One of the most remarkable trials that occur in the history of
criminal jurisprudence, was that of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender at
Bury St. Edmund's in the year 1664. Not for the circumstances that
occasioned it; for they were of the coarsest and most vulgar
materials. The victims were two poor, solitary women of the town of
Lowestoft in Suffolk, who had by temper and demeanour rendered
themselves particularly obnoxious to their whole neighbourhood.
Whenever they were offended with any one, and this frequently
happened, they vented their wrath in curses and ill language,
muttered between their teeth, and the sense of which could scarcely
be collected; and ever and anon they proceeded to utter dark
predictions of evil, which should happen in revenge for the ill
treatment they received. The fishermen would not sell them fish; and
the boys in the street were taught to fly from them with horror, or
to pursue them with hootings and scurrilous abuse. The principal
charges against them were, that the children of two families were
many times seized with fits, in which they exclaimed that they saw
Amy Duny and Rose Cullender coming to torment them. They vomited,
and in their vomit were often found pins, and once or twice a
two-penny nail. One or two of the children died; for the accusations
spread over a period of eight years, from 1656 to the time of the
trial. To back these allegations, a waggoner appeared, whose waggon
had been twice overturned in one morning, in consequence of the curses
of one of the witches, the waggon having first run against her hovel,
and materially injured it. Another time the waggon stuck fast in a
gate-way, though the posts on neither side came in contact with the
wheels; and, one of the posts being cut down, the waggon passed easily
along.
This trial, as I have said, was no way memorable for the circumstances
that occasioned it, but for the importance of the persons who were
present, and had a share in the conduct of it. The judge who presided
was sir Matthew Hale, then chief baron of the exchequer, and who had
before rendered himself remarkable for his undaunted resistance to
one of the arbitrary mandates of Cromwel, then in the height of his
power, which was addressed to Hale in his capacity of judge. Hale
was also an eminent author, who had treated upon the abstrusest
subjects, and was equally distinguished for his piety and inflexible
integrity. Another person, who was present, and accidentally took
part in the proceedings, was sir Thomas Browne, the superlatively
eloquent and able author of the Religio Medici. (He likewise took
a part on the side of superstition in the trial of the Lancashire
witches in 1634.) A judge also who assisted at the trial was Keeling,
who afterwards occupied the seat of chief justice.
Sir Matthew Hale apparently paid deep attention to the trial, and
felt much perplexed by the evidence. Seeing sir Thomas Browne in
court, and knowing him for a man of extensive information and vast
powers of intellect, Hale appealed to him, somewhat extrajudicially,
for his thoughts on what had transpired. Sir Thomas gave it as his
opinion that the children were bewitched, and inforced his position
by something that had lately occured in Denmark. Keeling dissented
from this, and inclined to the belief that it might all be practice,
and that there was nothing supernatural in the affair.
The chief judge was cautious in his proceeding. He even refused to
sum up the evidence, lest he might unawares put a gloss of his own
upon any thing that had been sworn, but left it all to the jury. He
told them that the Scriptures left no doubt that there was such a
thing as witchcraft, and instructed them that all they had to do was,
first, to consider whether the children were really bewitched, and
secondly, whether the witchcraft was sufficiently brought home to
the prisoners at the bar. The jury returned a verdict of guilty; and
the two women were hanged on the seventeenth of March 1664, one week
after their trial. The women shewed very little activity during the
trial, and died protesting their innocence. [225]
This trial is particularly memorable for the circumstances that
attended it. It has none of the rust of ages: no obscurity arises
from a long vista of years interposed between. Sir Matthew Hale and
sir Thomas Browne are eminent authors; and there is something in such
men, that in a manner renders them the contemporaries of all times,
the living acquaintance of successive ages of the world. Names
generally stand on the page of history as mere abstract idealities;
but in the case of these men we are familiar with their tempers and
prejudices, their virtues and vices, their strength and their
weakness.
They proceed in the first place upon the assumption that there is
such a thing as witchcraft, and therefore have nothing to do but with
the cogency or weakness of evidence as applied to this particular
case. Now what are the premises on which they proceed in this
question? They believe in a God, omniscient, all wise, all powerful,
and whose "tender mercies are over all his works." They believe in
a devil, awful almost as God himself, for he has power nearly
unlimited, and a will to work all evil, with subtlety, deep reach
of thought, vigilant, "walking about, seeking whom he may devour."
This they believe, for they refer to "the Scriptures, as confirming
beyond doubt that there is such a thing as witchcraft." Now what
office do they assign to the devil, "the prince of the power of the
air," at whose mighty attributes, combined with his insatiable
malignity, the wisest of us might well stand aghast? It is the first
law of sound sense and just judgment,
--_servetur ad imum,
Qualis ab incoepto processerit, et sibi constet_;
that every character which we place on the scene of things should
demean himself as his beginning promises, and preserve a consistency
that, to a mind sufficiently sagacious, should almost serve us in
lieu of the gift of prophecy. And how is this devil employed according
to sir Matthew Hale and sir Thomas Browne? Why in proffering himself
as the willing tool of the malice of two doting old women. In
afflicting with fits, in causing them to vomit pins and nails, the
children of the parents who had treated the old women with barbarity
and cruelty. In judgment upon these women sit two men, in some
respects the most enlightened of an age that produced Paradise Lost,
and in confirmation of this blessed creed two women are executed in
cool blood, in a country which had just achieved its liberties under
the guidance and the virtues of Hampden.
What right we have in any case to take away the life of a human being
already in our power, and under the forms of justice, is a problem,
one of the hardest that can be proposed for the wit of man to solve.
But to see some of the wisest of men, sitting in judgment upon the
lives of two human creatures in consequence of the forgery and tricks
of a set of malicious children, as in this case undoubtedly it was,
is beyond conception deplorable. Let us think for a moment of the
inexpressible evils which a man encounters when dragged from his
peaceful home under a capital accusation, of his arraignment in open
court, of the orderly course of the evidence, and of the sentence
awarded against him, of the "damned minutes and days he counts over"
from that time to his execution, of his being finally brought forth
before a multitude exasperated by his supposed crimes, and his being
cast out from off the earth as unworthy so much as to exist among
men, and all this being wholly innocent. The consciousness of
innocence a hundred fold embitters the pang. And, if these poor women
were too obtuse of soul entirely to feel the pang, did that give their
superiors a right to overwhelm and to crush them?