witchcraft in England, together with seven men who had been confederate
with her. In 1541 the Earl of Hungerford was beheaded for inquiring of
a witch how long Henry VIII. would live. In 1549 it was made the duty
of bishops, by Archbishop Cranmer's articles of visitation, to inquire
of their clergy, whether "they know of any that use charms, sorcery,
enchantments, witchcraft, soothsaying, or any like craft invented by
the Devil." In 1563[i.344] the King of Sweden carried four witches with
him, as a part of his armament, to aid him in his wars with the Danes.
In 1576, seventeen or eighteen were condemned in Essex, in England. A
single judge or inquisitor, Remigius, condemned and burned nine hundred
within fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, in the single district of
Lorraine; and as many more fled out of the country; whole villages were
depopulated, and fifteen persons destroyed themselves rather than
submit to the torture which, under the administration of this successor
of Draco and rival of Jeffries, was the first step taken in the trial
of an accused person. The application of the rack and other instruments
of torment, in the examination of prisoners, was recommended by him in
a work on witchcraft. He observes that "scarcely any one was known to
be brought to repentance and confession but by these means"!
The most eminent persons of the sixteenth century were believers in the
popular superstition respecting the existence of compacts between Satan
and human beings, and in the notions associated with it. The excellent
Melancthon was an interpreter of dreams and caster of nativities.
Luther was a strenuous supporter of the doctrine of witchcraft, and
seems to have seriously believed that he had had frequent interviews
with the arch-enemy himself, and had disputed with him on points of
theology, face to face. In his "Table-Talk," he gives the following
account of his intimacy with the Devil: speaking of his confinement in
the Castle of Wartburg, he says, "Among other things[i.345] they
brought me hazel-nuts, which I put into a box, and sometimes I used to
crack and eat of them. In the night-times, my gentleman, the Devil,
came and got the nuts out of the box, and cracked them against one of
the bedposts, making a very great noise and rumbling about my bed; but
I regarded him nothing at all: when afterwards I began to slumber, then
he kept such a racket and rumbling upon the chamber stairs, as if many
empty barrels and hogsheads had been tumbled down." Kepler, whose name
is immortalized by being associated with the laws he discovered that
regulate the orbits of the heavenly bodies, was a zealous advocate of
astrology; and his great predecessor and master, the Prince of
Astronomers, as he is called, Tycho Brahe, kept an idiot in his
presence, fed him from his own table, with his own hand, and listened
to his incoherent, unmeaning, and fatuous expressions as to a
revelation from the spiritual world.
The following is the language addressed to Queen Elizabeth by Bishop
Jewell. He was one of the most learned persons of his age, and is to
this day regarded as the mighty champion of the Church of England, and
of the cause of the Reformation in Great Britain. He was the terrible
foe of Roman-Catholic superstition. "It may please Your Grace," says
he, "to understand that witches and sorcerers within these four last
years are marvellously increased within Your Grace's realm; Your
Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth,
their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft.
I[i.346] pray God," continues the courtly preacher, "they never
practise further than upon the subject." The petition of the polite
prelate appears to have been answered. The virgin queen resisted
inexorably the arts of all charmers, and is thought never to have been
bewitched in her life.
It is probable that Spenser, in his "Faërie Queen," has described with
accuracy the witch of the sixteenth century in the following beautiful
lines:—
"There, in a gloomy hollow glen, she found
A little cottage built of sticks and weedes,
In homely wise, and wald with sods around,
In which a witch did dwell in loathly weedes
And wilful want, all careless of her needes;
So choosing solitarie to abide
Far from all neighbors, that her devilish deedes
And hellish arts from people she might hide,
And hurt far off unknowne whomever she envide."
So prone were some to indulge in the contemplation of the agency of the
Devil and his myrmidons, that they strained, violated, and perverted
the language of Scripture to make it speak of them. Thus they insisted
that the word "Philistines" meant confederates and subjects of the
Devil, and accordingly interpreted the expression, "I will deliver you
into the hands of the Philistines," thus, "I will deliver you into the
hands of demons."
I cannot describe the extent to which the superstition we are reviewing
was carried about the close of the sixteenth century in stronger
language than the following, from a candid and learned French
Roman-[i.347]Catholic historian: "So great folly," says he, "did then
oppress the miserable world, that Christians believed greater
absurdities than could ever be imposed upon the heathens."
We have now arrived at the commencement of the seventeenth century,
within which the prosecutions for witchcraft took place in Salem. To
show the opinions of the clergy of the English Church at this time, I
will quote the following curious canon, made by the convocation in
1603:—
"That no minister or ministers, without license and direction of the
bishop, under his hand and seal obtained, attempt, upon any pretence
whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer,
to cast out any devil or devils, under pain of the imputation of
imposture or cozenage, and deposition from the ministry." In the same
year, licenses were actually granted, as required above, by the Bishop
of Chester; and several ministers were duly authorized by him to cast
out devils!
