Chapter 2

two imps to Mary Smith. The poor old woman "praying to God with her hands upward, that if she was guilty of any such thing, He would show some example on her, presently after she shaked and quivered, and fell to the ground backward, and tumbled up and down the ground, and hath continued sick ever since."

Old Margaret Moone had twelve imps, but her informants could only remember the names of "Jesus, Jockey, Sandy, Mrs. Elizabeth, and Collyn." Her imps killed cows and babes; spoiled brewings; broke horses' necks; bewitched "aples" so that the eaters thereof died; sent Rawbodd's wife such a plague of lice that they might have been swept off her clothes with a stick; and did other maleficent things, proper to imps and witches. When searched she was found to have "bigges" where the imps sucked; and confessed the same, saying that "if she might have some bread and beere she would call her said Impes; which being given unto her, she put the bread into the beere and set it against a hole in the wall, and made a circle round about the pot, and then cried, Come Christ, come Christ, come Mounsier, come Mounsier." No imps appearing, she said her daughters had carried them off in a white bag, and demanded that the said daughters might be "searched," "for they were naught." They were searched, and were found witch-marked. Margaret denied all the charges against herself, but was condemned nevertheless; and only escaped the executioner's hands by dying on her way to the gallows.

Judith Moone helped her mother a step gallowsward by a rambling, pointless confession about some wood, and how her mother threatened her, and how something seemed to come about her legs that night; but when she searched she found nothing; so Judith Moone probably died because she did not know how to distinguish a false sensation from a true one.

Elizabeth Harvey, widow, Sarah Hating, wife, Marian Hocket, widow, were "searched:" the first two were marked, the last not, but yet was the worst witch of all, for she had made Elizabeth Harvey as bad as herself by bringing her three things the bigness of mouses, which she said were "pretty things," and to be made use of. As for Sarah Hating, she had sent Francis Stock's wife a snake, which the said wife espied lying on a shelf, and strove to kill with a spade, but the snake was too quick for her and vanished away; so Francis Stock's wife was taken sick, and within one week died. A daughter was taken ill immediately after her mother, and she also died, and then another child; all because Francis Stock had impressed Sarah Hating's husband for a soldier, and Sarah Hating was angered. Marian Hocket was told on by her own sister, Sarah Barton, who said that she had given her three imps, "Littleman, Prettyman, and Dainty." They were all executed, Sarah and Marian denying their guilt, but Elizabeth Harvey sticking to her tale of the three mouses which Marian had brought her, and which sucked her.

Rose Hallybread bewitched Robert Turner's servant so that he crowed like a cock, barked like a dog; groaned beyond the ordinary course of nature, and, though but a youth, struggled with such strength that four or five men could not hold him. Says Rose, fifteen or sixteen years ago, Goodwife Hagtree brought an imp to her house which she nourished on oatmeal, and suckled according to the manner of witches, for the space of a year and a half--when she lost it; then Joyce Boanes brought her another, as a small grey bird, which she carried to Thomas Toakley's house in St. Osyth, putting it into a cranny of the door, so that his son should die, as he did--crying out all the time that Rose Hallybread had killed him. She then accused Susan Cocks and Margaret Landish, and died in prison, cheating the hangman.

Old Joyce Boanes now took up the tale. She had two imps like mouses she said, and they killed the lambs at the farm-house called Cocket-wick, and one of these imps called "Rug" she took to Rose Hallybread, that they might torment Turner's servant. Wherefore her imp made him bark like a dog; Rose Hallybread's "inforced him to sing sundry tunes in his great extremity of paines;" Susan Cock's compelled him to crow like a cock; and Margaret Landish's made him groan. Poor old Joyce Boanes was hanged in return for her drivelling ravings.

So was Susan Cock; who confirmed all that had gone before, adding only that the night her mother died she gave her two imps, one like a mouse "Susan," the other yellow and like a cat "Besse," with which she did sundry acts of spite and damage. Wherefore Susan was put out of the way of further harm. Margaret Landish knew not much about the matter, but was executed nevertheless, for having bewitched Thomas Hart's child--incited thereto by the girl's pointing at her and crying "There goes Pegg the witch!" upon which Peg turned back and clapped her hands in a threatening manner, saying "she should smart for it," and that very night the child fell sick in a raving manner, and died within three weeks after; often in its fits crying out that "Pegg the witch was by the bedside making strange mouths at her."

Rebecca Jones owned to knowing the devil as a handsome young man, who pricked her wrist and made her his in soul and body. This was about four or five and twenty years ago, when living with John Bishop as his servant. About three months since too, going to St. Osyth to sell her master's butter, she met a man in a ragged suit and with such great eyes that she was afraid of him, and he gave her three things like "moules," having four feet apiece but no tails, and black, which he told her to nurse carefully and feed on milk. Their names were Margaret, Anie, and Susan, and they killed cows and sheep and hogs, and revenged her on her enemies. So Rebecca was hanged as befitted.

Johan Cooper, widow, had three imps, two like mouses and one like a frog; their names were "Prickeare, Robyn, and Frog," and they killed men and beasts. Wherefore she too was hanged like the rest.

Anne Cate had four, given her by her mother twenty years ago, "James, Prickeare, Robyn, and Sparrow:" the first three like mouses, and the fourth like a sparrow; and they did evil and mischief and killed all whom she would. She was hanged too.

At the end of the tract is a very curious bit of evidence, given by an honest man of Manningtree, one Goff, a glover, concerning old Anne West, then on her trial. He said that one moonlight morning, about four o'clock, as he was passing Anne West's house, the door being open, he looked in and saw three or four little things like black rabbits which came skipping towards him. He struck at them, but missed; when, by better luck, he caught one in his hand and tried to wring its head off; but "as he wrung and stretched the neck of it, it came out betweene his hands like a lock of wooll," so he went to drown it at a spring not far off. But still as he went he could not hinder himself from falling down, so that at last he was obliged to creep on his hands and knees, till he came to the water, when he held the imp for a long space underneath, till he conceived it was drowned, but, "letting goe his hand, it sprang out of the water up into the aire, and so vanished away." Coming back to Anne West's, he found her standing at her door in terrible undress, and to his complaint of why did she send her imps to molest him? she answered "that they were not sent out to trouble him, but as Scouts upon another designe."

But one of the most painful murders of the Hopkins Session was that of old Mr. Lewis,[132] the "Reading Parson" of Franlingham; a fine old man of good character, but generally regarded as a Malignant, because he preferred to read Queen Elizabeth's Homilies instead of composing nasal discourses of his own, of the kind so dear to the Puritan party: wherefore the authorities and Matthew Hopkins--who was a devout Puritan--had their eyes upon him, and were not disposed to be lenient. He was swum in Hopkins's manner, cross-bound; set on a table cross-legged; kept several nights without sleep, and twenty-four hours without food; run backwards and forwards in the room, two men holding him, until he was out of breath; "pricked" and searched for marks; after all which barbarity it is not surprising to find that the poor old Reading Parson of eighty-five "confessed." Yes, he had made a compact with the devil and sealed it with his blood; and he had two imps that sucked him, one of which, the yellow dun imp, was always urging him to do some mischief, but the other was more amiable. Accordingly, to please the yellow dun he had one day sent it to sink an Ipswich ship, which he spied out in the offing: a commission which the imp executed with zeal and precision before the eyes of a whole beach full of spectators. This Ipswich ship was one of many that rode safely enough in the calm sea, but the imp troubled the waters immediately about her, and down she went like a stone, as all present could testify. Asked if he had not grieved to make so many--they were fourteen--widows in a few moments he said "No, he was glad to have pleased his imp." This confession and various witch "bigges" found on him were held proofs conclusive; and Mr. Lewis was condemned to be hanged; his eighty years, and his gown, protecting him nowise. As soon as he was a little refreshed he denied all the ravings he had been induced to utter, read the burial service for himself with cheerfulness and courage, and met his death calmly and composedly; perhaps not sorry to resign into God's keeping a life which Matthew Hopkins and the Puritans were rendering intolerable.

A Penitent Woman[133] of the same time confessed that when her mother lay sick a thing like a mole ran into bed to her. She, the Penitent Woman, started, but her mother told her not to fear, but to take the mole and keep it, saying, "Keep this in a pot by the fire, and thou shalt never want." The daughter did as she was bid, and made the mole comfortable in its pot. And after she had done this, a seemingly poor boy came in and asked leave to warm himself by the fire. When he went away she found some money under the stool whereon he had sat. This happened many times, and so her mother's promise and her imp brought the poor penitent romancer Barmecidal good luck. It could not have been much, for Hopkins, or at least his friend and comrade John Sterne, says in the examination of Joan Ruccalver, of Powstead, Suffolk, that "six shillings was the largest amount he had ever known given by an imp to its dame."

That all this seemed right and rational in the eyes of sane men is one of the most marvellous things connected with the delusion: that well-educated Englishmen should send such a wretch as Matthew Hopkins with legal authorisation to prick witches, associating with him Mr. Calamy "to see that there was no fraud:" that they should arraign miserable old women by scores, and hang them by dozens: and that Baxter should gravely argue for the validity of ghosts and spectres on the plea that "various Creatures must have a various Situation, Reception, and Operation: the Fishes must not dwell in our cities nor be acquainted with our affairs"--strikes me chiefly with amazement at the marvellous imbecility of superstition. It is well for the leaders of sects to bid us cast down our reason before blind faith; for, assuredly, our reason, which is the greatest gift of God, pleads loudly against the follies of belief and the vital absurdities into which religionists fall when unchecked by common sense. It was only the "Atheists" and "Sadducees," as they were called, who at last managed to put a stop to this hideous delusion: all the pious believers upheld the holy need of searching for witches, and of not suffering them to live wherever they might be found. All sects and denominations of Christians joined in this, and found a meeting-place of brotherly love and concord beneath the witches' gallows. And though one's soul revolts most at the so-called "Reformed Party," because of the greater unctuousness of their piety, and their mighty professions, yet they were all equally guilty, one with the other; all equally steeped to the lips in insanest superstition. The temper of the times has so far changed now that men and women are no longer hung because they have mesmeric powers, or because hysterical and epileptic patients utter wild ravings: but the thing remains the same; there is the same amount of superstition still afloat, if somewhat altered in its direction; and modern Spiritualism, which has come to supersede Witchcraft, is, when it is true at all and not mere legerdemain, as little understood and as falsely catalogued as was ever the art of magic and sorcery.

THE HUNTINGDON IMPS.

In another very scarce tract by "J. D." (John Davenport) "present at the trial," we come to a strange and mournful group of judicial murders that took place in Huntingdon, 1646. First, there was Elizabeth Weed, of Great Catworth, who confessed that twenty-one years ago, as she was saying her prayers, three spirits came suddenly to her, one of which was like a man or youth, and the other two like puppies, of which one was white and the other black. The young man asked her if she would renounce God and Christ: to which she assented, her faith being weak; and then the devil promised that she should do all the mischief she would, if she would covenant to give him her soul at the end of twenty-one years. She assented to this too; and sealed the bargain with her blood. He drew the blood from under her left arm, and "a great lump of flesh did rise there, and has increased ever since;" and the devil scribbled with her blood, and the covenant was signed and sealed. The name of her white imp, like a puppy, was "Lilly," of the black "Priscille;" and the office of the white was to hurt man, woman, and child, but of the black to hurt cattle. The man spirit's function was that of her husband, in which relation she lived with him to her great satisfaction. Lilly killed Mr. Henry Bedell's child, and Priscille sundry cattle; but she had not had much good of the bargain, for the twenty-one years were to be out next Low Sunday, when her soul would be required of her and the devil would take her away; and she desired to be rid of the burden of her life before then. The judges acquiesced in her desire: which a little good food and careful watching would have proved to them was but the phantasy of disease; and the hangman had her body, though no devil took her soul, and her sufferings and her sins vexed the universe no more.

John Winnick's confession is one of the most graphic and extraordinary of any in the tract. I give it word for word as I found it.

"The examination of John Winnick, of Molseworth in the said County, Labourer, taken upon the 11th day of Aprill, 1646, before Robert Bernard, Esquire, one of His Majesties Justices of the Peace for this County. Hee saith, that about 29 yeares since, the 29th yeare ending about Midsommer last past, he being a Batchellour, lived at Thropston with one Buteman, who then kept the Inne at the George, and withall kept Husbandry: this Examinate being a servant to him in his Husbandry, did then loose a purse with 7_s._ in it, for which he suspected one in the Family. He saith that on a Friday being in the barne, making hay-bottles for his horses about noon, swearing, cursing, raging, and wishing to himselfe that some wise body (or Wizzard) would helpe him to his purse and money again: there appeared unto him a Spirit, blacke and shaggy, and having pawes like a Beare, but in bulk not fully so big as a Coney. The Spirit asked him what he ailed to be so sorrowfull, this Examinate answered that he had lost a purse and money, and knew not how to come by it again. The Spirit replied, if you will forsake God and Christ and fall down and worship me for your God, I will help you to your purse and money again. This Examinate said he would, and thereupon fell down upon his knees and held up his hands. Then the Spirit said, to-morrow about this time of the day, you shall find your purse upon the floor where you are now making bottles, I will send it to you, and will also come my selfe. Whereupon this Examinate told the Spirit he would meete him there, and receive it, and worship him. Whereupon at the time prefixed, this Examinate went unto the place, and found his purse upon the floore, and tooke it up, and looking afterwards into it, he found there all the money that was formerly lost: but before he had looked into it, the same Spirit appears unto him and said, there is your purse and your money in it: and then this Examinate fell downe upon his knees and said, My Lord and God I thanke you. The said Spirit at that time brought with him two other Spirits for shape, bignesse, and colour, the one like a white Cat, the other like a grey Coney; and while this Examinate was upon his knees, the Beare Spirit spake to him, saying, you must worship these two Spirits as you worship me, and take them for your Gods also: then this Examinate directed his bodie towards them, and called them his Lords and Gods. Then the Beare Spirit told him that when he dyed he must have his soule, whereunto this Examinate yielded. Hee told him then also that they must suck of his body, to which this Examinate also yielded; but they did not sucke at that time. The Beare Spirit promised him that he should never want victuals. The Cat Spirit that it would hurt Cattel when he would desire it. And the Coney-like Spirit that it would hurt men when he desired. The Bear Spirit told him that it must have some of his blood wherewith to seale the Covenant, whereunto this Examinate yielded, and then the beare Spirit leapt upon his shoulder, and prickt him on the head, and from thence tooke blood; and after thus doing, the said three spirits vanisht away. The next day about noone, the said Spirits came to him while hee was in the field, and told him they were come to suck of his body, to which he yielded, and they suckt his body at the places where the marks are found, and from that time to this, they have come constantly to him once every 24 hours, sometimes by day, and most commonly by night. And being demanded what mischiefe he caused any of the said spirits to do, he answered never any, onely hee sent his beare Spirit to provoke the maid-servant of Mr. Say of Molmesworth, to steale victualls for him out of her Master's house, which she did, and this Examinate received the same.

The marke of John Winnicke Rob. Bernard.

He was hanged, 1646.

Eight years before this--namely, in 1638--Frances Moore had a black puppy imp of Margaret Simson of Great Catworth, which she called Pretty, and whose office was to harm cattle. Then Goodwife Weed gave her a thing like a white cat, called Tissy, saying, if she would deny God and affirm the same by her blood, to whomsoever she sent this cat, and cursed, would die. So she cursed William Foster, who, sixteen years ago would have hanged two of her children because they offered to take a piece of bread; and he died: but she could not remember what the cat imp did to him. Poor old creature! such naïve little bits of truth and scientific direction come out in the midst of all the wildness and raving of the "examined!"--such little quiet bits of unconscious common sense, to redeem the whole account from the mere maunderings of lunacy! Frances Moore did not remember what her imp did to William Foster, yet she went on to say that she got tired of having them about her, and killed them both a year since; but they haunted her still, and when she was apprehended crept up her clothes and tortured her so that she could not speak.

Elizabeth Chandler, widow, had something that came to her in a "puffing and roaring manner," and that now hurt her sorely. She denied that she ever spoiled Goodwife Darnell's furmety, but Goodwife Darnell, by causing her to be ducked, she did heartily desire to be revenged on. She had been troubled with these roaring things for a quarter of a year, and had two imps besides, one called "Beelzebub," and the other "Trullibub." This she denied when asked, while sane and awake, saying that "Beelzebub was a logg of wood and Trullibub a stick." But the neighbours testified against her, so her denial went for naught.

Ellen Shepheard had four iron-grey rat imps that sucked her; and Anne Desborough had two--mouses--Tib and Jone, one brown and the other white. She had been told to forsake God and Christ, and that she would then have her will on men and cattle; as she did, and got her mouse imps in consequence.

Jane Wallis saw a man in black clothes, about six weeks since, as she was making her bed. She bid him civilly good morning, and asked him his name. He told her it was "Blackeman," and, in turn, asked her if she was poor. Yes, she said "she was." Then he would send her two imps said he, Grissel and Greedigut, that should do anything for her she would. At this moment, Jane, looking up, saw he had ugly feet, and was fearful; still more fearful when he became at one moment bigger and at another less, and then suddenly vanished. Grissel and Greedigut came in the shape of "dogges, with great brisles of hogges hair upon their backs." They said they came from Blackeman to do whatever she might command: and sometimes all three of them--the two dogs and the man--brought her two or three shillings at a time; and once they robbed a man and pulled him from his horse.

On September 25, 1645,[134] Joan Walliford confessed before the major and other jurates, "that the divell, about seven yeares agoe did appeare to her in the shape of a little dog, and bid her to forsake God and leane to him; who replied, that she was loath to forsake him." Still, she wished to be revenged on Thomas Letherland and Mary Woodrufe, now his wife; and as "Bunne," the devil, promised she should not lack, and did actually send her money, she knew not whence--sometimes a shilling and sometimes eightpence, "never more"--devil-worship did not seem such a bad trade after all. She further said that her retainer, Bunne, once carried Thomas Gardler out of a window; and that twenty years ago she promised her soul to the devil, and that he wrote the covenant between them in her blood, promising to be her servant for that space of time, which time was now almost expired; that Jane Hot, Elizabeth Harris, and Joan Argoll, were her fellows; that Elizabeth Harris curst the boat of one John Woodcott, "and so it came to passe;" that Goodwife Argoll, curst Mr. Major and John Mannington, and so it came to pass in these cases too; and that Bunne had come to her twice since in prison, and sucked her "in the forme of a muce." So poor Joan Walliford was hanged, and at the place of execution exhorted all good people to take warning by her, and not to suffer themselves to be deceived by the divell, neither for love of money, malice, or anything else, as she had done, but to sticke fast to God; for if she had not first forsaken God, God would not have forsaken her.

