"The hanging of a great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously
known. Mr. Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear
their confessions, and see there was no fraud or wrong done them. I
spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible persons that
lived in the counties, and some that went to them in the prisons, and
heard their sad confessions. Among the rest an old _reading parson_,
named Lowis, not far from Framlingham, was one that was hanged, who
confessed that he had two imps, and that one of them was always putting
him upon doing mischief; and he, being near the sea, as he saw a ship
under sail, it moved him to send it to sink the ship; and he consented,
and saw the ship sink before them." Mr. Baxter passes on to another
story of a mother who gave her child an imp like a mole, and told her to
keep it in a can near the fire, and she would never want; and more such
stuff as nursery-maids tell froward children to keep them quiet.

It is remarkable that in this passage Baxter names the Witchfinder
General rather slightly as "one Hopkins," and without doing him the
justice due to one who had discovered more than one hundred witches, and
brought them to confessions, which that good man received as
indubitable. Perhaps the learned divine was one of those who believed
that the Witchfinder General had cheated the devil out of a certain
memorandum-book, in which Satan, for the benefit of his memory
certainly, had entered all the witches' names in England, and that
Hopkins availed himself of this record.[57]

[Footnote 57: This reproach is noticed in a very rare tract, which was
bought at Mr. Lort's sale, by the celebrated collector Mr. Bindley, and
is now in the author's possession. Its full title is, "The Discovery of
Witches, in Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of
Assize for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins,
Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom. Printed for R.
Royston, at the Angel, in Inn Lane. 1647."]

It may be noticed that times of misrule and violence seem to create
individuals fitted to take advantage from them, and having a character
suited to the seasons which raise them into notice and action; just as a
blight on any tree or vegetable calls to life a peculiar insect to feed
upon and enjoy the decay which it has produced. A monster like Hopkins
could only have existed during the confusion of civil dissension. He was
perhaps a native of Manningtree, in Essex; at any rate, he resided there
in the year 1644, when an epidemic outcry of witchcraft arose in that
town. Upon this occasion he had made himself busy, and, affecting more
zeal and knowledge than other men, learned his trade of a witchfinder,
as he pretends, from experiment. He was afterwards permitted to perform
it as a legal profession, and moved from one place to another, with an
assistant named Sterne, and a female. In his defence against an
accusation of fleecing the country, he declares his regular charge was
twenty shillings a town, including charges of living and journeying
thither and back again with his assistants. He also affirms that he went
nowhere unless called and invited. His principal mode of discovery was
to strip the accused persons naked, and thrust pins into various parts
of their body, to discover the witch's mark, which was supposed to be
inflicted by the devil as a sign of his sovereignty, and at which she
was also said to suckle her imps. He also practised and stoutly defended
the trial by swimming, when the suspected person was wrapped in a sheet,
having the great toes and thumbs tied together, and so dragged through a
pond or river. If she sank, it was received in favour of the accused;
but if the body floated (which must have occurred ten times for once, if
it was placed with care on the surface of the water), the accused was
condemned, on the principle of King James, who, in treating of this mode
of trial, lays down that, as witches have renounced their baptism, so it
is just that the element through which the holy rite is enforced should
reject them, which is a figure of speech, and no argument. It was
Hopkins's custom to keep the poor wretches waking, in order to prevent
them from having encouragement from the devil, and, doubiless, to put
infirm, terrified, overwatched persons in the next state to absolute
madness; and for the same purpose they were dragged about by their
keepers till extreme weariness and the pain of blistered feet might form
additional inducements to confession. Hopkins confesses these last
practices of keeping the accused persons waking, and forcing them to
walk for the same purpose, had been originally used by him. But as his
tract is a professed answer to charges of cruelty and oppression, he
affirms that both practices were then disused, and that they had not of
late been resorted to.

The boast of the English nation is a manly independence and
common-sense, which will not long permit the license of tyranny or
oppression on the meanest and most obscure sufferers. Many clergymen and
gentlemen made head against the practices of this cruel oppressor of the
defenceless, and it required courage to do so when such an unscrupulous
villain had so much interest.

