Chapter 1

desired--putting one hand on the crown of her head, and another on the soles of her feet, and giving over to him all that lay between; whereupon her mother promised her a new coat, and the devil made her officer at their several meetings. He gave her, too, such a nip on the arm that she was sore for half an hour after, and gave her a new name--Annippy, or an Ape according to Law. Her mother's devil-name was Lands-lady; Bessie Weir was called Sopha; Marjorie Craig was Rigeru; Margaret Jackson Locas; John Stewart, Jonas; and they were all present at the making of the clay image which was to doom Sir George to death. They made it of clay, then bound it on a spit and turned it before the fire, "Sopha" crying "Sir George Maxwell! Sir George Maxwell!" which was repeated by them all. Another time, she said, there was a meeting, when the devil was dressed in "black cloathes and a blew band, and white hand cuffs, with hoggers on his feet, and that his feet were cloven." The black man stuck the pins into the picture, and his name was Ejoall, or J. Jewell. For the devil delighted in giving himself various names, as when he caused himself to be called Peter Drysdale, by Catherine Sands and Laurie Moir, and Peter Saleway by others.

John now followed suit. He confessed to his own baptism; to the hoggers on the black man's legs, who had no shoes, and spoke in a voice hollow and ghousty; to the making the clay image; and to his new name of Jonas. On the 15th of February, 1677, John Stewart, Annabel Stewart, and Margaret Jackson all adhered to these depositions, but Jennet and Bessie and Margerie denied them. Jennet's feet were fixed in stocks, so that she might not do violence to her own life: and one day her gaoler declared that he had found her bolster, which the night before was laid at least six yards from the stocks, now placed beneath her; the stocks being so heavy that two of the strongest men in the country could hardly have carried them six yards. He asked her "how she had win to the bolster," and she answered that she had crept along the floor of the room, dragging the stocks with her. Before the court she said that she had got one foot out of the hole, and had drawn the stocks with her, "a thing altogether impossible." Then John and Annabel exhorted their mother to confess, reminding her of all the meetings which she had had with the devil in her own house, and that "a summer's day would not be sufficient to relate what passages had been between the devil and her." But Jennet Mathie was a stern, brave, high-hearted Scotch woman, and would not seal her sorrow with a lie. "Nothing could prevail with her obdured and hardened heart," so she and all, save young Annabel, were burnt; and when she was bound to the stake, the spectators saw after a while a black, pitchy ball foam out of her mouth, which, after the fire was kindled, grew to the size of a walnut, and flew out into sparks like squibs. This was the devil leaving her. As for Bessie Weir, or Sopha, the devil left her when she was executed, in the form of a raven; for so he owned and dishonoured his chosen ones.

"The dumbe girl, Jennet Douglas, now speaks well, and knows Latine, which she never learned, and discovers things past!" says Sinclair. But she still followed her old trade. She had mesmeric visions, and was evidently a "sensitive;" and some of the people believed in her, as inspired and divine, and some came, perhaps mockingly, to test her. But they generally got the worst off, and were glad to leave her alone again. One woman came and asked her "'how she came to the knowledge of so many things,' but the young wench shifted her, by asking the woman's name. She told her name. Says the other, 'Are there any other in Glasgow of that name?' 'No!' sayes the woman. 'Then,' said the girle, 'you are a witch!' Says the other, 'Then are you a devil!' The girl answers 'The devil doth not reveal witches; but I know you to be one, and I know your practices too.' On which the poor woman ran away in great confusion;" as, indeed, she might--such an accusation as this being quite sufficient to sign her death-warrant. To another woman who came to see and question her, she said the same thing; taking her arm, and showing the landlord a secret mark which she told him the woman had got from the devil. "The poor woman much ashamed ran home, and a little while after she came out and told her neighbours that what Jennet Douglas had said of her was true, and earnestly entreated that they might show so much to the magistrates, that she might be apprehended, otherwise the devil says she will make me kill myself." The neighbours were wise enough to think her mad, as she was, and took her home; but the next day she was found drowned in the Clyde; fear and despair had killed her before the stake-wood had had time to root and ripen. The dumb girl herself was afterwards carried before the great council at Edinburgh, imprisoned, scourged through the town, and then banished to "some forraigne Plantation," whence she reappears no more to vex her generation. God forgive her! She has passed long years ago to her account, and may her guilty soul be saved, and all its burning blood-stains cleansed and assoilzed!

LIZZIE MUDIE AND HER VICTIMS.[59]

The year after Sir George Maxwell's affair there was another case at Haddington which gave full employment to the authorities. Margaret Kirkwood, a woman of some means, hanged herself one Sunday morning during church time. Her servant, Lizzie Mudie, who was at kirk like a good Christian, suddenly called out, to the great disturbance of the congregation. She began repeating all the numbers--one, two, three, four, &c.--till she came to fifty-nine; then she stopped and cried, "The turn is done!" When it was afterwards found that Margaret Kirkwood had hung herself just about that moment, and that her age was fifty-nine, Lizzie Mudie was taken up and searched. She was found a witch by her marks, and soon after confessed, delating five women and one man as her accomplices. But the five women and the one man were obstinate, and would not say that they were guilty, though they were pricked and searched and marks found on them. Lord Fountainhall was present at the searching of the man, and he gives an account of it: "I did see the man's body searched and pricked in two sundry places, one at the ribs and the other at his shoulder. He seemed to find no pain, but no blood followed. The marks were blewish, very small, and had no protuberancy above the skin. The pricker said there were three sorts of witches' marks: the horn mark, it was very hard; the breiff mark, it was very little; and the feeling mark, in which they had sense and pain." "I remained very dissatisfied with this way of trial," says my Lord farther on, "as most fallacious; and the fellow could give me no account of the principles of his art, but seemed to be a drunken, foolish rogue." One of Lizzie Mudie's five victims was an old woman of eighty, named Marion Phinn, who had always borne a good character, "never being stained with the least ignominy, far less with the abominable crime of witchcraft." But though she petitioned the council to free her on her own caution, she was kept hand-fast and foot-bound in gaol, being far too dangerous in the helplessness and feebleness of her eighty years to be let out with the chance of bewitching mankind to death. This she could do, and work all other miracles; but she could not help herself to sunlight and liberty.

BRAVE OLD KATHERINE LIDDELL.[60]

In 1678 two old women of Prestonpans were burnt. They made a voluntary confession, and accused a few more of their craft. These in their turn accusing others, in a very short time seventeen unhappy creatures were collected together, all charged with the sin of witchcraft, intercommuning with the devil, voluntary transformation into ravens, cats, crows, &c., with all the other stock pieces of the hallucination. The judges seemed inclined to favour them, and Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik, when desired to sit on the commission appointed to try the seven given up by the parish of Loanhead, declined, "alleging drily that he did not feel himself warlock (that is, conjuror) enough to be judge upon such an inquisition." These poor creatures had deep sleeps, during which no pinching would awake them; but though the judges saw them when in these sleeps, and heard their confessions as to where they had been and what they had been doing during the time, they were regarded as diabolical trances, and dealt with accordingly. Nine of the East Lothian women were burnt, and the "seven of Loanhead were reserved for future procedure." Among the accused was one Katherine Liddell, a strong-minded, stout-hearted, old widow, who feared no man, spoke her mind freely, and had a body with nerves like cart ropes and muscles of iron. The bailie of Prestonpans, John Rutherford, had caused her to be seized in the late panic, and, though there was nothing against her, he had her pricked in various parts of her body "to the great effusion of her blood, and whereby her skin is raised and her body highly swelled, and she is in danger of life." A drummer, two salt-makers, and others, assisted him in this torture; for John Kincaid had found zealous followers: and any man with a peculiar temperament, and a heart hardened by superstition against suffering, might take on himself the office of pricker to his own soul's satisfaction, and the torture and murder of his fellow-creatures. Katherine Liddell, besides being actively tortured, was kept without sleep for six days and nights, but the stout old woman would confess nothing. On the contrary, she presented a petition to the Council, charging John Rutherford and the rest with "defamation, false imprisonment, and open and manifest oppression," and demanded vengeance and restitution in loud and vigorous terms. The Council, unaccustomed to this sort of thing, and used only to victims as tame as they were considered powerful, soon released her, dropping her like hot iron, and condemning Rutherford and his associates as too hasty and ill-advised: then, somewhat further redeemed themselves by an unusual act of justice and common sense, in sentencing David Cowan, "pricker"--the one who had been the most active of her tormentors--to be confined during pleasure in the Tolbooth.

Katherine Liddell did not do much good to her afflicted sisterhood, though she had helped herself: for that same year, in August,[61] "the devil had a great meeting of witches in Loudian, where, among others, was a warlock who formerly had been admitted to the ministrie in the Presbyterian tymes, and when the bishops came in conformed with them." This warlock minister was Mr. Gideon Penman, minister of Crighton, and a man of notoriously loose life; but whether he carried his defiance of good so far as to dance with the hags at the Sabbath, and "beat up those that were slow," and preach damnable doctrines and blasphemous travesties of the Christian faith in the devil's services, or whether he was only an immoral man--better out of the ministry than in it--remains for each reader's private judgment to determine. Ten of the accused stoutly affirmed that Mr. Gideon Penman was their devil's parson; but as he as stoutly denied it, he was liberated on his own security, while nine out of the ten were condemned to be strangled and burnt, which was done accordingly. They gave some curious details, as, that, when they renounced their baptism and gave themselves over to Satan by laying one hand on their head and the other on their feet he kissed them, and that he was cold to the touch, and his breath like a damp air; that he scourged them oft, and was a most "wicked and barbarous master;" and that when he administered the sacrament to them the bread was like wafers, and the drink like blood or black moss-water: that he transformed them to the likeness of bees, and crows, and ravens, when they flew about from place to place as he ordered.

THE DEVIL IN HIS CUPS.[62]

On December 19, 1679, the parish of Borrowstonness was again in an uproar concerning the evil doings of witches and wizards, the chief of whom was Annaple Thomson, once a widow, but now a wife. She was charged with having one day met the devil on her way between Linlithgow and Borrowstonness, when he "in the lyknes of ane black man told yow that yow wis ane poore puddled bodie, and had ane evill lyiff, and difficultie to win throw the warld; and promised that iff ye wald followe him, and go alongst with him, yow should never want, but have ane better lyiff; and abowt fyve wekes therafter, the Devill appeired to yow, when yow wis goeing to the coal-hill, about sevin o'clock in the morning. Having renewed his former tentatiowne yow did condescend thereto, and declared yowrselff content to follow him, and becwm his servant;"--which was bad of Annaple Thomson, and sure to bring her to ineffectual grief. Then some others, men and women both, were further informed of their misdeeds. They were told that "ye, and each person of yow, wis at several mettings with the Devill in the linkes of Borrowstownes, and in the howse of yow, Bessie Vickar, and ye did eatt and drinke with the Devill, and with on another, and with witches in hir howss in the nycht tyme; and the Devill and the said William Craw browght the ale which ye drank, extending to about sevin gallons, from the howss of Elisabeth Hamilton." So did the rest. Margaret Pringle, whose right wrist the devil had grievously pained, "but having it twitched of new againe, it immediatelie becam haill;" Margaret Hamilton, with whom the devil had at sundry times "drank several choppens of ale with yow," when they met at the town-well at Borrowstonness and talked together like two old gossips; also, another Margaret Hamilton, relict of James Pullwart, with whom the devil conversed in the likeness of a black man, but afterwards removed from her as a dog--they all committed abominable sins with the devil, and entertained him familiarly like any other cummer. And were they not all at the meeting with the "Devill and other witches at the croce of Murestaine," above Kinneil, upon "the threttin of October last, where yow all danced, and the Devill acted the pyiper, and where yow endevored to have destroyed Andrew Mitchell, sone to John Mitchell, elder in Dean of Kinneil?" The case was considered clear enough for all rational men in Borrowstonness; so Annabel Thomson, Margaret Pringle, the two Margaret Hamiltons, William Craw, and Bessie Vickar, were "found guiltie be ane assyse of the abominable cryme of Witchcraft," and were ordered to be taken to the west end of Borrowstonness, "the ordinar place of execution," betwixt two and four in the afternoon, and "there be wirried at a steack till they be dead, and thereafter to have their bodies burnt to ashes."

THE GHOST OF THE BLACK-BROWED MAID.[63]

If bodies were safe after death, characters were not. Isabel Heriot was maid of all work to the minister at Preston. "She was of a low Stature, small and slender of Body, of a Black Complexion. Her Head stood somewhat awry upon her Neck. She was of a droll and jeering Humour, and would have spoken to Persons of Honour with great Confidence." After some short time of service, her master the minister began to dislike her, because she was not eager in her religious duties; so he discharged her: and in 1680 she died--and "about the time of her death her face became extreamly black." Two or three nights after her burial, one Isabel Murray saw her, in her white grave-clothes, walk from the chapel to the minister's louping-on stone (horse-block). Here she halted, leaning her elbow on the stone, then went in at the back gate, and so towards the stable. A few nights after this stones were flung at the minister's house, over the roof, and in at the doors and windows; but they fell softly for the most part, and did no especial damage. Yet one night, just as the minister was coming in at the hall door, a great stone was flung after him, which hit the door very smartly and marked it. Isabel Murray was also hit with stones, and the serving-man who looked to the horses was gripped at the heel by something which made him cry out lustily. So it went on. Stones and clods, and lighted coals, and even an old horse-comb long since lost, were perpetually flying about, and only by severe prayer was the minister able to lay the devil who molested them.

Soon Isabel Murray reappeared with a fresh set of circumstances concerning the ghost of her namesake Isabel Heriot, the maid of all work. She said that as she was coming from church between sermons, to visit her house and kailyard for fear some vagrant cows might have got over the dyke--which were very likely of the true Maclarty type--on going down her own yard, which was next to the minister's, she saw again the apparition of Isabel Heriot, as she was when laid in her coffin. "Never was an egg liker to another than this Apparition was like to her, as to her Face, her Stature, her Motion, her Tongue, and Behaviour; her face was black like the mouten soot, the very colour which her face had when she died." The ghost was walking under the fruit-trees, and over the beds where the seeds had been sown, bending her body downwards, as if she had been seeking somewhat off the ground, and saying, "A stane! a stane!" Her lap was full of stones; as some people supposed the stones she cast in the night-time; and these stones she threw down, as if to harbour them, at a bush-root in the garden. Isobel Murray, nothing daunted, goes up to her.

"Wow!" says she, "what's thou doing here, Isabel Heriot? I charge thee by the law thou lives on to tell me."

Says the ghost, "I am come again because I wronged my master when I was his servant. For it was I that stealed his Shekel (this was a Jewish shekel of gold which, with some other things, had been stolen from him several years before), which I hid under the Hearthstone in the Kitching, and then when I flited took it into the Cannongate, and did offer to sell it to a French Woman who lodged where I served, who askt where I got it. I told her I found it between Leith and Edinburgh." Then she went on to make further confession. Having fyled herself for a thief she went on to show how she had been also a witch. "One night," says the ghost, "I was riding home late from the Town, and near the Head of Fanside Brae, the Horse stumbled, and I said, The Devil raise thee; whereupon the Foul Thief appeared presently to me, and threatened me, if I would not grant to destroy my Master the Minister, he would throw me into a deep hole (which I suppose is yet remaining); or if I could not get power over my master, I should strive to destroy the Shoolmaster."

"It was very remarkable," says George Sinclair, as a kind of commentary, "that one of the minister's servant-women had given to the schoolmaster's servant-woman some Linnings to make clean, among which there was a Cross cloth of strong Linning, which could never be found, though diligent search was made for it, till one morning the Master awakening found it bound round about his Night Cap, which bred admiration both to himself and his Wife. No more skaith was the Devil or the Witches able to do him. What way this was done, or for what end it cannot be well known: but it is somewhat probable that they designed to strangle and destroy him in the night time, which is their usual time in working and doing of mischief. This happened about the time (I suppose) that the Devil had charged Isabel Heriot to destroy this honest man. Yet within two days a young child of his, of a year old, fell sick, which was quickly pulled away by death, none knowing the cause or nature of the disease."

Isabel Murray went on to say, that furthermore the ghost confessed to her, that she, Isabel Heriot, when in life, had met the devil a second time at Elfiston Mill, near to Ormiston: and she told what foulness the devil did to her. Also, one night as she was coming home from Haddington Market with some horse-corn, she met the devil at Knock-hills, and he bade her destroy Thomas Anderson, who was riding with her. When she refused he threw all the horse-corn off the horse. "This Thomas Anderson was a Christian man," and when Murray told her tale "well remembered that Isabel had got up the next morning timeously," and brought home her oats which had lain in the road all the night. She said too that she had cheated her master whenever she went to the market to buy oats, charging him more than they cost--not an unusual practice with servants at market anywhere; and she told Isabel Murray that the stone cast at her was not for herself but for her goodman, who had once flung her, the ghost, into the jawhole, and abused her. At this point Murray said she began to be frightened, and ran home in all haste. So Isabel Heriot's character was settled for ever, and her neighbours only thought the judgment came too late.

THE SUCCUBUS.[64]

William Barton, a loose-lived man of notoriously strong passions, was apprehended for witchcraft. His confession included the not very frequent Scottish element of a Succubus--a demon under the form of a beautiful woman who beguiled him, and to whom he made himself over for love and gold. She baptized him under the name of John Baptist, gave him her mark, and fifteen pounds Scots in good gold as Tocher-money; and then they parted. When he had gone but a little way she called him back and gave him a mark to spend at the Ferry, desiring him to keep the fifteen pounds safe and unbroken. At this point in his confession the poor wretch was weary, and asked leave to go to sleep; which, for a wonderful stretch of humanity, the judges granted. Suddenly he awakened with a loud laugh. The magistrates asked why he laughed?--and he said that during his sleep the devil had come to him, very angry at his confession, and bidding him deny all when he awoke, "for he should be his Warrand." After this he became "obdured," and would never confess anything again; the devil persuading him that no man should take his life. And even when they told him that the stake was set up and the fire built round, he only answered, "he cared not for all that, for," said he, "I shal not die this day." How should he if no man was to kill him? Upon this the executioner came into the prison, but fell stone dead as he crossed the threshold. Hastily the magistrates offered a reward to the executioner's wife if she would undertake her husband's office, and strangle the poor mad fellow before he was burnt; which she agreed to do, for all that she was in great pain and grief, clapping her hands and crying, "Dool for this parting my dear burd Andrew Martin!" When the warlock heard that a woman was to put him to death, he fell into a passion of crying, saying that the devil had deceived him, and "let no man ever trust his promises again!"

Barton's wife was imprisoned with him. On her side she declared that she had never known her husband to be a warlock; he on his that he had never known her to be a witch: but presently the mask fell off, and she confessed. She said that malice against one of her neighbours had driven her to give herself over to the devil, that he had baptized her by the name of Margaratus, and taken her to be very near to him; a great deal too near for even a virtuous woman's thoughts. When asked if she had found pleasure in his society, she answered, "Never much." But one night, going to a witches' dance upon Pentland Hills, he went before them all in the likeness of a rough tanny dog, playing on a pair of pipes. The spring he played, said she, was "The silly bit chicken, gar cast it a pickle, and it will grow mickle;" and coming down the hill they had the best sport of all: the devil carried the candle and his tail went, "ey wig wag, wig wag!" Margaratus was burnt with her husband.

THE ISLAND WITCHES.

The Orkney and Shetland islanders were rich in witchcraft superstitions. They had all the Norwegian beliefs in fullest, ripest quality, and held to everything that had been handed down to them from Harald Harfagre and his followers. Kelpies and trows, and brownies and trolls, which somehow or other went out with taxation and agriculture, peopled every stream and every meadow, and witches were as many as there were men who loved nature, or women who had a faculty for healing and the instinct of making pets. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century a woman was adjudged a witch because she was seen going from Hilswick to Brecon with a couple of familiars in the form of black crows or corbies, which hopped on each side of her, all the way. Which thing, not being in the honest nature of these fowls to do, she was strangled and burnt. But most frequently the imp took the form of a cat or dog; sometimes of a respectable human being; as was the case about seventy years ago, when it was notorious that the devil, as a good braw countryman, helped a warlock's wife to delve while her husband was engaged at the Haaf. According to the same authority too,[65] not longer ago than this time, when the devil dug like any navvy, a woman of the parish of Dunrossness was known to have a deadly enmity against a boat's crew that had set off from the Haaf. The day was cloudless, but the woman was a witch, and storms were as easy for her to raise as to blow a kiss from the hand. She took a wooden basin, called a _cap_, and set it afloat in a tub of water; then, as if to disarm suspicion, went about her household work, chanting softly to herself an old Norse ditty. After she had sung a verse or two she sent her little child to look at the tub, and see whether the cap was _whummilled_ (turned upside down) or no. The child said the water was stirring but the bowl was afloat. The woman went on singing a little louder; and presently sent the child again to see how matters stood. This time the child said there was a strange swell in the water, but the cap still floated. The woman then sang more loud and fierce; and again she sent. The child came back saying the waters were strangely troubled, and the cap was whummilled. Then she cried out, "The turn is done!" and left off singing. On the same day came word that a fishing yawl had been lost in the Roust, and all on board drowned. The same story is told of some women in the island of Fetlar, who, when a boat's crew had perished in the Bay of Funzie, were found sitting round a well, muttering mysterious words over a wooden bowl supernaturally agitated. The whole thing, as Hibbert says, forcibly reminds one of the old Norse superstition of the Quern Song.

It was no unusual thing for men and women of otherwise peaceable and cleanly life to tamper with the elements in those dim and distant days. Even seventy years ago a man named John Sutherland of Papa Stour was in the habit of getting a fair wind for weather-bound vessels: and the Knoll of Kibister, in the island of Bressay, now called Luggie's Knowe,[66] testifies by its name to the skill and sorrowful fate of a well-known wizard of the seventeenth century. There on that steep hill used Luggie to live, and in the stormiest weather managed somehow always to have his bit of fresh fish: angling with the most perfect success, even when the boats could not come into the bay. When out at sea Luggie had nothing to do but cast out his lines to have as plentiful a dinner as he could desire. "He would out of Neptune's lowest kitchen, bring cleverly up fish well-boiled and roasted;" but strange and mischancy as the art was, his companions got accustomed to it, "and would by a natural courage make a merry meal thereof, not doubting who was cook." But Luggie's cleverness proved fatal to him. Men were not even adept fishers in those days without danger, and jealousy and fear helped to swell the reputation of his natural skill into supernatural power: so he was tried for a sorcerer, and burnt at a stake at Scalloway. We need hardly wonder at the fate of poor Luggie, considering the times. If it were possible to hang two women on the 26th of January, 1681--actually to hang them in the sight of God and this loving pitiful human world, "for calling kings and bishops perjured bloody men,"[67] we need not wonder to what lengths superstition in any of its other forms was carried. We have made a stride since then, with seven-leagued boots winged at the heels.

A family of bright young sons[68] lived on one of the Shetland islands. A certain Norwegian lady had reason to think herself slighted by one of them, and she swore she would have her revenge. The sons were about to cross a voe or ferry; but one was to take his shelty, while the rest were to go by the boat. Mysteriously the shelty was found to have been loosed from its tether, and was gone; so all the heirs male of the race were under the necessity of going by the boat across the voe. It was the close of day---a mild windless evening: not a ripple was on the water, not a cloud in the sky; and no one on either bank heard a cry or saw the waters stir. But the youths never returned home. When they were searched for the next day they could nowhere be found: only the boat drifting to the shore, unharmed and unsteered. When the deed was done the shelty was brought back to its tether as mysteriously as it had been taken away.

Trials and executions still went on; some at Dumfries, and some at Coldingham[69] where Margaret Polwart was publicly rebuked for using charms and incantations to recover her sick child whom "that thief Christian Happer had wronged." But as a neighbour told her very wisely, "They that chant cannot charm, or they that lay on cannot take off the disease, or they that do wrong to any one, cannot recover them," so what was the good of all her notorious cantrips with Jean Hart and Alison Nisbet--the last of such evil fame that she had lately been scratched for a witch--that is, had blood drawn above her breath? Margaret Polwart might be thankful that she got off with only a rebuke for using charms in place of drugs, and consorting with witches to undo witches' work. In 1696, Janet Widdrow and Isobel Cochrane were brought to trial, but not burnt for the present; but two poor creatures, M'Rorie and M'Quicken, did not escape: nor some others, of no special dramatic interest.

And now we come to that marvellous piece of disease and imposture combined, the notorious case of "Bargarran's Daughter."

THE RENFREWSHIRE WITCHES.[70]

Christian Shaw, Bargarran's daughter, was a little girl of about eleven years of age, "of a lively character and well inclined." On the 17th of August, 1696, she saw the woman servant, Katherine Campbell, steal a drink of milk from the can, whereupon she threatened to tell her mother; but Campbell, "being a young woman of a proud and revengeful temper, and much addicted to cursing and swearing upon any light occasion," turned against her vehemently, wishing "that the Devil might harle her soul through hell," and cursing her with violent imprecations. Five days after this, Agnes Naismith, an old woman of bad fame, came into the courtyard, and asked Christian how old she was, and how she did, inquiring also after the health of other members of the family. Christian gave her a pert answer, and there the matter ended; but the next night the young girl was taken with fits, and the first act of the long and mournful tragedy began. In her fits she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith, saying they were cutting her side and otherwise tormenting her; then she struggled as with an unseen enemy, and her body was, now bowed stiff and rigid, resting in an arch on her head and her heels alone, and now shaken with such a strange motion of rising and falling, as it had been a pair of bellows; her tongue was drawn into her throat, and even the great Dr. Brisbane of Glasgow himself was puzzled by what name to call her passion, for she began to vomit strange things, which she said the witches, her tormentors, forced upon her--such as crooked pins, small fowl bones, sticks of candle fir, filthy hay, gravel stones, lumps of candle-grease, and egg-shells. And still she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith; holding long conversations with the former, whom she affirmed to be sitting close by when she was perhaps many miles away, and arguing with her out of the Bible: exhorting her to repent of her sins with more unction than logical clearness of reasoning. Agnes Naismith she took somewhat into favour again; for the poor old woman, having been brought by the parents into the chamber where she lay, and having prayed for her a little simple prayer very heartily, the afflicted damsel condescended to exempt her from further persecution for the moment, saying that she was now her defender and did protect her from the fury of the rest. For the crafty child had seen too well how her first venture had sped not to venture on a broader cast. One day being in her fits she made a grip with her hands as if to catch something, then exclaimed that J. P. was then tormenting her, and that she had got a grip of his jerkin which was "duddie" (tattered) at the elbows; and immediately her mother and aunt heard the tearing of cloth, and the girl showed them in her hands two pieces of red cloth newly torn, where never a bit of red cloth had been before. Then she went off into a swoon or "swerf," and lay as if dead a considerable time. These fits continued with more or less severity far into the winter of the next year, and with ever new victims claimed by her as her tormentors. Now it was Elizabeth Anderson; now James and Thomas Lindsay--the latter a young lad of eleven, "the gley'd or squint-eyed elf," as she called him; now "the scabbed-faced lass," who came to the door to ask alms; and now the weary old Highland body, begging for a night's lodging; then Alexander Anderson, father of Elizabeth; and Jean Fulton, the grandmother; and then Margaret Lang--Pincht Margaret as she was called--"a Name given her by the Devil, from a Pincht Cross cloath, ordinarily worn on her Brow;" and her daughter, Martha Semple. Of the twenty-one people accused by this wicked girl, Margaret Lang and her daughter were the most remarkable--the one for her courage, her fine character and powerful mind, the other for her youth, her beauty, and child-like innocence of nature. When she heard that she was accused, Margaret--who had been advised to get out of the way for a time, but who had answered disdainfully, "Let them quake that dread and fear that need, but I will not gang"--went up straight to Bargarran house, and passing into the chamber where Christian lay, put her arms round her and spoke to her soothingly, saying, "The Lord bless thee and ding the devil frae thee!" She then asked her pointedly if she had ever seen her among her tormentors?--to which the girl said. "No, but she had seen her daughter Martha." Afterwards she retracted this admission and said that Margaret had really afflicted her, but that she was under a spell when asked and could not confess. Martha could not take things so gently. "She was as well-Favoured and Gentill a Lass as you'l look on, and about 17 or 18 years of Age," says an old authority in an anonymous letter written to a couple of initials. Poor Martha! her youth and beauty and passionate distress moved even the bigoted wretches who condemned her; but their compassion led to nothing pitiful or merciful, and the poor, bright, beautiful girl passed into the awful doom of the rest. Then the authorities "questioned" the witches; they were pricked, according to custom and the national law; and "There was not any of them, save Margaret Fulton, but marks were found on them, which were altogether insensible. That a Needle of 3 Inches length was frequently put in without their knowledge, nor would any Blood come from these places." Elizabeth Anderson, a girl of seventeen, a beggar, James Lindsay, of fourteen, and gley'd Thomas, his brother, not yet twelve--who for a halfpenny would turn himself widershins and stop a plough at a word--were found willing and able to confess. Elizabeth Anderson was especially determined that things should not be lost for the want of finding. She said that about twenty days ago her father had told her to go with him to Bargarran's yard, somewhere about noon, where they met a black man with a bonnet on his head, and a band round his neck, whom her father and Agnes Naismith, then present, told her was the devil: that certain people, named, were also in their company; that their discourse was all of Christian Shaw, then lying sick, "whose Life they all promis'd to take away by the stopping of her Breath;" that they all danced in the yard; that her father "Discharged her to tell anything she saw, or she would be Torn in Pieces: and that she was more Affraied of the forsaid persons than she was of the Devil." This confession was made on the 5th of February, 1697. A few days later her imagination was more lively. About seven years ago, she said, as she was playing round the door of her grandmother, Jean Fulton's, house, she saw "ane black grim man" go into the house to her grandmother, where he abode for a while talking. Jean bade her take the gentleman by the hand, and he would give her "ane Bony Black, new Coat; which accordingly she did." But his hand was cold and she was afeard: and then he vanished away. The same thing happened once again, when the black gentleman and her grandmother fell a-talking together by "rounding in other's ears," but the girl understood not what they said. This time she would not touch his hand for all his promises of bran new clothes; so "the gentleman went away in a flight," and she saw him no more for long after. The next time was when her father "desired her to go with him through the Country and seek their Meat; to which she replyed she need not seek her Meat, seeing she might have Work:" but her father prevailed, and took her to a moor where above twenty people were assembled; whose names she gives in a formidable muster. Now the devil tempted her anew with meat and clothes, but she would not consent; so he and her father stepped aside and conferred together. Their meeting this day was for the destruction of a certain minister's child, which they were to effect by means of a wax picture and pins. Another time it was for the destruction of another minister's child by the same means, and she heard Margaret Rodger say, "Stay a little, till I stop ane Pin in the Heart of it:" which accordingly she did. This time her father took her on his back over the water to Kilpatrick in a Flight, saying Mount and Fly. She was with the witch crew when they drowned Brighouse by upsetting his boat, and when they strangled a child with a sea napkin: after which they all danced with the devil "in ane black Coat, ane Blew Bonnet, ane Blew Band," who played the pipes for them, and gave them each a piece of an unchristened bairn's liver to eat, so that they should never confess if apprehended. With other abominations too foul to be repeated.