Joan Cariden, widow, said that about three quarters of a year since, "as she was in the bed about twelve or one of the clocke in the night, there lay a 'rugged soft thing' upon her bosome which was very soft, and she thrust it off with her hand; and she saith that when she had thrust it away she thought God forsooke her, and she could never pray so well since as she could before; and further saith that shee verily thinks it was alive." On a second examination she said that the divell came to her in the shape of a "black rugged Dog in the night time, and crept into the bed to her, and spake to her in a mumbling tongue." Two days after she made further revelations of how "within these two daies," she had gone to Goodwife Pantery's house, where were other good wives, and where the divell sat at the upper end of the table.

Jane Hot said that a thing like a "hedg-hog" had usually visited her for these twenty years. It sucked her in her sleep, and pained her, so that she awoke: and lay on her breast, when she would strike it off. It was as soft as a cat. On coming into the gaol she was very urgent on the others to confess, but stood out sturdily for her own innocence; saying, "that she would lay twenty shillings that if she was swum she would sink." She was swum and she floated; whereat a gentleman asked her "how it was possible that she could be so impudent as not to confesse herselfe?" to whom she answered, "That the Divell went with her all the way, and told her that she should sinke; but when she was in the Water he sat upon a Crosse beame, and laughed at her." "_These three were executed on Munday last_," says the tract in emphatic italics.

It now came to the turn of Elizabeth Harris. She said that nineteen years ago the devil came to her in the form of a muse (mouse) and told her she should be revenged. And she was revenged on all who offended her; on Goodman Chilman, who said she had stolen a pigge, and who therefore she wished might die--and her Impe destroyed him; on Goodman Woodcot, in whose High (hoy?) her son had been drowned, when "she wished that God might be her revenger, which was her watchword to the Divell"--and the hoy was cast away, as she conceived, in consequence of her wish. And did not Joan Williford's imp tell her that "though the Boate went chearfully oute it should not come so chearfully home?" She said further that sundry good wives, named, had "ill tongues;" and that she had made a covenant with the devil, written in the blood which she had scratched with her nails from out her breast.

Alexander Sussums of Melford, Sussex, said he had things which drew his marks, and that he could not help being a witch, for all his kindred were naught--his mother and aunt hanged, his grandmother burnt, and ten others questioned and hanged. At Faversham about this time, three witches were hanged, one of whom had an imp-dog, Bun; and on the 9th of September[135] Jane Lakeland was burnt at Ipswich for having bewitched to death her husband, and Mrs. Jennings' maid, who once refused her a needle and dunned her for a shilling. Jane Lakeland had contracted with the devil twenty years ago. He came to her when between sleeping and waking, speaking to her in a hollow voice, and offering her her will if she would covenant with him. To which she, assenting, he then stroke his claw into her hand and with her blood wrote out the covenant. She had bewitched men and women and cows and corn, and sunk ships, and played all the devilries of her art, but remained ever unsuspected, holding the character of a pious woman, and going regularly to church and sacrament. She had three imps--two little dogs and a mole--and Hopkins burnt her as the best way of settling the question of her sanity or disease.

It would have been well for all these poor people if their respective judges--Sir Matthew Hale included--had had only as much liberality and common sense as Mr. Gaule, the minister of Stoughton in Huntingdonshire; for though Gaule was no wise minded to give up his belief either in the devil or in witches, he utterly repudiated Matthew Hopkins and his tribe and his ways, and condemned his whole manner of proceeding, from first to last. He preached against him, and when he heard a rumour of his visiting Stoughton he strongly opposed him, whereupon Matthew wrote this insolent letter, which Mr. Gaule printed as a kind of preface to his book of "Select Cases," put out soon after.

"My Service to your Worship presented. I have this Day received a letter, &c., to come to a Town called Great Stoughton, to search for evil disposed Persons, called Witches (though I heare your Minister is farre against us through Ignorance:) I intend to come the sooner to heare his singular Judgement in the Behalfe of such Parties; I have known a Minister in Suffolk preach as much against this Discovery in a Pulpit, and forced to recant it, (by the Committee) in the same place. I much marvaile such evil Members should have any (much more any of the Clergy) who should dayly preach Terrour to convince such Offenders, stand up to take their Parts, against such as are Complainants for the King and Sufferers themselves, with their Families and Estates. I intend to give your Towne a visite suddenly. I am to come to Kimbolton this Week, and it shall be tenne to one, but I will come to your Town first, but I would certainly know afore, whether your Town affords many Sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to give and afford as good Welcome and Entertainment, as other where I have beene, else I shall wave your Shire, (not as yet beginning in any Part of it myself) and betake me to such Places, where I doe, and may persist without Controle, but with Thanks and Recompense. So I humbly take my leave and rest, Your Servant to be Commanded,

"MATTHEW HOPKINS."

I have not been able to find what was the result of this letter, but I do not suppose that Hopkins, who was a great coward like all tyrants, cared to brave even the small danger of one minister's opposition, not knowing how many "sticklers for such cattle" might be at his back. In his Apology, or "Certaine Queries Answered, which have been and are likely to be objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out Witches," he says that "he never went to any towne or place, but they rode, writ, or sent often for him, and were (for ought he knew) glad of him;" and if this was true, Mr. Gaule most likely was rid of him at Great Stoughton, and one rood of English land left undefiled. Besides, his hands were full elsewhere; for when we think that at Bury St. Edmunds eighteen persons were hanged on one day alone, and a hundred and twenty more left lying in prison, all through his instrumentality, we must imagine that he had enough to do in places where he was caressed and desired, not to forbear troubling those where he was abhorred and might run some danger.

MR. CLARK'S EXAMPLES.

A few other men, too, were about as sane as Mr. Gaule on this maddest of all mad subjects. Mr. Clark, a minister--and the ministers were generally the worst--had a marvellous allowance of common sense, remembering the times. A certain parishioner of his cried out that she was grievously beset by a neighbour who came in the spirit, that is, as an apparition, to teaze and torment her. Mr. Clark, the minister, knew the accused woman, and believed in her innocency; but it happened one day, by one of those curious coincidences which, by-the-bye, are so often exaggerated into far more significance than they deserve, that the suspected woman while milking her cow was struck by it on the forehead, and naturally fell a-bleeding. At that moment, or said to be at that moment, her "spectre" appeared to the afflicted person, and she, pointing out the place where it stood, desired some of those who were with her to strike at it. They did so, and she said they fetched blood. Hereupon a posse of them went to the supposed witch, and found her with her forehead bleeding, just as the afflicted had said. There was no question now of doubt, and they rushed off to Mr. Clark to tell them what they had seen, and demand that she be put to the proof. Mr. Clark went to the woman and asked what had made her forehead bleed? She told him, a blow from her cow's horn; "whereby he was satisfy'd that it was a Design of Satan to render an innocent person suspected." Another instance of the same kind of thing happened at Cambridge. A man believed that a certain widow sent her imps, as cats, to bewitch and torment him. One night as he lay in bed one of these imps came within reach, and he struck it on the back: when it vanished away, as was to be expected. The next day the man sent to inquire of his old enemy, and found that she had a sore back; at which he rejoiced exceedingly, having now in his hands the clew which would guide him to revenge and her to justice and the scaffold. But Mr. Day, her surgeon, stopped his triumph before it was ripe, and cut the clew before it had spun out; telling him that the sore back was nothing but a boil, which had gathered, headed, and healed, like any other boil, and that it could have had no connexion whatever with the blow which he had so valiantly given the cat-imp when in bed. So this bit of cruelty was put a stop to, and the poor old creature, with a boil on her back, slept her last sleep unhastened by the hangman. Another wretched being who had been kept without sleep or food for twenty-four hours, pricked, tried, and tortured into a state of temporary imbecility, at last confessed to her imp Nan; but a gentleman in the neighbourhood, very indignant at the folly and barbarity of the whole thing, rescued the poor victim, and made her eat some meat and go to sleep. When she woke up she said she knew nothing of what she had confessed, but that she had a pullet which she sometimes called Nan, and which of a surety was no imp, but an honest little hen that had to lay good eggs some day, and be eaten at table when her work was done.

THE NEWCASTLE PRICKERS.

Hopkins was not the only one of his trade in England, for Ralph Gardner, in his "England's Grievance Discovered" (1655), speaks of two prickers, Thomas Shovel and Cuthbert Nicholson, who, in 1649 and 1650, were sent by the Newcastle magistrates into Scotland, there to confer with a very able man in that line, and bring him back to Newcastle. They were to have twenty shillings, but the Scotchman three pounds, per head of all they could convict, and a free passage there and back. When these wretches got to any town--for they tried all the chief market towns of the district--the crier used to go round with his bell, desiring "all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tryed by the person appointed." As many as thirty women were brought at once into the Newcastle town-hall, stript, pricked, and twenty-seven set aside as guilty. This said witch-finder told Lieut.-Colonel Hobson that "he knew women, whether they were witches or no, by their looks; and when the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman, the said Colonel replyed and said, Surely this woman is none, and need not be tried; but the Scotchman said she was, for all the Town said she was, and therefore he would try her: and presently, in sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the Waste, with her cloaths over her head, by which Fright and Shame all her bloud contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran a Pin into her Thigh, and then suddenly let her Coats fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her body, but did not bleed, but she, being amazed, replied little, and then he put his hand up her coats and pulled out the pin and set her aside as a guilty person and child of the Devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty. Lieut.-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of the foresaid woman by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that woman to be brought again, and her cloaths pulled up to her Thigh, and required the Scot to run the pin in the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the Devil."

If this Scotch witch-finder had not been stopped he would have found half the women in the north country witches; at last Henry Ogle got hold of him, and "required Bond of him to answer the Sessions;" but he got away to Scotland, and so escaped for the time. Fifteen women lay in prison, charged by him, and were executed--all protesting their innocence; and "one of them, by name Margaret Brown, beseeched God that some remarkable sign might be seen at the time of their execution, to evidence their innocency; and as soon as ever she was turned off the Ladder her blood gushed out upon the people to the admiration of the beholders." Which touching little history we must relegate to the realms of fable and delusion, like others just as sad and supernatural. This precious wretch (was it John Kincaid?) was hung in Scotland, when the magistrates and people had got tired of him and his cruelty, and at "the gallows he confessed that he had been the death of two hundred and twenty men and women in England and Scotland, simply for the sake of the twenty shillings a head blood-money." Truly it was time for brave Ralph Gardner to write his bold and scorching "England's Grievance Discovered," when such monstrous crimes as these might be done without even the colour of a monstrous law.

In "Sykes's Local Records" mention is made of a curious little entry in the parish books of Gateshead, near Newcastle: "Paid as M{ris} Watson's when the Justices call to examine witches, 3{s} 4{d}; for a graue for a witch, 6{d}; for trying the witches, £1. 5." This was in 1649, in which year Jean Martin, "the myller's wyfe of Chattim," was executed for a witch, and the authorities of Berwick sent for the witch-finder to come and try witches there, promising that no violence should be done him by the townspeople. In the parish register of Hart, under the date of July 28, 1582, the office of Master Chancellor against Allison Lawe, of Hart, was brought into requisition. Allison was "a notourious sorcerer and enchanter," but was pulled up in the midst of her evil career, and sentenced to a milder punishment than she would have had a century later. Notorious witch and enchanter as she was, all she had to suffer was open penance once in the market-place at Durham, with a paper on her head setting forth her offences, once in Hart church, and once in Norton church; but what was the award to Janet Bainbridge and Jannet Allinson, of Stockton, "for asking counsell of witches, and resorting to Allison Lawe for the cure of the sicke," we are not told. The madness which possessed all men's minds in the next century had not then begun to rage: the storm that was to burst over the world was then giving forth only its warning mutterings, and it was reserved for a later age, with all its progress in art and science and freedom of thought and religious knowledge, to lay the coping-stone to the most monstrous temple of iniquity which fear has ever raised to ignorance. It is a humiliating thought; humiliating, too, the milder phases of this same fury which have so often possessed society; but it must be remembered that, though each wave of the tide recedes, each succeeding wave dashes farther over the reach, and the long lines of sea-wrack mark the point of progress as well as the point of declension.

THE WITCH IN THE BRAKE.[136]

At Droitwich, in Worcestershire, a boy, looking for his mother's cow, saw a bush in a brake move as if something was there. Thinking it to be his mother's cow he went to the place, but found no cow, only an old woman who cried "Ooh!" and so frightened the lad that he could not speak intelligibly. But no one knew what he meant by his strange mouthings and mutterings, until one day, seeing the old woman eating porridge before Sir Edward Barret's door, he rushed up to her, and flung her porridge in her face, and otherwise behaved violently and ill. The neighbours, thinking there was something in it, apprehended her as a witch, and took her to the Checker Prison. At night, the mother of the boy, hearing a great noise overhead, ran up stairs and found her son with the leg of a form in his hand, fighting furiously with something in the window; but what it was she could not see. He then put on his clothes and ran to the prison, midway recovering his speech. When he got there he found that the gaoler had kept the witch without food or sleep till she would say the Lord's Prayer and "God bless the boy:" which pious exercise she had completed at the very moment when his speech was restored. When the boy complained to the gaoler of his negligence in letting her out to hurt and annoy him, the gaoler answered that he had kept her very safe. "Nay," says the boy, "for she came and sat in my chamber window, and grinned at me; whereupon I took up a form and banged her:" the gaoler looked and they found the marks. She was a Lancashire woman, who, when Duke Hamilton was defeated, and there was a scarcity in those parts, "wandred abroad to get victuals." She was hanged, poor half-starved vagrant!

THE TEWKESBURY WITCH THAT SUCKED THE SOW.

About the same time a Tewkesbury man had a sow and a litter of pigs: the sow with abundance of milk, but the pigs lean and miserable. He concluded that something which had no right to it came and robbed his piglings of their milk; so he watched; and sure enough a "black four-footed Creature like a Pole-Cat" came and beat away the pigs and sucked the sow; but the farmer got a pitchfork and ran it into the thigh of the pole-cat, which struggled so mightily that, though it was nailed to the ground, it got away and made off. When he asked some neighbours, standing near, what they had seen, they said they had only seen a wench go by, with blood falling from her as she went. They caught the wench and searched her, and, sure enough, found her wounded as the man said he had wounded the thing sucking his sow. She was apprehended, tried, and hanged, because she made herself into a creature like a black pole-cat, and went and sucked the farmers' sows. "These two Relations, I received from a Person of Quality, of good Ability and of unquestionable Credit, who was present at both the Tryals, and wrote them in his Presence, and afterwards read them to him; and he assured me they were very true in all the Particulars, as they were given in Evidence," says the author of the "Collection of Modern Relations" complacently.

THE DEVIL'S DELUSION.[137]

That same year, in the month of July, a man and woman, John Palmer and Elizabeth Knott, were hanged at St. Albans for curing folks of disease without the leave and license of the authorities, and by the aid of the devil. John made some curious revelations. He said, first of all, that Marsh of Dunstable was the head of the whole college of witches, and that he could do more than all the rest. Then he went on to say that he, John Palmer, had held a blood covenant with the devil for sixty years, and that he bore his brand; also that he had two imps, "George," a dog, and "Jezabell," a woman, who did what he would. He had seduced to himself and his arts Elizabeth Knott, his kinswoman; and both together they made a clay picture of goodwife Pearls of Norton, which they put under some embers, and as the picture consumed away, so did goodwife Pearls--miserably and fatally. This was out of revenge for hanging a lock on his door because he did not pay his rent. Then he sent "George" to kill Cleaver's horses; and Elizabeth killed John Laman's cow by sending her imp, which was a cat. The cat had promised that she should have all she wanted, save money; but poor Elizabeth Knott did not add that puss had promised to give them a halter and the gallows at the end of their revenge: which would have been the only truth in the whole relation. She killed Laman's cow, she said, because she had been teazed for money due to him, or rather to his wife. When she was swum, her cat imp came up to her and sucked upon her breast; so she said, poor raving creature: but when she was taken out of the water she never saw it more. Palmer also confessed that once he lay as a toad in the way of a young man he hated, to get himself hurt. The young man kicked the toad, and Palmer had a sore shin; but he bewitched the youth, so that he languished for years in woe and torment. Then is given the list of all the people bedevilled and bewitched by these two persons, and the account is signed, "Yours, Misodaimon." Misodaimon would have done better if he could have called himself Philalethes.

THE WITCH OF WAPPING.

In April, 1652, Joan Peterson, the witch of Wapping, was hanged at Tyburn in just retribution of her sins. Joan had long had an ugly name in that mean house of hers on the small island near Shadwell; for she was known to heal the sick in a manner more suggestive than satisfactory, and she had a black beast that used to suck her: which every one knew was the art and function of an imp. That this was true of her who could doubt, for a man said he had seen it, and it took even less direct testimony than this to prove a woman a witch. Let the sceptical read the "Country Justice" to see what subtle threads were strong enough for a witch-halter! One evening a neighbour woman was watching by the cradle of a child who was strangely distempered. In jumped a black cat, coming no one knew whence, and stopped her cradling. This woman, and another watching with her, flung the fire-fork at the cat, when it vanished as quickly as it had come. In an hour's time it came again from the other side: one of the women raised her foot and kicked it; and immediately her foot and leg swelled, and were very sore and painful. Then, terrified, they called the master of the house, told him that they could not watch in a place so beset with evil spirits, and left him and the child to get on as they could. On their way home they lighted on a baker, who told them that he had just met a big black cat which had affrighted him so that his hair stood all on end; and when the women told their tale, he said "on his conscience he thought it was Mother Peterson, for he had met her going towards the island a little while before." When on his oath, under examination, this valiant baker declared that he had never been afraid of any cat before in his life; and to a further question answered, "No, he had never seen such a cat before, and he hoped in God he should never see the like again." But what connection old Joan Peterson was assumed to have with this mysterious black cat remains a mystery to this day: it was none to the judge and jury, who condemned her to be hanged with safe and tranquil minds.

THE GEOLOGICAL BEWITCHMENT.[138]

In April, 1652, Mary Ellins, aged nine years, daughter of Edward Ellins, of Evesham in the county of Worcester, was playing in the fields with some neighbours' children. They were gathering cowslips in a pretty innocent way, in which it would have been well if they had been contented to remain; but on passing by a ditch they saw crouching therein one Catherine Huxley, an old woman of no very good repute, generally supposed to be a witch of the worst kind, and quick at casting an evil eye when offended. The children seeing her, took up stones to throw at her, calling her "witch" and other opprobrious names; whereat old Catherine cursed them, and especially Mary Ellins, who made herself conspicuous as the chief tormentor. Her curses had the desired effect. Mary went home, bewitched, and who but Catherine had done it? For ever from that day she had strange and troublesome passages with stones, so that it seemed as if the child had fed upon stones, and nothing but stones, of all kinds of geological formation. Scores of people went to see them: they were handled, and looked at, and reasoned about, and discussed, and yet so many as ever might come away, more still remained behind, and the supply was never failing. When Mary's extraordinary power of elaborating flint and granite and boulder and pebble in her young body had become troublesome and expensive, and the parents wanted to get rid of the whole concern, they undertook the prosecution of old Catherine, and _on this evidence alone, that she had cursed their daughter, and that their daughter had since then had extraordinary discharges of stones_, the old woman was condemned and executed--hung up as a public show at Worcester in the bonny summer months of 1652. As soon as she was hanged Mary had instant and complete relief; and hid no more pebbles in her pockets to delude good, credulous, prayerful Mr. Baxter into the profound belief that she was bewitched.