During this whole century, there were trials and executions for
witchcraft in all civilized countries. More than two hundred were
hanged in England, thousands were burned in Scotland, and still larger
numbers in various parts of Europe.
Edward Fairfax, the poet, was one of the most accomplished men in
England. He is celebrated as the translator of Tasso's "Jerusalem
Delivered," in allusion to which work Collins thus speaks of
him:[i.348]—
"How have I sate, while piped the pensive wind,
To hear thy harp, by British Fairfax strung,
Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders that he sung."
This same Fairfax prosecuted six of his neighbors for bewitching his
children. The trials took place about the time the first pilgrims came
to America.
In 1634, Urbain Grandier, a very learned and eminent French minister,
rendered himself odious to the bigoted nuns of Loudun, by his
moderation towards heretics. Secretly instigated, as has been supposed,
by Cardinal Richelieu, against whom he had written a satire, they
pretended to be bewitched by him, and procured his prosecution: he was
tortured upon the rack until he swooned, and then was burned at the
stake. In 1640, Dr. Lamb, of London, was murdered in the streets of
that city by the mob, on suspicion of witchcraft. Several were hanged
in England, only a few years before the proceedings commenced in Salem.
Some were tried by water ordeal, and drowned in the process, in
Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire, at the very time
the executions were going on here; and a considerable number of capital
punishments took place in various parts of Great Britain, some years
after the prosecution had ceased in America.
The trials and executions in England and Scotland were attended by
circumstances as painful, as barbarous, and in all respects as
disgraceful, as those occurring in Salem. Every species of torture
seems to[i.349] have been resorted to: the principles of reason,
justice, and humanity were set at defiance, and the whole body of the
people kept in a state of the most fierce excitement against the
sufferers. Indeed, there is nothing more distressing in the
contemplation of these sanguinary proceedings than the spirit of
deliberate and unmitigated cruelty with which they were conducted. No
symptoms of pity, compassion, or sympathy, appear to have been
manifested by the judges or the community. The following account of the
expenses attending the execution of two persons convicted of witchcraft
in Scotland, shows in what a cool, business-like style the affair was
managed:—
"For ten loads of coal, to burn them £3 6 8 For a tar
barrel 0 14 0 For towes 0 6 0 For hurden to be jumps
for them 3 10 0 For making of them 0 8 0 For one to
go to Finmouth for the Laird to sit
upon their assize as judge 0 6 0 For the executioner for his
pains 8 14 0 For his expenses here 0 16 4"
The brutalizing effects of capital punishments are clearly seen in
these, as in all other instances. They gradually impart a feeling of
indifference to the value of human life, or to the idea of cutting it
off by the hand of violence, to all who become accustomed to the
spectacle. In various ways they exercise influences upon the tone and
temper of society, which can[i.350]not but be regarded with regret by
the citizen, the legislator, the moralist, the philanthropist, and the
Christian.
Sinclair, in his work called "Satan's Invisible World Discovered,"
gives the following affecting declaration made by one of the confessing
witches, as she was on her way to the stake:—
"Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch
by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers and
magistrates, of the guilt of my blood; I take it wholly upon myself, my
blood be upon my own head: and, as I must make answer to the God of
heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child;
but, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the
name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no
ground of hope of my coming out of prison, or ever coming in credit
again, through the temptation of the Devil, I made up that confession
on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing
rather to die than live."
Sir George Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had
confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him,
"under secresie," "that she had not confessed because she was guilty,
but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed
for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would
either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her, and
hound dogs at her, and that therefore she[i.351] desired to be out of
the world." Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and, upon her knees,
called God to witness to what she said.
A wretch, named Matthew Hopkins, rendered himself infamously
conspicuous in the prosecutions for witchcraft that took place in the
counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, in England, in the
years 1645 and 1646. The title he assumed indicates the part he acted:
it was "Witch-finder-general." He travelled from place to place; his
expenses were paid; and he required, in addition, regular fees for the
discovery of a witch. Besides pricking the body to find the witch-mark,
he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices
to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs
crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would
prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours.
He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot
over the rough ground, thus overcoming them with extreme weariness and
pain: but his favorite method was to tie the thumb of the right hand
close to the great toe of the left foot, and draw them through a river
or pond; if they floated, as they would be likely to do, while their
heavier limbs were thus sustained and upborne by the rope, it was
considered as conclusive proof of their guilt. This monster was
encouraged and sanctioned by the government; and he procured the death,
in one year and in one county, of more than three times as many as
suffered in Salem during the whole delusion. He[i.352] and his exploits
are referred to in the following lines, from that storehouse of good
sense and keen wit, Butler's "Hudibras:"—
"Hath not this present Parliament
A leiger to the Devil sent,
Fully empowered to treat about
Finding revolted witches out?
