Were not every chapter of the history of the human mind too precious
an inheritance to be willingly relinquished,--for appalling as its
contents may be, the value of the materials it may furnish may be
inestimable,--we might otherwise be tempted to wish that the miserable
record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are
narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled.
Most assuredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of
the author of _Hydriotaphia_ as a serious and literal truth, and who
believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the
chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he
should be in search of materials for humiliation and abasement, he
will find in the history of witchcraft in this country, from the
beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, large and abundant
materials, whether it affects the species or the individual. In truth,
human nature is never seen in worse colours than in that dark and
dismal review. Childhood, without any of its engaging properties,
appears prematurely artful, wicked and cruel[1]; woman, the victim of
a wretched and debasing bigotry, has yet so little of the feminine
adjuncts, that the fountains of our sympathies are almost closed; and
man, tyrannizing over the sex he was bound to protect, in its helpless
destitution and enfeebled decline, seems lost in prejudice and
superstition and only strong in oppression. If we turn from the common
herd to the luminaries of the age, to those whose works are the
landmarks of literature and science, the reference is equally
disappointing;--
"The sun itself is dark
And silent as the moon
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."
[Footnote 1: Take, as an instance, the children of Mr. Throgmorton, of
Warbois, for bewitching whom, Mother Samuels, her husband, and
daughter, suffered in 1593. No veteran professors "in the art of
ingeniously tormenting" could have administered the question with more
consummate skill than these little incarnate fiends, till the poor old
woman was actually induced, from their confident asseverations and
plausible counterfeiting, to believe at last that she had been a witch
all her life without knowing it. She made a confession, following the
story which they had prompted, on their assurances that it was the
only means to restore them, and then was hanged upon that confession,
to which she adhered on the scaffold. Few tracts present a more vivid
picture of manners than that in which the account of this case of
witchcraft is contained. It is perhaps the rarest of the English
tracts relating to witchcraft, and is entitled "The most strange and
admirable Discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys, arraigned,
convicted, and executed at the last Assizes at Huntingdon, for the
bewitching of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton, Esquire, and
divers other persons with sundrie Devilish and grievous torments. And
also for the bewitching to Death of the Lady Crumwell, the like hath
not been heard of in this age. London, Printed by the Widdowe Orwin
for Thomas Man and John Winnington, and are to be sold in Paternoster
Rowe at the Signe of the Talbot." 1593, 4to. My copy was Brand's, and
formed Lot 8224 in his Sale Catalogue.]
We find the illustrious author of the Novum Organon sacrificing to
courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the
ingredients for a witches' ointment;[2]--Raleigh, adopting miserable
fallacies at second hand, without subjecting them to the crucible of
his acute and vigorous understanding;[3]--Selden, maintaining that
crimes of the imagination may be punished with death;[4]--The detector
of Vulgar Errors, and the most humane of physicians,[5] giving the
casting weight to the vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew
Hale;[6]--Hobbes, ever sceptical, penetrating and sagacious, yet here
paralyzed, and shrinking from the subject as if afraid to touch
it;[7]--The adventurous explorer, who sounded the depths and channels
of the "Intellectual System" along all the "wide watered" shores of
antiquity, running after witches to hear them recite the Common Prayer
and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or innocence;[8]--The
gentle spirit of Dr. Henry More, girding on the armour of persecution,
and rousing itself from a Platonic reverie on the Divine Life, to
assume the hood and cloak of a familiar of the Inquisition;[9]--and
the patient and enquiring Boyle, putting aside for a while his
searches for the grand Magisterium, and listening, as if spell-bound,
with gratified attention to stories of witches at Oxford, and devils
at Mascon.[10] Nor is it from a retrospect of our own intellectual
progress only that we find how capricious, how intermitting, and how
little privileged to great names or high intellects, or even to those
minds which seemed to possess the very qualifications which would
operate as conductors, are those illuminating gleams of common sense
which shoot athwart the gloom, and aid a nation on its tardy progress
to wisdom, humanity, and justice. If on the Continent there were, in
the sixteenth century, two men from whom an exposure of the
absurdities of the system of witchcraft might have been naturally and
rationally expected, and who seem to stand out prominently from the
crowd as predestined to that honourable and salutary office, those two
men were John Bodin[11] and Thomas Erastus.[12] The former a
lawyer--much exercised in the affairs of men--whose learning was not
merely umbratic--whose knowledge of history was most philosophic and
exact--of piercing penetration and sagacity--tolerant--liberal
minded--disposed to take no proposition upon trust, but to canvass and
examine every thing for himself, and who had large views of human
nature and society--in fact, the Montesquieu of the seventeenth
century. The other, a physician and professor, sage, judicious,
incredulous,
"The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,"
who had routed irrecoverably empiricism in almost every
shape--Paracelsians--Astrologers--Alchemists--Rosicrucians--and who
weighed and scrutinized and analyzed every conclusion, from
excommunication and the power of the keys to the revolutions of comets
and their supposed effects on empires, and all with perfect
fearlessness and intuitive insight into the weak points of an
argument. Yet, alas! for human infirmity. Bodin threw all the weight
of his reasoning and learning and vivacity into the scale of the witch
supporters, and made the "hell-broth boil and bubble" anew, and
increased the witch _furor_ to downright fanaticism, by the
publication of his _Demo-manie_,[13] a work in which
"Learning, blinded first and then beguiled,
Looks dark as ignorance, as frenzy wild;"
but which it is impossible to read without being carried along by the
force of mind and power of combination which the author manifests, and
without feeling how much ingenious sophistry can perform to mitigate
and soften the most startling absurdity. His contemporary, Erastus,
after all his victories on the field of imposition, was foiled by the
subject of witchcraft at last. This was his pet delusion--almost the
only one he cared not to discard--like the dying miser's last
reserve:--
---- "My manor, sir? he cried;
Not that, I cannot part with that,--and died."
[Footnote 2: Lord Bacon thinks (see his _Sylva Sylvarum_) that
soporiferous medicines "are likeliest" for this purpose, such as
henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade, tobacco, opium, saffron, poplar
leaves, &c.]
[Footnote 3: See his _History of the World_.]