Mr. Gaul, a clergyman, of Houghton, in Huntingdonshire, had the courage
to appear in print on the weaker side; and Hopkins, in consequence,
assumed the assurance to write to some functionaries of the place the
following letter, which is an admirable medley of impudence, bullying,
and cowardice:--

"My service to your worship presented.--I have this day received a
letter to come to a town called Great Houghton to search for
evil-disposed persons called witches (though I hear your minister is far
against us, through ignorance). I intend to come, God willing, the
sooner to hear his singular judgment in the behalf of such parties. I
have known a minister in Suffolk as much against this discovery in a
pulpit, and forced to recant it by the Committee[58] in the same place.
I much marvel such evil men should have any (much more any of the
clergy, who should daily speak terror to convince such offenders) stand
up to take their parts against such as are complainants for the king,
and sufferers themselves, with their families and estates. I intend to
give your town a visit suddenly. I will come to Kimbolton this week, and
it will be ten to one but I will come to your town first; but I would
certainly know before whether your town affords many sticklers for such
cattle, or is willing to give and allow us good welcome and
entertainment, as others where I have been, else I shall waive your
shire (not as yet beginning in any part of it myself), and betake me to
such places where I do and may punish (not only) without control, but
with thanks and recompense. So I humbly take my leave, and rest your
servant to be commanded,

"MATTHEW HOPKINS."

[Footnote 58: Of Parliament.]

The sensible and courageous Mr. Gaul describes the tortures employed by
this fellow as equal to any practised in the Inquisition. "Having taken
the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room, upon a stool
or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture, to which, if
she submits not, she is then bound with cords; there she is watched and
kept without meat or sleep for four-and-twenty hours, for, they say,
they shall within that time see her imp come and suck. A little hole is
likewise made in the door for the imps to come in at; and lest they
should come in some less discernible shape, they that watch are taught
to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or
flies, to kill them; and if they cannot kill them, they may be sure they
are their imps."

If torture of this kind was applied to the Reverend Mr. Lewis, whose
death is too slightly announced by Mr. Baxter, we can conceive him, or
any man, to have indeed become so weary of his life as to acknowledge
that, by means of his imps, he sunk a vessel, without any purpose of
gratification to be procured to himself by such iniquity. But in another
cause a judge would have demanded some proof of the _corpus delecti_,
some evidence of a vessel being lost at the period, whence coming and
whither bound; in short, something to establish that the whole story was
not the idle imagination of a man who might have been entirely deranged,
and certainly was so at the time he made the admission. John Lewis was
presented to the vicarage of Brandiston, near Framlington, in Suffolk,
6th May, 1596, where he lived about fifty years, till executed as a
wizard on such evidence as we have seen. Notwithstanding the story of
his alleged confession, he defended himself courageously at his trial,
and was probably condemned rather as a royalist and malignant than for
any other cause. He showed at the execution considerable energy, and to
secure that the funeral service of the church should be said over his
body, he read it aloud for himself while on the road to the gibbet.

We have seen that in 1647 Hopkins's tone became lowered, and he began to
disavow some of the cruelties he had formerly practised. About the same
time a miserable old woman had fallen into the cruel hands of this
miscreant near Hoxne, a village in Suffolk, and had confessed all the
usual enormities, after being without food or rest a sufficient time.
"Her imp," she said, "was called Nan." A gentleman in the neighbourhood,
whose widow survived to authenticate the story, was so indignant that he
went to the house, took the woman out of such inhuman hands, dismissed
the witchfinders, and after due food and rest the poor old woman could
recollect nothing of the confession, but that she gave a favourite
pullet the name of Nan. For this Dr. Hutchison may be referred to, who
quotes a letter from the relict of the humane gentleman.

In the year 1645 a Commission of Parliament was sent down, comprehending
two clergymen in esteem with the leading party, one of whom, Mr.
Fairclough of Kellar, preached before the rest on the subject of
witchcraft; and after this appearance of enquiry the inquisitions and
executions went on as before. But the popular indignation was so
strongly excited against Hopkins, that some gentlemen seized on him, and
put him to his own favourite experiment of swimming, on which, as he
happened to float, he stood convicted of witchcraft, and so the country
was rid of him. Whether he was drowned outright or not does not exactly
appear, but he has had the honour to be commemorated by the author of
Hudibras:--

     "Hath not this present Parliament
     A leiger to the devil sent,
     Fully empower'd to treat about
     Finding revolted witches out?
     And has he not within a year
     Hang'd threescore of them in one shire?
     Some only for not being drown'd,
     And some for sitting above ground
     Whole days and nights upon their breeches,
     And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches.
     And some for putting knavish tricks
     Upon green geese or turkey chicks;
     Or pigs that suddenly deceased
     Of griefs unnatural, as he guess'd,
     Who proved himself at length a witch,
     And made a rod for his own breech." [59]

[Footnote 59: "Hudibras," part ii. canto 3.]

