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Samuel Pacey, of Lowestoft, a man of good repute for sobriety and other homely virtues, having been sworn, said: That on Thursday, October 10 last, his younger daughter Deborah, about nine years old, fell suddenly so lame that she could not stand on her feet, and so continued till the 17th, when she asked to be carried to a bank which overlooked the sea, and while she was sitting there, Amy Duny came to the witness’s house to buy some herrings, but was denied. Twice more she called, but being always denied, went away grumbling and discontented. At this instant of time the child was seized with terrible fits; complained of a pain in her stomach, as if she were being pricked with pins, shrieking out ‘with a voice like a whelp,’ and thus continuing until the 30th. This witness added that Amy Duny, being known as a witch, and his child having, in the intervals of her fits, constantly exclaimed against her as the cause of her sufferings, saying that the said Amy did appear to her and frighten her, he began to suspect the said Amy, and accused her in plain terms of injuring his child, and got her ‘set in the stocks.’ Two days afterwards, his daughter Elizabeth was seized with similar fits; and both she and her sister complained that they were tormented by various persons in the town of bad character, but more particularly by Amy Duny, and by another reputed witch, Rose Cullender.
Another witness deposed that she had heard the two children cry out against these persons, who, they said, threatened to increase their torments tenfold if they told tales of them. ‘At some times the children would see Things run up and down the house in the appearance of mice; and one of them suddenly snapped one with the tongs, and threw it in the fire, and it screeched out like a bat. At another time, the younger child, being out of her fits, went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a little Thing like a bee flew upon her face, and would have gone into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible manner; whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her, but before she could reach her, the child fell into her swooning fit, and, at last, with much pain and straining, vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and after that the child had raised up the nail she came to her understanding, and being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth.’
Such evidence as this failing to satisfy Serjeant Keeling, and several magistrates who were present, of the guilt of the accused, it was resolved to resort to demonstration by experiment. The persons bewitched were brought into court to touch the two old women; and it was observed (says Hutchinson) that when the former were in the midst of their fits, and to all men’s apprehension wholly deprived of all sense and understanding, closing their fists in such a manner as that the strongest man could not force them open, yet, at the least touch of one of the supposed witches – Rose Cullender, by name – they would suddenly shriek out, opening their hands, which accident would not happen at any other person’s touch. ‘And lest they might privately see when they were touched by the said Rose Cullender, they were blinded with their own aprons, and the touching took the same effect as before. There was an ingenious person that objected there might be a great fallacy in this experiment, and there ought not to be any stress put upon this to convict the parties, for the children might counterfeit this their distemper, and, perceiving what was done to them, they might in such manner suddenly alter the erection and gesture of their bodies, on purpose to induce persons to believe that they were not natural, but wrought strangely by the touch of the prisoners. Wherefore, to avoid this scruple, it was privately desired by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, and Mr. Serjeant Keeling, and some other gentleman then in court, would attend one of the distempered persons in the farthest part of the hall whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did accordingly; and Amy Duny was brought from the bar, and conveyed to the maid. They then put an apron before her eyes; and then one other person touched her hand, which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the court. Whereupon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting that they did believe the whole transaction of the business was a mere imposture.’ As, in truth, it was.
It is remarkable that Sir Matthew Hale was still unconvinced. He invited the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a man of great learning and ability – the author of the ‘Religio Medici,’ and other justly famous works – who admitted that the fits were natural, but thought them ‘heightened by the devil co-operating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies.’ Sir Matthew then charged the jury. There were, he said, two questions to be considered: First, whether or not these children were bewitched? And, second, whether the prisoners at the bar had been guilty of bewitching them? That there were such creatures as witches, he did not doubt; and he appealed to the Scriptures, which had affirmed so much, and also to the wisdom of all nations, which had enacted laws against such persons. Such, too, he said, had been the judgment of this kingdom, as appeared by that Act of Parliament which had provided punishment proportionable to the quality of the offence. He desired them to pay strict attention to the evidence, and implored the great God of heaven to direct their hearts in so weighty a matter; for to condemn the innocent, and set free the guilty, was ‘an abomination to the Lord.’
After a charge of this description, the jury naturally brought in a verdict of ‘Guilty.’ Sentence of death was pronounced; and the two poor old women, protesting to the last their innocence, suffered on the gallows. Who will not regret the part played by Sir Matthew Hale in this judicial murder? It is no excuse to say that he did but share in the popular belief. One expects of such a man that he will rise superior to the errors of ordinary minds; that he will be guided by broader and more enlightened views – by more humane and generous sympathies. Instead of attempting an apology which no act can render satisfactory, it is better to admit, with Sir Michael Foster, that ‘this great and good man was betrayed, notwithstanding the rectitude of his intentions, into a great mistake, under the strong bias of early prejudices.’