[Footnote 4: See his _Table Talk_, section "_Witches_."]
[Footnote 5: Sir Thomas Browne's evidence at the trial of Amy Duny and
Rose Cullender at Bury St. Edmunds in 1664, is too well known to need
an extract from the frequently reprinted report of the case. To adopt
the words of an able writer, (_Retros. Review_, vol. v. p. 118,) "this
trial is the only place in which we ever meet with the name of Sir
Thomas Browne without pleasurable associations."]
[Footnote 6: Those who wish to have presented to them a faithful
likeness of Sir Matthew Hale must not consult Burnet or Baxter, for
that great judge, like Sir Epicure Mammon, sought "for his meet
flatterers the gravest of divines," but will not fail to find it in
the pages of Roger North, who has depicted his character with a
strength and accuracy of outline which no Vandyck or Lely of biography
ever surpassed. Would that we could exchange some of those "faultless
monsters" with which that fascinating department of literature too
much abounds, for a few more such instantly recognised specimens of
true but erring and unequal humanity, which are as rare as they are
precious. In the unabridged life of Lord Guildford by Roger North,
which, with his own most interesting and yet unpublished
autobiography, are in my possession in his autograph, are found some
additional touches which confirm the general accuracy of the portrait
he has sketched of Hale in the work which has been printed. (Vide
North's _Life of Lord Guildford_, by Roscoe, vol. i. p. 119.)]
[Footnote 7: See his _Dialogue on the Common Laws of England_.]
[Footnote 8: Dr. Cudworth was the friend whom More refers to without
naming, _Collections of Relations_, p. 336, edit. 1726, 8vo.]
[Footnote 9: There is no name in this catalogue that excites more
poignant regret than that of Dr. Henry More. So exalted was his
character, so serene and admirable his temper, so full of harmony his
whole intellectual constitution, that, irradiated at once by all the
lights of religion and philosophy, and with clearer glimpses of the
land of vision and the glories behind the veil than perhaps uninspired
mortality ever partook of before, he seems to have reached as near to
the full standard of perfection as it is possible for frail and feeble
humanity to attain. Dr. Outram said that he looked upon Dr. More as
the holiest person upon the face of the earth; and the sceptical
Hobbes, who never dealt in compliment, observed, "That if his own
philosophy were not true, he knew of none that he should sooner like
than More's of Cambridge." His biographer, Ward, concludes his life in
the following glowing terms:--"Thus lived and died the eminent Dr.
More: thus set this bright and illustrious star, vanishing by degrees
out of our sight after, to the surprise and admiration of many, (like
that which was observed in Cassiopeia's chair,) it had illuminated, as
it were, both worlds so long at once." At the lapse of many years I
have not forgotten the impassioned fondness with which the late and
most lamented Robert Southey dwelt upon the memory of the Cambridge
Plato, or the delight with which he greeted some works of his
favourite author which I was fortunate enough to point out to him,
with which he had not been previously acquainted. The sad reverse of
the picture will he seen by those who consult the folio of More's
philosophical works and Glanville's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, the
greatest part of which is derived from More's _Collections_. His
hallucinations on the subject of witchcraft, from which none of the
English writers of the Platonic school were exempt, are the more
extraordinary, as a sister error, judicial astrology, met in More with
its most able oppugner. His tract, which has excited much less
attention than its merit deserves, (I have not been able to trace a
single quotation from it in any author during the last century,) is
entitled "Tetractys Anti-astrologica, or a Confutation of Astrology."
Lond. 1681, 4to. I may mention while on the subject of More, that the
second and most valuable part of the memoir of him by Ward, his
devoted admirer and pupil, which was never printed, is in my
possession, in manuscript.]
[Footnote 10: See Boyle's letter on the subject of the latter, in the
5th vol. of the folio edition of his works.]
[Footnote 11: I have always considered the conclusion of Bodin's book,
_De Republica_, the accumulative grandeur of which is even heightened
in Knolles's admirable English translation, as the finest peroration
to be found in any work on government. Those who are fortunate enough
to possess a copy of his interdicted _Examination of Religions_, the
title of which is, "Colloquium heptaplomeres de abditis sublimium
rerum arcanis, libris 6 digestum," which was never printed, and of
which very few MSS. copies are in existence, are well aware how little
he felt himself shackled in the spirit of examination which he carried
into the most sacred subjects by any respect for popular notions or
received systems or great authorities. My MS. copy of this
extraordinary work, which came from Heber's Collection, is contained
in two rather thick folio volumes.]
[Footnote 12: Few authors are better deserving of an extended
biography, a desideratum which, in an age characterised by its want of
literary research, is not likely to be soon supplied, than Thomas
Erastus, whose theological, philosophical, and medical celebrity
entitle him to rank with the greatest men of his century. At present
we have to collect all that is known of his life from various
scattered and contradictory sources. John Webster, in his _Displaying
of Supposed Witchcraft_, contrary to the usual candour and fairness of
his judgments, speaks slightingly of Erastus. There was, however, a
sufficient reason for this. Erastus had shown up the empiricism of
Webster's idol Paracelsus, and was in great disfavour with the writers
of the Anti-Galenic school.]
[Footnote 13: I cannot concur with Mr. Hallam in the extremely low
estimate he forms of the literary merit of Bodin's _Demomanie_, which
he does not seem to have examined with the care and impartiality which
he seldom is deficient in. Like all Bodin's works, it has a spirit
peculiarly his own, and is, in my opinion, one of the most
entertaining books to be found in the circle of Demonology.]
In his treatise _De Lamiis_, published in 1577, 8vo., he defends
nearly all the absurdities of the system with a blind zealotry which
in such a man is very remarkable. His book has accordingly taken its
place on the same shelf with Sprenger, Remigius, Delrio, and De
Lancre, and deserves insertion only in a list which has yet to be made
out, and which if accurately compiled would be a literary curiosity,
of the singularly illogical books of singularly able reasoners.
