NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT
BY
GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE
REPRINTED FROM THE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
VOLUME XVIII
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
THE DAVIS PRESS
1907
NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT.
BY GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE.
We are all specialists now-a-days, I suppose. The good old times of
the polymath and the Doctor Universalis are gone forever. Yet signs
are not wanting that some of us are alive to the danger of building
our party-walls too high. In one respect, at all events, there can be
no doubt that the investigators of New England antiquities are aware
of their peril, though they occasionally shut their eyes to it,--I
mean, the tendency to consider the Colonists as a peculiar people,
separated from the Mother Country not only geographically, but also
with regard to those currents of thought and feeling which are the most
significant facts of history. True, there is more or less justification
for that kind of study which looks at the annals of America as
ends-in-themselves; but such study is ticklish business, and it now
and then distorts the perspective in a rather fantastic way. This is
a rank truism. Still, commonplaces are occasionally steadying to the
intellect, and Dr. Johnson--whose own truths have been characterized by
a brilliant critic as “too true”--knew what he was about when he said
that men usually need not so much to be informed as to be reminded.
The darkest page of New England history is, by common consent, that
which is inscribed with the words Salem Witchcraft. The hand of the
apologist trembles as it turns the leaf. The reactionary writer who
prefers iconoclasm to hero-worship sharpens his pen and pours fresh
gall into his inkpot when he comes to this sinister subject. Let us try
to consider the matter, for a few minutes, unemotionally, and to that
end let us pass in review a number of facts which may help us to look
at the Witchcraft Delusion of 1692 in its due proportions,--not as an
abnormal outbreak of fanaticism, not as an isolated tragedy, but as a
mere incident, a brief and transitory episode in the biography of a
terrible, but perfectly natural, superstition.
In the first place, we know that the New Englanders did not invent the
belief in witchcraft.[1] It is a universally human belief. No race or
nation is exempt from it. Formerly, it was an article in the creed of
everybody in the world, and it is still held, in some form or other,
and to a greater or less extent, by a large majority of mankind.[2]
Further, our own attitude of mind toward witchcraft is a very modern
attitude indeed. To us, one who asserts the existence, or even the
possibility, of the crime of witchcraft staggers under a burden of
proof which he cannot conceivably support. His thesis seems to us
unreasonable, abnormal, monstrous; it can scarcely be stated in
intelligible terms; it savors of madness. Now, before we can do any
kind of justice to our forefathers,--a matter, be it remembered, of no
moment to them, for they have gone to their reward, but, I take it, of
considerable importance to us,--we must empty our heads of all such
rationalistic ideas. To the contemporaries of William Stoughton and
Samuel Sewall the existence of this crime was not merely an historical
phenomenon, it was a fact of contemporary experience. Whoever denied
the occurrence of witchcraft in the past, was an atheist; whoever
refused to admit its actual possibility in the present, was either
stubbornly incredulous, or destitute of the ability to draw an
inference. Throughout the seventeenth century, very few persons could
be found--not merely in New England, but in the whole world--who would
have ventured to take so radical a position. That there had been
witches and sorcerers in antiquity was beyond cavil. That there were,
or might be, witches and sorcerers in the present was almost equally
certain. The crime was recognized by the Bible, by all branches of the
Church, by philosophy, by natural science, by the medical faculty, by
the law of England. I do not offer these postulates as novelties. They
are commonplaces. They will not be attacked by anybody who has even a
slight acquaintance with the mass of testimony that might be adduced to
establish them.
It is a common practice to ascribe the tenets of the New Englanders in
the matter of witchcraft to something peculiar about their religious
opinions,--to what is loosely called their Puritan theology. This is a
very serious error. The doctrines of our forefathers differed, in this
regard, from the doctrines of the Roman and the Anglican Church in no
essential,--one may safely add, in no particular. Lord Bacon was not
a Puritan,--yet he has left his belief in sorcery recorded in a dozen
places. James I. was not a Puritan,[3] but his Dæmonologie (1597) is a
classic treatise, his zeal in prosecuting sorcerers is notorious, and
his statute of 1603[4] was the act under which Matthew Hopkins, in the
time of the Commonwealth, sent two hundred witches to the gallows in
two years,--nearly ten times as many as perished in Massachusetts from
the first settlement to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-Finder General, apparently _was_ a Puritan.
