“Halstead, August 2, 1732.“Sir—The narrative which I gave you in relation to witchcraft, and which you are pleased to lay your commands upon me to repeat, is as follows:—There was one Master Collett, a smith by trade, of Haveningham, in the county of Suffolk, who, as ’twas customary with him, assisting the maide to churne, and not being able (as the phrase is) to make the butter come, threw a hot iron into the churn, under the notion of witchcraft in the case, upon which a poore labourer, then employed in carrying of dung in the yard, cried out in a terrible manner, ‘They have killed me, they have killed me;’ still keeping his hand upon his back, intimating where the pain was, and died upon the spot.“Mr. Collett, with the rest of the servants then present, took off the poor man’s clothes, and found to their great surprise, the mark of the iron that was heated and thrown into the churn, deeply impressed upon his back.This account I had from Mr. Collett’s own mouth, who being a man of unblemished character, I verily believe to be matter of fact.“I am, Sir, your obliged humble Servant,“Sam. Manning.”
“Halstead, August 2, 1732.
“Sir—The narrative which I gave you in relation to witchcraft, and which you are pleased to lay your commands upon me to repeat, is as follows:—There was one Master Collett, a smith by trade, of Haveningham, in the county of Suffolk, who, as ’twas customary with him, assisting the maide to churne, and not being able (as the phrase is) to make the butter come, threw a hot iron into the churn, under the notion of witchcraft in the case, upon which a poore labourer, then employed in carrying of dung in the yard, cried out in a terrible manner, ‘They have killed me, they have killed me;’ still keeping his hand upon his back, intimating where the pain was, and died upon the spot.
“Mr. Collett, with the rest of the servants then present, took off the poor man’s clothes, and found to their great surprise, the mark of the iron that was heated and thrown into the churn, deeply impressed upon his back.This account I had from Mr. Collett’s own mouth, who being a man of unblemished character, I verily believe to be matter of fact.
“I am, Sir, your obliged humble Servant,“Sam. Manning.”
The only falsehood, probably, in the history is the manner of the poor fellow’s death, for either he was foully murdered on a wild suspicion of being concerned in the witching of a dirty milk vessel, or he died suddenly of some ordinary organic complaint, and the circumstances of the horse-shoe and the scarred back were purely imaginary. But again in 1751 was witch blood actually poured out on English soil, and the cry of the innocent murdered sent up to heaven in vain for mercy. At Tring, in Hertfordshire, lived an old man, one Osborne, and his wife; poor as witches always were; old—past seventy both of them—and obliged to beg from door to door for what, if the popular superstition was true, the devil had given them power to possess at any moment for themselves. But this was a point of view no one ever took. In the rebellion of ’45, just six years ago, old Mother Osborne had gone to one Butterfield, a dairyman living at Gubblecot, to beg for buttermilk. Butterfield was a churlish fellow, and told her roughly that he had not enough for his hogs, still less for her. Says old Mother Osborne, grumbling, “The Pretender will soon have thee and thy hogs too.” Now the Pretender and the devil were in league together, according to the belief of many, and old Mother Osborne might just as well have told the dairyman at once that he was going to the devil, or that she would send her imps to bewitch him; for soon Butterfield’s calvesbecame distempered, and soon his cows died, and his affairs went so far to the bad that he left his dairy and took a public house, in hopes that the imps which could bewitch the one might be powerless against the other. But he reckoned without his host, for in 1751 he himself was bewitched; he had fits—bad fits—and sent for a white witch all the way from Northamptonshire to tell him what ailed him. The white witch told him he was bewitched, and bade six men, with staves and pitchforks hanging round their necks as counter charms for their own safety, watch his house night and day. Doubtless they discovered all they were set there to seek.
