A host of precautionary measures to be taken by the judge when the witch was brought into court, have been recorded. On no account must he allow her to touch him, especially, as Reginald Scot has it, "upon his bare." He must wear about his neck "conjured salt, palms, herbes, and halowed waxe." The prisoner must approach the judge backwards—just as she approaches Satan's throne at the Sabbath, by the way—and he must make the sign of the cross frequently the while. As we have seen, any evidence, even of those debarred from testifying in ordinary cases, might be given against a witch. This, of course, provided an excellent opportunity for the dishonest servant, who, having stolen his mistress' property and with it levanted, need only accuse her of witchcraft to escape any unpleasant consequences to himself. It was, however, the only means by which the law could escape from the horns of a serious dilemma—as none that are honest can detect a witch. Again, she must be denied any chance of proving her innocence—or the Devil will certainly take full advantage of it on her behalf, and once arrested, she must on no account be allowed to leave the prison or go home. Popular suspicion, presumption, and conjecture are sufficient to ensure a conviction, for in such a case Vox populi is emphatically Vox Dei. Confession must, however, be extorted at all costs. As the great Inquisitor, Sprenger, from whose authoritative pronouncements I have already quoted freely, has it: "If she confess nothing she must be dismissed according to the law; therefore every care must be taken to ensure confession."
Before burning the witch, it was, however, necessary to catch her. Here—and more particularly in England—private enterprise stepped in to supplement public effort. Witch-finding offered a respectable and lucrative career for anyone gifted with the requisite imagination, and provided a safe opening for those who had failed in other walks of life. Enterprise, imagination, the form of facile expression, the instinct of sensationalism, and so forth—were all necessary for the finished witch-finder, it is true. The names of many have come down to us, but none more fully earned the prophetic title of the Napoleon of witch-finding than Matthew Hopkins, who alone gained, by his eminent services to the public, a "handle to his name"—that of "Witch-Finder General." Hopkins, who flourished in the mid-seventeenth century, gauged the public taste in witch-sensation to a nicety—and elevated his trade to an exact science. Yet curiously enough, he only entered it by accident, owing to an epidemic of witchcraft in his native town of Manningtree. His public spirit leading him to take a prominent part in the discovery and punishment of the culprits, it became plainly evident in which direction his talents could be best employed, and what had been a hobby became his life-work. His position having been legalised, he adopted the manner of a judge, taking regular circuits through the four counties which he more particularly took under his protection, or giving his services to any towns applying for them at the extremely modest charge of twenty shillings and expenses. More than a hundred witches were brought to punishment by his painstaking exertions, though perhaps his greatest triumph was achieved in the case of the Reverend Mr. Lewis, the "reading" parson of Framlingham. Mr. Lewis was a churchman, andas such regarded as a malignant by the Puritan Government, and, needless to say, by Mr. Hopkins, himself a Puritan of the most orthodox type. Mr. Lewis, being eighty-five years of age, was tortured after Mr. Hopkins' recipe, and was so brought to confess that he had made a compact with Satan, that he kept two imps, and that he had sunk several ships by his magic arts. He was duly hanged, though it is satisfactory to know that at his death he withdrew the confession his human weakness had extorted from him and died with a dignity becoming his age and cloth.
As was only to be expected in this imperfect world, Mr. Hopkins' just severity and proper disregard for sickly sentimentality brought him many enemies, some of whom no doubt were inspired by envy of his professional success. Although cheered by the understanding sympathy of the superior class, including among them no less a person than Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of England, he was continually attacked, both publicly and privately, by people who ought to have known better. One of the most virulent of these was one Mr. Gaule, minister of Great Stoughton, in Huntingdon, who not only wrote and preached against Hopkins and his methods, but refused him permission to conduct a witch-hunt at Stoughton. Stung to the heart by such ingratitude, Mr. Hopkins set forth his side of the argument in a letter which Mr. Gaule himself subsequently gave to the world. It is sufficiently characteristic to bear re-quotation:
"My Service to your Worship presented. I have this day received a letter not to come to a Toune called Great Stoughton, to search for evil-disposed persons, called Witches (though I heare your Minister is farre against us through Ignorance:) I intend to come the sooner to heare his singular Judgment in the Behalfe of such Parties; I have known a Minister in Suffolk preach as much against this Discovery in a Pulpit, and forced to recant it by the Committee in the same Place. I much marvaile such evil Members should have any, much more any of the Clergy, who should daily preach Terrour 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 Toune a visit suddenly. I am to come to Kimbolton this Weeke, and it shall be tenne to one, but I will come to your Toune first, but I would certainly know afore whether your Toune affords many sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to give and afford as good Welcome and Entertainment as other where I have beene, else I shall wave your Shire (not as yet beginning in any Part of it myself) and betake me to such Places, where I doe, and may, persist without Controle, but with Thanks and Recompense. So I humbly take my leave and rest.Your Servant to be Commanded, Matthew Hopkins."
Mr. Gaule, however ill-advised, proved himself no despicable antagonist. He turned the batteries of ridicule against the worthy witch-finder, and his methods, which he describes as follows: "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 the space of Four and Twenty Hours (for they say within that time they shall see her Imp come and suck). A little Hole is likewise made in the door, for her Imp to come in at—lest it should come in some less discernible shape. They that watch her 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, then they may be sure they are her Imps."
But however earnest in their errors might be Mr. Gaule and those who supported him, it was long ere they could find many supporters in their crusade against one who had so struck the public imagination. Hopkins' methods of torture might be severe, but they produced results—such as the following:—One Penitent Woman confessed that her mother, lying sick, and she looking at her, somewhat like a Mole ran into the bed toher, which she being startled at, her mother bade her not fear it, but gave it her, saying, "Keep this in a Pot by the fire and thou shalt never want." And so on and so forth.
In the end, however, as too often happens, envy triumphed over modest merit, and Hopkins had to pay the penalty that usually awaits the popular idol. Either his severity outran his discretion, or he showed too openly his belief that the chief object of a profession is to provide a handsome income; or perhaps his inventive faculties did not keep pace with the public desire. Be that as it may, his fall, when it came, was heavy. It is even said, on reputable authority, that Hopkins was himself, at the last, accused of witchcraft, that he was tried by one of his own methods, that of "swimming," and that like many of the old women he had tried, he "swam," was accordingly found guilty, and executed. It may be agreed that, like the story of Phalaris destroyed in the fiery bronze bull of his own devising, or of Dr. Guillotin, first to suffer on the guillotine he had invented, this end of Hopkins has too much of poetic justice about it to be altogether credible. But in all that has to do with witchcraft, faith is a matter of opinion, so there we may leave it.
