For convenience, the masculine offender is in demonology classed under
the female designation. According to Michelet and other authorities
there were ten thousand alleged witches for each alleged wizard! and
anyhow there is little etiquette as to the precedence of ladies in
criminal matters.
The first English Statute dealing directly with witches appears to be
the thirty-third of Henry VIII (1541) which brought into the list of
felonies persons “devising or practising conjurations, witchcraftes,
sorcerie or inchantments or the digging up of corpses,” and depriving
such of the benefit of clergy. It was however repealed by I Edward VI
Cap. 12, and again by I Mary (in its first section.). Queen Elizabeth,
however, passed another Act (5 Elizabeth Cap. 16) practically repeating
that of her father, which had been in abeyance for more than thirty
years. The Statute of Elizabeth is exceedingly interesting in that it
states the condition of the law at that time. The opening words leave
no misunderstanding:
“Whereas at this day there is no ordinary nor condigne punishment
provided against the wicked offences of conjurations or
invocations of evil spirits, or of sorceries, inchantments,
charmes or witchcraftes, which be practised to the obstruction
of the persons and goods of the Queene’s subjects, or for other
lewd purposes. Be it enacted that if any person or persons
after the first day of June next coming, shall use practice, or
exercise any invocations, or conjurations, of evill or wicked
spirits, to or for any intent or purpose, or else if any person
or persons after the said first day of June shall use, practice
or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charme or sorcerie,
whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroied, that
then as well every such offendour or offendours in invocations,
or conjurations, as is aforesayde, their aydours and counsellors,
as also everie such offendour or offendours in that Witchcrafte,
enchantment, charme or sorcerie whereby the death of any person
doth ensue, their ayders and counsellors, being of eyther of
the sayde offences lawfully convicted and attainted, shall
suffer paines of death, as a felon or felons, and shall lose the
privilege and benefit of Clergy and sanctuary,” &c.
In this act lesser penalties are imposed for using any form of
witchcraft or sorcery, for inducing to any persons harm, or to “provoke
any person to unlawfull love or to hurt or destroy any person in his
or her bodye, member or goods,” or for the discovery or recovery of
treasure. From that time down to the first quarter of the eighteenth
century, when the law practically died out, witchcraft had its place in
the category of legal offences. The law was finally repealed by an Act
in the tenth year of George II. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were the time of witch-fever, and in that period, especially in its
earlier days when the belief had become epidemic, it was ruthless and
destructive. It is said that in Genoa five hundred persons were burned
within three months in the year 1515, and a thousand in the diocese of
Como in a year. Round numbers in such matters are to be distrusted,
as we find they seldom bear investigation; but there is little doubt
that in France and Germany vast numbers suffered and perished. Even in
more prosaic and less emotional England there were many thousands of
judicial murders in this wise. It is asserted that within two centuries
they totalled thirty thousand.
It is startling to find such a weird and impossible credulity actually
rooted in the Statute book of one’s own country, and that there are
records of judges charging juries to convict. Sir Matthew Hale, a great
lawyer, a judge of the Common Pleas in 1654, and Lord Chief Justice in
1671, was a firm believer in witchcraft. He was a grave and pious man,
and all his life was an ardent student of theology as well as of law.
And yet in 1664 he sentenced women to be burned as witches. In 1716 a
mother and daughter--the latter only nine years of age--were hanged in
Huntingdon. In Scotland the last case of a woman being condemned as a
witch occurred at Dornoch in 1722.
It is no easy task in these days, which are rationalistic, iconoclastic
and enquiring, to understand how the commonalty not only believed
in witchcraft but acted on that belief. Probably the most tolerant
view we can take, is that both reason and enquiry are essential
and rudimentary principles of human nature. Every person of normal
faculties likes to know and understand the reasons of things;
and inquisitiveness is not posterior to the period of maternal
alimentation. If we seek for a cause we are bound to find one--even
if it be wrong. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_ has a wide if not always
a generous meaning; and when fear is founded on, if not inspired by
ignorance, that unthinking ferocity which is one of our birthrights
from Adam is apt to carry us further than we ever meant to go. In an
age more clear-seeing than our own and less selfish we shall not think
so poorly of primitive emotions as we are at present apt to. On the
contrary we shall begin to understand that in times when primitivity
holds sway, we are most in touch with the loftiest things we are
capable of understanding, and our judgment, being complex, is most
exact. Indeed in this branch of the subject persons used to call to aid
a special exercise of our natural forces--the æsthetic. When witchcraft
was a belief, the common idea was that that noxious power was almost
entirely held by the old and ugly. The young, fresh, and beautiful,
were seldom accepted as witches save by the novelty-loving few or
those of sensual nature. This was perhaps fortunate--if the keeping
down of the population in this wise was necessary; it is easier as
well as safer to murder the uncomely than those of greater charm. In
any case there was no compunction about obliterating the former class.