THE BURNING BEWITCHMENT.[139]

Brightling of Sussex, too, where now we have our sea-side London, was under a cloud, with the devil in actual human form possessing the place and haunting good folk out of their proper wits; for Joseph Cruttenden's house was bewitched, and they were sore holden how to restore the spirit of grace within it, and exorcise the spirit of evil. Joseph Cruttenden had a young servant girl, to whom one day came an old woman, unknown, saying to her that sad calamities were coming on her master's family by-and-bye, but that she was not to speak of them to any one; for he and his dame should be haunted, and their house fired and bewitched. She was to be particularly careful not to give warning of this to any, for if she did, the devil would tear her in pieces. The girl kept her own counsel; of course she did; there would have been no sport else: and that very night the troubles began. As Joseph and his wife lay in bed, dirt and dust and rubbish of all kinds were thrown at them, so that there was no way of escaping the handfuls of filth flung fast and furiously, and all the doors and windows shook as with a storm, though the air was still outside. On another night the house was set on fire in many places at once, flashing out like gunpowder; and as fast as one corner was extinguished another began; for they had no sooner trodden out the ashes and gone to another part, than they flamed up afresh, and they had all their work to do over again. Some said that a thing like a black bull was seen tumbling about in the flames; but Mr. Baxter halts at this, and declines to endorse it. At another time the furniture was all flung about, and a wooden "tut" came flying through the air, and a horseshoe struck the man on the breast, and there was no peace night or day for the black bull, the fire, and all the other things besetting. And then the man confessed that he had been a thief long time agone, whereby Satan had this extraordinary power over him; and the girl, despising the threat of the devil's tearing her to pieces, confessed to her mistress what the old woman had said. So the country was searched for an old woman answering the maid's description, and a poor old wretch was pitched upon as being most like. She was sent for and examined--watched for twenty-four hours; but nothing seems to have come of it this time. The girl "thought" she was "like" the same woman as had spoken to her, yet declined to swear positively. But the old woman had a bad name. She had been suspected as a witch before, "and been had to Maidstone to clear herself," which it seems she had done, for she got off, and had been living near Brightling ever since. She had a narrow escape now, for the country people were much excited against her, and naturally did not wish the presence of one who could haunt their houses with fire and dirt, and a big black bull tumbling about at his will. Had the maid had one grain less of conscience, this nameless wretch would have closed her earthly career a few years too soon; as it was she got off, and "lived miserably about Burwast ever since." It was a small sign of grace in that young jade that she would not swear away the life of an innocent woman to conceal her own childish tricks. It was not often that the accusing witnesses showed even this scant mercy to their victims, for the excitement of the game seemed to be in the largest amount of cruelty that could be perpetrated within the rules.

THE STRINGY MEAT.[140]

"Kent, the first Christian, last conquered, and one of the most flourishing and fruitful Provinces of England, is the Scene, and the beautiful Town of Maidstone, the Stage, whereon this Tragicall Story was publicly acted at Maidstone Assizes, last past."

In this Christian province and most beautiful country, Anne Ashby, Anne Martyn, Mary Browne, Mildred Wright, and Anne Wilson, all of Cranbrooke, and Mary Reade, of Lenham, were brought before Sir Peter Warburton, charged with "the Execrable and Diabolicall crime of Witchcraft." Anne Ashby, "who was the chiefe Actresse, and who had the greatest part in this Tragedy," and Anne Martyn were "confessing" witches; but their confessions did not amount to much, compared with the more highly spiced accounts of other witches. That they had both known the devil as a man, and in dishonesty and sin, was of course one of the chief items of their confession, as it was of most witches; but Anne Ashby further informed the Bench that the devil had given them each a piece of flesh, which, whensoever they should touch, would give them their desires; and that this piece of flesh was hid somewhere among the grass. As was proved: for upon search it was found. Of a sinewy substance and scorched was this redoubtable talisman, for it was both seen and felt by this Observator, E. G., and reserved for public view at the sign of the Swan in Maidstone. Anne Ashby had an imp too, called "Rug," which sometimes came out of her mouth like a mouse, and was of so malicious and venificall a nature that a certain groom belonging to Colonel Humfrey's regiment, for sport, said, "Come Rug into my mouth," and the said groom was dead in a fortnight after: "as it is reported," adds E. G. with saving grace. Anne was hysterical, poor soul: and "in view of this Observation, fell into an extasie before the Bench, and swell'd into a monstrous and vast bigness, screeching and crying out dolefully." When she recovered they asked her if she had been possessed by the devil at that time, to which she made answer "that she did not know that, but that her Spirit Rug had come out of her mouth like a mouse." After they were "cast" and judgment had been pronounced against them she and Anne Martyn pleaded that they were with child: but, being pressed on this point, they confessed that it was by no man of honest flesh and blood, but by the devil, their customary spouse. The plea was not suffered to stand. For proof against the rest, all that is recorded by E. G. is, that when pricked neither Mary Browne, nor Anne Wilson, nor yet Mildred Wright felt pain, or lost blood; and that Mary Read had a visible teat under her tongue which she did show to this Observator as well as to many others. But they were all hanged, at the common place of execution; though some there were who wished that they might be burnt instead, for burning had such virtue, that it prevented the blood of a witch "becomming hereditary to her Progeny in the same evill, which by hanging is not." The hangers, however, carried the day, and the blood of the progeny was left to take its chance of hereditary evil. It was supposed that these six witches, to whom were added five other persons, had bewitched nine children, one man, and one woman, lost five hundred pounds' worth of cattle, and wrecked much corn at sea.

THE LOST WIFE.[141]

That same month and year saw a strange matter of witchcraft at Warwick. "In Warwick Town one Mrs. Katherine Atkins, a Mercer's Wife, standing at her Door on Saturday night, the 24 July 1652. A certain unknown Woman came to her and sayd, Mistris, pray give me two-pence, she answered, two-pences are not so plentifull, and that she would give her no Mony. Pray Mistress, sayd she, then give me that Pin, so she took the Pin off her sleeve and gave her, for which she was very thankfull, and was going away. Mistress Atkins seeing her so thankfull for a Pin, called her again, and told her if she would stay, she would fetch some victuals for her, or give her some thread, or something out of the shop. She answered, she would have nothing else, and bid a pox of her victuals, and swore (by God) saying, You shall be an hundred miles off within this week, when you shall want two-pence as much as I, and so she went grumbling away.

"Hereupon the sayd Mistress Atkins was much troubled in mind, and did advise with some Friends what were best to be done in such a case, but receiving no resolution from any one what to do, she attended the Event what might befall within such a time, and upon the 29 of July she exprest to a kinsman, Mr. Nicholas Bikar, that she was much troubled about the forsayd businesse, but hoped the time was so much expired, that it would come to nothing.

"But the sayd Thursday night, betwixt the hours of 8 and 9, She, going into the Shop, and returning thence in the Entry adjoyning to the sayd Shop, she was immediately gone, by what means and whither we do not know, nor can we hear of upon enquiry made to this present.

"The desire of her Husband and Friends is of all the Inhabitants of this Nation, That if they hear of any such Party in such a lost condition as is before expressed, That there may be speedy Notice given thereof to her Husband in Warwick, and that all convenient Provisions, both of Horse and Mony may be made for the conveying of her to the place aforesayd, and such as shall take pains, or be at expences herein shall be sufficiently recompenced for the same, with many thanks.

"It's likewise desired that Ministers in London, and elsewhere, when the notice of these presents shall come, would be pleased to present her sad condition to God in their severall Congregations. The truth hereof we testifie, whose names are subscribed.

{ Richard Vennour. John Halleford. { Hen. Butler, Ministers of Warwick. { Joseph Fisher, Minister.

DR. LAMB AND HIS DARLING.[142]

Dr. Lamb, Buckingham's domestic physician in times past, and his maid Anne Bodenham, both met with a tragical fate, though not in the same year, for Dr. Lamb was brutally murdered for a conjuror and wizard by a mob in 1640, while Anne Bodenham was not executed until 1653. That Lamb was a terrible necromancer is testified by Richard Baxter, in his 'World of Spirits,' a book "written for the conviction of Sadducees and Infidels," but which now would convince none but the weak or half crazed of anything beyond Richard Baxter's own exceeding credulity and want of critical faculty. His story of Dr. Lamb's necromancy is so curious, it had better be given verbatim, for to translate would be to ruin it.

"Dr. Lamb, who was killed by the Mob for a Conjuror about 1640, met one Morning Sir Miles Sands and Mr. Barbor in the Street, and invited them to go and drink their Mornings Draught at his House: Discoursing about his Art, he told them that if they would hold their Tongues, and their Hands from medling with any thing, he would shew them some Sport. So falling to his Practice in the middle of the Room springs up a Tree; sone after appeared three little Fellows, with Axes on their Shoulders, and Baskets in their Hands, who presently fell to work, cut down the Tree, and carried all away. But Mr. Barbor observing one Chip to fall on his Velvet Coat, he slips it into his Pocket, That Night when he and his Family were in Bed, and asleep, all the Doors and Windows in the House opened and clattered, so as to awaken and affright them all. His Wife said, _Husband, you told me you was at Dr. Lamb's this Day, and I fear you medled with something_. He replied, _I put a Chip into my Pocket_. _I pray you_, said she, _fling it out, or we shall have no Quiet_. He did so, and all the Windows and Doors were presently shut, and all quiet, so they went to sleep."

With such powers of conjuration and sorcery as these, it is not surprising if Dr. Lamb's character tainted that of Anne Bodenham his maid; for the very fact of their living together under the same roof was inimical enough to Anne's reputation. We hear nothing of her for some years, beyond that she lived near New Sarum, was married to one Edward Bodenham, "clothyer," and that she was eighty years of age at the time of her trial. So at least says Edmund Bower, in his "Doctor Lamb revived." But her getting into trouble at all proves that she had long lived under the suspicion of commonly practising witchcraft and sorcery; for Anne Styles, the accuser, had been backwards and forwards to her on her own account scores of times, and thought nothing of it; neither was it considered wonderful when Mr. Mason, son-in-law of Richard Goddard, Anne Styles's master, sent her to Anne Bodenham to learn now their lawsuit would turn. Bodenham, who had a knack of "foretelling things to come, and helping men to their stolen goods, and other such like feats," expressed no surprise, but at once began her conjurations. "She took her staff, and there drew it about the house, making a kinde of a Circle, and then took a book, and carrying it over the Circle with her hands, and taking a green glasse, did lay it upon the book, and placed in the Circle an earthern Pan of Coals, wherein she threw something, which burning caused a very noisome stink, and told the Maid she should not be afraid of what she should then see, for now they would come (they are the words she used), and so calling Belzebub, Tormentor, Satan, and Lucifer appear, there suddenly arose a very high wind, which made the house shake, and presently the back door of the house flying open, there came five Spirits, as the Maid supposed, in the likenesse of ragged Boyes, some bigger than others, and ran about the House, where she had drawn the staff: and the witch threw down upon the ground crums of bread, which the Spirits picked up, and leapt over the Pan of Coals oftentimes, which she set in the midst of the Circle, and a Dog and a Cat of the witches danced with them; and after some time the witch looked again in her book, and threw some great white Seeds upon the ground, which the said Spirits picked up, and so in a short time the wind was laid and the witch going forth at the back door the Spirits vanished." After which Anne told the girl that Mr. Mason should demand fifteen hundred pounds, and one hundred and fifty pounds per annum of Mr. Goddard, and if it was denied he was to take the law and prosecute. For all which Anne Bodenham received the sum of three shillings: little enough too, considering the charges she must have been at for noisome roots and magic lanthorns, not to speak of the chance of being haled off to prison whenever the maid Anne Styles might choose to accuse her.

Another time Anne Styles was sent to her by Mrs. Goddard, to find where was hidden the poison which she said her two young step-daughters were designing to give her, but which Anne Styles herself had bought, as she said, by the witch's request. This Anne Bodenham denied. The witch took her stick as before, going through the same forms of conjuration; when on her adjuring "Belzebub, Tormentor, Lucifer, Satan," to appear, there came out of the mist first a little boy, who then turned into a snake, and then into "a shagged dog with great eyes, which went about in the Circle." And after she had burnt her noisome herbs again, and looked in her Magic book--her Book of Charms as she called it--she took a glass and showed in that "Mistress Sarah Goddard's Chamber, the colour of the Curtains, and the bed turned up the wrong way, and under that part of the bed where the Bolster laye she shewed the poison in a white paper." It was no discredit to maid or witch that this poisoning matter was found a mere suspicion and delusion, and that the young ladies never designed to poison their mother-in-law; though she, on the other hand, sent to Bodenham for charms and poisons against them. This time Anne got vervain and dill, which the little ragged boys (spectres, or spirits, or imps) gathered for her, in return for which she threw them bread which they ate, dancing about, then vanished on their mistress reading in her book. The witch gave the maid the leaves powdered, and dried--one packet of each--while, in a third packet, she put the parings of her nails; all of which the maid was to give to her mistress. The powder was to be put into Mistresses Sarah and Anne Goddard's drink or broth, to give them hideous indigestion rather too coarsely expressed for modern reading; the leaves were to rub about the rim of the pot, to make their teeth fall out of their heads; and the paring of the nails to make them drunk and mad. But Mrs. Goddard only laughed when she got these charms, and said "they were brave things:" she did not use them, luckily for her; though the young ladies would not have been much the worse, save for the white poison before mentioned.

Anne Bodenham had taken a great fancy to this servant girl, and wanted her to live with her, telling her that she would teach her all she knew, and enable her to do as she did; asking her, too, whether she would go to London high or low: for if high she should be carried through the air and be there in two hours, if low she should be taken at Sutton's town end, and before, "unless she had help." When she thus sought to seduce the girl, Anne Styles asked what she could do, whereupon Bodenham incontinently appeared in the form of a great black cat, and lay along by the chimney; but the girl being much frightened, she appeared in her own shape again, and tempted her no more. But first, before she would let her go, she made her swear to seal with her body and blood a vow that she would never discover what she had seen; so she took her forefinger and pricked it, and filled a pen with the blood, and made her write in a book, one of the imps--like "great boys with long shagged black hair," this time--having his hand or claw on the witch's, while Anne Styles wrote. And when she had done writing, the witch said "Amen," and the maid said "Amen," and the spirits said "Amen" each: and the spirit gave the witch a bit of silver for the maid, which he first bit. The maid's hand touched his, and she found that his was cold. Then Bodenham stuck two pins in her head-dress, which she bid her keep, and be gone; saying, "I will vex the Gentlewoman well enough, as I did the man in Clarington Park; which I made walk about with a bundle of Pales on his back all night in a pond of water, and could not lay them down till the next morning." The piece of silver, and the hole in her forefinger, the maid showed the judge and jury in the trial; and both were held to be conclusive evidence against Dr. Lamb's unfortunate "Darling." How far Anne Styles may be believed is not difficult to determine; for as to the conjurations about poisoning Mrs. Goddard, it came out that she, the maid, had gone to the apothecary's for an ounce of arsenic; and then set abroad the report that the two young ladies had bought it for the purpose of poisoning their step-mother. As the young ladies were not disposed to sit down quietly under this suspicion, they had the report sifted to the bottom, and Anne Styles fled in fear; which was the meaning of the witch's demanding how she would like to go to London--high or low--by witch's art, or justice's power. Mr. Chandler, Mr. Goddard's son-in-law, pursued her, and overtook her at Sutton-town end; when, to save herself from the unpleasant consequences of her various misdeeds, beginning with stealing a silver spoon and ending with buying arsenic, she made this "confession," which was safety to her but death to old Anne. Anne earnestly and passionately denied every word the girl said: whereupon Anne Styles, to give greater colour to her story, fell into fits, so strong that six men could not hold her. She was drawn up high into the air--so at least runs the report--her feet as high as the spectators' breasts; and she had scuffles with a black man with no head, who came and tumbled her about, as a little boy deposed. The little boy was sleeping in the same room with her, and he said that the black spirit came to her, and wanted her soul, but the maid answered her soul was none of hers to give; that he had got her blood already, but should never have her soul; and after a tumbling and throwing of her about rarely, he vanished away. At another time the witch was brought to the maid suddenly, when she instantly closed her eyes and fell back in so deep a sleep that they could not by any means awaken her; but so soon as the witch had gone, she woke up of herself, and was quite well. Anne Bodenham was condemned to die, and there was no help for her; but when sentence was passed, Anne Styles fell to bitter weeping and wailing, lamenting her own wickedness, and willing that the witch should be reprieved, if possible to the law. This was taken as a sign of her sweet and loving Christian spirit of forgiveness; we, who read such signs more clearly by the light of a better knowledge, know that it meant simply the weak pity of a selfish conscience, grieving for its sin, yet afraid to retract and make amends. Beside all this evidence, and its lies, Anne Bodenham had a tame toad which she wore in a green bag round her neck; and she had a great deal of natural clairvoyance and mesmeric power; and she was evidently a highly superstitious woman, who believed in her own powers, and was not unwilling to aid them by a little extra supernaturalism and good mechanical tricks. But she would confess to no witchcraft; knew nothing of a Red Book half written over in blood, which red book with its bloody writing contained a catalogue of those who had sold themselves to the devil; though she acknowledged that she had a Book of Charms, much as a servant maid of to-day might have a Book of Dreams: and that she could say the Creed backwards as well as forwards; and that she sometimes prayed to the planet Jupiter. The time-honoured belief in astrology and the power of the planets might well linger in the brain of an old country woman, who had a smattering of knowledge far beyond her station, and who had dabbled in mechanics and the art of conjuring; who could not, moreover, understand her own sensitive condition; and who had the alternative, as one of the witnesses said, of passing for a witch or a woman of God. The judge and jury had a very distinct idea as to which category she ought to be placed in; and fully believed what James Bower reports, that she could turn herself into a "mastive Dog, a black Lyon, a white Bear, a Woolf, a Monkey, a Horse, a Bull, and a Calf." Such a woman as this had no business here on this solid earth, so she was hanged at Salisbury, 1653, dying very hard and completely crazed. Before the hour came she wrote a letter to her husband desiring him never to live in his own house again; and she asked the woman who was to "shroud" her, to root up all her garden herbs and flowers when she should be dead; and she clamoured for a knife to stick into her heart; and she wanted to die drunk, calling for beer on her way to execution, and giving her gaolers much trouble to hold her in at all; and she would have no psalm sung, and no prayer read, and would forgive none of them, but cursed them all fiercely as she stood on the rungs of the ladder despairing and defying. So miserably she died, poor old wretch! and Anne Styles never looked up again into the fair face of heaven without the stain of blood across her hand, and the brand of Cain on her brow.