That Matthew Hopkins initiated new methods of witch-finding by no means implies that there was any lack of such before his time. Where the simple rule-of-thumb torture failed to extractthe requisite confession, a further range, subtler and more exquisite, came into play. No witch could say the Lord's Prayer—a possible enough contingency under great nervous strain even for a good Christian. Thus Fairfax relates how Thorp's wife, accused of bewitching his children, being put to this test, could not say "Forgive us our trespasses," and thus convinced the justices of her guilt. Another method much practised by Hopkins was the searching for the Devil-marks. These marks, as we have said, were the corporeal proofs of her contract with Satan, borne by every witch upon some part of her body, and were further the places whereat her imps came to suck her blood. Few witches—which is to say, suspects—were ever found to pass this test satisfactorily—a fact the less surprising in that any blemish, birth-mark, or even insect-bite was accepted by special legal injunction as sufficient evidence. The witch-mark was believed to be insensible to pain, whence arose the popular and lucrative profession of "witch-pricking." The witch-pricker, having blindfolded the witch, proceeded to prick her in suspected places with a three-inch pin, afterwards telling her to point out to him the places where she felt pain. If the suspect, half-crazed with shame and terror, was unable to do so with sufficient exactitude, the spot was declared insensible, and her conviction followed. Before the actual pricking, when thewitch had been stripped of her clothes, she was shaven, lest she should have concealed in her hair some charm against confession under torture. Great care was taken at the same time lest the Devil, by sucking blood from her little finger or left foot, should make it impossible for her to confess. Further, as a witch was notoriously unable to shed tears, another test of her guilt was to call upon her to weep to order—very much as Miss Haversham in "Great Expectations" commanded Little Pip, "Now, play!"
Most popular test of all, as taking place in the open and thus providing a general holiday, was witch-ducking or "swimming." So near was it to the great heart of the British public that its celebration continued informally well into the nineteenth century. In Monmouth, so late as 1829, several persons were tried for the ducking of a supposed witch; while in 1857 the Vicar of East Thorpe, in Essex—perhaps the most noted witch-stronghold in England—was compelled to mount guard in person over the door of a suspected witch to prevent her from undergoing a similar fate. The procedure was of the simplest. The thumbs and great toes of the suspect were tied across, and she was thus dragged in a sheet to a pond or stream. If she floated, she was pronounced a witch; if she sank, she was in all probability drowned. Even if by a lucky chance she escaped both these perils, the nervous shock—to say nothing of what was probably the first cold bath she had ever experienced—acting upon her advanced age, gave her little chance of final triumph over her accusers. Another well-known and popular test was that of weighing the suspected witch against the Church Bible. Had the authorities provided one of more than common weight which outweighed her skin and bone, woe betide her! for her guilt was proved beyond further question.
Such forms of extraneous evidence were, however, held in less store than was the obtaining of a definite confession, which had the double advantage of justifying the judges to the full as well as of convicting the accused. Of how it might be obtained Reginald Scot gives us a vivid example. "The seven words of the Cross," he says, "be hanged about the witch's neck and the length of Christ in wax be knit about her bare bodie with relikes of saints." If torture and other means of persuasion cannot obtain a confession, the jailer must pretend to leave her, and some of her friends must visit her, promising that if she will but confess they will help her to escape from prison. Friday, according to the same writer, was the most auspicious day for the purpose. As to the actual torture, the prisoner must first be stripped lest the means of witchcraft be sewn into her clothing, the instruments of torture being so placed that she has an uninterrupted view ofthem. The judge then exhorts her that if she remains obstinate, he bids the attendants make her fast to the strapado or other chosen instrument. Having been tortured, she is taken aside and again urged to confess by the promise of thus escaping the death-penalty. As the Church conveniently absolved the faithful from the necessity of keeping faith with heretics or sorcerers, this promise was never kept. To put it briefly, every possible avenue of escape was denied the accused. Even an alibi, however complete, was unavailing, seeing that in her absence her place was always filled by a demon.
However much we may sympathise with the victims of such judicial proceedings, it would be less than fair to blame the general public for its attitude towards them when such men as Blackstone or Sir Matthew Hale were convinced of their reasonableness. Blackstone, indeed, one of the greatest of English lawyers, went so far as to declare that "to deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God." The attitude of Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice, an enlightened and God-fearing man, may best be gathered from an account of one of the trials in which he was concerned. In 1664, at St. Edmundsbury, two women, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, were tried before him upon the usual charges. The first witness was Dorothy Durent,whose child was under the care of Rose Cullender. Dorothy had for some time suspected Rose of bewitching her child—a fact which throws some doubt upon the witness's maternal care in confiding her offspring to such a nurse. Eventually the witness consulted a witch-doctor, a proceeding which, had she known it, rendered her liable to conviction as well as Rose, under the statute of James I.[1]The doctor advised her to hang up her child's blanket in the chimney, which she did. On taking it down some time later, she was horror-stricken to find a toad in it. This toad she had "put it into the fire and held it there, though it made a great and horrible noise, and flashed like gunpowder and went off like a pistol, and then became invisible, and that by this the prisoner was scorched and burnt lamentably." Other witnesses, Mr. Pacy and Edmund Durent, deposed that Rose Cullender and Amy Duny came to them to buy herrings, and, on being refused, went away grumbling. Further, it appeared that Amy Duny had told Cornelius Sandwell's wife that if she did not fetch her geese home, they would be destroyed. She also told Cornelius that if he did not attend to a rickety chimney in his house it would fall. John Soan deposed that he had three carts wherein to carry corn. One of them "wrenched Amy Duny's house, whereat she scolded him. That very day his cart overturned two or three times, and his children had fits." Probably such damning evidence would have sufficed by itself. It was driven home by that of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared with dangerous moderation that "the fits were natural, but heightened by the Devil co-operating with the malice of the Witches, at whose Instance he did the villainies." This was too much for the Lord Chief Justice. He "was in such fears and proceeded with such caution that he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the Jury, with prayers that the great God of Heaven would direct their hearts in this weighty manner." Needless to say, the jury returned a sentence of "Guilty." Amy Duny and Rose Cullender were hanged at Cambridge accordingly, obstinately refusing to confess, and no sooner were they dead than the afflicted children were cured of their fitsand returned to the best of health. Which can have left no further doubt in the mind of Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, as to the justice of his sentence, even had he any before.
It would be both tedious and unprofitable to trace out the whole long history of witch-persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their details are invariably nauseous, and differ only in the slightest degree; having heard one, the recapitulation of the rest can be of interest only to the moralist. Some of the more famous examples may be briefly considered, however, as typical of the rest. I have already referred to the case of the Knaresborough witches, accused of bewitching the children of Edward Fairfax, the scholar—a case the more remarkable that the six women accused, although tried before two successive assizes, were finally acquitted. The lonely moorlands and grim wastes of the Northern counties were, naturally enough, regarded with suspicion as offering very eligible lurking-places for Satan's agents, and accordingly we find that the majority of the earlier persecutions concerned that part of the county. Ten years before the Knaresborough trial—in 1612—twenty witches were tried "at the Assizes and Generall Gaole-Delivery, holden at Lancaster, before Sir Edward Bromley and Sir James Eltham." They came from Pendle Forest, a wild district on the easternextremity of the county, and the most prominent among them was Elizabeth Southernes, more generally known as Mother Demdyke, who, by her own confession, had been a practising witch for nearly half a century, having been led astray thereto by one Tibb, a spirit or devil in the form of a boy wearing a parti-coloured coat of brown-and-black, whom she met upon the highway. She and her fellow-prisoners were charged with murders, conspiracies, and other damnable practices, upon evidence fully borne out by their own confessions. Nevertheless, of the twenty only twelve were hanged, one, Mother Demdyke herself, cheating the gallows by dying in prison, while the remaining seven were acquitted—for the time. That so large a proportion should have escaped speaks ill for the abilities of the prosecution, for an example was badly needed. "This remote country," says Scot, "was full of Popish recusants, travelling priests, and so forth, and some of their spells are given in which holy names and things alluded to form a strange contrast with the purpose to which they were applied to secure a good brewing of ale, or the like." One such charm, quoted at the trial, was used by Anne Whittle, _alias_ Chattox, one of the twenty, in order to remove a curse previously laid upon John Moore's wife's brewing, and ran as follows:—
Three Biters hast thou bitten,The Host, ill Eye, ill Tongue;Three Bitter shall be thy boote,Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost,A God's name.Five Paternosters, five Avies,And a creede,For worship of five woundesOf our Lord.
