at Oakly, near Bedford, on 12th July, 1707. There was one woman, upwards
of sixty years of age, who, being under an imputation of witchcraft, was
desirous to escape from so foul a suspicion, and to conciliate the
good-will of her neighbours, by allowing them to duck her. The parish
officers so far consented to their humane experiment as to promise the
poor woman a guinea if she should clear herself by sinking. The
unfortunate object was tied up in a wet sheet, her thumbs and great toes
were bound together, her cap torn off, and all her apparel searched for
pins; for there is an idea that a single pin spoils the operation of the
charm. She was then dragged through the river Ouse by a rope tied round
her middle. Unhappily for the poor woman, her body floated, though her
head remained under water. The experiment was made three times with the
same effect. The cry to hang or drown the witch then became general, and
as she lay half-dead on the bank they loaded the wretch with reproaches,
and hardly forbore blows. A single humane bystander took her part, and
exposed himself to rough usage for doing so. Luckily one of the mob
themselves at length suggested the additional experiment of weighing the
witch against the church Bible. The friend of humanity caught at this
means of escape, supporting the proposal by the staggering argument that
the Scripture, being the work of God himself, must outweigh necessarily
all the operations or vassals of the devil. The reasoning was received
as conclusive, the more readily as it promised a new species of
amusement. The woman was then weighed against a church Bible of twelve
pounds jockey weight, and as she was considerably preponderant, was
dismissed with honour. But many of the mob counted her acquittal
irregular, and would have had the poor dame drowned or hanged on the
result of her ducking, as the more authentic species of trial.
At length a similar piece of inhumanity, which had a very different
conclusion, led to the final abolition of the statute of James I. as
affording countenance for such brutal proceedings. An aged pauper, named
Osborne, and his wife, who resided near Tring, in Staffordshire, fell
under the suspicion of the mob on account of supposed witchcraft. The
overseers of the poor, understanding that the rabble entertained a
purpose of swimming these infirm creatures, which indeed they had
expressed in a sort of proclamation, endeavoured to oppose their purpose
by securing the unhappy couple in the vestry-room, which they
barricaded. They were unable, however, to protect them in the manner
they intended. The mob forced the door, seized the accused, and, with
ineffable brutality, continued dragging the wretches through a pool of
water till the woman lost her life. A brute in human form, who had
superintended the murder, went among the spectators, and requested money
for the sport he had shown them! The life of the other victim was with
great difficulty saved. Three men were tried for their share in this
inhuman action. Only one of them, named Colley, was condemned and
hanged. When he came to execution, the rabble, instead of crowding round
the gallows as usual, stood at a distance, and abused those who were
putting to death, they said, an honest fellow for ridding the parish of
an accursed witch. This abominable murder was committed July 30, 1751.
The repetitition of such horrors, the proneness of the people to so
cruel and heart-searing a superstition, was traced by the legislature to
its source, namely, the yet unabolished statute of James I. Accordingly,
by the 9th George II. cap. 5, that odious law, so long the object of
horror to all ancient and poverty-stricken females in the kingdom, was
abrogated, and all criminal procedure on the subject of sorcery or
witchcraft discharged in future throughout Great Britain; reserving for
such as should pretend to the skill of fortune-tellers, discoverers of
stolen goods, or the like, the punishment of the correction-house, as
due to rogues and vagabonds. Since that period witchcraft has been
little heard of in England, and although the belief in its existence has
in remote places survived the law that recognised the evidence of the
crime, and assigned its punishment--yet such faith is gradually becoming
forgotten since the rabble have been deprived of all pretext to awaken
it by their own riotous proceedings. Some rare instances have occurred
of attempts similar to that for which Colley suffered; and I observe one
is preserved in that curious register of knowledge, Mr. Hone's "Popular
Amusements," from which it appears that as late as the end of last
century this brutality was practised, though happily without loss of
life.
The Irish statute against witchcraft still exists, as it would seem.
Nothing occurred in that kingdom which recommended its being formally
annulled; but it is considered as obsolete, and should so wild a thing
be attempted in the present day, no procedure, it is certain, would now
be permitted to lie upon it.
If anything were wanted to confirm the general proposition that the
epidemic terror of witchcraft increases and becomes general in
proportion to the increase of prosecutions against witches, it would be
sufficient to quote certain extraordinary occurrences in New England.
Only a brief account can be here given of the dreadful hallucination
under which the colonists of that province were for a time deluded and
oppressed by a strange contagious terror, and how suddenly and
singularly it was cured, even by its own excess; but it is too strong
evidence of the imaginary character of this hideous disorder to be
altogether suppressed.
