resentment by submitting to all the ill-usage they chose to put upon
her; in vain that she underwent unresistingly the worst usage at the
hand of Lady Cromwell, her landlady, who, abusing her with the worst
epithets, tore her cap from her head, clipped out some of her hair, and
gave it to Mrs. Throgmorton to burn it for a counter-charm. Nay, Mother
Samuel's complaisance in the latter case only led to a new charge. It
happened that the Lady Cromwell, on her return home, dreamed of her
day's work, and especially of the old dame and her cat; and, as her
ladyship died in a _year and quarter_ from that very day, it was
sagaciously concluded that she must have fallen a victim to the
witcheries of the terrible Dame Samuel. Mr. Throgmorton also compelled
the old woman and her daughter to use expressions which put their lives
in the power of these malignant children, who had carried on the farce
so long that they could not well escape from their own web of deceit but
by the death of these helpless creatures. For example, the prisoner,
Dame Samuel, was induced to say to the supposed spirit, "As I am a
witch, and a causer of Lady Cromwell's death, I charge thee to come out
of the maiden." The girl lay still; and this was accounted a proof that
the poor woman, who, only subdued and crushed by terror and tyranny, did
as she was bidden, was a witch. One is ashamed of an English judge and
jury when it must be repeated that the evidence of these enthusiastic
and giddy-pated girls was deemed sufficient to the condemnation of three
innocent persons. Goody Samuel, indeed, was at length worried into a
confession of her guilt by the various vexations which were practised on
her. But her husband and daughter continued to maintain their innocence.
The last showed a high spirit and proud value for her character. She was
advised by some, who pitied her youth, to gain at least a respite by
pleading pregnancy; to which she answered disdainfully, "No, I will not
be both held witch and strumpet!" The mother, to show her sanity of mind
and the real value of her confession, caught at the advice recommended
to her daughter. As her years put such a plea out of the question, there
was a laugh among the unfeeling audience, in which the poor old victim
joined loudly and heartily. Some there were who thought it no joking
matter, and were inclined to think they had a Joanna Southcote before
them, and that the devil must be the father. These unfortunate Samuels
were condemned at Huntingdon, before Mr. Justice Fenner, 4th April,
1593. It was a singular case to be commemorated by an annual lecture, as
provided by Sir Samuel Cromwell, for the purposes of justice were never
so perverted, nor her sword turned to a more flagrant murder.
We may here mention, though mainly for the sake of contrast, the
much-disputed case of Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkerne, as she was
termed, which was of a much later date. Some of the country clergy were
carried away by the land-flood of superstition in this instance also and
not only encouraged the charge, but gave their countenance to some of
the ridiculous and indecent tricks resorted to as proofs of witchcraft
by the lowest vulgar. But the good sense of the judge, seconded by that
of other reflecting and sensible persons, saved the country from the
ultimate disgrace attendant on too many of these unhallowed trials. The
usual sort of evidence was brought against this poor woman, by pretences
of bewitched persons vomiting fire--a trick very easy to those who chose
to exhibit such a piece of jugglery amongst such as rather desire to be
taken in by it than to detect the imposture. The witchfinder practised
upon her the most vulgar and ridiculous tricks or charms; and out of a
perverted examination they drew what they called a confession, though of
a forced and mutilated character. Under such proof the jury brought her
in guilty, and she was necessarily condemned to die. More fortunate,
however, than many persons placed in the like circumstances, Jane Wenham
was tried before a sensible and philosophic judge, who could not
understand that the life of an Englishwoman, however mean, should be
taken away by a set of barbarous tricks and experiments, the efficacy of
which depended on popular credulity. He reprieved the witch before he
left the assize-town. The rest of the history is equally a contrast to
some we have told and others we shall have to recount. A humane and
high-spirited gentleman, Colonel Plummer of Gilston, putting at defiance
popular calumny, placed the poor old woman in a small house near his own
and under his immediate protection. Here she lived and died, in honest
and fair reputation, edifying her visitors by her accuracy and attention
in repeating her devotions; and, removed from her brutal and malignant
neighbours, never afterwards gave the slightest cause of suspicion or
offence till her dying day. As this was one of the last cases of
conviction in England, Dr Hutchison has been led to dilate upon it with
some strength of eloquence as well as argument.
He thus expostulates with some of the better class who were eager for
the prosecution:--"(1) What single fact of sorcery did this Jane Wenham
do? What charm did she use, or what act of witchcraft could you prove
upon her? Laws are against evil actions that can be proved to be of the
person's doing. What single fact that was against the statute could you
fix upon her? I ask (2) Did she so much as speak an imprudent word, or
do an immoral action, that you could put into the narrative of her case?
