as we have seen; indeed, twenty of the total of twenty-six cases fell
within the limits of that one year. There were no witch trials in
New England in the eighteenth century. The annals of Europe are not
so clear. Six witches were burned in Renfrewshire in 1697.[190] In
England, Elinor Shaw and Mary Phillips, “two notorious witches,” were
put to death at Northampton in 1705 (or 1706).[191] In 1712 Jane Wenham
was condemned to death for witchcraft, but she was pardoned.[192] Two
clergymen of the Church of England, as well as a Bachelor of Arts of
Cambridge,[193] gave evidence against her. Just before the arrest of
Jane Wenham, Addison in the Spectator for July 11, 1711, had expressed
the creed of a well-bred and sensible man of the world: “I believe
in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft;
but at the same time can give no Credit to any particular Instance
of it.” Blackstone, it will be remembered, subscribed to the same
doctrine, making particular reference to Addison.[194] Prompted, one
may conjecture, by the stir which the Wenham trial made, the Rev. J.
Boys, of Coggeshall Magna, in Essex, transcribed, in this same year,
from his memoranda, A Brief Account of the Indisposition of the Widow
Coman. This case had occurred in his own parish in 1699, and he had
given it careful investigation. Both in 1699, when he jotted down
the facts, and in 1712, Mr. Boys was clearly of the opinion that his
unfortunate parishioner was a witch. His narrative, which remained in
manuscript until 1901,[195] may be profitably compared with Cotton
Mather’s account of his visit to Margaret Rule in 1693.[196] Such a
comparison will not work to the disadvantage of the New England divine.
Incidentally it may be mentioned that the mob “swam” the widow Coman
several times, and that “soon after, whether by the cold she got in the
water or by some other means, she fell very ill, and dyed.” Let it not
be forgotten that this was six years after the end of the witchcraft
prosecutions in Massachusetts. In 1705 a supposed witch was murdered
by a mob at Pittenween in Scotland.[197] In 1730, another alleged
witch succumbed to the water ordeal in Somersetshire.[198] The English
and Scottish statutes against witchcraft were repealed in 1736,[199]
but in that same year Joseph Juxson, vicar, preached at Twyford, in
Leicestershire, a Sermon upon Witchcraft, occasioned by a late Illegal
Attempt to discover Witches by Swimming,[200] and in 1751 Ruth Osborne,
a reputed witch, was murdered by a mob in Hertfordshire.[201] The last
execution for witchcraft in Germany took place in 1775. In Spain the
last witch was burned in 1781, In Switzerland Anna Göldi was beheaded
in 1782 for bewitching the child of her master, a physician. In Poland
two women were burned as late as 1793.[202]
That the belief in witchcraft is still pervasive among the peasantry of
Europe, and to a considerable extent among the foreign-born population
in this country, is a matter of common knowledge.[203] Besides,
spiritualism and kindred delusions have taken over, under changed
names, many of the phenomena, real and pretended, which would have been
explained as due to witchcraft in days gone by.[204]
Why did the Salem outbreak occur? Of course there were many
causes--some of which have already suggested themselves in the
course of our discussion. But one fact should be borne in mind
as of particular importance. The belief in witchcraft, as we
have already had occasion to remark, was a constant quantity; but
outbreaks of prosecution came, in England--and, generally speaking,
elsewhere--spasmodically, at irregular intervals. If we look at Great
Britain for a moment, we shall see that such outbreaks are likely to
coincide with times of political excitement or anxiety. Thus early in
Elizabeth’s reign, when everything was more or less unsettled, Bishop
Jewel, whom all historians delight to honor, made a deliberate and
avowed digression, in a sermon before the queen, in order to warn
her that witchcraft was rampant in the realm, to inform her (on the
evidence of his own eyes) that her subjects were being injured in their
goods and their health, and to exhort her to enforce the law.[205] The
initial zeal of James I. in the prosecution of witches stood in close
connection with the trouble he was having with his turbulent cousin
Francis Bothwell.[206] The operations of Matthew Hopkins (in 1645-1647)
were a mere accompaniment to the tumult of the Civil War; the year in
which they began was the year of Laud’s execution and of the Battle
of Naseby. The Restoration was followed by a fresh outbreak of witch
prosecution,--mild in England, though far-reaching in its consequences,
but very sharp in Scotland.
