This additional evidence speaks for itself, and shows the whole tale to
be the fiction of the children's imagination, which some of them wished
to improve upon. The reader may consult "An Account of what happened in
the Kingdom of Sweden in the years 1669 and 1670, and afterwards
translated out of High Dutch into English by Dr. Antony Horneck,"
attached to Glanville's "Sadducismus Triumphatus." The translator refers
to the evidence of Baron Sparr, Ambassador from the Court of Sweden to
the Court of England in 1672; and that of Baron Lyonberg, Envoy
Extraordinary of the same power, both of whom attest the confession and
execution of the witches. The King of Sweden himself answered the
express inquiries of the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His
judges and commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and
children, to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence as was
brought before them. But whether the actions confessed and proved
against them were real, or only the effects of strong imagination, he
was not as yet able to determine"--a sufficient reason, perhaps, why
punishment should have been at least deferred by the interposition of
the royal authority.

We must now turn our eyes to Britain, in which our knowledge as to such
events is necessarily more extensive, and where it is in a high degree
more interesting to our present purpose.




LETTER VIII.

    The Effects of the Witch Superstition are to be traced in the Laws
    of a Kingdom--Usually punished in England as a Crime connected with
    Politics--Attempt at Murder for Witchcraft not in itself
    Capital--Trials of Persons of Rank for Witchcraft, connected with
    State Crimes--Statutes of Henry VIII--How Witchcraft was regarded by
    the three Leading Sects of Religion in the Sixteenth Century; first,
    by the Catholics; second, by the Calvinists; third, by the Church of
    England and Lutherans--Impostures unwarily countenanced by
    individual Catholic Priests, and also by some Puritanic
    Clergymen--Statute of 1562, and some cases upon it--Case of
    Dugdale--Case of the Witches of Warbois, and the execution of the
    Family of Samuel--That of Jane Wenham, in which some Church of
    England Clergymen insisted on the Prosecution--Hutchison's Rebuke to
    them--James the First's Opinion of Witchcraft--His celebrated
    Statute, 1 Jac. I.--Canon passed by the Convocation against
    Possession--Case of Mr. Fairfax's Children--Lancashire Witches in
    1613--Another Discovery in 1634--Webster's Account of the manner in
    which the Imposture was managed--Superiority of the Calvinists is
    followed by a severe Prosecution of Witches--Executions in Suffolk,
    &c. to a dreadful extent--Hopkins, the pretended Witchfinder, the
    cause of these Cruelties--His Brutal Practices--His
    Letter--Execution of Mr. Lowis--Hopkins Punished--Restoration of
    Charles--Trial of Coxe--Of Dunny and Callendar before Lord
    Hales--Royal Society and Progress of Knowledge--Somersetshire
    Witches--Opinions of the Populace--A Woman Swum for Witchcraft at
    Oakly--- Murder at Tring--Act against Witchcraft abolished, and the
    belief in the Crime becomes forgotten--Witch Trials in New
    England--Dame Glover's Trial--Affliction of the Parvises, and
    frightful Increase of the Prosecutions--Suddenly put a stop to--The
    Penitence of those concerned in them.


Our account of Demonology in England must naturally, as in every other
country, depend chiefly on the instances which history contains of the
laws and prosecutions against witchcraft. Other superstitions arose and
decayed, were dreaded or despised, without greater embarrassment, in the
provinces in which they have a temporary currency, than that cowards and
children go out more seldom at night, while the reports of ghosts and
fairies are peculiarly current. But when the alarm of witchcraft arises,
Superstition dips her hand in the blood of the persons accused, and
records in the annals of jurisprudence their trials and the causes
alleged in vindication of their execution. Respecting other fantastic
allegations, the proof is necessarily transient and doubtful, depending
upon the inaccurate testimony of vague report and of doting tradition.
But in cases of witchcraft we have before us the recorded evidence upon
which judge and jury acted, and can form an opinion with some degree of
certainty of the grounds, real or fanciful, on which they acquitted or
condemned. It is, therefore, in tracing, this part of Demonology, with
its accompanying circumstances, that we have the best chance of
obtaining an accurate view of our subject.