What was left unaccomplished by the centurions of literature came
ultimately from the strangest of all possible quarters; from the
study of an humble pupil of the transmuter of metals and prince
of mountebanks and quacks--the expounder of Reuchlin _de verbo
mirifico_, and lecturer in the unknown tongues--the follower of
Trismegistus--cursed with bell, book and candle, by every decorous
Church in Christendom--the redoubted Cornelius Agrippa; who, if he
left not to his pupil Wierus the secret of the philosopher's stone or
grand elixir, seems to have communicated a treasure perhaps equally
rare and not less precious, the faculty of seeing a truth which should
open the eyes of bigotry and dispel the mists of superstition, which
should stop the persecution of the helpless and stay the call for
blood. If, in working out this virgin ore from the mine, he has
produced it mixed up with the _scoria_ of his master's _Occult
Philosophy_; if he gives us catalogues of devils and spirits, with
whose acquaintance we could have dispensed; if he pleads the great
truth faintly, inconsistently, imperfectly, and is evidently unaware
of the strength of the weapons he wields; these deductions do not the
less entitle Wierus to take his place in the first rank of Humanity's
honoured professors, the true philanthropists and noble benefactors of
mankind.
In our own country, it may be curious and edifying to observe to whom
we mainly owe those enlightened views on this subject, which might
have been expected to proceed in their natural channel, but for which
we look in vain, from the "triumphant heirs of universal praise," the
recognized guides of public opinion, whose fame sheds such a lustre on
our annals,--the Bacons, the Raleighs, the Seldens, the Cudworths, and
the Boyles.
The strangely assorted and rather grotesque band to whom we are
principally indebted for a vindication of outraged common sense and
insulted humanity in this instance, and whose vigorous exposition of
the absurdities of the prevailing system, in combination with other
lights and sources of intelligence, led at last to its being
universally abandoned, consists of four individuals--on any of whom a
literary Pharisee would look down with supercilious scorn:--a country
gentleman, devoted to husbandry, and deep in platforms of hop
gardens,[14]--a baronet, whose name for upwards of a century has been
used as a synonyme for incurable political bigotry,[15]--a little,
crooked, and now forgotten man, who died, as his biographer tells us,
"distracted, occasioned by a deep conceit of his own parts, and by a
continual bibbing of strong and high tasted liquors,"[16]--and last,
but not least assuredly, of one who was by turns a fanatical preacher
and an obscure practitioner of physic, and who passed his old age at
Clitheroe in Lancashire in attempting to transmute metals and discover
the philosopher's stone.[17] So strange a band of Apostles of reason
may occasion a smile; it deserves, at all events, a little more
particular consideration before we address ourselves to the short
narration which may be deemed necessary as an introduction to the
republication which follows.
Of the first of the number, Reginald or Reynold Scot, it is to be
regretted that more particulars are not known. Nearly the whole are
contained in the following information afforded by Anthony à Wood,
_Athenæ._, vol. i. p. 297; from which it appears that he took to
"solid reading" at a crisis of life when it is generally thrown aside.
"Reynolde Scot, a younger son of Sir John Scot, of Scot's Hall, near
to Smeeth, in Kent, by his wife, daughter of Reynolde Pimp, of Pimp's
Court, Knight, was born in that county, and at about 17 years of age
was sent to Oxon, particularly as it seems to Hart Hall, where several
of his countrymen and name studied in the latter end of K. Henry
VIII. and the reign of Edward VI., &c. Afterwards he retired to his
native country, without the honour of a Degree, and settled at Smeeth,
where he found great encouragement in his studies from his kinsman,
Sir Thomas Scot. _About which time, taking to him a wife, he gave
himself up solely to solid reading_, to the perusing of obscure
authors that had, by the generality of scholars, been neglected, and
at times of leisure to husbandry and gardening. He died in September
or October in 1599, and was buried among his ancestors, in the church
at Smeeth before mentioned." Retired as his life and obscure as his
death might be, he is one whose name will be remembered as long as
vigorous sense, flowing from the "wells of English undefiled," hearty
and radiant humour, and sterling patriotism, are considered as
deserving of commemoration. His _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, first
published in 1584, is indeed a treat to him who wishes to study the
idioms, manners, opinions, and superstitions of the reign of
Elizabeth. Its entire title deserves to be given:--
"_The discouerie of witchcraft, wherein the lewde dealing of witches
and witchmongers is notablie detected, the knauerie of coniurors, the
impietie of inchantors, the follie of soothsaiers, the impudent
falshood of cousenors, the infidelitie of atheists, the pestilent
practises of Pythonists, the curiositie of figurecasters, the vanitie
of dreamers, the beggerlie art of Alcumystrie, the abhomination of
idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the vertue and power of
naturall magike, and all the conueiances of Legierdemaine and iuggling
are deciphered: and many other things opened, which haue long lien
hidden, howbeit verie necessarie to be knowne. Heerevnto is added a
treatise vpon the nature and substance of spirits and diuels, &c: all
latelie written by Reginald Scot Esquire._ 1 John, 4, 1. _Beleeue not
euerie spirit but trie the spirits, whether they are of God; for many
false prophets are gone out into the world, &c._ 1584."
[Footnote 14: Reginald Scot.]
[Footnote 15: Sir R. Filmer.]
[Footnote 16: John Wagstaffe.]
[Footnote 17: John Webster.]
This title is sufficient to show that he gives no quarter to the
delusion he undertakes to expose, and though he does not deny that
there may be witches in the abstract, (to have done so would have left
him a preacher without an audience,) yet he guards so cautiously
against any practical application of that principle, and battles so
vigorously against the error which assimilated the witches of modern
times to the witches of Scripture, and, denying the validity of the
confessions of those convicted, throws such discredit and ridicule
upon the whole system, that the popular belief cannot but have
received a severe shock from the publication of his work.[18] By an
extraordinary elevation of good sense, he managed, not only to see
through the absurdities of witchcraft, but likewise of other errors
which long maintained their hold upon the learned as well as the
vulgar. Indeed, if not generally more enlightened, he was, in some
respects, more emancipated from delusion than even his great
successor, the learned and sagacious Webster, who, a century after,
clung still to alchemy which Reginald Scot had ridiculed and exposed.
Yet with all its strong points and broad humour, it is undeniable that
_The Discoverie of Witchcraft_ only scotched the snake instead of
killing it; and that its effect was any thing but final and complete.