Suddenly there appeared a notice that certain and various witches were to be ducked at Longmarston the 22nd day of April. A crowd assembled at Tring to watch the sport; and but one thought went through that crowd—the Osbornes were to be the ducked witches, and the sport they would have would be rare. The parish officers had taken the old couple into the workhouse for safety, but the mob broke through the gates, and crushed down the doors, and searched the whole place through, from end to end, even to the salt box, “lest the witch should have made herself little,” and have hidden in the corners. But they could not find her, not even there; so, in a rage, they broke the windows, smashed the furniture, and then heaped up straw high against the house, threatening to burn it down, and every living soul within it, if the Osbornes were not given up them. The master was frightened; he had never faced such a scene before, and his nerve forsook him—not unreasonably. He brought the old people from their hiding place, and gave them up to that wild, tossing, furious mob. In a moment they werestripped stark naked, then cross-bound in the prescribed manner, wrapped loosely in a sheet, and dragged two miles along the road to a small pond or river, where with many a curse and many a kick they were thrown in, to prove whether they were witches or not. A chimney sweeper, called Colley, was the most active of the crew. Seeing that Mother Osborne did not sink, he waded into the water and turned her over with his stick. She slipped out of the sheet, and thus lay exposed, naked, and half choked with mud, before the brutal crowd, who saw nothing pitiful, and nothing shameful, in her state. After a time they dragged her out, flung her on the bank, and kicked and beat her till she died. Her husband died also, but not on the spot. The man who had arranged this rare diversion then went round among the crowd collecting money in return for his amusement. But government took the matter up. A coroner’s inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder returned against Colley, the chimney sweep, who, much to his own surprise and the indignation of the people—many ranking him as a martyr—was hanged by the neck till he was dead, for the murder of the witch of Tring, poor old Ruth Osborne. The act against witchcraft, under colour and favour of which all the judicial murders had been done, had been repealed a few years before, namely, in 1736, and Colley’s comrades bewailed piteously the degenerate times that were at hand, when a witch was no longer held fit sport for the public, but was protected and defended like ordinary folk, and let to live on to work her wicked will unchecked.
But the snake is scotched, not killed. So far are we in advance of the men of the ruder past, inasmuch as our superstitions, though quite as silly, are less cruelthan theirs, and hurt no one but ourselves. Yet still we have our wizards and witches lurking round area gates and prowling through the lanes and yards of the remoter country districts; still we have our necromancers, who call up the dead from their graves to talk to us more trivial nonsense than ever they talked while living, and who reconcile us with earth and humanity by showing us how infinitely inferior are heaven and spirituality; still we have the unknown mapped out in clear lines sharp and firm; and still the impossible is asserted as existing, and men are ready to give their lives in attestation of what contravenes every law of reason and of nature; still we are not content to watch and wait and collect and fathom before deciding, but for every new group of facts or appearances must at once draw up a code of laws and reasons, and prove, to a mathematical certainty, the properties of a chimera, and the divine life and beauty—of a lie. Even the mere vulgar belief in witchcraft remains among the lower classes; as witness the old gentleman who died at Polstead not so long ago, and who, when a boy, had seen a witch swum in Polstead Ponds, “and she went over the water like a cork;” who had also watched another witch feeding her three imps like blackbirds; and who only wanted five pounds to have seen all the witches in the parish dance on a knoll together: as witness also the strange letter of the magistrate, in the ‘Times’ of April 7, 1857; and the stranger trial at Stafford, concerning the bewitched condition of the Charlesworths, small farmers living at Rugely, which trial is to be found in the ‘Times’ of March 28, 1857; the case reported by the clergyman of East Thorpe, Essex, who had actually to mount guard against the door of an old Trot accused of witchcraft; while theinstances of silly servant maids, and fortune tellers whose hands are to be crossed with silver, and the stars propitiated with cast off dresses and broken meat, are as numerous as ever. And, indeed, so long as conviction without examination, and belief without proof, pass as the righteous operations of faith, so long will superstition and credulity reign supreme over the mind, and the functions of critical reason be abandoned and foresworn. And as it seems to me that credulity is even a less desirable frame of mind than scepticism, I have set forth this collection of witch stories as landmarks of the excesses to which a blind belief may hurry and impel humanity, and perhaps as some slight aids to that much misused common sense which the holders of impossible theories generally consider “enthusiastic,” and of “a nobler life” to tread under foot, and loftily ignore.
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
Footnotes:
[1]Pitcairn’s ‘Scottish Criminal Trials.’
[2]Pitcairn’s ‘Scottish Criminal Trials.’
[3]Pitcairn.
[4]Pitcairn.
[5]Pitcairn.
[6]Pitcairn.
[7]An iron instrument so constructed, that by means of a hoop which passed over the head, a piece of iron having four prongs or points, was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing outwards to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring, by which to attach to a staple in the wall of her cell.—Pitcairn’s ‘Scottish Criminal Trials.’
[8]Fountainhall says that she was convict and burnt; but is this not a mistake? Pitcairn gives the actual trial, and King James’s angry letter against the contumacious assisa.
[9]Pitcairn.
[10]Dr. Jamieson conjectures the word to signify “warm hose.” After encircling the leg with an iron framework, it was put into a moveable furnace or chauffer, and during the progress of heating the iron, the intended questions were successively put.—Note in Pitcairn’s ‘Scottish Criminal Trials.’
