] For a full account of this affair see Glanvill's _Sadducismus

Triumphatus_, pt. ii, preface and Relation I. Glanvill had investigated

the matter and had diligently collected all the evidence. He was

familiar also with what the "deriders" had to say, and we can discover

their point of view from his answers. See also John Beaumont, _An

Historical, Physiological and Theological Treatise of Spirits,

Apparitions, Witchcrafts, and other Magical Practices_ (London, 1705),

307-309.

[29] _Ibid._, 309.

[30] _Cal. St. P., Dom., 1671_, 105, 171.

[31] We have two accounts of this affair: _Strange and Wonderful News

from Yowell in Surry_ (1681), and _An Account of the Tryal and

Examination of Joan Buts_ (1682).

[32] Roger North, _op. cit._, 131-132.

[33] _York Depositions_, 247.

[34] _A True Account ... of one John Tonken, of Pensans in Cornwall ..._

(1686). For other examples of spectral evidence see _York Depositions_,

88; Roberts, _Southern Counties_ (London, 1856), 525-526; _Gentleman's

Magazine_, 1832, pt. II, 489.

[35] _York Depositions_, 112, 113.

[36] Drage, _Daimonomageia_, 12.

[37] For an account of her case, see Glanvill, _Sadducismus

Triumphatus_, pt. ii, 127-146.

[38] _York Depositions_, 191-201.

[39] For a complete account of the Julian Cox case see Glanvill,

_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, pt. ii, 191-209.

[40] _A Full and True Relation of the Tryal ... of Ann Foster ..._

(London, 1674).

[41] _Sussex Archaeological Collections_, XVIII, 111-113.

CHAPTER XII.

GLANVILL AND WEBSTER AND THE LITERARY WAR OVER WITCHCRAFT, 1660-1688.

In an earlier chapter we followed the progress of opinion from James I

to the Restoration. We saw that in the course of little more than a

half-century the centre of the controversy had been considerably

shifted: we noted that there was a growing body of intelligent men who

discredited the stories of witchcraft and were even inclined to laugh at

them. It is now our purpose to go on with the history of opinion from

the point at which we left off to the revolution of 1688. We shall

discover that the body of literature on the subject was enormously

increased. We shall see that a larger and more representative group of

men were expressing themselves on the matter. The controversialists were

no longer bushwhackers, but crafty warriors who joined battle after

looking over the field and measuring their forces. The groundworks of

philosophy were tested, the bases of religious faith examined. The days

of skirmishing about the ordeal of water and the test of the Devil's

marks were gone by. The combatants were now to fight over the reality or

unreality of supernatural phenomena. We shall observe that the battle

was less one-sided than ever before and that the assailants of

superstition, who up to this time had been outnumbered, now fought on at

least even terms with their enemies. We shall see too that the

non-participants and onlookers were more ready than ever before to join

themselves to the party of attack.

The struggle was indeed a miniature war and in the main was fought very

fairly. But it was natural that those who disbelieved should resort to

ridicule. It was a form of attack to which their opponents exposed

themselves by their faith in the utterly absurd stories of silly women.

Cervantes with his Don Quixote laughed chivalry out of Europe, and there

was a class in society that would willingly have laughed witchcraft out

of England. Their onslaught was one most difficult to repel.

Nevertheless the defenders of witchcraft met the challenge squarely.

With unwearying patience and absolute confidence in their cause they

collected the testimonies for their narratives and then said to those

who laughed: Here are the facts; what are you going to do about them?

The last chapter told of the alarms in Somerset and in Wilts and showed

what a stir they produced in England. In connection with those affairs

was mentioned the name of that brave researcher, Mr. Glanvill. The

history of the witch literature of this period is little more than an

account of Joseph Glanvill, of his opinions, of his controversies, of

his disciples and his opponents. It is not too much to say that in

Glanvill the superstition found its ablest advocate. In acuteness of

logical distinction, in the cleverness and brilliance of his

intellectual sword-play, he excelled all others before and after who

sought to defend the belief in witchcraft. He was a man entitled to

speak with some authority. A member of Exeter College at Oxford, he had

been in 1664 elected a fellow of the recently founded Royal Society and

was in sympathy with its point of view. At the same time he was a

philosopher of no small influence in his generation.

His intellectual position is not difficult to determine. He was an

opponent of the Oxford scholasticism and inclined towards a school of

thought represented by Robert Fludd, the two Vaughans, Henry More, and

Van Helmont,[1] men who had drunk deeply of the cabalistic writers,

disciples of Paracelsus and Pico della Mirandola. It would be foolhardy

indeed for a layman to attempt an elucidation of the subtleties either

of this philosophy or of the processes of Glanvill's philosophical

reasoning. His point of view was partially unfolded in the _Scepsis

Scientifica_, published in 1665[2] and dedicated to the Royal Society.

In this treatise he pointed out our present ignorance of phenomena and

our inability to determine their real character, owing to the

subjectivity of our perceptions of them, and insisted consequently upon

the danger of dogmatism. He himself had drawn but a cockle-shell of

water from the ocean of knowledge. His notion of spirit--if his works on

witchcraft may be trusted--seems to have been that it is a light and

invisible form of matter capable of detachment from or infusion into

more solid substances--precisely the idea of Henry More. Religiously, it

would not be far wrong to call him a reconstructionist--to use a much

abused and exceedingly modern term. He did not, indeed, admit the

existence of any gap between religion and science that needed bridging

over, but the trend of his teaching, though he would hardly have

admitted it, was to show that the mysteries of revealed religion belong

in the field of unexplored science.[3] It was his confidence in the far

possibilities opened by investigation in that field, together with the

cabalistic notions he had absorbed, which rendered him so willing to

become a student of psychical phenomena.