When she was denied a few turnips, she laid them down very submissively;
when she was called witch and bitch, she only took the proper means for
the vindication of her good name; when she saw this storm coming upon
her she locked herself in her own house and tried to keep herself out of
your cruel hands; when her door was broken open, and you gave way to
that barbarous usage that she met with, she protested her innocence,
fell upon her knees, and begged she might not go to gaol, and, in her
innocent simplicity, would have let you swim her; and at her trial she
declared herself a clear woman. This was her behaviour. And what could
any of us have done better, excepting in that case where she complied
with you too much, and offered to let you swim her?
"(3) When you used the meanest of paganish and popish
superstitions--when you scratched and mangled and ran pins into her
flesh, and used that ridiculous trial of the bottle, &c.--whom did you
consult, and from whom did you expect your answers? Who was your father?
and into whose hands did you put yourselves? and (if the true sense of
the statute had been turned upon you) which way would you have defended
yourselves? (4) Durst you have used her in this manner if she had been
rich? and doth not her poverty increase rather than lessen your guilt in
what you did?
"And therefore, instead of closing your book with a _liberavimus animas
nostras_, and reflecting upon the court, I ask you (5) Whether you have
not more reason to give God thanks that you met with a wise judge, and a
sensible gentleman, who kept you from shedding innocent blood, and
reviving the meanest and cruelest of all superstitions amongst us?"[55]
[Footnote 55: Hutchison's "Essay on Witchcraft," p. 166.]
But although individuals of the English Church might on some occasions
be justly accused of falling into lamentable errors on a subject where
error was so general, it was not an usual point of their professional
character; and it must be admitted that the most severe of the laws
against witchcraft originated with a Scottish King of England, and that
the only extensive persecution following that statute occurred during
the time of the Civil Wars, when the Calvinists obtained for a short
period a predominating influence in the councils of Parliament.
James succeeded to Elizabeth amidst the highest expectations on the part
of his new people, who, besides their general satisfaction at coming
once more under the rule of a king, were also proud of his supposed
abilities and real knowledge of books and languages, and were naturally,
though imprudently, disposed to gratify him by deferring to his judgment
in matters wherein his studies were supposed to have rendered him a
special proficient. Unfortunately, besides the more harmless freak of
becoming a prentice in the art of poetry, by which words and numbers
were the only sufferers, the monarch had composed a deep work upon
Demonology, embracing in their fullest extent the most absurd and gross
of the popular errors on this subject. He considered his crown and life
as habitually aimed at by the sworn slaves of Satan. Several had been
executed for an attempt to poison him by magical arts; and the turbulent
Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, whose repeated attempts on his person
had long been James's terror, had begun his course of rebellion by a
consultation with the weird sisters and soothsayers. Thus the king, who
had proved with his pen the supposed sorcerers to be the direct enemies
of the Deity, and who conceived he knew them from experience to be his
own--who, moreover, had upon much lighter occasions (as in the case of
Vorstius) showed no hesitation at throwing his royal authority into the
scale to aid his arguments--very naturally used his influence, when it
was at the highest, to extend and enforce the laws against a crime which
he both hated and feared.
The English statute against witchcraft, passed in the very first year of
that reign, is therefore of a most special nature, describing witchcraft
by all the various modes and ceremonies in which, according to King
James's fancy, that crime could be perpetrated; each of which was
declared felony, without benefit of clergy.
This gave much wider scope to prosecution on the statute than had
existed under the milder acts of Elizabeth. Men might now be punished
for the practice of witchcraft, as itself a crime, without necessary
reference to the ulterior objects of the perpetrator. It is remarkable
that in the same year, when the legislature rather adopted the passions
and fears of the king than expressed their own by this fatal enactment,
the Convocation of the Church evinced a very different spirit; for,
seeing the ridicule brought on their sacred profession by forward and
presumptuous men, in the attempt to relieve demoniacs from a disease
which was commonly occasioned by natural causes, if not the mere
creature of imposture, they passed a canon, establishing that no
minister or ministers should in future attempt to expel any devil or
devils, without the license of his bishop; thereby virtually putting a
stop to a fertile source of knavery among the people, and disgraceful
folly among the inferior churchmen.
The new statute of James does not, however, appear to have led at first
to many prosecutions. One of the most remarkable was (_proh pudor!_)
instigated by a gentleman, a scholar of classical taste, and a beautiful
poet, being no other than Edward Fairfax of Fayston, in Knaresborough
Forest, the translator of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." In allusion to
his credulity on such subjects, Collins has introduced the following
elegant lines:--
"How have I sate while piped the pensive wind,
To hear thy harp, by British Fairfax strung;
Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung!"
