THE LATER PERSECUTIONS IN ENGLAND
The law--especially in this country--gains half its terrors from
its pomp and circumstance. An English prisoner, condemned to death
by a wigless judge, might well regard himself as murdered--and few
Englishmen that have attended an American court of law but have felt
scandalised by its lack of ceremonious decency, even if they have
accepted its decrees as just. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to hold
that the firm belief in the corruptibility of the American judge and
the one-sidedness of American justice, which every Englishman cherishes
as his birthright, was originally based upon his distaste for this lack
of appropriate ceremonial.
If this judicial dignity be needed even for the trial of an ordinary
fellow mortal, how much more must it be needed when Satan himself and
his human agents are at the bar. Accordingly, we find the inquisitor or
judge always ultra-punctilious in bringing all due form and ceremony
to bear upon a witch-trial. No detail was without its special
significance, no circumstance too trivial for august consideration,
the more so that from its very nature a witch-trial could not exactly
follow ordinary procedure. The power of Satan--in the seventeenth
century at any rate--was more than a match even for the trained legal
intellect, and special precautions were necessary to provide for the
safety of the judge and the conviction of the witch. So exhaustive
were these precautions, indeed, that we can find no trace that any
judge in England or elsewhere was ever injured by the assaults of the
Devil, when in court, while but very few witches, once put on trial,
succeeded in escaping conviction--the accusation being, to all intents
and purposes, tantamount to a verdict of guilty.
A host of precautionary measures to be taken by the judge when the
witch was brought into court, have been recorded. On no account must
he allow her to touch him, especially, as Reginald Scot has it, "upon
his bare." He must wear about his neck "conjured salt, palms, herbes,
and halowed waxe." The prisoner must approach the judge backwards--just
as she approaches Satan's throne at the Sabbath, by the way--and he
must make the sign of the cross frequently the while. As we have seen,
any evidence, even of those debarred from testifying in ordinary
cases, might be given against a witch. This, of course, provided an
excellent opportunity for the dishonest servant, who, having stolen
his mistress' property and with it levanted, need only accuse her of
witchcraft to escape any unpleasant consequences to himself. It was,
however, the only means by which the law could escape from the horns
of a serious dilemma--as none that are honest can detect a witch.
Again, she must be denied any chance of proving her innocence--or the
Devil will certainly take full advantage of it on her behalf, and once
arrested, she must on no account be allowed to leave the prison or go
home. Popular suspicion, presumption, and conjecture are sufficient to
ensure a conviction, for in such a case Vox populi is emphatically Vox
Dei. Confession must, however, be extorted at all costs. As the great
Inquisitor, Sprenger, from whose authoritative pronouncements I have
already quoted freely, has it: "If she confess nothing she must be
dismissed according to the law; therefore every care must be taken to
ensure confession."
Before burning the witch, it was, however, necessary to catch her.
Here--and more particularly in England--private enterprise stepped in
to supplement public effort. Witch-finding offered a respectable and
lucrative career for anyone gifted with the requisite imagination,
and provided a safe opening for those who had failed in other walks
of life. Enterprise, imagination, the form of facile expression, the
instinct of sensationalism, and so forth--were all necessary for the
finished witch-finder, it is true. The names of many have come down to
us, but none more fully earned the prophetic title of the Napoleon of
witch-finding than Matthew Hopkins, who alone gained, by his eminent
services to the public, a "handle to his name"--that of "Witch-Finder
General." Hopkins, who flourished in the mid-seventeenth century,
gauged the public taste in witch-sensation to a nicety--and elevated
his trade to an exact science. Yet curiously enough, he only entered it
by accident, owing to an epidemic of witchcraft in his native town of
Manningtree. His public spirit leading him to take a prominent part in
the discovery and punishment of the culprits, it became plainly evident
in which direction his talents could be best employed, and what had
been a hobby became his life-work. His position having been legalised,
he adopted the manner of a judge, taking regular circuits through the
four counties which he more particularly took under his protection, or
giving his services to any towns applying for them at the extremely
modest charge of twenty shillings and expenses. More than a hundred
witches were brought to punishment by his painstaking exertions,
though perhaps his greatest triumph was achieved in the case of the
Reverend Mr. Lewis, the "reading" parson of Framlingham. Mr. Lewis
was a churchman, and as such regarded as a malignant by the Puritan
Government, and, needless to say, by Mr. Hopkins, himself a Puritan of
the most orthodox type. Mr. Lewis, being eighty-five years of age, was
tortured after Mr. Hopkins' recipe, and was so brought to confess that
he had made a compact with Satan, that he kept two imps, and that he
had sunk several ships by his magic arts. He was duly hanged, though it
is satisfactory to know that at his death he withdrew the confession
his human weakness had extorted from him and died with a dignity
becoming his age and cloth.