Inveterate error is seldom prostrated by a blow from one hand, and
truth seems to be a tree which cannot be forced by planting it before
its time. There was something, too, in the book itself which militated
against its entire acceptance by the public. It is intended to form a
little Encyclopædia of the different arts of imposition practised in
Scot's time; and in order to illustrate the various tricks and modes
of cozenage, he gives us so many charms and diagrams and conjurations,
to say nothing of an inventory of seventy-nine devils and spirits, and
their several seignories and degrees, that the _Occult Philosophy_ of
Cornelius Agrippa himself looks scarcely less appalling, at first
sight, than the _Discoverie_. This gave some colour to the declamation
of the author's opponents, who held him up as Wierus had been
represented before him, as if he were as deeply dipped in diabolical
practises as any of those whom he defended. Atheist and Sadducee, if
not very wizard himself, were the terms in which his name was
generally mentioned, and as such, the royal author of the _Demonology_
anathematizes him with great unction and very edifying horror. Against
the papists, the satire of Scot had been almost as much directed as
against what he calls the "witch-mongers," so that that very powerful
party were to a man opposed to him. Vigorous, therefore, as was his
onslaught, its effect soon passed by; and when on the accession of
James, the statute which so long disgraced our penal code was enacted,
as the adulatory tribute of all parties, against which no honest voice
was raised, to the known opinions of the monarch, Scot became too
unfashionable to be seen on the tables of the great or in the
libraries of the learned. If he were noticed, it was only to be
traduced as a sciolist, (imperitus dialecticæ et aliarum bonarum
artium, says Dr. Reynolds,) and to be exposed for imagined lapses in
scholarship in an age when for a writer not to be a scholar, was like
a traveller journeying without a passport. Meric Casaubon, who
carried all the prejudices of the time of James the first into the
reign of Charles the second, but who, though overshadowed by the fame
of his father, was no unworthy scion of that incomparable stock, at
the same time that he denounces Scot as illiterate, will only
acknowledge to having met with him "at friends houses" and
"booksellers shops," as if his work were one which would bring
contamination to a scholar's library. Scot was certainly not a scholar
in the sense in which the term is applied to the Scaligers, Casaubons,
and Vossius's, though he would have been considered a prodigy of
reading in these days of superficial acquisition. But he had original
gifts far transcending scholarship. He had a manly, straightforward,
vigorous understanding, which, united with an honest integrity of
purpose, kept him right when greater men went wrong. How invaluable a
phalanx would the battalion of folios which the reign of James the
first produced now afford us, if the admirable mother-wit and
single-minded sincerity of Reginald Scot could only have vivified and
informed them.[19]
[Footnote 18: In the epistle to his kinsman Sir Thomas Scot, prefixed
to his _Discoverie_, he observes:--
"I see among other malefactors manie poore old women conuented before
you for working of miracles, other wise called witchcraft, and
therefore I thought you also a meet person to whom I might commend my
booke."--And he then proceeds, in the following spirited and gallant
strain, to run his course against the Dagon of popular superstition:--
"I therefore (at this time) doo onelie desire you to consider of my
report, concerning the euidence that is commonlie brought before you
against them. See first whether the euidence be not friuolous, &
whether the proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting
of ghesses, presumptions, & impossibilities contrarie to reason,
scripture, and nature. See also what persons complaine vpon them,
whether they be not of the basest, the vnwisest, & most faithles kind
of people. Also may it please you to waie what accusations and crimes
they laie to their charge, namelie: She was at my house of late, she
would haue had a pot of milke, she departed in a chafe bicause she had
it not, she railed, she curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and
finallie she said she would be euen with me: and soone after my child,
my cow, my sow, or my pullet died, or was strangelie taken. Naie (if
it please your Worship) I haue further proofe: I was with a wise
woman, and she told me I had an ill neighbour, & that she would come
to my house yer it were long, and so did she; and that she had a marke
aboue hir waste, & so had she: and God forgiue me, my stomach hath
gone against hir a great while. Hir mother before hir was counted a
witch, she hath beene beaten and scratched by the face till bloud was
drawne vpon hir, bicause she hath beene suspected, & afterwards some
of those persons were said to amend. These are the certeinties that I
heare in their euidences.
"_Note also how easilie they may be brought to confesse that which
they neuer did, nor lieth in the power of man to doo_: and then see
whether I haue cause to write as I doo. Further, if you shall see that
infidelitie, poperie, and manie other manifest heresies be backed and
shouldered, and their professors animated and hartened, by yeelding to
creatures such infinit power as is wrested out of Gods hand, and
attributed to witches: finallie, if you shall perceiue that I haue
faithfullie and trulie deliuered and set downe the condition and state
of the witch, and also of the witchmonger, and haue confuted by reason
and lawe, and by the word of God it selfe, all mine aduersaries
obiections and arguments: then let me haue your countenance against
them that maliciouslie oppose themselues against me.
"_My greatest aduersaries are yoong ignorance and old custome._ For
what follie soeuer tract of time hath fostered, it is so
superstitiouslie pursued of some, as though no error could be
acquainted with custome. But if the lawe of nations would ioine with
such custome, to the maintenance of ignorance, and to the suppressing
of knowledge; the ciuilest countrie in the world would soone become
barbarous, &c. For as knowledge and time discouereth errors, so dooth
superstition and ignorance in time breed them."
The passage which I next quote, is a further specimen of the
impressive and even eloquent earnestness with which he pleads his
cause:--
"In the meane time, I would wish them to know that if neither the
estimation of Gods omnipotencie, nor the tenor of his word, nor the
doubtfulnes or rather the impossibilitie of the case, nor the small
proofes brought against them, nor the rigor executed vpon them, nor
the pitie that should be in a christian heart, nor yet their
simplicitie, impotencie, or age may suffice to suppresse the rage or
rigor wherewith they are oppressed; yet the consideration of their sex
or kind ought to mooue some mitigation of their punishment. For if
nature (as Plinie reporteth) haue taught a lion not to deale so
roughlie with a woman as with a man, bicause she is in bodie the
weaker vessell, and in hart more inclined to pitie (which Ieremie in
his lamentations seemeth to confirme) what should a man doo in this
case, for whome a woman was created as an helpe and comfort vnto him?