The existence of witchcraft was, no doubt, received and credited in
England, as in the countries on the Continent, and originally punished
accordingly. But after the fourteenth century the practices which fell
under such a description were thought unworthy of any peculiar
animadversion, unless they were connected with something which would
have been of itself a capital crime, by whatever means it had been
either essayed or accomplished. Thus the supposed paction between a
witch and the demon was perhaps deemed in itself to have terrors enough
to prevent its becoming an ordinary crime, and was not, therefore,
visited with any statutory penalty. But to attempt or execute bodily
harm to others through means of evil spirits, or, in a word, by the
black art, was actionable at common law as much as if the party accused
had done the same harm with an arrow or pistol-shot. The destruction or
abstraction of goods by the like instruments, supposing the charge
proved, would, in like manner, be punishable. _A fortiori_, the
consulting soothsayers, familiar spirits, or the like, and the obtaining
and circulating pretended prophecies to the unsettlement of the State
and the endangering of the King's title, is yet a higher degree of
guilt. And it may be remarked that the inquiry into the date of the
King's life bears a close affinity with the desiring or compassing the
death of the Sovereign, which is the essence of high treason. Upon such
charges repeated trials took place in the courts of the English, and
condemnations were pronounced, with sufficient justice, no doubt, where
the connexion between the resort to sorcerers and the design to
perpetrate a felony could be clearly proved. We would not, indeed, be
disposed to go the length of so high an authority as Selden, who
pronounces (in his "Table-Talk") that if a man heartily believed that he
could take the life of another by waving his hat three times and crying
Buzz! and should, under this fixed opinion, wave his hat and cry Buzz!
accordingly, he ought to be executed as a murderer. But a false prophecy
of the King's death is not to be dealt with exactly on the usual
principle; because, however idle in itself, the promulgation of such a
prediction has, in times such as we are speaking of, a strong tendency
to work its completion.

Many persons, and some of great celebrity, suffered for the charge of
trafficking with witches, to the prejudice of those in authority. We
have already mentioned the instance of the Duchess of Gloucester, in
Henry the Sixth's reign, and that of the Queen Dowager's kinsmen, in the
Protectorate of Richard, afterwards the Third. In 1521, the Duke of
Buckingham was beheaded, owing much to his having listened to the
predictions of one Friar Hopkins. In the same reign, the Maid of Kent,
who had been esteemed a prophetess, was put to death as a cheat. She
suffered with seven persons who had managed her fits for the support of
the Catholic religion, and confessed her fraud upon the scaffold. About
seven years after this, Lord Hungerford was beheaded for consulting
certain soothsayers concerning the length of Henry the Eighth's life.
But these cases rather relate to the purpose for which the sorcery was
employed, than to the fact of using it.

Two remarkable statutes were passed in the year 1541; one against false
prophecies, the other against the act of conjuration, witchcraft, and
sorcery, and at the same time against breaking and destroying crosses.
The former enactment was certainly made to ease the suspicious and
wayward fears of the tetchy King Henry. The prohibition against
witchcraft might be also dictated by the king's jealous doubts of hazard
to the succession. The enactment against breaking crosses was obviously
designed to check the ravages of the Reformers, who in England as well
as elsewhere desired to sweep away Popery with the besom of destruction.
This latter statute was abrogated in the first year of Edward VI.,
perhaps as placing an undue restraint on the zeal of good Protestants
against idolatry.

At length, in 1562, a formal statute against sorcery, as penal in
itself, was actually passed; but as the penalty was limited to the
pillory for the first transgression, the legislature probably regarded
those who might be brought to trial as impostors rather than wizards.
There are instances of individuals tried and convicted as impostors and
cheats, and who acknowledged themselves such before the court and
people; but in their articles of visitation the prelates directed
enquiry to be made after those who should use enchantments, witchcraft,
sorcery, or any like craft, _invented by the devil_.

But it is here proper to make a pause for the purpose of enquiring in
what manner the religious disputes which occupied all Europe about this
time influenced the proceedings of the rival sects in relation to
Demonology.