As was only to be expected in this imperfect world, Mr. Hopkins'
just severity and proper disregard for sickly sentimentality brought
him many enemies, some of whom no doubt were inspired by envy of his
professional success. Although cheered by the understanding sympathy
of the superior class, including among them no less a person than
Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of England, he was continually
attacked, both publicly and privately, by people who ought to have
known better. One of the most virulent of these was one Mr. Gaule,
minister of Great Stoughton, in Huntingdon, who not only wrote and
preached against Hopkins and his methods, but refused him permission
to conduct a witch-hunt at Stoughton. Stung to the heart by such
ingratitude, Mr. Hopkins set forth his side of the argument in a
letter which Mr. Gaule himself subsequently gave to the world. It is
sufficiently characteristic to bear re-quotation:
"My Service to your Worship presented. I have this day received a
letter not to come to a Toune called Great Stoughton, to search for
evil-disposed persons, called Witches (though I heare your Minister
is farre against us through Ignorance:) I intend to come the sooner
to heare his singular Judgment in the Behalfe of such Parties; I have
known a Minister in Suffolk preach as much against this Discovery in a
Pulpit, and forced to recant it by the Committee in the same Place. I
much marvaile such evil Members should have any, much more any of the
Clergy, who should daily preach Terrour to convince such Offenders,
stand up to take their Parts, against such as are complainants for
the King and Sufferers themselves, with their Families and Estates. I
intend to give your Toune a visit suddenly. I am to come to Kimbolton
this Weeke, and it shall be tenne to one, but I will come to your Toune
first, but I would certainly know afore whether your Toune affords
many sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to give and afford as
good Welcome and Entertainment as other where I have beene, else I
shall wave your Shire (not as yet beginning in any Part of it myself)
and betake me to such Places, where I doe, and may, persist without
Controle, but with Thanks and Recompense. So I humbly take my leave and
rest. Your Servant to be Commanded, Matthew Hopkins."
Mr. Gaule, however ill-advised, proved himself no despicable
antagonist. He turned the batteries of ridicule against the worthy
witch-finder, and his methods, which he describes as follows: "Having
taken the suspected Witch, she is placed in the middle of a room upon a
stool or table, cross-legged or in some other uneasy Posture, to which
if she submits not she is then bound with cords; there she is watched
and kept without Meat or Sleep for the space of Four and Twenty Hours
(for they say within that time they shall see her Imp come and suck).
A little Hole is likewise made in the door, for her Imp to come in
at--lest it should come in some less discernible shape. They that watch
her are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the Room, and if they see
any Spiders or Flies, to kill them, and if they cannot kill them, then
they may be sure they are her Imps."
But however earnest in their errors might be Mr. Gaule and those who
supported him, it was long ere they could find many supporters in their
crusade against one who had so struck the public imagination. Hopkins'
methods of torture might be severe, but they produced results--such as
the following:--One Penitent Woman confessed that her mother, lying
sick, and she looking at her, somewhat like a Mole ran into the bed to
her, which she being startled at, her mother bade her not fear it, but
gave it her, saying, "Keep this in a Pot by the fire and thou shalt
never want." And so on and so forth.