Gradually, however, a disbelief in witchcraft grew up in the public mind, as intellectual inquiry widened its scope, and the relations of man to the Unseen World came to be better understood. Among the educated classes the old superstition expired much more rapidly than among the poorer; and so we find that though convictions became rarer, committals and trials continued tolerably frequent until the closing years of the eighteenth century. To the ghastly roll of victims, however, additions continued to be made. Thus in August, 1682, three women, named Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards, and Mary Trembles, were tried at Exeter before Lord Chief Justice North and Mr. Justice Raymond, convicted of various acts of witchcraft, and sentenced to death. Before their trial they had confessed to frequent interviews with the devil, who appeared in the shape of a black man as long (or as short) as a man’s arm; and one of them acknowledged to have caused the death of four persons by witchcraft. Some portion of these monstrous fictions they recanted under the gallows; but even on the brink of the grave they persisted in claiming the character of witches, and in asserting that they had had personal intercourse with the devil.
In March, 1684, Alicia Welland was tried before Chief Baron Montague at Exeter, convicted, and executed.
To estimate the extent to which the belief in witchcraft, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, operated against the lives of the accused, Mr. Inderwick has searched the records of the Western Circuit, from 1670 to 1712 inclusive, and ascertained that out of fifty-two persons tried in that period on various charges of witchcraft, only seven were convicted, and one of these seven was reprieved. ‘What occurred on the Western,’ he remarks, ‘probably went on at each of the several circuits into which the country was then divided; and one cannot doubt that in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Huntingdon, and Lancashire, where the witches mostly abounded, the charges and convictions were far more numerous than in the West. The judges appear, however, not to have taken the line of Sir Matthew Hale, but, as far as possible, to have prevented convictions. Indeed, Lord Jeffreys – who, when not engaged on political business, was at least as good a judge as any of his contemporaries – and Chief Justice Herbert, tried and obtained acquittals of witches in 1685 and 1686 at the very time that they were engaged on the Bloody Assize in slaughtering the participators in Monmouth’s rebellion. It is also a remarkable fact that, from 1686 to 1712, when charges of witchcraft gradually ceased, charges and convictions of malicious injury to property in burning haystacks, barns, and houses, and malicious injuries to persons and to cattle, increased enormously, these being the sort of accusations freely made against the witches before this date.’
I think there can be little doubt that many evil-disposed persons availed themselves of the prevalent belief in witchcraft as a cover for their depredations on the property of their neighbours, diverting suspicion from themselves to the poor wretches who, through accidental circumstances, had acquired notoriety as the devil’s accomplices. It would also seem probable that not a few of the reputed witches similarly turned to account their bad reputation. It is not impossible, indeed, that there may be a certain degree of truth in the tales told of the witches’ meetings, and that in some rural neighbourhoods the individuals suspected of being witches occasionally assembled at an appointed rendezvous to consult upon their position and their line of operations. The practices at these gatherings may not always have been kept within the limits of decency and decorum; and in this way the loathsome details with which every account of the witches’ meetings are embellished may have had a real foundation.
That the judges at length began persistently to discourage convictions for witchcraft is seen in the action of Lord Chief Justice Holt at the Bury St. Edmunds Assize in 1694. An old woman, known as Mother Munnings, of Harks, in Suffolk, was brought before him, and the witnesses against her retailed the village talk – how that her landlord, Thomas Purnel, who, to get her out of the house she had rented from him, had removed the street-door, was told that ‘his nose should lie upward in the churchyard’ before the following Saturday; and how that he was taken ill on the Monday, died on the Tuesday, and was buried on the Thursday. How that she had a familiar in the shape of a polecat, and how that a neighbour, peeping in at her window one night, saw her take out of her basket a couple of imps – the one black, the other white. And how that a woman, named Sarah Wager, having quarrelled with her, was stricken dumb and lame. All this tittle-tattle was brushed aside in his charge by the strong common-sense of the judge; and the jury, under his direction, returned a verdict of ‘Not guilty.’ Dr. Hutchinson remarks: ‘Upon particular inquiry of several in or near the town, I find most are satisfied that it is a very right judgment. She lived about two years after, without doing any known harm to anybody, 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 (1694) a woman, named Margaret Elmore, was tried at Ipswich; in 1695 one Mary Gay at Launceston; and in 1696 one Elizabeth Hume at Exeter; but in each case, under the direction of Chief Justice Holt, a verdict of acquittal was declared. Thus the seventeenth century went its way in an unaccustomed atmosphere of justice and humanity.