New England, as is well known, was peopled mainly by emigrants who had
been disgusted with the government of Charles I. in church and state,
previous to the great Civil War. Many of the more wealthy settlers were
Presbyterians and Calvinists; others, fewer in number and less
influential from their fortune, were Quakers, Anabaptists, or members of
the other sects who were included under the general name of
Independents. The Calvinists brought with them the same zeal for
religion and strict morality which everywhere distinguished them.
Unfortunately, they were not wise according to their zeal, but
entertained a proneness to believe in supernatural and direct personal
intercourse between the devil and his vassals, an error to which, as we
have endeavoured to show, their brethren in Europe had from the
beginning been peculiarly subject. In a country imperfectly cultivated,
and where the partially improved spots were embosomed in inaccessible
forests, inhabited by numerous tribes of savages, it was natural that a
disposition to superstition should rather gain than lose ground, and
that to other dangers and horrors with which they were surrounded, the
colonists should have added fears of the devil, not merely as the Evil
Principle tempting human nature to sin, and thus endangering our
salvation, but as combined with sorcerers and witches to inflict death
and torture upon children and others.
The first case which I observe was that of four children of a person
called John Goodwin, a mason. The eldest, a girl, had quarrelled with
the laundress of the family about some linen which was amissing. The
mother of the laundress, an ignorant, testy, and choleric old
Irishwoman, scolded the accuser; and shortly after, the elder Goodwin,
her sister and two brothers, were seized with such strange diseases that
all their neighbours concluded they were bewitched. They conducted
themselves as those supposed to suffer under maladies created by such
influence were accustomed to do. They stiffened their necks so hard at
one time that the joints could not be moved; at another time their necks
were so flexible and supple that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They
had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a
spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to
those who had a taste for the marvellous, seemed entirely dislocated and
displaced. Amid these distortions, they cried out against the poor old
woman, whose name was Glover, alleging that she was in presence with
them adding to their torments. The miserable Irishwoman, who hardly
could speak the English language, repeated her Pater Noster and Ave
Maria like a good Catholic; but there were some words which she had
forgotten. She was therefore supposed to be unable to pronounce the
whole consistently and correctly, and condemned and executed
accordingly.
But the children of Goodwin found the trade they were engaged in to be
too profitable to be laid aside, and the eldest in particular continued
all the external signs of witchcraft and possession. Some of these were
excellently calculated to flatter the self-opinion and prejudices of the
Calvinist ministers by whom she was attended, and accordingly bear in
their very front the character of studied and voluntary imposture. The
young woman, acting, as was supposed, under the influence of the devil,
read a Quaker treatise with ease and apparent satisfaction; but a book
written against the poor inoffensive Friends the devil would not allow
his victim to touch, She could look on a Church of England Prayer-book,
and read the portions of Scripture which it contains without difficulty
or impediment; but the spirit which possessed her threw her into fits if
she attempted to read the same Scriptures from the Bible, as if the awe
which it is supposed the fiends entertain for Holy Writ depended, not on
the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type
in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was
designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions;
others were more strictly personal. The afflicted damsel seems to have
been somewhat of the humour of the Inamorata of Messrs. Smack, Pluck,
Catch, and Company, and had, like her, merry as well as melancholy fits.
She often imagined that her attendant spirits brought her a handsome
pony to ride off with them to their rendezvous. On such occasions she
made a spring upwards, as if to mount her horse, and then, still seated
on her chair, mimicked with dexterity and agility the motions of the
animal pacing, trotting, and galloping, like a child on the nurse's
knee; but when she cantered in this manner upstairs, she affected
inability to enter the clergyman's study, and when she was pulled into
it by force, used to become quite well, and stand up as a rational
being. "Reasons were given for this," says the simple minister, "that
seem more kind than true." Shortly after this, she appears to have
treated the poor divine with a species of sweetness and attention, which
gave him greater embarrassment than her former violence. She used to
break in upon him at his studies to importune him to come downstairs,
and thus advantaged doubtless the kingdom of Satan by the interruption
of his pursuits. At length the Goodwins were, or appeared to be, cured.
But the example had been given and caught, and the blood of poor Dame
Glover, which had been the introduction to this tale of a hobby-horse,
was to be the forerunner of new atrocities and fearfully more general
follies.