In the end, however, as too often happens, envy triumphed over modest
merit, and Hopkins had to pay the penalty that usually awaits the
popular idol. Either his severity outran his discretion, or he showed
too openly his belief that the chief object of a profession is to
provide a handsome income; or perhaps his inventive faculties did not
keep pace with the public desire. Be that as it may, his fall, when it
came, was heavy. It is even said, on reputable authority, that Hopkins
was himself, at the last, accused of witchcraft, that he was tried by
one of his own methods, that of "swimming," and that like many of the
old women he had tried, he "swam," was accordingly found guilty, and
executed. It may be agreed that, like the story of Phalaris destroyed
in the fiery bronze bull of his own devising, or of Dr. Guillotin,
first to suffer on the guillotine he had invented, this end of Hopkins
has too much of poetic justice about it to be altogether credible. But
in all that has to do with witchcraft, faith is a matter of opinion, so
there we may leave it.
That Matthew Hopkins initiated new methods of witch-finding by no
means implies that there was any lack of such before his time. Where
the simple rule-of-thumb torture failed to extract the requisite
confession, a further range, subtler and more exquisite, came into
play. No witch could say the Lord's Prayer--a possible enough
contingency under great nervous strain even for a good Christian. Thus
Fairfax relates how Thorp's wife, accused of bewitching his children,
being put to this test, could not say "Forgive us our trespasses," and
thus convinced the justices of her guilt. Another method much practised
by Hopkins was the searching for the Devil-marks. These marks, as
we have said, were the corporeal proofs of her contract with Satan,
borne by every witch upon some part of her body, and were further the
places whereat her imps came to suck her blood. Few witches--which is
to say, suspects--were ever found to pass this test satisfactorily--a
fact the less surprising in that any blemish, birth-mark, or even
insect-bite was accepted by special legal injunction as sufficient
evidence. The witch-mark was believed to be insensible to pain, whence
arose the popular and lucrative profession of "witch-pricking." The
witch-pricker, having blindfolded the witch, proceeded to prick her in
suspected places with a three-inch pin, afterwards telling her to point
out to him the places where she felt pain. If the suspect, half-crazed
with shame and terror, was unable to do so with sufficient exactitude,
the spot was declared insensible, and her conviction followed. Before
the actual pricking, when the witch had been stripped of her clothes,
she was shaven, lest she should have concealed in her hair some charm
against confession under torture. Great care was taken at the same time
lest the Devil, by sucking blood from her little finger or left foot,
should make it impossible for her to confess. Further, as a witch was
notoriously unable to shed tears, another test of her guilt was to
call upon her to weep to order--very much as Miss Haversham in "Great
Expectations" commanded Little Pip, "Now, play!"
Most popular test of all, as taking place in the open and thus
providing a general holiday, was witch-ducking or "swimming." So near
was it to the great heart of the British public that its celebration
continued informally well into the nineteenth century. In Monmouth, so
late as 1829, several persons were tried for the ducking of a supposed
witch; while in 1857 the Vicar of East Thorpe, in Essex--perhaps the
most noted witch-stronghold in England--was compelled to mount guard
in person over the door of a suspected witch to prevent her from
undergoing a similar fate. The procedure was of the simplest. The
thumbs and great toes of the suspect were tied across, and she was
thus dragged in a sheet to a pond or stream. If she floated, she was
pronounced a witch; if she sank, she was in all probability drowned.
Even if by a lucky chance she escaped both these perils, the nervous
shock--to say nothing of what was probably the first cold bath she had
ever experienced--acting upon her advanced age, gave her little chance
of final triumph over her accusers. Another well-known and popular test
was that of weighing the suspected witch against the Church Bible.
Had the authorities provided one of more than common weight which
outweighed her skin and bone, woe betide her! for her guilt was proved
beyond further question.
Such forms of extraneous evidence were, however, held in less store
than was the obtaining of a definite confession, which had the double
advantage of justifying the judges to the full as well as of convicting
the accused. Of how it might be obtained Reginald Scot gives us a vivid
example. "The seven words of the Cross," he says, "be hanged about the
witch's neck and the length of Christ in wax be knit about her bare
bodie with relikes of saints." If torture and other means of persuasion
cannot obtain a confession, the jailer must pretend to leave her, and
some of her friends must visit her, promising that if she will but
confess they will help her to escape from prison. Friday, according to
the same writer, was the most auspicious day for the purpose. As to
the actual torture, the prisoner must first be stripped lest the means
of witchcraft be sewn into her clothing, the instruments of torture
being so placed that she has an uninterrupted view of them. The judge
then exhorts her that if she remains obstinate, he bids the attendants
make her fast to the strapado or other chosen instrument. Having
been tortured, she is taken aside and again urged to confess by the
promise of thus escaping the death-penalty. As the Church conveniently
absolved the faithful from the necessity of keeping faith with heretics
or sorcerers, this promise was never kept. To put it briefly, every
possible avenue of escape was denied the accused. Even an alibi,
however complete, was unavailing, seeing that in her absence her place
was always filled by a demon.