The same day, February 18th, James Lindsay, the elder of the two brothers, confessed. Jean Fulton was his grandmother too, and he said that one day, when she met him, she took his little round hat and plack from him. Being loath to part with the same, he ran after her crying for them: which she refusing, he called her an old witch, and ran away. Whereupon she threatened him. Eight days after this, as he was begging through the country near Inchannan where she lived, he met her again; and this time she had with her "ane black grim man with black cloaths, ane black Hat and blew Band," who offered his hand, which James took and which he found cold as it gript him straitly. The gentleman asked if he would serve him for a Bonny black coat and a black hat, and several other things, to which he replied "Yes, I'll do't." He then went to all the meetings, and saw all the people and did all the things that Elizabeth had spoken of; even to strangling Montgomerie's bairn with a sea napkin at twelve o'clock at night, while the servant girl was watching by the cradle. Young Thomas the gley'd followed next, confessing to just the same things, even to the liver of the "uncrissened bairn," which all eat save Elizabeth and their two selves: a slip-by that accounted for their confessions. And now justice had a good handful to begin with, so the work of accusation went briskly forward. Bargarran's daughter still continued bringing out crooked pins and stones and all sorts of unmentionable filth from her mouth, and still went on quarrelling with the devil whom she called an old sow, and holding conversations with the apparitions of her tormentors, still mixed up fraud with epilepsy, and lies and craft and wicked guile with hysteria, till the witch-fires were fairly lighted, and seven of the poor wretches "done to death." Among whom brave Margaret and her beautiful child held the most prominent place. Never for a moment did Margaret Lang lose her courage or self-possession. Seeing a farmer whom she knew, among the crowd assembled round the gallows, she called out to him bitterly, "that he would now thrive like a green bay-tree, for there would be no innocent blood shed that day;" but what she meant for irony the people took for confession. When she was burned, the answer of a spectator to one who asked if the execution was over, showed what feeling they had about her: "There's ane o' the witches in hell, an' the rest 'ill shune follow!" said he contentedly. Another man, whose stick was taken to push back the legs of the poor wretches as they were thrust out of the flames, when it was returned to him, flung it into the flames, saying, "I'll tak nae stick hame wi' me to nay hous that has touched a witch." When all was over and the sacrifice was complete, Bargarran's daughter declared herself satisfied and cured; no more "bumbees" came to pinch her--no more charms of balls of hair or waxen eggs were laid beneath her bed--no more apparitions thronged to vex her, nor had she fits or tossings, foamings or strange swellings as of old; the devil left off tempting her with promises of a fine gentleman for a husband; the witches no longer allured her by phantom aprons filled with phantom almonds; the Lord "helped the poor daft child," as Mrs. M. had prayed, though she was scarce worth the helping, and the world was oppressed with her lies no more. But the blood of the murdered innocent lay red on the ground, and cried aloud to heaven for vengeance against the murderers. The case of Bargarran's daughter has been always accepted as one of the most puzzling on record; but when may not mankind be puzzled if they have but sufficient credulity? Subtract from this account the possible and the certain--the possible frauds and the certain lies--and what is left? A diseased girl, hysterical and epileptic, full of hallucinations and pretended fancies, with a certain quickness of hand which the tremendous gullibility of her auditory rendered yet more facile--unscrupulous, mendacious; the only thing surprising in the whole matter was that there was not one man of sufficient coolness of judgment, or quickness of perception, to see through the imposture and set his grip on it ere it passed. Dickie and Mitchell, who a few years back visited the house where all this took place, found a slit or hole in the wooden partition between her bedroom and the room next it; a slit, evidently made purposely, and not a natural defect in the wood, and so placed that when the bed was made up (the bed of richly-carved oak yet stands or stood there) it could not be seen by any one in the room. This little fact seems to speak volumes, and to help materially towards establishing the questions of fraud and connivance. The remote sequel is the only consoling feature in the case. From being the most notorious impostor and the most cruel, false, and deadly persecutor of her time, Bargarran's daughter, as Mrs. Miller, became one of the best and most famous spinners of fine and delicate thread. She caused certain machinery to be brought from Holland, and wrought at her spinning wheel with all the intelligence and zeal that, earlier, had been so miserably employed to the ruin and destruction of her fellow-creatures. It is to be hoped that the coolness and reflection of maturity gave her grace to repent of the sins of her girlhood, and that after-penitence wiped out the terrible stains of youthful lying and murder.

MISCELLANEOUS.

That same year also Sir John Maxwell, of Pollok, and some other gentlemen, were commissioned to try two poor women, Mary Millar and Elspeth M'Ewen, and if guilty adjudge them to death; which they were found to be, and adjudged accordingly; and a few months after, Margaret Laird--still in Renfrewshire--was reputed to have been "under ane extraordinary and most lamentable trouble, falling into strange and horrible fits, judged by all who have seen her to be preternatural, arising from the devil and his instruments." The suspected witches who were accused of troubling her, were seized and put upon their trial. So was Mary Morrison, spouse of Francis Duncan; but her husband petitioned so earnestly for her release for sake of her "numerous poor family" starving in neglect at home, and there being no kind of proof against her, she was at length released and set at liberty. "The Lord-Advocate soon after reported to the Privy Council a letter he had received from the Sheriff of Renfrewshire, stating that 'the persons imprisoned in that county as witches are in a starving condition, and that those who informed against them are passing from them, and the sheriff says he will send them in prisoners to Edinburgh Tolbooth, unless they be quickly tried.' His lordship was recommended to ask the sheriff to support the prisoners till November next, when they would probably be tried, and the charges would be disbursed by the treasury. A distinct allowance of a groat a day was ordered on the 12th of January, 1699, for each of the Renfrewshire witches."[71]

In July of the same year, Ross-shire contributed a famous quota. Twelve luckless creatures were reported at once as being guilty of the "diabolical crimes and charms of witchcraft," and by the 2nd of January, 1700, two of them had confessed, and were sentenced to such arbitrary punishment as the committee might think proper. "This is the first appearance of an inclination in the central authorities to take mild views of witchcraft," says Chambers; but we have not seen the last of capital punishments, for on the 20th of November, 1702, Margaret Myles was hanged at Edinburgh. That she was a witch was proved not only by her own confession, but by her inability to say the Lord's Prayer, even when the minister, Mr. George Andrews, tried to teach her. When he desired her to pray "her heart was so obdured that she answered she could not; for, as she confessed, she was in covenant with the devil, who had made her renounce her baptism." He then wished her to say the Lord's Prayer after him, and she began, but she would say nothing but "Our Father which wart in heaven," and could not by any means be got to say the right word. He then reproached her, saying, "How could she bid him pray for her, since she could not pray for herself?" and, singing two verses of the 51st Psalm, he made her show a little penitence. Then he essayed her again, trying to make her repeat after him, "I renounce the devil," but she would only say, "I unce the devil;" "for by no means would she say distinctly that she renounced the devil, and adhered unto her baptism, but that she unced the devil, and hered unto her baptism. The only sign of repentance she gave was after the napkin had covered her face, for then she said, 'Lord, take me out of the devil's hands, and put me in God's.'"

The next year, "The Rigwoodie Witch," lean Marion Lillie of Spott, was had before the Kirk Session to account for her dealings in the village. She was a passionate-tongued old dame, who had handled roughly one of her neighbours while in the condition that looked forward to Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup; so roughly, indeed, that Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup were forestalled, and the poor woman was brought to an unpleasant pass; so the Rigwoodie witch got something not so pleasant as a month's nursing, and was put out of the way of handling pregnant women roughly for the future.

THE STIRK'S FOOT.[72]

Jean Neilson lived in Torryburn, a village in the west of Fife, and she and Lillias Adie, a woman of more than equivocal reputation, were not on the best of terms. Jean Neilson was but a poor sickly body, full of fancies and uncatalogued ailments; and because she had no scientific name to give them, she gave Lillias the credit of having created them by her magic. She swore that she was bewitched, and that old Lillias was the bewitcher. Upon which the ministers and elders of the kirk in Torryburn met in solemn conclave on the 29th of July, and called Lillias before them to give an account of her bad practices. Lillias had no mind that they should lose their trouble. She confessed herself a witch without further ado; said how that she had met the devil by the side of a "stook" in the harvest field, where she had renounced her baptism and accepted him on the instant as her lord and lover; how he had embraced her, when she found his skin cold, and saw his feet cloven like a "stirk's." Since then she had joined in dances with him and others whom she named; for Lillias, like all the rest, seemed to think there was safety in a multitude, and delated several of the parish, to bear her company in her uncomfortable position; and she told how, at the back of Patrick Sands' house in Vellyfield, they were lighted by a mysterious light, just sufficient to let them see each other's faces, and to show the devil with a cap covering his ears and neck. The minister and elders had now rich game in view, and they held meeting after meeting to examine those whom Lillias accused, and feed their ears with all the wild and monstrous tales they chose to pour into them. But what became of them eventually no one now knows: only of a surety Lillias Adie was burned "within the sea mark," and Jean Neilson might now bear her uncatalogued ailments in peace. The minister of Torryburn at that time was one Allen Logan--the Reverend Allen Logan--notorious for his skill in detecting witches, and his zeal in hunting them down. When administering the communion he would flash his eye through the congregation and say harshly, as by knowledge, "You witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord," casting a ball for the conscience-stricken to kick at; when, ten to one, some poor old trembling wretch would totter up, and so go mumbling through the doors, "thus exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards." He was always "dinging" against witchcraft; and one day a woman called Helen Kay took up her stool and went out of the church. She said she thought he was "daft" "to be always dinging against witches thae' gait;" but the elders thought differently, and Helen Kay was convicted of profanity, and ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.

THE HORRIBLE MURDER OF JANET CORNFOOT.[73]

While Lillias Adie was being burned in the west of Fife, Beatrix Laing, at Pittenweem in the east, was put to sore trouble. Patrick Morton, a youth of sixteen "free from any known vice," sent up a petition to the Privy Council (June 13, 1704), stating, that being employed by his father to make some nails for a ship lying off Pittenweem, Beatrix Laing, spouse to William Brown, tailor, and late treasurer of the burgh, came and demanded some nails. He "modestly" refused her, saying that he was engaged in another job, and could not therefore work for her; whereupon she went away, "threatening to be revenged, which did somewhat frighten him, because he knew she was under a bad fame and reputed for a witch." The next day, on passing Beatrix's door, "he observed a timber vessel with some water and fire coal in it at the door, which made him apprehend that it was a charm laid for him, and the effect of her threatening; and immediately he was seized with such a weakness in his limbs that he could hardly stand or walk." For many weeks this strange kind of lingering disease and discomfort went on, he "still growing worse, having no appetite, and his body strangely emaciated," all because of Beatrix having "slockened" fire coals in a vessel as a malevolent charm for him; till about May the disease ripened, and the symptoms of hysteria and epilepsy presented themselves. He swelled prodigiously; his breathing was like the blowing of a pair of bellows; his body was rigid and inflexible; his tongue was drawn into his mouth; and he cried out vehemently against Beatrix Laing and others--for these accusations never came alone; professing to know his tormentors by their touch if brought to him, although his eyes were blinded, and the bystanders held their peace. In short, he played the same antics here in the east as Bargarran's daughter had played in the west. Beatrix and the rest were flung into prison, and every effort was made to induce them to confess. Beatrix was pricked, and kept without sleep for five days and nights; but she held out manfully. She would not consent to accept the modest youth's interpretation of his illness, and denied strongly all hand in it, and all trafficking with witch charms or unholy arts. At last she was conquered. Sleeplessness and torture did their appointed work, and she made a rambling statement of baptismal renunciation, and the like, delating Janet Cornfort and others, which confession she recanted as soon as she had got a little strength; and specially that part where she had spoken of her fine packs of wool which she had sold so well at the market, coming home afterwards on a big black horse, which she gave into her husband's hands. Her husband, she had said, was embarrassed with this big black horse, and asked what he should do with it? to which she had answered, "Cast his bridle on his neck and you will be quit of him." So the horse flew off overhead with a great noise, and Beatrix Laing's startled husband for the first time understood its real character.

In revenge at her obduracy the magistrates "put her in the stocks, and then carried her to the Thieves' Hole, and from that transported her to a dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse; and in this condition she lay for five months." All this while the magistrates of the burgh were pressing on the Privy Council the absolute need of trying her; but the Earl of Balcarres and Lord Anstruther, two members of the council connected with the district, interposed their influence, and got the poor creature set at liberty;--"brought her off as a dreamer," says the anonymous pamphlet angrily. But she was forced to turn her face from Pittenweem, and "wandered about in strange places, in the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but dared not come near her own house," for fear of the fury and rage of the people: dying at last "undesired" in her bed at St. Andrews.

Beatrix was wandering about in strange places, safe if sorrowful, but Alexander Macgregor clinched her muttered charge against Janet Cornfoot by accusing her of perpetually haunting him--she and two other witches, and his Cloutieship along with them. They tormented him chiefly in the night time, while he was sleeping in his bed. Janet, under torture confessed; but retracted immediately after, saying that the minister himself had beaten her with his staff to make her speak out: and there being considerable doubt of her guilt in the minds of the gentry of the district, even of the chastising minister himself, she was allowed to escape, by connivance. But another minister of the neighbourhood, with more zeal than humanity and more grace than knowledge, stopped her in her flight, and sent her back to Pittenweem. There the mob got hold of her. They had been fearfully excited by Beatrix Laing's acquittal and Janet's escape, and they were not disposed to let this unexpected glut to their vengeance go. They seized poor Janet Cornfoot, tied her up hard in a rope, beat her unmercifully, then dragged her by the heels through the streets and along the shore. "The appearance of a bailie for a brief space dispersed the crowd, but only to show how easily the authorities might have protected their victim if they had chosen." Resuming their horrible work, the rabble tied Janet to a rope stretching between a vessel in the harbour and the shore, swinging her to and fro, and amusing themselves by pelting her with stones. Tiring at length of this sport, they let her down with a sharp fall upon the beach, beat her again unmercifully, and finally covering her with a door, pressed her to death (Jan. 30, 1705). Janet's daughter was in the town, and knew what was taking place down by that blood-stained shore, but she dared not interfere; and during all the time this hideous murder was going on--lasting for nearly three hours--neither magistrate nor minister came forward to protect or interpose. Are verily and in truth "the powers that be ordained of God," or has not the devil sometimes something to do with the laying on of hands?--so much of the devil, at least, as is represented by ignorance, inhumanity, superstition, and cowardice, always conspicuous qualities of the more zealous of every denomination.

About this time,[74] Thomas Brown, another of the accused, died of "hunger and hardship" in prison; and at the close of the year, two Inverness men, George and Lachlan Rattray, were executed, being found "guilty of the horrid crimes of mischievous charms, by witchcraft and malefice, sorcery or necromancy." And many witches were also burnt on the top of Spott Loan.

THE SPELL OF THE SLAP.[75]

In 1708, William Stensgar, of Southside, in Orkney, had rheumatism. He sent to an old beggar-woman, called Catherine Taylor--a cripple herself, but none the less qualified to heal others by her magic arts. She came to him about an hour before sunrise and took the case in hand, bidding him follow her till they came to a certain kind of gate or stile, called a slap or grind; William's wife accompanying them with a stoup of water. At this slap Catherine touched his knee, saying, "As I was going by the way I met the Lord Jesus Christ in the likeness of another man; he asked me what tidings I had to tell? I said I had no tidings to tell, but I am full of pain, and can neither gang nor stand. Thou shalt go to the holy kirk, and thou shalt gang round about, and then sit down upon thy knees, and say thy prayers to the Lord, and then thou shalt be as heal as the hour when Christ was born." After this precious charm, which the old cripple said had been taught her when a child, she repeated the 23rd Psalm; and then the evil spirit which had caused the rheumatism was assumed to be "telled out" into the stoup of water; at all events William Stensgar would have no more of it. Then the water was emptied out over the slap or gate so that the next person passing by the stile might get it instead of William. One man who had watched this devilry from the beginning, evaded the foul fiend by pushing his way through the hedge higher up; but another unfortunate wretch, not so lucky or not so early a riser, coming blundering over the stile as usual, got laid hold of by the fiend which William Stensgar had shaken off, and was holden by it hardly.

THE PLAGUE OF CATS.[76]

Year by year witches became scarcer, none of any special note presenting themselves till we come to the case of Margaret Nin-Gilbert, of Caithness, which happened in the year 1718; the same year as that in which the minister of Redcastle lost his life by witchcraft, and Mr. M'Gill's house at Kinross (he was minister there) was so egregiously troubled by a spirit which nipped the sheets and stuck pins into eggs and meat, and clipt away the laps of a gentlewoman's hood and a servant maid's gown tail, and flung stones down the chimney, which "wambled a space" on the floor, and then took a flight out of the window, and threw the minister's bible into the fire, and spoilt the baking, and played all sorts of mad pranks to disquiet the family and defy God. If such things as these could be done in the light of the sun, why, should not Margaret Nin-Gilbert have supernatural power? Nin-Gilbert had a friend, one Margaret Olson, a woman of it is said wicked behaviour, whom Mr. Frazer put out of her house, taking as his tenant instead one William Montgomerie. Upon this Margaret Olson went to her friend Nin-Gilbert, the notorious witch, and besought her to harm Mr. Frazer; but Mr. Frazer being a gentleman of rank and fortune was defended from the witches, and Nin-Gilbert confessed she had no power or inclination to hurt him. However, one night as he was crossing a bridge, they attempted him, but succeeded not; and he, on being questioned, said he perfectly remembered "his horse making a great adoe at that place, but that by the Lord's goodness he escaped." Also he had a great sickness at the time these women were taken, but he had common sense enough to refuse to ascribe it to them. Finding that they could not prevail against Mr. Frazer, they turned their attention to Montgomerie, "mason, in Burnside of Scrabster," who was also under the ban for having accepted the tenancy of which Margaret Olson had been dispossessed. Suddenly his house became so infested with cats that it was no longer safe for his family to remain there. He himself was away, but his wife sent to him five times, threatening that if he did not return home to protect them, she would flit to Thurso; and his servant left them suddenly, and in mid term, because five of these cats came one night to the fireside where she was alone, and began speaking among themselves with human and intelligible voices. So William Montgomerie, mason at Scrabster, returned home to do battle with the enemy. The cats came in their old way and in their old numbers; and William prepared his best. On Friday night, the 28th of November, one of the cats got into a chest with a hole in it, and when she put her head out of the hole, William made a lunge at her with his sword, which "cutt hir," but for all that he could not hold her. He then opened the chest, and his servant, William Geddes, stuck his dirk into her hind quarters and pinned her to the chest. After which, Montgomerie beat her with his sword and cast her out for dead; but the next morning she was gone; so there was no doubt as to her true character. Four or five nights after this, his servant, being in bed, "cryed out that Some of these catts had come in on him." Montgomerie ran to his aid, wrapt his plaid about the cat and thrust his dirk through her body, then smashed her head with the back of an axe, and cast her out like the first. The next morning she too was gone, and there was proof positive for another case. So as none of these cats belonged to the neighbourhood, and there were eight of them assembled together in one night, "this looking like witchcraft, it being threatened that none should thrive in my said house," William Montgomerie made petition to the Sherrif-Deput of Caithness, to visit "some person of bad fame," who was reported to have fallen sick immediately on this encounter, and search out if she had any wounds on her body or not. "This representation seeming all the time to be very incredulous and fabulous, the sheriff had no manner of regard yrto." But when, on the 12th of February, Margaret Nin-Gilbert was seen by one of her neighbours "to drop at her own door one of her leggs from the midle, and she, being under bad fame for witchcraft, the legg, black and putrified, was brought before the Sheriff-depute" (not the sheriff himself, the Earl of Caithness, who might have had a little more common sense)--then the said Sheriff-depute ordered Nin-Gilbert to be seized and examined. Margaret made short work of it. Being interrogated the 8th of February, 1719, she confessed that she was under compact with the devil, whom she had met in the likeness of a black man as she was travelling some long time byegone in ane evening; confessed also that he sometimes appeared to her as a great black horse, and other times as if riding on a black horse, and sometimes as a black cloud, and sometimes as a black hen. Confessed also that she was at William Montgomerie's house that evening, when he attacked her as a cat, and that he broke her leg with the dirk or axe, which since had fallen off from the rest of her body: also, that Margaret Olson was there with her, who, being stronger than she did cast her on the dirk when her leg was broken. She then delated four other women, one of whom, Helen Andrew, had been so crushed and maimed by Montgomerie, "that she dyed that same night of her wounds or few days yrafter:" and another, M'Huistan, "cast herself a few days afterwards from the rocks of Borrowstoun into the sea, since which time she was never seen; while a third, Jannet Pyper, she identified as having a red petticoat on her. Asked how they managed not to be discovered said, the devil raised a fog or mist to conceal them." When her confession was ended, her accomplices were apprehended; but she herself died in prison in a fortnight's time. Margaret Olson was then examined. She was "tryed in the shoulders" (for witches' marks), "where there were several small spots, some read, some blewish; after a needle was driven in with great force almost to the eye she felt it not. Mr. Innes, Mr. Oswald, minister, and several honest women, and Bailzie Forbes, were witnesses to this. And further, that while the needle was in her shoulder, as aforesaid, she said, 'Am not I ane honest woman now?'" So this instance of human wickedness and folly ended by the usual method of the cord and the stake.

THE YOUNG HONOURABLE'S DECEITS.

January, 1720, saw distress and confusion at Calder in Mid Lothian. Lord Torphichen's third son, the Honourable Patrick Sandilands, was bewitched, and the whole country was in excitement. If the devil could touch a Lord's son, who was safe? There was no doubt of the fact, let who would deny it. Lord Torphichen's son though he was, the Honourable Patrick Sandilands was worse holden than the meanest hind on the estate. He was buffeted about the room; flung down in trances, from which no horsewhippings--and it is to be hoped he had plenty of them, and well laid on--could revive him; he pronounced prophecies; was lifted up in the air; taken off long journeys between the space of two flashes of light; had the gift of clairvoyance; and put out all the candles by his very presence--his powers depending, as such powers generally do, on darkness and confusion for their perfect development. Lord Torphichen soon left off the use of the horsewhip, and he and all the family came to the conclusion that the Honourable Patrick was bewitched. So they got hold of the witch, a brutish, ignorant, half-witted woman living in the village of Calder, and put her in prison, waiting her confession. As for that, it was not difficult to get at. Yes, she was a witch; had been a witch for many years; had once given the devil her own dead child to make a roast of; had made an image of the young laird; and had three associates, two women and a man. Mad William Mitchell, the Tinklarian Doctor,[77] as he was called, went on foot in ill weather without food from the West Bow to Lord Torphichen's house at Calder, to see what he could do towards discovering the devil in the witches. This was on the 14th of January--the day of the solemn fast, which was all the help that the awakening reason of the times would allow the Honourable Patrick Sandilands. True, the witch and her confederates were in prison, but there was no gallows planted, and no fire set: only the ministers, and elders, and saints, and people, convened in solemn and sacred prayer, to beseech God to drive out the devil from a lying, mischievous, hysterical lad. But crazy William Mitchell took very little by this move, Lord Torphichen not favouring his pretensions to special and private illumination. The sermon was preached in the Calder Kirk by the Rev. Mr. John Wilkie, minister of Uphall, the sorcerers being present, and was found so powerful that the devil was fairly exorcised, and the boy soon after wholly recovered. In time he went to sea, rose to the command of an East Indiaman, but perished in a storm, leaving a meritorious name singularly stained with boyish sins. "It brings us strangely near to this wild-looking affair," says Chambers, "that the present Lord Torphichen (1860) is only _nephew_ to the witch-boy of Calder."

THE LAST OF THE WITCHES.

And now we draw near to the close of this fatal superstition. In 1726, Woodrow notes "some pretty odd accounts of witches," had from a couple of Ross-shire men, but fails to give us very accurate details, save only that one of them at her death "confessed that they had, by sorcery, taken away the sight of one of the eyes of an Episcopal minister, who lost the sight of his eye upon a sudden, and could give no reason for it." And early in the year of 1727[78] the last witch-fire was kindled with which the air of bonnie Scotland was polluted. Two poor Highland women, a mother and daughter, were brought before Captain David Ross of Littledean, deputy-sheriff of Sutherland, charged with witchcraft and consorting with the devil. The mother was accused of having used her daughter as her "horse and hattock," causing her to be shod by the devil, so that she was ever after lame in both hands and feet; and the fact being satisfactorily proved, and Captain David Ross being well assured of the same, the poor old woman was put into a tar-barrel and burned at Dornoch in the bright month of June. "And it is said that after being brought out to execution, the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were getting ready." The daughter escaped: afterwards she married and had a son who was as lame as herself; and lame in the same manner too; though it does not seem that he was ever shod by the devil and witch-ridden. "And this son," says Sir Walter Scott, in 1830, "was living so lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in her own right."

This, then, is the last execution for witchcraft in Scotland; and in June, 1736, the Acts Anentis Witchcraft were formally repealed. Henceforth, to the dread of the timid, and the anger of the pious, the English Parliament distinctly opposed the express letter of the Law of God, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live;" and declared the text upon which so much critical absurdity had been talked, and in support of which so much innocent blood had been shed, vain, superstitious, impossible, and contrary to that human reason which is the highest law of God hitherto revealed unto men. But if Parliament could stay executions it could not remove beliefs, nor give rationality in place of folly. Not more than sixty years ago an old woman named Elizabeth M'Whirter[79] was "scratched" by one Eaglesham, in the parish of Colmonel, Ayrshire, because his son had fallen sick, and the neighbours said he was bewitched. Poor old Bessie M'Whirter was forced over the hills to the young man's house, a distance of three miles, and there made to kneel by his bedside and repeat the Lord's Prayer. When she had finished, the youth's father took a rusty nail and scratched the poor old creature's brow in the form of a cross; scratched it so effectually that it was many weeks in healing, and the scar remained to the last day of her life. If Elizabeth M'Whirter had lived a generation earlier, she might have run a race with death and a tar barrel, and been defeated at the end, like the poor old wretch at Dornoch.

But still the old faith lingers in those beautiful vales, and hides in the fastnesses of the mountain glens; still brownies haunt the ruined places, and witches send forth blight and bale at their will; still the elfin people ride on the whirlwind and dance in the moonlight; and the hill and the flood and the brae and the streamlet have their attendant spirits which vie with the churchyard ghost in impotent malevolence to men. And the gift of second sight, though dying out because of these degenerate times of utilitarianism and power-loom weaving, is yet to be found where the old blood runs thickest, and the old ideas are least disturbed; and still the whole nation clings with spasmodic force to its gloomy creed of the Predestined and the Elect, and holds by the early faith from whose narrow bounds others have emerged into a brighter and a wider path. No more witch-fires are now lighted on the Castle Hill; no more grave and reverend divines give themselves up, like Mr. John Aird, to discovering the devil's mark stamped visibly on human flesh; yet the heart of the people has not abandoned its ancient God, and though the altars may be dressed with the flowers of another season, and the name upon the plinth be carved in other characters, yet is the indwelling idol the same. The God which Calvinistic Scotland yet worships is the same God as that to which the witches and wizards of old were sacrificed; he is the God of Superstition, the God of Condemnation, in whose temple Nature has no place, and Humanity no rights.

The Witches of England.

"Every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr'd brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue, having a ragged coate on her back, a skull-cap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a Dog or Cat by her side, is not only suspected but pronounced for a witch," says John Gaule;[80] while Reginald Scot[81] puts forth as his experience:--"One sort of such as are said to be witches, are women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, fowle, and full of wrinckles; poor, sullen, superstitious, and Papists; or such as know no religion; in whose drousie minds the devill hath gotten a fine seat; so as, what mischief, mischance, calamity or slaughter is brought to passe, they are easily perswaded the same is done by themselves; imprinting in their minds an earnest and constant imagination thereof. They are leane and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish; and not much differing from them that are thought to be possessed with spirits, so firm and steadfast in their opinions, as whosoever shall only have respect to the constancy of their words uttered, would easily believe they were true indeed." Dr. Harsnet, in his "Declaration of Popish Impostures," gives the subject a masterly touch of common sense and satire:--"These things," saith he, "are raked together out of old doating Heathen Histriographers, Wizzardizing Augurs, Imposturizing Soothsayers, Dreaming Poets, Chimerical Conceiters, and Coiners of Fables, &c. Out of these is shap'd the true Idea of a _Witch_, an old weather-beaten Crone, having her Chin and Knees meeting for Age, walking like a Bow leaning on a Staff, Hollow-Ey'd, Untooth'd, Furrow'd on her Face, having her Lips trembling with the Palsy, going mumbling in the Streets: One that hath forgotten her Pater Noster, and yet hath a shrewd Tongue to call a Drab a Drab. If she hath learn'd of an old Wife in a Chimney End Pax, Max, Fax, for a Spell; or can say Sir John Grantham's Curse for the Miller's Eels, All ye that have stolen the Miller's Eels, laudate Dominum de Coelis: And all they that have consented thereto, Benedicamus Domino: Why then beware, look about you, my Neighbours. If any of you have a Sheep sick of the Giddies, or a Stag of the Mumps, or a Horse of the Staggers, or a Knavish Boy of the School, or an idle Girl of the Wheel, or a young Drab of the Sullens, and hath not Fat enough for her Porrage, or Butter enough for her Bread, and she hath a little Help of the Epilepsy or Cramp, to teach her to roll her Eyes, wry her Mouth, gnash her Teeth, startle with her Body, hold her Arms and Hands stiff, &c. And then with an old Mother Nobs hath by Chance call'd her Idle young Housewife, or bid the Devil scratch her; then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the Witch, and the young Girl is Owl-blasted, &c." Then he goes on to say, with more force and right judgment than one could have expected from one of his generation:--"They that have their Brains baited, and their Fancies distemper'd with the Imaginations, and Apprehensions of Witches, Conjurers, and Fairies, and all that Lymphatical Chimæra, I find to be marshall'd in one of these five Ranks: Children, Fools, Women, Cowards, sick or black melancholick discompos'd Wits."

These then are the sentiments of three somewhat wise and sane men, who lived in a time of universal madness, and gave their minds to the task of stemming the raging torrent. For the whole world was overrun with witches. From every town came crowds of these lost and damned souls; from every hovel peered out the cursing witch, or cried aloud for help the stricken victims. These poor and old and wretched beings, upon whose heads lighted the wrath of a world, and against whom every idle lad had a curse and a stone to fling at his will, were held capable of all but omnipotence. They could destroy the babe in the womb and make the "mother of many children childless among women;" they could kill with a look and disable with a curse; bring storms or sunshine as they listed; by their "witch-ropes," artfully woven, draw to themselves all the profit of their neighbours' barns and breweries; yet ever remained poor and miserable, glad to beg a mouthful of meat, or a can of sour milk from the hands of those whom they could ruin by half a dozen muttered words; they could take on themselves what shapes they would, and transport themselves whither they would: no bolt or bar kept them out, no distance by land or sea was too great for them to accomplish; a straw--a broomstick--the serviceable imp ever at hand--was enough for them; and with a pot of magic ointment, and a charm of spoken gibberish, they might visit the king on his throne, or the lady in her bower, to do what ill was in their hearts against them, or to gather to themselves what gain and store they would. Yet with all this power the superstitious world of the time saw nothing doubtful or illogical in the fact of their exceeding poverty, and never stayed to think that if they could transport themselves through the air to any distance they chose, they would be but slippery holding in prison, and not very likely to remain there for the pleasure of being tortured and burnt at the end. But neither reason nor logic had anything to do with the matter. The whole thing rested on fear, and that practical atheism of fear, which denies the power of God and the wholesome beauty of Nature, to exalt in their stead the supremacy of the Devil. This belief in the Devil's material presence and power over men was the dark chain that bound them all. Even the boldest opponent of the Witchcraft Delusion dared not fling it off; not the bravest man or freest thinker could shake his mind clear of this terrible trammel, this bugbear, this mere phantasm of human fear and ignorance, this ghastly lie and morbid delusion, or abandon the slavish worship of Satan for the glad freedom of God and Nature. It was much when such men as Scot,[82] and Giffard,[83] and Gaule of Staughton,[84] Sir Robert Filmer,[85] Ady,[86] Wagstaffe,[87] Webster,[88] Hutchinson,[89] and half a dozen more shining lights could bring themselves to deny the supernatural power of a few half-crazed old beggar-women, and plead for humanity and mercy towards them, instead of cruelty and condemnation; but not one dare take the wider step beyond, and deny the existence of that phantom fiend, belief in whom wrought all this misery and despair. Even the very best of the time gave in to this delusion, and discussed gravely the properties and proportions of what we know now were mere lies.

"We find the illustrious author of the 'Novum Organum' sacrificing to courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the ingredients for a witch's ointment;--Selden maintaining that crimes of the imagination may be punished with death;--The detector of Vulgar Errors, and the most humane of physicians giving the casting vote to the vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;--Hobbes, ever sceptical, penetrating, and sagacious, yet here paralyzed and shrinking from the subject, as if afraid to touch it;--The adventurous explorer, who sounded the depths and channels of the 'Intellectual System' along all the 'wide-watered' shores of antiquity, running after witches to hear them recite the Common Prayer and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or innocence;--The gentle spirit of Dr. Henry More, girding on the armour of persecution, and rousing itself from a Platonic reverie on the Divine Life to assume the hood and cloak of a familiar of the Inquisition;--and the patient and inquiring Boyle, putting aside for a while his searches for the grand Magisterium, and listening, as if spell-bound, with gratified attention to stories of witches at Oxford and devils at Mascon."[90] In the Church and amongst the more notoriously "religious" men of the time it was worse. In Archbishop Cranmer's 'Articles of Visitation' (1549) is this clause:--"You shall enquire whether you know of any that use Charms, Sorcery, Enchantments, Soothsaying, or any like Craft invented by the Devil;" and Bishop Jewel, preaching before Queen Elizabeth (1558), informed her how that "witches and sorcerers within these last few years are marvellously increased in your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto their death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft; I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject.... These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness." At the next Parliament the new Bill against the detestable sin of witchcraft was passed, and Strype says, partly on account of the Lord Bishop's earnest objurgation. Dalton's[91] 'Country Justice' (1655) shows to what a pass, a century later, witchcraft had come in credulous England. Truly Scot was right when he said that his greatest adversaries were "young ignorance and old customs." They have always been the greatest adversaries of all truth. Of late, thank God, the march of humanity has been steadily, if slowly, towards the daylight; but at present you and I, my reader, have to do with the most debasing superstition that ever afflicted history, in the matter of those poor wretched servants of the devil--those witches and wizards, who somehow managed to lose on all sides--to suffer in time and be ruined for eternity, and to get only ill-will and ill-usage from man and fiend alike.