With facts like these in view, we can hardly regard it as an accident
that the Salem witchcraft marks a time when the Colony was just
emerging from a political struggle that had threatened its very
existence. For several years men’s minds had been on the rack. The
nervous condition of public feeling is wonderfully well depicted in a
letter written in 1688 by the Rev. Joshua Moodey in Boston to Increase
Mather, then in London as agent of the Colony. The Colonists are much
pleased by the favor with which Mather has been received, but they
distrust court promises. They are alarmed by a report that Mather and
his associates have suffered “a great slurr” on account of certain
over-zealous actions. Moodey rejoices in the death of Robert Mason,
“one of the worst enemies that you & I & Mr. Morton had in these
parts.” Then there are the Indians:--“The cloud looks very dark and
black upon us, & wee are under very awfull circumstances, which render
an Indian Warr terrible to us.” The Colonists shudder at a rumor that
John Palmer, one of Andros’s Council, is to come over as Supreme Judge,
and know not how to reconcile it with the news of the progress their
affairs have been making with the King. And finally, the writer gives
an account of the case of Goodwin’s afflicted children, which, as we
know, was a kind of prologue to the Salem outbreak:--“Wee have a very
strange th[ing] among us, which we know not what to make of, except it
bee Witchcraft, as we think it must needs bee.”[207] Clearly, there
would have been small fear, in 1692, of a plot on Satan’s part to
destroy the Province, if our forefathers had not recently encountered
other dangers of a more tangible kind.
* * * * *
In conclusion, I may venture to sum up, in the form of a number of
brief theses, the main results at which we appear to have arrived in
our discussion of witchcraft:--
1. The belief in witchcraft is the common heritage of humanity. It is
not chargeable to any particular time, or race, or form of religion.
2. Witchcraft in some shape or other is still credited by a majority of
the human race.
3. The belief in witchcraft was practically universal in the
seventeenth century, even among the educated; with the mass of the
people it was absolutely universal.
4. To believe in witchcraft in the seventeenth century was no more
discreditable to a man’s head or heart than it was to believe in
spontaneous generation or to be ignorant of the germ theory of disease.
5. The position of the seventeenth century believers in witchcraft was
logically and theologically stronger than that of the few persons who
rejected the current belief.
6. The impulse to put a witch to death comes from the instinct of
self-preservation. It is no more cruel or otherwise blameworthy, in
itself, than the impulse to put a murderer to death.
7. The belief in witchcraft manifests itself, not in steady and
continuous prosecution, but in sudden outbreaks occurring at irregular
intervals.
8. Such outbreaks are not symptoms of extraordinary superstition or of
a peculiarly acute state of unreason. They are due, like other panics,
to a perturbed condition of the public mind. Hence they are likely to
accompany, or to follow, crises in politics or religion.
9. The responsibility for any witch prosecution rests primarily on the
community or neighborhood as a whole, not on the judge or the jury.
10. No jury, whether in a witch trial or in any other case, can be more
enlightened than the general run of the vicinage.
11. Many persons who have been executed for witchcraft have supposed
themselves to be guilty and have actually been guilty in intent.
12. Practically every person executed for witchcraft believed in the
reality of such a crime, whether he supposed himself to be guilty of it
or not.
13. The witch beliefs of New England were brought over from the Mother
Country by the first settlers.
14. Spectral evidence had been admitted in the examinations and trials
of witches in England for a hundred years before the Salem prosecutions
took place.
15. Trials, convictions, and executions for witchcraft occurred in
England after they had come to an end in Massachusetts, and they
occurred on the Continent a hundred years later than that time.
16. Spectral evidence was admitted in English witch trials after such
trials had ceased in Massachusetts.