In so much as, euen in the lawe of nature, it is a greater offense to
slea a woman than a man: not bicause a man is not the more excellent
creature, but bicause a woman is the weaker vessell. And therefore
among all modest and honest persons it is thought a shame to offer
violence or iniurie to a woman: in which respect Virgil saith, _Nullum
memorabile nomen foeminea in poena est_.
"God that knoweth my heart is witnes, and you that read my booke shall
see, that my drift and purpose in this enterprise tendeth onelie to
these respects. First, that the glorie and power of God be not so
abridged and abased, as to be thrust into the hand or lip of a lewd
old woman: whereby the worke of the Creator should be attributed to
the power of a creature. Secondlie, that the religion of the gospell
may be seene to stand without such peeuish trumperie. Thirdlie, that
lawfull fauour and christian compassion be rather vsed towards these
poore soules, than rigor and extremitie. Bicause they, which are
commonlie accused of witchcraft, are the least sufficient of all other
persons to speake for themselues; as hauing the most base and simple
education of all others; the extremitie of their age giuing them leaue
to dote, their pouertie to beg, their wrongs to chide and threaten (as
being void of anie other waie of reuenge) their humor melancholicall
to be full of imaginations, from whence cheefelie proceedeth the
vanitie of their confessions; as that they can transforme themselues
and others into apes, owles, asses, dogs, cats, &c: that they can flie
in the aire, kill children with charmes, hinder the comming of butter,
&c.
"And for so much as the mightie helpe themselues together, and the
poore widowes crie, though it reach to heauen, is scarse heard here
vpon earth: I thought good (according to my poore abilitie) to make
intercession, that some part of common rigor, and some points of
hastie iudgement may be aduised vpon. For the world is now at that
stay (as Brentius in a most godlie sermon in these words affirmeth)
that euen as when the heathen persecuted the christians, if anie were
accused to beleeue in Christ, the common people cried _Ad leonem_: so
now, if anie woman, be she neuer so honest, be accused of witchcraft,
they crie _Ad ignem_."]
[Footnote 19: In the intervening period between the publication of
Soot's work and the advertisement of Filmer, several books came out on
the subject of witchcraft. Amongst them it is right to notice "A
Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft, by George Giffard,
Minister of God's Word in Maldon," 1593, 4to. This tract, which has
been reprinted by the Percy Society, is not free from the leading
fallacies which infected the reasonings of almost all the writers on
witchcraft. It is, nevertheless, exceedingly entertaining, and well
deserves a perusal, if only as transmitting to us, in their full
freshness, the racy colloquialisms of the age of Elizabeth. It is to
be hoped that the other works of Giffard, all of which are deserving
of attention, independently of their theological interest, as
specimens of pure and sterling English, may appear in a collected
form. The next tract requiring notice is "The Trial of Witchcraft, by
John Cotta," 1616, 4to, of which a second and enlarged edition was
published in 1624. Cotta, who was a physician of great eminence and
experience, residing at Northampton, has supplied in this very able,
learned, and vigorous treatise, a groundwork which, if pursued to its
just results, for he writes very cautiously and guardedly, and rather
hints at his conclusions than follows them out, would have sufficed to
have overthrown many of the positions of the supporters of the system
of witchcraft. His work has a strong scholastic tinge, and is not
without occasional obscurity; and on these accounts probably produced
no very extensive impression at the time. He wrote two other
tracts--1. "Discovery of the Dangers of ignorant practisers of Physick
in England," 1612, 4to; 2. "Cotta contra Antonium, or An Ant-Anthony,"
Oxford, 1623, 4to; the latter of which, a keen satire against the
chymists' aurum potabile, is exceedingly rare. Both are intrinsically
valuable and interesting, and written with great vigour of style, and
are full of curious illustrations derived from his extensive medical
practice. I cannot conclude this note without adverting to Gaule's
amusing little work, ("Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and
Witchcraft, by John Gaule, Preacher of the Word at Great Haughton, in
the county of Huntingdon," 1646, 24mo.) which gives us all the
casuistry applicable to witchcraft. We can almost forgive Gaule's
fundamental errors on the general question, for the courage and spirit
with which he battled with the villainous witchfinder, Hopkins, who
wanted sorely to make an example of him, to the terror of all
gainsayers of the sovereign power of this examiner-general of witches.
Gaule proved himself to be an overmatch for the itinerating
inquisitor, and so effectually attacked, battled with, and exposed
him, as to render him quite harmless in future. The minister of Great
Haughton was made of different metal to the "old reading parson
Lewis," or Lowes, to whose fate Baxter refers with such nonchalance.
As the only clergyman of the Church of England, that I am aware of,
who was executed for witchcraft, Lewis's case is sufficiently
interesting to merit some notice. Stearne's (vide his _Confirmation of
Witchcraft_, p. 23,) account of it, which I have not seen quoted
before, is as follows:--
"Thus was Parson Lowis taken, who had been a Minister, (as I have
heard) in one Parish above forty yeares, in Suffolke, before he was
condemned, but had been indited for a common imbarriter, and for
Witchcraft, above thirty yeares before, and the grand Jury (as I have
heard) found the bill for a common imbarriter, who now, after he was
found with the markes, in his confession, he confessed, that in pride
of heart, to be equall, or rather above God, the Devill tooke
advantage of him, and hee covenanted with the Devill, and sealed it
with his bloud, and had three Familiars or spirits, which sucked on
the markes found upon his body, and did much harme, both by Sea and
Land, especially by Sea, for he confessed, that he being at Lungarfort
in Suffolke, where he preached, as he walked upon the wall, or workes
there, he saw a great saile of Ships passe by, and that as they were
sailing by, one of his three Impes, namely his yellow one, forthwith
appeared to him, and asked him what hee should doe, and he bade it goe
and sinke such a Ship, and shewed his Impe a new Ship, amongst the
middle of the rest (as I remember) one that belonged to Ipswich, so he
confessed the Impe went forthwith away, and he stood still, and viewed
the Ships on the Sea as they were a sayling, and perceived that Ship
immediately, to be in more trouble and danger then the rest; for he
said, the water was more boystrous neere that then the rest, tumbling
up and down with waves, as if water had been boyled in a pot, and
soone after (he said) in a short time it sanke directly downe into the
Sea, as he stood and viewed it, when all the rest sayled away in
safety, there he confessed, he made fourteen widdowes in one quarter
of an houre. Then Mr. Hopkin, as he told me (for he tooke his
Confession) asked him, if it did not grieve him to see so many men
cast away, in a short time, and that he should be the cause of so many
poore widdowes on a suddaine, but he swore by his maker, no, he was
joyfull to see what power his Impes had, and so likewise confessed
many other mischiefes, and had a charme to keep him out of Goale, and
hanging, as he paraphrased it himselfe, but therein the Devill
deceived him; for he was hanged, that Michaelmas time 1645. at Burie
Saint Edmunds, but he made a very farre larger confession, which I
have heard hath been printed: but if it were so, it was neither of Mr.