This scene opened by the illness of two girls, a daughter and niece of
Mr. Parvis, the minister of Salem, who fell under an affliction similar
to that of the Goodwins. Their mouths were stopped, their throats
choked, their limbs racked, thorns were stuck into their flesh, and pins
were ejected from their stomachs. An Indian and his wife, servants of
the family, endeavouring, by some spell of their own, to discover by
whom the fatal charm had been imposed on their master's children, drew
themselves under suspicion, and were hanged. The judges and juries
persevered, encouraged by the discovery of these poor Indians' guilt,
and hoping they might thus expel from the colony the authors of such
practices. They acted, says Mather, the historian, under a conscientious
wish to do justly; but the cases of witchcraft and possession increased
as if they were transmitted by contagion, and the same sort of spectral
evidence being received which had occasioned the condemnation of the
Indian woman Titu, became generally fatal. The afflicted persons failed
not to see the spectres, as they were termed, of the persons by whom
they were tormented. Against this species of evidence no _alibi_ could
be offered, because it was admitted, as we have said elsewhere, that the
real persons of the accused were not there present; and everything
rested upon the assumption that the afflicted persons were telling the
truth, since their evidence could not be redargued. These spectres were
generally represented as offering their victims a book, on signing which
they would be freed from their torments. Sometimes the devil appeared in
person, and added his own eloquence to move the afflicted persons to
consent.
At first, as seems natural enough, the poor and miserable alone were
involved; but presently, when such evidence was admitted as
incontrovertible, the afflicted began to see the spectral appearances of
persons of higher condition and of irreproachable lives, some of whom
were arrested, some made their escape, while several were executed. The
more that suffered the greater became the number of afflicted persons,
and the wider and the more numerous were the denunciations against
supposed witches. The accused were of all ages. A child of five years
old was indicted by some of the afflicted, who imagined they saw this
juvenile wizard active in tormenting them, and appealed to the mark of
little teeth on their bodies, where they stated it had bitten them. A
poor dog was also hanged as having been alleged to be busy in this
infernal persecution. These gross insults on common reason occasioned a
revulsion in public feeling, but not till many lives had been
sacrificed. By this means nineteen men and women were executed, besides
a stouthearted man named Cory, who refused to plead, and was accordingly
pressed to death according to the old law. On this horrible occasion a
circumstance took place disgusting to humanity, which must yet be told,
to show how superstition can steel the heart of a man against the misery
of his fellow-creature. The dying man, in the mortal agony, thrust out
his tongue, which the sheriff crammed with his cane back again into his
mouth. Eight persons were condemned besides those who had actually
suffered, and no less than two hundred were in prison and under
examination.
Men began then to ask whether the devil might not artfully deceive the
afflicted into the accusation of good and innocent persons by presenting
witches and fiends in the resemblance of blameless persons, as engaged
in the tormenting of their diseased country-folk. This argument was by
no means inconsistent with the belief in witchcraft, and was the more
readily listened to on that account. Besides, men found that no rank or
condition could save them from the danger of this horrible accusation if
they continued to encourage the witnesses in such an unlimited course as
had hitherto been granted to them. Influenced by these reflections, the
settlers awoke as from a dream, and the voice of the public, which had
so lately demanded vengeance on all who were suspected of sorcery, began
now, on the other hand, to lament the effusion of blood, under the
strong suspicion that part of it at least had been innocently and
unjustly sacrificed. In Mather's own language, which we use as that of a
man deeply convinced of the reality of the crime, "experience showed
that the more were apprehended the more were still afflicted by Satan,
and the number of confessions increasing did but increase the number of
the accused, and the execution of some made way to the apprehension of
others. For still the afflicted complained of being tormented by new
objects as the former were removed, so that some of those that were
concerned grew amazed at the number and condition of those that were
accused, and feared that Satan, by his wiles, had enwrapped innocent
persons under the imputation of that crime; and at last, as was
evidently seen, there must be a stop put, or the generation of the
kingdom of God would fall under condemnation."[64]
[Footnote 64: Mather's "Magnalia," book vi. chap. lxxxii. The zealous
author, however, regrets the general gaol delivery on the score of
sorcery and thinks, had the times been calm, the case might have
required a farther investigation, and that, on the whole, the matter was
ended too abruptly But, the temper of the times considered, he admits
candidly that it is better to act moderately in matters capital, and to
let the guilty escape, than run the risk of destroying the innocent.]
The prosecutions were therefore suddenly stopped, the prisoners
dismissed, the condemned pardoned, and even those who had confessed, the
number of whom was very extraordinary, were pardoned amongst others; and
the author we have just quoted thus records the result:--"When this
prosecution ceased, the Lord so chained up Satan that the afflicted grew
presently well. The accused were generally quiet, and for five years
there was no such molestation among us."
To this it must be added that the congregation of Salem compelled Mr.
Parvis, in whose family the disturbance had begun, and who, they
alleged, was the person by whom it was most fiercely driven on in the
commencement, to leave his settlement amongst them. Such of the accused
as had confessed the acts of witchcraft imputed to them generally denied
and retracted their confessions, asserting them to have been made under
fear of torture, influence of persuasion, or other circumstances
exclusive of their free will. Several of the judges and jurors concerned
in the sentence of those who were executed published their penitence for
their rashness in convicting these unfortunate persons; and one of the
judges, a man of the most importance in the colony, observed, during the
rest of his life, the anniversary of the first execution as a day of
solemn fast and humiliation for his own share in the transaction. Even
the barbarous Indians were struck with wonder at the infatuation of the
English colonists on this occasion, and drew disadvantageous comparisons
between them and the French, among whom, as they remarked, "the Great
Spirit sends no witches."
