are poor ignorant creatures, and ofttimes women who understood
not the nature of what they are accused of, and many mistake
their own fears and apprehensions for witchcraft, of which I
shall give you two instances; one of a poor man, who after he
had confessed witchcraft being asked how he saw the devil,
he answered “like flies dancing about a candle.” Another of
a woman who asked sincerely; when accused, “if a woman might
be a witch and not know it?” And it is dangerous then. Those
who of all others are the most simple should be tried for a
crime which of all others is the most mysterious. Those poor
creatures when defamed became so confused with fear and the
close prison in which they were kept, and so starved for want
of meals and sleep (either of which wants is enough to destroy
the strongest reason), when men are confounded with fear and
apprehension they will imagine things very ridiculous and
absurd. Melancholy often makes men imagine they are horses.
Most of these poor creatures are tortured by their keepers
who are persuaded they do God good service. Most of all that
were taken were tortured in this manner and this usage was the
ground of their complaints.
To such an extent was this persecution carried even in protestant
Scotland that accused women sometimes admitted their guilt that they
might die and thus escape from a world where even if cleared, they
would ever after be looked upon with suspicion. Sir George Mackenzie
visiting some women who had confessed, one of them told him “under
secrecie” that:
She had not confessed because she was guilty but being a poor
creature who wrought for her meat and being defined for a
witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter
would give her either meat or lodging, and that all men would
beat her and hound dogs at her and therefore she desired to
be out of the world, whereupon she wept bitterly and upon her
knees called upon God to witness what she said.
Even under all the evidence of the persecution and cruel tortures that
innocent women endured during the witchcraft period, no effort of the
imagination can portray the sufferings of an accused woman. The death
this poor woman chose, in voluntarily admitting a crime of which she
was innocent, rather than to accept a chance of life with the name
of “witch” clinging to her, was one of the most painful of which we
can conceive, although in the diversity of torture inflicted upon the
witch it is scarcely possible to say which one was the least agonizing.
In no country has the devil ever been more fully regarded as a real
personage, ever on the watch for souls, than in Christian Scotland. Sir
George says:
Another told me she was afraid the devil would challenge a
right to her soul as the minister said when he desired her to
confess; and therefore she desired to die.[66]
The following is an account of the material used and the expenses
attending the execution of two witches in Scotland.
For 10 loads of coal to burn the witches £3 06.8
“ A tar barrell 0 14.0
“ towes 0 06.0
“ hurdles to be jumps for them 3 10.0
“ making of them 0 08.0
“ one to go to Tinmouth for the lord to
sit upon the assize as judge 0 06.0
“ the executioner for his pains 8 14.0
“ his expenses there 0 16.4
What was the special office of the executioner does not appear; whether
to drag the victims upon hurdles, to the places of burning, to light
the fire, to keep it well blazing, is not mentioned although his
office was important and a well paid one; eight pounds and fourteen
shillings above his expenses, sixteen shillings and four pence more;
in all nine pounds, ten shillings and four pence, a sum equal to one
hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars of the present day. At these
rates it was easy to find men for the purpose desired. It is worthy of
note that under the frequency of torture the payment lessened. Strange
experiences sometimes befell those who were tortured: a cataleptic or
hypnotic state coming on amid their most cruel sufferings causing an
entire insensibility to pain. To the church this condition was sure
evidence of help from Satan and caused a renewal of torture as soon as
sensibility returned.
In the year 1639 a poor widow called Lucken, who was accused
of being a witch and sentenced to the rack at Helmstadt
having been cruelly tortured by the screw, was seized with
convulsions, spoke high German and a strange language and
then fell asleep on the rack and appeared to be dead. The
circumstance related to the juricounsul at Helmstadt she was
ordered to be again submitted to the torture. Then protesting
she was a good Christian while the executioner stretched
her on the rack, whipt her with rods and sprinkled her with
burning brimstone, she fell again fast asleep and could not by
any means be awakened.[67]
Boiling heretics and malefactors alive, commonly in oil but
occasionally in water, was practiced throughout Europe until a
comparatively late period. In fact as a civil punishment in England it
dates only to 1531 under Henry VII. The “Chronicle of the Gray Friars”
mentioned a man let down by a chain into a kettle of hot water until
dead. We have expense items of this form of torture, in the boiling of
Friar Stone of Canterbury.