Little wonder, then, that he found the Mompesson and Somerset cases

material to his hand and that he seized upon them eagerly as irrefutable

proof of demoniacal agency. His first task, indeed, was to prove the

alleged facts; these once established, they could be readily fitted into

a comprehensive scheme of reasoning. In 1666 he issued a small volume,

_Some Philosophical Considerations touching Witches and Witchcraft_.

Most of the first edition was burned in the fire of London, but the book

was reprinted. Already by 1668 it had reached a fourth impression.[4] In

this edition the work took the new title _A Blow at Modern Sadducism_,

and it was republished again in 1681 with further additions as

_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, which might be translated "Unbelief

Conquered."[5] The work continued to be called for faster than the

publisher could supply the demand, and went through several more

revisions and reimpressions. One of the most popular books of the

generation, it proved to be Glanvill's greatest title to contemporary

fame. The success of the work was no doubt due in large measure to the

collection of witch stories; but these had been inserted by the author

as the groundwork of his argument. He recognized, as no one on his side

of the controversy had done before, the force of the arguments made by

the opposition. They were good points, but to them all he offered one

short answer--the evidence of proved fact.[6] That such transformations

as were ascribed to the witches were ridiculous, that contracts between

the Devil and agents who were already under his control were absurd,

that the Devil would never put himself at the nod and beck of miserable

women, and that Providence would not permit His children to be thus

buffeted by the evil one: these were the current objections;[7] and to

them all Glanvill replied that one positive fact is worth a thousand

negative arguments. Innumerable frauds had been exposed. Yes, he knew

it,[8] but here were well authenticated cases that were not fraud.

Glanvill put the issue squarely. His confidence in his case at once wins

admiration. He was thoroughly sincere. The fly in the ointment was of

course that his best authenticated cases could not stand any careful

criticism. He had been furnished the narratives which he used by "honest

and honourable friends." Yet, if this scientific investigator could be

duped, as he had been at Tedworth, much more those worthy but credulous

friends whom he quoted.

From a simple assertion that he was presenting facts Glanvill went on to

make a plea used often nowadays in another connection by defenders of

miracles. If the ordinary mind, he said, could not understand "every

thing done by Mathematics and Mechanical Artifice,"[9] how much more

would even the most knowing of us fail to understand the power of

witches. This proposition, the reader can see, was nothing more than a

working out of one of the principles of his philosophy. There can be no

doubt that he would have taken the same ground about miracles,[10] a

position that must have alarmed many of his contemporaries.

In spite of his emphasis of fact, Glanvill was as ready as any to enter

into a theological disquisition. Into those rarefied regions of thought

we shall not follow him. It will perhaps not be out of order, however,

to note two or three points that were thoroughly typical of his

reasoning. To the contention that, if a wicked spirit could work harm by

the use of a witch, it should be able to do so without any intermediary

and so to harass all of mankind all of the time, he answered that the

designs of demons are levelled at the soul and can in consequence best

be carried on in secret.[11] To the argument that when one considers the

"vileness of men" one would expect that the evil spirits would practise

their arts not on a few but on a great many, he replied that men are not

liable to be troubled by them till they have forfeited the "tutelary

care and oversight of the better spirits," and, furthermore, spirits

find it difficult to assume such shapes as are necessary for "their

Correspondencie with Witches." It is a hard thing for spirits "to force

their thin and tenuious bodies into a visible consistence.... For, in

this Action, their Bodies must needs be exceedingly compress'd."[12] To

the objection that the belief in evil beings makes it plausible that the

miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of devils,[13] he

replied that the miracles of the Gospel are notoriously contrary to the

tendency, aims, and interests of the kingdom of darkness.[14] The

suggestion that witches would not renounce eternal happiness for short

and trivial pleasures here,[15] he silenced by saying that "Mankind acts

sometimes to prodigious degrees of brutishness."

It is needless to go further in quoting his arguments. Doubtless both

questions and answers seem quibbles to the present-day reader, but the

force of Glanvill's replies from the point of view of his contemporaries

must not be underestimated. He was indeed the first defender of

witchcraft who in any reasoned manner tried to clear up the problems

proposed by the opposition. His answers were without question the best

that could be given.

It is easy for us to forget the theological background of

seventeenth-century English thought. Given a personal Devil who is

constantly intriguing against the kingdom of God (and who would then

have dared to deny such a premise?), grant that the Devil has

supernatural powers (and there were Scripture texts to prove it), and

it was but a short step to the belief in witches. The truth is that

Glanvill's theories were much more firmly grounded on the bedrock of

seventeenth-century theology than those of his opponents. His opponents

were attempting to use common sense, but it was a sort of common sense

which, however little they saw it, must undermine the current religious

convictions.

Glanvill was indeed exceedingly up-to-date in his own time. Not but that

he had read the learned old authors. He was familiar with what "the

great Episcopius" had to say, he had dipped into Reginald Scot and

deemed him too "ridiculous" to answer.[16] But he cared far more about

the arguments that he heard advanced in every-day conversation. These

were the arguments that he attempted to answer. His work reflected the

current discussions of the subject. It was, indeed, the growing

opposition among those whom he met that stirred him most. Not without

sadness he recognized that "most of the looser Gentry and small

pretenders to Philosophy and Wit are generally deriders of the belief of

Witches and Apparitions."[17] Like an animal at bay, he turned fiercely

on them. "Let them enjoy the Opinion of their own Superlative

Judgements" and run madly after Scot, Hobbes, and Osborne. It was, in

truth, a danger to religion that he was trying to ward off. One of the

fundamentals of religion was at stake. The denial of witchcraft was a

phase of prevalent atheism. Those that give up the belief in witches,

give up that in the Devil, then that in the immortality of the

soul.[18] The question at issue was the reality of the spirit world.