[11]Pitcairn’s ‘Scottish Criminal Trials.’
[12]Chambers’ ‘Domestic Annals of Scotland.’
[13]‘Antiquarian Researches of Aberdeen, by Gavin Turriff: Spalding Club Miscellany. Chambers’ ‘Domestic Annals,’ to the end of the Aberdeen trials.
[14]Apparently untranslateable.
[15]Patrick Anderson’s MS. history of Scotland, quoted by Robert Chambers, in his ‘Domestic Annals of Scotland.’
[16]Pitcairn.
[17]Pitcairn and Chambers.
[18]Pitcairn.
[19]Pitcairn.
[20]Dalyell’s ‘Darker Superstitions of Scotland.’
[21]Scott’s ‘Demonology and Witchcraft.’
[22]Pitcairn.
[23]Pitcairn and Chambers.
[24]Star-grass, queries Pitcairn; but is it not rather fox-tree—fox-glove?
[25]Chambers, Dalyell, Pitcairn.
[26]Dalyell, quoting the judiciary records of Orkney.
[27]Hibbert, quoting the Orkney Records.
[28]Pitcairn. Sharpe’s Introduction to Law’s ‘Memorials.’
[29]Dalyell.
[30]Law’s ‘Memorials,’ (Sharpe’s Introduction,) and Dalyell.
[31]Chambers, Sinclair, Dalyell.
[32]Dalyell’s ‘Darker Superstitions.’
[33]Pitcairn. Law’s ‘Memorials.’ Chambers.
[34]Dalyell.
[35]Chambers.
[36]Chambers.
[37]Dalyell.
[38]Chambers and Law; Sharpe’s Introduction.
[39]Hibbert’s ‘Description of the Shetland Islands.’
[40]Dalyell. Evidently the same thing with a different reading:—red, rode;sool-soot, stirrup;sled, slipped;shinew, sinew.
[41]Hibbert, &c.
[42]Sinclair’s ‘Invisible World Discovered.’
[43]Pitcairn.
[44]Sinclair.
[45]To the outer room.
[46]To the inner room.
[47]Chambers.
[48]Chambers.
[49]Pitcairn and Sinclair.
[50]Chambers’ ‘Domestic Annals.’
[51]Law—Sharp’s Introduction.
[52]Dalyell.
[53]Chambers.
[54]Law’s ‘Memorials’—Sharp’s Introductory Notice.
[55]Pitcairn.
[56]On life: alive.
[57]Chambers. Sinclair. Various tracts.
[58]Chambers. Dickie. Tracts.
[59]Law’s ‘Memorials.’
[60]Chambers.
[61]Law’s ‘Memorials.’
[62]Scots’ Magazine.
[63]Sinclair’s ‘Invisible World.’
[64]Sinclair.
[65]Hibbert’s ‘Shetland Islands.’
[66]Hibbert and Sinclair.
[67]Fountainhall.
[68]Hibbert.
[69]Chambers.
[70]Watson’s Tract, printed 1698. Chambers, Dickie, and various other sources.
[71]Chambers.
[72]Chambers.
[73]Chambers; Sinclair; and an anonymous tract.
[74]Chambers.
[75]Hibbert.
[76]Law’s ‘Memorials;’ and Chambers.
[77]A crazy old Illuminatus, who had a “call,” and wrote the Tinkler’s Testament.
[78]Scott. Dickie. Chambers, &c.
[79]Dickie’s ‘Philosophy of Magic.’
[80]‘Select Cases of Conscience.’
[81]‘Discoverie of Witchcraft.’
[82]‘Discoverie of Witchcraft,’ 1584.
[83]‘Dialogue concerning Witches,’ 1603.
[84]‘Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,’ 1646.
[85]‘Advertisement to the Jurymen of England,’ 1653.
[86]‘A Candle in the Dark,’ 1656.
[87]‘Question of Witchcraft debated,’ 1669. “Wagstaffe was a little crooked man, of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the boys of Oxford because they said he himself looked like a wizard.”
[88]‘Displaying of Witchcraft,’ 1677.
[89]‘Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft,’ 1720.
[90]Introduction to Potts’s ‘Discovery of Witches,’ edited by James Crossley, Esq. Chetham Society. 1845.