The Papal Church had long reigned by the proud and absolute humour which
she had assumed, of maintaining every doctrine which her rulers had
adopted in dark ages; but this pertinacity at length made her citadel
too large to be defended at every point by a garrison whom prudence
would have required to abandon positions which had been taken in times
of darkness, and were unsuited to the warfare of a more enlightened age.
The sacred motto of the Vatican was, "_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_;" and
this rendered it impossible to comply with the more wise and moderate of
her own party, who would otherwise have desired to make liberal
concessions to the Protestants, and thus prevent, in its commencement, a
formidable schism in the Christian world.

To the system of Rome the Calvinists offered the most determined
opposition, affecting upon every occasion and on all points to observe
an order of church-government, as well as of worship, expressly in the
teeth of its enactments;--in a word, to be a good Protestant, they held
it almost essential to be in all things diametrically opposite to the
Catholic form and faith. As the foundation of this sect was laid in
republican states, as its clerical discipline was settled on a
democratic basis, and as the countries which adopted that form of
government were chiefly poor, the preachers having lost the rank and
opulence enjoyed by the Roman Church, were gradually thrown on the
support of the people. Insensibly they became occupied with the ideas
and tenets natural to the common people, which, if they have usually the
merit of being honestly conceived and boldly expressed, are not the less
often adopted with credulity and precipitation, and carried into effect
with unhesitating harshness and severity.

Betwixt these extremes the Churchmen of England endeavoured to steer a
middle course, retaining a portion of the ritual and forms of Rome, as
in themselves admirable, and at any rate too greatly venerated by the
people to be changed merely for opposition's sake. Their comparatively
undilapidated revenue, the connexion of their system with the state,
with views of ambition as ample as the station of a churchman ought to
command, rendered them independent of the necessity of courting their
flocks by any means save regular discharge of their duty; and the
excellent provisions made for their education afforded them learning to
confute ignorance and enlighten prejudice.

Such being the general character of the three Churches, their belief in
and persecution of such crimes as witchcraft and sorcery were
necessarily modelled upon the peculiar tenets which each system
professed, and gave rise to various results in the countries where they
were severally received.

The Church of Rome, as we have seen, was unwilling, in her period of
undisputed power, to call in the secular arm to punish men for
witchcraft--a crime which fell especially under ecclesiastical
cognizance, and could, according to her belief, be subdued by the
spiritual arm alone. The learned men at the head of the establishment
might safely despise the attempt at those hidden arts as impossible; or,
even if they were of a more credulous disposition, they might be
unwilling to make laws by which their own enquiries in the mathematics,
algebra, chemistry, and other pursuits vulgarly supposed to approach the
confines of magic art, might be inconveniently restricted. The more
selfish part of the priesthood might think that a general belief in the
existence of witches should be permitted to remain, as a source both of
power and of revenue--that if there were no possessions, there could be
no exorcism-fees--and, in short, that a wholesome faith in all the
absurdities of the vulgar creed as to supernatural influences was
necessary to maintain the influence of Diana of Ephesus. They suffered
spells to be manufactured, since every friar had the power of reversing
them; they permitted poison to be distilled, because every convent had
the antidote, which was disposed of to all who chose to demand it. It
was not till the universal progress of heresy, in the end of the
fifteenth century, that the bull of Pope Innocent VIII., already quoted,
called to convict, imprison, and condemn the sorcerers, chiefly because
it was the object to transfer the odium of these crimes to the
Waldenses, and excite and direct the public hatred against the new sect
by confounding their doctrines with the influences of the devil and his
fiends. The bull of Pope Innocent was afterwards, in the year 1523,
enforced by Adrian VI. with a new one, in which excommunication was
directed against _sorcerers and heretics_.

While Rome thus positively declared herself against witches and
sorcerers, the Calvinists, in whose numbers must be included the greater
part of the English Puritans, who, though they had not finally severed
from the communion of the Anglican Church, yet disapproved of her ritual
and ceremonies as retaining too much of the Papal stamp, ranked
themselves, in accordance with their usual policy, in diametrical
opposition to the doctrine of the Mother Church. They assumed in the
opposite sense whatever Rome pretended to as a proof of her omnipotent
authority. The exorcisms, forms, and rites, by which good Catholics
believed that incarnate fiends could be expelled and evil spirits of
every kind rebuked--these, like the holy water, the robes of the priest,
and the sign of the cross, the Calvinists considered either with scorn
and contempt as the tools of deliberate quackery and imposture, or with
horror and loathing, as the fit emblems and instruments of an idolatrous
system.