Three Biters hast thou bitten,The Host, ill Eye, ill Tongue;Three Bitter shall be thy boote,Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost,A God's name.Five Paternosters, five Avies,And a creede,For worship of five woundesOf our Lord.
Which would seem to show that whether or no Anne Whittle was a witch, she was certainly a Papist, so we need feel little surprise that she was among the twelve executed.
The second great persecution in Lancashire, in 1633, rested almost entirely on the evidence of a boy of eleven. His name was Edmund Robinson, and he lived with his father, a very poor man, in Pendle Forest, where no doubt he heard many legends of the redoubtable Mother Demdyke and her colleagues. Upon All Saints' Day, when gathering "bulloes" in a field, he there saw two greyhounds, one black, the other brown, each wearing a collar shining like gold. They fawned upon him, whereafter, "seeing no one, he took them, thinking to course with them. And presently a Hare did rise very near before him. Whereat he cried, 'Loo, Loo, Loo'; but the Doggs would not run. Whereupon he, being very angry, took them, and with the strings that were about their collars, tied them to a little bush at the next hedge, and with a switch that he had in his hand he beat them. And instead of the black greyhound, one Dickenson's wife stood up,a Neighbour, whom this Informer knoweth. And instead of the brown one a little Boy, whom this Informer knoweth not." Dickenson's wife offered him a shilling as the price of his silence, but he answered, "Nay, thou art a witch." Whereupon she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out something like a Bridle, "that gingled," and put it over the little Boy's head, upon which he turned into a white horse. Mrs. Dickenson then seized upon the Informer, set him before her on the white horse, and carried him to a new house called Hoarstones, about a quarter of a mile away. Here he saw about sixty persons, some by the door, others riding towards the house on horses of different colours. In the house was a fire with meat roasting before it. A young woman offered him "Flesh and Bread upon a Trencher and Drink in a Glass," but after the first taste he would have no more of it. On going into the adjoining Barn, he there saw six persons kneeling and pulling at Ropes fastened to the top of the Barn. Whereupon "there came into the Informer's sight flesh smoking, butter in lumps, and milk as it were syling (streaming) from the said Ropes. All of which fell into basins placed under the said Ropes. And when these six had done, there came other six which did likewise, and during all the time of their said pulling they made such ugly faces as scared the Informer, so that he was glad to run out and stealhomewards." They pursued him, but he met two horsemen, whereupon they left him. The foremost of his pursuers was one Loind's wife.
The troubles of the Informer were not yet at an end. "After he had come from the company aforesaid, his Father bade him go and fetch home two kine and he happed upon a Boy, who fought him." The Informer had his ears and face made very bloody in the fight, and looking down he saw the Boy had a cloven foot. With commendable prudence he ran away, only to see a light like to a lantern, which he pursued, thinking it might be carried by a neighbour. But he only found a woman—Loind's wife—standing on a bridge, and running from her he met the cloven-footed Boy again, who hit him and made him cry.
Such was the dread story told in court, and partly corroborated by the boy's father. The wives of Dickenson and Loind, along with some eighteen other persons, were arrested at once, while the informer and his father made a comfortable little sum of money by going the round of the neighbouring churches and there detecting others. The trial took place at Lancaster Assizes, when seventeen of the accused were found guilty, but the judge, not being satisfied with the evidence, obtained a reprieve. Four of the accused were sent up to London, and committed to the Fleet Prison, where "great sums of money were gotten by shewing them." The Bishop of Chesterheld a special examination of the case, and the informer, being separated from his father, soon confessed that his estimable parent had invented the whole story as a means towards an end. So the trial ended in a lamentable fiasco, from the point of view of that public who were looking forward to the public executions as a holiday.
Although the activities of Matthew Hopkins reached their culminating point in the trial of the Manningtree Witches, held before Sir Matthew Hale at Ipswich in 1645, they were only a part of his bag in that year, as we may gather from a statement in Beaumont's "Treatise on Spirits," that "thirty-six were arraigned at the same time before Judge Coniers, an. 1645, and fourteen of them hanged and a hundred more detained in several prisons in Suffolk and Essex." Nearly twenty years later, in 1664, we find the Witchfinder-General at work in Great Yarmouth, where he accused sixteen old women, all of whom were convicted and executed; and in the same year took place the St. Edmunsbury trials already referred to. Nevertheless it must be said for Matthew Hopkins, gent., that by the very enthusiasm he imparted into his business he did something towards checking the tide of persecution even at the full. Although the general public gave little sign of satiety, those in authority and the more educated class in general were growing tired of so much useless bloodshed. Witch-trialscontinued unabated, but towards the close of the century the judge's directions to his jury were frequently such as to ensure an acquittal; while, even when found guilty, the accused were often reprieved through the judge's exertions. Among these just judges the name of Lord Chief Justice Holt merits a high place, as of one more than usually in advance of his age.
In 1694, before the same Lord Chief Justice, at Bury Saint Edmunds, was tried Mother Munnings, of Hartis, in Suffolk. Many things were deposed concerning her spoiling of wort and harming of cattle, and, further, that several persons upon their death-beds had attributed their destruction to her arts. Thus it was sworn that Thomas Pannel, the landlord, not knowing how to turn her out of his house, took away the door and left her without one. Some time after, he happening to pass by, she said to him, "Go thy way; thy nose shall lie upward in the churchyard before Saturday next." On the Monday following Pannel sickened, died on the Tuesday, and was buried within the week, according to her word. To confirm this, another witness added that a doctor, being consulted about another afflicted person, and Mother Munnings being mentioned, said that she was a dangerous woman, for she could touch the line of life. In the indictment she was charged with having an imp like a polecat, and one witness swore that coming fromthe alehouse about nine o'clock at night, he looked through her window, and saw her take two imps out of a basket, a black and a white. It was further deposed that one Sarah Wager, after a quarrel with the accused, was struck dumb and lame, and was in that condition at home at the time of the trial. Many other equally dreadful accusations were brought, and things might have gone hard for Mother Munnings had not the Lord Chief Justice been on the bench. He, however, directed the jury to bring in a verdict of "Not Guilty," which they obediently did. "Upon particular Enquiry," says Hutchinson, "of several in or near the Town, I find most are satisfied it was a very right Judgment. She lived about Two years after without doing any known Harm to any, and died declaring her Innocence. Her landlord was a consumptive spent Man, and the Words not exactly as they swore them, and the whole thing seventeen Years before ... the White Imp is believed to have been a Lock of Wool taken out of her Basket to spin, and its Shadow, it is supposed, was the Black one."