Paid two men that sat by the kettle and boiled him 1s
To three men that carried his quarters to the gate and set
them up 1s
For a woman that scoured the kettle 2d
Boiling was a form of torture frequently used for women. The official
records of Paris show the price paid for torture in France was
larger than in England; boiling in oil in the former country costing
forty eight francs as against one shilling in the latter. It must be
remembered these official prices for torture, are not taken from the
records of China or Persia, two thousand years ago, nor from among the
savages of Patagonia, Australia or Guinea, but two European countries
of highest Christian civilization within the last three hundred years.
The following list of prices for dealing with criminals is taken from
the official records in Paris:
For boiling a criminal in oil, francs 48
For tearing a living man in four quarters with horses 30
Execution with the sword 20
Breaking on the wheel 10
Mounting the head on a pole 10
Quartering a man 36
Hanging a man 29
Burying a man 2
Impaling a man alive 14
Burning a witch alive 28
Flaying a man alive 28
Drowning an infanticide in a sack 24
Throwing a suicide’s body among the offal 20
Putting to the torture 4
For applying the thumb-screw 2
For applying the boot 4
Torture by fire 10
Putting a man in the pillory 2
Whipping a man 4
Branding with a red-hot iron 10
Cutting off the tongue, the ears and the nose 10
Burning a witch, probably because of its greater frequency, cost
but little over one-half as much as boiling in oil. The battle of
gladiators with wild beasts in the Coliseum at Rome in reign of Nero,
had in it an element of hope. Not the priesthood but the populace were
the arbiters of the gladiator’s destiny, giving always a chance for
life in cases of great personal bravery. But in France and England the
ecclesiastical code was so closely united with the civil as to be one
with it; compassion equally with justice was forgotten, despair taking
their place. Implements of torture were of frequent invention, the
thought of the age turning in the direction of human suffering, new
methods were continually devised. Many of these instruments are now on
exhibition in foreign museums. One called “The Spider” a diabolical
iron machine with curved claws, for tearing out a woman’s breasts
was shown in the United States but a few years since. In Protestant
Calvinistic Scotland, where hatred of “popery” was most pronounced,
the persecution of witches raged with the greatest violence, and
multitudes of women died shrieking to heaven for that mercy denied them
by Christian men upon earth. It was in Scotland after the reformation
that the most atrocious tortures for the witch were invented, one of
the most diabolical being known as “the Witches’ Bridle.” By means of
a loop passed about the head, this instrument of four iron prongs was
fastened in the mouth. One of the prongs pressed down the tongue, one
touched the palate, the other two doing their barbarous work upon the
inner side of the cheeks. As this instrument prevented speech thus
allowing no complaint upon the part of the victim, it was preferred
to many other methods of torture.[68] The woman upon whom it was used
was suspended against a wall by a loop at the back, barely touching
the floor with her toes. The iron band around her neck rendered her
powerless to move, she was unable to speak or scarcely to breathe.
Every muscle was strained in order to sustain herself and prevent
entire suffocation, the least movement causing cruel wounds by means of
the prongs in her mouth.
The victims were mostly aged women who having reared a family, spending
their youth and beauty in this self-denying work, had lived until time
threading their hair with silver had also robbed cheek and lip of
their rosy hue, dimmed the brilliancy of the eye and left wrinkles in
place of youthful dimples. Such victims were left for hours, until the
malignity of their persecutors was satisfied, or until death after long
torture released them from a world where under the laws of both Church
and State they found their sex to be a crime. Old women for no other
reason than that they were old, were held to be the most susceptible to
the assaults of the devil, and the persons most especially endowed with
supernatural powers for evil. Blackstone refers to this persecution of
aged women in his reference to a statute of the Eight Henry.[69] We
discover a reason for this intense hatred of old women in the fact that
woman has chiefly been looked upon from a sensual view by christian
men, the church teaching that she was created solely for man’s sensual
use. Thus when by reason of declining years she no longer attracted
the sensual admiration of man, he regarded her as having forfeited all
right to life. England’s most learned judge, Sir Mathew Hale, declared
his belief in the agency of the devil in producing diseases through the
aid of old women. The prosecution against this class raged with unusual
violence in Scotland under the covenanters.