[91]Conjuration or invocation of any evil spirit was felony without benefit of clergy; so also to consult, covenant with, entertain, feed, or reward any evil spirit, or to take up any dead body for charms or spells; to use or practise witchcrafts, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, so that any one was lamed, killed, or pined, was felony without benefit of clergy, to be followed up by burning. Then ‘The Country Justice’ goes on to give the legal signs of a witch, and those on which a magistrate might safely act, as legal “discoveries.” She was to be found and proved by insensible marks; by teats; by imps in various shapes, such as toads, mice, flies, spiders, cats, dogs, &c.; by pictures of wax or clay; by the accusations of the afflicted; by her apparition seen by the afflicted as coming to torment them; by her own sudden or frequent inquiries at the house of the sick; by common report; by the accusations of the dying; and the bleeding of the corpse at her touch; by the testimony of children; by the afflicted vomiting pins, needles, straw, &c.; in short, by all the foolery, gravely formularized, to be found in the lies and deceptions hereafter related.
[92]Thomas Wright’s ‘Narrative of Sorcery and Magic.’ Southey’s Ballad.
[93]Thomas Wright’s ‘Narrative of Sorcery and Magic,’ and ‘Trial of Dame Alice Kyteler.’
[94]Idem.
[95]‘Introduction to the Narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler.’ By Thomas Wright. 1843.
[96]Wright’s ‘Narrative of Sorcery and Magic.’ 1851.
[97]Reginald Scot.
[98]Reginald Scot. Dr. Hutchinson.
[99]Stow.
[100]Scot, quoting a little pamphlet, without a title, which I cannot find.
[101]From an extremely rare black-letter book, entitled ‘A Detection of damnable driftes, practized by three Witches arraigned at Chelmsforde, in Essex, at the laste Assizes there holden, whiche were executed in Aprill 1579. Set forthe to discouer the Ambushementes of Sathan, whereby he would surprise us lulled in securitie, and hardened with contempte of God’s vengeance threatened for our offences. Imprinted at London, for Edward White, at the little North-dore of Paules.’
[102]Scot.
[103]‘A true and just Recorde of the Information, Examination, and Confession of all the Witches, taken at S. Osees in the countie of Essex; whereof some were executed, and other some entreated according to the determination of lawe. Wherein all men may see what a pestilent people Witches are, and how vnworthy to lyve in a Christian Commonwealth. Written orderly, as the cases were tryed by euidence by W. W. Imprinted in London at the three Cranes, in the Vinetree, by Thomas Dawson. 1582.’
[104]This was his manner of dealing with the accused, and its falsehood, iniquity, and injustice need no comment.
[105]The names of the imps which haunted various persons was curious. A Dutch boy had Pretty Betty, Cuckow, Longtail; and Bernard gives us his list:—“Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smack, Litefoote, Nonesuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Collins, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dickie, Prettie, Grissel, and Jacke;” together with “Pippin, Philpot, Modu, Soforce, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito, Lustie, Huffe, Cap, Killico, Hob, Fratello, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, and Lustie Jollie Jenkin.” We have seen some of these already, and those who read farther will find a few more, and some quite as quaint and odd not set down in this list.
[106]‘A true and most dreadfull discourse of a Woman possessed with the Deuill; who, in the likenesse of a headlesse Beare, fetched her oute of her Bedde, in the presence of seven persons, most straungely roulled her thorow three Chambers, and downe a high paire of stairres on the fower and twentie of May last, 1584. At Ditchet, in Somersetshire. A matter as miraculous as ever was seen in our time. Imprinted at London for Thomas Nelson.’
[107]‘A compleat History of Magick, Sorcery, and Witchcraft.’ By Richard Boulton. 1715.
[108]Hutchinson’s ‘Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft.’ Boulton’s ‘History of Magic.’ Harsent’s ‘Discovery of the Fravdvlent Practises of J. Darrel.’ ‘A True Relation of the Strange and Grevovs Vexation by the Devil of 7 Persons in Lancashire, and William Somers of Nottingham.’ By John Darrel. 1600.
[109]‘A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcrafts.’ 1603.
[110]This is an old story, found in all books on witchcraft.
[111]George Sinclair’s ‘Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.’
[112]Hutchinson’s ‘Essay on Witchcraft.’
[113]‘The Witches of Northamptonshire.’
Who were all executed at Northampton the 22 of Iuly last, 1612.
‘London. Printed by Tho. Purfoot for Arthur Iohnson. 1612.’ A rare and valuable little black-letter tract.
[114]‘The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancaster.’ By Thomas Potts. 1613. Thomas Wright’s ‘Narrative of Sorcery and Magic.’ 1851.