In the same year Margaret Elmore was tried at the Ipswich Assizes before the same judge. "She was committed," says Hutchinson, "upon the account of one Mrs. Rudge, who was Three Years in a languishing condition, as was thought by the Witchcraft of the Prisoner then at the Bar, because Mr. Rudge, Husband of theafflicted Person, had refused letting her a House. Some Witnesses said that Mrs. Rudge was better upon the confinement of the woman, and worse again when her chains were off. Other witnesses gave account that her grandmother and her aunt had formerly been hanged for Witches, and that her Grandmother had said she had 8 or 9 Imps, and that she had given two or three apiece to her children." It was further shown on the evidence of a midwife who had searched her grandmother, that the prisoner had plainer witch-marks than she; while several women who had been on bad terms with her took oath that their bodies were infested with lice and other vermin supposed to be of her sending. But not even the vermin could influence the Lord Chief Justice, and Margaret Elmore was found "Not Guilty."
Yet another case, tried before Holt, was that of Elizabeth Horner at Exeter, in 1696. Three children of one William Borch were said to have been bewitched by her. One had died, the leg of another was twisted, all had vomited pins, been bitten, pricked, and pinched. Their mother deposed "that one of them walked up a smooth plaistered Wall till her Feet were nine foot high, her Head standing off from it. This," she said, "she did five or six times, and laughed and said Bess Horner held her up." Poor Elizabeth had a wart on her shoulder, which the children said was a witch-mark, and was sucked by her toad.But the Lord Chief Justice seems to have been of another opinion, for he directed the jury to acquit her. Indeed, of all the many cases of witchcraft brought before him, not one prisoner was convicted—a state of things which would certainly have resulted in a question being asked in Parliament had it happened in our time. The last woman found guilty of witchcraft in this country was Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkerne, in Hertfordshire, who was tried in 1712. The witch-finder was called into requisition, and she was submitted to the usual inane and degrading tests. "They either did themselves or suffered others that were about them to scratch and tear her face and run Pins into her Flesh. They ... turned the Lord's Prayer into a Charm"—(the Vicar of Ardely was responsible for this part of the performance, by the way). "They turned to Spectre Evidence, they drave her to such Distraction that by leading Questions they drew from her what they called a Confession. They had her to Jail. The witnesses swore to vomiting Pins. The Jury found her Guilty, the Judge condemned her, and those clergymen wrote a Narrative of the Tryal, which was received and read with such Pleasure that in a Month's Time it had a Fourth Edition." But Jane Wenham was fortunate in her judge. Being a man of learning and experience, "he Valued not those Tricks and Tryals, and though he was forced to condemnher because a Silly Jury would find her guilty, he saved her Life. And that she might not afterwards be torn to pieces in an ignorant Town, a sensible Gentleman, who will for ever be in Honour for what he did, Colonel Plummer of Gilston, in the same County, took her into his protection and placed her in a little house near his own, where she now lives soberly and inoffensively, and keeps her church, and the whole county is now fully convinced that she was innocent, and that the Maid that was thought to be bewitched was an Idle Hussy ... and was well as soon as her sweetheart came and married her."
Thenceforward the law of England had no more terrors for the witch, though she was not yet quite out of danger. The Statute of James I. was not repealed until 1736, and long after that the mob was accustomed to take the law into its own hands. Thus, in 1751, a man and his wife named Osborn were ducked at Thring, having been dragged by the mob from the workhouse where they had been placed by the parish officers for safety. The woman lost her life in the process. She was, however, not unavenged, for a verdict of "Wilful Murder" was returned against the ringleader of the mob, a chimney-sweeper named Colley, and he was hanged, very much to his own and other people's indignation. There was indeed something to be said for the injured Colley when a man like Wesley, pinninghis faith to the Bible, could find no means of evading the direct command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The last case in which the blood of a witch was actually shed in this country, so far as I have been able to trace, was in 1875, when a certain Ann Turner, a reputed witch, was murdered by a man, who was, however, declared insane.
FOOTNOTES:[1]"If any person, or persons, shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, find, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or to take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part of any dead person to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof, every such offender is a felon without benefit of clergy." (This Act was not repealed until 1736.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1]"If any person, or persons, shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, find, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or to take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part of any dead person to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof, every such offender is a felon without benefit of clergy." (This Act was not repealed until 1736.)
[1]"If any person, or persons, shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, find, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or to take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part of any dead person to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof, every such offender is a felon without benefit of clergy." (This Act was not repealed until 1736.)
CHAPTER XII
PERSECUTIONS IN SCOTLAND
Theinfluence of longitude upon national tendencies in superstition is far too wide a subject to be here discussed in any detail, but speaking generally, it may be said that the superstitions of a people—as their religion—are largely a matter of climate—milder and more genial in temperate districts, carried to fiercer and more terrible lengths amid extremes of heat and cold. The man whose gods are based upon his conceptions of the thunderstorm, the grim northern winter or the tropical sun, evokes sterner and more dreadful images than he whose lot is cast amid mild skies and gentle breezes. How wide is the difference between the grim gods who ruled the inhospitable heavens of Scandinavian and Teuton from the tolerant Bohemians who tenanted the classical Olympus. The gentle dryads and light-hearted fauns of Italy would have perished in the first snows of a Baltic winter, just as the hungry ravens of Woden would have been metamorphosed into Venus' doves in one Italian generation.
Nowhere is the influence of climate uponnational temperament more clearly typified than in the island of Great Britain. The Viking, settling amid the lush meadows and pleasant woodlands of England, laid aside his heathen sacrifices for the more climatically appropriate religion of Christ with scarcely a regret. Thor and Woden long held their own in the bare northern fastnesses, not to be finally driven out until they had tinged the Christianity which took their place with something of their own hopelessness and gloom. Just as the gods of Valhalla ever looked forward to the day of their destruction, so Hell rather than Heaven has always held the leading place in the Scottish imagination. So it came about that the superstitions of the Scot were gloomier than were those of his neighbour over the Border. The conviction of his own sinfulness was always with him; how much deeper and more certain that of his neighbours. And because he had a more imminent sense of sin, his belief in witches and their malignancy was more intimate and more resentful. The Englishman, again, feared the witch chiefly on his own personal account; the Scotsman took up the cudgels on behalf of his Creator as well. The Devil seemed so much more powerful to the dwellers of a bleak Highland glen than to the stout yeoman walking amid his opulent English pastures. In Scotland he was on terms almost of equality with God; it is scarcely toomuch to say that to the majority he was even more powerful, and his earthly agents all the more to be feared and hated.
As in Rome and Greece, the witch was firmly settled in Scotland centuries before the coming of Christianity. But she was of another breed, as befitted her sterner ancestry. She and her demoniacal coadjutors held all the land under a grip of blood and iron. There was nothing amiable, nothing whimsical, nothing human about the spirits, of one kind or another, that lorded it among the mists and heather. Even the fairies had more in common with Logi than with Oberon, Elfame, their dwelling-place, resembled rather Hell than Fairyland. In place of a Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, who found his highest pleasure in the helping of good housewives without fee, of a Queen Mab, who tormented no one but the idle or the wicked, you had a Kelpie, lurking in lonely places intent upon your murder, or a Banshee, prophesying your coming death or ruin. When at last Christianity came, it had a long, stern struggle against such antagonists—nor, indeed, could it ever altogether overcome them, even though it forced them to adopt new names and new disguises. The missionary saints found their task of conversion increased tenfold by the strenuous opposition of the witches and other evil spirits. St. Patrick, in particular, so enraged them and their master the Devil, by his pertinacity, thathe was forced, for a time, to flee before their assaults back to Ireland. One of their most famous exploits was the bombardment with a mountain-top of the vessel in which he was embarked. It is true that their aim, like that of Polyphemus, a member of their own family, was bad, and the mountain-top fell into the sea instead of drowning the saint. But by this very mischance they provided permanent proof of their exploit; for the mountain-top remains to this day to testify unto it, being that upon which Dumbarton Castle was subsequently built.