To deny the existence of especially evil supernatural powers, in old
women, was held as an evidence of skepticism exposing the doubting
person to like suspicion. Great numbers of women were put to death at
a time; so common indeed was the sight as to cause but little comment.
A Scotch traveler casually mentioned having seen nine women burning
together at Bath in 1664. Knox himself suffered a woman to be burned
at St. Andrews whom one word from him would have saved. Father Tanner
speaks of “the multitude” of witches who were daily brought under the
torture that was constantly practiced by the church.
The reformers were more cruel than those from whose superstitious
teachings they professed to have escaped. All the tortures of the old
church were repeated and an unusual number of new and diabolical
ones invented to induce confession. Nor were these tortures applied
to the suspected witch alone; her young and tender children against
whom no accusation had been brought, were sometimes tortured in her
presence in order to wring confession from the mother. Towards the end
of the sixteenth century, a woman accused of witchcraft endured the
most intense torture, constantly asserting her innocence. Failing to
secure confession, her husband, her son, and finally her young daughter
of seven short years were tortured in her presence, the latter being
subjected to a species of thumb-screw called “the pinniwinkies” which
brought blood from under the finger nails with a pain terribly severe.
When these were applied to the baby hands, to spare her innocent
child, the mother confessed herself a witch; but after enduring all
the agonies of torture upon herself and all she was made to suffer in
the persons of her innocent family, confession having been obtained
through this diabolical means, she was still condemned to the flames,
undergoing death at the stake a blazing torch of fire, and died calling
upon God for that mercy she could not find at the hands of Christian
men.[70] In protestant Scotland as in catholic countries, witchcraft
was under control of the clergy. When a woman fell under suspicion of
being a witch, the minister denounced her from the pulpit, forbade
any one to harbor or shelter her and exhorted his parishioners to
give evidence against her.[71] She was under ban similar to the
excommunicate of the catholic church, a being outside of human help or
sympathy. In protestant as in catholic countries the woman accused was
virtually dead. She was excommunicated from humanity; designated and
denounced as one whom all must shun, to whom no one must give food or
lodging or speech or shelter; life was not worth the living. To afford
such a one aid was to hazard accusation as a confederate. The first
complaint was made to the clergy and Kirk Sessions.[72]
Notwithstanding two hundred years of such experience, when by an
act of parliament in 1784, the burning and hanging of witches was
abolished, the General Assembly of the Calvinistic church of Scotland
“confessed” this act “as a great national sin.” Not only were the
courts and the church alert for the detection of alleged witches, but
the populace persecuted many to death.[73] Deserted by her friends, the
suspected witch was beaten, worried by dogs, denied food and prevented
from sleeping.[74] Contrary to equity and the principles of modern
law, the church sought in every way to entrap victims into giving
evidence against themselves. Once a person was accused, no effort was
spared to induce confession. Holding control over the soul as well
as the body, enquiry into these crimes was pushed by every method
that human ingenuity could devise. The kirk became the stronghold of
superstition; both rewards and punishments were used as inducements
towards ferreting out witches. All ties of natural affection were
ignored, the kirk preaching it to be a matter of greater duty to inform
against one’s nearest relatives than against strangers. Unlike the
theory of Roman civil law which held the accused innocent until proven
guilty, ecclesiastical law everywhere produced a condition under which
the accused was held guilty from the moment of accusation. During
the witchcraft period the minds of people were trained in a single
direction. The chief lesson of the church that betrayal of friends was
necessary to one’s own salvation, created an intense selfishness. All
humanitarian feeling was lost in the effort to secure heaven at the
expense of others, even those most closely bound by ties of nature
and affection. Mercy, tenderness, compassion were all obliterated.