It can be seen why the man was tremendously in earnest. One may indeed

wonder if his intensity of feeling on the matter was not responsible for

his accepting as _bona fide_ narratives those which his common sense

should have made him reject. In defending the authenticity of the

remarkable stories told by the accusers of Julian Cox,[19] he was guilty

of a degree of credulity that passes belief. Perhaps the reader will

recall the incident of the hunted rabbit that vanished behind a bush and

was transformed into a panting woman, no other than the accused Julian

Cox. This tale must indeed have strained Glanvill's utmost capacity of

belief. Yet he rose bravely to the occasion. Determined not to give up

any well-supported fact, he urged that probably the Devil had sent a

spirit to take the apparent form of the hare while he had hurried the

woman to the bush and had presumably kept her invisible until she was

found by the boy. It was the Nemesis of a bad cause that its greatest

defender should have let himself indulge in such absurdities.

In truth we may be permitted to wonder if the philosopher was altogether

true to his own position. In his _Scepsis Scientifica_ he had talked

hopefully about the possibility that science might explain what as yet

seemed supernatural.[20] This came perilously near to saying that the

realms of the supernatural, when explored, would turn out to be natural

and subject to natural law. If this were true, what would become of all

those bulwarks of religion furnished by the wonders of witchcraft? It

looks very much as if Glanvill had let an inconsistency creep into his

philosophy.

It was two years after Glanvill's first venture that Meric Casaubon

issued his work entitled _Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things

Natural, Civil, and Divine_.[21] On account of illness, however, as he

tells the reader in his preface, he had been unable to complete the

book, and it dealt only with "Things Natural" and "Things Civil."

"Things Divine" became the theme of a separate volume, which appeared in

1670 under the title _Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and

Spiritual: wherein ... the business of Witches and Witchcraft, against a

late Writer, [is] fully Argued and Disputed_. The interest of this

scholar in the subject of witchcraft was, as we have seen, by no means

recent. When a young rector in Somerset he had attended a trial of

witches, quite possibly the identical trial that had moved Bernard to

appeal to grand jurymen. We have noted in an earlier chapter[22] that

Casaubon in 1654, writing on _Enthusiasm_, had touched lightly upon the

subject. It will be recalled that he had come very near to questioning

the value of confessions. Five years later, in prefacing a _Relation of

what passed between Dr. Dee and some Spirits_, he had anticipated the

conclusions of his _Credulity and Incredulity_. Those conclusions were

mainly in accord with Glanvill. With a good will he admitted that the

denying of witches was a "very plausible cause." Nothing was more liable

to be fraud than the exhibitions given at trials, nothing less

trustworthy than the accounts of what witches had done. Too many cases

originated in the ignorance of ministers who were on the look-out "in

every wild notion or phansie" for a "suggestion of the Devil."[23] But,

like Glanvill, and indeed like the spiritualists of to-day, he insisted

that many cases of fraud do not establish a negative. There is a very

large body of narratives so authentic that to doubt them would be

evidence of infidelity. Casaubon rarely doubted, although he sought to

keep the doubting spirit. It was hard for him not to believe what he had

read or had been told. He was naturally credulous, particularly when he

read the stories of the classical writers. For this attitude of mind he

was hardly to be censured. Criticism was but beginning to be applied to

the tales of Roman and Greek writers. Their works were full of stories

of magic and enchantment, and it was not easy for a seventeenth-century

student to shake himself free from their authority. Nor would Casaubon

have wished to do so. He belonged to the past both by religion and

raining, and he must be reckoned among the upholders of

superstition.[24]

In the next year, 1669, John Wagstaffe, a graduate of Oriel College who

had applied himself to "the study of learning and politics," issued a

little book, _The Question of Witchcraft Debated_. Wagstaffe was a

university man of no reputation. "A little crooked man and of a

despicable presence," he was dubbed by the Oxford wags the little

wizard.[25] Nevertheless he had something to say and he gained no small

hearing. Many of his arguments were purely theological and need not be

repeated. But he made two good points. The notions about witches find

their origin in "heathen fables." This was an undercutting blow at those

who insisted on the belief in witchcraft as an essential of Christian

faith; and Wagstaffe, moreover, made good his case. His second argument

was one which no less needed to be emphasized. Coincidence, he believed,

accounts for a great deal of the inexplicable in witchcraft

narratives.[26]

Within two years the book appeared again, much enlarged, and it was

later translated into German. It was answered by two men--by Casaubon in

the second part of his Credulity[27] and by an author who signed himself

"R. T."[28] Casaubon added nothing new, nor did "R. T.," who threshed

over old theological straw. The same can hardly be said of Lodowick

Muggleton, a seventeenth-century Dowie who would fain have been a

prophet of a new dispensation. He put out an exposition of the Witch of

Endor that was entirely rationalistic.[29] Witches, he maintained, had

no spirits but their own wicked imaginations. Saul was simply the dupe

of a woman pretender.

An antidote to this serious literature may be mentioned in passing.