CHAPTER III
THE DECLINE OF WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND
The honour of discouraging prosecutions for witchcraft belongs in the first place to France, which abolished them as early as 1672, and for some years previously had refrained from sending any victims to the scaffold or the stake. In England, the same effect was partly due, perhaps, to the cynical humour of the Court of Charles II., where many, who before ventured only to doubt, no longer hesitated to treat the subject with ridicule. ‘Although,’ says Mr. Wright, ‘works like those of Baxter and Glanvil had still their weight with many people, yet in the controversy which was now carried on through the instrumentality of the press, those who wrote against the popular creed had certainly the best of the argument. Still, it happened from their form and character that the books written to expose the absurdity of the belief in sorcery were restricted in their circulation to the more educated classes, while popular tracts in defence of witchcraft and collections of cases were printed in a cheaper form, and widely distributed among that class in society where the belief was most firmly rooted. The effect of these popular publications has continued in some districts down to the present day. Thus the press, the natural tendency of which was to enlighten mankind, was made to increase ignorance by pandering to the credulity of the multitude.’
I have spoken of the seventeenth century as going out in an atmosphere of justice and humanity. But an ancient superstition dies hard, and the eighteenth century, when it dawned upon the earth, found the belief in witchcraft still widely extended in England. Even men of education could not wholly surrender their adhesion to it. We read with surprise Addison’s opinion in The Spectator, ‘that the arguments press equally on both sides,’ and see him balancing himself between the two aspects of the subject in a curious state of mental indecision. ‘When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the world,’ he says, ‘I cannot forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil spirits, as that which we express by the name of witchcraft. But when I consider,’ he adds, ‘that the ignorant and credulous parts of the world abound most in these relations, and that the persons among us who are supposed to engage in such an infernal commerce are people of a weak understanding and crazed imagination, and at the same time reflect upon the many impostures and delusions of this nature that have been detected in all ages, I endeavour to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts than any which have yet come to my knowledge.’ And then he comes to a halting and unsatisfactory conclusion, which will seem almost grotesque to the reader of the preceding pages, with their details of succubi and incubi, imps and familiars, black cats, pole-cats, goats, and the like: ‘In short, when I consider the question, whether there are such persons in the world as we call witches, my mind is divided between two opposite opinions, or, rather (to speak my thoughts freely), I believe in general that there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft, but, at the same time, can give no credit to any particular instance of it.’
Addison goes on to draw the picture of a witch of the period, ‘Moll White,’ who lived in the neighbourhood of Sir Roger de Coverley, ‘a wrinkled hag, with age grown double.’ This old woman had the reputation of a witch all over the country; her lips were observed to be always in motion, and there was not a switch about her house which her neighbours did not believe had carried her several hundreds of miles. ‘If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake at church, and cried Amen in a wrong place, they never failed to conclude that she was saying her prayers backwards. There was not a maid in the parish that would take a pin of her, though she should offer a bag of money with it… If the dairy-maid does not make her butter to come so soon as she would have it, Moll White is at the bottom of the churn. If a horse sweats in the stable, Moll White has been upon his back. If a hare makes an unexpected escape from the hounds, the huntsman curses Moll White…
‘I have been the more particular in this account,’ says Addison, ‘because I know there is scarce a village in England that has not a Moll White in it. When an old woman begins to dote, and grow chargeable to a parish, she is generally turned into a witch, and fills the whole country with extravagant fancies, imaginary distempers, and terrifying dreams. In the meantime, the poor wretch that is the innocent occasion of so many evils begins to be frighted at herself, and sometimes confesses secret commerces and familiarities that her imagination forms in a delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest objects of compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards those poor decrepit parts of our species in whom human nature is defaced by infirmity and dotage.’