Such of them as did not absolutely deny the supernatural powers of which
the Romanists made boast, regarded the success of the exorcising priest,
to whatever extent they admitted it, as at best a casting out of devils
by the power of Beelzebub, the King of the Devils. They saw also, and
resented bitterly, the attempt to confound any dissent from the
doctrines of Rome with the proneness to an encouragement of rites of
sorcery. On the whole, the Calvinists, generally speaking, were of all
the contending sects the most suspicious of sorcery, the most undoubting
believers in its existence, and the most eager to follow it up with what
they conceived to be the due punishment of the most fearful of crimes.

The leading divines of the Church of England were, without doubt,
fundamentally as much opposed to the doctrines of Rome as those who
altogether disclaimed opinions and ceremonies merely because she had
entertained them. But their position in society tended strongly to keep
them from adopting, on such subjects as we are now discussing, either
the eager credulity of the vulgar mind or the fanatic ferocity of their
Calvinistic rivals. We have no purpose to discuss the matter in
detail--enough has probably been said to show generally why the Romanist
should have cried out a miracle respecting an incident which the
Anglican would have contemptuously termed an imposture; while the
Calvinist, inspired with a darker zeal, and, above all, with the
unceasing desire of open controversy with the Catholics, would have
styled the same event an operation of the devil.

It followed that, while the divines of the Church of England possessed
the upper hand in the kingdom, witchcraft, though trials and even
condemnations for that offence occasionally occurred, did not create
that epidemic terror which the very suspicion of the offence carried
with it elsewhere; so that Reginald Scot and others alleged it was the
vain pretences and empty forms of the Church of Rome, by the faith
reposed in them, which had led to the belief of witchcraft or sorcery in
general. Nor did prosecutions on account of such charges frequently
involve a capital punishment, while learned judges were jealous of the
imperfection of the evidence to support the charge, and entertained a
strong and growing suspicion that legitimate grounds for such trials
seldom actually existed. On the other hand, it usually happened that
wherever the Calvinist interest became predominant in Britain, a general
persecution of sorcerers and witches seemed to take place of
consequence. Fearing and hating sorcery more than other Protestants,
connecting its ceremonies and usages with those of the detested Catholic
Church, the Calvinists were more eager than other sects in searching
after the traces of this crime, and, of course, unusually successful, as
they might suppose, in making discoveries of guilt, and pursuing it to
the expiation of the fagot. In a word, a principle already referred to
by Dr. Francis Hutchison will be found to rule the tide and the reflux
of such cases in the different churches. The numbers of witches, and
their supposed dealings with Satan, will increase or decrease according
as such doings are accounted probable or impossible. Under the former
supposition, charges and convictions will be found augmented in a
terrific degree. When the accusations are disbelieved and dismissed as
not worthy of attention, the crime becomes unfrequent, ceases to occupy
the public mind, and affords little trouble to the judges.

The passing of Elizabeth's statute against witchcraft in 1562 does not
seem to have been intended to increase the number of trials, or cases of
conviction at least; and the fact is, it did neither the one nor the
other. Two children were tried in 1574 for counterfeiting possession,
and stood in the pillory for impostors. Mildred Norrington, called the
Maid of Westwell, furnished another instance of possession; but she also
confessed her imposture, and publicly showed her fits and tricks of
mimicry. The strong influence already possessed by the Puritans may
probably be sufficient to account for the darker issue of certain cases,
in which both juries and judges in Elizabeth's time must be admitted to
have shown fearful severity.