There was published at London, in 1673,[30] _A Pleasant Treatise of

Witches_, in which a delightful prospect was opened to the reader: "You

shall find nothing here of those Vulgar, Fabulous, and Idle Tales that

are not worth the lending an ear to, nor of those hideous Sawcer-eyed

and Cloven-Footed Divels, that Grandmas affright their children withal,

but only the pleasant and well grounded discourses of the Learned as an

object adequate to thy wise understanding." An outline was offered, but

it was nothing more than a thread upon which to hang good stories. They

were tales of a distant past. There were witches once, of course there

were, but that was in the good old days. Such was the author's

implication.

Alas that such light treatment was so rare! The subject was, in the

minds of most, not one for laughter. It called for serious

consideration. That point of view came to its own again in _The Doctrine

of Devils proved to be the grand apostacy of these later Times_.[31] The

Dutch translator of this book tells us that it was written by a New

England clergyman.[32] If that be true, the writer must have been one of

the least provincial New Englanders of his century, for he evinces a

remarkable knowledge of the witch alarms and witch discussions in

England. Some of his opinions betray the influence of Scot, as for

instance his interpretation of Christ's casting out of devils.[33] The

term "having a devil" was but a phrase for one distracted. The author

made, however, some new points. He believed that the importance of the

New Testament miracles would be overshadowed by the greater miracles

wrought by the Devil.[34] A more telling argument, at least to a modern

reader, was that the solidarity of society would be endangered by a

belief that made every man afraid of his neighbor.[35] The writer

commends Wagstaffe's work, and writes of Casaubon, "If any one could

possibly have bewitcht me into the Belief of Witchcraft, this reverend

person, of all others, was most like to have done it." He decries the

"proletarian Rabble," and "the great Philosophers" (More and Glanvill,

doubtless), who call themselves Christians and yet hold "an Opinion that

Butchers up Men and Women without Fear or Witt, Sense or Reason, Care or

Conscience, by droves;" but he praises "the reverend judges of England,

now ... much wiser than before," who "give small or no encouragement to

such accusations."

We come now to the second great figure among the witch-ologists of the

Restoration, John Webster. Glanvill and Webster were protagonist and

antagonist in a drama where the others played somewhat the role of the

Greek chorus. It was in 1677 that Webster put forth _The Displaying of

Supposed Witchcraft_.[36] A Non-Conformist clergyman in his earlier

life, he seems to have turned in later years to the practice of

medicine. From young manhood he had been interested in the subject of

witchcraft. Probably that interest dates from an experience of his one

Sunday afternoon over forty years before he published his book. It will

be recalled that the boy Robinson, accuser of the Lancashire women in

1634, had been brought into his Yorkshire congregation at an afternoon

service and had come off very poorly when cross-questioned by the

curious minister. From that time Webster had been a doubter. Now and

again in the course of his Yorkshire and Lancashire pastorates he had

come into contact with superstition. He was no philosopher, this

Yorkshire doctor of souls and bodies, nor was he more than a country

scientist, and his reasoning against witchcraft fell short--as Professor

Kittredge has clearly pointed out[37]--of scientific rationalism. That

was a high mark and few there were in the seventeenth century who

attained unto it. But it is not too much to say that John Webster was

the heir and successor to Scot. He carried weight by the force of his

attack, if not by its brilliancy.[38] He was by no means always

consistent, but he struck sturdy blows. He was seldom original, but he

felled his opponents.

Many of his strongest arguments, of course, were old. It was nothing new

that the Witch of Endor was an impostor. It was Muggleton's notion, and

it went back indeed to Scot. The emphasizing of the part played by

imagination was as old as the oldest English opponent of witch

persecution. The explanation of certain strange phenomena

as ventriloquism--a matter that Webster had investigated

painstakingly--this had been urged before. Webster himself did not

believe that new arguments were needed. He had felt that the "impious

and Popish opinions of the too much magnified powers of Demons and

Witches, in this Nation were pretty well quashed and silenced" by

various writers and by the "grave proceedings of many learned judges."

But it was when he found that two "beneficed Ministers," Casaubon and

Glanvill, had "afresh espoused so bad a cause" that he had been impelled

to review their grounds.

As the reader may already have guessed, Webster, like so many of his

predecessors, dealt largely in theological and scriptural arguments. It

was along this line, indeed, that he made his most important

contribution to the controversy then going on. Glanvill had urged that

disbelief in witchcraft was but one step in the path to atheism. No

witches, no spirits, no immortality, no God, were the sequences of

Glanvill's reasoning. In answer Webster urged that the denial of the

existence of witches--_i. e._, of creatures endued with power from the

Devil to perform supernatural wonders--had nothing to do with the

existence of angels or spirits. We must rely upon other grounds for a

belief in the spirit world. Stories of apparitions are no proof, because

we cannot be sure that those apparitions are made or caused by spirits.

We have no certain ground for believing in a spirit world but the

testimony of Scripture.[39]

But if we grant the existence of spirits--to modernize the form of

Webster's argument--we do not thereby prove the existence of witches.

The New Testament tells of various sorts of "deceiving Imposters,

Diviners, or Witches," but amongst them all "there were none that had

made a visible league with the Devil." There was no mention of

transformation into cats, dogs, or wolves.[40] It is hard to see how the

most literal students of the Scriptures could have evaded this argument.

The Scriptures said a great deal about the Devil, about demoniacs, and

about witches and magicians--whatever they might mean by those terms.

Why did they not speak at all of the compacts between the Devil and

witches? Why did they leave out the very essential of the witch-monger's

lore?

All this needed to be urged at a time when the advocates of witchcraft

were crying "Wolf! wolf!" to the Christian people of England. In other

words, Webster was rendering it possible for the purely orthodox to give

up what Glanvill had called a bulwark of religion and still to cling to

their orthodoxy.