Truthfulness escaped from the Christian world; fear, sorrow and cruelty
reigned pre-eminent. All regard that existed for others grew up outside
of church teaching and was shown at the hazard of life. Contempt and
hatred of woman was inculcated with greater intensity; love of power
and treachery were parts of the selfish lessons of the church. All
reverence for length of years was lost. The sorrows and sufferings of a
long life appealed to no sympathetic cord in the heart. Instead of the
tenderness and care due to aged women, they were so frequently accused
of witchcraft that for years it was an unusual thing for an old woman
in the north of Europe to die in her bed. Besides the thousands of
accused who committed suicide in order to escape the horrors incident
upon trial, many others tired of life amid so much humiliation and
suffering, falsely accused themselves, preferring a death by the
torture of fire to a life of endless isolation and persecution. An
English woman on her way to the stake, with a greatness of soul born
of despair, freed her judges from responsibility, by saying to the
people, “Do not blame my judges. I wished to put an end to my own
self. My parents keep aloof from me; my own husband has denied me. I
could not live on without disgrace. I longed for death and so I told a
lie.” The most eminent legal minds became incompetent to form correct
judgment. Having received the church as of divine origin, and its
priesthood as the representatives of the divinity, they were no longer
capable of justice. Old and ignorant women upon the most frivolous
testimony of young children were condemned to death. One of the most
notable examples of the power of superstitious belief to darken the
understanding, is that of Sir Matthew Hale, living in the seventeenth
century. He was spoken of by his contemporaries as one of the most
eminent jurists of the world, whose integrity, learning and knowledge
of law were scarcely to be paralleled in any age, and yet he became so
entirely convinced of the diabolism of two women as to condemn them to
death while sitting at Bury St. Edmunds, without even summing up the
evidence. The learned and famous Sir Thomas Browne, who was present,
coincided in the justice of this decision, although but a short time
previously he had published a work against superstition. The testimony
upon which these women were condemned was of the most petty and
worthless character, yet among all the persons present at the trial,
but one or two seemed inclined to doubt the sufficiency of the evidence.
The records of this remarkable trial were preserved to the world by
a gentleman who privately took a report for his own use, which was
published in pamphlet form a number of years afterwards. This extremely
rare book is not to be found even in the Congressional Library at
Washington, but the Supreme Court Library owns a copy from which this
report is taken:
Trial March 10, 1664 by Sir Matthew Hale, Knight, Lord Chief
Baron of his Majesty’s Court of Exchequer held before a judge
who for his integrity, learning and wisdom hardly any age
before or since could parallel; he not only took a great deal
of pains and spent much time in this trial himself, but had
the assistance and opinion of several other very eminent and
learned persons; so that this was the most perfect narrative
of anything of this nature hitherto extant.
The persons tried were Ann Durant, or Drury, Susan Chandler,
Elizabeth Pacy. The celebrated Dr. Brown of Norwich who had
written a work against witchcraft, was present and after
hearing the evidence expressed himself as clearly of the
opinion the persons were bewitched, and said in Denmark lately
there had been a great discovery of witches who used the
same way of afflicting persons by the agency of pins. This
trial took place in the sixteenth year of Charles II. The
witnesses were two children of eleven and nine years who fell
into fits, vomiting pins and nails. Sargeant Keeling asserted
deception on part of the witnesses. The Court appointed Lord
Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon and Sargeant Keeling as committee
to examine the girl alone, when they became fully satisfied
of her imposture but without convincing the learned judge who
contrary to all justice and law did not sum up the evidence,
but gave the great weight of his opinion in favor of their
guilt saying: “That there are such creatures as witches,
I have not doubt at all. For First, Scripture has offered
so much. Second, the wisdom of all nations has propounded
laws against such persons, which is an argument of their
confidence of such a crime. And such has been the judgment
of this kingdom as appears by that Act of Parliament which
hath provided punishments proportionate to the guilt of this
offense, and desired them strictly to observe the evidence;
and desired the great God of Heaven to direct their hearts
in the weighty things they had so heard. For to condemn
the innocent and to let the guilty go free, were both an
abomination to the Lord. Within half an hour the jury returned
a verdict of guilty on thirteen counts. The judge and all the
court were fully satisfied with the verdict and therefore gave
judgment against the witches that they should be hanged.