THE WITCH OF BERKELEY.

One of our earliest English witches, so early indeed that she becomes mythical and misty and out of all possible proportion, was the celebrated Witch of Berkeley,[92] who got the reward of her sins in the middle of the ninth century, leaving behind her a tremendous lesson, by which, however, after generations did not much profit. The witch had been rich and the witch had been gay, but the moment of reckoning had to come in the morning; the feast had been noble and well enjoyed, but the terrible account had to be paid when all was over; and the poor witch found her ruddy-cheeked apple, now that the rind was off and eaten, filled with nothing but dust and ashes--which she must digest as best she may. As the moment of her death approached, she called for the monks and the nuns of the neighbouring monasteries, and sent for her children to hear her confession; and then she told them of the compact she had made, and how the Devil was to come for her body as well as her soul. "But," said she, "sew me in the hide of a stag, then place me in a stone coffin, and fasten in the covering lead and iron. Upon this place another stone, and chain the whole down with heavy chains of iron. Let fifty psalms be sung each night, and fifty masses be said by day, to break the power of the demons. If you can thus keep my body for three nights safe, on the fourth day you may bury it--the Devil will have sought and not found." The monks and the nuns did as they were desired; and, on the first night, though the demons kept up a loud howling and wailing outside the church, the priests conquered, and the old witch slept undisturbed. On the second night the demons were more fierce and clamorous, and the monks and the nuns told their beads faster and faster; but the fiends were getting more powerful as time went on, and at last broke open the gates of the monastery, in spite of prayer and bolt and bar; and two chains of the coffin burst asunder, but the middle one held firm. On the third night the fiends raged sore and wild. The monastery was shaken to its foundations, and the monks and the nuns almost forgot their paters and their aves in the uproar that drowned their voices and quailed their hearts; but they still went on, until, with an awful crash, and a yell from all the smaller demons about, a Devil, larger and more terrible than any that had come yet, stalked into the church and up to the foot of the altar, where the old woman and her coffin lay. Here he stopped, and bade the witch rise and follow him. Piteously she answered that she could not--she was kept down by the chain in the middle: but the Devil soon settled that difficulty; for he put his foot to the coffin, and broke the iron chain like a bit of burnt thread. Then off flew the covering of lead and iron, and there lay the witch, pale and horrible to see. Slowly she uprose, blue, dead, stark, as she was; and then the Devil took her by the hand, and led her to the door where stood a gigantic black horse, whose back was all studded with iron spikes, and whose nostrils, breathing fire, told of his infernal manger below. The Devil vaulted into the saddle, flung the witch on before him, and off and away they rode--the yells of the clamouring demons, and the shrieks of the tortured soul, sounding for hours, far and wide, in the ears of the monks and the nuns. So here too, in this legend, as in all the rest, the Devil is greater than God, and prayer and penitence inefficacious to redeem iniquity.

EARLY HISTORIC TRIALS.

Coming out from these purely legendary times, we find ourselves on the more solid ground of an actual legal record--the 'Abbreviatio Placitorum;'[93] which informs us that in the tenth year of King John's reign, "Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant, accused Gideon of sorcery (de sorceria), and she was acquitted by the judgment of the (hot) iron." This is the earliest historic trial to be found in any legal document in England. Nothing more appears until 1324, when two Coventry men,[94] specially appointed out of twenty-seven implicated, undertook the slaying of the King, Edward II., the two Dispensers his favourites, the Prior of Coventry, his caterer and his steward, because they had oppressed the town, and dealt unrighteously with its inhabitants. These two men went to a famous necromancer then living in Coventry, called Master John of Nottingham, whom, with his servant Robert Marshall of Leicester, they engaged to perform the work required. But Robert Marshall proved faithless, and betrayed his master to the authorities; telling them how they had received a sum of money for the work in hand, with which sum of money they had bought seven pounds of wax and two yards of canvas, to make seven images--six for the six already enumerated, the seventh for one Richard de Lowe, who had done no one any harm, but on whom they wished to try the effect of the spell, as a modern anatomist would try his experiments on cats, or dogs, or rabbits. He told them how he and Master John of Nottingham had been to a ruined house under Shorteley Park, about half a league from Coventry, where they remained at work from the Monday after the Feast of Saint Nicholas to the Saturday after the Feast of Ascension, making these images of wax and canvas by which they were to bewitch their noble enemies to death. And first, to try the potency of the charm, Master John took a long leaden pin, and struck it two inches deep into the forehead of the image representing Richard de Lowe, upon which Richard was found writhing and in great pain, screaming "harrow!" and having no knowledge of any man; and so he languished for some days. Then Master John drew out the leaden pin from the brow, and struck it into the heart of the image, when immediately Richard de Lowe died, as any number of witnesses could testify. The necromancer and his man, and the twenty-seven Coventry men implicated in this bit of sorcery, were tried at common law, and acquitted for want of evidence.

That same year, too, occurred one of the most picturesque trials for witchcraft known: the trial of Dame Alice Kyteler, which Mr. Wright, with so much industry and learning, has exhumed from the dusty old records where it was buried, and set out into the light of present knowledge and apprehension. But Dame Alice was an Irishwoman, and so does not rightly come into a book on English witches; else it would be a pleasant, if sad, labour to tell how she was arrested on the charge of holding nightly conferences with her spirit or familiar, Artisson, who was sometimes a cat, and sometimes a black shaggy dog, and sometimes a black man with two tall black companions, each carrying an iron rod in his hand--to which fiendish Proteus she had sacrificed, in the highway, nine red cocks, and nine peacocks' eyes; and also for having, between complines and twilight, raked all the filth of Kilkenny streets to the doors of her son-in-law William Outlawe, murmuring to herself--

"To the house of William, my sonne, Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie towne."

Of how, too, she blasphemously travestied the holy sacrament, having a wafer with the Devil's name stamped on it instead of Christ's; and how she had a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased a staff "upon which she ambolled and gallopped thorough thicke and thin, when and what manner she listed." But it does not belong to my present subject: nor to tell how one of her accomplices, poor weak Petronilla de Meath, was burnt at Kilkenny, not having strength or courage to resist the monstrous confession forced upon her; but how the other, Basil, escaped, according to the natural law by which the strongest always come off the best. Perhaps the fact that Dame Alice took refuge in England may give her a slight claim to a place in these pages; but the question is doubtful, so we must let her go--as also her son-in-law, William Outlawe, whose strict imprisonment of nine weeks led to no bad result, and, let us hope, cooled his blood, which was a trifle too near to boiling point.

Then we stumble over the threshold of the chamber where Friars Bacon and Bungay are sleeping, while stupid Miles is watching the Brazen Head whose brief solemn words were spoken in vain; going forward just a few paces until we come to the death-beds of Bungay and Vandermast, and Friar Bacon's clever cheating of the Devil at last. But we are still on the outskirts of legendary land, and must go on to the middle of the fourteenth century before we get a firm hold. About this time the subject of witchcraft occupied much of the attention and thought of the Church, but the priests had not yet quite closed their fingers round it; for in 1371 a man was arrested for sorcery, and "brought before the justices of the King's Bench, by whom he was acquitted for want of evidence, which shows that it was still looked upon merely as an offence against common law."[95] It was only when it became the superstition which some men are pleased to call "religion" that it got stained with its deepest dyes. Early in 1406 Henry IV. gave instructions to the Bishop of Norwich to search for the sorcerers, witches, and necromancers reported to be rather rife in that respectable diocese, and if he could not convert them from the evil of their ways, he was to bring them to speedy punishment; and in 1432 the Privy Council ordered to be seized and examined a Franciscan friar of Worcester, by name Thomas Northfield; another friar, John Ashwell; John Virley "a clerk;" and Margery Jourdemaine--the same Margery generally called the Witch of Eye, who, nine years later, was burnt at Smithfield for her complicity in the treasonable practices of Dame Eleanor of Gloucester. In 1441 Dame Eleanor herself was arrested, and "put in holt, for she was suspecte of treason;" and with her the Witch of Eye, who was burnt; and Roger, a clerk "longing to her," who was placed on a high scaffold against St. Paul's Cross on the Sunday, and there "arraied like as he should never thrive in his garnementys;" while heaped up round about were all his instruments taken with him, to be showed among the people, and create a proper fear and horror in their mind. The end of poor Roger the clerk was, that he was dragged from the Tower to Tyburn, there hanged, beheaded, and quartered; his head set on London Bridge, and his four quarters sent--one to Hereford, and one to Oxenford, another to York, and the fourth to Cambrigge. As for Dame Eleanor, that proud, dark, unscrupulous heroine of romance, every one knows the story of her disgrace and shame; how she came from London to Westminster, and walked through the streets of the city barefooted and bareheaded, carrying the waxen taper of two pounds' weight, and doing penance before all the crowd of citizens assembled to see her "on her foot and hoodles;" and how she offered up her taper on the high altar of "Poules;" and when all was done, was sent to Chester prison, "there to byde while she lyveth."

After her, in 1478, comes "the high and noble princesse Jaquet," Duchess of Bedford, charged with having, by the aid of "an image of lede, made lyke a man of arms, conteyning the length of a mannes fynger, and broken in the myddes, and made fast with a wyre," turned the love of King Edward IV. from one Dame Elianor Butteler daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury, to whom he was affianced, unto her own child, Elizabeth Grey, sometime wife to Sir John Grey, knight; and in 1483 poor Jane Shore was bound to do penance, walking bareheaded and barefooted, clad only in her kirtle, carrying a wax taper, and acknowledging her sins, because Richard of Gloucester had a withered arm, and wanted to put a few enemies out of the way of that arm and its desires. He employed the same accusation against many of those enemies, but so patently for political motives and without even the semblance of reason, that these attainders can scarcely be set down in any manner to the charge of witchcraft. Then in 1484 came the bull of Innocent VIII., which gave authority to the inquisitors to "convict, imprison, and punish" the unfortunate servants of the Devil, who thus found themselves a mark for every one's shaft.

In Henry the Eighth's time treasure-seeking was the most fashionable phase of necromancy. There was Neville of Wolsey's household, who consulted Wood--gentleman, magician, and treasure-seeker extraordinary--but only for a charm or magic ring which should bring him into favour with his prince, saying that his master the Cardinal had such an one, and he would fain participate; and he did at last get Wood to make him one that would bring him the love of women. Wood could find treasures wherever hidden, and was sure of the philosopher's stone; nay, he would "chebard" (jeopard) his life but that he could make gold as he listed, and offered to remain in prison till he had accomplished it, "twelve months on silver and twelve and a half on gold." In this same reign, too, was arrested William Stapleton for sorcery. William[96] was a monk of St. Benet in the Holm, Norfolk, and William loved not his monkish life; so he got out, seeking money to buy his dispensation. And not having the money at hand himself, nor knowing how to get it, he took to treasure-seeking as the easiest manner open to him of making a fortune. But his conjurations and his magic staff only led him to some Roman remains, and nothing more; so he borrowed of a friend instead, then settled in Norfolk, and turned to treasure-seeking again, uselessly; got into intrigues that did him no good; and had three spirits, Andrea Malchus, Inchubus, and Oberion--the last a dumb devil who would not speak, being in the service of my Lord Cardinal.

In 1521 the Duke of Buckingham died on the scaffold, led into some imprudent actions by the predictions of his familiar magician, one friar Hopkins; and Hopkins, to make amends, died broken-hearted shortly after. And there was the Maid of Kent (1534), Elizabeth Barton, who had trances and gave revelations, and was on intimate terms with Mary Magdalen and the Virgin, and who was probably a "sensitive" made use of by the Catholics to try and frighten the King from his marriage with the "gospel eyes;" but poor Elizabeth Barton came to a sad pass with her revelations and trances; and Mary Magdalen, who had given her a letter written in heaven and all of gold, forgot to forewarn or shield her from her cruel and shameful end at Tyburn that cloudy fitful day of April, with the gallows standing out against the flecked sky, and the poor raving nun, half-enthusiast half-impostor, praying bareheaded at its foot--she and her accomplices waiting for the moment to die.

In 1541 we find a nobler name on the scaffold--Lord Hungerford--"beheaded for procuring certain persons to conspire that they might know how long Henry VIII. would live;" and that same year an Act was passed against false prophecies, and another against conjurations, witchcraft, and sorcery, making it felony without benefit of clergy. But six years later Edward VI. abrogated that statute; not for any tenderness to witches, but because with it was bound up a prohibition against pulling down crosses. In 1549 Ket's rebellion was troublesome; its vigour due partly to the old prophecy repeated through the plains of Norfolk--

"Hob, Dic, and Hic, with Clubs and clouted Shoon, Shall fill up Duffin-dale with slaughtered Bodies soon."

And then we come to nothing more until 1559, when Elizabeth "renewed the same article of inquiry for sorcerers," but punishing the first conviction only with the pillory. The following year eight men were taken up for conjurations and sorcery, and tried at Westminster, where they had to purge themselves by confession, penitence, and a repudiating oath. In 1562 the Earl and Countess of Lennox, Anthony Pool, Anthony Fortescue, and some others, were condemned for treason and meddling with sorcerers; though, indeed, Elizabeth herself was not free from either the superstition or its practice; for did she not patronize Dr. Dee and his "skryer" John Kelly, with his ranting about Madimi in her gown of "changeable sey," and all the other spirits who came in and out of the "show-stone," and talked just the same kind of rubbish as spirits talk now in modern circles? But the poor "figure-flinger, with his tin pictures," was a sorcerer not to be protected, so got tried and condemned--poor figure-flinger!

In 1562, the year of Lady Lennox's business, a new Act against witchcraft was passed; and in 1589 one Mrs. Deir practised conjuration against the Queen, for which she was tried, but acquitted for want of evidence; but the Queen had excessive anguish in her teeth that year, by night and by day. When Ferdinand Earl of Derby died, about this time, of perpetual and unceasing sickness, a waxen image was found in his chamber stuffed with hair the exact colour of his; which sufficiently accounted for his illness and the mysterious manner of his death, though a Sadducee and sceptic might have whispered of poison, or a physician have spoken of cholera; from which disease indeed, by the minute symptoms so carefully detailed, the poor earl's death seems to have been--if not from poison, which might have produced the same effects. Still, the accusation of sorcery was so convenient--such a cloak for viler sins! The latter half of Elizabeth's reign was disgraced by many witch persecutions, for the subject was beginning to attract painful notice now; and, though it was not till James I. had set the smouldering fragments all a-blaze that the worst of the evils were done, still enough was doing now for the philosopher to deplore and the humanitarian to lament. In 1575 many were hanged at Barking; in 1579 three were executed at Chelmsford, four at Abingdon, and two at Cambridge. In 1582 thirteen at St. Osith's, the evidence against one being that she had been heard to talk to something when alone in her house; while of the other, a woman swore that she looked through her window one day, when she was out, and there "espied a spirite to looke out of a potcharde from under a clothe, the nose thereof being browne like unto a ferret." In 1585 one was hanged at Tyburn and one at Stanmore; 1589 saw three sent into eternity at Chelmsford; in 1593 we have the witches of Warbois; and two years later (1595) three at Barnet and Brainford; in 1597 several at Derby and Stafford; so that by degrees the thing came to be a notorious matter of social life; and the poor and the aged and the disliked lived in fear and peril, daily increasing. At this time, too, possessions were many and ghosts walked abroad without let or hindrance. Richard Lee saw one at Canterbury (1575), and Master Gaymore and others saw another at Rye two years after. "But," says Reginald Scot, "certainely some one knave in a white sheet hath cosened and abused many thousands that way, specially when Robin Goodfellow kept such a coile in the Country. For you shall understand that these bugs specially are spied and feared of sicke folke, children, women, and cowards, which, through weaknesse of minde and body, are shaken with vain dreames and continuall fear. The Scythians, being a stout and a warlike nation, as divers writers report, never see any vaine sights, or spirits. It is a common saying, a Lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our mothers' maids have so terrified us with an ugly devil having hornes on his head, fire in his mouth, and a taile at his back, eyes like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skinne like a Niger, and a voice roring like a Lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough; they have so fraied us with bullbeggars, spirits, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns, sylens (syrens?), kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcats, conjurors, nymphes, changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell-waine, the firedrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob-gobbin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadowes; insomuch as some never fear the devil, but in a dark night; and then a polled sheep is a perillous beast, and many times is taken for our father's soul, specially in a churchyard, where a right hardy man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand upright. For right grave writers report, that spirits most often and specially take the shape of women, appearing to monks, &c., and of beasts, dogs, swine, horses, goats, cats, haires, of fowles, as crowes, night owles and shreek owles; but they delight most in the likenesse of snakes and dragons." All of which "wretched and cowardly infidelity" was rampant in England when good Queen Bess ruled the land--rampant doubly, so that there was no holding in of this furious madness after James I. had got his foot in the stirrup, and was riding a race neck and neck with the Devil. But I must turn back a few years, and tell of

THE AFFLICTIONS OF ALEXANDER NYNDGE,

a precious babe of grace snatched from destruction. They are to be found in 'A Booke declaring the fearfull vexation of one Alexander Nyndge, Beynge moste Horriblye tormented wyth an euyll spirit, the xx. daie of Januarie. In the yere of our Lorde 1573, at Lyeringswell in Suffolke;' and this book sets forth the details of the various fits which Alexander Nyndge indulged in, for the purpose, as it seems, of enabling his brother Edward to prove his power of exorcism. His first fit began one evening at seven--his father, mother, brothers, and the residue of the household being present; his chest and body swelled, his eyes stared wildly as if starting from their sockets, his back bent inward: the household was disturbed and sore affrighted, but brother Edward had courage enough to say that it was an evil spirit, and undertook to exorcise it. So he charged the foul fiend to come out of him, and the countenance of his brother became more sad and fearful than it was before. Edward was not dismayed but returned to the conflict full of confidence, not giving in even when Alexander and the devil had a wrestle together; or rather when the devil within him seemed as if he would have torn him to pieces, so great was his rage and malice. After some time of this kind of work, Edward got the devil to confess to one or two little matters. In the first place his name was Aubon, and he came last from Ireland; he had come for Alexander's soul, which his brother was not disposed to give up; and by a strange slip of the tongue he called Christ _his_ Redeemer: but Edward rebuked him, as became a learned M.A., reminding him that He was Alexander's Redeemer in truth, but not his, the foul fiend's. Even this palpable blunder did not enlighten the Nyndge household as to whose was really the "hollow ghostly" voice proceeding out of Alexander's chest. At last, when Edward had tired him very much, and powerfully shaken him, he said, gruffly, "Bawe wawe, bawe wawe!" and Alexander was transformed, "much like a picture in a play," while a terrible roaring voice sounded "Hellsownd." Then they opened the windows to allow the foul spirit to escape; and in two minutes Alexander leaped up joyfully, crying, "He is gone! he is gone!" After this he had a second, and then a third, attack; but his brother, praying in his right ear, comforted him and finally cured him, for he was never after tormented. Luckily he had not fixed upon any unhappy old woman as the cause of his disorder, so it passed for a case of simple "possession," which prayer and supplication had overcome.

ADE DAVIE'S MOURNING.[97]

Ade Davie, wife of Simon Davie husbandman, had a wiser man for her husband, simple and unlearned as he was, than had many a wretched creature for her judge. Ade suddenly became sad and pensive as she never had been in times past. Her husband did his best to cheer her, but Ade still continued sorrowful; when, at last her burden grew heavier than she could bear, falling down at Simon's feet she besought him to forgive her, for that she had grievously offended both God and him. "Her poor husband being abashed at this her behaviour, comforted her as he could; asking her the cause of her trouble and greefe; who told him that she had, contrary to God's law, and to the offence of all good Christians, to the injury of him, and specially to the losse of her own soul, bargained and given her soul to the devill, to be delivered unto him within short space. Whereunto her husband answered, saying, 'Wife, be of good cheer, this thy bargain is void and of none effect; for thou hast sold that which is none of thine to sell: sith it belongeth to Christ, who hath bought it, and dearly paid for it, even with his blood, which he shed upon the crosse; so as the devil hath no interest in thee.' After this, with like submission, teares, and penitence, she said unto him, 'Oh, husband, I have yet committed another fault, and done you more injury; for I have bewitched you and four children.' 'Be content,' quoth he, 'by the grace of God, Jesus Christ can unwitch us; for none evill can happen to them that fear God.'"

This fresh and pure idyl comes to us with a sweet and wholesome savour, in the midst of the foul quagmires of superstition where it stands; and that poor husbandman's simple faith in God's goodness and his wife's virtue is more touching than many a grand heroic deed which has the suffrages of all history to float it through the life of the world. Simon Davie was an unlettered man, but he was strong-hearted and believing, and, thinking that earnest prayer might comfort his wife, when the time approached for the Devil to come and close his bargain, knelt down by her and prayed, she joining with him fervently. Then they heard a low rumbling noise below which made the windows shake, and which convinced the poor wife that it was the Devil trying to take possession of her soul, but barred out from the chamber by the fervent prayers aforesaid. In the morning it was found that the noise came from a dog which had devoured a sheep that was newly flayed and hung against the wall; and in due time, Ade Davie recovering her reason--for she was crazed, and took every fire to be the fire lighted to burn her for witchcraft--came to the knowledge that she had never sold her soul to the Devil at all, and had never bewitched husband or children, but had always been a faithful wife and fond mother--afflicted with a light brain and nervous imagination.

THE POSSESSION OF MILDRED NORRINGTON.[98]

Mildred, the "base daughter" of Alice Norrington, being seventeen years of age, was likewise possessed of the Devil, in much the same way as Alexander Nyndge had been. She lived as servant with William Spooner of Westwell, in the county of Kent, and her case attracted great attention. All the divines of the neighbourhood assembled at Spooner's house on the 13th of October, 1574, to endeavour to cast out the Devil by such means of prayer and exorcism as they had at their command. Powerfully did they pray; mightily roared the Devil; "And tho' we did command him many times, in the Name of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in his mighty Power to speak, yet he would not, until he had gone through all his Delays, as roaring, crying, striving, and gnashing of teeth, and otherwise, with mowing and other terrible Countenances, and was so strong in the Maid that four men could scarce hold her down." This continued for about two hours, and then he spoke out, but very strangely, crying, "He comes, he comes," and "He goes, he goes." When charged to tell the exorcists who had sent him, he said, "I lay in her way like a Log, and I made her run like Fire; but I could not hurt her." "And why so?" said we. "Because God kept her," said he. When asked when he came to her, he said, "At night, in her bed." And when charged to tell them his name, he said, "The Devil, the Devil." But being still more powerfully exhorted, he roared and cried as before, and spake terrible words: "I will kill her; I will kill her; I will tear her in pieces; I will kill you all!" Asked again, and conjured so that he could not escape, he was forced to confess that his name was Satan, and Little Devil, and Partner, and that old Alice had sent him--old Alice in Westwell Street, with whom he had lived these twenty years shut up in two bottles. "Where be they?" said we. "In the back side of her house," said he. "In what place?" said we. "Under the wall," said he. The other was at Kennington, in the ground. Then we asked him what old Alice had given him. He said, "Her will, her will." "What did she bid thee do?" said we. "Kill her maid," he said, because she did not love her. He then said that he had been to the vicarage loft in the likeness of two birds, and that old Alice had sent him and his servant (another devil) to kill those whom she loved not. "How many hast thou killed for her?" said we. "Three," said he. "Who are they?" said we. "A man and his child," said he. "What were their names?" said we. "The child's name was Edward," said he. "What more than Edward?" said we. "Edward Ager," said he. "What more?" said we. "Richard Ager," said he. "Where dwelt the man and the child?" said we. "At Dig, at Dig," said he. This Richard Ager was a gentleman of forty pounds' land by the year; a very honest man, but would often say he was bewitched, and languished long ere he died. The Devil--or Mildred for him--said that he had also killed Wotton's wife, and that he used to fetch old Alice meat and drink and corn, and that he had been at many houses (named) doing her wicked will. Then he was adjured so that he could not resist, when he cried out that he would go, he would go, and so he departed. Then said the maid, "He is gone. Lord have mercy on me! for he would have killed me!" So those ministers and neighbours present all kneeled down and thanked God for Mildred's deliverance; and she kept her countenance, and did not betray herself. But a short time after, the "bruit of her divinity and miraculous trances" spreading far and wide, Mr. Thomas Wotton, "a man of great Worship and Wisdom, and for deciding and ordering of Matters, of rare and singular Dexterity," got to the true understanding of the case, when "the Fraud was found, and the cozenage confessed, and she received condign Punishment." After her trial, and when she knew the worst, she "showed her Feats, Illusions, and Trances, with the Residue of all her miraculous Works in the Presence of divers Gentlemen of great Worship and Credit at Boston-Malherb, in the House of the said Mr. Wotton." "Now compare this wench with the witch of Endor, and you shall see that both the cozenages may be done by one art," says Reginald Scot.

MISCELLANEOUS.

It was in this same year that Agnes Brigs and Rachel Pindar had to do penance at St. Paul's Cross, in London,[99] having been convicted of cheat and imposture in pretending to vomit pins and straws and old "clouts," and other such impossibilities; and for counterfeiting possession by the Devil, which the philosophers of the time thought was no subject to trifle with, or affect in any manner whatsoever. And then, a few years later, a young Dutchman living at Maidstone was dispossessed of ten devils, and the mayor of the town got to subscribe his name to the account, which turned out afterwards to be nothing but fraud and lies. In 1579[100] four witches were hung up together, the chief accusation against one of them, Mother Still, being, "that she did kill one Saddocke with a touch on the shoulder, for not keeping promise with her for an old cloak, to make her a safeguard; and that she was hanged for her labour:" and another, Ellein Smith, was executed at Maldon,[101] on the testimony of her little son of eight, who accused her of having three spirits--Great Dick in a wicker bottle, Little Dick in a leathern bottle, and Willet kept in a woolpack. Upon which the house was commanded to be searched, and "the bottles and packe were found, but the spirites were banished awaie."

At the Rochester assizes, held 1591, Margaret Simons,[102] the wife of John Simons, of Brenchley in Kent, was arraigned for witchcraft, on the charge of bewitching the son of John Ferrall the vicar. An ill-conditioned young cub was he, and prentice to Robert Scotchford, clothier; and the father himself seems to have been little better than his son--making a bad pair between them for the teacher and "pattern child" of Brenchley. There had long been ill blood between Mr. John Ferrall, vicar, and Margaret Simons; and one day it came somewhat to a head; for, when the boy was passing Margaret's house on his way home, her little dog jumped out at him and barked. "Which thing the boy taking in evil part," says Reginald Scot, in his quaint, blunt, incisive way, "drew his knife, and pursued him therewith even to her door; whom she rebuked with some such words as the boy disclaimed, and yet neverthelesse would not be perswaded to depart in a long time." The consequence of the fray was, that the boy in five or six days' time fell dangerously ill. Then the vicar, "who thought himself so privileged as he little mistrusted that God would visit his children with sicknesse," declared that his son was bewitched by Margaret Simons, who also had done the like evil to himself; for whenever he wished to read the service with special emphasis and care his voice always failed him, so that his congregation could scarce hear him at all. Margaret made answer that his voice was always hoarse and low, and particularly when he strained himself to speak loudest then it ever failed him: but there was no witchcraft in the case, for all that Mr. Ferrall had procured the health of his son at the hands of another witch, who had taken off the charm and effected a perfect cure. Margaret had a very narrow escape for her life. The whole of the jury, save one man, were against her, but she had in her favour the fact that the vicar was very unpopular, and, justly or unjustly, lay under some odious charges; so, what with the sane juryman's exertions in her favour, and Mr. Ferrall's small hold on the interest and affections of his parishioners, she was brought in Not Guilty, and the hangman's cord fell slack from his greedy grasp.

It must have been somewhere about this time that the execution mentioned by Dr. More in his 'Antidote to Atheism' took place, when a mother and daughter were hanged at Cambridge for witchcraft and service to the Devil. When the mother was called on to renounce and forsake her old master, she refused to do so, saying that he had been faithful to her for fourscore years, and she would not be faithless now to him. And in that obstinacy she died, with a courage and constancy worthy a better cause. The daughter was of a contrary mind. She avowed her misdeeds, and asked for pardon and grace, was penitent, and faithful, and earnest in prayer. All of which the Devil took, as may be imagined, very heinously; and showed his displeasure by sending, in the midst of a dead calm, so sudden and violent a blast of wind, that the mother's body was driven sharply against the ladder, and was like to have overturned it, while the gallows shook with such force that the men standing round were fain to hold the posts, for fear of all being flung to the ground. It was somewhat before this, that at Town Malling, in Kent, one of Queen Mary's Justices, "on the complaint of many wise men, and a few foolish boyes, laid an archer by the heels because he shot so near the white at buts. For he was informed and perswaded that the poor man played with a fly, otherwise called a devill or familiar. And because he was certified that the archer aforesaid shot better than the common shooting, which he before had heard of or seen, he conceived it could not be in God's name, but by inchantment, whereby the archer (as he supposed, by abusing the Queen's liege people) gained some one day two or three shillings, to the detriment of the commonwealth, and to his owne inriching. And therefore the archer was severely punished, to the great encouragement of archers, and to the wise example of justice, but specially to the overthrow of witchcraft." Which quaint little anecdote of Scot's is worth a whole handful of jewels more richly set.

We are coming now to one of the most curious of the older trials, that of--

THE WITCHES OF S. OSEES,

held before Brian Darcey. It is contained in a rare and beautiful little black-letter book,[103] and is spoken of by Scot in his 'Discovery' without much sparing of ridicule. It opens thus: "If there hath bin at anytime (Right Honorable) any meanes used to appease the wrath of God, to obtaine his blessing, to terrifie secreete offenders by open transgressors punishments, to withdraw honest natures from the corruption of euill company, to diminish the great multitude of wicked people, to increase the small number of virtuous persons, and to reforme all the detestable abuses which the peruerse witte and will of man doth dayly devise, this doubtlesse is no lesse necessarye than the best, that Sorcerers, Wizzardes, or rather Dizzardes, Witches, Wise women (for so they will be named), are rygorously punished. Rygorously? sayd I; why it is too milde and gentle a tearme for such a mercilesse generation: I should rather have sayd most cruelly execueted; for that no punishment can be thought vpon, be it in neuer so high a degree of torment, which may be deemed sufficient for such a deuilishe and damnable practise." These were the sentiments of W. W., as propounded to his patron "the right honourable and his singular good lorde, the Lord Darcey," to whom he inscribes his little book. For Brian Darcy, evidently a relation, had lately put in practice the views and opinions of a worthy citizen and zealous Christian touching witches, at the great holocaust offered up at "S. Osees" (St. Osyth), in the 23rd year of Queen Elizabeth's reign (1582): and witch hatred therefore ran in the blood.

The first complainant in this process was Grace Thurlowe, wife of John Thurlowe, who came to make her moan about the evil practices of her neighbour, Ursley Kempe, alias Grey. About twelve months since, said Grace, her son Davy was strangely taken and greatly tormented. Ursley came, like the rest of the neighbours, to see him; but, unlike the rest, she thrice took the child by the hand, saying each time, "A good childe, howe are thou loden:" going out of the house and returning between each phrase, which was evidently a charm, and no holy way of pitying a sick child. After this she said to Grace, "I warrant thee, I, thy childe shall doe well enough;" and sure it was so, for that night the child slept well, and after another such cantrip visit from Ursula, mended entirely. This was not much to complain to the magistrates about, but Grace had another and more grievous count. After this evident cure of her son she was delivered of a woman child, and, ungratefully enough, asked not Ursley to be her nurse; whereat sprang up a quarrel, and the child in consequence fell out of the cradle and brake its neck; not because it was clumsily laid, or carelessly rocked, but because Ursley was a witch and had a grievance against Grace. And to this mischance, when she heard of it, all that the old dame said, was, "It maketh no matter; for she might have suffered me to have the keeping and nursing of it." Then a trouble and a "fratch" ensued, and Ursley threatened Grace with lameness, whereat Grace answered, "Take heed, Ursley, thou hast a naughtie name;" but in spite of her warning the old witch did her work, so that Grace was taken with such lameness that she had to go upon her hands and knees. And thus it continued; whenever she began to amend her child fell ill, and when her child was well she was cast down lame and helpless.