It is much to the credit of Webster that he spoke out plainly concerning

the obscenity of what was extorted from the witches. No one who has not

read for himself can have any notion of the vile character of the

charges and confessions embodied in the witch pamphlets. It is an aspect

of the question which has not been discussed in these pages. Webster

states the facts without exaggeration:[41] "For the most of them are not

credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears

would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and

sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean

stories ...? Surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to

overthrow the credibility of it, especially among Christians." Professor

Burr has said that "it was, indeed, no small part of the evil of the

matter, that it so long debauched the imagination of Christendom."[42]

We have said that Webster denied the existence of witches, that is, of

those who performed supernatural deeds. But, like Scot, he explicitly

refrained from denying the existence of witches _in toto_. He was, in

fact, much more satisfactory than Scot; for he explained just what was

his residuum of belief. He believed that witches were evil-minded

creatures inspired by the Devil, who by the use of poisons and natural

means unknown to most men harmed and killed their fellow-beings.[43] Of

course he would have insisted that a large proportion of all those

charged with being such were mere dealers in fraud or the victims of

false accusation, but the remainder of the cases he would have explained

in this purely natural way.

Now, if this was not scientific rationalism, it was at least

straight-out skepticism as to the supernatural in witchcraft. Moreover

there are cases enough in the annals of witchcraft that look very much

as if poison were used. The drawback of course is that Webster, like

Scot, had not disabused his mind of all superstition. Professor

Kittredge in his discussion of Webster has pointed this out carefully.

Webster believed that the bodies of those that had been murdered bleed

at the touch of the murderer. He believed, too, in a sort of "astral

spirit,"[44] and he seems to have been convinced of the truth of

apparitions.[45] These were phenomena that he believed to be

substantiated by experience. On different grounds, by _a priori_

reasoning from scriptural premises, he arrived at the conclusion that

God makes use of evil angels "as the executioners of his justice to

chasten the godly, and to restrain or destroy the wicked."[46]

This is and was essentially a theological conception. But there was no

small gap between this and the notion that spirits act in supernatural

ways in our every-day world. And there was nothing more inconsistent in

failing to bridge this gap than in the position of the Christian people

today who believe in a spirit world and yet discredit without

examination all that is offered as new evidence of its existence.

The truth is that Webster was too busy at destroying the fortifications

of his opponents to take the trouble to build up defences for himself.

But it is not too much to call him the most effective of the seventeenth

century assailants of witch persecution in England.[47] He had this

advantage over all who had gone before, that a large and increasing body

of intelligent people were with him. He spoke in full consciousness of

strong support. It was for his opponents to assume the defensive.

We have called John Webster's a great name in the literature of our

subject, and we have given our reasons for so thinking. Yet it would be

a mistake to suppose that he created any such sensation in his time as

did his arch-opponent, Glanvill. His work never went into a second

edition. There are but few references to it in the writings of the time,

and those are in works devoted to the defence of the belief. Benjamin

Camfield, a Leicestershire rector, wrote an unimportant book on _Angels

and their Ministries_,[48] and in an appendix assailed Webster. Joseph

Glanvill turned fiercely upon him with new proofs of what he called

facts, and bequeathed the work at his death to Henry More, who in the

several following editions of the _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ attacked him

with no little bitterness.

We may skip over three lesser writers on witchcraft. During the early

eighties John Brinley, Henry Hallywell, and Richard Bovet launched their

little boats into the sea of controversy. Brinley was a bold plagiarist

of Bernard, Hallywell a logical but dull reasoner from the Bible, Bovet

a weakened solution of Glanvill.[49]

We turn now from the special literature of witchcraft to a sketch of the

incidental evidences of opinion. Of these we have a larger body than

ever before, too large indeed to handle in detail. It would be idle to

quote from the chap-books on witch episodes their _raisons d'etre_. It

all comes to this: they were written to confute disbelievers. They refer

slightingly and even bitterly to those who oppose belief, not however

without admitting their numbers and influence. It will be more to our

purpose to examine the opinions of men as they uttered them on the

bench, in the pulpit, and in the other walks of practical life.

We have already had occasion to learn what the judges were thinking. We

listened to Matthew Hale while he uttered the pronouncement that was

heard all over England and even in the North American colonies. The

existence of witches, he affirmed solemnly, is proved by Scripture and

by the universality of laws against them. Justice Rainsford in the

following years and Justice Raymond about twenty years later seem to

have taken Hale's view of the matter. On the other side were to be

reckoned Sir John Reresby and Francis North. Neither of them was quite

outspoken, fearing the rage of the people and the charge of atheism.

Both sought to save the victims of persecution, but rather by exposing

the deceptions of the accusers than by denying witchcraft itself. From

the vast number of acquittals in the seventies and the sudden dropping

off in the number of witch trials in the eighties we know that there

must have been many other judges who were acquitting witches or quietly

ignoring the charges against them. Doubtless Kelyng, who, as a spectator

at Bury, had shown his skepticism as to the accusations, had when he

later became a chief justice been one of those who refused to condemn

witches.

From scientific men there were few utterances. Although we shall in

another connection show that a goodly number from the Royal Society

cherished very definite beliefs--or disbeliefs--on the subject, we have

the opinions of but two men who were professionally scientists, Sir

Thomas Browne and Sir Robert Boyle. Browne we have already met at the

Bury trial. It may reasonably be questioned whether he was really a man

of science. Certainly he was a physician of eminence. The attitude he

took when an expert witness at Bury, it will be recalled, was quite

consistent with the opinion given in his _Commonplace Book_. "We are

noways doubtful," he wrote, "that there are witches, but have not always

been satisfied in the application of their witchcrafts."[50] So spoke

the famous physician of Norwich. But a man whose opinion was of much

more consequence was Sir Robert Boyle. Boyle was a chemist and "natural

philosopher." He was the discoverer of the air pump, was elected

president of the Royal Society, and was altogether one of the greatest

non-political figures in the reign of Charles II. While he never, so far

as we know, discussed witchcraft in the abstract, he fathered a French

story that was brought into England, the story of the Demon of Mascon.