Indeed, it is his career, more than anything that ever happened in New
England, which has led to the reiterated statement that Puritanism was
especially favorable, by its temper and its tenets, to prosecution for
witchcraft. For his activity falls in the time of the Commonwealth,
and the Parliament granted a Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer,
in 1645, to try some of the witches that he had detected, and Edmund
Calamy was associated with the Commission. But, on the other hand,
it must be noted that John Gaule, who opposed Hopkins and is usually
credited with most influence in putting an end to his performances, was
also a Puritan,--and a minister likewise, and a believer in witches
as well. The Hopkins outbreak, as we shall see, must be laid to the
disturbed condition of the country rather than to the prevalence of
any particular system of theology.[5] Under Cromwell’s government,
witch trials languished, not because the belief in witchcraft changed,
but because there was order once more. So in Scotland, the conquest
by Cromwell checked one of the fiercest prosecutions ever known. The
Restoration was followed, both in England and in Scotland, by a marked
recrudescence of prosecution.[6]
But we must return to Matthew Hopkins. Let us see how his discoveries
affected James Howell. In 1647 Howell writes to Endymion Porter: “We
have likewise multitudes of _Witches_ among us, for in _Essex_ and
_Suffolk_ there were above two hundred indicted within these two
years, and above the one half of them executed: More, I may well
say, than ever this Island bred since the Creation, I speak it with
horror. God guard us from the Devil, for I think he was never so busy
upon any part of the Earth that was enlightned with the beams of
_Christianity_; nor do I wonder at it, for there’s never a Cross left
to fright him away.”[7] In the following year, Howell writes to Sir
Edward Spencer an elaborate defence of the current tenets in witchcraft
and demonology.[8] One striking passage demands quotation:--“Since the
beginning of these unnatural Wars, there may be a cloud of Witnesses
produc’d for the proof of this black Tenet: For within the compass of
two years, near upon three hundred Witches were arraign’d, and the
major part executed in _Essex_ and _Suffolk_ only. _Scotland_ swarms
with them now more than ever, and Persons of good Quality executed
daily.”
It is confidently submitted that nobody will accuse Howell of
Puritanism. The letters from which our extracts are taken were written
while he was a prisoner in the Fleet under suspicion of being a
Royalist spy.[9] His mention of the disappearance of crosses throughout
England will not be overlooked by the discriminating reader. It will be
noted also that he seems to have perceived a connection--a real one,
as we shall see later--[10] between the increase in witchcraft and the
turmoil of the Civil War.
Jeremy Taylor was surely no Puritan; but he believed in witchcraft. It
is a sin, he tells us, that is “infallibly desperate,”[11] and in his
Holy Living (1650) he has even given the weight of his authority to the
reality of sexual relations between witches and the devil.[12]
It was not in Puritan times, but in 1664, four years after the
Restoration, that Sir Matthew Hale, then Chief Baron of the Exchequer,
pronounced from the bench the following opinion in the Bury St. Edmunds
case:--“That there were such Creatures as _Witches_ he made no doubt
at all; For _First_, the Scriptures had affirmed so much. _Secondly_,
The wisdom of all Nations had provided Laws against such Persons, which
is an Argument of their confidence of such a crime. And such hath been
the judgment of this Kingdom, as appears by that Act of Parliament[13]
which hath provided Punishments proportionable to the quality of
the Offence. And desired them [the jury], strictly to observe their
Evidence; and desired the great God of Heaven to direct their Hearts in
this weighty thing they had in hand: _For to Condemn the Innocent, and
to let the Guilty go free, were both an Abomination to the Lord_.”[14]
Hale’s words were fraught with momentous consequences, for he was
“allowed on all hands to be the most profound lawyer of his time,”[15]
and the Bury case became a precedent of great weight. “It was,”
writes Cotton Mather, “a Tryal much considered by the Judges of New
England.”[16]
Hale’s conduct on this occasion has of course subjected him to severe
criticism. Lord Campbell, for example, goes so far as to declare
that he “murdered” the old women,--a dictum which shows but slight
comprehension of the temper of the seventeenth century. More creditable
to Campbell’s historical sense is the following passage:--“Although, at
the present day, we regard this trial as a most lamentable exhibition
of credulity and inhumanity, I do not know that it at all lowered
Hale in public estimation in his own life.”[17] Bishop Burnet, as is
well-known, makes no mention of the case in his Life of Hale.[18]
One might surmise that he omitted it out of respect for his hero’s
memory, since his little book is rather an obituary tribute than a
biography. More probably, however, Burnet did not regard the case as
any more significant than many other decisions of Hale’s which he
likewise passed over in silence. Unequivocal evidence that the Bury
trial did not injure Hale’s reputation may be found in the silence of
Roger North. North’s elaborate character of Hale, in his Life of the
Lord Keeper Guilford,[19] is notoriously prejudiced in the extreme.
Though admitting Hale’s legal learning and many good qualities, North
loses no opportunity to attack his record. Besides, North praises
the Lord Keeper for his conduct in procuring the acquittal of an
alleged witch. If, then, the Bury case had seemed to him especially
discreditable, or if he had thought that it afforded an opening for
hostile criticism, we cannot doubt that he would have spoken out in
condemnation. His complete silence on the subject is therefore the
most emphatic testimony to the general approval of Hale’s proceedings.