Then Annis Letherdall had her word. Annis and Ursley had a little matter of commerce between them, but Annis failed the suspected woman, "knowing her to be a naughtie beast." So Ursley in revenge bewitched Annis's child, and that so severely that Mother Ratcliffe, a skilful woman, doubted if she could do it any good; yet for all that she ministered unto it kindly. And, as a proof that it was Ursley, and only Ursley, who had so harmed the babe, and that its sad state came in no wise from bad food, bad nursing, and filthy habits, the little creature of only one year old, when it was carried past her house, cried "wo, wo," and pointed with its finger windowwards. What evidence could be stronger? So then, to clinch the matter and strike fairly home, the magistrate examined Thomas Rabbet, Ursley's "base son," a child of barely eight years of age, and got his version of the mother's life. The little fellow's testimony went chiefly on the imps at home. His mother had four, he said--Tyffin, like a white lamb; Titty, a little grey cat; Pygine, a black toad; and Jacke, a black cat; and she fed them, at times with wholesome milk and bread, and at times they sucked blood from her body. He further said that his mother had bewitched Johnson and his wife to death, and that she had given her imps to Godmother Newman, who put them into an earthen pot which she hid under her apron, and so carried them away. One Laurence then said that she had bewitched his wife, so that when "she lay a drawing home, and continued so a day and a night, all the partes of her body were colde like a dead creatures, and yet at her mouth did appeare her breath to goe and come." Thus she lingered, said her husband, until Ursley came in unbidden, turned down the bed-clothes, and took her by the arm, when immediately she gasped and died. Ursley at first would confess nothing beyond having had, ten or eleven years ago, a lameness in her bones, for the cure of which she went to Cook's wife of Wesley, who told her that she was bewitched, and taught her a charm by which she might unwitch herself and cure her bones; which charm quite answered its purpose, and had never failed her with her neighbours; all else she denied. But upon Brian Darcy[104] "promising to the saide Ursley that if she would deale plainely and confesse the truth that she should have fauour, so by giving her faire speeche she confessed as followeth." "Bursting out with weeping" and falling on her knees, she said, yes, she had the four imps her son had told of, and that two of them, Titty and Jack, were "hees," whose office was to punish and kill unto death; and two, Tiffin and Piggin, were "shees," who punished with lameness and bodily harm only, and destroyed goods and cattle. And she confessed that she had killed all the folk charged against her; her brother-in-law's wife, and Grace Thurlowe's cradled child, making it to fall out of its cradle and break its neck solely by her enchantments; and that she had bewitched that little babe of Annis Letherdall's, and Laurence's wife, and, in fact, that she had done all the mischief with which she was charged. Then, not liking to be alone, she said that Mother Bennet had two imps; the one a black dog, called Suckin, the other red like a lion, Lyerd: and that Hunt's wife had a spirit too, for one evening she peeped in at her window when she was from home, and saw it look out from a potcharde from under a bundle of cloth, and that it had a brown nose like a ferret. And she told other lies of her neighbours, saying that her spirit Tiffin informed her of all these things; and Brian Darcy sat there, gloating over these maniacal revelations. But in spite of his soft words and fair promises, Ursley Kempe was condemned, and executed when her turn came.

Joan Pechey, widow, was then brought forward; and Ales Hunt, herself an accused witch, deposed against her that she was angry because, at a distribution of bread made by the said Brian Darcy, she had gotten a loaf which was too hard baked for her; whereat in a pet she said it might have been given to some one younger, and not to her, with no teeth to eat through the crust. And then Ales watched her home, and saw her go in alone to her own house where no human soul was; but there she heard her say, as to some one, "Yea, are you so sawsie; are yee so bolde; you were not best to bee so bolde with mee: For if you will not bee ruled, you shall have Symonds sawse; yea, saide the saide Joan, I perceive if I doe give you an inch you will take an ell." All of which talk Ales Hunt found was to no Christian creature, but to her foul and wicked imps. The which testimony her sister, Margerie Sammon, confirmed, saying that old Joan was as clever as their own mother (a noted witch, one Mother Barnes), or any one else in S. Osees skilled in sorcery and magic. Another examinate then came forward with a story of a bewitched cow unbewitched by a fire lighted around it: which, however, does not apparently touch any of the accused. And then the accuser, Ales Hunt, was made to take the place of the accused, and listen to the catalogue of her own sins. The chief witness against her was her little daughter-in-law (step-child?) Febey, of the age of eight or thereabouts, who deposed to her having two little things like horses, the one white the other black, which she kept by her bedside in a little low earthern pot with wool, colour white and black, and which she fed with milk out of a black "trening" dish. When the Commissioners went to search the place they found indeed the board which Phoebe said was used to cover them, and she pointed out the trening dish whence they were fed; but the little things like horses were gone; when Phoebe said they had been sent to Hayward of Frowicke. After a time Alice Hunt was brought to confess not only to two, but four, imps; two like colts, black and white, called Jack and Robbin; and two like toads, Tom and Robbyn. Mother Barnes, her mother, gave them to her, she said, when she died; and she gave her sister, Margerie Sammon, two also. When Margerie was confronted with Alice and heard what she had deposed, she got very angry and denied the whole tale, saying: "I defie thee, though thou art my sister," saying that she had never any imps given to her on her mother's death-bed, or at any other time. But Alice took her aside and whispered something in her ear; after which Margerie, "with great submission" and many tears, confessed that she had in truth these two imps, given to her by her mother as her sister had said, and that she had carried them away that same evening in a wicker basket filled with black and white wool. Her mother had said that if she did not like to keep them old Joan Pechey would be glad of them; but she did not part with them just then; and that she was to feed them on bread and milk, otherwise they would suck her blood. Their names were Tom and Robbin, and last evening she took them away--being perhaps afraid to keep them longer, now that the scent was warm--and went into Read's ground, where she bade them "go." Immediately they skipped out of the wicker basket toward a barred gate going into Howe Lane, to Mother Peachey's house, whereat she, Margerie, said, "All evill goe with you, and the Lorde in heaven blesse mee from yee."

All of which Mother Peachy, who seems to have been an upright, high-spirited old dame, stoutly denied. She was threescore year and upwards, she said, and had lived forty years in S. Osees in honour and good repute. She knew Mother Barnes, yet knew her for no witch, nor ever heard her to be so accompted, or to have skill in any witchery; nor was she at her death-bed; nor knew she of her imps. For her own part she denied that she had any "puppettes, spyrites, or maumettes;" or had had any spirits conveyed to her by Margery Sammon, or since Mother Barnes's death. She denied all that Ales Hunt had said, as, "Yea, art thou so bolde," &c., she denied that she had had any hand in Johnson's death, as she had been accused of, but when he died said only he was a very honest man: she also denied some very shocking passages with her son, which he, however, had been brought to confess; and when questioned more closely concerning her imps, said that she had only a kitten and a dog at home. When asked of what colour were they? she answered tartly, "Ye may goe and see."

Ales Newman was also condemned and executed; being obstinate to the last; denying the four counts with which she was charged, viz. her imps, the slaughter of her own husband, of John Johnson, and of his wife. But William Hoke deposed that on his death-bed her husband had been perpetually crying out against her, saying, "Dost thou not see--dost thou not see?" meaning the imp with which she tormented him, and which he strove vainly to beat away. Seeing her obstinacy, Brian Darcy told her that he would sever her and her spirits asunder; to which she answered quickly, "Nay," sayth shee, "that shal ye not, for I will carry them with mee." Then seeing that they took note of her words, she added, "if I have any." The admission was enough, and she was hanged.

Elizabeth Bennet denied that she had had any hand in the bewitching to death Johnson or his wife, saying that the aforesaid Ales had done it all. But William Bonner had his stone ready for her on the other side, accusing her of bewitching his wife, for "shee, being sickely and sore troubled, the said Elizabeth vsed speeches unto her, saying, a goode woman howe art thou loden, and then clasped her in her armes and kissed her. Wherevpon presently after her vpper Lippe swelled and was very bigge, and her eyes much sunked into her head, and shee hath lain sithence in a very strange case." Yet these two women were familiar friends, and "did accompanie much together;" which shows that friendship was as dangerous as enmity in those mad times when the swelling of a lip, or the familiarity of a house pet, could bring the best of a district to the gallows. And then Ursley Kemp's testimony was remembered against Elizabeth, and the mysteries of Suckin and Liard sought to be fathomed. Elizabeth at the first was obdurate and would confess to nothing beyond that she had certainly a pot, but no wool therein, and no imps to lay on it; but at last she too was persuaded by Brian Darcy's fine false words; so falling on her knees, "distilling tears," she made her public moan. William Byet and she dwelt as neighbours together, she said, living as neighbours should, well and easily; but latterly they had fallen out, because William called her "old Trot" and "old witch," and "did ban and curse her and her cattle." So she replied with calling him "knave," saying, "Wind it vp Byet, for it will light vpon yourself." And Byet's beast died forthwith. Then Byet's wife beat her swine with great "gybels," and made them sick; and once she ran a pitchfork through the side of one so that it was dead, and when the butcher who bought it came to dress and cut it up, it proved "a messel," so she had no money for it, for the butcher would not keep it and she was forced to take it back again. So far was only the ordinary quarrelling of ill-tempered country folk, and nothing very damaging to confess to; but now Brian Darcy's fair words drew from her all about her imp Suckin, a he and like a black dog, and Lierd, a she and like a hare or a lion, and red. Suckin had first come to her a long time ago, as she was returning home from the mill; he held her by the coats, she being amazed, but vanished when she prayed. Again, when nigh hand at home, he tugged at her coats as before, yet vanished when she prayed. The next day he came with Lierd, and asked "why she was so snappish yesterday?" and thus they were for ever troubling and visiting her, till at last she yielded to their solicitations, and set them to the work she was accused of. This was the second instance in which Brian Darcy found that old Ursley and her imp Tiffin had spoken the truth.

Ales Manfielde bewitched John Sayer's cart, keeping it standing stock still for above an hour, because she was offended that he would not let his thatcher cover in an oven for her; and she lamed all Joan Chester's cattle, because Joan refused her some curds. So Ales Manfielde was condemned and executed; but not before she made her confession. She said that Margaret Greuell (Greville), twelve years since, gave her four imps--Robin, Jack, William, and Puppet or Mamet: they were like black cats, two shes and two hes, and were put into a box with some wool, and placed on a shelf by her bed. But Margaret denied it all, even when Ales was confronted with her; denied too that queer tale of how she had bewitched John Carter's two brewings, so that half a seame had to go to the swill tub, all because he would not give her Godesgood. The brewing was only unbewitched when John's son, a tall lusty man of thirty-six, managed to stick his arrow in the brewing-vat. He had shot twice before, but missed, though he was a good shot and stood close to the vat--which was evident sorcery, somehow. Margaret denied also that she had bewitched Nicholas Strickland's wife so that she could make no butter, because Nicholas, who was a butcher, refused her a neck of mutton. But in spite of all her denials, she, the hale woman of fifty-four, was condemned to remain in prison, heaven knows for how long; escaping the gallows by a greater miracle than any recorded of herself.

Elizabeth Ewstace, a year younger than Margaret Greville, was told that she had bewitched Robert Sanneuer, drawing his mouth all awry so that it could be got into its place again only with a sharp blow; and that she had killed his brother Crosse, three years ago, and bewitched his wife when with child and quite lusty and well, so that she had a most strange sickness, and the child died soon after its birth; that she made his cows give blood instead of milk; and caused his hogs "to skip and leap about the yarde in a straunge sorte," because of the small bickerings to which S. Osees seemed specially subject. And she hurt all Felice Okey's geese, and in particular her favourite goose, because she, Felice, had turned hers out of her yard; all of which Elizabeth Eustace denied to the face of Alice Mansfield and her other accusers. And as, on being searched, she was found to have no "bigges" or witch marks, she was mercifully kept in prison--for the time. And Annis Glascocke, wife of John the sawyer, got into the trouble that had its end only in the hangman's cord, because Mychel the shoemaker charged her with being a "naughtie woman," and because Ursley Kemp, informed by Tiffin, accused her of sundry things about as true as all the rest of the story. Being found well supplied with witch marks, her denial was not allowed to go for much; whereupon she abused Ursley, and said she had bewitched her and made her like to herself, she, Annis Glascocke, all the time ignorant and innocent of her devilish arts.

Then came the sad story of Henry Celles (Selles) and his wife Cysley. They were said to have killed Richard Ross's horses, because Richard had refused Cicely a bushel of malt which she had come for, bringing a poke to put it in. And to make the accusation stronger, little Henry their son, only nine years old, affirmed that at Candlemas last past about midnight there came to his brother John a spirit, which took him by the left leg and also by the little toe, and which was like his little sister, only that it was black. At which his brother cried out, "'Father, father, come helpe me; there is a black thing that hath me by the legge as big as my sister;' whereat his father saide to his mother, 'Why thou ----, cannot you keepe your imps from my children?' Whereat she presently called it away from her sonne, saying, 'Come away, come away.' At which speeche it did depart." He further said that his mother fed her imps daily with milk out of a black dish; that their names were Hercules, Sotheons, or Jacke which was black and a he, and Mercurie, white and a she; that their eyes were like goose eyes; and that they lay on some wool under a stack of broom at the old crab-tree root. And also that his mother had sent Hercules to Ross for revenge; at which his father, when he heard of it, said, "She was a trim fool." As she very likely was; but for other things than sending imps to her neighbours. John, a little fellow of six and three-quarters, confirmed his brother's deposition, adding to it that "the imps had eyes as big as himself," and that his mother fed them with thin milk out of a spoon. He gave the names of other people whom his mother had bewitched, and he showed his scarred leg, and the nail of the little toe still imperfect. And Joan Smith deposed that one day, as she was making ready to go to church, holding her babe in her arms, her mother, one Redworth's wife, and Cicely were all at her door, ready to draw the latch as she came out, "whereat the grandmother to the childe tooke it by the hand, and shoke it, saying, 'A mother pugs, art thou coming to church?' and Redworth's wife, looking on it, said, 'Here is a iolie and likely childe--God blesse it.' After which speeches, Selles his wife saide, 'shee hath neuer the more children for that, but a little babe to play withall for a time.' And she saith within a short time after her said childe sickened and died. 'But,' she saith"--her womanly heart carrying it over her superstition--"'that her conscience will not serve her to charge the said Cysley or her husband to be the causers of any suche matter, but prayeth God to forgive if they haue dealt in any such sorte.'" Then Thomas Death accused Cicely Selles and one Barker's wife of bewitching George Battell's wife and his own daughter Mary, who got such good of the witches by a wise man's ministering that she saw her tormentor standing in bodily shape before her; and Ales Baxter was pricked to the heart by a white imp like a cat which then vanished into the bushes close by, and so badly holden that she could neither go nor stand nor speak, and did not know her own master when he came by, but was forced to be taken home in a chair by two men. All of which Henry Selles and his wife Cicely denied; specially the story of the imp and the children, who, if there were imps at all in the matter, were the only imps afloat. But denial did them no good, for Cicely had witch marks, so was condemned, and the two little lying varlets made themselves orphans and homeless.

A very crowd of witnesses came to testify against Annis Herd. Of some she had bewitched the cream, of others the milk; of some the cows or pigs or wives; but all this was mere floating accusation until the Commissioners got hold of her little "base" daughter of seven, who gave them plenty of information. Asked if her mother had imps, she said "Yes;" in one box she had six "auices," or blackbirds, and in another box six like cows as big as rats, with short horns, lying in the boxes on white or black wool. And she said that her mother gave her one of the cow imps, a black and white one, called Crowe; and to her little brother one, red and white, called Donne; and that she fed the avices or blackbirds with wheat and barley and oats and bread and cheese; giving to the cows wheat straw, bean straw, oat straw, or hay, with water or beer to drink. When her brother sees these blackbird imps come a "tuitting and tetling" about him, added the little base daughter, he takes and puts them in the boxes. Some of them sucked on her mother's hands, and some on her brother's legs, and when they showed her the marks she pointed them out one by one, saying, "Here sucked aves and here blackbird." She was sharp enough though to shield herself, young as she was; for when asked why one of her hands had the same kind of mark, she said it was burnt. Anis Herd was kept in prison, but not hanged just then, for she could not, luckily for her, be got to confess to anything very damaging. She said that she was certainly angry with the churl Cartwright for taking away a bough which she had laid over a flow in the highway, but she had not bewitched him or his; and that she had, truly, kept Lane's wife's dish fourteen days or more, as Lane's wife had said, and that Lane's wife had sent for the twopence which she, Anis, owed her, and that she had grumbled with her--also with this neighbour and that neighbour, according to the habits of S. Osees--but that she had bewitched none of them. And she denied the avices and the blackbirds and all and sundry of the stories of Crow or Dun; which, indeed, with some others spoken of by the children, seem to have been, _if existing at all_, toys or treasures kept hoarded from them, to which they added these magical and absurd conditions as their imaginations taught them or their examiners prompted.

Joan Robinson, another S. Osees witch, was to blame for various acts of sorcery and witchcraft--hurting one woman's brood goose, and another's litter of pigs, drowning cows, laming ambling mares, and the rest of the witch's playful practices; all of which she, too, denied strenuously, but nevertheless formed one of the thirteen victims whom the offended justice of the times found necessary to condemn and execute. So this sad trial came to an end, and Brian Darcy covered his name with infamy so long as W. W. has a black letter copy extant.

The following singular table is drawn up at the end of the book:--

"The names of XIII Witches and those that have been bewitched by them.

The Names of those persons that have beene bewitched and thereof haue dyed, and by whome, and of them that haue receyved bodyly harme, &c. As appeareth vpon sundrye Enformations, Examinations, and Confessions taken by the worshipfull Bryan Darcey, Esquire; and by him certified at large vnto the Queene's Maiestie's Justices of Assise of the Countie of Essex, the XXIX of Marche, 1582.

S. Osythes. The Witches. } {Kempes wife, 1. Ursley Kempe,} bewitched {Thorlowes Childe, alias Gray } to death {and Strettons wife.

2. Ales Newman } and Ursley } bewitched {Letherdalles childe, Kempe } to death {and Strettons wife.

Confessed by} The said Ales} Ursley and} and Ursley } bewitched {Strattons Childe,}whereof Elizabeth.} Kempe } {Grace Thorlowe, }they did }languish.

{William Byet, and Joan his 3. Elizabeth } bewitched { wife, and iii of his Bennet } to death { beasts. {The wife of William Willes, { and William Wittingalle.

Elizabeth } {William Bonners Wife, John Bennet } bewitched { Butler, Fortunes Childe; { whereof they did languish.

Ales Newman } bewitched {John Johnson and his Wife, }to death { and her own Husband, as it { is thought.

Confessed } 4. Ales Hunt } bewitched {Rebecca Durrant and vi the cattell.} } to death { beasts of one Haywardes.

5. Cysley Celles} bewitched { Thomas Deaths Childe. } to death {

Little } Cysley Celles bewitched {Rosses Mayde, Mary Death, Clapton. } { whereof they did languish.

Cysley Celles} bewitched Richard Rosses horse and and } beasts and caused their Impes to Thorpe. 6. Ales } burne a barne with much corne. Manfielde }

Confessed by} 7. Ales } bewitched {Robert Chesson, and Ales } Manfielde } to death { Greuell husband to Manfield. } and Margaret} { Margaret. Greuell }

Ales } bewitched the widdow Chesson, and her Manfielde } husband, v beasts and one bullocke, and Margaret} and seuerall brewinges of beere, and Greuell } batches of bread.

Thorpe. 8. Elizabeth } bewitched {Robert Stannevettes Childe, Ewstace } to death { and Thomas Crosse.

Elizabeth } bewitched Robert Stanneuet, vii milch Ewstace } beasts, w{h} gaue blood in steede of milke, and seuerall of his Swine dyed.

Little Okley. 9. Annys Herd } bewitched {Richard Harrisons wife, and } to death { two wives of William { Dowsinge, as it is { supposed.

Annys Herd } bewitched Cartwright two beasts, } made, sheepe, and lambes xx; West } swine, and pigs; Diborne, a brewing } of beere, and seuerall other losses } of milke and creame.

Walton. 10. Joan Robinson} bewitched beasts, horses, swine, and } pigs, of seuerall men.

"The sayd Ursley Kemp had foure spyrites, viz., their names Tettey a hee like a gray Cat, Jack a hee like a black Cat, Pygin a she like a black Toad, and Tyffin a she like a white Lambe. The hees were to plague to death, and the shees to punish with bodily harme, and to destroy cattell.

"Tyffyn, Ursley's white Spirit, did tell her alwayes (when she asked) what the other witches had done: and by her the most part were appelled, which spirit telled her alwayes true. As is well approved by the other Witches confession.

"The sayd Ales Newman had the sayd Ursley Kemps spirits to vse at her pleasure. Elizabeth Bennet had two spirits, viz., their names Suckyn, a hee like a blacke Dog: and Lyard, red lyke a Lyon or Hare.

"Ales Hunt had two spirits lyke Colts, the one blacke, the other white.

"11. Margery Sammon had two spirits lyke Toads, their Names Tom and Robyn.

"Cysley Celles had two spirits by seuerall names, viz., Sotheons, Hercules, Jack, or Mercury.

"Ales Manfield and Margaret Greuell had in common by agreement, iiii Spirits, viz., their names Robin, Jack, Will, Puppet, alias Mamet, whereof two were hees, and two were shees, lyke vnto black Cats.

"Elizabeth Ewstace had iii Impes or Spirits of colour white, grey, and black.

"Annis Herd had vi Impes or Spirites, like auises and black byrdes, and vi other like Kine, of the bygnes of Rats, with short hornes; the Auises shee fed with wheat, barley, otes, and bread, the Kine with straw and hay.

Annys Glascocke. } These have not confessed any thing touching 12. Joan Pechey. } the hauing of spirits. 13. Joan Robinson.}

Annis Glascocke } bewitched { Mychell Steuens Childe. } to death { The base Childe at Pages. {William Pages Childe.

Thus did W. W. and Bryan Darcey finish their respective works, in which, perhaps, this formal tabular statement, this pretence at scientific arrangement and accuracy, is the strangest and most revolting element.[105]

Another rare and curious[106] black-letter pamphlet gives a marvellous account of a woman's possession, as it happened in Somersetshire; which perchance we of the light-minded and sceptical nineteenth century might interpret differently to what the believing sixteenth held likely.

THE WOMAN AND THE BEAR.

One Stephen Cooper, of Ditchet, a yeoman of honest reputation, good wealth, and well beloved by his neighbours, being sick and weak, sent his wife Margaret to a farm of his at Rockington, Gloucestershire, where she remained a few days--not finding all to her liking, she said. When she returned she found her husband somewhat better, but she herself was strange and wild, using much idle talk to him concerning an old groat which her little son had found and which she wanted to see, and raving about the farm in Gloucestershire, as if she had been bewitched, and knew not what she said. Then she began to change in very face, and to look on her husband with "a sad and staring countenance;" and, one night, things came to a climax, for she got very wild and bad, and shook so frightfully that they could scarce keep her down in the bed; and then she began talking of a headless bear, which, she said, she had been into the town to beat away during the time of her fit, and which had followed her from Rockington: as the sequel proved was true. Her friends and husband exhorted her to prayer and patience, but she still continued marvellously holden, the Devil getting quite the better of her until Sunday night, when she seemed to come to her worst. Suddenly the candle, which they had not been noticing, went out, and she set up a lamentable cry; they lighted another, but it burnt so dim it was almost useless, and the friends and neighbours themselves began to be disquieted. Wildly and hurriedly cried Margaret, "Look! do you not see the Devil?" herself all terrified and disturbed. They bade her be still and pray. Then said Margaret, "Well, if you see nothing now, you shall see something by and bye;" and "forthwith they heard a noise in the streete, as it had been the coming of two or three carts, and presently they in the chamber cried out, 'Lord helpe us, what manner of thing is this that commeth here!'" For up to the bedside where the woman lay with heaving breasts and dilated eyes, came a thing like a bear, only that it had no head and no tail; a thing "half a yard in height and half a yard in length" (no bigger, Margaret? not so big as a well-trussed man on all-fours?) which, when her husband saw, he took a joyn'd stool, and "stroke" at it, and the blow sounded as though it had fallen on a feather bed. But the creature took no notice of the man: it wanted only Margaret. Slowly it paddled round the bed, then smote her thrice on the feet, took her out of bed, and rolled her to and fro in the chamber, round about the floor and under the bed; the husband and friends, sore amazed and affrighted, only calling on God to assist them, not daring to lift a hand for themselves or her. And all the while the candle grew dimmer and dimmer, so that they could scarce see each other: which was what Margaret and the headless bear, no doubt, desired. Then the creature took her in its arms, thrust her head between her legs so that he made her into a round ball, and "so roulled her in a rounde compasse like an Hoope through three other Chambers, downe an highe paire of staires, in the Hall, where he kept her for the space of a quarter of an hour." The people above durst not come down, but remained above, weeping pitifully and praying with loud and fervent prayer. And there was such a terrible stench in the hall, and such fiery flames darting hither and thither, that they were fain to stop their noses with clothes and napkins, expecting every moment to find that hell was opening beneath their feet, and that they would be no longer able to keep out of harm's way and the Devil's. Then Margaret cried out, "He is gone. Now he is gone!" and her husband joyfully bade her come up to him again; which she did, but so quickly that they greatly marvelled at it, and thought to be sure the Devil had helped her. Yet she proved to be none the worse for the encounter: which was singular, as times went. They then put her in bed, and four of them kept down the clothes, praying fervently. Suddenly the woman was got out of bed: she did not move herself by nerves, muscles, or will, of course; but she was carried out by a supernatural power, and taken to the window at the head of the bed. But whether the devil or she opened the window, the pamphlet does not determine. Then her legs were thrust out of the window, and the people heard a thing knock at her feet as if it had been upon a tub; and they saw a great fire, and they smelt a grievous smell; and then, by the help of their prayers, they pulled Margaret into the room again, and set her upon her feet. After a few moments she cried out, "O Lord, methinks I see a little childe!" But they paid no heed to her. Twice or thrice she said this, and ever more earnestly; and at last they all looked out at the window, for they thought to be sure she must have some meaning for her raving. And "loe, they espied a thing like unto a little child, with a bright shining countenaunce casting a greate light in the chamber." And then the candle, which had hitherto burnt blue and dim, gave out its natural light so that they could all see each other. Whereupon they fell to joyful prayer, and gave thanks to God for the deliverance. And Margaret Cooper was laid in her bed again, calm, smiling, and collected, never more to be troubled by a Headless Bear which rolled her about like a ball, or by a bright shining child looking out from the chinks of a rude magic lantern. As for the bear, I confess I think he was nearer akin to man than devil; that he was known about Rockington in Gloucestershire; and that Margaret Cooper understood the conduct of the plot from first to last. But then this is the sceptical nineteenth century, wherein the wiles of human cunning are more believed in than the power of the devil, or the miracles of supernaturalism. Yet this was a case which, in spite of all its fraud and folly so patently displayed, was cited as one of the most notorious and striking instances of the power of Satan over the bodies as well as the souls of those who gave themselves up to the things of the world.

THE WITCHES OF WARBOIS.[107]

In 1589, Robert Throckmorton, Esquire, lived at Warbois, in Huntingdonshire. He had five daughters, the eldest of whom, Miss Joan, was fifteen, while the rest came down in steps, two years or so between each, in the ordinary manner. On the tenth of November, Mistress Jane, being then near ten years of age, was suddenly seized with a kind of fit. She "screeked" loud and often, lay as if in a trance for half an hour or more, shook one leg or one arm and no other, "as if the Palsie had been in it," made her body so stiff and rigid that no man could bend her, and went through the usual forms of a young girl's hysteria. A neighbour, one Alice Samuel, who lived next door to the Throckmortons, went in to see the afflicted child; for all the neighbours were flocking in to see her as a kind of curiosity; and, stepping up into the chimney-side, sat hard down by her, she being held in another woman's arms by the fire. Suddenly the child cried out, "Did you ever see one more like a Witch than she is?" pointing to Mother Samuel; "take off her black-thrumb'd cap, for I cannot abide to look at her."

Nothing was thought of her words at the time, the mother merely chiding her for her lightness of speech; but "the old woman hearing her, sat still, without saying a word, yet looked very dismally, as those that saw her remembered very well." And as well she might, poor old soul; for she must have known that Mrs. Jane's light speech would in all probability be heavy enough to bring her down to the grave.

Doctoring did the child no good. Dr. Barrow of Cambridge, the most noted man of the district, gave the distemper no satisfactory name, and his remedies were powerless to remove it; Mr. Butler, another skilful man, was equally at fault; and when, about a month after Mrs. Jane had been attacked, two other daughters were driven to the like extremity, and "cry'd out upon Mother Samuel, 'Take her away, look where she standeth there before us in a black thrumb'd Cap (which she commonly wore, though not then); it's she that hath bewitched us, and she will kill us if you don't take her away,'" the parents were moved to believe the whole thing supernatural, and that Mother Samuel had indeed bewitched them as they said. About a month after the affliction of these two, a younger child, not quite nine years old, was taken like the rest; and soon after Mrs. Joan, of fifteen, went the same way--only more severely handled than them all. Mrs. Joan had a specialty in her fits. She was not only hysterical like her sisters, but she had a Spirit, and this Spirit sounded in her ears information of things to come: as, that the servants as well as the five children should be bewitched--which they were, but did not become so notorious as the little impostors of better blood; all recovering so soon as they left the house for other situations, and nothing more being heard of them. Things went on then in this manner, the children being perpetually tormented with fits, and for ever crying out against old dame Samuel, when, in February of the next year (1590), it was resolved to bring her to the house that the children might "scratch" her, and so relieve themselves somewhat. Whereupon she, her young daughter Agnes, and one Cicely Burder--both of whom were accused of the same malpractices as herself--were haled to Mr. Throckmorton's, there to undergo their preliminary ordeal. Every care was taken to prevent the mother from holding any communication with her daughter Agnes; but at the entry she managed to lean over and whisper to her. Mr. Pickering, the children's uncle, who had undertaken to conduct this Scratching, was ready to swear that she said, "I charge thee do not confess anything;" but Mother Samuel swore, in her turn, that she had only charged her to hasten home to get her father his dinner; for that same father was a terrible old Turk, and not likely to wait patiently for his dinner or aught else.

When the women went into the house the children were standing by the fire, perfectly well; but the instant they saw Mother Samuel, they fell down in their fits, leaping and springing about like fishes newly taken out of the water, drawing their heads and heels backwards, and throwing out their arms with great groans that were terrible and troublesome to those that beheld them. They screamed and struggled to get at the old woman, scratching at the bed-clothes, or the maids' aprons, or anything they could touch, crying out, "O! that I had her! O! that I had her!" And when Mr. Pickering forced Mother Samuel's hand within theirs, they scratched at it with so much vehemence that one of them splintered her nails "with her eager desire of revenge;" doing the same by Cicely Burder, who thus, we are not told how or why, found herself in a dangerous and equivocal position, but seems to have got well out of it in time. Or perhaps she died between whiles, happily for herself.