On March 2, 1703, one Richard Hathaway, apprentice to Thomas Wiling, a blacksmith in Southwark, was tried before Chief Justice Holt at the Surrey Assizes, as a cheat and an impostor, having pretended that he had been bewitched by Sarah Morduck, wife of a Thames waterman, so that he had been unable to eat or drink for the space of ten weeks together; had suffered various pains; had constantly vomited nails and crooked pins; had at times been deprived of speech and sight, and all through the wicked cunning of Sarah Morduck; further, that he was from time to time relieved of his ailments by scratching the said Sarah, and drawing blood from her. On these charges Sarah had been committed by the magistrates, and was tried as a witch at the Guildford Assizes in February, 1701. It was then proved in her defence that Dr. Martin, minister, of the parish of Southwark, hearing of Hathaway’s troubles and method of obtaining relief, had resolved to put the matter to a fair test; and repairing to Hathaway’s room, in one of his semi-conscious and wholly blind intervals, had, in the presence of many witnesses, pretended to give to the supposed sufferer the arm of Sarah Morduck, when it was really that of a woman whom he had called in from the street. Hathaway, in ignorance of the trick played upon him, scratched the wrong arm, and immediately professed to recover his sight and senses. On finding his deception discovered, Hathaway looked greatly ashamed, and attempted no defence or excuse, when Dr. Martin severely reproached him for his conduct.
The populace, however, remained unconvinced, and when Dr. Martin and his friends had departed, accompanied Hathaway to the house of Sarah Morduck, whom they savagely ill-treated. They then declared that the woman who had lent herself as a subject for experiment was also a witch, and loaded her with contumely, while her husband gave her a beating. It further appeared that, on one occasion, when Hathaway alleged he had been vomiting crooked pins and nails, he had been searched, and hundreds of packets of pins and nails found in his pockets, and on his hands being tied behind him, the vomiting immediately ceased. Eventually the jury acquitted Sarah Morduck, and branded Hathaway as a cheat and an impostor. The lower classes, however, received the verdict with contempt, mobbed Dr. Martin, and raised a collection for Hathaway as for a man of many virtues whom fortune had ill-treated. A magistrate, Sir Thomas Lane, who sided with the mob, summoned Sarah Morduck before him, and after she had been scratched by Hathaway in his presence, ordered her to be examined for devil-marks by two women and a doctor. Though none could be detected, his prejudice was so extreme that he committed her as a witch to the Wood Street Compter, refusing bail to the extent of £500. Dr. Martin, with other gentlemen, again came to her assistance, and ultimately she was released on reasonable surety.
The Government now thought it time to support the cause of justice, and, carrying out the verdict of the Guildford jury, indicted Hathaway as a cheat, and himself and his friends for assaulting Sarah Morduck. In addition to the evidence previously adduced, it was shown that, being in bad health, he had been placed in the custody of a Dr. Kenny, a surgeon, who, desiring to test the truth of his fasting, made holes in the partition wall of his compartment, and watched his proceedings for about a fortnight, during which period, while pretending to fast, he was observed to feed heartily on the food conveyed to him, and once, having received an extra allowance of whisky, he got tipsy, played a tune on the tongs, and danced before the fire. At the trial a Dr. Hamilton was called for the defence; but, Balaam-like, he banned rather than blessed, for having affirmed that the man’s fasting was the chief evidence of witchcraft, ‘Doctor,’ said the Chief Justice, ‘do you think it possible for a man to fast a fortnight?’ ‘I think not,’ he replied. ‘Can all the devils in hell help a man to fast so long?’ ‘No, my lord,’ said the doctor; ‘I think not.’ These answers were conclusive; and without leaving the box, the jury found Hathaway guilty, and he was sentenced by Chief Justice Holt to pay a fine of one hundred marks, to stand in the pillory on the following Sunday for two hours at Southwark, the same on the Tuesday at the Royal Exchange, the same on the Wednesday at Temple Bar, the next day to be whipped at the House of Correction, and afterwards to be imprisoned with hard labour for six months.
Two reputed witches, Eleanor Shaw and Mary Phillips, were executed at Northampton on March 17, 1705; and on July 22, 1712, five Northamptonshire witches, Agnes Brown, Helen Jenkinson, A… Bill, Joan Vaughan, and Mary Barber, suffered at the same place.
It is generally believed that the last time an English jury brought in a verdict of guilty in a case of witchcraft was in 1712, when a poor Hertfordshire peasant woman, named Jane Wenham, was tried before Mr. Justice Powell, sixteen witnesses, including three clergymen, supporting the accusation. The evidence was absurd and frivolous; but, in spite of its frivolousness and absurdity, and the poor woman’s fervent protestations of innocence, and the judge’s strong summing-up in her favour, a Hertfordshire jury convicted her. The judge was compelled by the law to pronounce sentence of death, but he lost no time in obtaining from the Queen a pardon for the unfortunate woman. But, on emerging from her prison, she was treated by the mob with savage ferocity; and, to save her from being lynched, Colonel Plumer, of Gilson, took her into his service, in which she continued for many years, earning and preserving the esteem of all who knew her.