He turned the story over to Glanvill to be used in his list of authentic

narratives; and, when it was later reported that he had pronounced the

demon story an imposture, he took pains to deny the report in a letter

to Glanvill.[51]

Of literary men we have, as of scientists, but two. Aubrey, the

"delitescent" antiquarian and Will Wimble of his time, still credited

witchcraft, as he credited all sorts of narratives of ghosts and

apparitions. It was less a matter of reason than of sentiment. The

dramatist Shadwell had the same feeling for literary values. In his

preface to the play, _The Lancashire Witches_, he explained that he

pictured the witches as real lest the people should want "diversion,"

and lest he should be called "atheistical by a prevailing party who take

it ill that the power of the Devil should be lessen'd."[52] But

Shadwell, although not seriously interested in any side of the subject

save in its use as literary material, included himself among the group

who had given up belief.

What philosophers thought we may guess from the all-pervading influence

of Hobbes in this generation. We have already seen, however, that Henry

More,[53] whose influence in his time was not to be despised, wrote

earnestly and often in support of belief. One other philosopher may be

mentioned. Ralph Cudworth, in his _True Intellectual System_, touched on

confederacies with the Devil and remarked in passing that "there hath

been so full an attestation" of these things "that those our so

confident Exploders of them, in this present Age, can hardly escape the

suspicion of having some Hankring towards Atheism."[54] This was

Glanvill over again. It remains to notice the opinions of clergymen. The

history of witch literature has been in no small degree the record of

clerical opinion. Glanvill, Casaubon, Muggleton, Camfield, and Hallywell

were all clergymen. Fortunately we have the opinions of at least half a

dozen other churchmen. It will be remembered that Oliver Heywood, the

famous Non-Conformist preacher of Lancashire, believed, though not too

implicitly, in witchcraft.[55] So did Samuel Clarke, Puritan divine and

hagiographer.[56] On the same side must be reckoned Nathaniel Wanley,

compiler of a curious work on _The Wonders of the Little World_.[57] A

greater name was that of Isaac Barrow, master of Trinity, teacher of

Isaac Newton, and one of the best preachers of his time. He declared

that to suppose all witch stories fictions was to "charge the world with

both extreme Vanity and Malignity."[58] We can cite only one divine on

the other side. This was Samuel Parker, who in his time played many

parts, but who is chiefly remembered as the Bishop of Oxford during the

troubles of James II with the university. Parker was one of the most

disliked ecclesiastics of his time, but he deserves praise at any rate

for his stand as to witchcraft. We do not know the details of his

opinions; indeed we have nothing more than the fact that in a

correspondence with Glanvill he questioned the opinions of that

distinguished protagonist of witchcraft.[59]

By this time it must be clear that there is possible no hard and fast

discrimination by groups between those that believed in witchcraft and

those that did not. We may say cautiously that through the seventies and

eighties the judges, and probably too the justices of the peace,[60]

were coming to disbelieve. With even greater caution we may venture the

assertion that the clergy, both Anglican and Non-Conformist, were still

clinging to the superstition. Further generalization would be extremely

hazardous. It looks, however, from the evidence already presented, as

well as from some to be given in another connection--in discussing the

Royal Society[61]--as if the scientists had not taken such a stand as

was to be expected of them.

When we examine the attitude of those who scoffed at the stories vouched

for by Glanvill and More it becomes evident that they assumed that

practically all thinking men were with them. In other words, they

believed that their group comprised the intellectual men of the time.

Now, it would be easy to rush to the conclusion that all men who thought

in conventional ways would favor witchcraft, and that those who took

unconventional views would be arrayed on the other side, but this would

be a mistake. Glanvill was an exceedingly original man, while Muggleton

was uncommonly commonplace; and there were numbered among those who held

to the old opinion men of high intelligence and brilliant talents.

We must search, then, for some other basis of classification. Glanvill

gives us an interesting suggestion. In withering tone he speaks of the

"looser gentry and lesser pretenders to wit." Here is a possible line of

cleavage. Might it be that the more worldly-minded among the county

families, that those too who comprised what we may call, in the absence

of a better term, the "smart set," and the literary sets of London, were

especially the "deriders" of superstition? It is not hard to believe

that Shadwell, the worldly Bishop Parker, and the polished Sir William

Temple[62] would fairly reflect the opinions of that class. So too the

diarist Pepys, who found Glanvill "not very convincing." We can conceive

how the ridicule of the supernatural might have become the fad of a

certain social group. The Mompesson affair undoubtedly possessed

elements of humor; the wild tales about Amy Duny and Rose Cullender

would have been uncommonly diverting, had they not produced such tragic

results. With the stories spun about Julian Cox the witch accusers could

go no farther. They had reached the culmination of nonsense. Now, it is

conceivable that the clergyman might not see the humor of it, nor the

philosopher, nor the scholar; but the worldly-minded Londoner, who cared

less about texts in Leviticus than did his father, who knew more about

coffee-houses and plays, and who cultivated clever people with

assiduity, had a better developed sense of humor. It was not strange

that he should smile quizzically when told these weird stories from the

country. He may not have pondered very deeply on the abstract question

nor read widely--perhaps he had seen Ady's book or glanced over

Scot's--but, when he met keen men in his group who were laughing quietly

at narratives of witchcraft, he laughed too. And so, quite

unobtrusively, without blare of trumpets, skepticism would slip into

society. It would be useless for Glanvill and More to call aloud, or for

the people to rage. The classes who mingled in the worldly life of the

capital would scoff; and the country gentry who took their cue from them

would follow suit.