These cases of possession were in some respects sore snares to the
priests of the Church of Rome, who, while they were too sagacious not to
be aware that the pretended fits, contortions, strange sounds, and other
extravagances, produced as evidence of the demon's influence on the
possessed person, were nothing else than marks of imposture by some idle
vagabond, were nevertheless often tempted to admit them as real, and
take the credit of curing them. The period was one when the Catholic
Church had much occasion to rally around her all the respect that
remained to her in a schismatic and heretical kingdom; and when her
fathers and doctors announced the existence of such a dreadful disease,
and of the power of the church's prayers, relics, and ceremonies, to
cure it, it was difficult for a priest, supposing him more tender of the
interest of his order than that of truth, to avoid such a tempting
opportunity as a supposed case of possession offered for displaying the
high privilege in which his profession made him a partaker, or to
abstain from conniving at the imposture, in order to obtain for his
church the credit of expelling the demon. It was hardly to be wondered
at, if the ecclesiastic was sometimes induced to aid the fraud of which
such motives forbade him to be the detector. At this he might hesitate
the less, as he was not obliged to adopt the suspected and degrading
course of holding an immediate communication _in limine_ with the
impostor, since a hint or two, dropped in the supposed sufferer's
presence, might give him the necessary information what was the most
exact mode of performing his part, and if the patient was possessed by a
devil of any acuteness or dexterity, he wanted no further instruction
how to play it. Such combinations were sometimes detected, and brought
more discredit on the Church of Rome than was counterbalanced by any
which might be more cunningly managed. On this subject the reader may
turn to Dr. Harsnett's celebrated book on Popish Impostures, wherein he
gives the history of several notorious cases of detected fraud, in which
Roman ecclesiastics had not hesitated to mingle themselves. That of
Grace Sowerbutts, instructed by a Catholic priest to impeach her
grandmother of witchcraft, was a very gross fraud.

Such cases were not, however, limited to the ecclesiastics of Rome. We
have already stated that, as extremes usually approach each other, the
Dissenters, in their violent opposition to the Papists, adopted some of
their ideas respecting demoniacs; and we have now to add that they also
claimed, by the vehemence of prayer and the authority of their own
sacred commission, that power of expelling devils which the Church of
Rome pretended to exercise by rites, ceremonies, and relics. The
memorable case of Richard Dugdale, called the Surrey Impostor, was one
of the most remarkable which the Dissenters brought forward. This youth
was supposed to have sold his soul to the devil, on condition of being
made the best dancer in Lancashire, and during his possession played a
number of fantastic tricks, not much different from those exhibited by
expert posture-masters of the present day. This person threw himself
into the hands of the Dissenters, who, in their eagerness, caught at an
opportunity to relieve an afflicted person, whose case the regular
clergy appeared to have neglected. They fixed a committee of their
number, who weekly attended the supposed sufferer, and exercised
themselves in appointed days of humiliation and fasting during the
course of a whole year. All respect for the demon seems to have
abandoned the reverend gentlemen, after they had relieved guard in this
manner for some little time, and they got so regardless of Satan as to
taunt him with the mode in which he executed his promise to teach his
vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth
commemoration:--"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave
himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old
records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there
find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot
the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems spring up one
new method of cutting capers? Is this the top of skill and pride, to
shuffle feet and brandish knees thus, and to trip like a doe and skip
like a squirrel? And wherein differ thy leapings from the hoppings of a
frog, or the bouncings of a goat, or friskings of a dog, or
gesticulations of a monkey? And cannot a palsy shake such a loose leg as
that? Dost thou not twirl like a calf that hath the turn, and twitch up
thy houghs just like a springhault tit?"[54] One might almost conceive
the demon replying to this raillery in the words of Dr. Johnson, "This
merriment of parsons is extremely offensive."

[Footnote 54: Hutchison on Witchcraft, p. 162.]

The dissenters were probably too honest, however simple, to achieve a
complete cure on Dugdale by an amicable understanding; so, after their
year of vigil, they relinquished their task by degrees. Dugdale, weary
of his illness, which now attracted little notice, attended a regular
physician, and was cured of that part of his disease which was not
affected in a regular way _par ordonnance du mГ©decin_. But the reverend
gentlemen who had taken his case in hand still assumed the credit of
curing him, and if anything could have induced them to sing _Te Deum_,
it would have been this occasion. They said that the effect of their
public prayers had been for a time suspended, until seconded by the
continued earnestness of their private devotions!