But there is a record of an execution for witchcraft, that of Mary Hicks and her daughter, taking place in 1716 (July 28); and though it is not indubitably established, I do not think its authenticity can well be doubted.
In January, 1736, an old woman of Frome, reputed to be a witch, was dragged from her sick-bed, put astride on a saddle, and kept in a mill-pond for nearly an hour, in the presence of upwards of 200 people. The story goes that she swam like a cork, but on being taken out of the water expired immediately. A coroner’s inquest was held on the body, and three persons were committed for trial for manslaughter; but it is probable that they escaped punishment, as nobody seems to have been willing to appear in the witness-box against them.
Among the vulgar, indeed, the superstition was hard to kill. In the middle of the last century, a poor man and his wife, of the name of Osborne, each about seventy years of age, lived at Tring, in Hertfordshire. On one occasion, Mother Osborne, as she was commonly called, went to a dairyman, appropriately named Butterfield, and asked for some buttermilk; but was harshly repulsed, and informed that he had scarcely enough for his hogs. The woman replied with asperity that the Pretender (it was in the ’45 that this took place) would soon have him and his hogs. It was customary then to connect the Pretender and the devil in one’s thoughts and aspirations; and the ignorant rustics soon afterwards, when Butterfield’s calves sickened, declared that Mother Osborne had bewitched them, with the assistance of the devil. Later, when Butterfield, who had given up his farm and taken to an ale-house, suffered much from fits, Mother Osborne was again declared to be the cause (1751), and he was advised to send to Northamptonshire for an old woman, a white witch, to baffle her spells. The white witch came, confirmed, of course, the popular prejudice, and advised that six men, armed with staves and pitchforks, should watch Butterfield’s house by day and night. The affair would here, perhaps, have ended; but some persons thought they could turn it to their pecuniary advantage, and, accordingly, made public notification that a witch would be ducked on April 22. On the appointed day hundreds flocked to the scene of entertainment. The parish officers had removed the two Osbornes for safety to the church; and the mob, in revenge, seized the governor of the workhouse, and, collecting a heap of straw, threatened to drown him, and set fire to the town, unless they were given up. In a panic of fear the parish officers gave way, and the two poor creatures were immediately stripped naked, their thumbs tied to their toes, and, each being wrapped in a coarse sheet, were dragged a couple of miles, and then flung into a muddy stream. Colley, a chimney-sweep, observing that the woman did not sink, stepped into the pool, and turned her over several times with a stick, until the sheet fell off, and her nakedness was exposed. In this miserable state – exhausted with fatigue and terror, sick with shame, half choked with mud – she was flung upon the bank; and her persecutors – alas for the cruelty of ignorance! – kicked and beat her until she died. Her husband also sank under his barbarous maltreatment. It is satisfactory to know that Colley, as the worst offender, was brought to trial on a charge of wilful murder, found guilty, and most righteously hanged. The crowd, however, who witnessed his execution, lamented him as a martyr, unjustly punished for having delivered the world from one of Satan’s servants, and overwhelmed with execrations the sheriff whose duty it was to see that the behests of the law were carried out.
In February, 1759, Susannah Hannaker, of Wingrove, Wilts, was put to the ordeal of weighing, but fortunately for herself outweighed the church Bible, against which she was tested. In June, 1760, at Leicester; in June, 1785, at Northampton; and in April, 1829, at Monmouth, persons were tried for ducking supposed witches. Similar cases have occurred in our own time. On September 4, 1863, a paralytic Frenchman died of an illness induced by his having been ducked as a wizard in a pond at Castle Hedingham, in Essex. And an aged woman, named Anne Turner, reputed to be a witch, was killed by a man, partially insane, at the village of Long Compton, in Warwickshire, on September 17, 1875. But the reader needs no further illustrations of the longevity of human error, or the terrible vitality of prejudice, especially among the uneducated. The thaumaturgist or necromancer, with his wand, his magic circle, his alembics and crucibles, disappeared long ago, because, as I have already pointed out, his support depended upon a class of society whose intelligence was rapidly developed by the healthy influences of literature and science; but the sham astrologer and the pseudo-witch linger still in obscure corners, because they find their prey among the credulous and the ignorant. The more widely we extend the bounds of knowledge, the more certainly shall we prevent the recrudescence of such forms of imposture and aspects of delusion as in the preceding pages I have attempted to describe.