The evidence was of the most paltry character; as when out
of door a little thing like a bee flew upon the witness
face, putting a ten penny nail with a broad head into her
mouth. Lath nails and pins said to have been vomited by the
children were produced in court. When arraigned the accused
pleaded not guilty nor did they ever change this plea. Great
pressure was upon them to induce confession, but they could
not be prevailed upon to thus criminate themselves and were
executed the seventeenth of March, just one week after trial,
confessing nothing.
This trial is the more remarkable that confessions usually
deemed the best of evidence, were not obtained, these poor
illiterate, persecuted women braving all the learning of the
great judge and power of the kingdom in maintaining to the
last the assertion of their innocence. The minutes of this
trial were taken by a gentleman in attendance upon the court
and were not published until 1716 when the record fell into
the hands of a person who saw its value “so that,” he says,
“being the most complete minutes of anything of this nature
hitherto extant, made me unwilling to deprive the world of it;
which is the sole motive that induced me to publish it.”
Not alone the clergy and the legal fraternity wrought in unison, but
the medical as well, gave the weight of their authority in favor of
witchcraft; and many persons needing the wisest medical appliance for
their relief from disease were executed as witches. Half-witted and
insane persons met with the same persecution as old women. It was an
era of the strong against the weak, the powerful against the helpless.
Even Sir Thomas Browne, himself a physician, regarded the fainting
fits to which one of the accused women had long been subject as fuller
evidence of her guilt. In his character of medical examiner he asserted
that the devil had taken opportunity of her natural fits, to operate
with her malice.
An almost equally notable trial as that of Bury St. Edmunds before
Sir Matthew Hale, was known as the Sommers Trial, or that of the
“Lancashire Witches,” in 1612. Among the accused were two extremely
aged women decrepit and nearly blind, tottering into second childhood,
incapable of understanding whereof they were accused, or the evidence
against them which, as in the case argued before Sir Matthew Hale, was
of the most worthless character. One needs but refer to the records in
order to learn the extreme age, ignorance and many infirmities of these
women. But as was the case in Scotland, these weaknesses were used as
evidences of guilt. The feeble mental and physical condition of “the
Lancashire witches,” their great age and failing power were used as
evidence for their condemnation. From published accounts of this trial,
we learn that:
This Annie Whittle, alias Chattox, was a very old withered and
decrepit creature, her sight almost gone, a dangerous witch of
very long continuance, her lips ever chattering and walking
(talking)? but no one knew what. She was next in order to that
wicked, fierce bird of mischief, old Demdike.
This poor old creature “confessed” that Robert Mutter had offered
insult to her married daughter; and the court decreed this was a fair
proof of her having bewitched him to his death. No condemnation of the
man who had thus insulted her daughter, but death for the aged mother
who had resented this insult. Designated as “Old Demdike, a fierce
bird of mischief” this woman of four score years of age, had not only
brought up a large family of her own, but her grand children had fallen
to her care. She had lived a blameless life of over eighty years, much
of it devoted to the care of children and children’s children. But when
decrepit and almost blind she fell under suspicion of a crime held
by Church and State as of the most baleful character, her blameless
and industrious life proved of no avail against this accusation. She
seems to have originally been a woman of great force of character
and executive ability, but frightened at an accusation she could not
understand and overpowered by all the dread majesty of the law into
whose merciless power she had fallen, she “confessed” to communion with
a demon spirit which appeared to her in the form of a brown dog.[75]
From a work entitled The Sommers Trials, the form of indictment is
learned.[76]
INDICTMENT.