However much we may sympathise with the victims of such judicial
proceedings, it would be less than fair to blame the general public for
its attitude towards them when such men as Blackstone or Sir Matthew
Hale were convinced of their reasonableness. Blackstone, indeed, one
of the greatest of English lawyers, went so far as to declare that "to
deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft is at
once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God." The attitude of
Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice, an enlightened and God-fearing
man, may best be gathered from an account of one of the trials in which
he was concerned. In 1664, at St. Edmundsbury, two women, Amy Duny
and Rose Cullender, were tried before him upon the usual charges. The
first witness was Dorothy Durent, whose child was under the care of
Rose Cullender. Dorothy had for some time suspected Rose of bewitching
her child--a fact which throws some doubt upon the witness's maternal
care in confiding her offspring to such a nurse. Eventually the witness
consulted a witch-doctor, a proceeding which, had she known it,
rendered her liable to conviction as well as Rose, under the statute
of James I.[1] The doctor advised her to hang up her child's blanket
in the chimney, which she did. On taking it down some time later, she
was horror-stricken to find a toad in it. This toad she had "put it
into the fire and held it there, though it made a great and horrible
noise, and flashed like gunpowder and went off like a pistol, and then
became invisible, and that by this the prisoner was scorched and burnt
lamentably." Other witnesses, Mr. Pacy and Edmund Durent, deposed
that Rose Cullender and Amy Duny came to them to buy herrings, and,
on being refused, went away grumbling. Further, it appeared that Amy
Duny had told Cornelius Sandwell's wife that if she did not fetch her
geese home, they would be destroyed. She also told Cornelius that if
he did not attend to a rickety chimney in his house it would fall.
John Soan deposed that he had three carts wherein to carry corn. One
of them "wrenched Amy Duny's house, whereat she scolded him. That very
day his cart overturned two or three times, and his children had fits."
Probably such damning evidence would have sufficed by itself. It was
driven home by that of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared with dangerous
moderation that "the fits were natural, but heightened by the Devil
co-operating with the malice of the Witches, at whose Instance he did
the villainies." This was too much for the Lord Chief Justice. He "was
in such fears and proceeded with such caution that he would not so much
as sum up the evidence, but left it to the Jury, with prayers that the
great God of Heaven would direct their hearts in this weighty manner."
Needless to say, the jury returned a sentence of "Guilty." Amy Duny
and Rose Cullender were hanged at Cambridge accordingly, obstinately
refusing to confess, and no sooner were they dead than the afflicted
children were cured of their fits and returned to the best of health.
Which can have left no further doubt in the mind of Sir Matthew Hale,
Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, as to the justice of his
sentence, even had he any before.