The system of witchcraft, as believed in Scotland, must next claim our
attention, as it is different in some respects from that of England, and
subsisted to a later period, and was prosecuted with much more severity.
LETTER IX.
Scottish Trials--Earl of Mar--Lady Glammis--William Barton--Witches
of Auldearne--Their Rites and Charms--Their Transformation into
Hares--Satan's Severity towards them--Their Crimes--Sir George
Mackenzie's Opinion of Witchcraft--Instances of Confessions made by
the Accused, in despair, and to avoid future annoyance and
persecution--Examination by Pricking--The Mode of Judicial Procedure
against Witches, and nature of the Evidence admissible, opened a
door to Accusers, and left the Accused no chance of escape--The
Superstition of the Scottish Clergy in King James VI.'s time led
them, like their Sovereign, to encourage Witch-Prosecutions--Case of
Bessie Graham--Supposed Conspiracy to Shipwreck James in his Voyage
to Denmark--Meetings of the Witches, and Rites performed to
accomplish their purpose--Trial of Margaret Barclay in 1618--Case of
Major Weir--Sir John Clerk among the first who declined acting as
Commissioner on the Trial of a Witch--Paisley and Pittenweem
Witches--A Prosecution in Caithness prevented by the Interference of
the King's Advocate in 1718--The Last Sentence of Death for
Witchcraft pronounced in Scotland in 1722--Remains of the Witch
Superstition--Case of supposed Witchcraft, related from the Author's
own knowledge, which took place so late as 1800.
For many years the Scottish nation had been remarkable for a credulous
belief in witchcraft, and repeated examples were supplied by the annals
of sanguinary executions on this sad accusation. Our acquaintance with
the slender foundation on which Boetius and Buchanan reared the early
part of their histories may greatly incline us to doubt whether a king
named Duffus ever reigned in Scotland, and, still more, whether he died
by the agency of a gang of witches, who inflicted torments upon an image
made in his name, for the sake of compassing his death. In the tale of
Macbeth, which is another early instance of Demonology in Scottish
history, the weird-sisters, who were the original prophetesses, appeared
to the usurper in a dream, and are described as _volæ_, or sibyls,
rather than as witches, though Shakspeare has stamped the latter
character indelibly upon them.
One of the earliest real cases of importance founded upon witchcraft
was, like those of the Duchess of Gloucester and others in the sister
country, mingled with an accusation of a political nature, which, rather
than the sorcery, brought the culprits to their fate. The Earl of Mar,
brother of James III. of Scotland, fell under the king's suspicion for
consulting with witches and sorcerers how to shorten the king's days. On
such a charge, very inexplicitly stated, the unhappy Mar was bled to
death in his own lodgings without either trial or conviction;
immediately after which catastrophe twelve women of obscure rank and
three or four wizards, or warlocks, as they were termed, were burnt at
Edinburgh, to give a colour to the Earl's guilt.
In the year 1537 a noble matron fell a victim to a similar charge. This
was Janet Douglas, Lady Glammis, who, with her son, her second husband,
and several others, stood accused of attempting James's life by poison,
with a view to the restoration of the Douglas family, of which Lady
Glammis's brother, the Earl of Angus, was the head. She died much pitied
by the people, who seem to have thought the articles against her forged
for the purpose of taking her life, her kindred and very name being so
obnoxious to the King.
Previous to this lady's execution there would appear to have been but
few prosecuted to death on the score of witchcraft, although the want of
the justiciary records of that period leaves us in uncertainty. But in
the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, when
such charges grew general over Europe, cases of the kind occurred very
often in Scotland, and, as we have already noticed, were sometimes of a
peculiar character. There is, indeed, a certain monotony in most tales
of the kind. The vassals are usually induced to sell themselves at a
small price to the Author of Ill, who, having commonly to do with women,
drives a very hard bargain. On the contrary, when he was pleased to
enact the female on a similar occasion, he brought his gallant, one
William Barton, a fortune of no less than fifteen pounds, which, even
supposing it to have been the Scottish denomination of coin, was a very
liberal endowment compared with his niggardly conduct towards the fair
sex on such an occasion. Neither did he pass false coin on this
occasion, but, on the contrary, generously gave Burton a merk, to keep
the fifteen pounds whole. In observing on Satan's conduct in this
matter, Master George Sinclair observes that it is fortunate the Enemy
is but seldom permitted to bribe so high (as £15 Scots); for were this
the case, he might find few men or women capable of resisting his
munificence. I look upon this as one of the most severe reflections on
our forefathers' poverty which is extant.