For the next few months it was Mrs. Elizabeth Throckmorton who kept up the ball. Mr. Pickering took her away with him to his own house, where she fooled them all to the top of their bent, crying out to Mother Samuel to take away her mouse, for she would have none of it, and exclaiming in piteous tones that Mother Samuel was trying to force a cat, or a frog, or sometimes a toad, into her mouth; hopping about on one leg, pretending to be utterly incapable of putting the other to the ground; sometimes going for two steps at a time, when "she would halt and give a beck with her head as low as her knees;" asking if no one heard the spirit within her lapping the milk she had just taken; playing at cards with her eyes shut, or seemingly so; and falling into drowsy fits which took her even in the midst of meals, or any while else specially untimely. Her bewitchment took a certain controversial turn too, and witnessed for the Pope and the Devil; for "on the Eleventh, one asked her if she loved the Word of God; whereupon she was much troubled and tormented. When they asked, Love you Witchcraft? she was content. Love you the Bible? it shaked her. Love you Papistry? the Devil within her was quiet. Love you Prayer? it raged. Love you the Mass? it was still. Love you the Gospel? it heaved up her Belly; so that every good thing it disliked; but whatever concerned Popish Idolatry it was pleased with." Mr. Pickering kept this sectarian young lady from March to September, and then it pleased Mistress Elizabeth to require change of air and scene, and she demanded to be taken back to her father's house at Warbois. There she played off her tricks with new vigour, when Lady Cromwell, wife of Sir Henry Cromwell, Knt., hearing of these heavy afflictions came to visit the children and comfort the parents. The children of course went off into their customary state; it was not their game to disappoint my Lady; "and were so grievously Tormented that it moved the good Lady's Heart with Pity, so that she could not forbear Tears, and caused old Mother Samuel to be sent for, who durst not deny to come, because her Husband was Tenant to Sir Henry Cromwell." As soon as she came in, the children were so much worse that the Lady, transported beyond herself, and exceedingly angry that Mother Samuel would not confess to her crime, seized hold of her as she was struggling to get free of their hands and slip out of the room, pulled off her kircher, and cut off a lock of her hair, which she gave privately to Mrs. Throckmorton together with the old dame's hairlace; bidding her burn them. The old woman turning against the Lady, said, half sorrowfully, "Madam, why do you use me thus? I never did you any harm as yet:" words to be remembered and treasured up against her, when the hour came. That very night Lady Cromwell had bad dreams concerning Mother Samuel and her cat, which she said came to strip all the flesh from her--and awakened, crying mightily and much distressed. From that time she had fits, and continued very hardly holden till her dying day, which was one year and a quarter after the visit to Warbois. So Mother Samuel's words were held to have been witch's threats, and the whole country was convinced that Lady Cromwell had died by her magic arts, and bewitched. As she was, poor lady, with nervous fear and superstition and ignorance.

The next year, in the winter of 1591, Mr. Henry Pickering, a young student at Cambridge, tried to make Dame Samuel confess, but she would not suffer him or his companions to speak, and when they desired her to speak softlier, answered: "She was born in a Mill, begot in a Kiln, and must have her Will, and could speak no softlier." Then Mr. Henry began to question her on her faith, but got only tart answers; so, losing patience, he said that if she did not repent and confess to having worked that wickedness on the children, he hoped one day to see her burn at the stake, and that he would bring wood and faggots and the children should blow the coals. To which old Dame Samuel replied that she "would rather see him doused over head in the pond;" and so went away home, to be beaten for gossiping and staying late, by that terrible old Turk of hers.

And now the children would be well only when the dame was with them; so the parents sought to engage her to live with them, but the old Turk would not give his consent, and beat her severely with a cudgel on the slightest pretext. The whole thing angered him, and his dame could not do right let her do what she would. However, he was prevailed on to spare her for eight or nine days, during which time the lying little girls professed themselves cured of all their haunting spirits--dun chickens, naked babes, and the like; to the old woman's extreme consternation and passionate assurances of innocence. Then the children turned against Agnes Samuel, the daughter, declaring that she had bewitched them equally with the mother: whereupon the father, Mr. Throckmorton, went to bring her to the house; when she hid herself in an attic or loft, barricading herself in by sacks of wool piled up on the trapdoor. She was forced to come down at last, and her fear was made the chief evidence against her. The hour had come round for her on Time's cruel dial, and she could not escape the inevitable decree that had gone forth. All this while the old mother was forcibly detained at Mr. Throckmorton's house; the children pretending that they could be well only in her presence, and absolutely refusing to let her go, though she was sick and fearful and weary, and cried to get home again to her daughter and husband. That uncompromising oaken cudgel of his was less terrible than the awful suspicion under which she was living here; and the harassing uncertainty of her life--never knowing what new lie the children might frame against her, nor how much nearer they might bring her to the gallows by some wicked fancy or delusion--was infinitely worse than all the oaths and ill-usage of home, of which she knew at least the extent and end. She seems to have been a gentle-spirited old creature in spite of her crusty tongue; and at the beck of every one who chose to knock her about and require from her service and submission. When Mr. Throckmorton had teased and threatened and exhorted her, till she was completely "dazed and mazed" with all she heard--and when the children had acted their fits with such power and accuracy that they simulated nature to the life, and had impressed even her with all the wicked things which their Spirits told them of her and of her daughter--her mind, enfeebled by suffering and terror, gave way, and she was deluded into a confession of sin and penitence; after which she obtained leave to go home. As her husband gave her but a harsh welcome, angry with her for her weakness in confessing, she recanted as of course; when Mr. Throckmorton, getting hold of her by an open window beneath which his friends were stationed, bullied and deluded her once more into making a confession which they might hear; and on the strength of which he carried off both dame and daughter, to be examined by the Bishop of Lincoln.

The Bishop found her easy. Yes, she had an imp; a dun chicken which sucked on her chin, and which she had sent to torment the Throckmorton girls. The dun chicken and the rest of the spirits were now at the bottom of her stomach, and made her so full and heavy that she could not lace her coat, nor was the horse on which she rode able to carry her all the way: she had three spirits, all like dun chickens--Pluck, Catch, and White, which had been given her by an "upright man," extremely hard, of the name of Langland, of no particular dwelling and now gone beyond seas; and she had sent all three to the children and had plagued them sorely. This she said at various times, at each clause conjuring the devil and her spirits to inform her of the facts required by the Right Reverend Father in God. After her examination she and her daughter were committed to gaol; but Mr. Throckmorton got Agnes out on bail that he might take her home to the children, and see what they would say of her. This seemed to him the best way to complete the evidences of guiltiness against her, which at present were very slight and worthless. So the net closed tighter and tighter round this hapless family, and soon the deep black waves, rolling onward, dashed over their devoted heads.

When they heard that Agnes was brought back to Warbois, the children fell into their fits again, each saying, "I am glad, I am glad; none so glad as I." They knew the cruel sport preparing for them, and were in no hurry to abandon the pleasant excitement of their Possession, during which they were made so many centres of public interest, petted and commiserated and looked at and talked about and made of more consequence than the finest lady in the land. When the game was over they must sink down into the humdrum lives of good little girls in a country town, of no possible interest to living being outside their own house door. Surely an event to be deferred to the latest moment possible! For the first three or four days after Agnes' arrival they condescended to be well, but, being by that time tired of their new companion, they fell back into their former state, and cried out against her more bitterly than they had ever done against her mother. She was more helpless, too, than the mother, and more entirely in their power; so that the sport was greater, and the fear of opposition or detection less. Specially did Mistress Joan, the eldest girl, torment her; who, being at this time seventeen, had other ideas of spirits than dun chickens, mice, or frogs, which were all very well in the days of her infancy but quite uninteresting to her now. The manner in which she introduced her Spirits was singular. One day, just after her nose had bled, and she had said "it would be a good thing to throw her handkerchief into the fire, and burn the young witch," she suddenly looked about her smiling, and said, "What is this in God's Name that comes tumbling to me? It tumbles like a Foot-bal, it looks like a puppit-player, and appears much like its Dame's old thrumb Cap. 'What is your Name, I pray you?' said she. The Thing answered, his Name was Blew. To which she answered, 'Mr. Blew you are welcome, I never saw you before; I thought my Nose bled not for nothing, what News have you brought? What,' says she, 'dost thou say I shall be worse handled than ever I was? Ha! what dost thou say? that I shall now have my Fits, when I shall both hear and see and know every Body? that's a new Trick indeed. I think never any of my Sisters were so used, but I care not for you: do your worst, and when you have done, you will make an end.'" Then she cried out that Agnes Samuel had too much liberty, and must be more strictly looked to; for that Mr. Blew had told her she should have no peace till she and the old dame were hanged.

Mrs. Joan had opened a most prolific and amusing vein. Her imagination stopped at nothing, and she showed herself no mean hand at romance. She was very consecutive too, and kept up the likeness well. In the evening Mr. Blew appeared again, chiefly for the purpose of telling her that young Nan Samuel was his Dame, and to ask when the Spirit Smack, of whom he was jealous, had been with her. Mrs. Joan said she knew of no Smack. "You do," says the Thing, "and it is he that tells you all these things, but I will curse him for it." "Do your worst to me or him, I care not for you," says she. "Farewel," says the Thing. "Do you bid me farewel?" says she; "farewel, and be hanged; and come again when you are sent for." So then she came out of her fit. The next day a strange gentleman coming, Mrs. Elizabeth passed off into one of her wild states, and Mr. Throckmorton, "to show the gentleman a wonder," sent for young Agnes, and made her say after him, "I charge thee, thou Devil, as I love thee, and have Authority over thee, and am a Witch, and guilty of this matter, that thou suffer this Child to be well at this present." Upon which Mrs. Elizabeth wiped her eyes, and was perfectly well; and the wretched young girl was by so many steps nearer to her doom. The next day was a grand field-day for Mrs. Joan. Her spirits were in admirable disorder. Mr. Smack came from fighting with Pluck about her, for they were both in love with her, and had fought with great cowl staves last night in old dame's back yard, and Smack had broken Pluck's head, for which Mrs. Joan was not at all thankful, but, when he looked for a little loving word of gratitude, answered, scornfully, that she wished Pluck had broke his neck also, and so bid him go and be hanged for she would have nought to do with him. Presently in came Mr. Pluck, hanging down his broken head and looking very sheepish, but jealous and angry with Smack who seemed to have the best chance of them all with the young lady. Another day it was Catch who came in limping, with a broken leg got from the redoubtable Smack; but when Mrs. Joan tried to break his other leg with a stick she had in her hand--for she was a very scornful young lady to them--she could not; for ever as she struck at him he leaped over the stick, "just like a Jack-an-apes," as she said. Mr. Blew's turn came next. He appeared before her at supper with his arm in a sling: Smack had broken it. So Smack broke Pluck's head, Catch's leg, and Blew's arm, and then came himself to tell her that he would beat them all again, with the help of his cousin another Smack, and one Hardname, whose "Name standeth upon eight Letters, and every Letter standeth for a Word, but what his Name is otherwise we know not." Then Smack and she conversed about the propriety of "scratching" Agnes Samuel; and it was agreed between them that she should not scratch her then, because her face would be healed by the Assizes, but just before that time when all the world might see the marks.

And now began a scene of painful brutality. Whenever the children fell into their fits, they would only consent to be got out of them by Agnes' repeating a form of conjuration, in which she acknowledged herself to be a witch and guilty of their disease, commanding the devil, whom she had sent into them, to leave them. Then they came round, and were well until strangers called, when they invariably went off into their fits--which we can quite well understand--or until they got tired of the monotony of health. The most terrible threats were held out against Nan Samuel; and each child talked to its particular spirit with passion and fury of scratching her. It came at last: the little diabolical tempers which rose higher and higher with each fresh indulgence, getting weary of only fits and muttered communications with spirits and the thirst for blood grew into a frenzy. One of the younger children, Mrs. Mary, one day fell into a "very troublesome Fit," which held her half an hour, and at the last, growing better, she said, "Is it true? Do you say this is the day I must scratch the young Witch? I am glad of it; I will pay her home both for myself and Sisters." The young Pickering men who were standing by, hearing this, sent for Agnes to come into the room; when she came in the child cried out, "Art thou come, thou young Witch, who hath done all this mischief?" At which Agnes seemed surprised, this being the first time Mrs. Mary had abused her. Then one of the company told her to take Mary in her arms, and carry her down stairs; but she had no sooner got hold of her than the child fell to scratching her head and face with eager fierceness; the poor girl standing still and holding down her head, not defending herself but only crying out pitifully, while the child scratched on her face a broad and bleeding wound. When she was out of breath and thus forced to leave off, she cried and said "she was sorry for her cruelty, but the Thing made her do it, so that she could not help herself." Another day it was another of them who fell upon the maid, she not defending herself or resenting, but "crying out sadly, desiring the Lord to pitty her." Then they abused her, saying, "Thy Mother is a Witch, thy Father is a Witch, and thou art a Witch, and the worst of all;" and then they clamoured for the father, the old Turk, and would have him in to scratch him too. Just at that moment old Samuel chanced to come in to see his daughter--for he knew what kind of treatment she had to undergo--when a great hubbub arose. The children cried out against him, and--wretched young hypocrites!--exhorted him in the godliest terms to confess and repent; called him witch and naughty man and all the rest of the injuries then current; while he retorted fiercely and rudely, and told one of the little baggages she lied--as she did. But Mr. Throckmorton got angry, and would not let him go till he had pronounced the same conjuration as that by which his poor daughter was forced to "fyle" herself; and when he had said the words, the child came out of her fit, and acted amazement and shame to the life. So it went on: the children having their fits, being visited by their spirits, of whom there were nine now afloat--three Smacks, Pluck, Blew, Catch, White, Callicot, and Hardname--and every day or so scratching poor Nan till her face and back and hands were one mass of scars and wounds. And then the Assize time came, and the three Samuels--father, mother, and daughter--were put upon their trial for bewitching Lady Cromwell to death, and tormenting Mrs. Joan Throckmorton and her sisters. There could be no mistake about it now, for not only had they all three convicted themselves by their own confessions in the conjuration which they had been obliged to repeat, but even before the judge, Mrs. Jane played off the like trick, falling into a terrible fit which only old Samuel could get her out of by repeating the charm. At first he was obstinate and sturdily refused to say the words; but on the judge telling him that he should be brought in guilty if he did not, he consented, and had no sooner said--"As I am a witch, and did consent to the death of the Lady Cromwell, so I charge thee, Devil, to suffer Mrs. Jane to come out of her Fit at this present"--than Mrs. Jane wiped her eyes, looked round her, and said, "O Lord father where am I?" pretending to be quite amazed at her position. No hand is wanting when there is stoning to be done. Now that the Samuels were fairly convicted of witchcraft in one instance, witnesses came forward to prove them guilty of the like in others. It was remembered how certain persons had died who had offended the old dame; how others had lost their cows and whole farm stock in consequence of giving her rough language; how, even since she had been in gaol, she had bewitched to his death one of the turnkeys who had chained her to a bedpost, and had cruelly afflicted the gaoler's own son, so that he could not be recovered but by "scratching" her; with the further proof that when the grand jury returned a true bill, "billa vera," against them, old father Samuel burst out passionately to her with, "A plague of God light on thee, for thou art she that has brought us all to this, and we may thank thee for it." So the judge, "after good divine counsel given to them, proceeded to Judgment, which was to death." But the poor old woman set up a plea of being with child, though she was near fourscore years of age; at which all the court laughed, and she herself most of all, thinking it might save her. Some one standing near to Agnes counselled her to try the like plea; but the brave young girl, who had something of her father's spirit in her, indignantly refused. "No," said Agnes, with the gallows straight before her, and this desperate plea perhaps able to save her--"no; it shall never be said that I was both Witch and ----." She died with the same haughty courage maintained to the last: but old mother Samuel maundered through a vast number of confessions--implicated her husband--confessed to her spirits--but with one affecting touch of nature, through all her drivel and imbecility steadily refused to criminate her daughter. No, her Nan was no witch; she was clear and pure before God and towards man; and neither force nor cajolery could make her forswear that bit of loving truth.

When those three helpless wretches were fairly dead, the children, upon whose young souls lay the ineffaceable stain of Murder, and whose first steps in life had been through innocent blood, gave up the game and pronounced themselves cured: so we hear no more of their fits or their spirits, or Mrs. Joan's ghostly lovers fighting with cowl staves and breaking each other's heads out of jealousy and revenge: and the last record of the case is, that Sir Henry Cromwell left an annual sum of forty shillings to provide for a yearly sermon against witchcraft, to be preached at Huntingdon by a B.D. or D.D. member of Queen's College, Cambridge. How terrible to think that three human lives were sacrificed for such wild and wilful nonsense, and that sane and thoughtful and noble-minded people of this present day walk on the way towards the same faith! Better by far the most chill and desolate scepticism, which at least will light no Smithfield fires for any forms of creed or monstrous imaginings of superstition, than beliefs which can only be expressed and maintained by blood, and the culmination of which is in the suffering and destruction of all dissentients.

THE MAN OF HOPE AND THE DEVIL.[108]

A young lawyer, a Mr. Darrel, had a call to the ministry. He was made aware of this by the extraordinary sluggishness that came upon him when he turned to open a law book; so, as preaching puritanical sermons extempore was less toilsome and cost less study than learning the intricacies of the Codex Anglicanus, he became converted to extreme doctrines, and was principally regarded as a Man of Hope, skilful in casting out devils and marvellously apt at discovering witchcraft. His first essay at this work was in 1587 with Katherine Green, a young girl of seventeen, who had some hysterical affection which caused her to swell to an enormous size and led her to fancies and delusions, as, that she saw shapes and apparitions, and a young child without feet or legs looking at her from out a well. She also had fits, which she afterwards confessed were simulated in order to make her father-in-law, who was generally exceedingly severe with her, more kind and pliable: but Mr. Darrel said they were the fits of possession, and, as a proof, cast eight devils out of her; specially one sturdy devil, called Middlecub, which had been sent into her by Margaret Roper. Mr. Darrel at once seized Margaret Roper, accusing her of this Middlecub imp, and sending her off to the magistrate, Mr. Fouliamb; and in the meanwhile Katherine suffered herself to be repossessed, having been imprudent enough to talk with the devil in the likeness of a handsome young man who met her in the lanes, where he entertained her with propositions of marriage, and gave her some bread to eat. Mr. Fouliamb happened to be a man of sense, and discharged Margaret Roper, at the same time threatening to send Darrel to prison in her stead if he took on himself to calumniate honest folk without cause. This rebuff cooled the young lawyer parson's ardour a little; but in 1594 the Starkies of Lancashire announced themselves possessed, and Mr. Darrel must needs go down to vex the foul fiend that had gotten them. For he was so holy a man that the devils hated him mightily, being sorely vexed in his presence, and crying out, "Now he is gone; now he is gone; now blacke coate is gone," as soon as he quitted them, wearied with his wrestling. The story of the Starkies was this:--

Anne, aged nine, and John, of ten, were taken with "dumpish heavie countenances," and fearful startings of their bodies, loud shouting fits, and convulsions. The father went to Hartley, a known conjuror, who came to their aid with popish charms and certain herbs; and so stilled them for a year and a half. But when he "fained as thought he would haue gone into another countrey," the children fell ill again, and Mr. Starkie thought it best to secure the perpetual services of the conjuror by a fee of forty shillings yearly. But Hartley wanted more, and thereupon began a quarrel which ended in the Possession of the children, of three scholars living at the Starkies, of Margaret Byron, and lastly of Hartley himself. Now Hartley had a devil, and whomsoever he kissed he inoculated with this devil and breathed it into them. And as he was always kissing some one--John for love often, the little wenches in jest, to Margaret Hardman "promising a thraue of kisses," "wrestling with Johan Smyth, a maid, to kiss her"--he had given the devil in rich proportion all through the Starkies' house, and only Mr. Darrel could exorcise him. The possessed leaped about like goats, and crawled on all fours like beasts, and barked like dogs, and had communications from a white dove, and saw horned devils under the beds, and had visions of big black dogs with monstrous tails and bound with chains, and huge black cats and big mice that knocked them down at a blow, and left them speechless, cold, and dead. And then they took to "slossinge up their meat like greedy dogges or hogges," and they made the same noises as a broken-winded horse; and they howled and shrieked; and one of them, Jane Ashton the servant aged thirty, fell foul of Edmund Hartley for all his kisses and promises of marriage; and they "yelled and whupped;" and there was in very truth the devil to pay in that horrible house when Mr. More and Mr. Darrel went to exorcise the fiends and restore the possessed to their senses. After some days of prayer, and of fighting with the devil who would cry out when Mr. Darrel was preaching, "Bible bable, he will never have done prating, prittle prattle;" and "I must goe, I must away; I cannot tarrie; whither shall I goe? I am hot, I am too hot, I will not dye!" and such like, six of them were delivered, and visibly and bodily dispossessed. With one, Mary Byron, the devil came up from her stomach to her breast, then to her throat, when it gave her "a sore lug," whilst a mist dazzled her eyes. Then she felt it go out of her mouth, leaving behind it a sore throat and a filthy smell, and it was in the likeness of a crow's head, and it sat in a corner of the parlour in the dark; but suddenly flashing out all a fire it flew out of the window, and the whole place was in a blaze, according to her imagination. John Starkie lost his in the shape of a man with a humpback and very ill-favoured, who, when he had gone out wished much to re-enter, but Master John withstood him, and had the best of it. He was like a "foule ugly man with a white beard and a 'bulch' on his back." The same tale had little Ellin Holland and Anne Starkie to tell, all save the white beard. Elinor Hardman lost hers as an urchin, but presently returning through a little hole in the parlour, he offered her gold and silver in any quantity if she would let him enter again, and when she resisted he threatened to cast her into the fire and the pit, and to break her neck; all of which threats being unheeded by the little maid of ten, he left her again in his old form of "urchin." The next day, and the next, all these devils came again, seeking to repossess the children. They came in various forms--as a black raven; a black boy, with his head bigger than his body; a black rough dog with a firebrand in his mouth; five white doves; a brave fellow like a wooer; two little whelps that played on the table, and ran into a dish of butter; an ape; a bear with fire in his mouth; a haystack--all, haystack as well as the rest, promising them bags of gold and silver if they might come into them again, but threatening to break their necks and their backs, and throw them into the pit and the fire, and out of the window, if denied. But Messrs. More and Darrel were instant in prayer, and successfully withstood them. The children were pronounced finally dispossessed: all save Jane Ashton, who went away to a popish family and became popish herself; wherefore the devil recovered her, says Mr. Darrel, and her last state was worse than her first. As for Edmund Hartley, he was hanged at Lancaster, chiefly through Mr. Darrel's exertions.

In 1596 Mr. Darrel had more work. Thomas Darling, "the Boy of Burton," had offended old Alice Goodridge; so Alice possessed him, and Mr. Darrel was sent for the undoing. His chief weapon in this case was a ranting tract called "The Enemie of Securitie," which the devil could not abide any how, and during the reading of which he would cry out--through the earthly medium of the Boy of Burton--"Radulphus, Belzebub can doe no good, his head is stricken off with a word."--"We cannot prevaile (against the church and Mr. Darrel), for they will not be holpen by witches. Brother Radulphus, we cannot prevaile; let us go to our mistress and torment her; I have had a draught of her blood to-day." "Againe--'There is a woman earnest at prayer, get her away.' 'Nay,' quoth John Alsop (a man that was present), with a loude voice, 'we cannot spare her.' Thus the Boy graced Mistress Wightman, his aunt. And againe, 'Brother Glassop (another devil), we cannot prevaile, his faith is soe strong. And they fast and pray, and a preacher prayeth as fast as they.'" And "I bayted my hooke often, and at last I catcht him. Heere I was before, and heere I am againe, and heere I must stay, though it be but for a short tyme. I leade them to drink, carouse, and quaffe. I make them to sweare. I have leave given mee to doe what I will for a time. What is wightier than a Kinge in his owne lande? A King I am, in whome I raigne, heere I am King for a time." With much more of the same kind. In the mean time old Alice Goodridge, who had wrought all this mischief, died in prison, while her devilish spirit or imp, Minnie, whom she had sent into the boy, racketed and rioted in his soul and body, and Mr. Darrel wrestled against him with prayer and "the Enemie of Securitie." He finally prevailed, and after Thomas Darling had been possessed and dispossessed and repossessed again, delivered him from Radulphus and Minnie and Glassop and Beelzebub, and so had leisure to turn to some one else when needed.

That some one else was soon found; for there was Will Somers, a lad living with Mr. Brakenbury at Ashby-de-la-Zouch during the time of Mr. Darrel's ministry there, who was now at Nottingham, and one of the most accomplished demoniacs of the day. Nothing would satisfy Will but that Mr. Darrel should be sent for to cast the devil out of him. He had known of his prowess with Katherine Wright, and the Starkies, and the Boy of Burton, and why should he not glorify God and the Puritans as well in Nottingham as in Lancashire? Accordingly, that gentleman was sent for on the 5th of November, 1597, and the farce began. Before Mr. Darrel even saw the lad he said he was possessed, and he said the same thing to himself--counterfeiting or illness being of course put out of court; and he described to the bystanders in what shape the devil would appear when driven out of the lad--for he would make himself visible to them if they had but faith and courage and patience to see the end, and if they would not be terrified when the boy "scriehed or cryed aloude in a strange and supernaturall manner; sometimes roaring fearfullye lyke a beare, and crying like a swyne." The shapes, then, in which he would go were these--"a Mouse, a Man with a Hunch-back higher than his Head, an ugly Man with a white Beard, a Crow's Head round, a great Breath, ugly like a Toad, an Urchin, &c." And he told them, also in the lad's hearing, of what other possessed persons had done: how they had cast themselves into fire or water, gnashed with their teeth, writhed with their necks, and drawn their mouths awry, foaming. Then he said that Will Somers was afflicted for the sins of Nottingham, and God had made even the devil a preacher to deter them from them; whereat Will acted by signs all the sins of Nottingham, and Mr. Darrel explained them to the people as he went on. With such a master as this, it was no difficult matter for the pupil to succeed. Two sermons were preached on his behalf. During Mr. Aldred's he lay still, excepting a little struggle now and then: this was to show that Mr. Aldred was not powerful as a Man of God. But when Mr. Darrel began, he roused himself up, and on his describing the fourteen signs of Possession one after the other, acted them all to the life as he told them off. "He tore; he foamed; he wallowed; his Face was drawn awry; his Eyes would stare and his Tongue hang out; he had a Swelling would seem to run from his Forehead down by his Ear and Throat, and through his Belly and Thighs, to the Calf of his Legs; he would speak with his Mouth scarce moving; and when they looked his Tongue would seem drawn down his Throat; he would try to cast himself into the Fire and Water; he would seem heavy that they could not lift him, and his Joints stiff that they could not bend them." And when Mr. Darrel further exhorted them all to stand firm, and they would see the glory of God in the dispossession, he cried and rended and laid as if dead, just in the order which the preacher desired. Then he rose up cured and exorcised; but Mr. Darrel told him he might be possessed again, and he must be very careful and watchful. Of course he was possessed again. He had been too great a gainer by the first trial not to venture on a second. If he had been bought off his apprenticeship, had large presents of clothes, and kept in idleness at his father-in-law's, for a first trial, what might not fall from the skies on this second occasion? So Will began to talk wildly of a black dog that haunted him, offering him gold and ginger, and of the devil who came with six more shapes to torment him--namely, as a cock, a crane, a snake, an angel, a toad, a newt, a set of viols, and dancers, and that he stood before him "with a foure-forked cappe on his heade;" sometimes, too, making noises and motions like whelps or "kitlings." Fourteen persons were thrown into prison, accused of bewitching Master Will, of whom the most celebrated was Millicent Horslie, whom no human skill could have saved had not the impostor betrayed himself in time. For Will Somers had a revelation concerning her, which must be told in the words of his "confession," as reported by Harsnet:--"Maister Darrel told my father-in-law and others in my hearing, that he, the said Maister Darrel, Maister Aldred, and some others, were going to carrie Millicent Horsley (that present morning) to the said Maister Perkins, to be examined. Whereupon, I gessing by the time of Maister Darrel's departure, and by the distance of the way, and of the likelihood that she woulde deny herselfe to bee a witche, said to those that were present by mee in one of my fittes, about eleven of the clocke, that Millicent Horsley was in examining, and that she denyed herselfe to be a witch." This coincidence was too striking an instance of supernatural power to be overlooked. Mr. Darrel worked on it as one of the most marvellous proofs of the boy's undeniable possession, and Millicent Horsley lay in gaol, together with thirteen others, to satisfy the craft of one and the credulity of the other, and to prove the whole age sick, diseased, and enfeebled by superstition.

Will's sister, Mary Cowper, seeing how pleasant and profitable a thing it was to be bewitched, followed in her brother's steps, and cried out on Alice Freeman, a poor old creature who thought to escape by saying she was with child. The plea was not a very safe one, for Mr. Darrel told her if she was, it was by the devil, and she had better have held her tongue. But by this time the parish authorities got frightened, and interfered; sending Will off to the workhouse, where he still continued his fits and antics, until a rough fellow there, one John Shepheard, told him that if he "did not leave and rise up he would set such a pair of Knip-knaps upon him as should make him rue it"--when he gathered himself up and confessed his imposture. Mr. Darrel would have none of this recantation. He said he was more possessed than ever, and that it was the devil within him that made him to lie. So Will wrote the following letter, as a kind of quietus to his zealous friend:--

"Mr. Darrel, my hearty Commendations unto you. This is to desire you that you would let me be at quiet: For whereas you said that I was Possessed, I was not; and for those Tricks that I did before you came, was through Folks Speeches that came to me: And those that I did since, was through your Speeches, and others. For as you said I could not hear, I did hear all Things that were done in the House, and all Things that I did were counterfeit; And I pray you to let it pass; for the more you meddle in it, the more discredit it will be for you: And I pray God, and you, and all the World to forgive me."

Even this was not enough. Will was bribed over by the promise of a good place in a gentleman's house if he would be properly demoniac again; and consenting thereto, played again his old tricks; but the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edmund Anderson, not believing a word of it all, encouraged him kindly to tell the truth, and not be afraid; so Will started up and was perfectly well, and for the greater satisfaction of the gentlefolks showed them how he worked.

And to prove how small was the value of evidence in those days, one Richard Mee--who was held to have deposed "That he had seen William Somers turn his Face directly backward, not moving his Body, and that his Eyes were as great as Beasts' Eyes, and that his Tongue would be thrust out of his Head to the bigness of a Calve's Tongue" when re-examined explained himself thus:--"My Meaning was that he turned his Face a good Way towards his Shoulder, and that his Eyes were something gogling; and by reason that it was Candle-light when I saw his Tongue thrust out, and by reason of my Conceit of the Strangeness of Somers's Troubles, it seemed somewhat bigger than, if Somers had been well, I should have thought it to have been." Again, a black dog which Will had cried out on as the devil, and which, by reason of his words had actually been taken for the devil with eyes glaring like fire, come back to repossess him, turned out to be nothing but a spurrier's dog crouching in the background of the darkening chamber. So, when carefully sifted, would the evidence of all such-like marvels prove to be merest chaff scattered on the ground; and yet, a century after, Mr. Richard Boulton is found repeating the story of Will Somers' possession as if it had never been disproved; and there are some even now living who would cite it as a case of proved spiritualism. Mr. Darrel was degraded from the ministry, and committed to close prison: rather harsh measures simply because he had more faith and a little less discretion than his neighbours.

GIFFARD'S ANECDOTES.[109]

George Giffard, "minister of God's word in Maldon," put forth a little book in 1603, containing a number of witch stories and anecdotes, without names, dates, or places, yet written in a manner and style evidently proving their reliability, and all seeming to have come within his own personal knowledge as believed in by others. One, whom he knew, under the assumed name of one of his characters was constantly troubled by a hare, which his conscience accused him was a witch "she stared at him so;" and sometimes an ugly weasel would run through his yard; and sometimes a foul big cat sit upon his barn, for which he had no manner of liking; and an old woman of the place, whom he had been as careful to please as if she had been his mother, still frowned upon him to his exceeding discomfort; and a hog which overnight had eaten his meat with his fellows, quite hearty and well, in the morning was stark dead; and five or six hens died too, in a manner no one could understand, save by the power of witchcraft. And once another of his friends went to a cunning man who lived twenty miles off, complaining of his farm-yard losses: so the cunning man took a glass, and bidding him look in it, showed him a certain suspected witch therein, telling him that she had three or four imps, "some call them puckrels," one of which was like a gray cat, another like a weasel, a third like a mouse. There was also another cunning person--a woman--to whom a father took a child that had long been lame and pained. The woman told the man he had an ill neighbour, and that the child was forespoken. "Marie, if he would go home and bring her some of the clothes which the child lay in all night, she would tell him certainely." The father went home and did as he was bid, when the wise woman informed him that the girl was bewitched, counselled him what to do, and the "girle is well at this day, and a pretie quicke girle," says George Giffard, with a sneer at his neighbour's easy faith. Another had his wife much troubled; so he, too, went off to a wise woman, who told him that his wife was haunted by a fairy. As a counter-charm she was bidden to wear a part of St. John's Gospel ever about her, against which the fairies could not stand, so fled. Another good wife could not make her butter come: it was bewitched, and for a whole week obstinately disregarded the laws of butter nature: wherefore they heated a spit, red hot, and thrust it into the cream--and it came at once. The next morning the good wife met the suspected witch--"the old filth," she calls her with more emphasis than euphony. "Lord, how sowerly she looked upon me, and mumbled as she went! Ah, quoth she, you have an honest man to your husband. I hear how he doth use me!" The wife longed to scratch the witch, her stomach rose so against her, but she was afraid she would prove the stronger, for she was "a lustie old quean," and let her pass unmolested.