Of course this is theory. It would require a larger body of evidence

than we can hope to gather on this subject to prove that the change of

opinion that was surely taking place spread at first through the higher

social strata and was to reach the lower levels only by slow filtration.

Yet such an hypothesis fits in nicely with certain facts. It has

already been seen that the trials for witchcraft dropped off very

suddenly towards the end of the period we are considering. The drop was

accounted for by the changed attitude of judges and of justices of the

peace. The judges avoided trying witches,[63] the justices were less

diligent in discovering them. But the evidence that we had about men of

other occupations was less encouraging. It looked as if those who

dispensed justice were in advance of the clergy, of the scholars,

physicians, and scientists of their time. Had the Master of Trinity, or

the physician of Norwich, or the discoverer of the air pump been the

justices of the peace for England, it is not incredible that

superstition would have flourished for another generation. Was it

because the men of the law possessed more of the matter-of-factness

supposed to be a heritage of every Englishman? Was it because their

special training gave them a saner outlook? No doubt both elements help

to explain the difference. But is it not possible to believe that the

social grouping of these men had an influence? The itinerant justices

and the justices of the peace were recruited from the gentry, as none of

the other classes were. Men like Reresby and North inherited the

traditions of their class; they spent part of the year in London and

knew the talk of the town. Can we doubt that their decisions were

influenced by that fact? The country justice of the peace was removed

often enough from metropolitan influences, but he was usually quick to

catch the feelings of his own class.

If our theory be true that the jurists were in advance of other

professions and that they were sprung of a higher stock, it is of course

some confirmation of the larger theory that witchcraft was first

discredited among the gentry. Yet, as we have said before, this is at

best a guess as to how the decline of belief took place and must be

accepted only provisionally. We have seen that there are other

assertions about the progress of thought in this period that may be

ventured with much confidence. There had been great changes of opinion.

It would not be fair to say that the movement towards skepticism had

been accelerated. Rather, the movement which had its inception back in

the days of Reginald Scot and had found in the last days of James I a

second impulse, which had been quietly gaining force in the thirties,

forties, and fifties, was now under full headway. Common sense was

coming into its own.

[1] Ferris Greenslet, _Joseph Glanvill_ (New York, 1900), 153. The

writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Greenslet's

excellent book on Glanvill.

[2] The _Scepsis Scientifica_ was really _The Vanity of Dogmatising_

(1661) recast.

[3] See, for example, the introductory essay by John Owen in his edition

(London, 1885), of the _Scepsis Scientifica_, xxvii, xxix. See also

_Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (citations are all from the edition of 1681),

7, 13.

[4] So at least says Leslie Stephen, _Dict. Nat. Biog._ Glanvill

himself, in _Essays on Several Important Subjects_ (1676), says that the

sixth essay, "Philosophical Considerations against Modern Sadducism,"

had been printed four times already, _i. e._, before 1676. The edition

of 1668 had been revised.

[5] This edition was dedicated to Charles, Duke of Richmond and Lenox,

since His Grace had been "pleased to commend the first and more

imperfect Edition."

[6] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Preface, F 3 verso, F 4; see also p. 10.

In the second part see Preface, Aa 2--Aa 3. In several other places he

has insisted upon this point.

[7] See _ibid._, 9 ff., 18 ff., 21 ff., 34 ff.

[8] _Ibid._, 32, 34.

[9] _Ibid._, 11-13.

[10] See, for example, _ibid._, 88-89.

[11] _Ibid._, 25-27.

[12] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 39.

[13] _Ibid._, 52-53.

[14] To the argument that witches are not mentioned in the New Testament

he retorted that neither is North America (_ibid._, 82).

[15] _Ibid._, 78.

[16] Nevertheless he took up some of Scot's points.

[17] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Preface.

[18] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, pt. ii, 3.

[19] See _ibid._, pt. ii, Relation VIII.

[20] _Scepsis Scientifica_ (ed. of 1885), 179.

[21] London, 1668. It was reprinted in 1672 with the title _A Treatise

proving Spirits, Witches, and Supernatural Operations by pregnant

instances and evidences_.

[22] See above, pp. 239-240.

[23] _Of Credulity and Incredulity_, 29, 30.

[24] He characterizes Reginald Scot as an illiterate wretch, but admits

that he had never read him. It was Wierus whom he chiefly sought to

confute.

[25] He was given also to "strong and high tasted liquors." Anthony a

Wood, _Athenae Oxonienses_ (London, 1691-1692; 3d ed., with additions,

London, 1813-1820), ed. of 1813-1820, III, 11-14.

[26] _The Question of Witchcraft Debated_ (London, 1669), 64.

[27] 1670 (see above, p. 293).

[28] _The Opinion of Witchcraft Vindicated. In an Answer to a Book

Intituled The Question of Witchcraft Debated_ (London, 1670).

[29] _A True Interpretation of the Witch of Endor_ (London, 1669).

[30] "By a Pen neer the Convent of Eluthery."

[31] London, 1676.

[32] To Professor Burr I owe my knowledge of this ascription. The

translator (the English Quaker, William Sewel, all his life a resident

of Holland), calls him "N. Orchard, Predikant in Nieuw-Engeland."