It would be both tedious and unprofitable to trace out the whole
long history of witch-persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Their details are invariably nauseous, and differ only in
the slightest degree; having heard one, the recapitulation of the
rest can be of interest only to the moralist. Some of the more famous
examples may be briefly considered, however, as typical of the rest. I
have already referred to the case of the Knaresborough witches, accused
of bewitching the children of Edward Fairfax, the scholar--a case the
more remarkable that the six women accused, although tried before two
successive assizes, were finally acquitted. The lonely moorlands and
grim wastes of the Northern counties were, naturally enough, regarded
with suspicion as offering very eligible lurking-places for Satan's
agents, and accordingly we find that the majority of the earlier
persecutions concerned that part of the county. Ten years before
the Knaresborough trial--in 1612--twenty witches were tried "at the
Assizes and Generall Gaole-Delivery, holden at Lancaster, before Sir
Edward Bromley and Sir James Eltham." They came from Pendle Forest, a
wild district on the eastern extremity of the county, and the most
prominent among them was Elizabeth Southernes, more generally known
as Mother Demdyke, who, by her own confession, had been a practising
witch for nearly half a century, having been led astray thereto by one
Tibb, a spirit or devil in the form of a boy wearing a parti-coloured
coat of brown-and-black, whom she met upon the highway. She and
her fellow-prisoners were charged with murders, conspiracies, and
other damnable practices, upon evidence fully borne out by their own
confessions. Nevertheless, of the twenty only twelve were hanged,
one, Mother Demdyke herself, cheating the gallows by dying in prison,
while the remaining seven were acquitted--for the time. That so large
a proportion should have escaped speaks ill for the abilities of the
prosecution, for an example was badly needed. "This remote country,"
says Scot, "was full of Popish recusants, travelling priests, and so
forth, and some of their spells are given in which holy names and
things alluded to form a strange contrast with the purpose to which
they were applied to secure a good brewing of ale, or the like." One
such charm, quoted at the trial, was used by Anne Whittle, _alias_
Chattox, one of the twenty, in order to remove a curse previously laid
upon John Moore's wife's brewing, and ran as follows:--
Three Biters hast thou bitten,
The Host, ill Eye, ill Tongue;
Three Bitter shall be thy boote,
Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost,
A God's name.
Five Paternosters, five Avies,
And a creede,
For worship of five woundes
Of our Lord.
Which would seem to show that whether or no Anne Whittle was a witch,
she was certainly a Papist, so we need feel little surprise that she
was among the twelve executed.
The second great persecution in Lancashire, in 1633, rested almost
entirely on the evidence of a boy of eleven. His name was Edmund
Robinson, and he lived with his father, a very poor man, in Pendle
Forest, where no doubt he heard many legends of the redoubtable Mother
Demdyke and her colleagues. Upon All Saints' Day, when gathering
"bulloes" in a field, he there saw two greyhounds, one black, the other
brown, each wearing a collar shining like gold. They fawned upon him,
whereafter, "seeing no one, he took them, thinking to course with them.
And presently a Hare did rise very near before him. Whereat he cried,
'Loo, Loo, Loo'; but the Doggs would not run. Whereupon he, being very
angry, took them, and with the strings that were about their collars,
tied them to a little bush at the next hedge, and with a switch that
he had in his hand he beat them. And instead of the black greyhound,
one Dickenson's wife stood up, a Neighbour, whom this Informer
knoweth. And instead of the brown one a little Boy, whom this Informer
knoweth not." Dickenson's wife offered him a shilling as the price of
his silence, but he answered, "Nay, thou art a witch." Whereupon she
put her hand into her pocket and pulled out something like a Bridle,
"that gingled," and put it over the little Boy's head, upon which
he turned into a white horse. Mrs. Dickenson then seized upon the
Informer, set him before her on the white horse, and carried him to a
new house called Hoarstones, about a quarter of a mile away. Here he
saw about sixty persons, some by the door, others riding towards the
house on horses of different colours. In the house was a fire with meat
roasting before it. A young woman offered him "Flesh and Bread upon
a Trencher and Drink in a Glass," but after the first taste he would
have no more of it. On going into the adjoining Barn, he there saw six
persons kneeling and pulling at Ropes fastened to the top of the Barn.
Whereupon "there came into the Informer's sight flesh smoking, butter
in lumps, and milk as it were syling (streaming) from the said Ropes.
All of which fell into basins placed under the said Ropes. And when
these six had done, there came other six which did likewise, and during
all the time of their said pulling they made such ugly faces as scared
the Informer, so that he was glad to run out and steal homewards."
They pursued him, but he met two horsemen, whereupon they left him. The
foremost of his pursuers was one Loind's wife.
The troubles of the Informer were not yet at an end. "After he had
come from the company aforesaid, his Father bade him go and fetch
home two kine and he happed upon a Boy, who fought him." The Informer
had his ears and face made very bloody in the fight, and looking
down he saw the Boy had a cloven foot. With commendable prudence he
ran away, only to see a light like to a lantern, which he pursued,
thinking it might be carried by a neighbour. But he only found a
woman--Loind's wife--standing on a bridge, and running from her he met
the cloven-footed Boy again, who hit him and made him cry.