Hopkins doing nor mine owne; for we never printed anything untill
now."
Hutchinson gives the explanation of this confession. What can be more
atrocious than the whole story, which is yet but the common story of
witch confessions?
"_Adv._ Then did not he confess this before the Commissioners, at the
Time of his Tryal?
"_Clerg._ No, but maintained his Innocence stoutly, and challenged
them to make Proof of such Things as they laid to his Charge. I had
this from a Person of Credit, who was then in Court, and heard his
Tryal. I may add, that tho' his Case is remembered better than others
that suffered, yet I never heard any one speak of him, but with great
Compassion, because of his Age and Character, and their Belief of his
Innocence: And when he came to his Execution, because he would have
Christian Burial, he read the Office himself, and that way committed
his own Body to the Ground, in sure and certain Hope of the
Resurrection to eternal Life.
"In the Notes upon those Verses that I quoted out of Hudibras, it is
said, that he had been a painful Preacher for many Years, I may add
for Fifty, for so long he had been Vicar of Brandeston in the County
of Suffolk, as appears by the Time of his Institution. That I might
know the present Sense of the Chief Inhabitants of that Place, I wrote
to Mr. Wilson, the Incumbent of that Town, and by his Means received
the following Letter from Mr. Rivett, a worthy Gentleman who lived
lately in the same Place, and whose Father lived there before him.
"'SIR,
"'In Answer to your Request concerning Mr. Lowes, my Father was always
of the opinion, that Mr. Lowes suffered wrongfully, and hath often
said, that he did believe, he was no more a Wizzard than he was. I
have heard it from them that watched with him, that _they kept him
awake several Nights together, and run him backwards and forwards
about the Room, until he was out of Breath: Then they rested him a
little, and then ran him again: And thus they did for several Days and
Nights together, till he was weary of his Life, and was scarce
sensible of what he said or did_. They swam him at Framlingham, but
that was no true Rule to try him by; for they put in honest People at
the same Time, and they swam as well as he."]
After the lapse of another half century, and at the very period when
the persecution against witches waxed hotter, and the public
prejudice had become only more inveterate, from the ingredient of
fanaticism having been largely thrown in as a stimulant, another ally
to the cause of compassion and common sense started up, in the person
of one whose name has rounded many a period and given point to many
an invective. To find the proscribed author of the _Patriarcha_
purging with "euphrasy and rue" the eyes of the dispensers of justice,
and shouldering the crowd to obtain for reason a fair and impartial
hearing, is indeed like meeting with Saul among the prophets. If there
be one name which has been doomed to run the gauntlet, and against
which every pert and insolent political declaimer has had his fling,
it is that of this unfortunate writer; yet in his short but masterly
and unanswerable "Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching
Witches, together with a difference between an English and Hebrew
Witch," first published in 1653, 4to., he has addressed himself so
cogently and decisively to the main fallacy of the arguments in favour
of witchcraft which rested their force on Scripture misunderstood, and
has so pertinently and popularly urged the points to be considered,
that his tract must have had the greatest weight on the class to whom
his reasoning was principally addressed, and on whose fiat the fates
of his unhappy clients may be said to have hung. For this good
service, reason and common sense owe Sir Robert Filmer a debt which
does not yet appear to have been paid. The verdict of proscription
against him was pronounced by the most incompetent and superficial æra
of our literature, and no friendly appellant has yet moved the court
of posterity for its reversal. Yet without entering upon the theory of
the patriarchal scheme, which after all, perhaps, was not so
irrational as may be supposed, or discussing on an occasion like the
present the conflicting theories of government, it may be allowable to
express a doubt whether even the famous author of the "Essay on the
Human Understanding," to whose culminating star the decadence of the
rival intelligence is attributable, can be shewn to have been as much
in advance of his generation in the time of king William, as from the
tract on witchcraft, and another written on a different subject, but
with equally enlightened views,[20] Sir Robert Filmer manifestly
appears to have outrun his at the period of the usurpation.[21]
[Footnote 20: I allude to his little tract on Usury.]
[Footnote 21: Between the period of the publication of Filmer's
Advertisement and the appearance of Wagstaffe's work, a tract was
published too important in this controversy to be passed over without
notice. It is entitled _A Candle in the Dark, or a Treatise concerning
the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft; being Advice to Judges,
Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, and Grand Jurymen, what to do before
they passe sentence on such as are arraigned for their lives as
Witches. By Thomas Ady, M.A. London, printed for R.J., to be sold by
Thomas Newberry, at the Three Lions in Cornhill, by the Exchange,
1656_, 4to. Ady, of whom, unfortunately, nothing is known, presses the
arguments against the witchmongers and witchfinders with unanswerable
force. In fact, this tract comprises the quintessence of all that had
been urged against the popular system, and his "Candle" was truly a
burning and a shining light. His Dedication is too curious to be
omitted:--
"To the Prince of the Kings of the Earth. It is the manner of men, O
heavenly King, to dedicate their books to some great men, thereby to
have their works protected and countenanced among them; but thou only
art able, by thy holy Spirit of Truth, to defend thy Truth, and to
make it take impression in the heart and understanding of men. Unto
thee alone do I dedicate this work, entreating thy Most High Majesty
to grant, that whoever shall open this book, thy holy Spirit may so
possess their understanding, as that the Spirit of errour may depart
from them, and that they may read and try thy Truth by the touchstone
of thy Truth, the holy Scriptures; and finding that Truth, may embrace
it and forsake their darksome inventions of Antichrist, that have
deluded and defiled the nations now and in former ages. Enlighten the
world, thou that art the Light of the World, and let darkness be no
more in the world, now or in any future age; but make all people to
walk as children of the Light for ever; and destroy Antichrist, that
hath deceived the nations, and save us the residue by thyself alone;
and let not Satan any more delude us, for the Truth is thine for
ever." He then puts his "Dilemma that cannot be answered by
Witchmongers." It is too long to quote, but it is a dilemma that would
pose the stoutest Coryphæus of the party to whom he addressed
himself.]