The understanding reader will easily conceive that this alteration of
the current in favour of those who disapproved of witch-prosecutions,
must have received encouragement from some quarter of weight and
influence; yet it may sound strangely enough that this spirit of lenity
should have been the result of the peculiar principles of those
sectarians of all denominations, classed in general as Independents,
who, though they had originally courted the Presbyterians as the more
numerous and prevailing party, had at length shaken themselves loose of
that connexion, and finally combated with and overcome them. The
Independents were distinguished by the wildest license in their
religious tenets, mixed with much that was nonsensical and mystical.
They disowned even the title of a regular clergy, and allowed the
preaching of any one who could draw together a congregation that would
support him, or who was willing, without recompense, to minister to the
spiritual necessities of his hearers. Although such laxity of discipline
afforded scope to the wildest enthusiasm, and room for all possible
varieties of doctrine, it had, on the other hand, this inestimable
recommendation, that it contributed to a degree of general toleration
which was at that time unknown to any other Christian establishment. The
very genius of a religion which admitted of the subdivision of sects _ad
infinitum_, excluded a legal prosecution of any one of these for heresy
or apostasy. If there had even existed a sect of Manichæans, who made it
their practice to adore the Evil Principle, it may be doubted whether
the other sectaries would have accounted them absolute outcasts from the
pale of the church; and, fortunately, the same sentiment induced them to
regard with horror the prosecutions against witchcraft. Thus the
Independents, when, under Cromwell, they attained a supremacy over the
Presbyterians, who to a certain point had been their allies, were
disposed to counteract the violence of such proceedings under pretence
of witchcraft, as had been driven forward by the wretched Hopkins, in
Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, for three or four years previous to 1647.

The return of Charles II. to his crown and kingdom, served in some
measure to restrain the general and wholesale manner in which the laws
against witchcraft had been administered during the warmth of the Civil
War. The statute of the 1st of King James, nevertheless, yet subsisted;
nor is it in the least likely, considering the character of the prince,
that he, to save the lives of a few old men or women, would have run the
risk of incurring the odium of encouraging or sparing a crime still held
in horror by a great part of his subjects. The statute, however, was
generally administered by wise and skilful judges, and the accused had
such a chance of escape as the rigour of the absurd law permitted.

Nonsense, it is too obvious, remained in some cases predominant. In the
year 1663 an old dame, named Julian Coxe, was convicted chiefly on the
evidence of a huntsman, who declared on his oath, that he laid his
greyhounds on a hare, and coming up to the spot where he saw them mouth
her, there he found, on the other side of a bush, Julian Coxe lying
panting and breathless, in such a manner as to convince him that she had
been the creature which afforded him the course. The unhappy woman was
executed on this evidence.

Two years afterwards (1664), it is with regret we must quote the
venerable and devout Sir Matthew Hales, as presiding at a trial, in
consequence of which Amy Dunny and Rose Callender were hanged at Saint
Edmondsbury. But no man, unless very peculiarly circumstanced, can
extricate himself from the prejudices of his nation and age. The
evidence against the accused was laid, 1st, on the effect of spells used
by ignorant persons to counteract the supposed witchcraft; the use of
which was, under the statute of James I., as criminal as the act of
sorcery which such counter-charms were meant to neutralize, 2ndly, The
two old women, refused even the privilege of purchasing some herrings,
having expressed themselves with angry impatience, a child of the
herring-merchant fell ill in conseqence. 3rdly, A cart was driven
against the miserable cottage of Amy Dunny. She scolded, of course; and
shortly after the cart--(what a good driver will scarce
comprehend)--stuck fast in a gate, where its wheels touched neither of
the posts, and yet was moved easily forward on one of the posts (by
which it was _not_ impeded) being cut down. 4thly, One of the afflicted
girls being closely muffled, went suddenly into a fit upon being touched
by one of the supposed witches. But upon another trial it was found that
the person so blindfolded fell into the same rage at the touch of an
unsuspected person. What perhaps sealed the fate of the accused was the
evidence of the celebrated Sir Thomas Browne, "that the fits were
natural, but heightened by the power of the devil co-operating with the
malice of witches;"--a strange opinion, certainly, from the author of a
treatise on "Vulgar Errors!"[60]

[Footnote 60: See the account of Sir T. Browne in No. XIV. of the
"Family Library" ("Lives of British Physicians"), p. 60.]

But the torch of science was now fairly lighted, and gleamed in more
than one kingdom of the world, shooting its rays on every side, and
catching at all means which were calculated to increase the
illumination. The Royal Society, which had taken its rise at Oxford from
a private association who met in Dr. Wilkin's chambers about the year
1652, was, the year after the Restoration, incorporated by royal
charter, and began to publish their Transactions, and give a new and
more rational character to the pursuits of philosophy.