THE SPRIGHTLY LAD OF SOMERSETSHIRE.[143]

One certain Sunday afternoon, in November 1657, Richard Jones, "a sprightly youth of twelve," living at Shepton Mallet, in Somersetshire, being left at home alone, and looking abroad as sprightly youth will, saw an old woman of the place, by name Jane Brooks, look in at the window. He went to the door to see what she wanted, when she asked him to give her a piece of "close bread," and she would give him an apple. He did so, and she thanked him, stroked him down the right side, shook him by the hand, and bade him good night. When the father and our coz. Gibson came back, they found the sprightly youth ill, and complaining of pain in the right side. He continued in the same state through the night, and on the following day became much worse, falling into fits of speechlessness, &c., immediately after having roasted and eaten the apple which Jane Brooks had given him. He then told the father that an old woman of the place, name unknown but person remembered, had stroked his right side, and thus had caused his illness; whereupon his father decided that all the women of Shepton Mallet should come to see him, and that in case he was in his fit, and not able to speak when the true witch came, he should give a "jogg," which would be sufficiently expressive. All the women of Shepton Mallet were brought in by turns; but the boy remained quiet until Jane Brooks appeared, when he fell into a fit, and was for some time unable to see or speak. Recovering himself, "he gave his father the Item," and drew towards Jane. She was standing behind her two sisters, but the boy singled her out and put his hand upon her; which the father seeing, he flew on the poor creature, scratched her face "above her breath," and drew blood. After this rather rough manner of exorcism, Master Richard Jones cried out that he was well, and condescended to remain well for seven or eight days. But at the end of this time, Alice Coward, sister to Jane, happening to meet him and to say, "How do you do, my Honey?" he fell ill again, and "cried out" on them without intermission. One Sunday he was in his fits, his father and cousin Gibson with him as usual, when he suddenly exclaimed that he "saw Jane Brooks there"--pointing to the wall. Cousin Gibson at once struck a knife into the spot; whereupon the sprightly youth cried, "O father, couz Gibson hath cut Jane Brooks's hand, and 'tis Bloody." The father and Gibson on this went to the constable, "a discreet Person," and telling him what had happened, took him with them to Jane's house, where they found her sitting on a stool, with one hand over the other. After a few questions they drew her hand away, and found that which was underneath all bloody; which appearance she explained away as well as she could, by saying that it was scratched with a great pin. This kind of thing going on for some time, the pitiful plot grew ripe for execution, and on the 8th of December Jane Brooks and her sister, Alice Coward, were taken to Castle Cary to be examined by the justices, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Cary. Here Richard performed all the usual tricks of the bewitched, lying speechless and motionless while the suspected women were in the room; springing up into tetanic fits if they laid their hands upon him, or so much as looked towards him; bringing on himself, by his own will, convulsive fits and catalepsy, and many of the more violent symptoms of hysteria, and insisting that the two women came constantly to see him--as apparitions--"their Hands cold, their Eyes staring, and their Lips and Cheeks looking pale." "In this manner on a Thursday about Noon, the Boy being newly laid in his Bed, Jane Brooks and Alice Coward appeared to him, and told him that what they had begun they could not perform. But if he would say no more of it, they would give him Money, and so put a Twopence into his Pocket. After which they took him out of his Bed and laid him on the ground and vanished, and the Boy was found by those that came next into the Room lying on the Floor as if he had been dead." This twopence had odd properties. When put upon the fire and made hot, the boy fell ill; when taken out and cooled, he was all right again. The trick was tried in the presence of many, and was found to answer admirably. Between the 8th of December and the 17th of February, he practised another variation of the same air. "Divers persons at sundry times" heard a croaking, as of a toad, proceed from the boy, and though they held a candle to his face they could not discern any movement of tongue, teeth, or lips. And this croaking as of a toad repeated incessantly, "Jane Brooks, Alice Coward, Jane Brooks, Alice Coward." On the 25th of February he performed his greatest feat of all; or was reported to have done so--which did quite as well in those days; for Richard Isles's wife said she saw him raised up from the ground, mounting gradually higher and higher till he was carried full thirty yards over the garden wall, when, falling at last at one Jordan's door, he was there found as if dead. Coming to himself, he declared that Jane Brooks had taken him by the arm, and carried him up, as Isles's wife had seen; which fact was told and believed in as a fearful instance of her malicious and wicked sorcery against the sprightly youth. At another time, as many as nine people at once saw him hanging from a beam, his hands placed flat against the wood, and his whole body raised two or three feet from the ground. He continued to play these extraordinary tricks from the 15th of November to the 10th of March; when, being much wasted and worn, it was deemed advisable to save his life if yet there might be time. Jane Brooks was sent to gaol, condemned, and hanged at Charde assizes, March 26th, 1658; and Richard Jones, having no longer any inducement to act the possessed, consented to remain with his feet on the ground and his head in the air, according to the laws of nature and Newton, and took no more fits, real or simulated, to extort compassion or obtain revenge.

THE WITCHES OF THE RESTORATION.

The poor witches were always seeing troublous times. At about the time of the Lord Protector's death one was hanged in Norwich and several in Cornwall. In 1659 two suffered at Lancaster, for crimes which I cannot discover; while in 1660, on the 14th of May, the Restoration had its victims in the persons of a widow, her two daughters, and a man, who were carried to Worcester gaol on the double charge of witchcraft and high treason. For the eldest daughter had been heard to say that if they had not been taken the king would never have come to England: which was enough to frighten all the court into fits. And when they were taken, and tried, and condemned, she said further that "though he now doth come, yet he shall not live long but shall die as ill a death as they" adding that had they not been taken "they would have made corn like pepper:" that is, they would have blighted it. As there were many other charges against them, they were swum: when they floated like ducks--or witches; and then they were searched: when the man was found to have five "bigges," two of the women three, but the eldest daughter only one. When first searched, none of these marks were visible on any of the women, whereat the inquisitors were advised to put them flat on their backs and keep their mouths open, until they should appear; which advice was taken, with the happiest and most palpable results.

THE WITCH-FINDER FOUND

Sometimes knavery defeated itself, though unhappily not often, as in the case of the famous witch-finder Mother Baker[144] and the young maid Stuppeny, of New Romsey in Kent. The young maid Stuppeny was sick, and as sickness in those days never meant the natural consequence of filthy habits, filthy food, and filthy habitations, but was by the supernatural devilry of witches and wizards, the parents concluded that their young maid must be bewitched, so set off to old Mother Baker to learn who was the guilty person. Old Mother Baker asked whom they suspected? and they mentioned a near neighbour of theirs--particulars not given. "Yes," says the hag, "it is she, and she has made a heart of wax, which she daily pricks with pins and knitting-needles, and which is now concealed in the house, for the destruction of the young maid your daughter." So the parents Stuppeny searched their house, but found no heart of wax; whereupon old Mother Baker, with big pockets to her sides, said she herself must search. And she did search, and turned out the charm from the very spot where she said it was. But certain prying neighbours, whose eyes were sharp and wits clear, had watched old Baker and her pockets; and as she laid the image in a corner that had been most diligently searched and looked into, her cheat was discovered, and the anonymous wretch living next door escaped, while Mother Baker suffered the penalties awarded in Scot's time to cozenage and deceit with intent to defraud or do ill.

DOLL BILBY AND HER COMPEER.[145]

Burton Agnes, in the county of York, was troubled; for Faith Corbet, the young daughter of Henry Corbet, was taken violently ill, and Alice Huson and Doll Bilby had bewitched her. Good Mrs. Corbet--beyond her age in generous unbelief--refused to entertain her daughter's suspicions; indeed she had chidden her some years ago for calling old Alice a witch, for she had a liking to the poor widow, and kept her about the house, looking after her young turkeys, &c., and was kind and liberal to her, and sought to make her wasting life pass as easily as might be. But Miss Faith hated the old woman, and cried out against her as a witch; and when she lost her gloves, swore that Alice had taken them to play cantrips with, and that she should never be well again. Then she began to fall into fits, when she would be so terribly tormented that it took two or three to hold her; and she would screech and cry out vehemently, and bite and scratch anything she could lay hold of, all the while exclaiming, "Ah, Alice, old witch, have I gotten thee!" And sometimes she would lie down, all drawn together in a round, and be speechless and half swooning for days together; and then she would be wildly merry, and as full of antics as a monkey. Physicians were consulted, but none came near to her disorder; and though her father carried her about hither and thither, for change of air, nothing would cure her, she said, so long as Alice Huson and Doll Bilby remained at liberty. Still the father and mother held out, until, one day, before a whole concourse of people come to look at her in her fits, she cried out, "Oh Faithless and incredulous People! shall I never be believed till it be past Time? For I am as near Death as possibly may be, and when they have got my Life you will repent when it is past Time." On hearing this the father went to the minister of Burton Agnes, Mr. Wellfet, and he, Sir Fr. Boynton--a justice of the peace--and Mr. Corbet himself at last dragged the old woman Huson into Faith's chamber. At which Miss Faith gave a great screech, but presently called for toast and beer; then for cordials; and having taken a somewhat large quantity of both, she got up, dressed herself, and came down stairs. This, too, after she had been so weak that she could not turn herself in bed: which proved that Mother Huson had some extraordinary influence over the girl--an influence more potent than holy said the bystanders. This happy state did not continue. Faith said she should never be well while the two women were at liberty; and so it proved; for when they were at last arrested, and held in strict security and durance, the young lady pronounced herself healed, and gave no one any more trouble. Then Alice Huson was got to make confession to Mr. Wellfet, the minister, and thus sealed her own doom, and saved the prosecution the pain of conviction.

She said that for three years she had had intercourse with the devil, who, one day as she was on the moor, appeared to her in the form of a black man riding on horseback. He told her she should never want if she would follow his ways and give herself up to him: which Alice promised to do. Then he sealed the bargain by giving her five shillings; at another time he gave her seven; and often--indeed six or seven times--repeating his gifts to the like munificent extent. He was like a black man with cloven feet, riding on a black horse, and Alice fell down and worshipped him, as she had covenanted. And she had hurt Faith Corbet by her evil spirit, for she did, in her apprehension, ride her; and when Mr. Wellfet examined her once before, the devil stood by, and gave her answers; and she was under the Corbets' window as a cat when Mrs. Corbet said she was--for even her kindly faith was shaken at last; and Doll Bilby had a hand in all this evil too; for Doll wanted to kill Faith outright, but old Alice interposed, thinking they had done enough harm already. She confessed to killing Dick Warmers "by my wicked heart and wicked eyes;" and to having lent Lancelot Harrison eight shillings of the ten which the devil had given her at Baxter's door, a fortnight ago, "about twilight or daygate;" and she had a bigge, or witch mark, where the devil sucked from supper-time till after cockcrowing, twitching at her heart as if it was drawn with pincers the while; and she meant to practise witchcraft four years ago, when she begged old clothes of Mrs. Corbet, and the children refused her; and the devil told her not to tell of Doll Bilby. And to all this raving Timothy Wellfet, minister of Burton Agnes, set his name, and so hanged Alice Huson and Doll Bilby at the next York assizes: after which Miss Faith Corbet was for ever rid of her fits and fancies.

THE ASTRAL SPIRIT'S ASSAULT.

Can we wonder at anything which it might please those servants of the devil, the witches, to do, when even a spirit--a disembodied ghost--a mere appearance--a spectre--an apparition--could audibly box a lad's ears before a whole room full of spectators, and at last box them so soundly as to break his neck, and kill him? Baxter's "World of Spirits" gives this story as happening to a barber's apprentice in Cambridge, in the year 1662. The spectre who killed the boy was in the garb and appearance of a gentlewoman; and at about the same hour, as near as they could guess, when it boxed the boy's ears and broke his neck at Cambridge, while the father was sitting at dinner with the boy's master at Ely, "the appearance of a Gentlewoman comes in, looking very angrily, taking a Turn or two, disappeared." It seems that the spectre had that night been endeavouring to persuade the boy to leave his apprenticeship and return home to Ely, where she and he were very free and had long been wont to disport together, even while company was in the room, and while the father, a minister named Franklin, was sitting there. After some treaty the boy resolutely said he would not go home, whereupon the spirit gave him a sounding box on the ear, which made him very ill; but he rose as usual when the morning came, though unfit for work or even play. When the master heard the story, he rode over to Ely to see Mr. Franklin, and confer with him respecting the uncomfortable and inconvenient desires of the spirit; and in the forenoon of the day, the boy sitting by the kitchen fire, his mistress being by, suddenly cried out, "O, mistress, look: there's the gentlewoman!" The mistress looked, but saw nothing, yet soon after heard a noise as of a great box on the ears, and turning round saw the boy bending down his neck: and presently he died. This is the story gravely told by Baxter, in the fullest faith that all was as he narrated, and that there was no natural explanation possible to a circumstance which derived its only importance from its supernaturalism.

Another spirit, a few years later--in 1667--took to haunting a man's house at Kinton, six miles from Worcester; and boxed his ears as he sat by the fire over against the maid. At which the man cried out, and went away to his son's in the town, not caring to continue where a ghost could make itself equal to a living body with bones and muscles, and give him undeniable proofs of the same. A minister of the place, Charles Hatt, went to the house to exorcise the ghost by prayer, and had not been there long before "there was a great noise in the said room, of groaning, or rather gruntling, like a Hog, and then a lowd Shriek." Mr. Charles Hatt prayed on; and after the spectre had done its best to frighten him with noises, but finding that the louder it gruntled the louder he prayed, it died away, and the man was troubled no more to the day of his death, which happened about two years after.

If this was a book on spirits instead of on witchcraft many stories from Baxter could be given bearing on the question; but, fascinating as they are, they are somewhat foreign to my design; so I must pass them by, and go on to the more material, and more guilty, records of the witchcraft superstition. All the mere spectre or ghost stories are both tame and innocent compared to the witch delusions. At least they caused no bloodshed; and if they broke hearts it was not through shame and despair and ruin.

JULIAN'S TOADS.[146]

At the Taunton assizes, in 1663, Julian Cox, about seventy years old, was indicted before Judge Archer for practising her arts of witchcraft upon a "young Maid, whereby her Body languished, and was impaired of Health." And first were taken proofs of her witchcraft. One witness, a huntsman, swore that one day, as he was hunting not far from Julian's house, he started a hare, which the dogs ran very close till it came to a bush; when, going round to the other side to keep it from the dogs, he perceived Julian Cox grovelling on the ground, panting and out of breath. She was the hare, and had had just time enough to say the magic stave which changed her back to woman's form again, ere the dogs had caught her. Another man swore that one day, passing her house as "she was taking a Pipe of Tobacco upon the Threshold of the Door," she invited him to come in and join her; which he did; when presently she cried out, "Neighbour, look what a pretty thing there is!" and there was "a monstrous great Toad betwixt his Legs, staring him in the Face." He tried to hit it, but could not, whereupon Julian told him to desist striking it and it would do him no hurt; but he was frightened, and went off to his family, telling them that he had seen one of Julian Cox her devils. Yet even when he was at home this same toad appeared again betwixt his legs, and though he took it out, and cut it in several pieces, still, when he returned to his pipe, there was the toad. He tried to burn it, but could not; then to beat it with a switch, but the toad ran about the room to escape him; presently it gave a cry and vanished, and he was never after troubled with it. A third witness swore that one day, when milking, Julian Cox passed by the yard where he was, and "stooping down scored upon the ground for some small time, during which time his Cattle ran Mad, and some of them ran their Heads against the Trees, and most of them died speedily." Concluding by which signs that they were bewitched, he cut off their ears to burn them, and, while they were on the fire, Julian Cox came in a great heat and rage, crying out that they abused her without cause; but, going slily up to the fire, she took off the ears, and then was quiet. By the laws of witchcraft it was she who was burning, not the beasts' ears. A fourth, as veracious as the former, swore to having seen her "fly into her own Chamber-window in her full proportion;" all of which testimony gave weight and substance to the maid's charge.

The maid was servant at a certain house, where Julian came one day to ask for alms; but the maid gave her a cross answer, and said she should have none; so Julian told the maid she should repent her incivility before night. And she did; for she was taken with convulsions, and cried out to the people of the house to save her from Julian, for she saw her following her. In the night she became worse, saying that she saw Julian Cox and the black man by her bedside, and that they tempted her to drink, but "she defy'd the Devil's Drenches." The next night, expecting the same kind of conflict, she took up a knife and laid it at the head of her bed. In the middle of the night came the spiritual Julian and the black man, as before, so the maid took the knife, and stabbed at Julian, whom she said she had wounded in the leg. The people, riding out to see, found Julian in her own house with a fresh wound on her leg, and blood was also on the maid's bed. The next day Julian appeared to the maid and forced her to eat pins. Her apparition was on the house wall; and "all the Day the Maid was observ'd to convey her Hand to the House wall, and from the Wall to her Mouth, and she seem'd by the motion of her Mouth as if she did eat something." So towards night, still crying out on Julian, she was undressed, and all over her body were seen great swellings and bunches in which were huge pins--as many as thirty or more--which she said Julian Cox, when in the house wall, had forced her to eat. Was not all this enough to hang a dozen Julian Coxes? Judge Archer thought so; especially when was added to this testimony Julian's own enforced confession, of how she had been often tempted by the devil to become a witch, but would never consent; yet how one evening, walking about a mile from her house, she met three persons riding on broom-staves, borne up about a yard and a half from the ground, two of whom she knew--a witch and a wizard, hanged for witchcraft several years ago--but the third, a black man, she did not then know. He however tempted her to give up her soul, which she did by pricking her finger and signing her name with her blood. So that, by her own showing, as well as by the unimpeachable testimony of reputable witnesses, she was a witch and one coming under the provisions of the Awful Verse. And further, as she could not repeat the Lord's Prayer, but stumbled over the clause "And lead us not into Temptation," which she made into "And lead us into temptation," or "And lead us not into no temptation," but could in no manner repeat correctly, the judge and jury had but one conclusion to come to, which was that she be hanged four days after her trial. But some of the less blind and besotted spoke harsh words of Judge Archer for his zeal and precipitancy, and openly declared poor Julian's innocence when advocacy could do her strangled corpse no good.