In a certain village a wealthy man was suddenly reduced to comparative poverty by extraordinary losses in his farm; he himself fell ill, and his child of seven years of age sickened and died. He sent to the same wise woman at R. H., who told him that he was bewitched, and moreover, that there were three witches and one wizard in the town where he lived. The forespoken farmer caused the one whom he most suspected to be seized and examined, who at last confessed, after making "much ado," and taking up the time of the worshipful justice to no good. She said that she had three imps, a cat Lightfoot, a toad Lunch, a weasel Makeshift. Lightfoot had been given to her sixteen years ago, by one Mother Barlie of W. in return for an oven cake; the toad and the weasel came of their own accord and offered their services gratuitously. The cat killed kine, the weasel killed horses, and the toad plagued men; so the poor old creature was sent to the county gaol, where she died before the assizes. Another woman, old Mother W. of Great T., had an imp like a weasel. "She was offended highly with one H. M.; home she went, and called forth her spirit, which lay in a pot of woole under her bed: she willed him to go plague the man: he inquired what she would give him, and he would kill H. M. She said she would give him a cocke, which she did, and he went, and the man fell sicke with a greate paine in his belly, languished and died; the witch was arraigned, condemned, and hanged, and did confesse all this."

Seven miles hence, at W. B., a man in good health suddenly fell sick, pined for half a year, and then died. His wife, suspecting evil doings, went to a cunning woman, who showed her in a glass the likeness of the witch who had destroyed him, wearing an old red cap with corners, such as women were used to wear. The old red-capped woman was taken, tried, soon brought to confess to the bewitching of the man, and executed. But before she died she told them all, how that she had a spirit in the likeness of a yellow dun cat, which came to her one night as she sat by the fire nursing angry thoughts against a neighbour with whom she had fallen out. She was frightened, she said, but the cat bid her not be afraid, for it had served an old dame, that was now dead, for five years down in Kent, and would serve her now, an she would. The woman took the cat at its word, and by it killed many a cow and hog of those who angered her: at last she sent it to this man, and the cat killed him. She was hanged, and the yellow dun imp was never more seen.

Mr. Giffard knew a church which had been robbed of its communion service: a wise man told the churchwardens what to do and the thief would surely ride in all haste to confess. As it proved. Another case was that of a child taken piteously ill. Under the cunning man's advice the father burnt its clothes, and while they were burning, the witch came running in, grievously pained. The child was well within two days. A butcher had a son, John, terribly afflicted with sores. Salves and plasters would not heal him; but when a cunning man showed him in a glass the form of the witch who had laid this harmful thing upon him, and they had cut off some of the boy's hair and burnt it, the old woman came to the house in all speed, crying, "John, John, scratch me!" So John scratched her till the blood came, and his sores all healed of themselves, without salve or plaster helping. A woman had blear eyes that were watery; a knave lodging at the house wrote a charm which she was always to wear about her neck, and never lose or look at. She wore her charm, and her eyes got quite well; but one day, prompted by Eve's sin, she opened the packet, and found a piece of paper on which was written, in the German tongue, "The devil plucke out thine eyes and fill their holes with dirt." Terrified at the unholy nature of her cure, the woman flung the charm away, and her eyes immediately became bleared and watery as before.[110] A woman suspected of witchcraft was taken in hand by a gentleman, who undertook to induce her to confess. She was very stiff about the matter, and denied all dealings with the devil in any way. Suddenly, at some distance from them, appeared a weasel or a lobster, looking straight at them. "Look!" said the gentleman, "yonder same is thy spirit!" "Oh, master," said she, "that is a vermine. There be many of them everywhere." But as they went towards it, the weasel or lobster vanished clean out of sight. "Surely," said the gentleman, "it is thy spirit." But still she denied, "and with that her mouth was drawn all awrie." When a little further pressed she allowed all, and the gentleman, being no justice, sent her home, exhorting her to go to a magistrate and ease her soul by confession. As she got home she was met by another witch who came violently enraged against her. "Ah, thou beast! what hast thou done? thou hast bewrayed us all!" she said. "What remedy now?" said she. "What remedy?" saith the other, "send thy spirit and touch him." At that moment the gentleman felt, as it were, a flash of fire about him; but he lifted his hat and prayed, and the spirit came back and said it could do him no hurt, because he had faith. So then they sent it against his child, and the child was taken ill with great pain and died. The witches confessed and were hanged. Another witch had her spirit hidden in the boll of a tree; and there she held long conversations with this ghastly Ariel, he answering in a hollow ghoustie voice, as might be expected. When any offended her, she would go to the tree and release her imp to do them harm. She had killed many hogs, horses, and the like by this spirit; but at last justice got hold of her with its mailed hand and killed her. Another friend of Giffard's, also under the disguise of one of his characters, was twice on a jury, when certain old women were charged with harming their neighbours' goods and lives. There was no proof in either case, and the old women protested their innocence passionately; but the jury brought them in guilty, which was perfectly logical and right according to their notions of the law of that God who suffers the devil to torment the sons of men, and to delude old women into the possession of unholy powers. What, indeed, could be done with them when, by a look or a word, they could afflict even unto death the most beautiful of God's creatures, and send the devil to inhabit the purest of souls? The mischief lay in the fundamental creed, not so much in the application of it, terrible and bloody as it was; and it is against this creed, that I would most earnestly insist. It must be remembered, too, that Giffard writes ironically, and brings together all these cases as evidence of the foolishness and wickedness of the faith.

THE POSSESSED MAID OF THAMES STREET.[111]

In 1603, Mary Glover, a merchant's daughter in Thames Street, gave herself out as bewitched, and said that Mother Jackson had done it. A little glimmering of reason made the physician Dr. Boncraft tell the Lord Chief Justice Anderson that Mother Jackson was wrongfully accused, and the girl was counterfeiting. So the Lord Chief Justice caused the Recorder of London, Sir John Crook, have her to him in his chambers in the Temple. The maid went with her mother and some neighbours, and in an hour's time came Mother Jackson, disguised like a country market woman, with a muffler hiding her face, an old hat, and a short cloak bespattered with mire. As soon as she entered the maid fell backward on the floor; "her Eyes drawn into her Head, her Tongue toward her Throat, her Mouth drawn up to her Ear, her Bodie became stiff and senseless, Her Lips being shut closs a plain and audible Voice came out from her Nostrils saying 'Hang her, hang her.'" The Recorder, willing to try her, called for a candle at which to light a sheet of paper, then held the burning paper to her hand till a blister came, rising and breaking and the water running down on the floor. But still the maid lay as if dead, with the Voice coming out of her Nostrils, saying, "Hang her, hang her." Not satisfied with the trial of burning, the Recorder got a long pin, which he made hot and thrust up her nostrils to see if she would "neese," wink, bend her brows, or stir her head; but still she lay as before, stiff, senseless, and as one dead. The minister, one Lewis Hughes, who tells this story which Sinclair quotes, told the Recorder that he had often prayed with the maid, and that when he concluded with the Lord's Prayer and came to "but deliver us from all evil," the maid would be tost and shaken as a mastiff might shake a cur. Then the Recorder bade the witch say the Lord's Prayer, but she could not say it: she kept on all right until the clause "deliver us from evil," and this she skipped over; neither would she confess that Jesus Christ was our Lord in the Articles of the Christian Faith. When Mary was in her fits, if the witch but so much as laid her hand upon her she was tost and shaken fearfully. This the Recorder wished to verify: so he bade first one, then another, of the neighbours come forward and touch her; which they did; but she never stirred till Mother Jackson touched her, when she was shaken as before. Then the Recorder said, "Lord, have mercy upon the woman!" for he was now fully convinced; and sent poor old Mother Jackson off to Newgate. As soon as she was sent off the maid came to herself, the voice ceased out of her nostrils, and she went home with her mother. Three weeks or more after the witch was condemned, the maid had the same fits, strange and fearful to behold, and the Recorder told the minister, and all the ministers of London, "that we might be ashamed to see a Child of God in the Claws of the Devil without any hope of deliverance but by such means as God had appointed--Fasting and Prayer." Then five ministers, all good Christians and sound believers, assembled and prayed from morning to candle-light, when Mary suddenly started out of her chair--they crying "Jesus help, Jesus save!"--and came up to Lewis Hughes, in a state of wildness and dismay. As he stood behind her holding her by the arms, she lifted both herself and him off the ground, foaming at the mouth and struggling thus all over the chamber; and then her strength gave way, and she fell as if dead, her head hanging down and her limbs, which had been so stiff and frozen, now supple and limber. In a short time her eyes came back into their place and her tongue came out of her throat, and she looked round and said cheerfully, "Oh! he is come, he is come! The Comforter is come! the Comforter is come! I am delivered, I am delivered!" Her father hearing these words wept and said, "These were her grandfather's words when he was at the stake, the fire crackling about him," for he died a martyr to the Reformed Faith in Queen Mary's time. Then she prayed and thanked God till her voice was weak, and so the company separated, and Mary went home. Afterwards she was put with Lewis Hughes for a year, lest Satan should assault her again, and Mr. John Swan wrote the most canting and nauseating book on her "case" that ever fanatic penned or the duped and the gulled believed. But poor old Mother Jackson was dead: and those who mourned for her, mourned in secret and silence and shame.

There was another case of possession, this same year--Thomas Harrison, the Boy of Norwich--chiefly remarkable for having procured such attention from the ecclesiastical authorities that seven persons were formally licensed to have private prayers and fasting for his deliverance. But the bishop and commissioners who had seen his fits thought him an impostor, so his case died out for want of public support.[112]

And now we have the master of kingcraft on the throne, with his mania against witches, his private vices, and public follies, treacherous, cruel, narrow-minded, and cowardly beyond anything that has ever disgraced the English throne before or since. And one of the first trials for witchcraft during his reign was that disgraceful affair in which Somerset and his wife, Foreman, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Mrs. Turner were all mixed up together.

SWEET FATHER FOREMAN.

That Carr and Lady Essex should have an intrigue together was not so bad, but that Mrs. Turner should have recourse to charms and conjurations, "to inchant the Viscount's affection towards her," that "much time should be spent, many words of witchcraft, great cost in making pictures of wax, crosses of silver, and little babies for that use," that specially, there should be among the images of wax, one "very sumptuously apparrelled in silke and sattin, as alsoe another sitting in forme of a naked woman spreading and laying forth her haires in a glass," was terrible misdoing against both God and the king. The murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was venial; the intrigue between his favourite and another man's wife was venial too; his own vices were mere kindly flea-bites on his dignity; but charms and conjurations, and my Lady Essex calling that old wizard Foreman her "sweet father"--this was more than the British Solomon could well digest. So when he had got tired of Carr and wanted to be rid of him, he suddenly remembered sweet Father Foreman, disciple of Dr. Dee, and Mrs. Turner, inventor of yellow starch for ruffs and falling bands, and not only smote Somerset straight in the face for his own share, but sent a side shaft after him, through his "creatures." Well for himself was it that sweet Father Foreman was dead and buried deep; so there only remained Mrs. Turner and one or two inferior agents in the matter--just enough to keep the people amused, and satisfy the royal lust for witch blood. Somerset came to the block on another count, about as false as the rest; and Mrs. Turner swung from the gibbet in her yellow ruff on every plea but the right one, and for any sin but those of her real and actual life. After her death was found her black scarf full of white crosses: and the mould in which Father Foreman had cast his leaden images of women; and written charms spread out on fair white parchment; and, worst of all, a list of all the ladies who had gone to consult the sorcerer as to how they might gain the love of other lords than their own; which list the Lord Chief Justice would not read out in court because, said the gossips, his own wife's name was the first that caught his eye.

THE WITCHES OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.[113]

"Of poor parentage, and poor education," old Agnes Browne had but a sorry life of it in the little town of Gilsborough where she lived. She had one daughter, Joan Vaughan, or Varnham, "a maide, or at least unmarried," says the old black-letter book maliciously; "as gratious as the mother, and both of them as farre from grace as Heaven from hell;" which Joan was "so well brought up vnder her mother's elbow, that she hangd with her for company vnder her mother's nose." It seems that one day, Joan, being in the company of a certain Mistress Belcher, "a virtuous and godly Gentlewoman of the same towne of Gilsborough, whether of purpose to giue occasion of anger to the saide Mistris Belcher, or but to continue her vilde and ordinary custome of behauiour, committed something either in speech or gesture so vnfitting, and vnseeming the nature of womanhood" that Mistress Belcher's patience could bear with her no longer. She got up, beat Joan Vaughan, and "forced her to avoid the company." Joan went away muttering that she would be revenged; to which replied Mrs. Belcher stoutly, that she feared neither her nor her mother, and bade her do her worst. Then Joan went home to her mother, and both together devised such a punishment that Mrs. Belcher was griped and gnawed of her body, her mouth drawn all awry, and in such powerful fits that she could scarce be held, crying out incessantly in her fits, "Here comes Joane Vaughan, away with Joane Vaughan!" till all the world knew that she was bewitched, and that old Agnes Browne and her daughter had caused the trouble. Mistress Belcher's brother, one Master Avery, hearing of his sister's sickness and extremity, came to see her; and when he saw her, was moved to such anguish and indignation that he must needs go to the house of the witches to hale them to his sister, that she might draw their blood. But though he twice essayed, he was twice arrested by some miraculous agency, spell-bound, and unable to move hand or foot; he could not, by any possibility, advance beyond a certain spot, whereby the witches were safe for this time at least, "the devil, who was standing sentinel," being stronger than he. Wherefore sorrowfully he turned back, and went home to his own place. But these "imps of the devil" had longer arms than he, and in a very short time he was as grievously tormented as his sister, his torments enduring until the witches were arrested and taken to Northampton gaol. When there, nothing would satisfy Mistress Belcher and her brother Master Avery but that they should go to the prison and "scratch" the witches; which they did, and both recovered of their pains marvellously on the instant. "Howbeit they were no sooner out of sight, but they fell againe into their old traunces, and were more violently tormented than before; for when Mischiefe is once a foote, she grows in short time so headstrong, that she is hardly curbed." Mistress Belcher and Master Avery returning home from Northampton in a coach, after their godly exercise of drawing blood from these two wretched women, saw suddenly a man and woman riding both upon a black horse. At which Master Avery cried out that either they or their horses should presently miscarry; and he had no sooner spoken than both their horses fell down dead. Wherefore, for all these crimes, as well as for bewitching a young child to death, Agnes Browne and her daughter Joan were adjudged guilty, and hanged on that 22nd of July, protesting their innocence to the last. And then it came out that about a fortnight before her apprehension Agnes Browne, Katherine Gardiner, and Joan Lucas, "all birds of a winge," had been seen riding on a sow's back to a place called Ravenstrop, to see one Mother Rhoades, an old witch that dwelt there. But before they got there old Mother Rhoades had died, "and in her last cast cried out that there were three of her old friends comming to see her, but they came too late. Howbeit she would meet with them in another place within a month after. And thus much concerning Agnes Browne and her daughter Joane Vaughan," says the old black-letter book contemptuously.

The son of witches, Arthur Bill could not control his appointed fate. Suspected by the authorities, but without proof, he and his father and mother were swum for trial, tied cross bound and flung into the water, where they floated and did not sink. Arthur was accused of bewitching to her death one Martha Aspine, as also of having bewitched sundry cattle; and as the parents had a bad name, it was thought best to try them all. After this trial of the water, Arthur was afraid, says the black-letter book, lest his father should relent and betray him and them all; whereupon he sent for his mother, and both together bewitched a round ball into his father's throat, so that he could not speak a word. When the ball was got out, the father proved the principal witness against them. The poor mother, who seems to have been a loving, sensitive, downcast woman, fainted many times during this terrible period; "Many times complaining to her spirit," says the bitter, uncharitable, anonymous author, "that the power of the Law would bee stronger than the power of her art, and that shee saw no other likelihood but that shee should be hanged as her Sonne was like to bee: To whom her spirit answered, giuing this sorry comfort, that shee should not bee hanged, but to preuent that shee should cut her owne throatt. Shee, hearing this sentence and holding it definitive, in great agony and horror of minde and conscience fell a rauing, crying out that the irreuocable Iudgement of her death was giuen, and that shee was damned perpetually; cursing and banning the time wherein shee was borne, and the houre wherein shee was conceiued." A short time after "shee made good the Deuil's worde, and to preuent the Iustice of the Law, and to saue the hangman a labour, cut her owne throate." The poor boy was in great misery when he heard of his mother's death, and knew now that what despair had done for her, the tyranny of superstition would do for him; yet "he stood out stiffly for his innocence," and when found guilty, broke out into grievous cries, saying that he had now found the Law to have a power above Justice, for that it had condemned an Innocent. At the gallows he said the same thing, refusing to confess to Martha Aspine's murder, and "thus with a dissembling Tongue, and a corrupted conscience, hee ended his course in this world, with little hope or respect (as it seemed) of the world to come." What became of his three familiars, Grissil, Ball, and Jack, we are not informed, neither of what forms or functions they were, nor of what colours or dimensions.

Grievously did Mistress Moulsho offend Ellen Jenkinson, when she caused her to be searched for witch-marks, which of course were found; for Helen's character was notorious, and there is no smoke without a little fire. So Helen, in revenge, played Mistress Moulsho a trick that brought herself to the gallows. For "at that time Mistris Moulsho had a Bucke of clothes to be washt out. The next morning, the Mayd, when shee came to hang them forth to dry, spyed the Cloathes, but especially Mistris Moulsho's Smocke, to bee all bespotted with the pictures of Toades, Snakes, and other ougly Creatures, which making her agast, she went presently and told her mistris, who, looking on them, smild, saying nothing else but this: 'Here are fine Hobgoblins indeede.' And being a Gentlewoman of a stout courage, went immediately to the house of the sayd Hellen Ienkinson, and with an angry countenance told her of this matter, threatening her that if her Linnen were not shortly cleered from those foule spots shee would scratch out both her eyes; and so not staying for any answere, went home and found her linnen as white as it was at first." Helen was soon after arraigned for the death of a child, by witchcraft, but this story of Mrs. Moulsho's clothes all bespotted with the figures of toads and snakes stood in the stead of any more rational evidence. When found guilty, the poor creature cried out, "Woe is me, I now cast away!" And when at the place of execution, she "made no other Confession but this. That shee was guiltlesse, and neuer shewed signe of Contrition for what was past, nor any sorrow at all, more than did accompany the feare of death. Thus ended this Woman her miserable life, after shee had lived many yeares poore, wretched, scorned, and forsaken of the world."

Of Mary Barber, the last of the sad crew hanged at Northampton on those bloody assizes, the author gives no special account, but plenty of abuse, mixed up with the strangely cruel and immoral morality of the day. He says that "as shee was of meane Parents, so was she monstrous and hideous both in her life and actions. Her education and barbarous Nature neuer promising to the world anything but what was rude, violent, and without any hope of proportion more than only in the square of uitiousnesse. For out of the oblyuion and blindnesse of her seduced senses, she gaue way to all the passionate and earthly faculties of the flesh, and followed all the Fantazmas Vanities and Chimeras of her polluted and vnreasonable delights, forsaking the Society of Grace, and growing enamored vpon all the euill that Malice or Frenzy could minister to her vicious desires and intendments." She was put in prison on the charge of bewitching a man to death, but "the prison (which makes men bee fellowes and chambermates with theeves and murtherers) the common guests of such dispised Innes, and should cause the Imprisoned Party (like a Christian Arithmetician) to number and cast vp the amount of his own Life, neuer put her in minde of the hatefull transgressions shee had committed, and to consider the filth and leprosie of her soule, and intreate heaven's mercy for the release thereof. Prison put her not in minde of her graue, nor the grates and lockes put her in remembrance of hell, which depriued her of the ioy of liberty, which shee saw others possesse. The iangling of irons did not put her in minde of the chaines wherewith shee should be bound in eternall torments, vnlesse heaven's mercy vnloosed them, nor of the howling terrors and gnashing of teeth which in hel euery soule shall receiue for the particular offences committed in this life, without vnfained and hearty contrition. Shee neuer remembered or thought shee must die, or trembled for feare of what should come to her after death. But as her use was alwaies knowne to be deuilish, so her death was at last found to be desperate. For shee (and the rest before named) being brought from the common gaole of Northampton to Northampton Castle, where the Assizes are vsually held, were seuerally arraigned and indited for the offences they had formerly committed, but to the inditement they pleaded not guilty. Putting therefore their causes to the triall of the Countrey, they were found guilty, and deserved death by the verdit of a credible Iury returned. So without any confession or contrition, like birds of a feather they all held and hangd together for company at Abington gallowes hard by Northampton the two and twintieth day of Iuly last past; Leauing behinde them in prison many others tainted with the same corruption, who without much mercy and repentance are likely to follow them in the same tract of Precedencie."

THE WITCHES OF LANCASHIRE.[114]

In Pendle Forest, a wild tract of land on the borders of Yorkshire, lived an old woman about the age of fourscore, who had been a witch for fifty years, and had brought up her own children, and instructed her grandchildren, to be witches. "She was a generall agent for the Deuill in all these partes;" her name was Elizabeth Southernes, usually called Mother Demdike; the date of her arraignment 1612. She was the first tried of this celebrated "coven," twenty of whom stood before Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, charged with all the crimes lying in sorcery, magic, and witchcraft. Old Mother Demdike died in prison before her trial, but on her being taken before the magistrate who convicted them all, Roger Nowell, Esq., she made such a confession as effectually insured her due share of execration, and hedged in the consciences of all who had assailed her from any possible pangs of self-reproach or doubt.

About fifty years ago, she said, she was returning home from begging, when, near a stone pit in the Pendle Forest, she met a spirit or devil in the shape of a boy, with one half of his coat brown and the other half black, who said to her, if she would give him her soul, she should have all that she might desire. After a little further talk, during which he told her that his name was Tibb, he vanished away, and she saw him no more for this time. For five or six years Mother Demdike never asked any kind of help or harm of Tibb, who always came to her at "daylight gate" (twilight); but one Sabbath morning, she having her little child on her knee, and being in a light slumber, Tibb came to her in the likeness of a brown dog, and forced himself on her knee, trying to get blood from under her left arm. Mother Demdike awoke sore troubled and amazed, and strove to say, "Jesus, save my child," but could not, neither could she say, "Jesus, save myself." In a short time the brown dog vanished away, and she was "almost starke madde for the space of eight weekes." She and Tibb had never done much harm, she said; not even to Richard Baldwin, for all that he had put them off his land, and taken her daughter's day's work at his mill without fee or reward, and when she, led by her grandchild Alison (for she was quite blind), went to ask for pay, gave them only hard words and insolence for their pains, saying, "he would burn the one, and hang the other," and bidding them begone for a couple of witches--and worse. She confessed though, after a little pressing, that at that moment Tibb called out to her, "Revenge thee of him!" to whom she answered, "Revenge thou either of him or his!" on which he vanished away, and she saw him no more. She would not say what was the vengeance done, or if any. But if she was silent, and not prone to confession, there were others, and those of her own blood, not so reticent. Elizabeth Device her daughter, and Alison and James and Jennet Device, her grandchildren, testified against her and each other in a wonderful manner, and filled up all the blanks in the most masterly and graphic style.

Alison said that her grandmother had seduced her to the service of the devil, by giving her a great black dog as her imp or spirit, with which dog she had lamed one John Law, a petit chapman or pedlar, as he was going through Colnefield with his pack at his back. Alison wanted to buy pins of him, but John Law refused to loose his pack or sell them to her; so Alison in a rage called for her black dog, to see if revenge could not do what fair words had failed in. When the black dog came he said, "What wouldst thou have me to do with yonder man?" To whom she answered, "What canst thou do at him?" and the dog answered again, "I can lame him." "Lame him," says Alison Device; and before the pedlar went forty yards he fell lame. When questioned, he, on his side, said, that as he was going through Colnefield he met a big black dog with very fearful fiery eyes, great teeth, and a terrible countenance, which looked at him steadily then passed away; and immediately after he was bewitched into lameness and deformity. And this took place after having met Alison Device and refused to sell her any pins. Then Alison fell to weeping and praying, beseeching God and that worshipful company to pardon her sins. She said further that her grandmother had bewitched John Nutter's cow to death, and Richard Baldwin's woman-child on account of the quarrel before reported, saying that she would pray for Baldwin himself, "both still and loud," and that she was always after some matter of devilry and enchantment, if not for the bad of others then for the good of herself. For once, Alison got a piggin full of blue milk by begging, and when she came to look into it, she found a quarter of a pound of butter there, which was not there before, and which she verily believed old Mother Demdike had procured by her enchantments. Then Alison turned against the rival Hecate, Anne Whittle, _alias_ Chattox, between whom and her family raged a deadly feud with Mother Demdike and her family; accusing her of having bewitched her father, John Device, to death, because he had neglected to pay her the yearly tax of an aghen dole (eight pounds) of meal, which he had covenanted to give her on consideration that she would not harm him. For they had been robbed, these poor people, of a quarter of a peck of cut oatmeal and linens worth some twenty shillings, and they had found a coif and band belonging to them on Anne Whittle's daughter; so John Device was afraid that old Chattox would do them some grievous injury by her sorceries if they cried out about it, therefore made that covenant for the aghen dole of meal, the non-payment of which for one year set Chattox free from her side of the bargain and cost John's life. She said, too, that Chattox had bewitched sundry persons and cattle, killing John Nutter's cow because he, John Nutter, had kicked over her canfull of milk, misliking her devilish way of placing two sticks across it; and slaying Anne Nutter because she laughed and mocked at her; slaying John Morris' child, too, by a picture of clay--with other misdeeds to be hereafter verified and substantiated. So Alison Device was hanged, weeping bitterly, and very penitent.

James Device, her brother, testified to meeting a brown dog coming from his grandmother's about a month ago, and to hearing a noise as of a number of children shrieking and crying, "near daylight gate." Another time he heard a foul yelling as of a multitude of cats, and soon after this there came into his bed a thing like a cat or a hare, and coloured black, which lay heavily on him for about an hour. He said that his sister Alison had bewitched Bullock's child, and that old Mother Chattox had dug up three skulls, and taken out eight teeth, four of which she kept for herself and gave four to Mother Demdike; and that Demdike had made a picture of clay of Anne Nutter, and had burned it, by which the said Anne had been bewitched to death. Also she had bewitched to death one Mitton, because he would not give her a penny; with other iniquities of the same sort. He said that his mother, Elizabeth Device, had a spirit like a brown dog called Ball, and that they all met at Malking Tower; all the witches of Pendle--and they were not a few--going out in their own shapes, and finding foals of different colours ready for their riding when they got out: Jennet Preston was the last: when they all vanished. He then confessed, for his own part, that his grandmother Demdike told him not to eat the communion bread one day when he went to church, but to give it to the first thing he met on the road on his way homewards. He did not obey her, but ate the bread as a good Christian should; and on the way he met with a thing like a hare which asked him for the bread; but he said he had not got it; whereupon the hare got very angry and threatened to tear him in pieces, but James "sained" himself, and the devil vanished. This, repeated in various forms, was about the pith of what James Device confessed, his confession not including any remarkable betrayal of himself, or admission of any practical and positive evil. His young sister Jennet, a little lassie of nine, supplied the deficiencies. She had evidently been suborned, says Wright, and gave evidence enough to have hanged half Lancashire. She said that James had sold himself to the devil, and that his spirit was a black dog called Dandy, by whom he had bewitched many people to death; and she confirmed what he had said of Jennet Preston's spirit, which was a white foal with a black spot in its forehead. And then she said that she had seen the witches' meetings, but had taken no part in them; and that on Good Friday they had all dined off a roasted wether which James had stolen from Christian Swyers; and that John Bulcocke turned the spit. She said that her mother Elizabeth had taught her two prayers, the one to get drink and the other to cure the bewitched. The one to get drink was a very short one, simply--"Crucifixus, hoc signum vitam eternam, Amen;" but this would bring good drink into the house in a very strange manner. The other, the prayer to cure the bewitched, was longer:--

"Vpon Good Friday, I will fast while I may, Vntill I heare them knell, Our Lord's owne Bell, Lord in his messe With his twelve Apostles good, What hath he in his hand? Ligh in[115] Leath[116] wand: What hath he in his other hand? Heauen's doore key. Open, open, Heauen doore keyes, Steck, steck, hell doore. Let Crizum[117] child Go to it Mother mild. What is yonder that casts a light so farrandly?[118] Mine owne deare Sone that's nail'd to the Tree, He is nail'd sore by the heart and hand, And holy harne Panne.[119] Well is that man That Fryday spell can, His Childe to learne A Crosse of Blewe, and another of Red, As good Lord was to the Roode. Gabriel laid him downe to sleepe Vpon the grounde[120] of holy weepe; Good Lord came walking by, Sleep'st thou, wak'st thou, Gabriel? No, Lord, I am sted with stick and stake, That I can neither sleepe nor wake: Rise vp, Gabriel, and goe with me, The stick nor the stake shall neuer deere[121] thee, Sweete Jesus our Lorde. Amen."

On such conclusive testimony as this, and for such fearful crimes, James Device was condemned for "as dangerous and malicious a witch as ever lived in these parts of Lancashire, of his time, and spotted with as much Innocent bloud as euer any witch of his yeares." Poor lad!

"O Barbarous and inhumane Monster, beyond example; so farre from sensible vnderstanding of thy owne miserie as to bring thy owne naturall children into mischiefe and bondage, and thyselfe to be a witnesse vpone the gallowes, to see thy owne children, by thy deuillish instructions, hatcht vp in villanie and witchcraft, to suffer with thee, euen in the beginning of their time, a shamefull and untimely Death!" These are the words which Thomas Potts addresses to Elizabeth Device, widow of John the bewitched, daughter to old Demdike the "rankest hag that ever troubled daylight," and mother of Alison and James the confessing witches; mother, also, of young Jennet of nine, their accuser and hers, by whose testimony she was mainly condemned. Elizabeth was charged with having bewitched sundry people to death, by means and aid of her spirit, the brown dog Ball, spoken of by James; also she had gone to the Sabbath held at Malking Tower, where they had assembled to consult how they could get old Mother Demdike, their leader, out of prison, by killing her gaoler and blowing up the castle, and where they had beef and bacon and roasted mutton--the mutton that same wether of Christopher Swyers' of Barley, which James had stolen and killed; with other things as damnable and insignificant. So Elizabeth Device, "this odious witch, who was branded with a preposterous marke in Nature even from her Birth, which was her left Eye standing lower than the other, the one looking down the other looking up," was condemned to die because she was poor and ugly, and had a little lying jade for a daughter, who made up fine stories for the gentlefolks.

Anne Whittle, _alias_ Chattox, was next in influence, power, and age to Mother Demdike, and she began her confession by saying that old Demdike had originally seduced her by giving her the devil in the shape and proportion of a man, who got her, body and soul, and sucked on her left ribs, and was called Fancie. Afterwards she had another spirit like a spotted bitch, called Tibbe, who gave them all to eat and to drink, and said they should have gold and silver as much as they wanted. But they never got the gold and silver at all, and what they ate and drank did not satisfy them. "This Anne Whittle, _alias_ Chattox, was a very old withered, spent, decrepid creature, her Sight almost gone; A dangerous Witch of very long continuance; always opposite to old Demdike; For whom the one fauoured the other hated deadly: and how they curse and accuse one an other in their Examinations may appear. In her Witchcraft always more ready to doe mischiefe to men's goods than themselves; Her lippes ever chattering and talking; but no man knew what. She lived in the Forrest of Pendle amongst this wicked Company of dangerous Witches. Yet in her Examination and Confession she dealt always very plainely and truely; for vpon a speciall occasion, being oftentimes examined in open Court, she was neuer found to vary, but alwayes to agree in one and the selfe same thing. I place her in order next to that wicked Firebrand of mischiefe, old Demdike, because from these two sprung all the rest in order; and even the Children and Friendes of these two notorious Witches."