[33] See _Doctrine of Devils_, chaps. VII, VIII, and _cf._ Scot,

_Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 512-514.

[34] Glanvill had answered a somewhat similar argument, that the

miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of the Devil.

[35] He said also that, if the Devil could take on "men's shapes, forms,

habits, countenances, tones, gates, statures, ages, complexions ... and

act in the shape assumed," there could be absolutely no certainty about

the proceedings of justice.

[36] The book had been written four years earlier.

[37] See G. L. Kittredge, "Notes on Witchcraft," in American Antiquarian

Soc., _Proceedings_, n. s., XVIII (1906-1907), 169-176.

[38] There is, however, no little brilliance and insight in some of

Webster's reasoning.

[39] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 38-41.

[40] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 53.

[41] _Ibid._, 68.

[42] _The Witch-Persecutions_ (University of Pennsylvania Translations

and Reprints, vol. III, no. 4), revised ed. (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 1.

[43] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 247-248.

[44] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 308, 312 ff. The astral spirit

which he conceived was not unlike More's and Glanvill's "thin and

tenuous substance."

[45] _Ibid._, 294 ff.

[46] _Ibid._, 219-228.

[47] The author of _The Doctrine of Devils_ (see above, note 32), was

thorough-going enough, but his work seems to have attracted much less

attention.

[48] London, 1678.

[49] John Brinley, "Gentleman," brought out in 1680 _A Discovery of the

Impostures of Witches and Astrologers_. Portions of his book would pass

for good thinking until one awakens to the feeling that he has read

something like this before. As a matter of fact Brinley had stolen the

line of thought and much of the phrasing from Richard Bernard (1627, see

above, pp. 234-236), and without giving any credit. A second edition of

Brinley's work was issued in 1686. It was the same in every respect save

that the dedication was omitted and the title changed to _A Discourse

Proving by Scripture and Reason and the Best Authors Ancient and Modern

that there are Witches_.

Henry Hallywell, a Cambridge master of arts and sometime fellow of

Christ's College, issued in 1681 _Melampronoea, or a Discourse of the

Polity and Kingdom of Darkness, Together with a Solution of the chiefest

Objections brought against the Being of Witches_. Hallywell was another

in the long list of Cambridge men who defended superstition. He set

about to assail the "over-confident Exploders of Immaterial Substances"

by a course of logical deductions from Scripture. His treatise is slow

reading.

Richard Bovet, "Gentleman," gave the world in 1684 _Pandaemonium, or the

Devil's Cloyster; being a further Blow to Modern Sadduceism_. There was

nothing new about his discussion, which he dedicates to Dr. Henry More.

His attitude was defensive in the extreme. He was consumed with

indignation at disbelievers: "They oppose their simple _ipse dixit_

against the most unquestionable Testimonies"; they even dare to "affront

that relation of the Daemon of Tedworth." He was indeed cast down over

the situation. He himself relates a very patent instance of witchcraft

in Somerset; yet, despite the fact that numerous physicians agreed on

the matter, no "justice was applyed." One of Bovet's chief purposes in

his work was to show "the Confederacy of several Popes and Roman Priests

with the Devil." He makes one important admission in regard to

witchcraft; namely, that the confessions of witches might sometimes be

the result of "a Deep Melancholy, or some Terrour that they may have

been under."

[50] _Works_, ed. of 1835-1836, IV, 389.

[51] For Boyle's opinions see also Webster, _Displaying of Supposed

Witchcraft_, 248.

[52] He says also: "For my part I am ... somewhat cotive of belief. The

evidences I have represented are natural, viz., slight, and frivolous,

such as poor old women were wont to be hang'd upon." The play may be

found in all editions of Shadwell's works. I have used the rare

privately printed volume in which, under the title of _The Poetry of

Witchcraft_ (Brixton Hill, 1853), J. O. Halliwell [-Phillips] united

this play of Shadwell's with that of Heywood and Brome on _The late

Lancashire Witches_. These two plays, so similar in title, that of

Heywood and Brome in 1634, based on the case of 1633, and that of

Shadwell in 1682, based on the affair of 1612, must not be confused. See

above pp. 121, 158-160, 244-245.

[53] See above, pp. 238-239.

[54] _The True Intellectual System of the Universe_ (London, 1678), 702.

[55] See above, p. 256 and note.

[56] See his _Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons_ (London, 1683), 172; also

his _Mirrour or Looking Glass, Both for Saints and Sinners_ (London,

1657-1671), I, 35-38; II, 159-183.

[57] London, 1678; see pp. 515-518.

[58] _Works_ (ed. of Edinburgh, 1841), II, 162.

[59] Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 80.

[60] By the eighties it is very clear that the justices were ceasing to

press charges against witches.

[61] In an article to be published separately.

[62] See his essay "Of Poetry" in his _Works_ (London, 1814), III,

430-431.

[63] Justice Jeffreys and Justice Herbert both acquitted witches

according to F. A. Inderwick, _Sidelights on the Stuarts_ (2d ed.,

London, 1891), 174.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FINAL DECLINE.

In the history of witchcraft the years from 1688 to 1718 may be grouped

together as comprising a period. This is not to say that the year of the

Revolution marked any transition in the course of the superstition. It

did not. But we have ventured to employ it as a convenient date with

which to bound the influences of the Restoration. The year 1718 derives

its importance for us from the publication, in that year, of Francis

Hutchinson's _Historical Essay on Witchcraft_, a book which, it is not

too much to say, gave the final blow to the belief in England.[1]