THE YOUGHAL WITCH.

About this time, too, or rather two years before old Julian Cox had been seen flying in at her window in full proportion, one Florence Newton, of Youghal, was overhauled for her misdeeds towards Mary Longdon. Mary was John Pyne's servant, and deposed that one day Florence came to where she lived and asked her for a bit of beef out of the powdering tub, to which Mary would not consent (these witnessing servants were always so moral and honest!), saying she had no right to give away her master's beef. The witch, being angry, muttered, "Thou had'st as good have given it me," and went away grumbling. A few days after, meeting with Mary going to the water with a pail of cloth on her head, she came full against her, and violently kissed her, and said, "Mary, I pray thee let thee and I be friends, for I bear thee no ill will, and I pray thee do thou bear me none." Mary does not give her reply, but says that she went home, and in a few days after "saw a Woman with a Vail over her Face stand by her bedside, and one standing by her like a little old Man in silk Cloaths, and that this Man, whom she took to be a Spirit, drew the Vail from off the Woman's Face, and then she knew it to be Goody Newton; and that the Spirit spake to the Deponent, and would have had her promise him to follow his Advice, and she should have all things after her own Heart; to which she says she answered 'That she would have nothing to say to him, for her Trust was in the Lord.'" After this Mary Longdon was taken very ill, vomiting pins and needles and horse-nails and stubbs and wool and straw, while small stones followed her about the room, and from place to place, striking her sharply on her head and shoulders and arms, then vanishing away. She was also strangely put upon by beds, and other such assailants. Sometimes she was forcibly carried from one bed to another; sometimes taken to the top of the house, or laid on a board betwixt two sollar beams, or put into a chest, or laid under a parcel of wool, or betwixt two feather beds, or (in the day time) between the bed and the mat in her master's room. All of these pranks done by Florence Newton's Astral Spirit, by which Mary maid was bewitched. Florence Newton also bewitched to his death David Jones, who had constituted himself one of her watchers while she was in "bolts" in prison. David took great pains to teach her the Lord's Prayer, but Florence, being a witch, could not repeat it correctly; at last she called out to him, "David! David! come hither; I can say the Lord's Prayer now." Not that she could, for when she came to the clause "Forgive us our Trespasses," she skipped over it, or boggled at it, or got round it in some way or other that was not holy; then seizing David's hand between the bars of the grate she kissed it thankfully; and thus and there possessed him, so that he died fourteen days after of that strange languishing disease known to all the world as a bewitchment.

THE WITCHES OF STYLES'S KNOT.[147]

Elizabeth Hill, aged thirteen, had strange fits. She was much convulsed and contorted; she writhed, foamed, and could with difficulty be held or mastered; she had moreover swellings and holes in her flesh, which were made she said by thorns, and whence the bystanders averred they saw the child hook out thorns. Even the clergyman of the parish, William Parsons rector of Stoke Trister, added his testimony to the rest: and on the 26th of January, 1664, in an examination taken before Robert Hunt, vouched for the truth of the fits, and the swellings, and the black thorns in the midst of the swellings; but he did not add to this testimony the further assertion that it was Elizabeth Styles who had bewitched the child, though she herself "cried out" on her, and said that she tormented her in her fits. Elizabeth Styles was further accused of causing Richard Hill's horse to sit down and paw with his fore feet when attempted to be crossed, and of having bewitched Agnes Vining by means of a rosy-cheeked apple, which was no sooner eaten than it caused a grievous pricking in Agnes' thigh, who forthwith languished and died, "her hip rotted, and one of her eyes swelled out." These are signs of a worse bewitchment than poor old Mother Styles's rosy-cheeked apple--signs of the deadly sorcery of scrofula induced by the poverty, dirt, bad food and worse lodging of the times; for the effects of which many a poor wretch lost her life who yet had done no more harm than the nursling at the breast. Robert Hunt the Justice, and one of our fine old English gentlemen, did not take this materialistic view of the matter. When told of Agnes Vining's illness and manner of disease, and seeing Elizabeth Styles looking appalled and concerned, he said to her: "You have been an old sinner, you deserve little mercy." To which the poor soul answered, humbly, "I have asked God for it." She then said that the devil had seduced her, and so began her confession on the 26th of January--three days after the first accusation by the Hills. She said that about ten years ago the devil appeared to her as a handsome man changing afterwards to the shape of a black dog; "that he promised her money, and that she should live gallantly, and have the Pleasures of the World for twelve years," if only she would sign a certain bond with her blood, give him her soul, obey his laws, and let him suck her blood. To all of which she consented after four solicitations, whereupon he pricked her finger--the mark thereof to be seen at this time--and she, with her own blood signed the paper with an O, when the devil gave her sixpence and vanished with the bond. Since then he appeared to her constantly, under the forms of a man, a cat, a dog, or a "fly like a millar" (a large white moth), as which last he usually sucked her poll about four in the morning; and hurt her terribly in doing so. She also said that when she wanted him to do anything for her, she called him by the name of "Robin," adding, "O Satan give me my purpose!" which he never failed to do. It was he who stuck the thorns into Elizabeth Hill; but then she implicated three other women, Alice Duke, Ann Bishop, and Mary Penny, saying that they too had stuck thorns into an enchanted picture meant for Elizabeth Hill, one night when they had all met the devil on the common, he, as a man in black clothes with a little band, first anointing its forehead with oil, saying, "I baptize thee with this oyl." After which they had a supper of wine, cakes, and roast meat, all brought by the man in black, and they ate and drank and danced and were merry. This they did always, whenever they would destroy any one obnoxious; and so had a merry time of it upon the whole. When they wanted to go to their meetings "they would anoint their wrists and foreheads with an oyl the spirit brings them, which smells raw," after which they were carried off, saying: "Thout, tout, a tout, tout, throughout and about:" on their return changing the stave to "Rentum Tormentum," which was the shibboleth to bring them back. But before they left they used to make obeisance to the man in black, who usually played to their dancing, saying, "A Boy! merry meet, merry part;" on which he vanished, and the conclave was broken up. She then told the "several grave and orthodox divines" who assisted Robert Hunt to take her examination, that Alice Duke's familiar was a cat, and Ann Bishop's a rat. Her own was a millar; concerning which Nicholas Lambert made some strange revelations. He said that as he and two others, hired to watch Elizabeth Styles in prison, were sitting near her as she crouched by the fire--he, Nicholas Lambert, reading in "The Practise of Piety"--about three in the morning they saw a "glistering bright fly," about an inch in length, come from her head and pitch on the chimney: then instantly vanish. In less than a quarter of an hour after, in came two other flies and seemed to strike at his hand, but which dodged him cleverly when he struck at them with his book. At this, Styles's countenance became very black and ghastly, and the fire also changed its colour; so the watchers, conceiving that her familiar was about her, and seeing also her hair shake very strangely, went to examine her poll, when out flew a great millar, which pitched on a table board and then vanished away. Her poll was red like raw beef, but presently regained its natural colour. Upon which Elizabeth confessed that it was her familiar, and that she had felt it tickle her poll. She was condemned, after having inculpated thirteen other persons, but "prevented execution by dying in gaol, a little before the expiring of the term her confederate dæmon had set for her enjoyment of Diabolical Pleasures."

Alice Duke, "another witch of Styles's Knot," a widow living in Wincaunton, county of Somerset, was then apprehended and examined. She seems to have given no trouble, but to have come frankly to the point, and to have admitted whatever they liked to demand. She said that, eleven or twelve years ago, Ann Bishop persuaded her to go one night to the churchyard, and "being come thither to go backward round the church, which they did three times." In their first round they met a man in black clothes who accompanied them: in their second a thing like a great black toad, which leaped up against Duke's apron: in the third, "somewhat in the shape of a rat" which vanished away. After which they both went home, but before they went the man in black said something softly to Ann Bishop, yet what it was Alice did not hear. Soon after this she signed herself away in the same manner and for the same purposes as Elizabeth Styles had done; and the devil gave her sixpence as he had given Styles, and vanished away with the fatal paper. She confirmed all that Styles had said concerning the meetings on the common, the enchanted pictures and the greenish oil, the devil, the wine, and cakes, and music; she gave information, though, of many more such pictures which were to doom the unfortunate likenesses to death; and she said farther that Ann Bishop was the devil's favourite, and that she sat next him, and wore "a green Apron, a French Waistcoat, and a red Petticoat." She gave the same phrase that Elizabeth Styles had given, as the magic password which took them to and from the devil's meetings; and she confessed that her familiar came to her each night, about seven o'clock, "in the shape of a little Cat of a dunnish colour, which is as smooth as a Want, and when she is suck'd she is in a kind of Trance." She had hurt several people; specially Thomas Hanway's daughter by giving her a pewter dish for a "good handsel" in the time of her lying in. This pewter dish was of such a malicious and venefical nature that when Thomas Hanway's daughter used it to heat some deer suet and rose water for her breasts, she was put to extreme pain; which pain she had not when she heated the same deer suet and the same rose water in a common spoon. So, suspecting harm in the dish, she put it into the fire, "which then presently vanished, and nothing of it was afterwards to be found." Alice Duke also said that she called the devil "Robin," and demanded of him aid and help in her undertakings. Like Styles and many others, she said that when the devil vanished he left an ill smell behind him; which is explained as, "Those ascititious Particles he held together in his visible vehicle, being loosened at his vanishing, and so offending the Nostrils by their floating and diffusing themselves in the open air."

ROBIN AND HIS SERVANTS[148]

Somersetshire was sorely afflicted at this time. On the 2nd of March still in the year of grace, 1664, Christian Green, aged about thirty-three, and wife of Robert Green of Brewham, was taken before Robert Hunt, Esq., to be examined and induced to confess. She did confess, without torture as it would appear; at all events without more than the ordinary torture of "pricking" and sleeplessness always applied to witches. She said that about a year and a half ago, she being in great poverty, was induced by one Catherine Green (her husband's sister?) to give her body and soul to the devil on condition that he would give her clothes, victuals, and money, as she might desire. She was to keep his secrets, and suffer him to suck her once in the twenty-four hours; to which at last she consented, the devil giving her fourpence-halfpenny as earnest money wherewith to buy bread in Brewham. Since this time he came to her ever at five o'clock in the morning, much in the likeness of a hedgehog bending, and sucked her left breast: a painful process, though she was generally in a kind of trance at the time. Christian Green gave no new particulars relative to the devil and his works. He was always as a man in black clothes; and he charmed pictures to the undoing of those for whom they were designed; and when he vanished he left an ill smell behind him; and he spake them very low when they arrived; and they did three horses to death by saying simply, "A Murrain on them Horses to death;" and they bewitched unlikely sinners by mere word or look: all of which processes we have read of twenty times before. Nor was there much more to be got out of "the villainous Feats of that rampant hag Margaret Agar," of Brewham, tried also in 1664, whom poor hysterical Christian Green had delated, for she did nothing beyond curse her enemies and those who offended her, whereupon they died "as if stabbed with daggers," or were "consumed and pined away;" some with one disease, some with another; but all dying without reprieve because of her curse. She also, in company with many others, was proved to have met "a little man in black clothes," whom they called "Robin," and to whom they all made obeisance, the little man putting his hand to his head, saying, "How do ye?" speaking low, but big. And they made "pictures" of wax into which the little black man stuck thorns, one in the crown, another in the breast, and a third in the side, which then Margaret would fling down saying, "This is Cornish's figure with a murrain to it," and Elizabeth Cornish would languish and die; or "This is Bess Hill's;" or any other person's whom it was desired to "forespeak" and destroy; who of course were forespoken and destroyed from that hour. Margaret Agar was a "rampant hag" indeed in one sense, being evidently an ill-conditioned old woman, quick at a curse, and passionately eager to avenge herself, but her magical arts appear to have been of the lowest possible order, and pale and lifeless compared with the more highly-coloured doings of others. Anything, however, was sufficient for the worshipful Master Robert Hunt and his fellow justices, and curses did as well as the rest; so poor old Margaret Agar was taken to the tree whereon grew the fatal fruit of death, to meditate there on Christian charity and the wise compassionateness of men, before learning by what steps the weary soul passes from earth to immortality. She was probably no great loss to the community, but her death placed her among the martyrs to superstition, and left her for ever as an object of historic pity.

SIR MATTHEW HALE'S JUDGMENT.[149]

At Bury St. Edmonds, in the county of Suffolk, a remarkable "Tryal of witches" was held on the tenth day of March, 1664, before Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, both widows and both of Leystoff, were indicted for bewitching Elizabeth and Ann Durent, Jane Bocking, Susan Chandler, William Durent, and Elizabeth and Deborah Pacy. William Durent, being an infant, was sworn by grace of his mother Dorothy, and she deposed that some little time ago, having occasion to go from home, she desired Amy, who was her neighbour, to look after her child, but expressly forbade her to suckle it in her absence. When asked by the court why she gave this caution to an old woman far past the age of performing such an office, Dorothy answered that Amy had long had the character of a witch who might suckle the devil himself or any of his imps; and that moreover old women were apt to give the breast to a crying child, to please it during its mother's absence; a habit that made the children ill. But it seems that Amy disobeyed her, for when she came home the old woman told her that she had given the breast to her infant, which made Dorothy very cross, and a high quarrel ensued. And that very night her child was taken with "strange fits of swounding," and was held in such a terrible manner that she expected to lose it every moment. Not knowing what to do or where to get it relief, she went to a certain Doctor Jacob, well known through the country for skill in helping children that were bewitched, and this Dr. Jacob advised her to hang up the child's blanket in the chimney corner all the day, and to put the child into it at night, and not be afraid at anything she might see, but to throw it at once into the fire. Dorothy did as she was bid, and when she took the blanket from the chimney-corner, down fell a great toad, "which ran up and down the hearth, and she having a young youth only with her in the House, desired him to catch the Toad and throw it into the Fire; which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with the Tongs; and as soon as it was in the Fire it made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the Fire like Gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a Pistol, and thereupon the Toad was no more seen nor heard." But Amy Duny sat by her fireside all smirched and scorched, and in revenge bewitched the little daughter Elizabeth to death, and further afflicted Dorothy herself with a lameness in both her legs, so that she was forced to go upon crutches. About which the strangest thing was, that though she had gone on them for three years now, no sooner was Amy Duny condemned than she cast them away and went home without them, "to the great admiration of all persons." This was the first count completed.

The second was made by Samuel Pacy, "a Merchant of Leystoff aforesaid (a Man who carried himself with so much soberness during the Tryal, from whom proceeded no words either of Passion or Malice, though his Children were so greatly Afflicted)," on behalf of his daughters, Elizabeth and Deborah; the one aged about eleven, the other nine. Elizabeth had fits. She remained as one wholly senseless or in a deep sleep, the only sign of life being that, as she lay on cushions in the court, her stomach was raised to a great height on the drawing of her breath. After she had remained there for some time she came somewhat to herself, and then "laid her Head on the Bar of the Court with a Cushion under it, and her hand and her Apron upon that;" when Amy Duny was brought privately to touch her. She had no sooner done so than the child, although not seeing her, suddenly leaped up and caught her by the hand and face, and scratched her till the blood came: after which she was easier. Samuel deposed that his younger daughter, Deborah, was suddenly taken with a lameness in her legs, which continued from the 10th to the 17th of October; when the day, being fair and sunshiny, she desired to be carried to the east part of the house, and then set upon a bank which looks towards the sea. While sitting there, came Amy Duny to buy some herrings; but being denied she went away grumbling, and on the instant "the Child was taken with the most violent Fits, feeling most extream Pain in her Stomach, like the pricking of Pins, and shreeking out in a most dreadful manner, like unto a Whelp, and not like unto a sensible Creature." The doctor, not understanding this disorder, and Amy Duny being under ill fame for a witch, Samuel Pacy caused her to be set in the stocks, as the most powerful remedy he knew of for his child's disorder. Being in the stocks, a neighbour told her that she was suspected of being the cause of Mr. Pacy's trouble: whereupon Amy answered, "Mr. Pacy keeps a great stir about his Child; let him stay until he has done as much by his Children as I have by mine." And being further examined what she had done to her children, she answered, "That she had been fain to open her Child's Mouth with a Tap to give it victuals." When, therefore, Elizabeth, the elder girl, fell ill within two days after this, and could by no means be made to open her mouth without a good-sized tap being put into it, the thing was certain, and might no longer be gainsayed. And when they both vomited crooked pins, and as many as forty broad-headed nails, and were deprived of sight and hearing, and cried out perpetually against Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, and could not be got to say the names "Jesus," "Lord," or "Christ," but when they came to "Satan" or "Devil," would clap their fingers on the book (the New Testament), crying out, "This bites, but makes me speak right well," what sane person could doubt the truth? Other strange things beside happened to them. They used to see creatures of the appearance of mice run up and down the house, and one of them "suddainly snapt one with the Tongs, and threw it into the Fire, and it screeched out like a Rat." At another time a thing like a bee flew into Deborah's face, and would have got into her mouth, had she not gone shrieking into the house; when, with much apparent pain and effort, she brought up a twopenny nail with a broad head, which she said the bee had forced into her mouth. Again, another time, Elizabeth cried out that she saw a mouse under the table, which she caught up in her apron and flung into the fire. Deponent, her aunt, confessed that she saw nothing in the child's hand, nevertheless the fire flashed as if gunpowder had been flung in; also "at another time, the said Child being speechless, but otherwise of perfect understanding, ran round about the House, holding her Apron, crying 'Hush, hush,' as if there had been Poultry in the House; but this Deponent could perceive nothing; but at last she saw the Child stoop as if she had catch't at something, and put it into her Apron, and afterwards made as if she had thrown it into the Fire; but this Deponent could not discover any thing; but the Child afterwards being restored to her speech, she, this Deponent, demanded of her what she saw at the time she used such a posture? who answered, That she saw a Duck."