Highly significant, too, is the fact that even Lord Campbell does not
blame Hale for believing in witchcraft, but only for allowing weight
to the evidence in this particular case. “I would very readily have
pardoned him,” he writes, “for an undoubting belief in witchcraft,
and I should have considered that this belief detracted little from
his character for discernment and humanity. The Holy Scriptures teach
us that, in some ages of the world, wicked persons, by the agency of
evil spirits, were permitted, through means which exceed the ordinary
powers of nature, to work mischief to their fellow-creatures.... In the
reign of Charles II., a judge who from the bench should have expressed
a disbelief in [magic and the black art] would have been thought to
show little respect for human laws, and to be nothing better than an
atheist.” We may profitably compare what Guilford himself (then Francis
North, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) wrote of the Devonshire
witches in 1682,--nearly twenty years after the Bury case:--“We cannot
reprieve them, without appearing to deny the very being of witches,
which, as it is contrary to law, so I think it would be ill for his
Majesty’s service, for it may give the faction occasion to set afoot
the old trade of witch-finding, that may cost many innocent persons
their lives which the justice will prevent.”[20]
Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici, was no Puritan,
and he was one of the leading scientific men of his day. Yet he gave
his opinion, as an expert, at the request of the Court in this same
Bury St. Edmunds case, to the following effect:--“That the Devil
in such cases did work upon the Bodies of Men and Women, upon a
Natural Foundation, (that is) to stir up, and excite such humours
super-abounding in their Bodies to a great excess,”[21] and further,
that “he conceived, that these swouning Fits were Natural, and nothing
else but what they call the Mother,[22] but only heightned 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.”[23]
Browne has been much blamed for this dictum, but there is nothing
unreasonable or unscientific in it, if one merely grants the actuality
of demoniacal possession, which was then to all intents and purposes
an article of faith. If the devil can work upon our bodies at all, of
course he can intensify any natural fits or spasms from which we happen
to be suffering. Thus Browne’s diagnosis of the disease in this case
as hysteria, by no means excluded the hypothesis of _maleficium_. But
most modern writers refuse to discuss such subjects except _de haut en
bas_,--from the vantage-ground of modern science.
Sir Thomas Browne’s view was, it seems, substantially identical
with that of his predecessor, the famous Robert Burton,--no Puritan
either!--who has a whole subsection “Of Witches and Magitians, how
they cause Melancholy,” asserting that what “they can doe, is as much
almost as the Diuell himselfe, who is still ready to satisfie their
desires, to oblige them the more vnto him.”[24]
Joseph Glanvill, the author of The Vanity of Dogmatizing, was no
Puritan,[25] but a skeptical philosopher, a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles II.; neither was
his friend, Dr. Henry More, the most celebrated of the Cambridge
Platonists. Yet these two scholars and latitudinarians joined forces
to produce that extraordinary treatise, Saducismus Triumphatus: or, A
Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions. This book,
an enlarged form of Glanvill’s Philosophical Considerations concerning
Witchcraft (1666), was published in 1681, and went through no less than
five editions, the last appearing as late as 1726.[26] It was thought
to have put the belief in apparitions and witchcraft on an unshakable
basis of science and philosophy.[27] No English work on the subject had
a more powerful influence. When the Rev. John Hale, of Beverley, wrote
his Modest Enquiry,[28] which deplored the Salem excesses and protested
against spectral evidence,--a notable treatise, published, with a
prefatory epistle from the venerable Higginson,[29] in 1702,--he was
able to condense the affirmative part of his argument, because, as he
himself says, Glanvill “hath strongly proved the being of Witches.”[30]
Dr. Meric Casaubon, Prebend of Canterbury, was not a Puritan; yet the
second part of his Credulity and Incredulity (1668) contains a vigorous
assertion of demonology and witch-lore, and was republished in 1672
under the alluring title, A Treatise Proving Spirits, Witches and
Supernatural Operations by Pregnant Instances and Evidences.[31]
Ralph Cudworth, the antagonist of Hobbes, was not a Puritan. Yet in his
great Intellectual System he declares for the existence of sorcery,
and even admits a distinction between its higher operations--as in the
θεουργία [Greek: theourgia] of Apollonius of Tyana[32]--and the vulgar
performances of everyday wizards.[33] There is some reason, too, for
supposing that Cudworth took part with Henry More in examining certain
witches at Cambridge, and heard one of them try to recite the Creed and
the Lord’s Prayer, as she had offered to do “as an argument she was no
witch.”[34]
Robert Boyle, the improver of the air-pump and the discoverer of
Boyle’s Law, had “particular and considerable advantages to persuade
[him], upon good grounds” that some witch stories are true, and he
thought that Glanvill’s investigations would do “a good service to
religion.”[35] This was in 1677. In the following year Boyle declared
his belief[36] in the performances of the devil of Mascon.[37] Boyle’s
religious views did not hinder him from being a leader in that fervor
of scientific experimentation which is one of the glories of the latter
half of the seventeenth century. And he too was not a Puritan.