Among the many legends dealing with these same early Scots witches, I am tempted to quote from one, taken down verbatim from the lips of an old Highland woman, by the late Dr. Norman Macleod and related by him in his "Reminiscences of a Highland Parish." In its modern form it was woven around the imaginary misadventures of a Spanish Princess—and the real shipwreck of the _Florida_, one of the vessels forming the Spanish Armada, sunk near Tobermory, in Mull, in 1588. Actually, however, the magical passages have some much more ancient history, probably, as we may judge from incidental reference to Druidism, from pre-Christian days. The first part of the legend relates how the Spanish Princess came to Mull, there had a love affair with Maclean of Duart, and was murdered by his jealous wife. The King of Spain, hearing of his daughter's fate, fitted out a war-vessel and despatched it to Tobermory to take summary vengeance. Maclean and his people, feeling unequal to resisting it by ordinary means, sought aid from magic (Druidism, in fact) and by powerful spells and charms gathered all the witches of Mull, the _Doideagan Muileach_, together. He explained the position and begged them to raise a tempest and sink the Spanish vessel, pointing out at the same time that her commander, one Captain Forrest, was himself a magician. The chief witch asked if the Spaniard, when declaring his unfriendly intentions, had said, "With God's help!" On learning that he had omitted that precaution she professed herself ready to undertake the task. This passage is so unsuggestive of the pagan witch's usual attitude that I take it to be a pious interpretation of later date.
In due time the witches began their work of _ṻbag_, _obag_ and _gisreag_ (charm, incantation and chanting), but with little initial effect. Stronger measures becoming necessary the chief witch tied a straw rope to a quern-stone, passed it over a rafter, and raised the stone as high as she was able. As it rose the wind rose with it, but she could not get it very high owing to the counter-spells of the Spanish captain with the English name. Accordingly she called her sister-witches to help her—witches with very much finer names,by the way, than their English colleagues could boast of. They were nine in all, and the names of five were Luideag (which is to say "Raggie"), Agus Doideag (or "Frizzle Hair"), Agus Corrag Nighin Jain Bhàin ("The Finger of White John's Daughter"), Cas a'mhogain Riabhaich á Gleancomham ("Hogganfoot from Glencoe") and Agus Gormshuil mhòr bhàrr na Maighe ("Great Blue-Eye from Moy"). All pulled together at the rope, but could not raise the quern-stone. Some of them then flew through the air and climbed about the ship's rigging in the shape of cats, spitting and swearing. But Captain Forrest only laughed at them. So he did when their number increased to fifteen. At last the _Doideag_ got a very strong man, _Domhnull Dubh Làidir_, to hold the rope and prevent the stone from slipping down again, while she flew off to Lochaber to beg the assistance of Great Garmal of Moy, the _doyenne_ of Scotch witchcraft, whose powers were more developed than those of all the others put together. Garmal accepted the flattering invitation, and set out for the scene of action. No sooner was she in the air than a tempest began, and by the time she reached Tobermory Captain Forrest realised that he had better retire. But before his cable could be cut Great Garmal had reached the ship, had climbed to the top of the mast in the shape of the largest black cat that ever was seen, and uttered onespell, whereupon the Spanish man-o'-war with all her crew sank to the bottom of the sea.
Against witches of such prowess he must be a powerful man—saint or king—who would gainsay them. Many—if not most—of the earlier Scottish kings had passages with witchcraft, mostly to their own detriment. Leaving aside Macbeth, quite as credible an historic character as the rest, we have King Duff, who, towards the end of the tenth century, narrowly escaped a lingering death at the hands of the witches—they employing the old-fashioned, even in those days, but eminently dependable "waxen image." By good luck only he was enabled to discover the witches and, having burned them and broken up the magic before it was quite melted before their fire, to recover his usual health and spirits.
Not only for its long line of eminent witches does Scotland claim an important place in the annals of the arts magical. In Michael Scot she had one of the most famous wizards known to history, far superior in prowess to the great bulk of his successors, if tradition may be credited, and every whit as eminent, while a great deal more probable, than the British Merlin of Arthurian legend. Thomas the Rhymer, he of Escildonne, chosen lover of the Fairy Queen, was another wizard of repute.
It is an indirect testimony to the high, if evil, place held by magic in Scotland that so many ofits followers and practitioners were men and women of the first ranks of life. We have the dread figure of William, Lord Soulis, boiled to death as the only fit punishment for the crimes committed in his feudal stronghold, such as put him on an evil parity with the Marshal de Retz, the French Bluebeard. Or again, in 1479, by which time we are on firm ground, the Earl of Mar, with a whole band of male and female abettors of humbler rank, was burned in Edinburgh for attempts on the King's life by aid of waxen images and spells. Indeed, the whole family of this peccant nobleman proved, on investigation, to be tarred with the same magical brush. Lady Glammis again, burned in 1536 as a witch, was one of the proud Douglasses, grand-daughter of Archibald Bell-the-Cat, widow of "Clean the Causeway" Lord Glammis, whom, _inter alia_, she was accused of murdering—young, beautiful, and wealthy. It is true that her death was very necessary to one of the contemporary political parties, though that may have been only a coincidence. Another aristocratic witch was Lady Katherine Fouliss, who, with her step-son, was tried in 1590 for "witchcraft, incantation, sorcery, and poisoning." She, although she seems to have gone about her questionable business with an open-hearted publicity that arouses our admiration, was acquitted through family influence, and her step-son with her, though several of theirhumbler accomplices paid the penalty in the usual way.
In the following year occurred a witch-trial of interest in itself, and the cause of the great outburst of persecution which for the next century makes the annals of Scottish justice run red with innocent blood—that of Dr. Feane—or Fian, as it is variously spelt. The story of the "Secretar and Register to the Devil" has been often told, but it will bear recapitulation. Fian was a schoolmaster at Saltpans, Lothian; he was further, according to his accusers, a wizard. More exactly, perhaps, he should be described as a male-witch, seeing that he had no control over Satan, but, on the other hand, had sworn allegiance to him, received witch-marks—under his tongue—and otherwise conformed to the etiquette of the lower grade in the profession. This seems, indeed, to have been customary in Scotland, where the distinction which I have endeavoured to lay down between the sorcerer and the witch is often hard to trace. His magic, however, gains its chief interest from its object—no less a person than James I. and VI. This learned and Protestant monarch, being on his way to visit his Danish bride in her native land, the Devil and his Secretary laid a plot to drown him. They put to sea, after the vessel, along with a whole regiment of witches, and there cast an enchanted cat into the sea, raising a fierce storm, which could not, however, prevent the Divinely-protected James from reaching Denmark in safety. On his return journey the plotters tried another plan—to raise a fog whereby the Royal ship might be driven ashore on the English coast. Towards this end Satan cast a football, or its misty semblance, into the sea, and succeeded in raising what may be accurately described as the Devil's own fog. But angels guided the ship upon its proper course, and again the King escaped the assaults of his enemies. For these and other crimes Dr. Fian, with a number of women-witches, was tried, tortured, forced to confess, and burned on Castle Hill—though he withdrew his confession before the end and died like a gentleman and a scholar. It is an interesting point about the trial that in it occurs the first Scottish mention of the Devil's mark.
