"Dance and provencal song"
which formed one great accompaniment of the orgies of the southern
witches. Bodin's authority is express, that each, the oldest not
excused, was expected to perform a coranto, and great attention was
paid to the regularity of the steps. We owe to him the discovery,
which is not recorded in any annals of dancing I have met with, that
the lavolta, a dance not dissimilar, according to his description, to
the polka of the present day, was brought out of Italy into France by
the witches at their festive meetings. Of the language spoken at these
meetings, De Lancre favours us with a specimen, valuable, like the
Punic fragment in the Poenolus, for its being the only one of the
kind. _In nomine patrica araguenco petrica agora, agora, Valentia
jouando goure gaiti goustia._ As it passes my skill, I can only
commend it to the especial notice of Mr. Borrow against his next
journey into Spain. What was spoken at Malkin Tower was, doubtless, a
dialect not yet obsolete, and which Tummus and Meary would have had no
difficulty in comprehending. On the subject of these witches'
Sabbaths, Dr. Ferriar remarks, in his curious and agreeable _Essay on
Popular Illusions_, (see _Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society_, vol. iii., p. 68,) a sketch which it is much
to be regretted that he did not subsequently expand and revise, and
publish in a separate form:--
The solemn meetings of witches are supposed to be put beyond
all doubt by the numerous confessions of criminals, who have
described their ceremonies, named the times and places of
meeting, and the persons present, and who have agreed in
their relations, though separately delivered.[78] But I
would observe, first, that the circumstances told of those
festivals are ridiculous and incredible in themselves; for
they are represented as gloomy and horrible, yet with a
mixture of childish and extravagant fancies, more likely to
disgust and alienate than to conciliate the minds of the
guests. They have every appearance of uneasy dreams;
sometimes the devil and his subjects _say mass_, sometimes
he _preaches_ to them, more commonly he was seen in the form
of a black goat, surrounded by imps in a thousand frightful
shapes; but none of these forms are _new_, they all resemble
known quadrupeds or reptiles. Secondly, I observe, that
there is direct proof furnished even by demonologists, that
all these supposed journies and entertainments are nothing
more than dreams. Persons accused of witchcraft have been
repeatedly watched, about the time which they had fixed for
the meeting; they have been seen to anoint themselves with
soporific compositions, after which they fell into profound
sleep, and on awaking, several hours afterwards, they have
related their journey through the air, their amusement at
the festival, and have named the persons whom they saw
there. In the instance told by Hoffman, the dreamer was
chained to the floor. Common sense would rest satisfied
here, but the enthusiasm of demonology has invented more
than one theory to get rid of these untoward facts. Dr.
Henry More, as was formerly mentioned, believed that the
astral spirit only was carried away: other demonologists
imagined that the witch was really removed to the place of
meeting, but that a cacodemon was left in her room, as an
[Greek: eidôlon], to delude the spectators. Thirdly, some
stories of the festivals are evidently tricks. Such is that
related by Bodinus, with much gravity: a man is found in a
gentleman's cellar, and apprehended as a thief; he declares
his wife had brought him thither to a witch-meeting, and on
his pronouncing the name of God, she and all her companions
had vanished, and left him inclosed. His wife is immediately
seized, on this righteous evidence, and hanged, with several
other persons, named as present at the meeting.
[Footnote 78: There is a grave relation, in Delrio, of a witch being
shot flying, by a Spanish centinel, at the bridge of Nieulet, near
Calais, after that place was taken by the Spaniards. The soldier saw a
black cloud advancing rapidly, from which voices issued: when it came
near, he fired into it; immediately a witch dropped. This is
_undoubted proof_ of the meetings!--_Disq. Mag._, p. 708.]
G 3 _b_ 2. "_Christopher Iackes, of Thorny-holme, and his wife._"]
This would appear to be Christopher Hargreaves, called here
Christopher Jackes, for o' or of Jack, according to the Lancashire
mode of forming patronymics.
G 4 _a_. "_The first was, for the naming of the Spirit, which Alizon
Deuice, now Prisoner at Lancaster, had: But did not name him, because
shee was not there._"] Gaule says, speaking of the ceremonies at the
witches' solemn meetings: "If the witch be outwardly Christian,
baptism must be renounced, and the party must be rebaptized in the
Devil's name, and a new name is also imposed by him; and here must be
godfathers too, for the Devil takes them not to be so adult as to
promise and vow for themselves." (_Cases of Conscience touching
Witches_, page 59. 1646, 12mo.) But Gaule does not mention any naming
or baptism of spirits and familiars on such occasions.