17. The total number of persons executed for witchcraft in New England
from the first settlement to the end of the century is inconsiderable,
especially in view of what was going on in Europe.
18. The public repentance and recantation of judge and jury in
Massachusetts have no parallel in the history of witchcraft.
19. The repentance and recantation came at a time which made them
singularly effective arguments in the hands of the opponents of the
witch dogma in England.
20. The record of New England in the matter of witchcraft is highly
creditable, when considered as a whole and from the comparative point
of view.
21. It is easy to be wise after the fact,--especially when the fact is
two hundred years old.
[1] That the New Englanders brought their views on
demonology and witchcraft with them from the Mother Country
is a self-evident proposition, but it may be worth while
to refer to a striking instance of the kind. The Rev. John
Higginson, writing from Salem to Increase Mather in 1683,
sends him two cases for his Illustrious Providences,--both
of which he “believes to be certain.” The first is an
account of how a mysterious stranger, thought to be the
devil, once lent a conjuring book to “godly Mr. [Samuel]
Sharp, who was Ruling Elder of the Church of Salem allmost
30 years.” The incident took place when Sharp was a
young man in London. The second narrative Mr. Higginson
“heard at Gilford from a godly old man yet living. He
came from Essex, and hath been in N. E. about 50 years.”
It is a powerfully interesting legend of the Faust type,
localised in Essex. In a postscript Mr. Higginson adds,
“I had credible information of one in Leicestershire, in
the time of the Long Parliament, that gave his soul to
the Divel, upon condition to be a Famous Preacher, which
he was for a time, &c., but I am imperfect in the story.”
(Mather Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series,
VIII, 285-287). See also the cases of witchcraft before
1692 collected in S. G. Drake’s Annals of Witchcraft in
New England. Dr. Poole is far nearer the truth in saying
that “the New-England colonists had no views concerning
witchcraft and diabolical agency which they did not bring
with them from the Old World” (Witchcraft in Boston, in
Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, II, 131) than President
White is when he remarks that “the life of the early
colonists in New England was such as to give rapid growth
to the germs of the doctrine of possession brought from the
mother country” (Warfare of Science with Theology, II, 145).
[2] A masterly short account of the various elements
which made up the fully developed doctrine of witchcraft
as it was held during the three centuries of especial
prosecution (1400-1700), and of the sources from which
these elements were derived, may be found in the first
chapter of Joseph Hansen’s Zauberwahn, Inquisition und
Hexenprozess im Mittelalter (Munich and Leipzig, 1900).
A learned and able essay by Professor George L. Burr,
The Literature of Witchcraft, reprinted from the Papers
of the American Historical Association, New York, 1890,
should also be consulted. Professor Burr emphasises the
sound and necessary distinction between witchcraft and
magic. But he seems to go too far in his insistence on
this distinction as vital in the history of witchcraft:
“Magic itself is actual and universal. But witchcraft never
was. It was but a shadow, a nightmare: the nightmare of a
religion, the shadow of a dogma. Less than five centuries
saw its birth, its vigor, its decay” (p. 238; p. 38 of
reprint). This statement is true if by witchcraft is meant
(and this is Professor Burr’s sense) the fully developed
and highly complicated system set forth in the Malleus
Maleficarum and in Del Rio’s Disquisitiones Magicae--what
Hansen (p. 35) calls “der verhängnisvolle Sammelbegriff des
Hexenwesens,”--which was not possible until scholasticism
had schematised the diversified elements of belief in
magic and demonology and sorcery and devil-worship which
Christian theology and Christian superstition had derived
from the most various sources--from Judaism, classical
antiquity, Neo-Platonism, and the thousand-and-one beliefs
of pagan converts. But, important as this fully developed