The next champion in this unpopular cause, John Wagstaffe, who
published "The Question of Witchcraft Debated," 1669, 12mo,[22] was,
as A. à Wood informs us, "the son of John Wagstaffe, citizen of
London, descended from those of his name of Hasland Hall, in
Derbyshire, was born in Cheapside, within the city of London, became a
commoner of Oriel College in the latter end of 1649, took the degrees
in Arts, and applied himself to the study of politics and other
learning. At length, being raised from an academical life to the
inheritance of Hasland, by the death of an uncle, who died without
male issue, he spent his life afterwards in single estate." His death
took place in 1677. The Oxford historian, who had little reverence for
new lights, and never loses an opportunity of girding at those whose
weights and measures were not according to the current and only
authentic standard, has left no very flattering account of his person.
"He was a little crooked man, and of a despicable presence. He was
laughed at by the boys of this University, because, as they said, he
himself looked like a little wizard." Small as might be his stature,
and questionable the shape in which he appeared, he might still have
taken up the boast of the author of the _Religio Medici_: "Men that
look upon my outside do err in my altitude, for I am above Atlas's
shoulders." None but a large-souled and kindly-affectioned man, whose
intellect was as comprehensive as his feelings were benevolent, could
have produced the excellent little treatise which claims him as its
author. The following is the lofty and memorable peroration in which
he sums up the strength of his cause:--
"I cannot think without trembling and horror on the vast numbers of
people that in several ages and several countries have been sacrificed
unto this idol, Opinion. Thousands, ten thousands, are upon record to
have been slain, and many of them not with simple deaths, but horrid,
exquisite tortures. And yet, how many are there more who have
undergone the same fate, of whom we have no memorial extant. Since,
therefore, the opinion of witchcraft is a mere stranger unto
Scripture, and wholly alien from true religion; since it is ridiculous
by asserting fables and impossibilities; since it appears, when duly
considered, to be all bloody and full of dangerous consequence unto
the lives and safety of men; I hope that with this my Discourse,
opposing an absurd and pernicious error, I can not at all disoblige
any sober, unbiassed person; especially if he be of such ingenuity as
to have freed himself from a slavish subjection unto those prejudicial
opinions which custom and education do with too much tyranny
impose.--If the doctrine of witchcraft should be carried up to a
height, and the inquisition after it should be intrusted in the hands
of ambitious, covetous and malicious men, it would prove of far more
fatal consequence unto the lives and safety of mankind, than that
ancient, heathenish custom of sacrificing men unto idol gods; insomuch
that we stand in need of another Hercules Liberator, who, as the
former freed the world from human sacrifice, should, in like manner,
travel from country to country, and by his all-commanding authority,
free it from _this euil and base custom of torturing people to confess
themselves witches, and burning them after extorted confessions_.
Surely the blood of men ought not to be so cheap, nor so easily to be
shed by those who, under the name of God, do gratifie exorbitant
passions and selfish ends; for without question, under this side
heaven, there is nothing so sacred as the life of man; for the
preservation whereof all policies and forms of government, all laws
and magistrates are most especially ordained. Wherefore I presume that
this Discourse of mine, attempting to prove the vanity and
impossibility of witchcraft, is so far from any deserved censure and
blame, that it rather deserves commendation and praise, if I can in
the least measure contribute to the saving of the lives of men."
[Footnote 22: I have not seen his earlier work, "Historical
Reflections on the Bishop of Rome, &c." Oxford, 1660, 4to. If it be
written with any portion of the power evinced in his "Question of
Witchcraft Debated," the ridicule with which Wood says it was received
by the wits of the university, and the oblivion into which it
subsequently fell, were both equally undeserved.]
Wagstaffe was answered by Meric Casaubon in his treatise "Of Credulity
and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual," 1670, 12mo; and if
his reply be altogether inconclusive, it cannot be denied to be, as
indeed every thing of Meric Casaubon's writing was, learned,
discursive and entertaining. He observes of Wagstaffe:--
"He doth make some show of a scholar and a man of some learning, but
whether he doth acquit himself as a gentleman (which I hear he is) in
it, I shall leave to others to judge." This is surely the first time
that a belief in witchcraft was ever made a test of gentlemanly
propriety.
Two years before the trial, which is the subject of the following
republication, took place, the hamlet of Thornton, in the parish of
Coxwold, in the adjoining county of York, gave birth to one who was
destined so utterly to demolish the unstable and already shaken and
tottering structure which Bodin, Delrio, and their followers had set
up, as not to leave one stone of that unhallowed edifice remaining
upon another. Of the various course of life of John Webster, the
author of "The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft," his travels,
troubles, and persecutions; of the experience he had had in restless
youth and in unsettled manhood of religion under various forms,
amongst religionists of almost every denomination; and of those
profound and wide-ranging researches in every art and science in which
his vigorous intellect delighted, and by which it was in declining age
enlightened, sobered and composed; it is much to be regretted that we
have not his own narrative, written in the calm evening of his days,
when he walked the slopes of Pendle, from where,
"Through shadow dimly seen
Rose Clid'row's castle grey;"[23]
when, to use his own expressions, he lived a "solitary and sedentary
life, _mihi et musis_, having more converse with the dead than the
living, that is, more with books than with men." The facts for his
biography are scanty and meagre, and are rather collected by inference
from his works, than from any other source. He was born at Thornton on
the 3rd of February, 1610. From a passing notice of A. à Wood, and an
incidental allusion in his own works, he may be presumed to have
passed some time at Cambridge, though with what views, or at what
period of his life, is uncertain. He was ordained Presbyter by Dr.