Isaac Barrow, the master of Newton, was not a Puritan. Yet he left on
record, in one of his sermons, one of the most powerful and eloquent
of all protests against disbelief in the kind of phenomena which our
ancestors are so often attacked for crediting. The passage is long, but
must be quoted in full, for every word is of weight:--
“I may adjoin to the former sorts of extraordinary actions,
some other sorts, the consideration of which (although
not so directly and immediately) may serve our main
design; those (which the general opinion of mankind hath
approved, and manifold testimony hath declared frequently
to happen) which concern apparitions from another world,
as it were, of beings unusual; concerning spirits haunting
persons and places, (these discerned by all senses, and
by divers kinds of effects;) of which the old world (the
ancient poets and historians) did speak so much, and of
which all ages have afforded several attestations very
direct and plain, and having all advantages imaginable
to beget credence; concerning visions made unto persons
of especial eminency and influence, (to priests and
prophets;) concerning presignifications of future events
by dreams; concerning the power of enchantments, implying
the cooperation of invisible powers; concerning all sorts
of intercourse and confederacy (formal or virtual) with
bad spirits: all which things he that shall affirm to be
mere fiction and delusion, must thereby with exceeding
immodesty and rudeness charge the world with extreme both
vanity and malignity; many, if not all, worthy historians,
of much inconsiderateness or fraud; most lawgivers, of
great silliness and rashness; most judicatories, of high
stupidity or cruelty; a vast number of witnesses, of the
greatest malice or madness; all which concurred to assert
these matters of fact.
“It is true, no question, but there have been many vain
pretences, many false reports, many unjust accusations, and
some undue decisions concerning these matters; that the
vulgar sort is apt enough to be abused about them; that
even intelligent and considerate men may at a distance
in regard to some of them be imposed upon; but, as there
would be no false gems obtruded, if there were no true ones
found in nature; as no counterfeit coin would appear, were
there no true one current; so neither can we well suppose
that a confidence in some to feign, or a readiness in most
to believe, stories of this kind could arise, or should
subsist, without some real ground, or without such things
having in gross somewhat of truth and reality. However,
that the wiser and more refined sort of men, highest in
parts and improvements both from study and experience,
(indeed the flower of every commonwealth; statesmen,
lawgivers, judges, and priests,) upon so many occasions
of great importance, after most deliberate scanning such
pretences and reports, should so often suffer themselves
to be deluded, to the extreme injury of particular persons
concerned, to the common abusing of mankind, to the hazard
of their own reputation in point of wisdom and honesty,
seems nowise reasonable to conceive. In likelihood rather
the whole kind of all these things, were it altogether
vain and groundless, would upon so frequent and so mature
discussions have appeared to be so, and would consequently
long since have been disowned, exploded, and thrust out of
the world; for, as upon this occasion it is said in Tully,
‘Time wipeth out groundless conceits, but confirms that
which is founded in nature, and real.’
“Now if the truth and reality of these things, (all or any
of them,) inferring the existence of powers invisible, at
least inferior ones, though much superior to us in all sort
of ability, be admitted, it will at least (as removing the
chief obstacles of incredulity) confer much to the belief
of that supreme Divinity, which our Discourse strives to
maintain.”[38]
Dr. George Hickes, of Thesaurus fame, was one of the most eminent
scholars of his time. He was also a Non-juror, and titular Bishop of
Thetford. In other words, he was not a Puritan. Yet in 1678 Hickes
published an account of the infamous Major Weir, the most celebrated
of all Scottish wizards, which betrays no skepticism on the cardinal
points of sorcery.[39] There is also an extremely interesting letter
from the Doctor to Mr. Pepys, dated June 19, 1700, which indicates a
belief in witchcraft and second sight. The most curious part of this
letter, however, deals with Elf Arrows. “I have another strange story,”
writes Dr. Hickes, “but very well attested, of an Elf arrow, that was
shot at a venerable Irish Bishop by an Evil Spirit in a terrible noise,
louder than thunder, which shaked the house where the Bishop was; but
this I reserve for his son to tell you, who is one of the deprived
Irish Clergymen, and very well known, as by other excellent pieces, so
by his late book, entitled, ‘The Snake in the Grass.’”[40] What would
the critics say if this passage were found in a work of Cotton Mather’s?
Finally, it is not amiss to remember that the tolerant, moderate,
and scholarly John Evelyn, whom nobody will accuse of being a
Puritan, made the following entry in his Diary under February 3d,
1692-3:--“Unheard-of stories of the universal increase of Witches in
New England; men, women and children devoting themselves to the devil,
so as to threaten the subversion of the government. At the same time
there was a conspiracy amongst the negroes in Barbadoes to murder all
their masters, discovered by overhearing a discourse of two of the
slaves, and so preventing the execution of the designe.” There is no
indication that Evelyn regarded either of these conspiracies as less
possible of occurrence than the other.[41]
Most of these passages are sufficiently well known, and their
significance in the abstract is cheerfully granted, I suppose, by
everybody. But the cumulative effect of so much testimony from
non-Puritans is, I fear, now and then disregarded or overlooked by
writers who concern themselves principally with the annals of New
England. Yet the bearing of the evidence is plain enough. The Salem
outbreak was not due to Puritanism; it is not assignable to any
peculiar temper on the part of our New England ancestors; it is no
sign of exceptional bigotry or abnormal superstition. Our forefathers
believed in witchcraft, not because they were Puritans, not because
they were Colonials, not because they were New Englanders,--but because
they were men of their time. They shared the feelings and beliefs of
the best hearts and wisest heads of the seventeenth century. What more
can be asked of them?[42]
I am well aware that there are a few distinguished names that are
always entered on the other side of the account, and some of them we
must now consider. It would be unpardonable to detract in any manner
from the dear-bought fame of such forerunners of a better dispensation.