G 4 _b_. "_Romleyes Moore._"] Romilly's or Rumbles Moor, a wild and
mountainous range in Craven, not unaptly selected for a meeting on a
special emergency of a conclave of witches.
H 2 _a_ 1. "_Was so insensible, weake, and vnable in all thinges, as
he could neither speake, heare, or stand, but was holden vp._"]
Pitiable, truly, was the situation of this unhappy wretch. Brought out
from the restraint of a long imprisonment, before and during which he
had, as we may conjecture, been subjected to every inhumanity, in a
state more dead than alive, into a court which must have looked like
one living mass, with every eye lit up with horror, and curses, not
loud but deep, muttered with harmonious concord from the mouths of
every spectator.
H 2 _a_ 2. "_Anne Towneley, wife of Henrie Townely, of the Carre._"]
Would this be Anne, the daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Catterall,
of Catterall and Little Mitton, Esq., who married Henry Townley, the
son of Lawrence Townley? (See Whitaker's _Whalley_, p. 396.) The
Townleys of Barnside and Carr were a branch of the Townleys, of
Townley. Barnside, or Barnsete, is an ancient mansion in the township
of Colne, which, Whitaker observes, was abandoned by the family, for
the warmer situation of Carr, about the middle of the last century.
H 2 _a_ 3. "_Master Nowel humbly prayed Master Towneley might be
called._"] It is to be regretted we have no copy of the _viva voce_
examination of Mr. Townley, the husband of the lady whose life was
said to have been taken away by witchcraft. The examinations given in
this tract are altogether those of persons in a humble rank of life.
The contrast between their evidence and that of an individual
occupying the position of the descendant of one of the oldest families
in the neighbourhood, with considerable landed possessions, might have
been amusing and instructive.
H 2 _a_ 4. "_Master Nowell humbly prayed, that the particular
examinations taken before him and others might be openly published and
read in court._"] This kind of evidence, the witnesses being in court,
and capable of being examined, would not be received at the present
day. At that time a greater laxity prevailed.
H 3 _a_. "_Sheare Thursday._"] The Thursday before Easter, and so
called, for that, in the old Fathers' days, the people would that day,
"shave their hedes, and clypp their berdes, and pool their heedes, and
so make them honest against Easter Day."--_Brand's Popular
Antiquities_, vol. i., p. 83, edition 1841.
K _b_ 1. "_A Charme._"] Sinclair, in his _Satan's Invisible World
Discovered_, informs us, that "At night, in the time of popery, when
folks went to bed, they believed the repetition of this following
prayer was effectual to preserve them from danger, and the house too.
"Who sains the house the night,
They that sains it ilka night.
Saint Bryde and her brate,
Saint Colme and his hat,
Saint Michael and his spear,
Keep this house from the weir;
From running thief,
And burning thief;
And from and ill Rea,
That be the gate can gae;
And from an ill weight,
That be the gate can light
Nine reeds about the house;
Keep it all the night,
What is that, what I see
So red, so bright, beyond the sea?
'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands,
Through the feet, through the throat,
Through the tongue;
Through the liver and the lung.
Well is them that well may
Fast on Good-friday."
which lines are not unlike some of those in the present "charme,"
which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and
interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior
to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by
the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves,
hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot
throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in
poetical spirit.
K _b_ 2. "_Ligh in leath wand._"] Leath is no doubt lithe, flexible.
What "ligh in" is intended for, unless it be lykinge, which the
_Promptorium Parvulorum_ (_vide_ part i. p. 304) explains by lusty, or
craske, _Delicativus_, crassus, I am unable to conjecture. It is
clear, that the wand in one hand is to steck, _i.e._ stake, or fasten,
the latch of hell door, while the key in his other hand is to open
heaven's lock.
K _b_ 3. "_Let Crizum child goe to it Mother mild._"] The chrisom,
according to the usual explanation, was a white cloth placed upon the
head of an infant at baptism, when the chrism, or sacred oil of the
Romish Church, was used in that sacrament. If the child died within a
month of its birth, that cloth was used as a shroud; and children so
dying were called chrisoms in the old bills of mortality.
K _b_ 4. "_A light so farrandly._"] Farrandly, or farrantly, a word
still in use in Lancashire, and which is equivalent to fair, likely,
or handsome. (See _Lancashire Dialect and Glossary_.) "Harne panne,"
_i.e._, cranium.--_Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 237.