Others deposed to the same kind of things: as Edmund Durent, father to the girl Ann, whom Rose Cullender had bewitched--also because denied the right of buying herrings; and Diana Bocking, mother to Jane likewise afflicted with crooked pins and tenpenny nails; and Mary Chandler, mother of Susan, who was stricken blind and dumb, and had the plague of pins upon her too, and who cried out "in a miserable manner, 'Burn her, burn her,'" which were all the words she could speak, and which meant that poor old Rose was to be burnt that Susan Chandler might be dispossessed. And there was Dr. Brown, of Norwich, a person of great knowledge, who gave it as his deliberate opinion that the girls were bewitched, every one of them, and that "the Devil in such cases did work upon the Bodies of Men and Women upon a Natural Foundation, (that is) to stir up and excite such Humours superabounding in their Bodies to a great Excess, whereby he did in an Extraordinary Manner Afflict them with such Distempers as their Bodies were most subject to, as particularly appeared in these Children; for he considered that these swooning Fits were Natural, and nothing else but that they call the Mother, but only heightened to a great excess by the subtilty of the Devil co-operating with the Malice of these which we term Witches, at whose instance he doth these Villanies." Such an argument as this was then held quite as pertinent and irresistible as would now be the evidence of the microscope and the test of chemical experiment. It is refreshing, in the midst of all this wild nonsense, to find that some gentlemen--Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, and Mr. Serjeant Keeling, who had been directed by the Lord Chief Justice to make an experiment with these girls--openly protested against the whole thing, affirming it to be an imposture from first to last; and that when the children covered up their heads in their aprons, and shrieked and writhed when Rose Cullender or Amy Duny touched them, they did it in full possession of their senses, and perfectly understanding what they were about. For when they tried them with other women whom they made believe were the two, cried out on, and took care that their eyes were held, so that they should not see, the children shrieked and howled, and went off into their fits all the same; which double experiment satisfied the gentlemen of the fraudulent character of it all. But this little nucleus of rationality was not strong enough to disperse the thick darkness gathered round the minds of all present--gathered round the mind of even Sir Thomas Brown and the "good" Sir Matthew Hale; and when one witness had deposed that his cart had stuck fast between some posts, and that the haymakers could not unload the hay until the next morning, because Rose Cullender had threatened him; and another that his pigs and cattle died in a most extraordinary manner, and he himself swarmed with vermin which he could not get rid of, because he also had been threatened by her; and a third that she had lost her geese because Amy Duny had said she should; and that a chimney had fallen down because Amy Duny had said it would--when all these things had been sworn to and proved, then the minds of the judge and jury admitted of no further doubt. Amy Duny and Rose Cullender were brought in guilty, and hanged at Cambridge on Monday, March 17, confessing nothing.

"The next morning the children came with their Parents to the Lodgings of the Lord Chief Justice, and were in as good Health as ever they were in their lives, being restored within half an hour after the witches were convicted." A fact then sufficiently conclusive, but which now is the strongest proof that could be offered of the wicked deception of the whole matter.

THE WAITING-MAID AND THE PIN.[150]

In 1665 Elizabeth Brooker, servant to Mrs. Hieron, of Honiton, in Devonshire, waiting at table one Lord's day, suddenly felt a pricking as of a pin in her thigh, and, on looking, found indeed a pin there, but inside her skin, drawing no blood nor breaking the skin, and thrust in so far that she could scarce feel the head of it with her finger. By Tuesday it had worked so far inwards that she could no longer feel it at all; and the day after she went to Mr. Anthony Smith, a surgeon of great repute, who was obliged to have recourse to incisions and cataplasms, and all the appliances of the surgery, in order to extract this obstinate and malevolent pin. For it was a bewitched pin; and either Agnes Richardson, who had been angry with Elizabeth "about miscarriage in an errand that she sent her on," or an unknown woman who had lately been near her, was suspected of the crime of sticking it into her. Mrs. Hieron was a widow, and kept a draper's shop in Honiton, and Elizabeth Brooker, her servant, sold small wares in a stall before her mistress's door. On market day, which was Saturday, came a certain woman and asked Elizabeth for a pin. She took one from her sleeve readily enough; but the woman was dissatisfied, and demanded one of a bigger sort hung up in a paper to sell. The maid said they were not hers to give; they were her mistress's: if she would ask her mistress for one, and get her leave to have it, she, Elizabeth, would then give her one willingly. This woman went away in a great fume, saying "she should hear farther from her, and that she would wish e'er long she had given the pin as desired." The next day a pin was thrust into her thigh as she was waiting at table, and no Christian person could doubt whence it came or why it was sent. Mr. Anthony Smith, the "Chirurgeon of great Reputation," who could not extract a pin without a fortnight's illness supervening, wrote a detailed account of the whole matter; but whether the unknown woman was traced and found, or whether Agnes Richardson got any mishandling for the suspicion cast on her, or whether, again, the trick passed off without result, and no one was the worse because a maid-servant chose to run a pin into her thigh, I can find no record to inform me. As not much harm was done, perhaps the devil was let off easy this time, and the hags, his mistresses, suffered to extend their trade a little longer.

JANE STRETTON AND THE CUNNING WOMAN.[151]

Jane Stretton and her parents lived at Ware in the year 1669, Jane being then a young maid of about twenty, generally out at service. It chanced that Thomas, her father, lost a Bible, and must needs go to a cunning man to ask where it was, and who had it--a thing which, as a good Christian, he should have been ashamed of: to which the cunning man replied darkly, "he could tell him if he would." Whereupon Stretton, not in the least grateful for such a doubtful reply, broke out with, "Then thou must be either a witch or a devil, seeing thou canst neither read nor write." This was all that passed, and it seems but scant substance for a deadly quarrel; but a few days afterwards this cunning man's wife went slily to Stretton's, and asked daughter Jane for a pot of drink. This was to establish direct communication. "Innocency dreads no danger: the child will play with the Bee for his gaudy Coat, and mistrusts not his sting," says this flowery tract; but soon after Jane had thus committed herself to transfers and communication with the witch, the "devil, who is a sly thief, and though he keeps his servants poor, yet indues them, with a plentifull stock of malice, revenge, and dissimulation," suffered this bad woman, or this cunning man, to afflict Jane, but not so grievously as they were suffered to do hereafter. In about a week's time the cunning man's wife went and desired a pin of her, which Jane, granting, became suddenly beset with fits, most terrible to behold. "But her misery ends not here: the squib is not run out to the end of the rope. When the Devil has an inch given to him he will take an ell;" so poor Jane was not only troubled with fits, but must needs have her mouth stopped so that she ate nothing for weeks and months, and was forced to live like a chameleon, on air. Besides this, she was made to perpetually vomit flax and hair and thread-ends and crooked pins; while blue, white, and red flames came in the intervals out of her mouth, and her body was continually slashed and cut with a knife, and imps in the shape of frogs, and toads, and mice, and the like, for ever haunted her; and the wise man's wife was the cause of all. Then the neighbours took some of the foam which Jane had always hanging round her mouth, and burnt it for a counter charm, and to hurt the besetting witch; and chancing to light on the woman, they told her they would take her to the maid to be scratched. To which she made answer, "That if they had not come she could not have stayed any longer from her:" so great was the potency of the burnt foam. For nine months did this girl befool her world, and then--the cunning man and his wife being probably put to death--she managed to get well of all her ailments, and to find meat and milk more sustaining diet than crooked pins, hair, or wool; though, indeed, the meat and milk had never been wanting in the dark hours undiscovered, for Jane had taken care to live as usual when the night had blinded prying eyes, and there was no one to count off the tale of slices cut and devoured.

Fortunately for the sanity of society, every one did not believe these monstrous stories. Webster's book, published about this time, was one of those brave few which openly discredited the truth of the witch stories afloat in the world, and made as great a sensation, or even greater, than the grand old work of Reginald Scot. Like him, Webster doubted the truth of the witch of Endor's enchantments, which the upholders of the faith rested on as the very keystone of their position. The witch herself he calls "a cozening quean," "a crafty subtile quean," "an idolatrous, wicked, and couzening witch:" for they understood the value of forcible language in those days: Saul is "a drowned puppet"--to Glanvil's intense wrath at this rude mishandling of a "noble prince;" Samuel but "a confederate knave," or "but a lying phantasie;" in the conjurations the witch, "casting herself into a feigned Trance, lay grovelling upon the Earth with her face downwards, and so changing her voice did mutter, and murmur, and peep, and chirp, like a bird coming forth of the shell;" with other knockdown assertions of common sense not afraid, by which the curate of Kildwick demolished the whole argument of supernaturalism, and left the poor witch of Endor and Saul himself not an inch of ground to stand on. So with all the other stories that came into his hands; so with the special points of faith, peculiar to the creed of witchcraft, such as communion and covenant with the devil, transportation through the air on sticks, straws, or bedstaves; transformation into the shapes of cat, dog, wolf, raven, &c.; intercourse with imps and familiars; witches' sabbaths; charms; conjurations; weeping the prescribed three tears with the left eye only, or not weeping at all; swimming on the surface of the water, because of the Christian character of that element, which refused to admit a devil-devoted soul within its bosom; apparitions, or spectres of witches troubling the afflicted--souls quitting their bodies, but taking with them the spiritual substance even of woven garments; with the whole course of lies and delusions belonging to the subject, from the devil's baptism to the imps' bigges. All this seemed but so much delusion to plain John Webster, with his unidealising common sense and kindly heart; yet a delusion so fraught with sin and danger as to make it a Christian man's first duty to combat and destroy it. Wherefore was he most barbarously and evilly entreated by Glanvil in his "Saducismus Triumphatus"--the answer to the "Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft"--and a mighty pretty quarrel, full of the choicest amenities, was the result. But as Glanvil had error and credulity, and Webster reason and right judgment on his side, it mattered little who was assumed to have the best of it for the moment. Time and education gradually settled the question, and buried it for a time out of sight; yet it has sprung up anew of late, and now needs settling again.

THE BIDEFORD TROUBLES.[152]

In the July of 1682, Temperance Lloyd, of Bideford, or "Bytheford," was accused of bewitching Mrs. Grace Thomas. Temperance, being a little crazy, had cried one day on meeting Mrs. Grace, who had been for long months but a poor, "dunt," feckless body; and when asked why she wept had made answer, "For joy to see her who had been so ill, walk abroad again without disaster." But that very same night Mrs. Grace was taken with fresh pains, "sticking and pricking Pains, as if Pins and Awls had been thrust into her Body, from the Crown of her Head to the Soles of her Feet, and she lay as if she had been upon a rack;" and none but Temperance Lloyd the cause thereof, despite all her hypocritical tears. And did not Elizabeth Eastcheap see her knee, which looked as if it had been pricked in nine places with a thorn? And when Temperance was asked if she had any clay or wax wherewith to torment Mrs. Grace, did she not confess to a bit of leather which she had pricked nine times, and which was as full of venom and sorcery as any wax or clay in the world? Besides, it came out afterwards, that she had gone to Thomas Eastcheap's shop in the form of a gray or "braget cat," and thence taken out a "puppit or picture, commonly called a child's baby," which she stuck full of pins, whereby to prick Grace to death. When asked in what part of the house the said puppet or picture was hidden, she refused to tell, saying the devil would tear her in pieces if she confessed. Anne Wakely, too, the neighbour who went to nurse poor Grace, had her word to say; for one morning--it was on a bonny day in June--she saw "something in the shape of a magpye come at the chamber window;" and when Temperance was questioned as to what she knew of this fluttering thing, she made answer that it was the Black Man in the shape of a bird which she had sent to trouble poor rheumatic pain-racked Grace. For Temperance was not stiff. She was easily brought to confess how she had given herself over to the service of a black man, who made her do all manner of hurt to her neighbours--made her pinch Grace Thomas, and bewitch William Herbert to his death twelve years ago, and destroy Anne Fellows three years since--for both of which crimes she had been arraigned and questioned at the time, but had managed to get clear. Now, however, she confessed that she had been guilty of them. The dread and evil fame and poverty under which she had lived so long had done their appointed work on her poor old brain; and she was ready to confess to anything which it was desired she should allow. Yes, she had bewitched the eyes of Jane Dalbin, but so secretly that no one had suspected her: and she had destroyed one woman by kissing her, holding her so tight that she squeezed her to death--the blood gushing out of her mouth and nose: and she hunted with the devil, he going before her in the shape of a hound; "doubtless he hunted for souls," says a very odd tract which gives this additional trait of diabolical management and the economy of time. Being asked of what stature was her black man, she said "he was above the Length of her Arm; and that his Eyes were very big; and that he hopped, or leaped in the way before her;" but when asked if she had made any contract with him she said "No; neither had she gone through the keyhole when she went to harm Grace Thomas, but through the door, the devil leading her, and both invisible; and that she had been made to pinch and torment Grace; and that the devil beat her about the head grievously because she would not kill her." She had never bewitched any ships or boats, nor done a child to death; for the child who stole her apple died of the small-pox, and she was guiltless of its decease; nor had she ever ridden over an arm of the sea on a cow--"No, master, never; it was she," meaning another delated witch, Susanna Edwards, who did this. The worst thing she had ever done was to Grace Thomas, and then the devil made her do it, beating her about the head and back in shape and form, "black like a bullock." Temperance Lloyd was executed; and died penitent and crazy.

Mary Trembles was another delated witch. She bewitched Agnes Whitefield with all manner of pains; and Grace Barnes deposed to pricks and pains like awls and pins thrust into her, which evil Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards had done together; for they were comrades and cronies, and would go hand-in-hand about the world, invisible to all save themselves and their master the devil. It was Susanna Edwards who had seduced Mary and got her to accept the service of the devil, who came to her as a lion; at which she was much frightened, though not hurt; and made her bewitch Grace Barnes, because said Grace would give her no meat. She was also executed, very penitent and quite resigned.

Susanna Edwards was active and powerful in forespeaking. She sent pains to Dorcas Coleman--tormenting pains, and very grievous--so that Dr. George Bear could do her no good, but openly proclaimed her beyond his power for that she was bewitched; and she held Anthony Jones pretty hardly, as Joane his wife deposed. For when Susan was apprehended, Anthony "observing her to gripe and twinkle her Hands upon her own Body, said to her, 'Thou Devil, thou art now tormenting some Person or other.'" Upon which the said Susanna was displeased with him, and said, "Well enough I will fit thee." And fit him she did, for on his making one of the rabble that dragged her before the magistrates, Susanna turned round and looked at him, "so that he cried out, 'I am now bewitched with this Devil, wife,' meaning Susanna Edwards, and presently leaped and capered like a madman, and fell a-shaking, quivering, and foaming, and for the space of half an Hour like a dying or dead Man." Susan knew the devil as a gentleman dressed in black clothes, and also as a little boy; but could not be induced to confess to any of the more striking monstrosities beyond what might have well belonged to an ordinary case of hallucination. She was executed as the other two; but we are not told if Grace Thomas, or Dorcas Coleman, or Grace Barnes, or Anthony Jones recovered their health now that the witches were dead, or if hysteria and rheumatism and neuralgia and scrofula were found more troublesome enemies to conquer than three crazy old women. It would be curious as well as interesting to know the condition of the honestly deceived and actually diseased after the death of the possessing witch. In those instances where crutches were thrown away, and fits suddenly brought to a close, the instant the law had laid its gripe on the neck of the unfortunate accused, we have no choice but to refer the whole proceedings to imposture quickened by enmity or the desire of notoriety; but there were cases where a strange and sudden disease did really appear as bewitchment to the afflicted, and of these one would be glad to know the after mental condition when the obsessing witch was killed, yet the obsessing sickness unconquered. Did experience ever open their eyes or shake their faith? or did they die in their belief that the stake and the gallows were the finest remedies known for disordered functions or organic mischief? No one of the time was sufficiently accurate, or sufficiently unprejudiced, to be able to give us reliable information, and thus we have lost a most valuable indication of the absolute power exercised by the mind over the body.

SIR JOHN HOLT'S JUDGMENTS.[153]

Mr. May Hill, minister of Beckington, in Somersetshire (near Frome), had a servant, one Mary Hill, whom Satan and the malice of his servants had grievously bewitched. Mr. Baxter had brought to him a bag of iron, nails, and brass which the girl had vomited, and he kept some of them to show his friends. "Nails about three or four inches long, doubled, crooked at the end, and pieces of old Brass doubled, about an Inch broad and two Inches long, with crooked edges," all of which Mary had brought up, together with about two hundred crooked pins. Elizabeth Carrier was first committed on the charge of having bewitched her; but a fortnight after, Mary, whom this sacrifice had temporarily appeased, went back to her old ways, and began to vomit nails and pieces of nails, brass, and handles of spoons, and so continued to do for six months and more; all the while crying out against Margery Coombes and Ann More, who, she said, appeared to her and tormented her. These two poor creatures were immediately apprehended and committed to the county gaol; but Margery died as soon as she was imprisoned: and when my Lord Chief Justice Holt came to try old Ann, he said there was not sufficient evidence against her, so directed the jury to acquit her. But the maid was worse than ever after this acquittal, and took to vomiting pieces of glass, and several pieces of bread and butter besmeared with a poisonous matter, adjudged to be white mercury, and a great board nail, and, in short, Mr. May Hill and the neighbours did not know what she might not throw up at last, her mouth was so capacious, and the space against her gums so flexible. But as it was observed that she never vomited these things save in the morning, and that in the afternoon she was quiet; and when, upon inquiry, it was found that she always slept with her mouth wide open, and slept so soundly, that she could not be awakened by pulling, or jogging, or calling; then Mr. Hill commanded that some one should sit up with her, and keep her mouth rigidly and pertinaciously shut. And when they did this she vomited nothing, for the witches had not been able to convey their trash into her mouth. This experiment was satisfactorily tried for thirteen nights; but as soon as she was left to sleep by herself, and with her mouth open, the wicked witches were sure to come to her and force all kinds of trash into it. But at last she wearied of her work; and, Sir John Holt not holding out much inducement to ill-tempered young women to declare themselves possessed because they had a disagreeable neighbour or two, she owned herself quite cured, and no more was heard of her fits or her nails.

Poor old Widow Chambers,[154] of Upaston, in Suffolk, "a diligent, industrious, poor woman," was accused of witchcraft, upon what grounds does not appear. "After she had been walk'd betwixt two," and, we may naturally suppose, pressed and plied with questions, she became confused and overwrought, and began to confess a great many things of herself. She said that she had killed both her husband and Lady Blois, though the last had died a fair and evident death, "without any Hurt from that poor Woman:" and then some, to make trial of her wits, asked her if she had not killed such and such persons then living? to which old Widow Chambers maundered out yes, she had killed them sure enough. She was committed to Beccles Gaol, even after this; but died before her trial, happily for her.