And has he not within a year
Hanged threescore of them in one shire?"
The infatuated people looked upon this Hopkins with admiration and
astonishment, and could only account for his success by the
supposition, which, we are told, was generally entertained, that he had
stolen the memorandum-book in which Satan had recorded the names of all
the persons in England who were in league with him!
The most melancholy circumstance connected with the history of this
creature is, that Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy—names dear and
venerable in the estimation of all virtuous and pious men—were deceived
and deluded by him: they countenanced his conduct, followed him in his
movements, and aided him in his proceedings.
At length, however, some gentlemen, shocked at the cruelty and
suspicious of the integrity of Hopkins, seized him, tied his thumbs and
toes together, threw him into a pond, and dragged him about to their
hearts' content. They were fully satisfied with the result of the
experiment. It was found that he did not sink. He stood condemned on
his own principles; and thus[i.353] the country was rescued from the
power of the malicious impostor.
Among the persons whose death Hopkins procured, was a venerable,
gray-headed clergyman, named Lewis. He was of the Church of England,
had been the minister of a congregation for more than half a century,
and was over eighty years of age. His infirm frame was subjected to the
customary tests, even to the trial by water ordeal: he was compelled to
walk almost incessantly for several days and nights, until, in the
exhaustion of his nature, he yielded assent to a confession that was
adduced against him in Court; which, however, he disowned and denied
there and at all times, from the moment of release from the torments,
by which it had been extorted, to his last breath. As he was about to
die the death of a felon, he knew that the rites of sepulture,
according to the forms of his denomination, would be denied to his
remains. The aged sufferer, it is related, read his own funeral service
while on the scaffold. Solemn, sublime, and affecting as are passages
of this portion of the ritual of the Church, surely it was never
performed under circumstances so well suited to impress with awe and
tenderness as when uttered by the calumniated, oppressed, and dying old
man. Baxter had been tried for sedition, on the ground that one of his
publications contained a reflection upon Episcopacy, and was imprisoned
for two years. It is a striking and melancholy illustration of the
moral infirmity of human nature, that the author of the "Saints'
Everlast[i.354]ing Rest," and the "Call to the Unconverted," permitted
such a vengeful feeling against the Establishment to enter his breast,
that he took pleasure, and almost exulted, in relating the fate of this
innocent and aged clergyman, whom he denominates, in derision, a
"Reading Parson."
Baxter's writings are pervaded by his belief in all sorts of
supernatural things. In the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," he declares his
conviction of the reality and authenticity of stories of ghosts,
apparitions, haunted houses, &c. He placed full faith in a tale,
current among the people of his day, of the "dispossession of the Devil
out of many persons together in a room in Lancashire, at the prayer of
some godly ministers." In his "Dying Thoughts," he says, "I have had
many convincing proofs of witches, the contracts they have made with
devils, and the power which they have received from them;" and he seems
to have credited the most absurd fables ever invented on the subject by
ignorance, folly, or fraud.
The case to which he refers, as one of the "dispossession of devils,"
may be found in a tract published in London in 1697, entitled, "The
Surey Demoniac; or, an Account of Satan's strange and dreadful actings,
in and about the body of Richard Dugdale, of Surey, near Whalley, in
Lancashire. And how he was dispossessed by God's blessing on the
Fastings and Prayers of divers Ministers and People. The matter of fact
attested by the oaths of several creditable persons, before some of his
Majestie's Justices of the Peace[i.355] in the said county." The
"London Monthly Repository" (vol. v., 1810) describes the affair as
follows: "These dreadful actings of Satan continued above a year;
during which there was a desperate struggle between him and nine
ministers of the gospel, who had undertaken to cast him out, and, for
that purpose, successively relieved each other in their daily combats
with him: while Satan tried all his arts to baffle their attempts,
insulting them with scoffs and raillery, puzzling them sometimes with
Greek and Latin, and threatening them with the effects of his
vengeance, till he was finally vanquished and put to flight by the
persevering prayers and fastings of the said ministers."
No name in English history is regarded with more respect and
admiration, by wise and virtuous men, than that of Sir Matthew Hale.
His character was almost venerated by our ancestors; and it has been
thought that it was the influence of his authority, more than any thing
else, that prevailed upon them to pursue the course they adopted in the
prosecutions at Salem. This great and good man presided, as Lord Chief
Baron, at the trial of two females,—Amy Dunny and Rose Cullender,—at
Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, in the year 1664. They were convicted and
executed.