K 2 _a_ 1. "_Vpon the ground of holy weepe._"] I know not how to
explain this, unless it mean the ground of holy weeping, _i.e._, the
Garden of Gethsemane.
K 2 _a_ 2. "_Shall neuer deere thee._"] The word to dere, or hurt,
says Mr. Way, _Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 119, is commonly used by
Chaucer and most other writers until the sixteenth century:
"Fyr he schal hym nevyr dere."
_Coeur de Lion_, 1638.
Fabyan observes, under the year 1194, "So fast besyed this good Kyng
Richarde to vex and dere the infydelys of Sury." Palsgrave gives, "To
dere or hurte a noye nuire, I wyll never dere you by my good wyll."
Ang. Sax., [Anglo-Saxon: derian] _nocere_, [Anglo-Saxon: derung]
_læsio_.
K 3 _a_. "_The Witches of Salmesbvry._"] Or, more properly,
Samlesbury. This wicked attempt on the part of this priest, or Jesuit,
Thompson, _alias_ Southworth, to murder the three persons whose trial
is next reported, by suborning a child of the family to accuse them of
what, in the excited state of the public mind at the time, was almost
certain to consign them to a public execution, has few parallels in
the annals of atrocity. The plot was defeated, and the lives of the
persons accused, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth,
saved, by no sagacity of the judge or wisdom of the jury, but by the
effect of one simple question, wrung from the intended victims on the
verge of anticipated condemnation, and which, natural as it might
appear, was one the felicity of which Garrow or Erskine might have
envied. It demolished, like Ithuriel's spear, the whole fabric of
imposture, and laid it open even to the comprehension of Sir Edward
Bromley and Master Thomas Potts. This was a case which well deserved
Archbishop Harsnet for its historian. His vein of irony, which Swift
or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was
so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down
to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the
stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had,
from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute
1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared
a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have
accomplished at once what was slowly and with difficulty brought about
by the arguments of Scot and Webster, the establishment of the Royal
Society, and a century's growth of intelligence and knowledge.
K 3 _b_ 1. "_A Seminarie Priest._"] Of this Thompson, _alias_
Southworth, I find no account in Dodd's _Catholic Church History_. A
John Southworth is noticed, vol. iii. p. 303, who is described as of
an ancient family in Lancashire, and who was executed at Tyburn, June
28th, 1655. His dying speech is to be found in the same volume, p.
360. The interval of time, as well as the difference of surname,
excludes the presumption of his being identical with the person
referred to in the text, the hero of this extraordinary conspiracy,
and who was probably of the family of Sir John Southworth, after
mentioned.
K 3 _b_ 2. "_A Iesuite, whereof this Countie of Lancaster hath good
store._"] Lancashire was, about this period, the great hot-bed of
Popish recusants. From the very curious list of recusants given
(Baines's _Lancashire_, vol. i. p. 541,) it would seem that Samlesbury
was one of their strongholds:--
James Cowper a seminarie prieste receipted releived and
mainteined att the lodge of Sir John Southworthe in
Samlesburie Parke by Mr. Tho: Southworthe, one of the
younger sonnes of the said Sir John. And att the howse of
John Warde dwellinge in Samlesburie Park syde. And the said
Prieste sayeth Masse att the said lodge and att the said
Wards howse. Whether resorte, Mr. Sowthworthe, Mres. An
Sowthworthe, John Walmesley servante to Sir John
Southworthe, Tho. Southworthe dwellinge in the Parke, John
Gerrerde, servante to Sir John Southworthe, John Singleton,
John Wrighte, James Sherples iunior, John Warde of
Samlesburie, John Warde of Medler thelder, Henrie Potter of
Medler, John Gouldon of Winwicke, Thomas Gouldon of the
same, Roberte Anderton of Samlesburie and John Sherples of
Stanleyhurst in Samlesburie.--_Baines's Lancashire_, vol. i.
p. 543.
Att the lodge in Samlesburie Parke there be masses daylie
and Seminaries dyuerse Resorte thither as James Cowpe,
Harrisson Bell and such like, The like vnlawfull meetings
are made daylie att the howse of John Warde by the Parke
syde of Samlesburie all wiche matters, masses, resorte to
Masses, receipting of Seminaries wilbe Justifyed by Mr. Adam
Sowtheworthe Thomas Sherples and John Osbaldston.--_Ibid._,
p. 544.