Such was the dread story told in court, and partly corroborated by
the boy's father. The wives of Dickenson and Loind, along with some
eighteen other persons, were arrested at once, while the informer and
his father made a comfortable little sum of money by going the round of
the neighbouring churches and there detecting others. The trial took
place at Lancaster Assizes, when seventeen of the accused were found
guilty, but the judge, not being satisfied with the evidence, obtained
a reprieve. Four of the accused were sent up to London, and committed
to the Fleet Prison, where "great sums of money were gotten by shewing
them." The Bishop of Chester held a special examination of the case,
and the informer, being separated from his father, soon confessed that
his estimable parent had invented the whole story as a means towards an
end. So the trial ended in a lamentable fiasco, from the point of view
of that public who were looking forward to the public executions as a
holiday.
Although the activities of Matthew Hopkins reached their culminating
point in the trial of the Manningtree Witches, held before Sir Matthew
Hale at Ipswich in 1645, they were only a part of his bag in that year,
as we may gather from a statement in Beaumont's "Treatise on Spirits,"
that "thirty-six were arraigned at the same time before Judge Coniers,
an. 1645, and fourteen of them hanged and a hundred more detained in
several prisons in Suffolk and Essex." Nearly twenty years later,
in 1664, we find the Witchfinder-General at work in Great Yarmouth,
where he accused sixteen old women, all of whom were convicted and
executed; and in the same year took place the St. Edmunsbury trials
already referred to. Nevertheless it must be said for Matthew Hopkins,
gent., that by the very enthusiasm he imparted into his business he
did something towards checking the tide of persecution even at the
full. Although the general public gave little sign of satiety, those
in authority and the more educated class in general were growing tired
of so much useless bloodshed. Witch-trials continued unabated, but
towards the close of the century the judge's directions to his jury
were frequently such as to ensure an acquittal; while, even when found
guilty, the accused were often reprieved through the judge's exertions.
Among these just judges the name of Lord Chief Justice Holt merits a
high place, as of one more than usually in advance of his age.
In 1694, before the same Lord Chief Justice, at Bury Saint Edmunds,
was tried Mother Munnings, of Hartis, in Suffolk. Many things were
deposed concerning her spoiling of wort and harming of cattle, and,
further, that several persons upon their death-beds had attributed
their destruction to her arts. Thus it was sworn that Thomas Pannel,
the landlord, not knowing how to turn her out of his house, took away
the door and left her without one. Some time after, he happening to
pass by, she said to him, "Go thy way; thy nose shall lie upward
in the churchyard before Saturday next." On the Monday following
Pannel sickened, died on the Tuesday, and was buried within the week,
according to her word. To confirm this, another witness added that a
doctor, being consulted about another afflicted person, and Mother
Munnings being mentioned, said that she was a dangerous woman, for she
could touch the line of life. In the indictment she was charged with
having an imp like a polecat, and one witness swore that coming from
the alehouse about nine o'clock at night, he looked through her window,
and saw her take two imps out of a basket, a black and a white. It was
further deposed that one Sarah Wager, after a quarrel with the accused,
was struck dumb and lame, and was in that condition at home at the time
of the trial. Many other equally dreadful accusations were brought, and
things might have gone hard for Mother Munnings had not the Lord Chief
Justice been on the bench. He, however, directed the jury to bring in
a verdict of "Not Guilty," which they obediently did. "Upon particular
Enquiry," says Hutchinson, "of several in or near the Town, I find
most are satisfied it was a very right Judgment. She lived about Two
years after without doing any known Harm to any, and died declaring her
Innocence. Her landlord was a consumptive spent Man, and the Words not
exactly as they swore them, and the whole thing seventeen Years before
... the White Imp is believed to have been a Lock of Wool taken out of
her Basket to spin, and its Shadow, it is supposed, was the Black one."