Like Mr. Throgmorton in the Warbois case, Mr. Fairfax accused six of his
neighbours of tormenting his children by fits of an extraordinary kind,
by imps, and by appearing before the afflicted in their own shape during
the crisis of these operations. The admitting this last circumstance to
be a legitimate mode of proof, gave a most cruel advantage against the
accused, for it could not, according to the ideas of the demonologists,
be confuted even by the most distinct _alibi_. To a defence of that sort
it was replied that the afflicted person did not see the actual witch,
whose corporeal presence must indeed have been obvious to every one in
the room as well as to the afflicted, but that the evidence of the
sufferers related to the appearance of their _spectre_, or apparition;
and this was accounted a sure sign of guilt in those whose forms were so
manifested during the fits of the afflicted, and who were complained of
and cried out upon by the victim. The obvious tendency of this doctrine,
as to visionary or spectral evidence, as it was called, was to place the
life and fame of the accused in the power of any hypochondriac patient
or malignant impostor, who might either seem to see, or aver she saw,
the _spectrum_ of the accused old man or old woman, as if enjoying and
urging on the afflictions which she complained of; and, strange to tell,
the fatal sentence was to rest, not upon the truth of the witnesses'
eyes, but that of their imagination. It happened fortunately for
Fairfax's memory, that the objects of his prosecution were persons of
good character, and that the judge was a man of sense, and made so wise
and skilful a charge to the jury, that they brought in a verdict of not
guilty.
The celebrated case of "the Lancashire witches" (whose name was and will
be long remembered, partly from Shadwell's play, but more from the
ingenious and well-merited compliment to the beauty of the females of
that province which it was held to contain), followed soon after.
Whether the first notice of this sorcery sprung from the idle head of a
mischievous boy, is uncertain; but there is no doubt that it was
speedily caught up and fostered for the purpose of gain. The original
story ran thus:--
These Lancaster trials were at two periods, the one in 1613, before Sir
James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, Barons of Exchequer, when nineteen
witches were tried at once at Lancaster, and another of the name of
Preston at York. The report against these people is drawn up by Thomas
Potts. An obliging correspondent sent me a sight of a copy of this
curious and rare book. The chief personage in the drama is Elizabeth
Southam, a witch redoubted under the name of Dembdike, an account of
whom may be seen in Mr. Roby's "Antiquities of Lancaster," as well as a
description of Maulkins' Tower, the witches' place of meeting. It
appears that this remote county was full of Popish recusants, travelling
priests, and so forth; and some of their spells are given in which the
holy names and things alluded to form a strange contrast with the
purpose to which they were applied, as to secure a good brewing of ale
or the like. The public imputed to the accused parties a long train of
murders, conspiracies, charms, mischances, hellish and damnable
practices, "apparent," says the editor, "on their own examinations and
confessions," and, to speak the truth, visible nowhere else. Mother
Dembdike had the good luck to die before conviction. Among other tales,
we have one of two _female_ devils, called Fancy and Tib. It is
remarkable that some of the unfortunate women endeavoured to transfer
the guilt from themselves to others with whom they had old quarrels,
which confessions were held good evidence against those who made them,
and against the alleged accomplice also. Several of the unhappy women
were found not guilty, to the great displeasure of the ignorant people
of the county. Such was the first edition of the Lancashire witches. In
that which follows the accusation can be more clearly traced to the most
villanous conspiracy.
About 1634 a boy called Edmund Robinson, whose father, a very poor man,
dwelt in Pendle Forest, the scene of the alleged witching, declared that
while gathering _bullees_ (wild plums, perhaps) in one of the glades of
the forest, he saw two greyhounds, which he imagined to belong to
gentlemen in that neighbourhood. The boy reported that, seeing nobody
following them, he proposed to have a course; but though a hare was
started, the dogs refused to run. On this, young Robinson was about to
punish them with a switch, when one Dame Dickenson, a neighbour's wife,
started up instead of the one greyhound; a little boy instead of the
other. The witness averred that Mother Dickenson offered him money to
conceal what he had seen, which he refused, saying "Nay, thou art a
witch." Apparently she was determined he should have full evidence of
the truth of what he said, for, like the Magician Queen in the Arabian
Tales, she pulled out of her pocket a bridle and shook it over the head
of the boy who had so lately represented the other greyhound. He was
directly changed into a horse; Mother Dickenson mounted, and took
Robinson before her. They then rode to a large house or barn called
Hourstoun, into which Edmund Robinson entered with others. He there saw
six or seven persons pulling at halters, from which, as they pulled
them, meat ready dressed came flying in quantities, together with lumps
of butter, porringers of milk, and whatever else might, in the boy's
fancy, complete a rustic feast. He declared that while engaged in the
charm they made such ugly faces and looked so fiendish that he was
frightened. There was more to the same purpose--as the boy's having seen
one of these hags sitting half-way up his father's chimney, and some
such goodly matter. But it ended in near a score of persons being
committed to prison; and the consequence was that young Robinson was
carried from church to church in the neighbourhood, that he might
recognise the faces of any persons he had seen at the rendezvous of
witches. Old Robinson, who had been an evidence against the former
witches in 1613, went along with his son, and knew, doubtless, how to
make his journey profitable; and his son probably took care to recognise
none who might make a handsome consideration. "This boy," says Webster,
"was brought into the church at Kildwick, a parish church, where I,
being then curate there, was preaching at the time, to look about him,
which made some little disturbance for the time." After prayers Mr.