In France, where the mere will of the government could accomplish
greater changes, the consequence of an enlarged spirit of scientific
discovery was, that a decisive stop was put to the witch-prosecutions
which had heretofore been as common in that kingdom as in England. About
the year 1672 there was a general arrest of very many shepherds and
others in Normandy, and the Parliament of Rouen prepared to proceed in
the investigation with the usual severity. But an order, or _arret_,
from the king (Louis XIV.), with advice of his council, commanding all
these unfortunate persons to be set at liberty and protected, had the
most salutary effects all over the kingdom. The French Academy of
Sciences was also founded; and, in imitation, a society of learned
Germans established a similar institution at Leipsic. Prejudices,
however old, were overawed and controlled--much was accounted for on
natural principles that had hitherto been imputed to spiritual
agency--everything seemed to promise that farther access to the secrets
of nature might be opened to those who should prosecute their studies
experimentally and by analysis--and the mass of ancient opinions which
overwhelmed the dark subject of which we treat began to be derided and
rejected by men of sense and education.

In many cases the prey was now snatched from the spoiler. A pragmatical
justice of peace in Somersetshire commenced a course of enquiry after
offenders against the statute of James I., and had he been allowed to
proceed, Mr. Hunt might have gained a name as renowned for witch-finding
as that of Mr. Hopkins; but his researches were stopped from higher
authority--the lives of the poor people arrested (twelve in number) were
saved, and the country remained at quiet, though the supposed witches
were suffered to live. The examinations attest some curious particulars,
which may be found in _Sadducismus Triumphatus_: for among the usual
string of froward, fanciful, or, as they were called, afflicted
children, brought forward to club their startings, starings, and
screamings, there appeared also certain remarkable confessions of the
accused, from which we learn that the Somerset Satan enlisted his
witches, like a wily recruiting sergeant, with one shilling in hand and
twelve in promises; that when the party of weird-sisters passed to the
witch-meeting they used the magic words, _Thout, tout, throughout, and
about_; and that when they departed they exclaimed, _Rentum, Tormentum_!
We are further informed that his Infernal Highness, on his departure,
leaves a smell, and that (in nursery-maid's phrase) not a pretty one,
behind him. Concerning this fact we have a curious exposition by Mr.
Glanville. "This,"--according to that respectable authority, "seems to
imply the reality of the business, those ascititious particles which he
held together in his sensible shape being loosened at the vanishing, and
so offending the nostrils by their floating and diffusing themselves in
the open air."[61] How much are we bound to regret that Mr. Justice
Hunt's discovery "of this hellish kind of witches," in itself so clear
and plain, and containing such valuable information, should have been
smothered by meeting with opposition and discouragement from some then
in authority!

[Footnote 61: Glanville's "Collection of Relations."]

Lord Keeper Guildford was also a stifler of the proceedings against
witches. Indeed, we may generally remark, during the latter part of the
seventeenth century, that where the judges were men of education and
courage, sharing in the information of the times, they were careful to
check the precipitate ignorance and prejudice of the juries, by giving
them a more precise idea of the indifferent value of confessions by the
accused themselves, and of testimony derived from the pretended visions
of those supposed to be bewitched. Where, on the contrary, judges shared
with the vulgar in their ideas of such fascination, or were contented to
leave the evidence with the jury, fearful to withstand the general cry
too common on such occasions, a verdict of guilty often followed.

We are informed by Roger North that a case of this kind happened at the
assizes in Exeter, where his brother, the Lord Chief Justice, did not
interfere with the crown trials, and the other judge left for execution
a poor old woman, condemned, as usual, on her own confession, and on the
testimony of a neighbour, who deponed that he saw a cat jump into the
accused person's cottage window at twilight, one evening, and that he
verily believed the said cat to be the devil; on which precious
testimony the poor wretch was accordingly hanged. On another occasion,
about the same time, the passions of the great and little vulgar were so
much excited by the aquittal of an aged village dame, whom the judge had
taken some pains to rescue, that Sir John Long, a man of rank and
fortune, came to the judge in the greatest perplexity, requesting that
the hag might not be permitted to return to her miserable cottage on his
estates, since all his tenants had in that case threatened to leave him.
In compassion to a gentleman who apprehended ruin from a cause so
whimsical, the dangerous old woman was appointed to be kept by the town
where she was acquitted, at the rate of half-a-crown a week, paid by the
parish to which she belonged. But behold! in the period betwixt the two
assizes Sir John Long and his farmers had mustered courage enough to
petition that this witch should be sent back to them in all her terrors,
because they could support her among them at a shilling a week cheaper
than they were obliged to pay to the town for her maintenance. In a
subsequent trial before Lord Chief Justice North himself, that judge
detected one of those practices which, it is to be feared, were too
common at the time, when witnesses found their advantage in feigning
themselves bewitched. A woman, supposed to be the victim of the male
sorcerer at the bar, vomited pins in quantities, and those straight,
differing from the crooked pins usually produced at such times, and less
easily concealed in the mouth. The judge, however, discovered, by
cross-examining a candid witness, that in counterfeiting her fits of
convulsion the woman sunk her head on her breast, so as to take up with
her lips the pins which she had placed ready in her stomacher. The man
was acquitted, of course. A frightful old hag, who was present,
distinguished herself so much by her benedictions on the judge, that he
asked the cause of the peculiar interest which she took in the
acquittal. "Twenty years ago," said the poor woman, "they would have
hanged me for a witch, but could not; and now, but for your lordship,
they would have murdered my innocent son."[62]

