Red Chironia. _Chironia Centaureum._
Dedicated to _St. Martha_.
[231] Mr. Loudon’s “Encyclopædia of Gardening,” a book of practical
and curious facts, with hundreds of interesting engravings, is a most
useful volume to any one who has a garden, or wishes to form one.
[232] Any one possessing a figure of this fountain designed by Michael
Angelo, and probably seen by Wotton during his travels in Italy, will
much oblige the editor by lending it to him for the purpose of being
copied and inserted in the _Every-Day Book_.
[233] Reliq. Wotton.
~July 30.~
_Sts. Abden_ and _Sennen_, A. D. 250. _St. Julitta_, A. D. 303.
_Witchcraft._
On Tuesday, the 30th of July, 1751, Thomas Colley, William Humbles, and
Charles Young, otherwise Lee, otherwise Red Beard, were tried at
Hertford for the murder of Ruth Osborne, by drowning her in a pond at
Marlston-green, in the parish of Tring. The trial is exceedingly
curious. It appeared that William Dell, the town crier of
Hamel-Hempstead, on the 18th of April preceding, was desired by one
Nichols, who gave him a piece of paper and fourpence, to cry the words
at the market-place that were wrote thereon, which he accordingly did.
The paper was as follows:--“This is to give notice, that on Monday next,
a man and woman are to be publicly ducked at Tring, in this county, for
their wicked crimes.”
Matthew Barton, the overseer of Tring, on hearing that this had been
cried at Winslow, Leighton-Buzzard, and Hamel-Hempstead, in order to
prevent the outrage, and believing them to be very honest people, sent
them into the workhouse. On the Monday, a large mob of 5,000 people and
more, assembled at Tring; but Jonathan Tomkins, master of the workhouse,
in the middle of the night, had removed them into the vestry-room
adjoining the church. The mob rushed in and ransacked the workhouse, and
all the closets, boxes, and trunks; they pulled down a wall, and also
pulled out the windows and window-frames. Some of the mob perceiving
straw near at hand said, let us get the straw, and set fire to the
house, and burn it down. Some cried out and swore, that they would not
only burn the workhouse down, but the whole town of Tring to ashes.
Tomkins being apprehensive that they would do so told them where the two
unhappy people were, they immediately went to the vestry-room, broke it
open, and took the two people away in great triumph.
John Holmes deposed, that the man and woman were separately tied up in a
cloth or sheet; that a rope was tied under the arm-pits of the deceased,
and two men dragged her into the pond; that the men were one on one side
of the pond, and the other on the other; and they dragged her sheer
through the pond several times; and that Colley, having a stick in his
hand, went into the pond, and turned the deceased up and down several
times.
John Humphries deposed, that Colley turned her over and over several
times with the stick; that after the mob had ducked her several times,
they brought her to the shore, and set her by the pond side, and then
dragged the old man in and ducked him; that after they had brought him
to shore, and set him by the pond side, they dragged the deceased in a
second time; and that Colley went again into the pond, and turned and
pushed the deceased about with his stick as before; that then she being
brought to shore again, the man was also a second time dragged in, and
underwent the same discipline as he had before; and being brought to
shore, the deceased was a third time dragged into the pond; that Colley
went into the pond again, and took hold of the cloth or sheet in which
she was wrapt, and pulled her up and down the pond till the same came
from off her, and then she appeared naked; that then Colley pushed her
on the breast with his stick, which she endeavoured with her left hand
to catch hold of, but he pulled it away, and that was the last time
life was in her. He also deposed, that after Colley came out of the
pond, he went round among the people who were the spectators of this
tragedy, and collected money of them as a reward for the great pains he
had taken in showing them sport in ducking the old witch, as he then
called the deceased.
The jury found the prisoner Colley--_guilty_.
* * * * *
The reporter of the trial states, from the mouth of John Osborne, the
following particulars not deposed to in court, namely: that as soon as
the mob entered the vestry-room, they seized him and his wife, and Red
Beard carried her across his shoulders, like a calf, upwards of two
miles, to a place called Gubblecut; where not finding a pond they
thought convenient, they then carried them to Marlston-green, and put
them into separate rooms in a house there; that they there stripped him
naked, and crossed his legs and arms, and bent his body so, that his
right thumb came down to his right great toe, and his left thumb to his
left great toe, and then tied each thumb and great toe together; that
after they had so done, they got a cloth, or an old sheet, and wrapped
round him, and then carried him to the Mere on the green, where he
underwent the discipline as has been related in the course of the trial.
What they did with his wife he could not say, but he supposed they had
stripped her, and tied her in the same manner as himself, as she
appeared naked in the pond when the sheet was drawn from off her, and
her thumbs and toes tied as his were. After the mob found the woman was
dead, they carried him to a house, and put him into a bed, and laid his
dead wife by his side; all which he said he was insensible of, having
been so ill-used in the pond, as not to have any sense of the world for
some time; but that he was well assured it was so, a number of people
since informing him of it who were present. His wife, if she had lived
till Michaelmas, would have been seventy years of age; he himself was
but fifty-six.
The infatuation of the people in those parts of Hertfordshire was so
great, in thinking that these people were a witch and a vizard, that
when any cattle died, it was always said that Osborne and his deceased
wife had bewitched them. And even after the trial, a great number of
people in that part of the country thought the man a vizard, and that he
could cast up pins as fast as he pleased. Though a stout able man of his
age, and ready and willing to work, yet none of the farmers thereabouts
would employ him, ridiculously believing him to be a vizard, so that the
parish of Tring were obliged to support him in their workhouse after his
wife’s death.
So far is reported by the editor of the trial.
* * * * *
On the 24th of August, 1751, Colley was hung at Gubblecut-cross, and
afterwards in chains. Multitudes would not be spectators of his death;
yet “many thousands stood at a distance to see him die, muttering that
it was a hard case to hang a man for destroying an old wicked woman that
had done so much mischief by her withcraft.” Yet Colley himself had
signed a public declaration the day before, wherein he affirmed his
conviction as a dying man, that there was no such a thing as a witch,
and prayed that the “good people” might refrain from thinking that they
had any right to persecute a fellow-creature, as he had done, through a
vain imagination, and under the influence of liquor: he acknowledged his
cruelty, and the justice of his sentence.[234]
The pond wherein this poor creature lost her life was in mud and water
together not quite two feet and a half in depth, and yet her not sinking
was deemed “confirmation strong as proof of holy writ” that she was a
witch. Ignorance is mental blindness.
* * * * *