But we must not forget that they were forerunners. They occupy a much
more conspicuous place in modern books than they occupied in the minds
of their contemporaries.[43] Further, if we listen closely to the words
of these voices in the wilderness, we shall find that they do not sound
in unison, and that then testimony is not in all cases precisely what
we should infer from the loose statements often made about them.
Johann Wier, or Weyer (1515-1588), deserves all the honor he has ever
received. He devoted years to the study of demonology, and brought
his great learning, and his vast experience as a physician, to bear
on the elucidation of the whole matter.[44] He held that many of the
performances generally ascribed to devils and witches were impossible,
and that the witches themselves were deluded. But there is another
side to the picture. Wier’s book is crammed full of what we should
now-a-days regard as the grossest superstition. He credited Satan and
his attendant demons with extensive powers. He believed that the fits
of the so-called bewitched persons were due in large part to demoniacal
possession or obsession, and that the witches themselves, though
innocent of what was alleged against them, were in many cases under
the influence of the devil, who made them think that they had entered
into infernal compacts, and ridden through the air on broomsticks, and
killed their neighbors’ pigs, and caused disease or death by occult
means. And further, he was convinced that such persons as Faust, whom
he called _magi_, were acquainted with strange and damnable arts, and
that they were worthy of death and their books of the fire. One example
may serve to show the world-wide difference between Wier’s mental
attitude and our own.
One of the best known symptoms of bewitchment was the vomiting of
bones, nails, needles, balls of wool, bunches of hair, and other
things, some of which were so large that they could not have passed
through the throat by any natural means.[45] Such phenomena, Wier
tells us, he had himself seen. How were they to be explained? Easily,
according to Wier’s general theory. Such articles, he says, are put
into the patient’s mouth by the devil; one after another, as fast as
they come out. We cannot see him do this,--either because he acts so
rapidly that his motions are invisible, or because he fascinates our
sight, or because he darkens our eyes, perhaps by interposing between
them and the patient some aërial body.[46]
The instability of Wier’s position should not be brought against him
as a reproach, since he was far in advance of his contemporaries, and
since his arguments against the witch dogma are the foundation of
all subsequent skepticism on the subject.[47] Besides, it is certain
that such a thorough-going denial of the devil’s power as Bekker
made a century later would have utterly discredited Wier’s book
and might even have prevented it from being published at all.[48]
Yet, when all is said and done, it must be admitted that Wier’s
doctrines have a half-hearted appearance, and that they seemed to most
seventeenth-century scholars to labor under a gross inconsistency. This
inconsistency was emphasized by Meric Casaubon. “As for them,” writes
Dr. Casaubon, “who allow and acknowledge _supernatural operations_ by
Devils and Spirits, as _Wierius_; who tells as many strange stories of
them, and as _incredible_, as are to be found in any book; but stick at
the business of _Witches_ only, whom they would not have thought the
Authors of those mischiefs, that are usually laid to their charge, but
the Devil only; though this opinion may seem to some, to have more of
_charity_, than _Incredulity_; yet the contrary will easily appear to
them, that shall look into it more carefully.” And Casaubon dwells upon
the fact that Wier grants “no small part of what we drive at, when he
doth acknowledge _supernatural operations_, by Devils and Spirits.”[49]
Indeed, the apparent contradiction in Wier’s theories may also excuse
Casaubon for the suggestion he makes that Wier’s intention “was not so
much to favour _women_, as the _Devil_ himself, with whom, it is to be
feared, that he was too well acquainted.”[50] This reminds us of what
King James had already written of “Wierus, a German Physition,” who
“sets out a publike Apologie for all these craftes-folkes, whereby,
procuring for their impunitie, he plainely bewrayes himselfe to have
bene one of that profession.”[51]
Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft appeared in 1584. Scot, who
was largely indebted to Wier, goes much farther than his Continental
predecessor. Of course he does not deny the existence of evil
spirits;[52] but he does not believe, like Wier, that evil spirits are
continually occupied in deluding mankind by all manner of false (or
præstigious) appearances. Such deceits he ascribes to juggling, and he
accordingly gives elaborate directions for the performance of various
tricks of legerdemain.[53]
There seems to be a more or less prevalent impression that Scot’s book
explodes witchcraft so thoroughly that the whole delusion might soon
have come to an end in England if James I. had not mounted the throne
a short time after it was published. True, King James’s Dæmonologie
is expressly directed “against the damnable opinions” of Wier and
Scot.[54] But, to tell the truth, Scot’s treatise did not require
a royal refutation. To us moderns, who are converted already and
need no repentance, its general air of reasonableness, together with
its humor and the raciness of the style, makes the Discoverie seem
convincing enough. But this is to look at the matter from a mistaken
point of view. The question is, not how Scot’s arguments affect us,
but how they were likely to affect his contemporaries. Now, if the
truth must be told, the Discoverie is deficient in one very important
respect. It makes no satisfactory answer to the insistent questions:
“What are these evil spirits of which the Bible and the philosophers
tell us, and which everybody believes in, and always has believed
in, from the beginning of time? And what are they about? If they are
powerful and malignant, why is it not likely that the effects which
everybody ascribes to them are really their work? And if they are eager
not only to torment but to seduce mankind, why is it not reasonable
to suppose that they accomplish both ends at the same time--kill
two birds with one stone--by procuring such evil effects by means
of witches, or by allowing themselves to be utilized by witches as
instruments of malice?” It was quite proper to ask these questions of
Scot. He admitted the existence of evil spirits, but declared that
we know little or nothing about them, denied that they can produce
the phenomena then generally ascribed to their agency, and alleged
fraud and delusion to account for such phenomena. Even to us, with
our extraordinary and very modern incredulity toward supernatural
occurrences, the lacuna in Scot’s reasoning is clear enough if we only
look at his argument as a whole. This we are not inclined to do; at
least, no historian of witchcraft has ever done it. It is easier and
more natural for us to accept such portions of Scot’s argument as agree
with our own view, to compliment him for his perspicacity, and to pass
on, disregarding the inadequacy of what he says about evil spirits.