[Footnote 62: Roger North's "Life of Lord-Keeper Guilford."]

Such scenes happened frequently on the assizes, while country gentlemen,
like the excellent Sir Roger de Coverley, retained a private share in
the terror with which their tenants, servants, and retainers regarded
some old Moll White, who put the hounds at fault and ravaged the fields
with hail and hurricanes. Sir John Reresby, after an account of a poor
woman tried for a witch at York in 1686 and acquitted, as he thought,
very properly, proceeds to tell us that, notwithstanding, the sentinel
upon the jail where she was confined avowed "that he saw a scroll of
paper creep from under the prison-door, and then change itself first
into a monkey and then into a turkey, which the under-keeper confirmed.
This," says Sir John, "I have heard from the mouth of both, and now
leave it to be believed or disbelieved as the reader may be
inclined."[63] We may see that Reresby, a statesman and a soldier, had
not as yet "plucked the old woman out of his heart." Even Addison
himself ventured no farther in his incredulity respecting this crime
than to contend that although witchcraft might and did exist, there was
no such thing as a modern instance competently proved.

[Footnote 63: "Memoirs of Sir John Reresby," p. 237.]

As late as 1682 three unhappy women named Susan Edwards, Mary Trembles,
and Temperance Lloyd were hanged at Exeter for witchcraft, and, as
usual, on their own confession. This is believed to be the last
execution of the kind in England under form of judicial sentence. But
the ancient superstition, so interesting to vulgar credulity, like
sediment clearing itself from water, sunk down in a deeper shade upon
the ignorant and lowest classes of society in proportion as the higher
regions were purified from its influence. The populace, including the
ignorant of every class, were more enraged against witches when their
passions were once excited in proportion to the lenity exercised towards
the objects of their indignation by those who administered the laws.
Several cases occurred in which the mob, impressed with a conviction of
the guilt of some destitute old creatures, took the law into their own
hands, and proceeding upon such evidence as Hopkins would have had
recourse to, at once, in their own apprehension, ascertained their
criminality and administered the deserved punishment.

The following instance of such illegal and inhuman proceedings occurred
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 ВЈ15 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.

In many of the Scottish witches' trials, as to the description of
Satan's Domdaniel, and the Sabbath which he there celebrates, the
northern superstition agrees with that of England. But some of the
confessions depart from the monotony of repetition, and add some more
fanciful circumstances than occur in the general case. Isobel Gowdie's
confession, already mentioned, is extremely minute, and some part of it
at least may be quoted, as there are other passages not very edifying.
The witches of Auldearne, according to this penitent, were so numerous,
that they were told off into squads, or _covines_, as they were termed,
to each of which were appointed two officers. One of these was called
the Maiden of the Covine, and was usually, like Tam o' Shanter's Nannie,
a girl of personal attractions, whom Satan placed beside himself, and
treated with particular attention, which greatly provoked the spite of
the old hags, who felt themselves insulted by the preference.[65] When
assembled, they dug up graves, and possessed themselves of the carcases
(of unchristened infants in particular), whose joints and members they
used in their magic unguents and salves. When they desired to secure for
their own use the crop of some neighbour, they made a pretence of
ploughing it with a yoke of paddocks. These foul creatures drew the
plough, which was held by the devil himself. The plough-harness and
soams were of quicken grass, the sock and coulter were made out of a
riglen's horn, and the covine attended on the operation, praying the
devil to transfer to them the fruit of the ground so traversed, and
leave the proprietors nothing but thistles and briars. The witches'
sports, with their elfin archery, I have already noticed (page 136).
They entered the house of the Earl of Murray himself, and such other
mansions as were not fenced against them by vigil and prayer, and
feasted on the provisions they found there.