K 4 _b_. "_Picked her off._"] Threw her off.
L _a_. "_Hugh Walshmans._"] The wife of Hugh Walshman, of Samlesbury,
is mentioned in the list of recusants; Baines, vol. i. p. 544.
L 2 _a_ 1. "_Brought a little child._"] The evidence against the
Pendle witches exhibits meagreness and poverty of imagination compared
with the accumulated horrors with which the Jesuit, fresh, it may be,
from Bodin and Delrio, made his "fire burn and cauldron bubble." With
respect to this old story of the magical use made of the corpses of
infants, Ben Jonson, in a note on
"I had a dagger: what did I with that?
Killed an infant to have his fat;"
tells us with great gravity:
Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of
their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as
I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also
out of a lust to do murder. _Sprenger in Mal. Malefic._
reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil,
confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they
were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a
needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of
the three witches in _Rem. Dæmonola lib. cap._ 3, about the
end of the chapter. And M. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich _Quæst._
8. And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia,
_Epod. Horat. lib. ode_ 5, and Lucan, _lib._ 6, whose
admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:--
Nec cessant à cæde manus, si sanguine vivo
Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto.
Nec refugit cædes, vivum si sacra cruorem
Extaque funereæ poscunt trepidantia mensæ.
Vulnere si ventris, non quâ natura vocabat,
Extrahitur partus calidus ponendus in aris;
Et quoties sævis opus est, et fortibus umbris
Ipsa facit maneis. Hominum mors omnis in usu est.
_Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford_, vol. vii. p. 130.
L 2 _a_ 2. "_They said they would annoint themselues._"] Ben Jonson
informs us:
When they are to be transported from place to place, they
use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride
on. Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, _Remig.
Dæmonolatriæ lib._ 1. _cap._ 14. _Delrio, Disquis. Mag. l._
2. _quæst._ 16. _Bodin Dæmonoman. lib._ 2 _c._ 14. _Barthol.
de Spina. quæst. de Strigib. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich.
quæst._ 10. _Paracelsus in magn. et occul. Philosophia_,
teacheth the confection. _Unguentum ex carne recens natorum
infantium, in pulmenti, forma coctum, et cum herbis
somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta_, &c. And
_Giov. Bapti. Porta, lib._ 2. _Mag. Natur. cap._ 16.--_Ben
Jonson's Works by Gifford_, vol. vii. p. 119.
L 3 _a_. "_Did carrie her into the loft._"] There is something in this
strange tissue of incoherencies, for knavery has little variety, which
forcibly reminds us of the inventions of Elizabeth Canning, who ought
to have lived in the days when witchcraft was part of the popular
creed. What an admirable witch poor old Mary Squires would have made,
and how brilliantly would her persecutor have shone in the days of the
Baxters and Glanvilles, who acquitted herself so creditably in those
of the Fieldings and the Hills.
L 4 _b_ 1. "_Robert Hovlden, Esquire._"] This individual would be of
the ancient family of Holden, of Holden, the last male heir of which
died without issue, 1792. (See Whitaker's _Whalley_, 418.)
L 4 _b_ 2. "_Sir John Southworth._"] In this family the manor of
Samlesbury remained for three hundred and fifty years. This was,
probably, the John (for the pedigree contained in Whitaker's
_Whalley_, p. 430, does not give the clearest light on the subject)
who married Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Sherburne, of Stonyhurst,
and who took a great lead amongst the Catholics of Lancashire. What
was the degree of relationship between Sir John and the husband of the
accused, Jane Southworth, there is nothing in the descent to show.
Family bickering might have a share, as well as superstition, in the
opinion he entertained, "that she was an evil woman." Of the old hall
at Samlesbury, the residence of the Southworths, a most interesting
account will be found in Whitaker's _Whalley_, p. 431. He considers
the centre of very high antiquity, probably not later than Edward III;
and observes, "There is about the house a profusion and bulk of oak
that must almost have laid prostrate a forest to erect it."
M 1 _b_. "_The particular points of the Evidence._"] What a waste of
ingenuity Master Potts displays in this recapitulation, where he is
merely slaying the slain, and where his wisdom was not needed. Had he
applied it to the service of the Pendle witches, he would have found
still grosser contrarieties, and as great absurdity. But in that case,
there was no horror of Popery to sharpen his faculties, or Jesuit in
the background to call his humanity into play.