The effects of this outrage upon the Lord's Anointed were not to end with the death of its presumed concocters. If the tribe of witches had grown so bold, it was high time they were extirpated, and gallantly did the King and his advisers set about it. It was in 1563 that the persecution of the witch was regularised as a distinct branch of crime by an enactment of the Estates, "that nae person take upon hand to use any manner of witchcrafts, sorcery, or necromancy, nor give themselves furth to have ony sic craft or knowledge thereof therethrough abusing the people,"and that "nae person seek ony help, response, or consultation, at any sic users or abusers of witchcrafts ... under pain of death."
Thenceforward, until the last witch-burning in 1727, the fires were seldom allowed to go out, and to be an old and ugly woman was perhaps the most "dangerous trade" in Scottish industry. There was, indeed, one incidental to a witch-burning which may—it is at least to be hoped—have sometimes moved the economical Scotsman in the direction of toleration—the expense. Here, for instance, are the items expended in the execution of one batch of witches in Fife in 1633:—
Or a grand total of £4 11s. 2d., no small sum, seen with thrifty eyes, especially if we consider the greater value of money in those days.
It is, perhaps, only characteristic of the national attitude towards the whole subject that the "White," or amiable, witch was held in as great detestation as her "Black," or malignant, sister. Torture and penalty were the same for either. Thus we find that, in 1597, four women were convicted at Edinburgh for curing, or endeavouring to cure, certain of their neighbours' ills by witchcraft, and were in due course strangled and burned. It is true that they did not suffer the greater penalty of being burned alive, which was reserved for witches of unusual malevolence. The dislike and dread of a "White" witch was not, be it noted, due to ingratitude alone, but rather because it entailed the mutilation of the patient at the Resurrection. While the rest of his body would owe its preservation in this world to God Himself, any limb or organ healed by the Devil—acting through the "White" witch—would belong to him, and thus be unable to rise at the Day of Judgment with the rest. In endeavouring to understand the mental attitude which gave rise to the great persecutions of the seventeenth century, one cannot afford to overlook such points of belief as this. Fear and the instinct of self-preservation, not cruelty, were the driving-power in the witch-murderer. We, who think no shame of shooting partridges for pastime, have little cause to contemn the seventeenth-century Christian who killed witches lest they should destroy him body and soul.
Such is the similarity of the various Scottish witch-trials that too-detailed recapitulation would be tedious and unprofitable. Some, however, stand out from the rest by reason of their grotesque horror and exaggeration. Such is the trialof Isobel Grierson, "spous to Johnne Bull, wark-man in the Pannis" (Preston Pans), tried at Edinburgh in March, 1607. Grierson, by the way, was a name very prominent in witch-circles at the time. One Robert Grierson had taken a leading part as an accomplice of Dr. Fian, above referred to, his being the hand which cast the enchanted cat into the sea in the endeavour to drown King James. He was also, as shown in the confession of another defendant in the same trial, the cause of much disturbance at a Sabbath held in North Berwick Churchyard. Satan, by an unfortunate slip, addressed him by his real name. As etiquette strictly demanded that Christian names should be ignored, and nicknames—in this instance "Rab the Rower"—used instead, the mistake appeared an intentional insult on Satan's part, and was so taken by the assembled witches, who expressed their displeasure with uncompromising vigour, even to the extent of running "hirdy girdy" about the churchyard. But to return to John Bull's wife. She was accused, _inter alia_, of having conceived a cruel hatred and malice against one Adam Clark, and with having for the space of a year used all devilish and unholy means to be revenged upon him. On a November night in 1606, between eleven and midnight, Adam and his wife being in bed, Isobel entered the house in the form of a black cat, accompanied by a number of other cats, and madea great and fearful noise, whereat Adam, his wife, and maid-servant were so frightened as almost to go mad. Immediately afterwards the Devil appeared, in the likeness of a black man, seized the servant's nightcap and cast it on the fire, and then dragged her up and down the house. Who thereby contracted a great sickness, so that she lay bed-fast, in danger of her life, for the space of six weeks. Isobel was further accused of having compassed the death of William Burnet and of laying on him a fearful and uncouth sickness, by casting in at his door a gobbet of raw, enchanted flesh. Whereafter the Devil nightly appeared in poor William's house in the guise of a naked infant child for the space of half a year. Occasionally he varied the performance by appearing in the shape of Isobel herself, but being called by her name would immediately vanish away. As a result of all which, Adam languished in sickness for the space of three years, unable to obtain a cure, and at last, in great "douleur and payne," departed this life. Another of her victims was Robert Peddan, who remained sick for the space of one year and six months, and then suddenly remembering that he owed Isobel nine shilling and fourpence, and that before the time of his sickness, as he had refused to pay it, she had delivered to him certain writings that she kept in MS., and thereafter, with divers blasphemous speeches, told him he should repent it. Remembering this, he sought out Isobel and satisfied her the said sum, at the same time asking his health of her for God's sake, saying, "If ye have done me any wrong or hurt, refrain the same and restore to me my health." And within twenty-four hours he was as well as ever before. Yet again, Margaret, the wife of Robert Peddan, lying in bed, Isobel, or a spirit in her shape, entered his house, seized Margaret by the shoulder and flung her upon the floor, so that she swooned with fright, and was immediately seized with a fearful and uncouth sickness. Isobel, hearing that rumours of her ill-doing were abroad, caused Mrs. Peddan to drink with her, whereupon her sickness left her for eight or ten days. But as Mrs. Peddan, learning nothing from experience, declared _hic et ubique_ that Isobel was a foul witch, she straightway laid another charm upon her, so that the sickness returned. Isobel, being found guilty of all these and other crimes, was ordered by her judges to be "taken to the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, and there to be strangled at the stake until she be dead and her body to be burnt in ashes, as convict of the said crimes; and all her movable goods to be escheat and inbrought to our sovereign lord's use, as convict of the said crimes." Which was done accordingly.
In 1622 Margaret Wallace was executed on the charge of inflicting and causing diseases. The chief count against her was of having consultedwith Christiane Graham—burned as a witch some time before Margaret's trial—how to cure Margaret Muir, "a bairne," of a disorder, "to which end they went about twelve at night to a yard, and there used their devilish charms, whereby the disease was removed from the bairne."
The next twenty years are filled with a monotonous record of witch-trials, similar in essentials to those already quoted. Perhaps the most outstanding is that of Catharine Oswald, who kept many rendezvous with Satan, and cursed the yard of John Clerk so effectually that for four years neither "kaill, hemp, nor other graine would grow therein." Alice Nisbet, also famous in her day, was likewise convicted of having "took paines off a woman in travell, by some charms and horrible words; among which thir ware some, 'the bones to the fire and the soull to the divill.'"