The general feeling was much the same as that in our own time which in
sporting circles calls for the destruction of vermin.
It will thus be seen that the profession of witchcraft, if occasionally
lucrative, was nevertheless always accompanied with danger and
execration. This was natural enough since the belief which made
witchcraft dangerous was based on fear. It is not too much to say that
in every case, professed witchcraft was an expression of fraudulent
intent. Such pity, therefore, as the subject allows of must be confined
to the guiltless victims who, despite blameless life, were tried by
passion, judged by frenzy, and executed by remorseless desperation.
There could be no such thing as quantitative analysis of guilt with
regard to the practice of witchcraft: any kind of playing with the
subject was a proof of _some_ kind of wrongful intent, and was to be
judged with Draconian severity. Doubtless it was a very simple way
of dealing with evils, much resembling the medical philosophy of the
Chinese. The whole logic of it can be reduced to a sorites. Any change
from the normal is the work of the devil--or _a_ devil as the case
may be. Find out the normal residence of that especial devil--which
is in some human being. Destroy the devil’s dwelling. You get rid of
the devil. It is pure savagery of the most primitive kind. And it
is capable of expansion, for logic is a fertile plant, and when its
premises are wrong it has the fecundity of a weed. Before even a savage
can have time to breathe, his logic is piling so fast on him that he
is smothered. If a human being is a devil then the club which destroys
him or her is an incarnation of good, and so a god to be worshipped in
some form--or at any rate to be regarded with esteem, like a sword,
or a legal wig, or a stethoscope, or a paint-brush, or a shovel,
or a compass, or a drinking-vessel, or a pen. If all the necessary
conditions of life and sanity and comfort were on so primitive a base,
what an easy world it would be to live in!
One benefit there was in witchcraft, though it was not recognised
officially as such at the time. It created a new industry--a whole
crop of industries. It is of the nature of belief that it encourages
belief--not always of exactly the same kind--but of some form which
intelligence can turn into profit. We cannot find any good in the new
industry--grapes do not grow on thorns nor figs on thistles. The sum
of human happiness was in no sense augmented; but at least a good deal
of money or money’s worth changed hands; which, after all, is as much
as most of the great financiers can point to as the result of long and
strenuous success. In the organisation of this form of crime there were
many classes, of varying risks and of benefits in inverse ratio to
them. For the ordinary rule of finance holds even here: large interest
means bad security. First there were the adventurers themselves who
took the great risks of life and its collaterals--esteem, happiness,
&c. The money obtained by this class was usually secured by fraudulent
sales of worthless goods or by the simple old financial device of
blackmail. Then there were those who were in reality merely parasites
on the pleasing calling--those timorous souls who let “‘I dare not’
wait upon ‘I would’ like the poor cat i’ the adage.” These were
altogether in a poorer way of trade than their bolder brothers and
sisters. They lacked courage, and sometimes even sufficient malice
for the proper doing of their work; with the result that success
seldom attended them at all, and never heartily. But at any rate they
could not complain of inadequate punishment; whenever religious zeal
flamed up they were generally prominent victims. They can in reality
only be regarded as specimens of parasitic growth. Then there came
the class known in French criminal circles as _agents provocateurs_,
whose business was not only to further ostensible crime but to work
up the opposition against it. Either branch of their art would
probably be inadequate; but by linking their services they managed to
eke out a livelihood. Lastly there was the lowest grade of all, the
Witch-finder--a loathly calling, comparable only to the class or guild
of “paraskistae” or “rippers” in the ritual of the Mummy industry of
ancient Egypt.
Of these classes we may I think consider some choice specimens--so
far as we may fittingly investigate the _personnel_ of a by-gone
industry. Of the main body, that of Wizards and Witches or those
pretending to the cult, let us take Doctor Dee and Madame Voisin, and
Sir Edward Kelley and Mother Damnable--thus representing the method of
the procession of the unclean animals from the Ark. Of the class of
Witchfinders one example will probably be as much as we can stand, and
we will naturally take the one who obtained fame in his calling--namely
Matthew Hopkins, who stands forth like Satan, “by merit raised to that
bad eminence.”