Or, if we notice that his utterances on this topic are halting and
uncertain, we are tempted to regard such hesitancy as further evidence
of his rational temper. He could not quite deny the existence of
devils, we feel,--that would have been too much to expect of him; but
he waves them aside like a sensible man.[55] A moment’s consideration,
however, will show us that this defect in Scot’s case, trifling as it
appears to us now-a-days, was in fact a very serious thing. To us,
who never think of admitting the intervention of evil spirits in the
affairs of this world, the question whether there are any such spirits
at all has a purely theoretical interest. Indeed, we practically deny
their existence when we ignore them as we do: _de non apparentibus et
non existentibus eadem est lex_.--But to Scot’s contemporaries, the
question of the existence of evil spirits involved the whole matter in
debate,--and Scot granted their existence.
A curious particular in the history of Scot’s Discoverie should also
be considered in estimating its effect on the seventeenth century. The
appearance of a new edition in 1665, shortly after the famous Bury St.
Edmunds case,[56] may at first sight seem to indicate powerful and
continuing influence on the part of the Discoverie. When we observe
from the title-page, however, that the publisher has inserted nine
chapters at the beginning of Book xv, and has added a second
book to the Treatise on Divels and Spirits, our curiosity is excited.
Investigation soon shows that these additions were calculated to
destroy or minimize the total effect of Scot’s book. The prefixed
chapters contain directions for making magical circles, for calling up
“the ghost of one that hath hanged himself,” and for raising various
orders of spirits. These chapters are thrust in without any attempt
to indicate that they are not consistent with Scot’s general plan and
his theories. They appear to be, and are, practical directions for
magic and necromancy. The additional book is even more dangerous to
Scot’s design. It is prefaced by the remark:--“Because the Author in
his foregoing Treatise, upon the _Nature of Spirits and Devils_, hath
only touched the subject thereof superficially, omitting the more
material part; and with a brief and cursory Tractat, hath concluded
to speak the least of this subject which indeed requires most amply
to be illustrated; therefore I thought fit to adjoyn this subsequent
discourse; as succedaneous to the fore-going, and conducing to the
compleating of the whole work.”[57]
How far “this subsequent discourse” is really fitted to complete
Scot’s work may be judged by a statement which it makes on the very
first page, to the effect that bad spirits “are the grand Instigators,
stirring up mans heart to attempt the inquiry after the darkest, and
most mysterious part of Magick, or Witchcraft.” And again a little
later:--“Great is the villany of Necromancers, and wicked Magicians,
in dealing with the spirits of men departed; whom they invocate, with
certain forms, and conjurations, digging up their Carkasses again,
or by the help of Sacrifices, and Oblations to the infernal Gods;
compelling the Ghost to present it self before them.”[58] All this
is quite opposed to Scot’s view and the whole intention of his book.
The insertion of such worthless matter was, of course, a mere trick
of the bookseller to make a new edition go off well. But the fact of
its insertion shows that Scot was thought to have left his treatise
incomplete or unsatisfactory in a most important point. And the
inserted matter itself must have gone far to neutralize the effect of
republication in a witch-haunted period. And so we may leave Reginald
Scot, with our respect for his courage and common sense undiminished,
but with a clear idea of the slight effect which his treatise must have
had on the tone and temper of the age that we are studying.
John Webster’s Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, which appeared in
1677--the Preface is dated “February 23. 1673”--was particularly
directed against Glanvill and Meric Casaubon. It holds a distinguished
place in the history of witchcraft, and demands our careful scrutiny.