M 2 _a_. "_The wrinkles of an old wiues face is good euidence to the
Iurie against a Witch._"] _Si sic omnia!_ For once the worthy clerk in
court has a lucid interval, and speaks the language of common sense.
M 2 _b_. "_But old Chattox had Fancie._"] A great truth, though Master
Potts might not be aware of the extent of it.
M 4 _a_. "_M. Leigh, a very religious Preacher._"] Parson of Standish,
a man memorable in his day. He published several pieces, amongst
others the two following: 1. "The Drumme of Devotion," by W. Leigh, of
Standish, 1613.--2. "News of a Prodigious Monster in Aldington, in the
Parish of Standish, in Lancashire," 1613, 4to, which show him to have
been an adept in the science of title-making. He was one of the tutors
of Prince Henry, and was great-grandfather of Dr. Leigh, author of the
_History of Lancashire_.
N 3 _b_. "_The Arraignment and Triall of Anne Redferne._"] This poor
woman seems to have been regularly hunted to death by her prosecutors,
who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds.
Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched
mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the
shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the
besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one
indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime
being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse
her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years before, by
witchcraft; the only evidence, true or false, being, that she had been
seen, about the same period, making figures of clay or marl. Her real
offence, it may well be conjectured, was her having rejected the
improper advances of the ill-conditioned young man whose death she was
first indicted for procuring, and to which circumstance the rancour of
his relations, the prosecutors, may evidently be traced. It is
gratifying to know that she had firmness of mind to persist in the
declaration of her innocence to the last.
O 3 _a_. "_Alice Nutter._"] We now come to a person of a different
description from any of those who have preceded as parties accused,
and on whose fate some extraordinary mystery seems to hang. Alice
Nutter was not, like the others, a miserable mendicant, but was a lady
of large possessions, of a respectable family, and with children whose
position appears to have been such as, it might have been expected,
would have afforded her the means of escaping the fate which overtook
her humbler companions.
"I knew her a good woman and well bred,
Of an unquestion'd carriage, well reputed
Amongst her neighbours, reckoned with the best."
_Heywood's Lancashire Witches._
She is described as the wife of Richard Nutter of the Rough Lee, and
mother of Miles Nutter, who were in all likelihood nearly related to
the other Nutters whose descent has been given. The tradition is, that
she was closely connected by relationship or marriage with Eleanor
Nutter, the daughter of Ellis Nutter of Pendle Forest, the grandmother
of Archbishop Tillotson. That she was the victim of a foul and
atrocious conspiracy, in which the movers were some of her own family,
there seems no reason to doubt. The anxiety of her children to induce
her to confess may possibly have originated in no impure or sinister
motive, but it is difficult altogether to dismiss from the mind the
suspicion that her wealth was her great misfortune; and that to secure
it within their grasp her own household were passive, if not active,
agents in her destruction. Any thing more childish or absurd than the
evidence against her--as, for instance, that she joyned in killing
Henry Mitton because he refused a penny to Old Demdike--it would not
be easy, even from the records of witch trials, to produce. As regards
Alice Nutter, Potts is singularly meagre, and it is to be lamented
that the deficiency of information cannot at present be supplied.
Almost the only fact he furnishes us with is, that she died
maintaining her innocence. It would have been most interesting to have
had the means of ascertaining how she conducted herself at her trial
and after her condemnation; and how she met the iniquitous injustice
of her fate, sharpened, as it must have been, by the additional
bitterness of the insults and execrations of the blind and infuriated
populace at her execution. It is far from improbable that some of the
correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county
hitherto unpublished may ultimately furnish these particulars.
Alice Nutter was doubtless the original of the story of which Heywood
availed himself in _The Late Lancashire Witches_, 1634, 4to, which is
frequently noticed by the writers of the 17th century--that the wife
of a Lancashire country gentleman had been detected in practising
witchcraft and unlawful arts, and condemned and executed. In that play
there can be little hesitation in ascribing to Heywood the scenes in
which Mr. Generous and his wife are the interlocutors, and to Broome,
Heywood's coadjutor, the subordinate and farcical portions. It is a
very unequal performance, but not destitute of those fine touches,
which Heywood is never without, in the characters of English country
gentlemen and the pathos of domestic tragedy. The following scene,
which I am tempted to extract, though very inferior to the noble ones
in his _Woman Killed by Kindness_, between Mr. and Mrs. Frankford,
which it somewhat resembles in character, is not unworthy of this
great and truly national dramatic writer:--