Baxter relates the following circumstance as having occurred at this
trial: "A godly minister, yet living, sitting by to see one of the
girls (who appeared as a witness against the prisoners) in her fits,
suddenly felt a force pull one of the hooks from his breeches; and,
while he looked with wonder at what was become[i.356] of it, the
tormented girl vomited it up out of her mouth."
To give an idea of the nature of the testimony upon which the principal
stress was laid by the government, I will extract the following
passages from the report of the trial: "Robert Sherringham testified
that the axle-tree of his cart, happening, in passing, to break some
part of Rose Cullender's house, in her anger at it, she vehemently
threatened him his horses should suffer for it; and, within a short
time, all his four horses died; after which he sustained many other
losses, in the sudden dying of his cattle. He was also taken with a
lameness in his limbs, and so far vexed with lice of an extraordinary
number and bigness, that no art could hinder the swarming of them, till
he burned up two suits of apparel."—"Margaret Arnold testified that Amy
Dunny afflicted her children: they (the children), she said, would see
mice running round the house, and, when they caught them and threw them
into the fire, they would screech out like rats."—"A thing like a bee
flew at the face of the younger child; the child fell into a fit, and
at last vomited up a two-penny nail, with a broad head, affirming that
the bee brought this nail, and forced it into her mouth."—"She one day
caught an invisible mouse, and, throwing it into the fire, it flashed
like to gunpowder. None besides the child saw the mouse, but every one
saw the flash!"
In this instance we perceive the influence of prejudice in perverting
evidence. The circumstance that[i.357] the mouse was invisible to all
eyes but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury
that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an
imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural
in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility
of the mouse as conclusive proof of diabolical agency.
Many persons who were present expressed the opinion, that the issue of
the trial would have been favorable to the prisoners, had it not been
for the following circumstance: Sir Thomas Browne, a physician,
philosopher, and scholar of unrivalled celebrity at that time, happened
to be upon the spot; and it was the universal wish that he should be
called to the stand, and his opinion be obtained on the general subject
of witchcraft. An enthusiastic contemporary admirer of Sir Thomas
Browne thus describes him: "The horizon of his understanding was much
larger than the hemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the
heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so
much; and of the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical
knowledge as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained
surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial globe and its products,
minerals, plants, and animals." His memory is stated to have been
inferior only to that of Seneca or Scaliger; and he was reputed master
of seven languages. Dr. Johnson, who has written his biography, sums up
his character in the following terms: "But it is not on the praises of
others, but on his[i.358] own writings, that he is to depend for the
esteem of posterity, of which he will not easily be deprived, while
learning shall have any reverence among men: for there is no science in
which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of
knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not
appear to have cultivated with success."
Sir Thomas Browne was considered by those of his own generation to have
made great advances beyond the wisdom of his age. He claimed the
character of a reformer, and gave to his principal publication the
title of an "Enquiry into Vulgar Errors." So bold and free were his
speculations, that he was looked upon invidiously by many as a daring
innovator, and did not escape the denunciatory imputation of heresy.
Nothing could be more unjust, however, than this latter charge. He was
a most ardent and zealous believer in the doctrines of the Established
Church. He declares "that he assumes the honorable style of a
Christian," not because "it is the religion of his country," but
because, "having in his riper years and confirmed judgment seen and
examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles of grace and
the law of his own reason, to embrace no other name but this." He
exults and "blesses himself, that he lived not in the days of miracles,
when faith had been thrust upon him, but enjoys that greater blessing
pronounced to all that believed, and saw not:" nay, he goes so far as
to say, that they only had the advantage "of a bold and noble faith,
who lived before the[i.359] coming of the Saviour, and, upon obscure
prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief." The fact that
such a man was accused of infidelity is an affecting proof of the
injustice that is sometimes done by the judgment of contemporaries.
This prodigy of learning and philosophy went into Court, took the
stand, and declared his opinion in favor of the reality of witchcraft,
entered into a particular discussion of the subject before the jury,
threw the whole weight of his great name into the wavering scales of
justice, and the poor women were convicted. The authority of Sir Thomas
Browne, added to the other evidence, perplexed Sir Matthew Hale. A
reporter of the trial says, "that it made this great and good man
doubtful; but he was in such fears, and proceeded with such caution,
that he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the
jury with prayers, 'that the great God of heaven would direct their
hearts in that weighty matter.'"
The result of this important trial established decisively the
interpretation of English law; and the printed report of it was used as
an authoritative text-book in the Court at Salem.
The celebrated Robert Boyle flourished in the latter half of the
seventeenth century. He is allowed by all to have done much towards the
introduction of an improved philosophy, and the promotion of
experimental science. But he could not entirely shake off the
superstition of his age.