Webster sought and found the boy, and two very unlikely persons, who,
says he, "did conduct him and manage the business: I did desire some
discourse with the boy in private, but that they utterly denied. In the
presence of a great many many people I took the boy near me and said,
'Good boy, tell me truly and in earnest, didst thou hear and see such
strange things of the motions of the witches as many do report that thou
didst relate, or did not some person teach thee to say such things of
thyself?' But the two men did pluck the boy from me, and said he had
been examined by two able justices of peace, and they never asked him
such a question. To whom I replied, 'The persons accused had the more
wrong.'" The boy afterwards acknowledged, in his more advanced years,
that he was instructed and suborned to swear these things against the
accused persons by his father and others, and was heard often to confess
that on the day which he pretended to see the said witches at the house
or barn, he was gathering plums in a neighbour's orchard.[56]
[Footnote 56: Webster on Witchcraft, edition 1677, p. 278.]
There was now approaching a time when the law against witchcraft,
sufficiently bloody in itself, was to be pushed to more violent
extremities than the quiet scepticism of the Church of England clergy
gave way to. The great Civil War had been preceded and anticipated by
the fierce disputes of the ecclesiastical parties. The rash and
ill-judged attempt to enforce upon the Scottish a compliance with the
government and ceremonies of the High Church divines, and the severe
prosecutions in the Star Chamber and Prerogative Courts, had given the
Presbyterian system for a season a great degree of popularity in
England; and as the King's party declined during the Civil War, and the
state of church-government was altered, the influence of the Calvinistic
divines increased. With much strict morality and pure practice of
religion, it is to be regretted these were still marked by unhesitating
belief in the existence of sorcery, and a keen desire to extend and
enforce the legal penalties against it. Wier has considered the clergy
of every sect as being too eager in this species of persecution: _Ad
gravem hanc impietatem, connivent theologi plerique omnes_. But it is
not to be denied that the Presbyterian ecclesiastics who, in Scotland,
were often appointed by the Privy Council Commissioners for the trial of
witchcraft, evinced a very extraordinary degree of credulity in such
cases, and that the temporary superiority of the same sect in England
was marked by enormous cruelties of this kind. To this general error we
must impute the misfortune that good men, such as Calamy and Baxter,
should have countenanced or defended such proceedings as those of the
impudent and cruel wretch called Matthew Hopkins, who, in those
unsettled times, when men did what seemed good in their own eyes,
assumed the title of Witchfinder General, and, travelling through the
counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, pretended to
discover witches, superintending their examination by the most
unheard-of tortures, and compelling forlorn and miserable wretches to
admit and confess matters equally absurd and impossible; the issue of
which was the forfeiture of their lives. Before examining these cases
more minutely, I will quote Baxter's own words; for no one can have less
desire to wrong a devout and conscientious man, such as that divine most
unquestionably was, though borne aside on this occasion by prejudice and
credulity.
"The hanging of a great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously
known. Mr. Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear
their confessions, and see there was no fraud or wrong done them. I
spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible persons that
lived in the counties, and some that went to them in the prisons, and
heard their sad confessions. Among the rest an old _reading parson_,
named Lowis, not far from Framlingham, was one that was hanged, who
confessed that he had two imps, and that one of them was always putting
him upon doing mischief; and he, being near the sea, as he saw a ship
under sail, it moved him to send it to sink the ship; and he consented,
and saw the ship sink before them." Mr. Baxter passes on to another
story of a mother who gave her child an imp like a mole, and told her to
keep it in a can near the fire, and she would never want; and more such
stuff as nursery-maids tell froward children to keep them quiet.
It is remarkable that in this passage Baxter names the Witchfinder
General rather slightly as "one Hopkins," and without doing him the
justice due to one who had discovered more than one hundred witches, and
brought them to confessions, which that good man received as
indubitable. Perhaps the learned divine was one of those who believed
that the Witchfinder General had cheated the devil out of a certain
memorandum-book, in which Satan, for the benefit of his memory
certainly, had entered all the witches' names in England, and that
Hopkins availed himself of this record.[57]
[Footnote 57: This reproach is noticed in a very rare tract, which was
bought at Mr. Lort's sale, by the celebrated collector Mr. Bindley, and
is now in the author's possession. Its full title is, "The Discovery of
Witches, in Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of
Assize for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins,
Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom. Printed for R.
Royston, at the Angel, in Inn Lane. 1647."]