In the same year Margaret Elmore was tried at the Ipswich Assizes
before the same judge. "She was committed," says Hutchinson, "upon
the account of one Mrs. Rudge, who was Three Years in a languishing
condition, as was thought by the Witchcraft of the Prisoner then at the
Bar, because Mr. Rudge, Husband of the afflicted Person, had refused
letting her a House. Some Witnesses said that Mrs. Rudge was better
upon the confinement of the woman, and worse again when her chains were
off. Other witnesses gave account that her grandmother and her aunt had
formerly been hanged for Witches, and that her Grandmother had said
she had 8 or 9 Imps, and that she had given two or three apiece to her
children." It was further shown on the evidence of a midwife who had
searched her grandmother, that the prisoner had plainer witch-marks
than she; while several women who had been on bad terms with her
took oath that their bodies were infested with lice and other vermin
supposed to be of her sending. But not even the vermin could influence
the Lord Chief Justice, and Margaret Elmore was found "Not Guilty."
Yet another case, tried before Holt, was that of Elizabeth Horner at
Exeter, in 1696. Three children of one William Borch were said to have
been bewitched by her. One had died, the leg of another was twisted,
all had vomited pins, been bitten, pricked, and pinched. Their mother
deposed "that one of them walked up a smooth plaistered Wall till her
Feet were nine foot high, her Head standing off from it. This," she
said, "she did five or six times, and laughed and said Bess Horner held
her up." Poor Elizabeth had a wart on her shoulder, which the children
said was a witch-mark, and was sucked by her toad. But the Lord
Chief Justice seems to have been of another opinion, for he directed
the jury to acquit her. Indeed, of all the many cases of witchcraft
brought before him, not one prisoner was convicted--a state of things
which would certainly have resulted in a question being asked in
Parliament had it happened in our time. The last woman found guilty of
witchcraft in this country was Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkerne, in
Hertfordshire, who was tried in 1712. The witch-finder was called into
requisition, and she was submitted to the usual inane and degrading
tests. "They either did themselves or suffered others that were about
them to scratch and tear her face and run Pins into her Flesh. They
... turned the Lord's Prayer into a Charm"--(the Vicar of Ardely was
responsible for this part of the performance, by the way). "They turned
to Spectre Evidence, they drave her to such Distraction that by leading
Questions they drew from her what they called a Confession. They had
her to Jail. The witnesses swore to vomiting Pins. The Jury found her
Guilty, the Judge condemned her, and those clergymen wrote a Narrative
of the Tryal, which was received and read with such Pleasure that in a
Month's Time it had a Fourth Edition." But Jane Wenham was fortunate in
her judge. Being a man of learning and experience, "he Valued not those
Tricks and Tryals, and though he was forced to condemn her because
a Silly Jury would find her guilty, he saved her Life. And that she
might not afterwards be torn to pieces in an ignorant Town, a sensible
Gentleman, who will for ever be in Honour for what he did, Colonel
Plummer of Gilston, in the same County, took her into his protection
and placed her in a little house near his own, where she now lives
soberly and inoffensively, and keeps her church, and the whole county
is now fully convinced that she was innocent, and that the Maid that
was thought to be bewitched was an Idle Hussy ... and was well as soon
as her sweetheart came and married her."
Thenceforward the law of England had no more terrors for the witch,
though she was not yet quite out of danger. The Statute of James I. was
not repealed until 1736, and long after that the mob was accustomed
to take the law into its own hands. Thus, in 1751, a man and his wife
named Osborn were ducked at Thring, having been dragged by the mob
from the workhouse where they had been placed by the parish officers
for safety. The woman lost her life in the process. She was, however,
not unavenged, for a verdict of "Wilful Murder" was returned against
the ringleader of the mob, a chimney-sweeper named Colley, and he was
hanged, very much to his own and other people's indignation. There was
indeed something to be said for the injured Colley when a man like
Wesley, pinning his faith to the Bible, could find no means of evading
the direct command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The last
case in which the blood of a witch was actually shed in this country,
so far as I have been able to trace, was in 1875, when a certain Ann
Turner, a reputed witch, was murdered by a man, who was, however,
declared insane.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "If any person, or persons, shall use, practise, or
exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit,
or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, find, or reward any
evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or to take up
any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any
other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part
of any dead person to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft,
sorcery, charm or enchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise any
witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery whereby any person shall
be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her
body, or any part thereof, every such offender is a felon without
benefit of clergy." (This Act was not repealed until 1736.)]