This was in 1693. The following year was a busy one for the witch-finders, but fortunate for such of the witches as came before Lord Chief Justice Holt, a man of clear, well-balanced mind, evidently not given to superstitious beliefs, or to much veneration for the Black Art. Mother Munnings, of Hartis, in Suffolk, was one of those brought before him at Bury St. Edmunds. She came with a bad character enough, accused of bewitching men to their death, spoiling brewings and churnings, and hurting cattle and corn--of being, in fact, a terrible pest to the whole neighbourhood. She killed Thomas Pannel her landlord, who had offended her by a rather summary method of ejectment, namely, taking her door off the hinges, since he could not get her out of his house any other way. Mother Munnings was angry: who would not have been? "Go thy way," she cried to him passionately; "thy Nose shall lie upward in the Churchyard before Saturday next." This was enough. Thomas Pannel sickened on Monday and died on Tuesday, and was buried within the week according to her word. That this was true was attested by a certain witness, a doctor, who said also that Mother Munnings "was a dangerous woman: she could touch the Line of Life." Mother Munnings had an imp, a thing like a polecat; and a man swore that one night, coming from the alehouse--a rather important circumstance--he saw her lift out of her basket two imps, a black one and a white; and it was well known that Sarah Wager was taken both dumb and lame after a quarrel with her, and was in that condition even at the time of trial. But in the face of all these tremendous accusations the Lord Chief Justice Holt directed the jury to bring her in Not Guilty, and poor old Mother Munnings lived in peace and quietness for about two years longer, doing no harm to anybody, and when dying declaring her innocence. Dr. Hutchinson gives a very rational, but somewhat quaint, explanation of two of the charges against her. On the death of her landlord, he says, that he, Thomas Pannel, "was a consumptive spent Man, and the Words not exactly as they swore them, and the whole Thing 17 years before;" and as to the imps--"the White Imp is believed to have been a Lock of Wool taken out of her Basket to spin; and its Shadow, it is supposed, was the Black one." Not an impossibility with an ignorant country clown, reeling home half drunk from the alehouse, and disposed to make a miracle out of the plainest matter before him seen through a witch's window.

At the Ipswich assizes of that same year the Lord Chief Justice had to hold the sword of judgment unsheathed between Margaret Elnore and her accusers. Margaret belonged to a family of witches, her grandmother and her aunt having been both hanged for that rational offence; and now, when Mrs. Rudge had been for three years in a languishing condition--ever since her husband had refused to take Elnore for his tenant--what so likely as that she was bewitched, and that the enraged witch and relative of witches had done it? Besides, women who had quarrelled with Margaret had found themselves suddenly covered with vermin, not at all due to their own uncleanly habits, but to the diabolical power of old Elnore, who would send lice or locusts, disease or death, just as it suited her. For she had eight or nine imps, and she was plainly branded with the witch marks. Lord Chief Justice Holt pooh-poohed the imps and the vermin, and directed again a verdict of Not Guilty. So Margaret Elnore was suffered to live out the natural term of her life, and Mrs. Rudge recovered her health for a certain time; but--some years after Margaret was peaceably laid in her grave--"fell again into the same Kind of Pains (supposed from the Salt Humour), and died of the same Distemper."

The next year Mary Guy was tried at Launceston for bewitching Philadelphia Row, who swore to her apparition perpetually troubling her, and who had the uncomfortable habit of vomiting pins, straws, and feathers. But the Lord Chief Justice turned a deaf ear to Philadelphia Row also, and Mary Guy was acquitted. So was Elizabeth Horner, who, in 1696, was brought before him at Exeter, charged with having bewitched three children belonging to William Bovet, whereof one was dead: "another had her Legs twisted, and yet from her Hands and Knees she would spring Five Foot high." The children brought up crooked pins, and were grievously bitten, and pinched, and pricked, and bruised--the marks of all this ill usage appearing plainly on the flesh; and they swore that Bess Horner's head would go off her shoulders and walk quietly into their stomachs: and the mother deposed "that one of them walked up a smooth plastered Wall, till her Feet were nine Foot high, her Head standing off from it." This she did five or six times, laughing and saying that Bess Horner held her up. Old Bess had a kind of wart or excrescence on her shoulder, which William Bovet's children said was her witch-mark, and where her imp--a toad--sucked; but the Lord Chief Justice shook his head, and Bess Horner was let to live on in her own way, taking off her head at will, and sending it into children's bodies, and nourishing a devil in shape of a toad on her shoulder--the law and judgment not interposing. The Lord Chief Justice had very many cases of witchcraft brought before him--about eleven places in all being supposed to be so infected--but he brought in every one "not guilty."

One of the most celebrated cases tried by him was that of Richard Hathaway, who came before him at the Guildford Assize of 1701 with a pitiful tale of possession and bewitchment, all owing to Sarah Morduck, of Southwark, in which parish he too was living as apprentice to Thomas Wellyn, blacksmith. Richard had fits and convulsions, in all probability real enough, for he was sent to the hospital, where he lay for seven weeks in a pitiable condition, sometimes bent double, and at all times strangely and fearfully contorted. This began in September, 1690,[155] he said, when the first appearances of being bewitched manifested themselves. For then he vomited crooked pins in great numbers, and lumps of tin, and loose nails, and nut-shells, and stones; and he foamed at the mouth; and bowed himself into an arch; and lay as if dead; and barked like a dog; and burnt as if with fire; and in the midst of all signed that Sarah Morduck had bewitched him, and that he should never be well till he had "scratched" her. So she was brought to him to be scratched; after which he ate and drank and had his sight and was perfectly well for six weeks together. Then he fell ill again, and must needs scratch her for this attack; and this time with more unction, for Sarah "was assaulted in her own House, and grievously abused; her Hair and Face torn; she was kicked, thrown to the Ground, stamped on, and threatened to be put into a Horse Pond, to be tried by Swimming, and very hardly escaped with her Life." To avoid being absolutely murdered, she left Southwark and went into London; but still was not safe, for she was constantly being followed in the streets, and was often in danger of being pulled to pieces by a mob which credited all that Richard Hathaway said and did. In 1701 she was taken before one Sir Thomas Lane, who ordered her to be stript and searched, and let Hathaway loose again on her to scratch her. After which he was well as before; and then Sarah Morduck was committed, and prayers were offered up in the churches for Hathaway, and collections made for him in the congregations, and six or seven pounds at a time got for him, besides various other sums, to bear his charges at the Assizes, and indemnify him for the evil the witch had inflicted. At the Assizes (Guildford, July, 1701) Sarah Morduck was brought out of prison to be tried for her life by the Lord Chief Justice: with the usual result in his trials of witches: she was released, but Hathaway took her place, and was committed to the Marshalsea as a cheat and impostor, lying, for the first part of the time, well and hearty, but afterwards falling into his fits again as if bewitched. He was then experimented with; given another woman to scratch, under the idea that it was Sarah; whom he scratched quite contentedly, and as well after he had done so. When he found out his mistake he was blind and dumb again. But now, it being specially desired to know the truth, when he brought up his crooked pins, his hands were kept carefully out of his pockets, which then were searched, and found plentifully supplied; and all the strange noises which had been heard to issue out of his bed were discovered to have been made by his own feet scratching the bedposts; and his miraculous fasting was proved a cheat, for Mrs. Kensy's maid, who had got into his confidence by a stratagem, brought him meat and drink privately, and Mr. Kensy and his friends peeping through a private hole saw him eat it quite composedly. So one by one his pretences were destroyed, and he was openly convicted of cozening and imposture. The Lord Chief Justice thought this a more cognizable crime than witchcraft, and condemned Richard Hathaway to be imprisoned for a year, and to stand in the pillory thrice during the period. Thus he was made a warning to all hysterical youths and maidens who took to possession as a good trade, and who liked the prayers of the faithful, and the money of the credulous, and the luxury of ill-treating any one specially spited, and the attentions of the gentry, and the pity of the commonalty, and all manner of petting and cossiting better than coarse hard fare and the scanty pleasures wrung from horny-handed labour. This Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Holt, may be taken as one of the greatest, if of the less noisy and notorious, benefactors of England known; setting himself so firmly as he did against this cruel and debasing superstition, and so manfully upholding the claims of humanity and common sense against all the "possibilities" of idealism, and the wild errings of credulity. From his time the witch madness sensibly declined, and folks woke gradually to the possession of their ordinary faculties.

THE SURREY DEMONIAC.[156]

"What, Satan! is this the Dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? Can'st thou Dance no better? Ransack the old Records of all past Times and Places in thy Memory: Can'st thou not there find out some better way of Trampling? Pump thine Invention dry: Cannot that universal Seed-plot of subtile Wiles and Stratagems spring up one new Method of Cutting Capers? Is this the top of Skill and Pride, to shuffle Feet, and brandish Knees thus, and to trip like a Doe, and skip like a Squirrel? And wherein differs thy Leapings from the Hoppings of a Frog, or Bouncings of a Goat, or Friskings of a Dog, or Gesticulations of a Monkey? And cannot a Palsy shake such a loose Leg as that? Dost thou not twirl like a Calf that hath the Turn, and twitch up thy Houghs just like a Spring-hault Tit?" This was one of the conversations, or rather exhortations, which the dissenting ministers had with the devil inhabiting Richard Dugdale--he who was called by some the Surrey demoniac,[157] by others the impostor, as faith or reason was the stronger. Richard drew largely upon the faith of his generation, largely even for the credulous generation flourishing in the year of our Lord 1695: for Richard the "possessed" vomited gold, silver, and brass rings, hair buttons, blue stones like flints, and once a big stone bloody at the edges; and he was transformed sometimes to the manner of a horse, when he would gallop round the barn on all fours, quite as quickly as any cob ever foaled, and whinny like a cob, and eat provender like a cob; and sometimes he was like a dog, "harring" and snarling and growling and barking so like a mastiff, that once a dog, a real mastiff and no counterfeit, set upon him, and would have given him rather an undesirable taste of canine fraternity had he not been prevented. Then he would be heavy or light in the same fit--now so heavy that six men could not lift him, now so light that he did not weigh six pounds: "sometimes light as a Feather-Boulster, but before he came out heavier than a Load of Corn," says a husbandman; "as light as a Chip, and as heavy as a horse," says a carpenter: and he had fits of leaping, as fast as a man could count; and he would dance on his toes and his knees, with marvellous agility--dance more quickly than ordinary men, not possessed, could do on their honest feet; then he would lie as if dead; or he would gape and snatch with his mouth, catching at flies; and he had noises in his mouth and breast, as if a family of young whelps were lapping, snarling, or sucking in his inside; and he rolled up his tongue into a lump and turned his eyes inward; and talked gibberish, which some one said was Latin; and played with rushes as if they had been dice and bowls. "And when he had thrown the 'Jack,' he said, 'I must now throw my Gill;' then running a good way, as if he had been running after a bowl, swearing, 'Run, Run, Flee, Flee, Hold a Biass;' and sometimes he catched up rushes, as if they had been bowls, swearing, 'Sirrah, stand out of the Way, or I'll knock out your Brains,' adding, 'I never was a Bowler, But don't Gentlemen do thus?'" which is scarcely evidence to us that he was possessed, or in any abnormal condition whatsoever. Neither was his habit of swearing and cursing, "so that he would have affrighted ordinary men," any very distinct sign of supernaturalism; nor yet his insolence in saying to Mr. Carrington, who had adjured the devil in him mightily, "Thou shalt be Porter of Hell-Gates, Thou'st have Brewis and Toad Broath." Any bold-faced lad of eighteen might have said the same under cover of what he chose to call a fit. And as for the strange swelling, as big as a turkey's egg, which ran like a mouse about his body, whatever in that account was naturally impossible was either trick on his part, or self-deception on the part of those who gave their testimony. Besides, they were all inclined to believe. Why, John Fletcher, who slept one night with Richard, and felt something come up towards his knees, creeping higher and higher till it got to his heart--something about the bigness of a little cat or dog, which when he thought to catch "slipped through his hands like a Snig"--even that most unterrifying occurrence was transformed into a demoniacal visitant, and the thing that slipped through John Fletcher's hands like a snig was no other than Richard Dugdale's devil come to pay him a midnight visit. Then Richard laid stones like hens' eggs, and in the manner of hens; and he flung them to incredible distances when newly laid, and they felt warm as milk; and he showed a slight amount of power in the matter of clairvoyance; but, oh faithless, feeble devil! when Drs. Chew and Crabtree got hold of him, and bled him well, and gave him physic, the devil, who hates blue pill and black draught worse than holy water, flew away, and what all the prayers and fastings and exhortations of the ministry could not do, the lancet and a good dose of calomel and aloes effected without trouble. And then Richard Dugdale confessed that he had never been possessed, but only ill, in consequence of a fight he had had with a man at a rush-bearing at Whalley, while he, Master Richard, was in drink. The next day he was heavy and troubled in his mind, and drank a quantity of cold water while in the hay field making hay; but being advised to go up to the hall and get a drink of something more nourishing, he took the advice, and went into the house, where the cook maid gave him some drink; and then he went into his own room and lay down. While thus on the bed the chamber door seemed to him to open of itself, and there came a thick smoke or mist, which on vanishing left him in extreme fear and horror; then appeared one Hindle, a fellow servant, with his hair cropped close to his ears, and he lay very heavy on his breast, but soon turned himself into the likeness of a naked child, which he caught by the knee; but the child became a "filmet" (foumart, pole-cat?), and went away with a shrill shriek. After this he raved, and was delirious; but when Dr. Chew physicked him, and Dr. Crabtree bled him, and Dr. Chew physicked him again, he had no more "fits," no more "obsessions" or "possessions," was no longer the demoniac of Surrey, half maniac, half impostor, but went quietly back to ordinary life, and the whole tribe of exorcising ministers were for once discomfited. It was a singular mercy to his friends and acquaintances that Master Richard did not take it into his head to delate any of them as witches, for assuredly he might have hanged half Lancashire on the strength of the whelps inside his body, and his galloping on all fours like a horse. He would not have been the first to shed innocent blood for the sake of keeping up a notoriety which, originally begun in very ordinary and natural disease, was afterwards continued in deception, fraud, and lies.

THE GROCER'S YOUNG MAN.[158]

A few years after (1704) Sarah Griffiths lay suspected for a witch, and a bad one, for all the children in her neighbourhood were afflicted with strange distempers, and had visions of cats and the like, so that no one coveted poor Sarah's company, and many removed because of her. Her guilt was discovered at last by a jolly young grocer's lad, who was one day weighing her out some soap, but the scales would not hang right, whereat he laughed and cried out they were bewitched. Sarah Griffiths did not understand joking. She got very angry, and ran out of the shop threatening revenge; and the next night all the goods in the shop were turned topsy-turvy, and the day after the jolly young fellow was troubled with a strange disease--but by prayer released. Meeting her by chance some time after, as he and some friends were walking up to New River Head, they resolved to swim her. They tossed her in, and she swam like a cork. They kept her there for some time, but at last she got out, and struck the young man on the arm, telling him he should pay dearly for what he had done. He looked at his arm and found it black as a coal, with the exact mark of her hand and fingers on it. He went home much tormented, vomiting old nails, pins, and the like, afflicted with fits and strange contortions, and for ever calling out against Mother Griffiths as he lay sickening and disabled. And then his arm gangrened and rotted off: whereby he died. Mother Griffith was taken by the constable, who, on her attempting to escape, knocked her down. She was secured more firmly, taken before the judge, and committed to Bridewell, whence--though I find no sequel to this strange little page--there is very little doubt that she was haled forth at the assizes only to be convicted and hanged.

We are coming now (1712) to the last authentic trial for witchcraft where the accused was condemned to death for an impossible crime by a jury of sane, decent, respectable Englishmen. Jane Wenham was this latest offshoot of the old tree of judicial bigotry; not the latest fruit, but the last instance of the law and judgment. There is a report current in most witch books of a case at a later period--but I can find no _authentic_ account of it--that, in 1716, of a Mrs. Hicks and her little daughter of nine, hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, bewitching their neighbours to death and their crops to ruin, and, as a climax to all, taking off their stockings to raise a storm. It may well be so, but I have not met with it in any reliable shape, so meanwhile we must accept Jane Wenham as the last officially condemned.

THE WITCH OF WALKERNE.[159]

Jane Wenham was the witch of Walkerne, a little village in the north of Hertford. She had long lived under ill fame, and her neighbours were resolved to get rid of her at the earliest opportunity. That opportunity presented itself in the person of John Chapman's man, one Matthew Gilson, whom Jane sent into a daft state by asking him for a pennyworth of straw, which he refused to give her. The old woman went away, muttering and complaining, whereupon Matthew, impelled by he knew not what impulse, ran out of the barn for a distance of three miles, asking as he went for pennyworths of straw. Not getting any, he went on to some dirt heaps, and gathered up straw from them, which he put in his shirt and brought home. A witness testified that he had seen Gilson come back with his shirt stuffed full of straw, that he moved along quickly, and walked straight through the water, instead of passing over the bridge like any other decent man. For this odd behaviour of his servant, John Chapman, who had all along suspected Jane of more cunning than was good for him or her--called her a witch the next time he saw her; and Jane took him before the magistrate, Sir Herbert Chauncey, to answer to the charge of defamation. But the magistrate recommended them to go to Mr. Gardiner the minister, and a great believer in witchcraft, and get their matter settled without more trouble or vexation. Mr. Gardiner was too zealous to be just. He scolded poor old Jane roundly, and advised her to live more peaceably with her neighbours--which was just what she wanted to do--and gave as his award that Chapman do pay the fine of one shilling. While this bit of one-sided justice was going on, Anne Thorne, Mr. Gardiner's servant, was sitting by the fire with a dislocated knee. Jane, not able to compass her wicked will on Chapman, and angry that Mr. Gardiner had spoken so harshly to her, turned her malice on the girl, and bewitched her, so that as soon as they all left the kitchen Anne felt a strange "Roaming in her Head, and she thought she must of Necessity run somewhere." In spite then of her dislocated knee, she started off and ran up the close, and away over a five-barred gate "as nimbly as a greyhound," along the highway and up a hill. And there she met two of John Chapman's men, who wanted her to go home with them; and one took her hand; but she was forced away from them, speechless, and not of her own volition, and so was driven on, on, towards Cromer, where the great sea would have either stopped or received her. But when she came to Hockney Lane, she met there a "little Old Woman muffled up in a Riding-Hood," who asked her whither she was going. "To Cromer," says Anne, "for sticks to make me a fire." "There be no sticks at Cromer," says the little old woman in the riding hood: "here be sticks enow; go to that oak tree and pluck them there." Which Anne did, laying them on the ground as they were gathered. Then the old woman bade her pull off her gown and apron, and wrap the sticks in them; asking her if she had ne'er a pin about her; but finding that she had not, she gave her a large crooked pin, with which she bade her pin her bundle, then vanished away. So Anne Thorne ran home half naked, with her bundle of leaves and sticks in her hand, and sat down in the kitchen, crying out "I am ruined and undone!"