What is usually thought of it has been eloquently expressed by the late
Mr. James Crossley. “In this memorable book,” writes Mr. Crossley, “he
exhausts the subject, as far as it is possible to do so, by powerful
ridicule, cogent arguments, and the most varied and well applied
learning, leaving to [Francis] Hutchinson, and others who have since
followed in his track, little further necessary than to reproduce his
facts and reasonings in a more popular, it can scarcely be said, in a
more effective form.”[59]
A few of Webster’s opinions must be specified, that the reader may
judge how far The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft deserves to rank as
a work of sober and scientific reason, and to what extent the author
merits the position that seems to be traditionally assigned to him as
an uncompromising assailant of superstition.
Angels, good and bad, are “really and truly corporeal” and not
spirits, except “in a relative and respective” sense.[60] Since devils
are corporeal, Webster admits that “they may move and agitate other
bodies.” Their strength, however, is limited, “for though one Devil
may be supposed to move or lift up that which would load an Horse, yet
it will not follow that he can move or lift up as much as would load
a Ship of a thousand Tun.”[61] Webster grants that “God doth make use
of evil Angels to punish the wicked, and to chastise and afflict the
godly, and in the effecting of these things that they have a power
given them to hurt the earth and the Sea and things therein, as to
bring tempests, thunder, lightning, plague, death, drought and the
like.”[62]
Webster has a profound belief in apparitions and tells some capital
ghost stories[63]--“unquestionable testimonies,” he calls them, “either
from our own Annals, or matters of fact that we know to be true of our
own certain knowledge, that thereby it may undoubtedly appear, that
there are effects that exceed the ordinary power of natural causes, and
may for ever convince all Atheisticall minds.”[64] One of these tales
concerns the murder of one Fletcher by Ralph Raynard, an innkeeper, and
Mark Dunn, a hired assassin. One day “the spirit of _Fletcher_ in his
usual shape and habit did appear unto [Raynard], and said, Oh _Raph_,
repent, repent, for my revenge is at hand.” The result was a full
confession. “I have recited this story punctually,” writes Webster, “as
a thing that hath been very much fixed in my memory, being then but
young, and as a certain truth, I being (with many more) an ear-witness
of their confessions and an eye-witness of their Executions, and
likewise saw _Fletcher_ when he was taken up, where they had buried him
in his cloaths, which were a green fustian doublet pinkt upon white,
gray breeches, and his walking boots and brass spurrs without rowels.”
The spectre, Webster is convinced, was an “extrinsick apparition to
_Raynard_,” and not the mere effect of a guilty conscience “which
represented the shape of _Fletcher_ in his fancy.” The thing could not,
he thinks, “be brought to pass either by the Devil, or _Fletchers_
Soul,” and therefore he “concludes that either it was wrought by the
Divine Power, ... or that it was the Astral or Sydereal Spirit of
_Fletcher_, seeking revenge for the murther.”[65]
Webster also believes fully in the “bleeding or cruentation of the
bodies of those that have been murthered,” particularly at the touch of
the murderer or in his presence, and he gives a very curious collection
of examples, in some of which “the murtherers had not been certainly
known but by the bleeding of the body murthered.”[66] The most probable
explanation of such phenomena he finds in the existence of the astral
spirit, “that, being a middle substance, betwixt the Soul and the Body
doth, when separated from the Body, wander or hover near about it,
bearing with it the irascible and concupiscible faculties, wherewith
being stirred up to hatred and revenge, it causeth that ebullition and
motion in the blood, that exudation of blood upon the weapon, and those
other wonderful motions of the Body, Hands, Nostrils and Lips, thereby
to discover the murtherer, and bring him to condign punishment.”[67]
In some cases, however, Webster holds that the soul has not actually
departed, “and God may in his just judgment suffer the Soul to stay
longer in the murthered Body, that the cry of blood may make known the
murtherer, or may not so soon, for the same reason, call it totally
away.”[68]
These specimens of Webster’s temper of mind might perhaps suffice
to show with what slight justification he has been regarded as a
scientific rationalist. We must not dismiss him, however, until we
have scrutinized his views on the subject of witchcraft itself. He
passes for a strong denier of the whole business of sorcery. We shall
find that this is a great mistake. So far from denying the existence
of witches, Webster is indignant at the imputation that his theories
and those of other like-minded scholars should be interpreted in any
such sense. “If I deny that a Witch cannot flye in the air, nor be
transformed or transubstantiated into a Cat, a Dog, or an Hare, or
that the Witch maketh any visible Covenant with the Devil, or that he
sucketh on their bodies, or that the Devil hath carnal Copulation with
them; I do not thereby deny either the Being of Witches, nor other
properties that they may have, for which they may be so called: no
more than if I deny that a dog hath rugibility (which is only proper
to a Lion) doth it follow that I deny the being of a Dog, or that he
hath latrability?”[69] This sentence contains, in effect, the sum and
substance of Webster’s negative propositions on the subject.[70] Let us
see what he holds as affirmatives.