system was--and true though it may be that without the
schematising influence of scholastic philosophy the
witch-prosecution which was epidemic in Europe from
1400 to 1700 could hardly have taken place--we should
never forget that the essential element in witchcraft is
_maleficium_--the working of harm to the bodies and goods
of one’s fellow-men by means of evil spirits or of strange
powers derived from intercourse with such spirits. This
belief in _maleficium_ was once universal; it was rooted
and grounded in the minds of the people before they became
Christians; it is still the creed of most savages and
of millions of so-called civilised men. Throughout the
history of witchcraft (in whatever sense we understand
that word), it remained the ineradicable thing,--the
solid foundation, unshakably established in popular
belief, for whatever superstructure might be reared by the
ingenuity of jurisconsults, philosophers, theologians, or
inquisitors. Without this popular belief in _maleficium_,
the initial suspicions and complaints which form the basis
and starting-point of all prosecutions would have been
impossible and inconceivable. _With_ this popular belief,
the rest was easy. The error into which Professor Burr
has fallen is due, no doubt, to his keeping his eye too
exclusively on the Continent, where the prosecutions were
most extensive, where, in truth, the fully developed system
was most prevalent, and where the inquisitorial methods
of procedure give to the witch-trials a peculiar air of
uniformity and theological schematism. Thus he has been
led, like many other historians, to over-emphasise the
learned or literary side of the question. For us, however,
as the descendants of Englishmen and as students of the
history of English colonies in America, it is necessary to
fix our attention primarily on the Mother Country. And, if
we do this, we cannot fail to perceive that the obstinate
belief of the common people in _maleficium_--a belief
which, it cannot be too often repeated, is not the work of
theologians but the universal and quasi-primitive creed
of the human race--is the root of the whole matter. (On
savage witchcraft see the anthropologists _passim_. Good
examples may be found in Karl von den Steinen, Unter den
Naturvölkern Brasiliens, 1894, pp. 339 ff.)
On _maleficium_ see especially Hansen, pp. 9 ff. Nothing
could be truer than his words:--“Wie viel auch immer im
Laufe der Zeit in den Begriff der Zauberei und Hexerei
hineingetragen worden ist, so ist doch sein Kern stets
das Maleficium geblieben. Aus dieser Vorstellung erwächst
die angstvolle Furcht der Menschen und das Verlangen nach
gesetzlichem Schutze und blutig strenger Strafe; von ihr
hat die strafrechtliche Behandlung dieses Wahns ihren
Ausgang genommen” (p. 9). “Das Maleficium, mit Ausnahme
des Wettermachens, ist ohne alle Unterbrechung von der
kirchlichen und bis in das 17. Jahrhundert auch von der
staatlichen Autorität als Realität angenommen, seine Kraft
ist nie ernstlich in Abrede gestellt worden; es bildet den
roten Faden auch durch die Geschichte der strafrechtlichen
Verfolgung” (p. 13). Everybody knows that the most
convincing evidence of witchcraft--short of confession
or of denunciation by a confederate--was held to be the
_damnum minatum_ and the _malum secutum_.
The difference between England and the Continent in the
development of the witchcraft idea and in the history
of prosecution is recognised by Hansen (p. 34, note 1).
President White, like Professor Burr, has his eye primarily
on the Continent (Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896,
I, 350 ff.). His treatment of demoniacal possession,
however, is much to our purpose (II, 97 ff., 135 ff.).
[3] King James’s connection with the history of
witchcraft almost deserves a monograph for it has never
been adequately discussed, and various misconceptions
on the subject are afloat. Thus Mr. H. M. Doughty, in
an interesting but one-sided essay on Witchcraft and
Christianity (Blackwood’s Magazine, March, 1898, CLXIII,
388), remarks that “the new King James had long lived in
abject fear of witches”--an assertion that he would find it
impossible to prove, even if it were true, as it seems not
to be.