Morton, when Bishop of Durham, who was, it will be recollected, the
sagacious prelate by whom the frauds of the boy of Bilson were
detected. In the year 1634, Webster was curate of Kildwick in Craven,
and while in that cure the scene occurred which he has so vividly
sketched in the passage after quoted, and which supplied the hint, and
laid the foundation, for the work which has perpetuated his fame. How
long he continued in this cure we know not: but, if one authority may
be relied on, he was Master of the Free Grammar School at Clitheroe in
1643. To this foundation he may be considered as a great benefactor,
for, from information supplied from a manuscript source, I find that
he recovered for its use, with considerable trouble and no small
personal charge, an income of about £60. per annum, which had been
given to the school, but was illegally diverted and withheld. From
this period there is a blank in his biography for about ten years.
Most probably his life was rambling and desultory. He speaks of
himself as having been about that time a chaplain in the army. His
first two works, published in 1653 and 1654, "The Saints' Guide," and
"The Judgment Set and the Books Opened,"[24] show that in the
interval he had deserted the Established Church, and, probably, after
some of those restless fluctuations of belief to which men of his
ardent temperament are subject, settled at last in a wilder sort of
Independency, which he eulogizes as "unmanacling the simple and pure
light of the Gospel from the chains and fetters of cold and dead
formality, and of restrictive and compulsory power." His language in
these two works is more assimilated to that of the Seekers or Quakers,
which it resembles in the cloudy mysteriousness of its phraseology,
than that of the more rational and sober writers of the Independent
school. Amongst the dregs of fanaticism of which they consist, the
reader will look in vain for any germ or promise of future excellence
or distinction as an author. It would seem that he preached the
sermons contained in "The Judgment Set and Books Opened" at the church
of All-Hallows, Lombard-street, at which he must have been for some
time the officiating minister, and where the amusing incident, in
which Webster was concerned, narrated by Wood, which had many a
parallel in those times, no doubt occurred. "On the 12th of Oct.,
1653," says the author of the _Athenæ._,[25] "he (_i.e._ William
Erbury) with John Webster, sometimes a Cambridge scholar, endeavoured
to knock down learning and the ministry both together, in a
disputation that they then had against two ministers in a church in
Lombard-street, in London. Erbury then declared that the wisest
ministers and purest churches were at that time befool'd, confounded,
and defil'd, by reason of learning. Another while he said, that the
ministry were monsters, beasts, asses, greedy dogs, false prophets;
and that they are the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. The same
person also spoke out and said that Babylon is the Church in her
ministers, and that the Great Whore is the Church in her worship, &c.;
so that with him there was an end of ministers and churches and
ordinations altogether. While these things were babbled to and fro,
the multitude being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to
cry out, and immediately it came to a meeting or tumult, (call it
which you please,) _wherein the women bore away the Bell, but lost
some of them their kerchiefs_: and the dispute being hot, there was
more danger of pulling down the church than the ministry."[26]
[Footnote 23: "Poems, by the Rev. R. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester,"
1845, 12mo. (Hunter's Song.) A most pleasing volume of a very
accomplished author. Long may he survive to add honours to the ancient
stock of which he has given so interesting an account, by well-earned
trophies gathered from the fair fields of literature and theology, and
by a most exemplary discharge of the appropriate duties of his own
sacred profession.]
[Footnote 24: "_The Saints' Guide, or Christ the Rule and Ruler of
Saints. Manifested by way of Positions, Consectaries, and Queries.
Wherein is contained the Efficacy of Acquired Knowledge; the Rule of
Christians; the Mission and Maintenance of Ministers; and the Power of
Magistrates in Spiritual Things. By John Webster, late Chaplain in the
Army._" London, 1653, 4to.
"_The Judgement Set, and the Bookes Opened. Religion Tried whether it
be of God or of men. The Lord cometh to visit his own, For the time is
come that Judgement must begin at the House of God._
{ _The Sheep from the Goats_,
_To separate_ { _and_
{ _The Precious from the Vile._
_And to discover the Blasphemy of those that say_,
{ _Apostles_, } { _Found Lyars_,
{ _Teachers_, } { _Deceivers_,
_They are_ { _Alive_, } _but are_ { _Dead_,
{ _Rich_, } { _Poore, blind, naked_,
{ _Jewes_, } { _The Synagogue of Satan._
_In severall Sermons at Alhallows Lumbard-street, By John Webster, A
servant of Christ and his Church. Micah 3. 5. &c. Thus saith the Lord,
concerning the Prophets that make my people erre, that bite with their
teeth, and cry peace: and he that putteth not into their mouths, they
prepare war against him: Therefore night shall be upon them, that they
shall not have a vision, &c. The Sun shall goe down over the prophets,
and the Day shall be dark. Their seers shall be ashamed, and the
Deviners confounded: yea, they shall All cover their lips, for there
is no answer of God._" London, 1654. 4to.]
[Footnote 25: _Athen. Oxon._, Vol. ii., p. 175. Edit. 1721.]
[Footnote 26: Old Anthony chronicles this battle of the kerchiefs with
a sly humour very different from his usual solemn matter-of-fact
style.]
Of Erbury who, being originally in holy orders and a beneficed
clergyman, deserted the Established Church and ran into all the
excesses of Antinomianism, Webster was a great admirer, and has in a
preface, hitherto unnoticed, prefixed to a scarce tract of Erbury's,
entitled "The great Earthquake, or Fall of all the Churches,"
published in 1654, 4to, left a sketch of his opinions and character,
in which his defence is undertaken with great zeal and no small
ingenuity. One of his apologist's conclusions most of Erbury's readers
will find no difficulty in assenting to, "the world is not ripe for
such discoveries as our author held forth." The verses which are
appended to this sketch, characterizing Erbury--
"As him
Who did the saintship sever
From the opinion; this fails, that shall never,
Chymist of Truth and Gospel;"--