Though rejecting the theory of an external covenant between the
devil and a witch, Webster acknowledges “an internal, mental, and
spiritual League or Covenant betwixt the Devil and all wicked
persons.” Further, “this spiritual League in some respects and in
some persons may be, and is an explicit League, that is, the persons
that enter into it, are or may be conscious of it, and know it to be
so.”[71] Now there are certain persons, commonly called witches, who
are full of “hatred, malice, revenge and envy,” of which the devil
is the “author and causer,”[72] and these, by Satan’s instigation,
“do secretly and by tradition learn strange poysons, philters and
receipts whereby they do much hurt and mischief. Which most strange
wayes of poysoning, tormenting, and breeding of unwonted things in
the stomach and bellies of people, have not been unknown unto many
learned men and Philosophers.”[73] Among these effects of “an art more
than Diabolical,” which has “been often practiced by most horrible,
malevolent, and wicked persons,” is the production of the plague.
There is no doubt of the fact. There are “undeniable examples.” An
unguent may be prepared which is of such power that when it is smeared
upon the handles of doors, “those that do but lightly touch them are
forthwith infected.” In 1536 there was a conspiracy of some forty
persons in Italy, who caused the death of many in this way.[74] To
such arts Webster ascribes the dreadful outbreak of jail-fever at the
Oxford assizes in 1579. This was not, and could not be, the ordinary
“prison infection.” It was brought about by the contrivances of one
Roland Jenks, “a Popish recusant,” who was condemned for seditious
words against the queen. Jenks, it seems, had procured strange poisons
of a local apothecary, and had made a kind of candle out of them. As
soon as he was condemned, he lighted his candle, from which there arose
such a “damp,” or steam, that the pestilence broke out as we have
seen.[75] It is manifest, Webster holds, “that these kind of people
that are commonly called Witches, are indeed (as both the Greek and
Latin names doe signifie) Poysoners, and in respect of their Hellish
designs are Diabolical, but the effects they procure flow from natural
Causes.”[76] This last proposition is, indeed, perhaps the chief point
of Webster’s book. Witches exist, and they do horrible things, but they
accomplish their ends, not by the actual intervention of the devil and
his imps, but by virtue of an acquaintance with little-known laws of
nature. Another example, which cannot be quoted in detail, will make
Webster’s position perfectly clear. A man was afflicted with a dreadful
disease. The cause was discovered to be the presence of an oaken pin
in the corner of a courtyard. The pin was destroyed and the man drank
birchen ale. He made a complete recovery. It is plain, according to
Webster, that the pulling up and burning of the oaken pin “was with
the help of the Birchen Ale the cure; but it can no wayes be judged
necessary that the Devil should fix the Oak pin there, but that the
Witch might do it himself. Neither can it be thought to be any power
given by the Devil to the Oaken pin, that it had not by nature, for in
all probability it will constantly by a natural power produce the same
effect; only thus far the Devil had a hand in the action, to draw some
wicked person to fix the pin there ..., thereby to hurt and torture
him.”[77]
One is tempted to still further quotations from Webster’s utterances
on this topic, especially because his book has been much oftener
mentioned than read. But we must rest content with one passage which
sums up the whole matter:--“The opinions that we reject as foolish and
impious are those we have often named before, to wit, that those that
are vulgarly accounted Witches, make a visible and corporeal contract
with the Devil, that he sucks upon their bodies, that he hath carnal
copulation with them, that they are transubstantiated into Cats, Dogs,
Squirrels, and the like, or that they raise tempests, and fly in the
air. Other powers we grant unto them, to operate and effect whatsoever
the force of natural imagination joyned with envy, malice and vehement
desire of revenge, can perform or perpetrate, or whatsoever hurt may be
done by secret poysons and such like wayes that work by meer natural
means.”[78]
It is true that Webster opposed some of the current witch dogmas of
his time. There are passages enough in his elaborate treatise which
insist on the prevalence of fraud and melancholia. In his Epistle
Dedicatory, which is addressed to five Yorkshire justices of the peace,
he lays particular stress on the necessity of distinguishing between
impostors and those unfortunate persons who are “under a mere passive
delusion” that they are witches, and warns the magistrates not to
believe impossible confessions. For all this he deserves honor.[79]
Nor do I intend for a moment to suggest that the queer things (as
we regard them now-a-days) which I have cited are in any manner
discreditable to Webster. He was not exceptionally credulous, and he
belonged to that advanced school of English physicians who, in the
second half of the seventeenth century, upheld the general theories
of Paracelsus and van Helmont in opposition to the outworn follies of
the Galenists or regulars. He was a man of great erudition, of vast
and varied experience, of uncommon mental gifts, and of passionate
devotion to the truth. I admire him, but I must be pardoned if I am
unable to see how he can be regarded as a tower of skeptical strength
in the great witchcraft controversy. Even his admissions on the subject
of the fallen angels are enough to destroy the efficiency of his
denial of current notions about witchcraft. Once grant, as Webster
does, that our atmosphere is peopled by legions upon legions of evil
angels, delighting in sin, eager to work mischief, inimical to God and
man, furnished with stores of acquired knowledge, and able to devise
wicked thoughts and put them into our minds,[80] and it was idle to
deny--in the face of the best philosophic and theological opinion
of the ages--that these demonic beings can make actual covenants
with witches or furnish them with the means of doing injury to their
fellow-creatures.