The ministers of the Church of England, though, from education,
intercourse with the world, and other advantages, they were less prone
to prejudice than those of other sects, are yet far from being entirely
free of the charge of encouraging in particular instances the witch
superstition. Even while Dr. Hutchison pleads that the Church of England
has the least to answer for in that matter, he is under the necessity of
acknowledging that some regular country clergymen so far shared the
rooted prejudices of congregations, and of the government which
established laws against it, as to be active in the persecution of the
suspected, and even in countenancing the superstitious signs by which in
that period the vulgar thought it possible to ascertain the existence of
the afflictions by witchcraft, and obtain the knowledge of the
perpetrator. A singular case is mentioned of three women, called the
Witches of Warbois. Indeed, their story is a matter of solemn enough
record; for Sir Samuel Cromwell, having received the sum of forty pounds
as lord of the manor, out of the estate of the poor persons who
suffered, turned it into a rent-charge of forty shillings yearly, for
the endowment of an annual lecture on the subject of witchcraft, to be
preached by a doctor or bachelor of divinity of Queen's College,
Cambridge. The accused, one Samuel and his wife, were old and very poor
persons, and their daughter a young woman. The daughter of a Mr.
Throgmorton, seeing the poor old woman in a black knitted cap, at a time
when she was not very well, took a whim that she had bewitched her, and
was ever after exclaiming against her. The other children of this
fanciful family caught up the same cry, and the eldest of them at last
got up a vastly pretty drama, in which she herself furnished all the
scenes and played all the parts.

Such imaginary scenes, or _make-believe_ stories, are the common
amusement of lively children; and most readers may remember having had
some Utopia of their own. But the nursery drama of Miss Throgmorton had
a horrible conclusion. This young lady and her sisters were supposed to
be haunted by nine spirits, dispatched by the wicked Mother Samuel for
that purpose. The sapient parents heard one part of the dialogue, when
the children in their fits returned answers, as was supposed, to the
spirits who afflicted them; and when the patients from time to time
recovered, they furnished the counterpart by telling what the spirits
had said to them. The names of the spirits were Pluck, Hardname, Catch,
Blue, and three Smacks, who were cousins. Mrs. Joan Throgmorton, the
eldest (who, like other young women of her age, about fifteen, had some
disease on her nerves, and whose fancy ran apparently on love and
gallantry), supposed that one of the Smacks was her lover, did battle
for her with the less friendly spirits, and promised to protect her
against Mother Samuel herself; and the following curious extract will
show on what a footing of familiarity the damsel stood with her
spiritual gallant: "From whence come you, Mr. Smack?" says the afflicted
young lady; "and what news do you bring?" Smack, nothing abashed,
informed her he came from fighting with Pluck: the weapons, great
cowl-staves; the scene, a ruinous bakehouse in Dame Samuel's yard. "And
who got the mastery, I pray you?" said the damsel. Smack answered, he
had broken Pluck's head. "I would," said the damsel, "he had broken your
neck also." "Is that the thanks I am to have for my labour?" said the
disappointed Smack. "Look you for thanks at my hand?" said the
distressed maiden. "I would you were all hanged up against each other,
with your dame for company, for you are all naught." On this repulse,
exit Smack, and enter Pluck, Blue, and Catch, the first with his head
broken, the other limping, and the third with his arm in a sling, all
trophies of Smack's victory. They disappeared after having threatened
vengeance upon the conquering Smack. However, he soon afterwards
appeared with his laurels. He told her of his various conflicts. "I
wonder," said Mrs. Joan, or Jane, "that you are able to beat them; you
are little, and they very big." "He cared not for that," he replied; "he
would beat the best two of them, and his cousins Smacks would beat the
other two." This most pitiful mirth, for such it certainly is, was mixed
with tragedy enough. Miss Throgmorton and her sisters railed against
Darne Samuel; and when Mr. Throgmorton brought her to his house by
force, the little fiends longed to draw blood of her, scratch her, and
torture her, as the witch-creed of that period recommended; yet the poor
woman incurred deeper suspicion when she expressed a wish to leave a
house where she was so coarsely treated and lay under such odious
suspicions.

It was in vain that this unhappy creature endeavoured to avert their
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.