[115]“Ligh in,” perhaps lykinge, lusty, or craske.
[116]“Leath,” flexible.
[117]The chrism was the white cloth placed over the brow of a newly-baptized child in the Roman Catholic service. When children died within the month they were called chrisoms.
[118]“Farrandly,” fair, handsome.
[119]“Harne panne,” brain case, cranium.
[120]Gethsemane.
[121]“Deere,” hurt.
[122]Potts’s ‘Discovery.’ Webster’s ‘Displaying.’
[123]A ‘Treatise of Witchcraft.’ By Alexander Roberts, B.D., and Preacher of God’s word at King’s Linne in Norfolk. 1616.
[124]Tract. Printed at London by G. Eld for I. Barnes, dwelling in the long Walke, neare Christ-Church. 1619.
[125]Wright and Hutchinson.
[126]Wright, quoting Lord Londesborough’s MSS.
[127]Wright.
[128]Webster. Wright. Harleian MSS.
[129]‘A most Certain Strange and true Discovery of a witch, being taken by some Parliamentary Forces as she was standing on a small planck-board and sayling on it over the River of Newberry. 1643.’ Evidently a political matter, and perhaps with no substratum of truth in the story at all.
[130]A collection of Modern Relations. 1693.
[131]Matthew’s own account of them in a little tract called ‘Certaine Queries Answered, which have been and are likely to be objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out witches,’ was slightly different.—1. Holt, like a white kitling.—2. Jarmara, a fat spaniel without any legs at all, which she said she kept fat, for he sucked good blood from her body.—3. Vinegar Tom, a long-legged greyhound with an head like an ox, a long tail and broad eyes, who, when Hopkins spoke to, and bade him go to the place provided for him and his angels, transformed himself into the shape of a child of foure years without a head, and gave half a dozen turns about the house and vanished at the door.—4. Sack-and-sugar, like a black rabbit; and 5. Newes, like a polecat. Also he said that no mortal could invent such names as Elemauzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, Griezel Greedigut, &c., which, however, one of our great word-masters, Charles Dickens, would find no difficulty in doing, and which certainly have no very infernal sound in them.
[132]Baxter, Hutchinson, &c.
[133]Baxter.
[134]Tract.
[135]‘The Laws against Witches.’ Published by Authority, 1645.
[136]‘Collection of Modern Relations.’
[137]‘The Devil’s Delusion.’ 1649.
[138]Baxter.
[139]Baxter’s ‘Certainty of the World of Spirits.’
[140]‘A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the Arraignment, Tryall, Confession, and Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone, in Kent, at the Assizes held there in July, Fryday 30, this present year 1652. Before the Right Honourable Peter Warburton, one of the Justices of the Common Pleas. Collected from the Observations of E. G. Gent, a learned Person, present at their Conviction and Condemnation, and digested by H. F. Gent.’ London: Printed for Richard Harper in Smithfield, 1652.
[141]A true Relation of one Mrs. Atkins, a Mercer’s Wife in Warwick, who was strangely carried away from her house in July last, and hath not since been heard of.
[142]Dr. George More’s ‘Antidote to Atheism.’ Dr. Lamb’s ‘Darling.’ By James Bower. 1653.
[143]Glanvil’s ‘Saducismus Triumphatus.’
[144]Reginald Scot.
[145]‘Collection of Modern Relations.’
[146]Glanvil
[147]Glanvil.
[148]Glanvil.
[149]Tract; Published 1682.
[150]Baxter’s ‘World of Spirits.’
[151]‘Hartfordshire Wonder; or, Strange News from Ware.’ London. Printed for John Clark, at the Bible and Harp, in West-Smith-Field, near the Hospital Gate. 1669.
[152]Boulton’s ‘Compleat History of Magick.’
[153]Baxter, Hutchinson.
[154]Dr. Hutchinson.
[155]That date seems wrong: ought it not to be 1699?
[156]Boulton’s ‘Compleat History of Magick.’ Dr. Hutchinson’s ‘Historical Essay.’
[157]Surrey in Lancashire.
[158]A Tract of one leaf in a collection of trials.
[159]Various Tracts—and ‘Thomas Wright’s Narrative.’
[160]Thomas Wright.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.
Some quotation marks are not paired in the original. Obvious errors have been corrected without comment, while those requiring interpretation have been left as they were.
Footnote 160 is located onpage 424in the original; however, the page has no in-text marker.
Text identified by a gray underscore was corrected. Hover the cursor over the word and the nature of the correction should appear.
Other than the corrections noted by hover information, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original text.