In 1633 twenty witches were executed, Sir George Home, of Manderston, being the most zealous persecutor, chiefly, it was said, to spite his wife, with whom he was not on good terms, and who had a taste for Black Magic. Ten years later arose another fierce persecution, so that in Fifeshire alone thirty women were executed—the local ministry taking the lead in the prosecution. Two of the accused were domestic servants in service at Edinburgh, and with that love of finery which even now attends their kind. By their own confession they had been introduced tothe Devil by Janet Cranston, a notorious witch, and had by him been promised that, if they gave themselves bodies and souls to his allegiance, "they should be as trimlie clad as the best servants in Edinburgh." Janet Barker, one of the twain, admitted having the Devil's mark between her shoulders, and when a pin was thrust therein it remained there for an hour before she noticed it. Needless to say, both were "wirriet" (strangled) at the stake and burned. Agnes Fynnie was convicted on no fewer than twenty counts of different offences, chiefly of harming the health of personal enemies. Her defence was more vigorous than was customary, but although she pleaded that of all the witches already burned not one had mentioned her name, she was found guilty and executed.
It must not be supposed that Satan did not make occasional efforts to befriend his own. Thus we may learn from Sinclair's "Invisible World Discovered" that he directly interfered, endeavouring to save the wife of one Goodail, "a most beautiful and comely person," for whom he had a particular regard, much to the jealousy of less well-favoured witches. He even visited her prison and endeavoured to carry her off through the air, so that "she made several loups upwards, increasing gradually till her feet were as high as his breast." But James Fleming, the gaoler, was a man of might. He caught hold of her feet,so that it was a case of "Pull Devil, pull Gaoler," and the better man—which is to say Mr. Fleming—won, and the prisoner was saved for subsequent execution. On another occasion Satan actually released a witch from the church-steeple of Culross, where she was confined. Unfortunately for her, before they had gone far upon their aerial flight, she happened, in the course of conversation, to mention the name of the Deity—whereupon he dropped her.
Political ups and downs, whomever else they might affect, made no difference in the hard lot of the witch—save, indeed, that she was regarded as belonging to the opposite party by that in power. That did not, however, gain for her the sympathy of the defeated. Thus the death of Charles I., according to many, could only have been compassed by the Powers of Darkness themselves. Even the brute creation seemed to have realised this, if we may judge from the reputed fact that some of the lions in the Tower of London died from the smell of a handkerchief dipped in the martyred monarch's blood. "Old Noll" was declared, by Royalists anxious to explain away their defeats, to be Satan's direct agent, if not the Devil incarnate, the Commonwealth representing his Kingdom upon Earth. Thus although the Republicans had done their utmost in the way of witch-harrying, their efforts were but feeble compared to those of the Royalistsupon the glorious Restoration. Obviously a witch must be a friend to crop-eared Roundheads—and fearfully did she pay the penalty. Somewhere about 120 were executed in the year 1661, immediately following the King's entering upon his own again—the majority owing their arrest to the exertions of John Kincaid and John Dick, witch-finders as eminent, though less famous, than Matthew Hopkins himself. And now it was the turn of the victorious Cavaliers to be regarded, by Presbyterian and Parliamentarian, as owing their success to the help of Satan and his agents. Their Bishops were reported to be cloven-footed and shadowless, their military commanders to be bullet-proof by enchantment, and to possess horses that could clamber among inaccessible rocks like foxes; the justices who put fugitives on trial for treason were seen in familiar converse with the Fiend, and one of them was known to have offered up his first-born son to Satan.
A representative example of the trials held in the latter part of the seventeenth century is that consequent upon the death of Sir George Maxwell, of Pollock, slain, as was supposed, by the malice of "some haggs and one wizard." A full account of it is given in the "Memorialls" of Robert Law, writer, edited from his MS. by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. To put it briefly, Sir George, having been ill for sometime, having great pain in his side and shoulder, a dumb girl called at the house and explained by signs that his waxen "picture" was being melted before the fire in a certain woman's house, who had a grudge against him. Search being made, his image was found up the chimney. Two pins being found stuck in the figure's shoulder were removed, whereupon Sir George recovered, and the woman was laid by the heels and found to have several witch-marks. But very soon the baronet was again taken ill. The witch's house, now inhabited by her son, was again searched, and a second "portraitour," this time of clay, found under the man's bolster. Arrested, he confessed that the Devil had visited him, in company with four witches, had made the image himself, and stuck pins in the appropriate limbs. The four witches were apprehended, and, with the young man, burnt at Paisley; but this did not prevent their victim's death. A few months later he died, "being worn to a shadow," owing, according to the dumb girl, to the existence of yet another "picture" which his friends had "slighted."
The last Scottish execution of a witch took place in 1722. The prisoner was accused of having turned her daughter into a pony, shod by the Devil and so ridden upon her—whence the girl was ever afterwards lame. Found guilty, this last of a long line of martyrs was burned at Dornoch, and scandalised the spectators—theweather being chilly—by composedly warming her hands at the fire that was to consume her.
In 1735, English and Scottish statutes against witchcraft were alike repealed, much to the horror of the seceders from the Established Kirk, who, in their annual confession of National and Personal Sins, gave a prominent place to "The Penal Statutes against Witches having been repealed by Parliament contrary to the express Law of God."
CHAPTER XIII
OTHER PERSECUTIONS
Theuniversality of the belief in witchcraft carried in its train international belief in the efficacy of persecution as its cure. When one nation led the others were bound to follow, and accordingly we find that every European country—to say nothing of non-Christian peoples—lent itself vigorously to this form of legalised murder. But so similar are the details of these proceedings that witchcraft might claim to have preceded Volapuk or Esperanto as an international bond. Everywhere the persecution followed the same, or parallel lines, differing only in minor national idiosyncrasies. So far as Catholic countries were in question this was natural enough—seeing that all alike drew their inspiration from the same source—Innocent VIII.'s Bull; while the Protestants, however much they might object to Papal persecution of their peculiar tenets, heartily agreed with both the purpose and the method of those directed at the common enemy of all.
In France, as elsewhere, the seventeenth century saw the witch-fever rise to its most extravagant height. Though it is difficult to compare them in degree—where all alike rose to the highest level of bloodthirstiness—the French may be said to have excelled their ancient rivals in thoroughness. Thus the direction of the campaign was in the direct control of either Church or State, rather than being submitted to the ordinary process of the law; they were official rather than local, and witchcraft a religious and political rather than a merely criminal offence. Thus, in 1634, Urbain Grandier, who had satirised Richelieu, was accused, at the Cardinal's direct instigation, of practising the Black Art upon some nuns at Loudun, and was in due course burned at the stake; and many similar cases are recorded. A point in which the French practice differed from the English in the matter of witch-finding was that, while in England the affair was usually entrusted to the care of such comparatively humble persons as Matthew Hopkins, the French Commissioner was an official of importance, and usually, as in the case of Pierre de Lancre, of education. This gentleman, sent as we have seen at the instance of the King, according to his own account, by the Parliament of Bordeaux to investigate the charges of wholesale witchcraft against the inhabitants of the Labourt district in 1608, has himself provided us with illuminating insight into such an official's frame of mind. This is shown even more clearlyin his introductory argument than in his book—already frequently referred to—written to prove the inconstancy of devils and bad angels. Towards this end he sets out to prove the inconstancy of the natives of Labourt and their peculiar liability to Satan's snares. Then he argues that Labourt must, on the face of it, breed an unsettled and inconstant race, being both mountainous and situated on the borders of three kingdoms, France, Spain, and Navarre. Its language, being likewise varied—a mixture of French, Spanish, and Basque—is in itself another powerful argument. Its inhabitants, again, are for the most part sailors, when they might with better reason be farmers, because they prefer the inconstant sea to the firm, unchanging land. Their long absences, he finds, tends to make their wives unfaithful—another powerful impetus towards witchcraft. Although the Commissioner—a man of open mind—confesses that their dress is not indecent; he has grave doubts about their dances, being not quiet and respectable, but rowdy in the extreme, and accompanied upon the tambourine, an instrument of baleful significance. They live very largely upon apples—which may also account for their proneness to forbidden things, the Devil's power over the apple having been recognised ever since the days of Eve. De Lancre even puts forward the assertions of heretical Scottish and English merchants, who have visitedBordeaux to buy wines, and have there assured him that they have often seen large troops of dæmons heading across the sea straight for Labourt. From all of which the Commissioner concludes that there is scarcely a family in the district but is more or less deeply involved in or connected with witchcraft and its practices.