Nothing special or very graphic was elicited about old Chattox. She had certainly bewitched to death sundry of the neighbourhood, lately deceased; but then they all did that; and her devil, Fancie, came to her in various shapes--sometimes like a bear, gaping as though he would worry her, which was not a pleasant manner of fulfilling his contract--but generally as a man, in whom she took great delight. She confessed to a charm for blessing forespoken drink; which she had chanted for John Moore's wife, she said, whose beer had been spoilt by Mother Demdike or some of her crew:--

"Three Biters hast thou bitten, The Hart, ill Eye, ill Tonge; Three Bitter shall be thy boote, Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost, a God's Name Fiue Paternosters, fiue Auies, and a Creede, For worship of fiue woundes of our Lord."

Of course there was no help or hope for old Chattox if she said such wicked things as these. The righteous justice of England must be satisfied, and Anne Whittle was hung--one of the twelve who sorrowed the sunlight in Lancaster on that bloody assize.

Her daughter, Ann Redfearne, was then taken, accused of making pictures of clay and other maleficent arts; and she, too, was hanged; and then well-born, well-bred, but unfortunate Alice Nutter--a gentlewoman of fortune living at Rough Lee, whose relatives were anxious for her death that they might come into some property, out of which she kept them while living, and between whom and Mr. Justice Nowell there was a long-standing grudge on the question of a boundary-line between their several properties--Alice Nutter, whom one would have thought far removed from any such possibility, was accused by young Jennet of complicity and companionship, and put upon her trial with but a faint chance of escape behind her. For Elizabeth Device swore that she had joined with her and old Demdike in bewitching the man Mitton, because of that twopence so fatally refused; and young Jennet swore that she was one of the party who went on many-coloured foals to the great witch meeting at Malking Tower; and so poor Alice Nutter, of Rough Lee, the well-born, well-bred gentlewoman, was hanged with the rest of that ragged crew; and her relations stood in her place, quite satisfied with their dexterity.

Then there was Katherine Hewitt, _alias_ Mouldheels, accused by James Device, who seemed to think that if he had to be hanged for nothing he would be hanged in brave company, and, by sharing with as many as could be found, lessen the obloquy he could not escape; and John Bulcocke, who turned the spit, and Jane his mother, for the same crimes and on the same testimony; for the added crime, too, of helping in the bewitching of Master Leslie, about which nefarious deed other hands were also busy; and Margaret Pearson, delated by Chattox as entertaining a man spirit cloven-footed, with whom she went by a loophole into Dodson's stable, and sat all night, on his mare until it died. She was also accused by Jennet Booth, who went into her house and begged some milk for her child; Margaret good-naturedly gave her some, and boiled it in a pan, but all her reward was, that Jennet accused her of witchcraft, for there was, said she, a toad, or something very like a toad, at the bottom of the pan when the milk was boiled, which Margaret took up with a pair of tongs and carried out of the house. Of course the toad was an imp, and Jennet Booth was quite right to repay an act of neighbourly generosity by accusation and slander. Margaret got off with standing in the pillory in open market, at four market towns on four market days, bearing a paper on her head setting forth her offence written in great letters, about which there could be no mistake; after which she was to confess, and afterwards be taken to prison, where she was to lie for a year, and then be only released when good and responsible sureties would come forward to answer for her good behaviour.

And there was Isabel Roby, who bewitched Peter Chaddock for jilting her, and in the spirit pinched and buffeted Jane Williams, so that she fell sick with the impression of a thumb and four fingers on her thigh; and Jennet Preston, she who had the white foal spirit, and who was afterwards hung at York for the murder of Master Thomas Lister--for Master Thomas in his last illness had been for ever crying out that Jennet Preston was lying on him, and when she was brought to see the body it gushed out fresh blood on her, which settled all doubts, if haply there had been any. So the famous trial of the Pendle Witches came to an end; and of the twenty who were accused twelve were hanged while the rest escaped only for the present, many of them meeting with their doom a few years afterwards.

GRACE SOWERBUTS AND THE PRIESTS.[122]

At the same time and place, namely, "at the Assizes and Generall Gaole-delivery, holden at Lancaster, before Sir Edward Bromley," old Jennet Bierly, Ellen Bierly her daughter-in-law, and Jane Southworth, were accused by Grace Sowerbuts of bewitching her, so that her "bodie wasted and was consumed." Grace was fourteen years old--a very ripe time for bewitchment and possession--and her evidence ran that for some years past she had been fearfully tormented by these women, for that "they did violently draw her by the Haire of the Head, and layd her on the toppe of a Hay-mowe;" and that Jennet Bierly appeared to her, first under her own shape and form, then as a black dog, and that as she was going over a style "she picked her off," but did not hurt her much, for soon she was enabled to rouse herself up, and go on her way without any great damage. But often the women came to her as black dogs, tempting her to cast herself into the water, or dragging her into the hay-loft where they covered her with hay on her head and with straw on her body, they, the black dogs, lying on the top of the straw till they took away all sense and feeling and she knew not where she was; and oft they "carried her where they met black things like men that danced with them and did abuse their bodies, and they brought her to one Thomas Walsham's House in the Night, and there they killed his Child, by putting a Nail into the Navil, and after took it forth of the Grave, and did boil it, and eat some of it, and made Oyl of the bones; and such like horrid lies," says honest Webster, indignantly. But fortunately for the three accused, Grace Sowerbuts was a popish pet, and suspected of decided papistical leanings; and it was said that she was put up to all this by one Thomson, a popish priest, whose real name was Southworth, and who was a relation of old Sir John Southworth the great popish lord of the district; to whom also Jane, one of the accused, was a near relative, but a hated enemy, as is often the case--Sir John having been known to ride miles round to avoid passing by her house. Jane Southworth was a Protestant and a convert, therefore likely to receive the protection of public opinion in those parts; likely, too, to be doubly hated by her relative, first for herself, and secondly for her apostacy. So Grace Sowerbuts, an excitable young maid with but a slender regard to truth, was hit upon as the person best fitted to carry confusion into the enemy's camp, and it was resolved to prove her bewitched by the devilish arts of the two Bierlys and the popish recusant. But Sir Edward Bromley, who cared nothing for the protestations of the Pendle witches, and hung every one of them with the most placid belief that he was doing a just and righteous work, gave a very different countenance to these Samesbury witches, all of whom would have been strung up like dogs had not the taint of papistry rested on Grace and her supporters. Leading her quietly to a denial of all she had asserted, Sir Edward got her to confess that she was an impostor, and that every article of her accusation was a lie and a fallacy from beginning to end. She had never known nor seen any devils; she had never been cast upon the henroof nor upon the hay-mow, but when she was found there she had gone of her own accord, and had covered herself with hay and straw to better prove the witches' despite against her; she knew nothing of any child done to death by nails in its body; and all that she had said about the bones, and the oil, and the tender flesh roasted at the fire, was as false as the rest. She had never been possessed, but had flung herself into these fits by her own will and independent power; and what she did in them was a mere trick, which she could show their worships if they liked. In short, Grace Sowerbuts was forced to play the losing game in as masterly a manner as might be, and to own herself a cheat and an impostor while yet there was time for pardon. So the three Samesbury witches got off with a stern exhortation from the judge, who scarcely seemed to relish the release of even Protestant witches delated by papistical accusers.

MARY AND HER CATS.[123]

Mary Smith of Lynn, wife of Henry Smith, glover, was envious of her neighbours for their greater skill in making cheese: in the midst of her discontents, and while her mind, by its passion and evil thoughts, was in a fit condition for the devil to enter therein, Satan came to her as a black man, provoking her in a "lowe murmuring and hissing Voyce," to forsake God and follow him; to which she "condescended" in express terms. The devil then constantly appeared to her--sometimes as a mist; sometimes as a ball of fire, with dispersed spangles of black; but chiefly as a black man; and sometimes as a horned man, in which shape he came to her when in prison. Mary was a good hand at banning. She cursed John Orkton, and wished his fingers might rot off, and they did so; she cursed Elizabeth Hancock, whom she accused of stealing her hen, wishing that the bones might stick in her throat, calling her a "prowde linny, prowde flurts, and shaking the hand bade her go in, for she should repent it;" and incontinently Elizabeth Hancock was taken with a pinching at the heart, and sudden weakness of all her body, and fainting fits, and racking pains, and madness, and raving, so that she tore the hair off her head as she tossed about distracted. Her father went to a wise man, who showed him Mary Smith's face in a glass, and bade him make a cake according to certain directions, which then he was to lay, half on Bessie's head and half on her back, and which would infallibly cure her, as she was not ill but bewitched. The father did so, and the daughter mended. Soon after this she married one James Scot, who, having a mortal hatred against Mary Smith, killed her cat, and threatened that if his wife had any such fits as she had before they married, he would hang Mary Smith without mercy. At this Mary clapped her hands, and cried "They had killed her cat!" and the next day Elizabeth had the old nipping round her heart. So James went to Mary and said he would most certainly take her before the magistrates, if she did not amend her ways and heal his wife at once. Fortunately for Mary the woman got better, and the evil day was staved off for a time. To Cecily Balye, the maid-servant next door, she sent her cat to sit upon her breast when she slept, in revenge at the maid's sweeping a little dust awry; and Cicely gave awful evidence how, through the thin partition which divided them, she used to see Mary Smith adoring her imp in a submissive manner--down on her knees, using strange gestures and uttering many murmuring and broken speeches; and if she had listened, and looked more attentively, she might have seen and heard more: "but she was with the present spectacle so affrighted, that she hurried away in much feare and distemper."

"The fourth endammaged by this Hagge," says Roberts, was one Edmund Newton. He was a cheesemonger, like herself, and she thought he got the best of the trade; so she, or her imp in her likeness, came to him as he was lying in bed, and "whisked about his face a wet cloath of very loathsome savour; after which he did see one clothed in russet, with a little bush beard, who told him he was sent to looke vpon his sore legge, and would heale it." When Newton rose to take a fairer look, he saw that the russet man with a little bush beard had cloven feet, so refused his offer of chirurgery. After this Mary was constantly sending her imps to him--a toad and crabs--which crawled about the house, "which was a shoppe planchered with boords, where his seruants (hee being a shoo maker) did worke;" and one of them took the toad and flung it into the fire, during which time the witch was grievously tormented. So nothing would serve Edmund Newton's turn but he must "scratch her;" yet when he strove to do so his nails turned like feathers, and he had no power over her, not even to raise the skin so much as a nine weeks' old babe might have done. At another time a great water-dog ran over his bed--the chamber door being shut--and he fell lame in his hand, and did not recover the use of it again. And then the law interfered, and Mary Smith was brought before the magistrates to answer to the charge of witchcraft--by them committed to the assizes--found guilty by judge and jury--and hanged by the neck till she was dead, as a warning to the time and her own kind. This murder was done 1616.

RUTTERKIN.[124]

The Earl and Countess of Rutland had shown much kindness to the widow Joan Flower, and her two daughters Philip and Margaret. Joan and Philip were employed at the castle pretty constantly as charwomen, and Margaret was taken into the castle itself, "looking both to the poultrey abroad and the washhouse within doores," and evidently a great favourite with my Lady, who trusted her much. Their good fortune raised them up a host of enemies, as is always the case; and backbiters went with tales to the Lord and Lady, saying, "First, that Ioane Flower the Mother was a monstrous malicious woman, full of oathes, curses, and imprecations, irreligious, and, for any thing they saw by her, a plaine Atheist; besides of late days her very countenance was estranged, her eyes were fiery and hollow, her speech fell and enuious, her demeanour strange and exoticke, and her conuersation sequestered; so that the whole course of her life gaue great suspition that she was a notorious witch, yea some of her neighbours dared to affirme that she dealt with familiar Spirits, and terrified them all with curses and threatening of reuenge, if there were neuer so little cause of displeasure and vnkindnesse. Concerning Margaret, that she often resorted from the Castle to her Mother, bringing such Provision as they thought was vnbefitting for a seruant to purloyne, and coming at such unseasonable houres, that they could not but coniecture some mischeife between them, and that their extraordinary ryot and expences tended both to rob the Lady, and to maintaine certaine deboist and base company which frequented this Ioane Flower's house the mother, and especially her youngest Daughter. Concerning Philip that she was lewdly transported with the loue of one Th. Simpson, who presumed to say, that she had bewitched him: for he had no power to leaue, and was as he supposed maruellously altered both in minde and body, since her acquainted company: these complaints began many yeares before either their conuiction or publique apprehension: Notwithstanding such was the honour of this Earle and his Lady; such was the cunning of this monstrous woman in her obseruation towards them; such was the subtilty of the Diuell to bring his purposes to passe; such was the pleasure of God to make tryall of his seruants; and such was the effect of a damnable womans wit and malitious enuy, that all things were carried away in the smooth Channell of liking and good entertainment on euery side, untill the Earle by degrees conceiued some mislike against; and so peraduenture estranged himself from that familiarity and accustomed conferences he was wont to haue with her; untill one Peate offered her some wrong; against whom she complained, but found that my Lord did affect her clamours and malicious information, vntill one Mr. Vauasor abandoned her company, as either suspicious of her lewd life, or distasted with his oun misliking of such base and poore Creatures, whom nobody loued but the Earle's household; vntill the Countesse misconceiuing of her daughter Margaret and discovering some vndecencies both in her life and neglect of her businesse, discharged her from lying any more in the Castle, yet gave her 40_s._, a bolster, and a mattresse of wooll; commanding her to go home vntill the slacknesse of her repayring to the Castle, as she was wont, did turne her loue and liking toward this honourable Earle and his family into hate and rancor; wherevpon despighted to bee so neglected, and exprobated by her neighbours for her Daughters casting out of doores, and other conceiued displeasures, she grew past all shame and womanhood, and many times cursed them all that were the cause of this discontentment, and made her so loathsome to her former familiar friends and beneficial acquaintance."

Things being come to this pass, it was not difficult to persuade the Earl and his Countess that, when their eldest son Henry, Lord Ross, sickened very strangely, and after a while died,--when their second son Francis was also tortured by a strange sickness--and the Lady Katherine their daughter was in danger of her life "through extreame maladies and vnusuall fits"--it was all done by Joan Flower's witchcraft, and that the quickest way out of their troubles was to arrest the widow and her two daughters and see what could be done with them, both by their own confessions and the neighbours' relations. They were arrested accordingly, and carried before the magistrates where witnesses were not awanting. The first evidence given was that of Philip Flower, sister to Margaret, and daughter of poor old Joan. On the 4th of February she confessed that her mother and sister "maliced" the Earl of Rutland, his countess, and their children, because they were put out of the Castle; wherefore her sister Margaret, by desire of her mother, got Lord Henry's right-hand glove which she found on the rushes in the nursery, and delivered it to Joan, who presently rubbed it on the back of her spirit Rutterkin, bidding him "height and goe and doe some hurt to Henry Lord Rosse," then put it into boiling water, pricking it many times with a knife, and burying it in the yard with a wish that Lord Henry might never thrive. Whereupon he fell sick and shortly after died. She also said that she often saw the spirit Rutterkin leap on her sister Margaret's shoulder and suck her neck, and that her mother had often cursed the earl and his lady, and boiled feathers and blood together, "vsing many Deuillish speeches and strange gestures." On the 22nd of the same month Margaret was examined, and she also gave no trouble. She confessed that truly she had got Lord Henry's glove, and that her mother had done with it in all particulars of stroking Rutterkin's back, and putting it into boiling water, and pricking, and burying it, according to the words of Philip; also that some two or three years ago she had found a glove of the Lord Francis', which her mother rubbed on Rutterkin the cat and bade him go upward, and which, by her incantations and sorceries, caused a grievous illness to light on the little nobleman. And she got a piece of Lady Katherine's handkercher, which her mother put into hot water, "and then taking it out rubbed it on Rutterkin, bidding him 'flye and go;' whereupon Rutterkin whined and cryed 'Mew,'" and the mother said he had no power over Lady Katherine to hurt her. A few days later both sisters were examined again, when Philip confessed that she had a spirit which sucked her in the form of a white rat, and which she had entertained for the space of two or three years, on condition that it should cause Thomas Simpson to love her; and Margaret allowed that she had two spirits, one white, the other black-spotted, to whom she had given her soul, they covenanting to do all that she commanded them. Then she rambled off into a wild statement of how on the thirtieth of January last, she, being in Lincoln gaol, four devils appeared to her at eleven or twelve o'clock at night; the one stood at her bed's foot, and had a black head like an ape, and spake unto her; but what she could not well remember; at which she was very angry that he would not speak plainer and let her understand his meaning. She said that the other three were Rutterkin, Little Robin, and Spirit, "but shee never mistrusted them nor suspected herselfe till then." This closed the examinations of the two younger women: for poor old Joan had died on her way to gaol "with a horrible excruciation of soul and body," and so an end was come to of her. But if there was nothing more to be got out of the Flower family, their neighbours were not backward to help them with a bad word, when handy. Anne Baker, evidently mad, Joan Willimot, and Ellen Greene, were brought to say their say in the face of the country and before the county justices. Joan Willimott gave evidence that Joan Flower had oftentimes complained to her of the unfriendly conduct of my Lord of Rutland, in turning her daughter out of the house, adding that though she could not have her will of my Lord himself, she had spied his son and stricken him to the heart--stricken him with a white spirit, which yet could be cured if she so willed. Joan Willimott then "fyled" herself for a witch, saying that she had a spirit called Pretty, given to her by her master, William Berry of Langholme, in Rutlandshire, whom she had served three years. When he gave it to her, he bade her open her mouth and he would blow into her a Fairy which should do her good; and she did so; and he blew into her mouth, and presently after there came out of her mouth a spirit which stood upon the ground in the shape and form of a woman, and asked of her her soul--which Joan granted--being willed thereto by her master. She did not own to having ever hurt anyone, but said instead that she had helped divers who had been stricken and forespoken, and that the use she made of her spirit was to know how those did whom she had undertaken to mend. She said, too, that her spirit came to her last night, in the form of a woman mumbling something, but she could not understand what; and that she was not asleep, but was as waking as at this present. On another occasion she fyled two of her neighbours, saying how Cooke's wife had said that John Patchet might have had his child alive, if he had asked for it, insinuating that Cooke's wife had forespoken the said child, and that Patchet's wife had an evil thing within her, and she knew it by her girdle. Also that Gamaliel Greete, of Waltham, had a spirit like a white mouse put into him in his swearing, and that those on whom he looked with intent to hurt were hurt; and that he had a mark on his left arm, which had been cut away; and that her own spirit had told her all this. And that she, and Joan, and Margaret Flower, had met in Blackborrow hill, the week before Joan's apprehension; and that she had seen in Joan's house two spirits, the one like a rat, and the other like an owl, and that one of them had sucked under her left ear--as she thought; and that Joan Flower said her spirits had informed her she should be neither burnt nor hanged.

On this same day Ellen Green gave in her account, saying that some six years since Joan Willimott had come to her in the wolds, persuading her to forsake God and betake her to the devil, and she would give her two spirits: which this Examinate consented unto. Whereupon Joan called two spirits, one in the likeness of a "kittin," the other of a "moldiwarp," the first of which was called "pusse," and the second "hiffe hiffe;" and they leapt on her shoulder, and sucked her. And that she sent the kittin to a baker in the town who had offended her, but whose name she had forgotten, and bade it bewitch him to death; and the moldiwarp she despatched to Ann Dawse, for the same purpose and the same offence. And of other deaths by the like means did Ellen Green accuse herself; adding that Joan Willimott's spirit was in the form of a white dog, and that she had seen it suck her in Barley harvest last.

And then came mad Ann Baker, who started with informing her audience that there are four colours of planets, black, yellow, green, and blue, and that black is always death, and that she saw the blue planet strike William Fairbairn's son, but when William Fairbairn did beat her and break her head, his said son Thomas did mend. Yet she sent not the blue planet. She said that she saw a hand appear to her, and a voice in the air say, "Anne Baker, save thyself, for to-morrow thou and thy maister must be slain;" and that the next day, as she and her master were together in a cart, suddenly she saw a flash of fire, but when she said her prayers the fire went away, and then a crow came and pecked her clothes; whereat she said her prayers again, and bade the crow go to whom it was sent, "and the Crow went vnto her Maister and did beat him to death, and shee with her prayers recouered him to life: but he was sick a fortnight after and saith that if shee had not had more knowledge than her Maister, both he and shee and all the Cattell had beene slaine." The rest of her confessions turned upon the histories of the various deaths and bewitchments with which she was charged, and most of which she denied; saying, that she had merely lain Ann Stannidge's child on her skirt, but had done it no harm, and that when the mother had burnt the little one's hair and nail parings, and she, Ann Baker, had gone in to the house in great pain and suffering, she knew nothing whatever of this burning, but that she was sick and knew not whither she went. Of the Rutland case all she knew was, that when she came back from Northamptonshire, whither she had gone three years ago, two good wives had told her that my young Lord Henry was dead, and that there was a glove of the said Lord buried underground, and that "as his glove did rot and wast, so did the liver of the young Lord rot and wast;" and that her spirit was a good spirit and in the shape of a white dog. The tract does not inform us what was done with these three wretched women. The two Flowers were hanged, the old mother having died as I have said: but whether the untimely death of a sickly lad was revenged by more innocent blood than this remains unknown. The death-sacrifices of savages, the witches of Africa, and the Red Indian "Medicine-men," are not so very far removed from our own forefathers that we should quite ignore the likeness between them and the recent past at home.

THE BOY OF BILSTON.[125]

The war between Papists and Protestants still went on, and the favourite weapon with each was the old one of Possession, and its result--exorcism. The patient in the present case was William Perry, a youth of twelve, generally called the Boy of Bilston, whom Joan Cock bewitched for the better showing forth the glory of God and the Church, and to the hurt of her own soul and body. One day William Perry met old Joan as he returned from school, and forbore to give her good time of the day, as a well-bred youth should: whereat the old woman was angry, and called him "a foul thing," saying "that it had been better for him if he had saluted her." At which words the boy felt something prick him to his heart, and when he came home fell into fits of the most demoniac kind. The parents seeing his extremity went cap and knee to some Catholics in the neighbourhood, and they, after long solicitation, proceeded to the exorcising. They poured holy water and holy oil in goodly quantity upon him, and left supplies of both to be used in their absence. The devil was sore afflicted by the holy water and the holy oil, and made the boy cast up pins, and wool, and knotted thread, and rosemary leaves, and walnut leaves, and feathers, and "thrums." For there were three devils inside him, he said, and they had uncommon power. On Corpus Christi day he brought up eleven pins, and a knitting needle folded in divers folds; all after extreme fits and heavings; and then the spirit told him not to listen to the exorcising priest--which was a great compliment from the devil--and that the witch had said she would make an end of him. When told to pray for the witch, the boy and the devils were furious; but afterwards calmed down on the exorciser getting extra power; and then the boy prayed his prayer and grew better. Then he demanded that everything about him should be blessed, and that all his family should be Catholics; but when any Puritans came in, he said the devil assaulted him in the shape of a black bird. So it was a vastly pretty little case of witness and conversion, and the Catholics made the most of it. Joan must now be arrested; for the fits continued, and the young gentleman was not to be pacified with anything short of the witch's blood. When brought into his presence the boy had extreme fits, crying out: "'Now she comes, now my Tormentor comes!' writhing and tearing and twisting himself into such Shapes as bred at once Amazement and Pity in the Spectators:" so the old woman was sent to Stafford gaol, but, because this was a Popish matter, acquitted without long delay. Then the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, desirous of testing the matter, and unwilling that the Catholics should take any glory to themselves for their holy oils and their anointings which were said to have calmed the most "sounding fits," took William Perry home to the Castle, and there had him watched: and watched so well that certain dirty tricks not to be spoken of here were found out, and the physiological part of the "miracle" set at rest. But before this the Bishop tried the devils with Greek. For they could not abide the first verse of the first chapter of St. John, and always fell on the boy with fury when it was read; so, said the Bishop, whose wits sectarian hatred had sharpened--one bigotry driving out another--"Boy, it is either thou or the Devil that abhorrest those Words of the Gospel: and if it be the Devil (he being so ancient a Scholar, as of almost six Thousand Years' standing) knows, and understands all Languages; so that he cannot but know when I recite the same sentence out of the Greek Text: But if it be thyself then art thou an execrable Wretch, who plays the Devil's part; wherefore look to thyself, for now thou art to be put to Trial, and mark diligently, whether it be that same Scripture which shall be read." Then was read the twelfth verse of the first chapter, at which William, supposing it to be the abhorred first, fell into his customary fits; but when, immediately after, the first verse was read, he, supposing it was another, was not moved at all. By which means this part of the fraud was discovered also; and when, moving his eyes and staring about him wildly, he declared that he saw mice running round the bed, no one gave any credit to his words. When the whole thing was blown to the winds, and the Greek test had failed, and the dirty tricks had been found out, the boy made a pretended confession, which was evidently no more true than anything else had been. He said that one day as he was coming home, an old man called Thomas, with gray hair and a cradle of glasses on his shoulders, met him, and after asking him if he went to school and how he liked it, told him that he could teach him a few tricks which should prevent his going to school any more, and would instead lead all people to pity and lament him, holding him to be bewitched. But it was shrewdly suspected that the old man Thomas, with his gray hair and cradle of glass, was but a pleasant phantasy of the imagination; and that the real secret had lain with the Catholic priests, who, finding the boy apt and handy, thought they could make good capital out of him for their Church, and put him forth as a witness for its divine power and holy office, seeing that it could dispossess the demoniac and drive away evil spirits. Fortunately they reckoned without their host--the host of "reformed" bigotry and hatred: for we need not congratulate ourselves on any clearsightedness or common sense in the matter. Had the Boy of Bilston been a sound Protestant, he would have been held as indubitably Possessed by the Devil, and some poor wretch would have been found as a convenient sacrifice to the stupidity of that devil.

MR. FAIRFAX'S FOLLY.

The next year saw Mr. Fairfax of Knaresborough--Edward Fairfax, the scholar, the gentleman, the classic, our best translator of Tasso, graceful, learned, elegant Edward Fairfax--pursuing with incredible zeal six of his neighbours for supposed witchcraft on his children. The children had fits and were afflicted with imps, so Edward Fairfax thought his paternal duty consisted in getting the lives of six supposed witches, the hanging of whom would infallibly cure his children, and drive away the evil spirits possessing them. But fortunately for the accused the judge had more sense than Mr. Fairfax; and, though the women were sent back again for another assize, suffered them to escape with only the terror of death twice repeated. It is strange to find ourselves face to face with such stupid bigotry as this in a man so estimable and so refined as Fairfax.

THE COUNTESS.[126]

Lady Jennings and her young daughter Elizabeth, of thirteen, lived at Thistlewood in the year 1622. One day an old woman, coming no one knew whence, perhaps from the bowels of the earth, appeared suddenly before the girl, demanding a pin. The child was frightened, and had fits soon after--fits of the usual hysteric character, but quite sufficiently severe to alarm Lady Jennings. A doctor was sent for; but also, as well as the doctor, came a clever shrewd woman called Margaret Russill, or "Countess," a bit of a doctress in her way, perhaps a bit of a white witch too, who thought she could do the afflicted child some good, and had beside a love of putting her fingers into everybody's pie. At the end of one of her fits the child began to cry out wildly, then mentioned Margaret and three others as the persons who had bewitched her. And then she went on, incoherently, "These have bewitched all my mother's children--east, west, north, and south all these lie--all these are witches. Set up a great sprig of rosemary in the middle of the house--I have sent this child to speak, to show all these witches--Put Countess in prison, this child will be well--If she had been long ago, all together had been alive--Them she bewitched with a cat-stick--Till then I shall be in great pain--Till then, by fits, I shall be in great extremity--They died in great misery." No mother's heart could resist the appeal contained in these wild words; poor Countess was arrested, and taken before Mr. Slingsby, a magistrate. When there she said, though heaven knows what prompted her to tell such falsehoods, "Yesterday she went to Mrs. Dromondbye in Black-and-White Court, in the Old Baylye; and told her that the Lady Jennings had a daughter strangely sicke, whereuppon the said Dromondbye wished her to goe to inquire at Clerkenwell for a minister's wiffe that cold helpe people that were sicke, but she must not aske for a witch or a cunning woman, but for one that is a phisition woman; and then this examinate found her and a woman sitting with her and told her in what case the child was, and shee said shee wold come this day, but shee ought her noe service, and said shee had bin there before and left receiptes there, but the child did not take them. And she said further that there was two children that her Lady Jennins had by this husband, that were bewitched and dead, for there was controversie betweene two howses, and that as long as they dwelt there, they cold not prosper, and that there shold be noe blessing in that howse by this man." When asked what was this "difference," she answered, "Between the house of God and the house of the world:" but when told that this was no answer, and that she must explain herself more clearly, she said that "she meant the apothecary Higgins and my Lady Jennings." "And shee further confessed that above a moneth agoe she went to Mrs. Saxey in Gunpouder Alley, who was forespoken herself, and that had a boke that cold helpe all those that were forespoken, and that shee wold come and shewe her the booke and help her under God. And further said to this examinate, that none but a seminary priest cold cure her." So here again we have the constantly recurring element of sectarianism, without which, indeed, we should be at a loss how to understand much that meets us. "Countess" was committed to Newgate, and the bewitched child cried out more and more against her, making new revelations with each fit, when the pitiful farce was brought to a close by the minister's wife, Mrs. Goodcole, who, when confronted with Countess, denied point blank the more important parts of her evidence. And then all this evil--this much ado about nothing--was found to have arisen from a private quarrel; and when Dr. Napier was sent for, he unbewitched the possessed child with some very simple remedies, and the great balloon burst and fell to the ground in hopeless collapse.

THE TWO VOICES.[127]

On the 13th of August, 1626, Edward Bull and Joan Greedie were indicted at Taunton for bewitching Edward Dinham. Dinham was a capital ventriloquist, and could speak in two different voices beside his own, as well as counterfeit fits and play the possessed to the life. One of his two feigned voices was pleasant and shrill, and belonged to a good spirit; the other was deadly and hollow, and belonged to an evil spirit. And when he spoke his lips did not move, and he lay as if in a trance, and both he and the voices said that he was bewitched, and all the people believed them. And the good voice asked who had bewitched him, to which the bad replied, "A woman in greene cloathes and a blacke hatt with long poll, and a man in gray srite, with blewe stockings." When asked where she was now, the bad spirit answered, "At her own house," while he was at a tavern in "Yeohull," Ireland. Then after some pressing the bad spirit said that the name of one was "Johan," of the other "Edward;" and after more pressing still, confessed to the surnames, "Greedie and Bull." So in consequence of this reliable report messengers were sent off to find old Joan, and when found arrest her. Then the good spirit, who played the part of a benevolent Pry, asked how these two became witches, to which the bad answered, "By descent." "But how by descent?" says the good spirit, anxious not to leave a lock unfastened or a problem unsolved. "From the grandmother to the mother, and from the mother to the children," says the bad. "But howe were they soe?" says Goody. "They were bound to us and we to them," answered the bad, with more words than explanation.

Good Spirit--"Lett me see the bond."

Bad Spirit--"Thou shalt not."

Good Spirit--"Lett me see it, and if I like it I will seale it alsoe."

Bad Spirit--"Thou shalt, if thou wilt not reveale the contentes thereof."

Good Spirit--"I will not."

At this point it was pretended that a spectral bond was passed from the bad to the good ghost; and then broke out the "sweet and shrill voice" of the ventriloquist with "Alas! oh, pittifull, pittifull, pittifull! What! eight seales? bloody seales! four dead and four alive; oh, miserable!" Then came in the man's natural voice, addressing the spirit: "Come, come, prithee tell me why did they bewitch me?" Bad Spirit--"Because thou didst call Johan Greedie witche." Man--"Why, is shee not a witche?" Bad Spirit--"Yes, but thou shouldst not have said so," which was a fine bit of worldly policy in the bad ghost. Good Spirit--"But why did Bull bewitche him?" Bad--"Because Greedie was not strong enough."

On this evidence further messengers were sent off for Edward Bull, but whether to Yeohull or not I cannot say. They were disappointed for the moment, for Bull had run away; and then, in a future interview, and to fill up the time until braver sport should be provided, the bad and the good spirits had a wrestle for Dinham's soul, which, judging from what evidence we have had left us, was not worth the struggle, and would be no great gain to either party. In the struggle the good spirit speaks Latin. "Laudes, laudes, laudes," says he, being well educated and not ashamed. But the bad was, as befitted his nature, churlish and ill-taught, and did not understand his opponent's talk, but translated it into "ladies," which made a laugh among them all. Then they struggled for the Prayer Book; but here again the bad was discomfited, and the man kept the talisman; after which the good spirit made "the sweetest musicke that ever was heard." When they set out to catch Bull again, they found him in bed; and now, when both the Possessors were safe, Dinham was freed and his voices dumb for ever. Perhaps he had caught cold. I do not know the fate of these poor wretches, but I should not think it doubtful.