[4] The act of 5 Eliz. c. 16 (after reciting that 33
Henr. VIII. c. 8 had been repealed by 1 Edw. VI. c. 12)
prescribes the penalty of death for witchcraft which
destroys life, imprisonment for that which causes bodily
injury (death for the second offence); in certain harmless
kinds of sorcery (such as accompanied the search for
treasure or stolen goods) the second offence is punished
by imprisonment for life. 1 Jac. I. c. 12 follows 5 Eliz.
c. 16 in the main. Its chief differences are,--greater
detail in defining witchcraft; the insertion of a passage
about digging up dead bodies for purposes of sorcery;
death for the first offence in cases of witchcraft which
causes bodily injury; death for the second offence
in treasure-seeking sorcery and the like. Before one
pronounces the new statute much severer than the old, it
would be well to examine the practical operation of the
two. In particular, one ought to determine how many witches
were executed under the law of James I. who would not
have been subject to the death penalty under the law of
Elizabeth. This is not the place for such an examination.
On treasure-seeking sorcery see the learned and
entertaining essay of Dr. Augustus Jessopp, Hill-Digging
and Magic (in his Random Roaming and Other Papers, 1893).
[5] See p. 64 below. Strictly speaking, the Commonwealth
did not begin until 1649, but this point need not be
pressed.
[6] See F. Legge, Witchcraft in Scotland (Scottish Review,
XVIII, 267); Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and
Witchcraft, Chap. xxv. Whitelocke, under date of Oct. 4,
1652, notes “Letters that sixty Persons Men and Women were
accused before the Commissioners for Administration of
Justice in _Scotland_ at the last Circuit for Witches; but
they found so much Malice and so little Proof against them
that none were condemned” (Memorials, 1732, p. 545). Cf.
also his very important entry on the same subject under
Oct. 29, 1652 (pp. 547-548).
[7] Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, Familiar Letters, edited by Joseph
Jacobs, 1890, book ii, letter 76, p. 506: “To my Honourable
Friend, Mr. E. P., at Paris” (cf. Jacobs’s notes pp.
783-784). The letter is dated “Fleet, 3 Feb. 1646.” This
is certainly Old Style. Howell is a queer dater, but a
reference in this letter to the departure of the Scottish
army (p. 505) proves that the letter was written after Dec.
21, 1646. There is a similar passage about witches in book
iii, letter 2, p. 515 (also to Porter), dated “Fleet, 20
Feb. 1646.”
[8] Letters, as above, book iii, no. 23, pp. 547 ff., dated
“Fleet, 20 Feb. 1647,” i. e. doubtless 1648.
[9] See Jacobs’s Introduction, pp. xlii-xliii. The question
whether Howell’s letters were actually sent to the persons
to whom they are addressed or whether they are to be
regarded merely as literary exercises composed during his
imprisonment (see Jacobs, pp. lxxi ff.) does not affect,
for our purposes, the value of the quotations here made,
since the letters to which we now refer actually purport to
have been written in the Fleet, and since they were first
published in the second edition (1650) in the additional
third volume and from the nature of things could not have
appeared in the first edition (1645). They must, at all
events, have been composed before 1650, and are doubtless
dated correctly enough.
[10] See p. 64, below.
[11] Sermon xvii (Whole Works, ed. Heber and Eden, 1861,
IV, 546).
[12] Whole Works, III, 57; cf. Sermon vii (Works, IV. 412).
[13] See p. 7, above, note 4.
[14] A Tryal of Witches, at the Assizes held at Bury St.
Edmonds ... 1664 (London, 1682), pp. 55-56. This report is
reprinted in Howell’s State Trials, VI, 647 ff., and (in
part) in H. L. Stephen’s State Trials Political and Social
(1899), I, 209 ff. See also Hutchinson, An Historical
Essay concerning Witchcraft, chap. viii. (1718, pp. 109
ff.; 2d ed., 1720, pp. 139 ff.); Thomas Wright, Narratives
of Sorcery and Witchcraft, II., 261 ff. Hale’s opinion
was regarded as settling the law beyond peradventure.
It is quoted, in A True and Impartial Relation of the
Informations against Three Witches ... Assizes holden
for the County of Devon at the Castle of Exon, Aug. 14,
1682 (London, 1682), Address to the Reader. For Roger
North’s comments on the Exeter case, see p. 192, below.
A Collection of Modern Relations of Matters of Fact,
concerning Witches & Witchcraft, Part I (London, 1693),
contains “A Discourse concerning the great Mercy of God, in
preserving us from the Power and Malice of _Evil Angels_.