The same causes which rendered the French persecutions more severe while they lasted, also brought it about that any relaxation of the Governmental attitude diminished them to a greater extent than was the case in England, where witchcraft had a more personal aspect. The armed peasant, who, musket in hand, proved his possession of supernatural powers by defeating the King's best troops led by a Marshall of France, among the bare peaks of the Cevennes, in defence of his detestable heresies, might look for nothing but ruthless extermination as a wizard; but even Governments have human memories, and the humble old woman muttering spells in obscure corners of the kingdom, was apt to be overlooked. Sometimes, too, as the years passed, the Royal Person actually interfered to shield the accused from less official persecution. Thus, when in 1672, a number of shepherds were arrested in Normandy and the Parliament of Rouen prepared for an investigation similar to that previously held at Labourt, the King ordered all the accused to be set at liberty,with salutary effect in dissipating the increasing witch-fever. Some ten years later, however, a Royal edict revived all previous ordinances against sorcery and divination. Many such cases were tried before the "Chambre Ardente," the last being that of a woman named Voisin, condemned for sorcery and poisoning in 1680. The anti-sorcery laws were in force until the mid-eighteenth century, while as proof of the persistence of the superstition we may again quote the case of the Soubervies, in 1850, already referred to.
Germany—the land of sentiment, no less than of common sense—was not different from her neighbours in her method of regarding the witch. The German, though he protested against the methods of the Inquisition, as applied to himself, could have no objection to its treatment of the witch-question. Cases were sometimes heard in the civil court, but were far more frequently left to the tender mercies of the Church. At the end of the fifteenth century the Inquisitors Sprenger and Kramer taught the whole duty of an Inquisitor in the "Malleus Maleficarum," and found many apt pupils throughout the Empire. Persecutions of unprecedented fierceness broke out in many districts, one of the most striking examples being that at Trier in the second half of the sixteenth century. For many years there had been failure of crops and increasing sterility throughoutthe land, attributed by many to the increase of witchcraft and the malice of the Devil. In time, so ferocious became the popular antipathy that scarcely any who fell under suspicion had the remotest chance of escape. It was perhaps the most democratic persecution recorded in history; neither rank nor wealth was of the least avail in face of accusation. Canon Linden, an eye-witness, relates that two Burgomasters, several councillors and associate judges, canons of sundry collegiate churches, parish priests and rural deans were among the victims. Dr. Dietrich Flade, judge of the secular court and deputy governor of the city, strove to check the persecution and fell a victim to it for his pains. He was accused, tortured into confessing various crimes of sorcery, and burned at the stake in 1589. A Dutch scholar, Cornelius Loos by name, a reputed disciple of Wierus and tenant of a professorial chair at the Trier University, also ventured to enter a protest against the prevalent madness. Failing in his appeal to the authorities he wrote a book, in which his views were set forth at length. It was seized while in the printers' hands and its author cast into prison. He was, however, released in the spring of 1593 upon uttering a solemn recantation—published in book form six years later by Del Rio. Far from curing the barrenness of the land, the persecution only increased it—and thus provided its own cure—dyingdown at last when the general poverty prevented the necessary funds being provided for its maintenance.
A pathetic incident is recorded of another formidable outburst of the witch-mania—at Bamberg in 1628. The Burgomaster, Johannes Junius, was among those put on trial. In the beginning he denied all the charges against him, but being put to the torture, confessed that he had been present at a witch gathering and a witch-dance and had desecrated the Host. Such a confession, though it spared him further torture, did not, of course, stay his execution. Some little time after, having partially recovered from his first agonies, he was in great distress of mind as to the opinion his dearly-loved daughter should hold of him after his death. With sorely maimed hands he yet managed to scrawl a letter and ensure its reaching her. In it he appeals in agony of heart that she shall not believe the matter of his enforced confession: "Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, and innocent must I die.... I confessed only in order to escape the great anguish and bitter torture, such as it was impossible for me longer to bear." Unfortunately the torturers were never satisfied with a confession unless it implicated other people as well, and the case of Junius and some of his friends and neighbours who also suffered formed no exception to the rule.
The Bamberg persecution was succeeded by one at Wurzburg in the following year. Fortunately the noble Jesuit priest and poet, Friedrich von Spee, was appointed confessor of those sentenced to death, and was inspired to write, in 1631, his "Cautio Criminalis," which, published anonymously, did much to stem the tide of persecution. "Incredible among us Germans," he begins, "and especially (I blush to say it) among Catholics, are the popular superstitions, envy, calumnies, backbitings, insinuations and the like, which being neither punished by the magistrates nor refuted by the pulpit, first stir up suspicion of witchcraft. All the Divine judgments which God has threatened in Holy Writ are now ascribed to witches. No longer do God or Nature aught, but witches everything."
It was a long time, however, before such enlightened views could obtain universal credence, and it was in Germany that the last European execution for witchcraft took place, so lately as 1793.
The international epidemic did not spread to Sweden till the end of the century, when it broke out, in more than usually eccentric form, in the village of Mohra. It was chiefly remarkable for the number of children concerned. "Four score and five persons, fifteen of them children, were condemned, and most, if not all of them, were burnt and executed. There were besidessix-and-thirty children that ran the gauntlet and twenty were whipt on the hands at the Church-door every Sunday for three weeks together." The whole proceedings were, indeed, almost a children's drama and no emanation of childish imagination but was eagerly swallowed by a normally sober and sensible community. Most probably, indeed, the whole affair had its foundation in some myth or folk-story more or less popular in all the local nurseries. Indeed, were we of the present generation to return to the earlier belief in lycanthropy and the ceaseless malignancy of ubiquitous were-wolves, it is easily within the bounds of possibility that "Red Riding Hood," a story which quite conceivably owes its origin to the same superstition, might bring about some similar panic. An imaginative child might easily mix up the grandmother in the story with the wolf who devours her: might thus come to the conclusion that his own grandmother occasionally masqueraded in the form of a wolf: might in time convince himself that he had actually seen her thus transmogrified, and might thus in time bring not only his own venerable relative but those of half the other children in the school that he attended under unpleasant suspicion and not improbably to a more unpleasant death.