In 1627 Mr. Rothnell exorcised an evil spirit out of one John Fox; but notwithstanding this John continued dumb for three years after; which was rather an unfortunate comment on the exorcism, but not at all likely to open the eyes of any one willing to be blind.

THE SECOND CURSE OF PENDLE.[128]

We have seen what Lancashire was in sixteen hundred and twelve: it was not much better twenty-one years later; for in 1633 we find that Pendle Forest was still of bad repute, and that traditions of old Demdike and her rival Mother Chattox yet floated round the Malkin Tower, and hid, spectre-like, in the rough and desert places of the barren waste. Who ever knew of evil example waiting for its followers? What Mothers Demdike and Chattox had done in their day, their children and grandchildren were ready to do after them. The world will never lose its old women, "toothless, blear-eyed, foul-tongued, malicious," for whom love died out and sin came in long years ago; and Edmund Robinson, son of Ned of Roughs, was one of those specially appointed by Providence to bring such evildoers to their reward.

Edmund, then about eleven years of age (how many of these sad stories come from children and young creatures!), lived with his father in Pendle Forest; lived poorly enough, but not without some kind of romance and interest; for on the 10th day of February, 1633, he made the following deposition:--

"Who upon oath informeth, being examined concerning the great meeting of the Witches of Pendle, saith that upon All Saints' Day last past, he, this Informer, being with one Henry Parker, a near-door neighbour to him in Wheatley-lane, desired the said Parker to give him leave to gather some Bulloes, which he did. In gathering whereof he saw two Grayhounds, viz., a black and a brown one, come running over the next field towards him, he verily thinking the one of them to be Mr. Nutter's, and the other to be Mr. Robinson's, the said Gentlemen then having such like. And saith, the said Grayhounds came to him, and fawned on him, they having about their necks either of them a Collar, unto each of which was tied a String; which Collars (as this Informer affirmeth) did shine like Gold. And he thinking that some either of Mr. Nutters or Mr. Robinsons Family should have followed them; yet seeing no body to follow them, he took the same Grayhounds, thinking to course with them. And presently a Hare did rise very near before him. At the sight whereof 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 in stead of the black Grayhound, one Dickensons Wife stood up, a Neighbour, whom this Informer knoweth. And in stead of the brown one a little Boy, whom this Informer knoweth not. At which sight this Informer, being afraid, endeavoured to run away; but being stayed by the Woman, (viz.) by Dickensons Wife, she put her hand into her pocket, and pulled forth a piece of Silver much like to a fair shilling, and offered to give him it to hold his tongue and not to tell; which he refused, saying, Nay, thou art a Witch. Whereupon she put her hand into her pocket again, and pulled out a thing like unto a Bridle that gingled, which she put on the little Boyes head; which said Boy stood up in the likeness of a white Horse, and in the brown Grayhounds stead. Then immediately Dickensons wife took this Informer before her upon the said Horse and carried him to a new house called Hoarstones, being about a quarter of a mile off. Whither when they were come, there were divers persons about the door, and he saw divers others riding on Horses of several colours towards the said House, who tied their Horses to a hedge near to the said House. Which persons went into the said House, to the number of three score or thereabouts, as this Informer thinketh, where they had a fire, and meat roasting in the said House, whereof a young Woman (whom this Informer knoweth not) gave him Flesh and Bread upon a Trencher, and Drink in a Glass, which after the first taste he refused, and would have no more, but said it was nought.

"And presently after, seeing divers of the said company going into a Barn near adjoining, he followed after them, and there he saw six of them kneeling, and pulling all six of them six several ropes, which were fastened or tied to the top of the Barn. Presently after which pulling, there came into this Informers sight flesh smoaking, butter in lumps, and milk as it were syleing (straining) from the said ropes. All which fell into basons which were placed under the said ropes. And after that these six had done, there came other six which did so likewise. And during all the time of their several pulling, they made such ugly faces as scared this Informer, so that he was glad to run out and steal homewards; who immediately finding they wanted one that was in their company, some of them ran after him near to a place in a Highway called Boggard-hole, where he, this Informer, met two Horsemen. At the sight whereof the said persons left following of him. But the foremost of those persons that followed him he knew to be one Loinds Wife; which said Wife, together with one Dickensons Wife, and one Jennet Davies, he hath seen since at several times in a Croft or Close adjoining to his Fathers house, which put him in great fear. And further this Informer saith, upon Thursday after New Years Day last past he saw the said Loinds Wife sitting upon a cross piece of wood being within the Chimney of his Fathers dwelling-house; and he, calling to her, said, Come down, thou Loynds Wife. And immediately the said Loynds Wife went up out of his sight. And further this Informer saith, that after he was come from the company aforesaid to his Fathers house, being towards evening, his Father bad him go and fetch home two kine to seal (tie up). And in the way, in a field called the Ellers, he chanced to hap upon a Boy, who began to quarrel with him, and they fought together, till the Informer had his ears and face made up very bloody by fighting, and looking down he saw the Boy had a cloven foot. At which sight, he being greatly affrighted, came away from him to seek the kine. And in the way he saw a light like to a Lanthorn, towards which he made haste, supposing it to be carried by some of Mr. Robinson's people; but when he came to the place he only found a Woman standing on a Bridge, whom, when he saw, he knew her to be Loinds Wife, and knowing her he turned back again; and immediately he met the aforesaid Boy, from whom he offered to run, which Boy gave him a blow on the back that made him to cry. And further this Informer saith, that when he was in the Barn, he saw three Women take six Pictures from off the beam, in which Pictures were many Thorns or such like things sticked in them, and that Loynds Wife took one of the Pictures down, but the other two Women that took down the rest he knoweth not. And being further asked what persons were at the aforesaid meeting, he nominated these persons following." Here follows a list of names of no interest to the modern reader. At the end of this deposition is one from the Father.

"Edmund Robinson of Pendle, Father of the aforesaid Edmund Robinson, Mason, informeth,

"That upon All Saints-day last he sent his Son the aforesaid Informer, to fetch home two kine to seal, and saith that his Son, staying longer than he thought he should have done, he went to seek him, and in seeking of him heard him cry pitifully, and found him so affrighted and distracted that he neither knew his Father nor did know where he was, and so continued very near a quarter of an hour before he came to himself. And he told this Informer his Father all the particular passages that are before declared in the said Robinson his Son's Information.

(Signed) "RICHARD SHUTTLEWORTH. "JOHN STARKEY."

Who would dare to doubt such testimony as this? Here was another child of God grievously mishandled; and what might not be done to the servants of the devil who had so evilly intreated him? And was not Edmund Robinson evidently raised up and directed by God to be the scourge of all witches, and the great discoverer of their naughty pranks? So the lad was elevated to the post of witch-finder, and was taken about from church to church--accusing any who might strike his fancy or his fears, and sending them off to prison at the impulse of his childish will. Among other places he was brought to the parish church of Kildwick, where Webster was then curate. It was during the afternoon service, and the lad was put upon a stall to look the better about him, and discern the witches more clearly. After service Webster went to him and found him with "two very unlikely persons that did conduct him and manage the business:" the curate of Kildwick would have drawn him aside, but the men would not suffer this. Then said Webster, "'Good boy, tell me truly and in earnest, didst thou hear and see such strange things of the meeting of witches as is reported by many that thou dost relate, or did some person teach thee to say such things of thyself?' But the two men, not giving the boy leave to answer, did pluck him from me, and said he had been examined by two able Justices of the Peace, and they did never ask him such a question; to whom I replied, 'The persons accused had therefore the more wrong.'" So Webster got nothing by this, and the boy was not damaged nor his credit shaken. Very many persons were arrested on this young imp's accusations, beside those seventeen whom he had seen "syleing" butter and bacon from witch-ropes in the magic barn. And among the rest Jennet Device, (was she our old acquaintance of perjured memory?) who was charged with killing Isabelle, the wife of William Nutter; and Mary Spencer, who was in imminent danger for having "caused a pale or cellocke to come to her, full of water, fourteen yards up a hill from a well;" and Margaret Johnson, accused of killing Henry Heape, and wasting and impairing the body of Jennet Shackleton--but there was no proof against her, save certain witch marks, which, however, were indisputable, and on the finding of which she was soon brought to confess. She said that, seven or eight years since, she was in a mighty rage against life and the world in general, when there appeared to her the devil like a man, dressed all in black tied about with silk points, who offered her all she might wish or want in return for her soul; telling her that she might kill man or beast as she should desire, and take her revenge when she would; and that if she did but call "Mamillion" when she wanted him, he would come on the instant and do as he was bid. So "after a sollicitacion or two, she contracted and condicioned with the said devill or spiritt for her soul," and henceforth became one of the most notorious of the Lancashire witches. She confessed that she was at the great witch-meeting held at Harestones, in Pendle, on All Saints'-day last past, and again at another the Sunday after; and that all the witches rode there on horses, and went to consult on the killing of men and beasts; and that "there was one devill or spiritt that was more greate and grand devill than the rest, and yf anie witch desired to have such an one, they might have such an one to kill or hurt anie body." She said, too, which was a new idea on her part, that the sharp-boned witches were more powerful and malignant than those with "biggs" only; and then she wandered off, and accused certain of her neighbours, of whom one, "Pickhamer's wife, was the most greate, grand, and auncyent witch." Then she told her audience that if any witch desired to be carried to any place, a cat, or a dog, or a rod would convey them away; but not their bodies, only their souls in the likeness of their bodies. The judge was not quite satisfied with either Edmund Robinson's depositions or Margaret's confessions, and for all that the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, managed to get a reprieve, and to send up some of the accused to London. He managed also to interest the king, Charles I., who had not his father's craze on the subject; and Charles ordered the bishop to make a special examination of the case, and send in his report. By this time, too, Edmund and his father were separated, and the boy fully examined; when at last he confessed to the entire worthlessness and fraud of all he had said. He had been robbing an orchard of bullees (plums) more than a mile off the barn at the day and hour named; and, counselled by his father, had made up those wicked lies to screen himself. And then, finding the game profitable--for in a short time they made so good a thing by it that the father bought a couple of cows--he flew further a-field, and attacked every one within reach. Fortunately for his victims, the judge was a man of sense and independent judgment; so the judiciary records of England are stained with one crime the less, and the neighbours lost the excitement of an execution.

THE WITCH ON A PLANK.[129]

"Many are in a belief that this silly sex of women can by no means attaine to that so vile and damned a practise of Sorcery and Witchcraft, in regard of their illiteratenesse and want of learning, which many men have by great learning done;" nevertheless the Earl of Essex and his army, marching through Newberry, saw a feat done by a woman which not the most learned man of them all could have accomplished by natural means. Two soldiers were loitering behind the main body, gathering nuts, blackberries, and the like, when one climbed up a tree for sport, and the other followed him, jesting. From their vantage place, looking on the river, they there espied a "tall, lean, slender woman treading of the water with her feet with as much ease and firmnesse as if one should walk or trample on the earth." The soldier called to his companion, and he to the rest; and soon they all--captains, privates, and commanders alike--saw this marvellous lean woman, who now they perceived was standing on a thin plank, "which she pushed this way and that at her pleasure, making it a pastime to her, little perceiving who was on her tracks." Then she crossed the river, and the army after her; but there they lost her for a time, and when they found her all were too cowardly to seize her. At last one dare-devil went up and boldly caught her, demanding what she was. The poor wretch was dumb--perhaps with terror--and spoke nothing; so they dragged her before the commanders, "to whom, though she was mightily urged, she did reply as little." As they could bethink themselves of nothing better to do with her, they set her upright against a mud bank or wall, and two of the soldiers, at their captain's command, made ready and fired. "But with a deriding and loud laughter at them, she caught their bullets in her hands and chew'd them, which was a stronger testimony than her treading water that she was the same that their imagination thought her for to be." Then one of the men set his carbine against her breast and fired; but the bullet rebounded like a ball, and narrowly missed the face of the shooter, which "so enraged the Gentleman, that one drew out his sword and manfully run at her with all the force his strength had power to make, but it prevailed no more than did the shot, the woman though still speechlesse, yet in a most contemptible way of Scorn still laughing at them, which did the more exhaust their furie against her life; yet one amongst the rest had heard that piercing or drawing bloud from forth the veines that crosse the temples of the head, it would prevail against the strongest sorcery, and quell the force of Witchcraft, which was allowed for Triall: the woman, hearing this, knew then the Devill had left her, and her power was gone; wherefore she began alowd to cry and roare, tearing her haire, and making pitious moan, which in these words expressed were: And is it come to passe that I must dye indeed? Why then his Excellency the Earle of Essex shall be fortunate and win the field. After which no more words could be got from her; wherewith they immediately discharged a Pistoll underneath her eare, at which she straight sunk down and dyed, leaving her legacy of a detested carcasse to the wormes, her soul we ought not to iudge of, though the euills of her wicked life and death can scape no censure. Finis. This Book is not Printed according to order."

THE WITCH-FINDING OF HOPKINS.

And now the reign of Matthew Hopkins, of Mannington, gent., begins--that most infamous follower of an infamous trade--the witch-finder general of England. It was Hopkins who first reduced the practice of witch-finding to a science, and established rules as precise as any to be made for mathematics or logic. His method of proceeding was to "walk" a suspected witch between two inquisitors, who kept her from food and sleep, and incessantly walking, for four-and-twenty hours; or if she could not be thus walked she was cross-bound--her right toe fastened to her left thumb, and her left toe to her right thumb--care being taken to draw the cords as tightly as possible, and to keep her as uneasily, and in this state she was placed on a high stool or chair, kept without food or sleep for the prescribed four-and-twenty hours, and vigilantly watched. And Hopkins recommended that a hole be made in the door, through which her imps were sure to come to be fed, and that her watchers be careful to kill everything they saw--fly, spider, lice, mouse, what not; for none knew when and under what form her familiars might appear; and if by any chance they missed or could not kill them, then they might be sure that they were imps, and so another proof be indisputably established. If neither of these ways would do, then, still cross-bound, she was to be "swum." If she sank, she was drowned; if she floated--and by putting her carefully on the water she generally would float--then she was a witch, and to be taken out and hung. For water, being the sacred element used in baptism, thus manifestly refused to hold such an accursed thing as a witch within its bosom; so that, when she swam, it was a proof that this "sacred element" rejected her for the more potent keeping of the fire. This was the explanation which, it seemed to King James the First, was a rational and religious manner of accounting for a certain physical fact.

This, then, was the wise and liberal manner in which an impossible sin was discovered, and judgment executed, in those fatal years when Matthew Hopkins ruled the mind of England; yet years wherein Harvey was patiently at work on his grand physiological discovery, and when Wallis, and Wilkins, and Boyle were founding the Royal Society of liberal art and free discussion. It was only a piece of poetical justice that in the future he should be "swum" cross-bound in his own manner, and found to float according to the hydrostatics of witches. The shame and fear of this trial hastened the consumption to which he was hereditarily predisposed; and after this stringent test we hear no more of this vile impostor and impudent deceiver, this canting hypocrite, who cloaked his cruelty and covetousness under the garb of religion, and professed to be serving God and delivering man from the power of the devil when he was pandering to the worst passions of the time, and sacrificing to his own corrupt heart. The blood money, for which he sent so many hapless wretches to the gallows (he charged twenty shillings a town for his labours), though not an exceeding bribe, as he himself boasts, was money pleasantly earned and pleasantly spent; for what man would object to travel through a beautiful country, surrounded by friends, and carrying influence and importance wherever he went, and have all his expenses paid into the bargain?

In 1664[130] we find him at Yarmouth, accusing sixteen women in a batch, among whom was an old woman easily got to confess. She said she used to work for Mr. Moulton, a stocking merchant and alderman of the town; but one day, going for work, she found him from home, and his man refused to let her have any till his return, which would not be for a fortnight. She, being exasperated against the man, applied to the maid to let her have some knitting to do, but the maid gave her the like answer: upon which she went home sorely discontented with both. In the middle of the night some one knocked at the door: on her rising to open it she saw a tall black man, who told her that she should have as much work from him as she would, if she would write her name in his book. He then scratched her hand with a penknife, and filled the pen with her blood--guiding her hand while she made her mark. This done, he asked what he could do for her: but when she desired to have her revenge on Mr. Moulton's man, he told her he had no power over him, because he went constantly to church to hear Whitfield and Brinsley, and said his prayers morning and evening. The same of the maid; but there was a young child in the house more easy to be dealt with, for whom he would make an image of wax which then they must bury in the churchyard, and as the waxen image wasted and consumed, so would the child; which was done, and the child thrown into a languishing condition in consequence; so bad, indeed, that they all thought it was dying. But as soon as the witch confessed, the little one lifted up its head and laughed, and from that instant began to recover. The waxen image was found where she said she and the devil had buried it, and thus the whole of the charm was destroyed, and the child was saved; but the poor old crazy woman with her blackbird imp, and her fifteen compeers with their whole menagerie of imps, were hung at Yarmouth, amid the rejoicings of the multitude.

At Edmonsbury, that same year, another witch had a little black smooth imp dog, which she sent to play with the only child of some people she hated. At first the child refused to play with its questionable companion, but soon got used to its daily appearance, and lost all fear. So the dog-imp, watching its opportunity, got the boy one day to the water, when it dragged him underneath and drowned him. The witch was hanged: could they do less in such a clear case as this?

Another woman was hanged at Oxford for a story as wild as any to be found in Grimm or Mother Bunch. There were two sisters, left orphans but well provided for. The eldest, somewhat prodigal, married a man as bad or worse than herself, who spent her money and afterwards deserted her, leaving her with one child and in extreme poverty. The younger, being very serious and religious, waited for two or three years before she settled herself, then married a good, honest, sober farmer, with whom she lived well and prosperously; her gear increasing yearly, and herself the happy mother of a pretty child. Her sister was moved to envy to see all this prosperity and contentment, and in her passion made a compact with the devil, by which she became a witch for the purpose of killing her sister's child as the greatest despite she could do them. For this purpose she used to mount a bedstaff, which, by the uttering of certain magical words, carried her to her sister's room; but she could never harm the child, because it was so well protected by the prayers of its parents. Her own daughter, a little one of about seven, watched her mother in her antics with the bedstaff, and from watching took to imitating--going through the air one night after its dame, and in like fashion. However, it chanced that she was left behind in her uncle's house; so presently she fell a-crying, her powers being apparently limited to going, not including the magic words that insured the return. Her uncle and aunt, hearing a child cry where never a child should be, took a candle and discovered the whole matter. Next day the child was taken before the magistrate, to whom it told its tale, and the mother was apprehended. On the trial this little creature of seven years old was admitted as the chief evidence against her mother; and after they had made the poor woman mad among them, she confessed, and was hanged quite quietly. These were only two out of the hundreds whom that miserable man, Matthew Hopkins, gent., contrived to send to the gallows. Beaumont, in his Treatise on Spirits, mentions that "thirty-six were arraigned at the same time before Judge Coniers, An. 1645, and fourteen of them hanged, and an hundred more detained in several prisons in Suffolk and Essex." But the most celebrated and the saddest of all the trials in which Hopkins played a part was that of

THE MANNINGTREE WITCHES,

held before Sir Matthew Hale in 1645--Hopkins's great witch-year.

In a very scarce tract called 'A true and exact relation of the severall Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the Late Witches Arraigned and Executed in the county of Essex, Published by Authoritie, and Printed by M. S. for Henry Overton and Benj. Allen, and are to be sold at their shops in Popes-head-alley, 1645,' is an account of these Manningtree witches. One John Rivet's wife, living in Manningtree, was taken sick and lame and with violent fits, and John swore before Sir Harbottel Grimston, one of the justices of the peace, that a cunning woman--wife of one Hovye at Hadleigh--told him that his wife was cursed by two women, near neighbours; of whom one was Elizabeth Clarke, _alias_ Bedingfield. Elizabeth's mother, and others of her kinsfolk, had been hanged for witchcraft in the bygone years: so it ran in the blood, and it was not to be wondered at if it broke out afresh now. Sir Harbottel Grimston and Sir Thomas Bowes, the two Justices before whom this deposition was taken, then admitted the evidence of Matthew Hopkins of Manningtree, gentleman and witch-finder, who deposed to having watched Elizabeth Clarke last night, being the 24th of March, 1645, when he and one Master Sterne, who watched with him, saw some strange things which he would presently tell their worships of. Elizabeth told this deponent and his companion that if they would stay and do her no harm, she would call one of her imps, and play with it in her lap; which at first they refused, but afterwards consenting, there appeared to them "an Impe like to a Dog, which was white, with some sandy spots, and seemed to be very fat and plump, with very short legges, who forthwith vanished away." This was Jarmara. Then came Vinegar Tom, in the shape of a greyhound with very long legs; and then for a moment only came one for Master Sterne, a black imp which vanished instantly; then one like a polecat, only bigger.[131] Elizabeth now told them that she had five imps of her own, and two of Beldam West's, and that they sucked turn and turn about: now she was sucked by Beldam West's and now Beldam West by hers. She further said that Satan, whom she knew very much too well as "a proper Gentleman with a laced band, having the whole proportion of a Man," would never let her have any peace till she slew the hogs of Mr. Edwards of Manningtree, and Mr. Taylor's horse. When she had slain them Satan let her be quiet. Then of his own accord, Mr. Hopkins said that going from Mr. Edwards's house to his own, that night at nine or ten, he saw the greyhound which he had with him jump as if after a hare; and coming up hurriedly, there was a white thing like a "kitlyn," and his greyhound standing aloof from it; but by-and-by the white kitlyn came dancing round and about the greyhound, "and by all likelihood bit off a piece of the flesh of the shoulder of the greyhound; for the greyhound came shrieking and crying to this Informant, with a piece of fleshe torne from her shoulder." To crown all, coming into his own yard, Mr. Hopkins saw a thing like a black cat, only three times as big, sitting on the strawberry-bed glaring at him; but when he went towards it, it leaped over the pale, ran right through the yard--his greyhound after it--then flung open a gate which was "underset with a paire of Tumbrell strings," and so vanished, leaving the greyhound in a state of extreme terror. Which, if there was any truth at all in these depositions, and they were not merely arbitrary lies, would make one suspect that Master Matthew Hopkins had been drinking, and knew a few of the phenomena of delirium tremens.

John Sterne, Matthew's slavey or attendant, then gave information. Watching with Matthew Hopkins, he asked Elizabeth Clarke if she were never afraid of her imps? to whom she made this notable answer, "What, doe you thinke I am afraid of my children?" His tale of imps was rather different to his patron's: they had consulted hurriedly, or John's memory was bad. The white imp was Hoult; Jarmara had red spots; Vinegar Tom was like a "dumbe Dogge;" and Sack-and-Sugar was a hard-working imp, which would tear Master John Sterne when it came. And it was well that Master Sterne was so quick, else this imp would have "soon skipped upon his face, and perchance had got into his throate, and then there would have been a feast of toades in this Informant's belly." Elizabeth had one imp, she said, for which she would fight up to her knees in blood before she would lose it; and when asked what the devil was like as a man, said he was a "proper man," a deal "properer" than Matthew Hopkins.

Other witnesses affirmed that if Elizabeth smacked with her mouth then a white cat-like imp, would come, and that they saw five more imps, named as above. And furthermore that she confessed that old Beldam, meaning Ann West--which was a very disrespectful way of speaking of her gossip--had killed Robert Oakes' wife and a clothier's child of Dedham, both of whom had died about a week since; and also that "the said old Beldam Weste had the wife of one William Cole of Mannintree in handling, who deid not long since of a pining and languishing disease," and that she had raised the wind which sunk the hoy in which was Tom Turner's brother thirty months agone. She also said that Beldam West had taught her all she knew; for that one day as she was pitying her for her lameness--she had but one leg--and for her poverty, she told her how she might get imps and be rich, for that the imps would help her to a husband who would keep her ever after, so that she need not be put to such miserable shifts as gathering sticks for a living. Elizabeth Clarke then accused Elizabeth Gooding of being one of the tribe: and Robert Taylor came forward to give corroborative evidence against her. He said that nine weeks since, Elizabeth Gooding came to his shop for half a pound of cheese, on trust; that he denied it to her; whereupon she went away, "muttering and mumbling" to herself, and soon came back with the money. That very night his horse, which was in the stable, sound and in good condition, fell lame and in four days' time died of a strange disease, and Elizabeth Gooding was the cause thereof. Elizabeth Gooding "is a lewd woman, and to this Informant's knowledge, hath kept company with the said Elizabeth Clarke, Anne Leech, and Anne West, which Anne West hath been suspected for a Witch many years since, and suffered imprisonment for the same." Elizabeth Gooding contented herself with saying quietly that she was not guilty of any one particular charged upon her in the examination of the said Robert Taylor. Nevertheless she was executed at Chelmsford.

Richard Edwards said that twelve months since he was driving his cows near to the house of Anne Leech, widow, when they both fell down and died in two days; the next day his white cow fell down within a rod of the same place, and died in a week after. In August last his child was out at nurse at goodwife Wyles', who lived near Elizabeth Gooding and Elizabeth Clarke; which said child was taken very sick, with rolling of the eyes, strange fits, extending of the limbs, and in two days it died: and Elizabeth Gooding and Anne Leech were the cause of its death.

And now poor old Anne Leech was brought on the scene, to "confess," as so many wretched victims did. She said that she and Elizabeth Clarke and Elizabeth Gooding sent their imps to kill Mr. Edwards's black cow, and his white cow; she sent a grey imp, Elizabeth Clarke a black one, and Gooding a white; also that thirty years since she sent her grey imp to kill Mr. Bragge's two horses, because he had called her a naughty woman--and that the imps did their work without fear of failure. When these imps were abroad, she said, and after mischief, she had her health, but when they were unemployed and for ever hanging about her, she was sick. They often spoke to her in a hollow voice which she easily understood, and told her that she should never feel hell's torments: which it is very sure the poor old maniac never did. She and Gooding killed Mr. Edwards's child too; she with her white imp, and Elizabeth with her black one. She had her white imp about thirty years since, and a grey and a black as well, from "one Anne, the wife of Robert Pearce of Stoak in Suffolk, being her brother." Three years since she sent her grey imp to kill Elizabeth Kirk; and Elizabeth languished for about a year after and then died; the cause of her, Anne Leech's, malice being that she had asked of Elizabeth a coif, which she refused. The grey imp killed the daughter of Widow Rawlyns, because Widow Rawlyns had put her out of her farm; and she knew that Gooding had sent her imp to vex and torment Mary Taylor, because Mary refused her some beregood; but when she wanted to warn her, the devil would not let her. Lastly, she said, that about eight weeks ago she had met West and Gooding at Elizabeth Clarke's house "where there was a book read wherein she thinks there was no goodnesse."

So all these wretched creatures were hanged at Chelmsford, and the informants plumed themselves greatly on their evidence. But before their execution, poor Hellen Clark, wife of Thomas Clark, and daughter of Anne Leech, was "fyled." On the 4th of April, 1645, Richard Glascock gave information that he had heard a falling out between Hellen, and Mary wife of Edward Parsley, and that he "heard the said Hellen to say as the said Hellen passed by this Informant's door in the street, that Mary the daughter of the said Edward and Mary Parsley should rue for all, whereupon presently the said Mary, the daughter, fell sick and died within six weeks after." When Helen was arrested she made her confession glibly. She said that about six weeks since the devil came to her house in the likeness of a white dog by name Elimanzer, and that she fed him with milk porridge; that he spoke to her audibly, bidding her deny Christ and she should never want; which she did: but she did not kill Mary Parsley nevertheless. She was executed at Manningtree all the same as if she had spoken sober truth.

On the 23rd of the same month Prudence Hart came to the magistrates with an accusation. About eight weeks since, she said, being at church very well and healthful--some twenty weeks gone with child--she was suddenly taken with pains, and miscarried before she could be got home: and about two months since, being in bed, something fell upon her right side, but being dark she could not tell of what shape it was: but presently she was taken lame on that side, and with extraordinary pains and burning, and she believed that Anne West and Rebecca West, the daughter, were the cause of her pains. John Edes also swelled the count of accusations. He said that Rebecca had confessed to him that seven years since her mother incited her to intercourse with the devil, who had since appeared to her at divers times and in various shapes, but chiefly as a proper young man, desiring of her such things as proper young men are wont to desire of women; promising her that if she would yield to his wishes she should have what she would, and especially should be avenged of her enemies; and that then Rebecca had demanded the death of Hart's son of Lawford, who, not long after, was taken sick and died. At which Rebecca had said "that shee conceived hee could do as God." And furthermore, that Rebecca said, while she lived at Rivenall her mother Anne came to her and said, "the Barley Corn was picked up," meaning one George Francis; and that shortly after George's father said his son was bewitched to death; to which Anne replied, "Be it unto him according to his faith." When Rebecca was called on the 21st of March, to answer to these charges, she confirmed all that John Edes had said, adding a few unimportant particulars which insured the execution of her mother in the August following; but in spite of her own confession she herself, though found guilty by the grand jury, was acquitted for life and death. Matthew Hopkins struck a few dashes of colour over the canvas, telling the judges that Rebecca had told him she was made a witch by her mother; and that when she met the four other goodies in Clarke's house, the devil, or their familiars, had come, now in the shape of a dog, then of two kittyns, then of two dogs--and that they first did homage to Elizabeth Clarke, skipping up into her lap and kissing her, and then to all the rest, kissing each one of them save Rebecca. Afterwards, when Satan came as a man, he gave her kisses enough: and not quite so innocently as the "kittyns and the dogges."

Susan Sparrow and Mary Greenliefe lived together. Each had a daughter thirteen or fourteen years old; and one night Susan Sparrow, being awake, heard Mary's child cry out, "Oh mother, now it comes, it comes! Oh helpe, mother, it hurts me, it hurts me!" So Susan said, "Goodwife Greenliefe, Goodwife Greenliefe, if your childe be asleep awaken it, for if anybody comes by and heare it make such moans (you having an ill name already), they will say you are suckling your Impes upon it." To which Mary replied that this was just what she was doing, and that she would "fee" with them (meaning her Imps), that one night they should suck her daughter, and one night Susan Sparrow's; which fell out as she said. For the very next night Susan's child cried out in the same manner as Mary's had done, and clasped her mother round the neck, much affrighted and shrieking pitifully. She complained of being pinched and nipped on her thigh; and in the morning there was a black and blue spot as broad and long as her hand. Susan Sparrow also said that the house where they lived was haunted by a leveret, which came and sat before the door; and knowing that Anthony Sharlock had a capital courser, she went and asked him to banish it for her. Whether the dog killed it or not she did not know; all that she did know was, that Goodman Merrill's dog coursed it but a short time before, but the leveret never stirred, and "just when the dog came at it he skipped over it, and turned about and stood still, and looked on it, and shortly after that dog languished and dyed. But whether this was an Impe in the shape of a Leveret, or had any relation to the said Mary, this Informant knows not, but does confesse shee wondered very much to see a Leveret, wilde by nature, to come so frequently and sit openly before the dore in such a familiar way." Mary was searched, and found marked with witch marks, but contented herself with quietly denying all knowledge of familiars, witchcraft, "bigges," and the like.

Mary Johnson was accused of having a familiar, in shape like a rat "without tayl or eares," which she used to carry about in her pocket, and set to rock the cradle. She kissed Elizabeth Otley's child, and gave it an apple, and the child sickened and died of fits; and Elizabeth herself had extraordinary pains, which left her when she had scuffled with Mary Johnson and gotten her blood. And she killed Annabell Durant's child by commending it as a pretty thing, stroking its face, and giving it a piece of bread and butter; and Annabell knew that she had been the death of the child, because, "setting up of broome in the outhouse after the little one had been taken, she saw the perfect representation of a shape just like Mary Johnson, and was struck with such a lamenesse in her Arms that she was not able to bow her arms, and so continued speechless all that day and night following. Mary came also as the noise of a Hornet, to the room where Annabell's husband lay sick, for he cried out, 'It comes, it comes! Now Goodwife Johnson's Impe is come! Now she hath my life!'" And immediately a great part of the wall fell down. So was not Mary Johnson an undoubted witch with all this testimony against her?

Anne Cooper was executed at Manningtree because she had three black imps, by name Wynow, Jeso, and Panu; because she gave her daughter Sarah a grey imp like a kite, and called Tomboy, telling her there was a cat for her to play with; because she cursed a colt and it broke its neck directly after; and because she sent one of her imps to kill little Mary Rous--which it