_Written by Sir_ Matt. Hale _at Cambridge_ 26 Mar. 1661.
_Upon occasion of a Tryal of certain Witches before him
the Week before at St._ Edmund’s Bury.” The date is wrong
(1661 should be 1664), but the trial is identified with
that which we are considering by the anonymous compiler of
the Collection in the following words: “There is a Relation
of it in print, written by his Marshal, which I suppose
is very true, though to the best of my Memory, not so
compleat, as to some observable Circumstances, as what he
related to me at his return from that Circuit.” The date of
the trial is given as “the Tenth day of March, 1664” on the
title-page of the report (A Tryal of Witches) and on page
1 as “the Tenth day of March, in the Sixteenth Year of the
Reign of ... Charles II.” On page 57 the year is misprinted
“1662.” Howell’s State Trials, VI, 647, 687, makes it 1665,
but 16 Charles II. corresponds to Jan. 30, 1664--Jan. 29,
1665: hence 1664 is right. The (unfinished) Discourse just
mentioned must not be confused with Hale’s Motives to
Watchfulness, in reference to the Good and Evil Angels,
which may be found in his Contemplations Moral and Divine,
London, 1682 (licensed 1675-6), Part II, pp. 67 ff.
[15] Roger North, Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, ed.
1826, I, 121.
[16] Wonders of the Invisible World (London, 1693), p.
55. Mather also reproduces the substance of the report
above referred to (note 14) in the same work. Bragge,
too, reproduces it, in the main, in his tract, Witchcraft
Farther Display’d, 1712, in support of the accusation
against Jane Wenham.
[17] Lives of the Chief Justices, 1849, I, 561 ff., Chapter
xvii. See also the criticism of Hale in a letter of
George Onslow’s, 1770, 14th Report of the Historical MSS.
Commission, Appendix, Part IX, p. 480.
[18] Published in 1682.
[19] Edition of 1826, I, 117 ff.
[20] State Papers (Domestic), 1682, Aug. 19, bundle 427,
no. 67, as quoted by Pike. History of Crime in England, II,
238.
[21] A Tryal of Witches, as above, p. 41.
[22] That is, _hysteria_.
[23] A Tryal, as above, p. 42. Cf. the Supplementary
Memoir, in Simon Wilkin’s edition of Browne’s Works, 1852,
I, liv-lvi.
[24] Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, Part 1, section 2, member
1, subsection 3. I quote from the edition of 1624.
[25] The following short character of Glanvill, by Bishop
Kennet, may be quoted, not because it is just, but because
it might conceivably be brought forward by somebody in
rebuttal of this proposition:--“Mr. _Joseph Glanvill_ of
_Lincoln_ College, _Oxon_. Taking the Degree of M. A. in
the beginning of 1658, was about that Time made Chaplain to
old _Francis Rous_; one of _Oliver_’s Lords, and Provost
of _Eaton_ College.--He became a great Admirer of Mr.
_Richard Baxter_, and a zealous Person for a Commonwealth.
After his Majesty’s Restauration he turn’d about, became
a Latitudinarian,--Rector of _Bath_, Prebendary of
_Worcester_, and Chaplain to the King” (White Kennet, An
Historical Register, 1744, p. 931).
[26] See Dr. Ferris Greenslet’s Joseph Glanvill, A Study
in English Thought and Letters of the Seventeenth Century,
New York, 1900, especially Chap. vi. For a bibliography of
Glanvill, see Emanuel Green, Bibliotheca Somersetensis,
Taunton (Eng.), 1902, I, 206 ff.
[27] More’s theories on the subject of apparitions, demons,
and witches may also be read, at considerable length,
in his Antidote against Atheism, Book iii, Chaps. 2-13
(Philosophical Writings, 2d ed., 1662, pp. 89 ff.); cf. the
Appendix to the Antidote, Chaps. 12-13 (pp. 181 ff.) and
The Immortality of the Soul, Chap. 16 (pp. 129 ff.).