When Mrs. Gardiner had opened the bundle, and seen all the twigs and leaves, she said they would burn the witch, and not wait long about it; so they flung the twigs and leaves into the fire; and while they were burning in came Jane Wenham, asking for Anne's mother, for she had, she said, a message to her, how that she was to go and wash next day at Ardley Bury, Sir Herbert Chauncey's place: which on inquiry turned out to be a falsehood: consequently Jane Wenham was set down doubly as a witch, the charm of burning her in the sticks having proved so effectual. John Chapman and his men then told their tale. Mr. Gardiner was not slow in fanning the flame into a fire, and poor old Jane was examined, searched for marks but none found, and committed to gaol, there to wait her trial at the next assizes. She earnestly entreated not to go to prison; protested her innocence, and appealed to Mrs. Gardiner to help her, woman-like, and not to swear against her; offering to submit to be swum--anything they would--so that she might be kept free of jail. But Sir Herbert Chauncey was just manly and rational enough not to allow of this test, though the Vicar of Ardeley tried her with the Lord's Prayer, which she could not repeat: and terrified and tortured her into a kind of confession, wherein she implicated three other women, who were immediately put under arrest, though they came to no harm in the end. When she was brought to trial, sixteen witnesses, including three clergymen, were standing there ready to testify against her, how that she had bewitched this one's cattle, and that one's sheep; and taken all the power from this one's body, and all the good from that one's gear; and slaughtered this child, and that man, by her evil eye and her curses; and in fact how that she had done all the mischief that had happened in the neighbourhood for years past. And there was Matthew Gilson, who had been sent mad, and forced to wander about the country with his shirt stuffed full of straw like a scarecrow; and Anne Thorne, who had had fits ever since her marvellous journey with the dislocated knee; and another Anne, very nearly as hardly holden as the first; and others beside, whom her malice had rendered sick and lame, and unfit for decent life: moreover, two veracious witnesses deposed positively to her taking the form of a cat when she would, and to hearing her converse with the devil when under the form of a cat, he also as a cat; together with Anne Thorne's distinct accusation that she was beset with cats--tormented exceedingly--and that all the cats had the face and the voice of Jane Wenham.

The lawyers, who believed little in the devil and less in witchcraft, refused to draw up the indictment on any other charge save that of "conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of a cat." But in spite of Mr. Bragge's earnest appeals against such profanation, and the ridicule which it threw over the whole matter, the jury found the poor old creature guilty, and the judge passed sentence of death against her. The evidence was too strong. Even one of the Mr. Chaunceys deposed that a cat came knocking at his door, and that he killed it--when it vanished away, for it was no other than one of Jane Wenham's imps; and all Mr. Gardiner's house went mad, some in one way and some in another: and credible witnesses deposed that they had seen pins come jumping through the air into Anne Thorne's mouth, and when George Chapman clapped his hand before her mouth to prevent them skipping in, he felt one stick against his hand, as sharp as might be; and every night Anne's pincushion was left full, and every morning found empty, and who but Jane could have conveyed them all from the pincushion into her mouth, where they were to be found all crooked and bent? But though the jury could not resist the tremendous weight of all this evidence, and the judge could not resist the jury, he managed to get a reprieve which left the people time to cool and reflect, and then he got a pardon for her--quietly and kindly done. And Colonel Plummer, of Gilston, took her under his protection, and gave her a small cottage near his house, where she lived, poor soul, in peace and safety for the end of her days, doing harm to no one and feared by none. As for Anne Thorne, the doctor, who had ordered her, as part of his remedy, to wash her hands and face twice a day in fair water, and who, as another part, had her watched and sat with by a "lusty young fellow" who asked nothing better, managed matters so well, that in a short time Anne and her brisk bachelor were married; and from that time we hear no more of her vomiting crooked pins, or being tormented with visions of cats wearing Jane Wenham's face, and speaking with Jane Wenham's voice. But though all the rest got well off with their frights and follies, no public compensation was given to poor old Jane for the brutal attacks of the mob upon her, for the hauling and maiming and scratching and tearing, by which they proved to their own satisfaction that she was a witch, and deserved only the treatment accorded to witches.

OUR LATEST.

But if the last officially condemned, Jane was not the last actually destroyed, for a curious MS. letter to be found in the British Museum "From Mr. Manning, Dissenting Teacher, at Halstead, in Essex, to John Morley, Esq., Halstead," gives us a strange garbled account of a reputed sacrifice; and the sadder and more brutal story of Ruth Osborne follows a few years after.

"Halstead, August 2, 1732.

"SIR--The narrative which I gave you in relation to witchcraft, and which you are pleased to lay your commands upon me to repeat, is as follows:--There was one Master Collett, a smith by trade, of Haveningham, in the county of Suffolk, who, as 'twas customary with him, assisting the maide to churne, and not being able (as the phrase is) to make the butter come, threw a hot iron into the churn, under the notion of witchcraft in the case, upon which a poore labourer, then employed in carrying of dung in the yard, cried out in a terrible manner, 'They have killed me, they have killed me;' still keeping his hand upon his back, intimating where the pain was, and died upon the spot.

"Mr. Collett, with the rest of the servants then present, took off the poor man's clothes, and found to their great surprise, the mark of the iron that was heated and thrown into the churn, deeply impressed upon his back. This account I had from Mr. Collett's own mouth, who being a man of unblemished character, I verily believe to be matter of fact.

"I am, Sir, your obliged humble Servant,

"SAM. MANNING."

The only falsehood, probably, in the history is the manner of the poor fellow's death, for either he was foully murdered on a wild suspicion of being concerned in the witching of a dirty milk vessel, or he died suddenly of some ordinary organic complaint, and the circumstances of the horse-shoe and the scarred back were purely imaginary. But again in 1751 was witch blood actually poured out on English soil, and the cry of the innocent murdered sent up to heaven in vain for mercy. At Tring, in Hertfordshire, lived an old man, one Osborne, and his wife; poor as witches always were; old--past seventy both of them--and obliged to beg from door to door for what, if the popular superstition was true, the devil had given them power to possess at any moment for themselves. But this was a point of view no one ever took. In the rebellion of '45, just six years ago, old Mother Osborne had gone to one Butterfield, a dairyman living at Gubblecot, to beg for buttermilk. Butterfield was a churlish fellow, and told her roughly that he had not enough for his hogs, still less for her. Says old Mother Osborne, grumbling, "The Pretender will soon have thee and thy hogs too." Now the Pretender and the devil were in league together, according to the belief of many, and old Mother Osborne might just as well have told the dairyman at once that he was going to the devil, or that she would send her imps to bewitch him; for soon Butterfield's calves became distempered, and soon his cows died, and his affairs went so far to the bad that he left his dairy and took a public house, in hopes that the imps which could bewitch the one might be powerless against the other. But he reckoned without his host, for in 1751 he himself was bewitched; he had fits--bad fits--and sent for a white witch all the way from Northamptonshire to tell him what ailed him. The white witch told him he was bewitched, and bade six men, with staves and pitchforks hanging round their necks as counter charms for their own safety, watch his house night and day. Doubtless they discovered all they were set there to seek.

Suddenly there appeared a notice that certain and various witches were to be ducked at Longmarston the 22nd day of April. A crowd assembled at Tring to watch the sport; and but one thought went through that crowd--the Osbornes were to be the ducked witches, and the sport they would have would be rare. The parish officers had taken the old couple into the workhouse for safety, but the mob broke through the gates, and crushed down the doors, and searched the whole place through, from end to end, even to the salt box, "lest the witch should have made herself little," and have hidden in the corners. But they could not find her, not even there; so, in a rage, they broke the windows, smashed the furniture, and then heaped up straw high against the house, threatening to burn it down, and every living soul within it, if the Osbornes were not given up them. The master was frightened; he had never faced such a scene before, and his nerve forsook him--not unreasonably. He brought the old people from their hiding place, and gave them up to that wild, tossing, furious mob. In a moment they were stripped stark naked, then cross-bound in the prescribed manner, wrapped loosely in a sheet, and dragged two miles along the road to a small pond or river, where with many a curse and many a kick they were thrown in, to prove whether they were witches or not. A chimney sweeper, called Colley, was the most active of the crew. Seeing that Mother Osborne did not sink, he waded into the water and turned her over with his stick. She slipped out of the sheet, and thus lay exposed, naked, and half choked with mud, before the brutal crowd, who saw nothing pitiful, and nothing shameful, in her state. After a time they dragged her out, flung her on the bank, and kicked and beat her till she died. Her husband died also, but not on the spot. The man who had arranged this rare diversion then went round among the crowd collecting money in return for his amusement. But government took the matter up. A coroner's inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder returned against Colley, the chimney sweep, who, much to his own surprise and the indignation of the people--many ranking him as a martyr--was hanged by the neck till he was dead, for the murder of the witch of Tring, poor old Ruth Osborne. The act against witchcraft, under colour and favour of which all the judicial murders had been done, had been repealed a few years before, namely, in 1736, and Colley's comrades bewailed piteously the degenerate times that were at hand, when a witch was no longer held fit sport for the public, but was protected and defended like ordinary folk, and let to live on to work her wicked will unchecked.

But the snake is scotched, not killed. So far are we in advance of the men of the ruder past, inasmuch as our superstitions, though quite as silly, are less cruel than theirs, and hurt no one but ourselves. Yet still we have our wizards and witches lurking round area gates and prowling through the lanes and yards of the remoter country districts; still we have our necromancers, who call up the dead from their graves to talk to us more trivial nonsense than ever they talked while living, and who reconcile us with earth and humanity by showing us how infinitely inferior are heaven and spirituality; still we have the unknown mapped out in clear lines sharp and firm; and still the impossible is asserted as existing, and men are ready to give their lives in attestation of what contravenes every law of reason and of nature; still we are not content to watch and wait and collect and fathom before deciding, but for every new group of facts or appearances must at once draw up a code of laws and reasons, and prove, to a mathematical certainty, the properties of a chimera, and the divine life and beauty--of a lie. Even the mere vulgar belief in witchcraft remains among the lower classes; as witness the old gentleman who died at Polstead not so long ago, and who, when a boy, had seen a witch swum in Polstead Ponds, "and she went over the water like a cork;" who had also watched another witch feeding her three imps like blackbirds; and who only wanted five pounds to have seen all the witches in the parish dance on a knoll together: as witness also the strange letter of the magistrate, in the 'Times' of April 7, 1857; and the stranger trial at Stafford, concerning the bewitched condition of the Charlesworths, small farmers living at Rugely, which trial is to be found in the 'Times' of March 28, 1857; the case reported by the clergyman of East Thorpe, Essex, who had actually to mount guard against the door of an old Trot accused of witchcraft; while the instances of silly servant maids, and fortune tellers whose hands are to be crossed with silver, and the stars propitiated with cast off dresses and broken meat, are as numerous as ever. And, indeed, so long as conviction without examination, and belief without proof, pass as the righteous operations of faith, so long will superstition and credulity reign supreme over the mind, and the functions of critical reason be abandoned and foresworn. And as it seems to me that credulity is even a less desirable frame of mind than scepticism, I have set forth this collection of witch stories as landmarks of the excesses to which a blind belief may hurry and impel humanity, and perhaps as some slight aids to that much misused common sense which the holders of impossible theories generally consider "enthusiastic," and of "a nobler life" to tread under foot, and loftily ignore.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.

Footnotes:

[1] Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'

[2] Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'

[3] Pitcairn.

[4] Pitcairn.

[5] Pitcairn.

[6] Pitcairn.

[7] An iron instrument so constructed, that by means of a hoop which passed over the head, a piece of iron having four prongs or points, was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing outwards to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring, by which to attach to a staple in the wall of her cell.--_Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'_

[8] Fountainhall says that she was convict and burnt; but is this not a mistake? Pitcairn gives the actual trial, and King James's angry letter against the contumacious assisa.

[9] Pitcairn.

[10] Dr. Jamieson conjectures the word to signify "warm hose." After encircling the leg with an iron framework, it was put into a moveable furnace or chauffer, and during the progress of heating the iron, the intended questions were successively put.--_Note in Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'_

[11] Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'

[12] Chambers' 'Domestic Annals of Scotland.'

[13] 'Antiquarian Researches of Aberdeen, by Gavin Turriff: Spalding Club Miscellany. Chambers' 'Domestic Annals,' to the end of the Aberdeen trials.

[14] Apparently untranslateable.

[15] Patrick Anderson's MS. history of Scotland, quoted by Robert Chambers, in his 'Domestic Annals of Scotland.'

[16] Pitcairn.

[17] Pitcairn and Chambers.

[18] Pitcairn.

[19] Pitcairn.

[20] Dalyell's 'Darker Superstitions of Scotland.'

[21] Scott's 'Demonology and Witchcraft.'

[22] Pitcairn.

[23] Pitcairn and Chambers.

[24] Star-grass, queries Pitcairn; but is it not rather fox-tree--fox-glove?

[25] Chambers, Dalyell, Pitcairn.

[26] Dalyell, quoting the judiciary records of Orkney.

[27] Hibbert, quoting the Orkney Records.

[28] Pitcairn. Sharpe's Introduction to Law's 'Memorials.'

[29] Dalyell.

[30] Law's 'Memorials,' (Sharpe's Introduction,) and Dalyell.

[31] Chambers, Sinclair, Dalyell.

[32] Dalyell's 'Darker Superstitions.'

[33] Pitcairn. Law's 'Memorials.' Chambers.

[34] Dalyell.

[35] Chambers.

[36] Chambers.

[37] Dalyell.

[38] Chambers and Law; Sharpe's Introduction.

[39] Hibbert's 'Description of the Shetland Islands.'

[40] Dalyell. Evidently the same thing with a different reading:--_red_, rode; _sool-soot_, stirrup; _sled_, slipped; _shinew_, sinew.

[41] Hibbert, &c.

[42] Sinclair's 'Invisible World Discovered.'

[43] Pitcairn.

[44] Sinclair.

[45] To the outer room.

[46] To the inner room.

[47] Chambers.

[48] Chambers.

[49] Pitcairn and Sinclair.

[50] Chambers' 'Domestic Annals.'

[51] Law--Sharp's Introduction.

[52] Dalyell.

[53] Chambers.

[54] Law's 'Memorials'--Sharp's Introductory Notice.

[55] Pitcairn.

[56] On life: alive.

[57] Chambers. Sinclair. Various tracts.

[58] Chambers. Dickie. Tracts.

[59] Law's 'Memorials.'

[60] Chambers.

[61] Law's 'Memorials.'

[62] Scots' Magazine.

[63] Sinclair's 'Invisible World.'

[64] Sinclair.

[65] Hibbert's 'Shetland Islands.'

[66] Hibbert and Sinclair.

[67] Fountainhall.

[68] Hibbert.

[69] Chambers.

[70] Watson's Tract, printed 1698. Chambers, Dickie, and various other sources.

[71] Chambers.

[72] Chambers.

[73] Chambers; Sinclair; and an anonymous tract.

[74] Chambers.

[75] Hibbert.

[76] Law's 'Memorials;' and Chambers.

[77] A crazy old Illuminatus, who had a "call," and wrote the Tinkler's Testament.

[78] Scott. Dickie. Chambers, &c.

[79] Dickie's 'Philosophy of Magic.'

[80] 'Select Cases of Conscience.'

[81] 'Discoverie of Witchcraft.'

[82] 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' 1584.

[83] 'Dialogue concerning Witches,' 1603.

[84] 'Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,' 1646.

[85] 'Advertisement to the Jurymen of England,' 1653.

[86] 'A Candle in the Dark,' 1656.

[87] 'Question of Witchcraft debated,' 1669. "Wagstaffe was a little crooked man, of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the boys of Oxford because they said he himself looked like a wizard."

[88] 'Displaying of Witchcraft,' 1677.

[89] 'Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft,' 1720.

[90] Introduction to Potts's 'Discovery of Witches,' edited by James Crossley, Esq. Chetham Society. 1845.

[91] Conjuration or invocation of any evil spirit was felony without benefit of clergy; so also to consult, covenant with, entertain, feed, or reward any evil spirit, or to take up any dead body for charms or spells; to use or practise witchcrafts, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, so that any one was lamed, killed, or pined, was felony without benefit of clergy, to be followed up by burning. Then 'The Country Justice' goes on to give the legal signs of a witch, and those on which a magistrate might safely act, as legal "discoveries." She was to be found and proved by insensible marks; by teats; by imps in various shapes, such as toads, mice, flies, spiders, cats, dogs, &c.; by pictures of wax or clay; by the accusations of the afflicted; by her apparition seen by the afflicted as coming to torment them; by her own sudden or frequent inquiries at the house of the sick; by common report; by the accusations of the dying; and the bleeding of the corpse at her touch; by the testimony of children; by the afflicted vomiting pins, needles, straw, &c.; in short, by all the foolery, gravely formularized, to be found in the lies and deceptions hereafter related.

[92] Thomas Wright's 'Narrative of Sorcery and Magic.' Southey's Ballad.

[93] Thomas Wright's 'Narrative of Sorcery and Magic,' and 'Trial of Dame Alice Kyteler.'

[94] Idem.

[95] 'Introduction to the Narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler.' By Thomas Wright. 1843.

[96] Wright's 'Narrative of Sorcery and Magic.' 1851.

[97] Reginald Scot.

[98] Reginald Scot. Dr. Hutchinson.

[99] Stow.

[100] Scot, quoting a little pamphlet, without a title, which I cannot find.

[101] From an extremely rare black-letter book, entitled 'A Detection of damnable driftes, practized by three Witches arraigned at Chelmsforde, in Essex, at the laste Assizes there holden, whiche were executed in Aprill 1579. Set forthe to discouer the Ambushementes of Sathan, whereby he would surprise us lulled in securitie, and hardened with contempte of God's vengeance threatened for our offences. Imprinted at London, for Edward White, at the little North-dore of Paules.'

[102] Scot.

[103] 'A true and just Recorde of the Information, Examination, and Confession of all the Witches, taken at S. Osees in the countie of Essex; whereof some were executed, and other some entreated according to the determination of lawe. Wherein all men may see what a pestilent people Witches are, and how vnworthy to lyve in a Christian Commonwealth. Written orderly, as the cases were tryed by euidence by W. W. Imprinted in London at the three Cranes, in the Vinetree, by Thomas Dawson. 1582.'

[104] This was his manner of dealing with the accused, and its falsehood, iniquity, and injustice need no comment.

[105] The names of the imps which haunted various persons was curious. A Dutch boy had Pretty Betty, Cuckow, Longtail; and Bernard gives us his list:--"Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smack, Litefoote, Nonesuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Collins, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dickie, Prettie, Grissel, and Jacke;" together with "Pippin, Philpot, Modu, Soforce, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito, Lustie, Huffe, Cap, Killico, Hob, Fratello, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, and Lustie Jollie Jenkin." We have seen some of these already, and those who read farther will find a few more, and some quite as quaint and odd not set down in this list.

[106] 'A true and most dreadfull discourse of a Woman possessed with the Deuill; who, in the likenesse of a headlesse Beare, fetched her oute of her Bedde, in the presence of seven persons, most straungely roulled her thorow three Chambers, and downe a high paire of stairres on the fower and twentie of May last, 1584. At Ditchet, in Somersetshire. A matter as miraculous as ever was seen in our time. Imprinted at London for Thomas Nelson.'

[107] 'A compleat History of Magick, Sorcery, and Witchcraft.' By Richard Boulton. 1715.

[108] Hutchinson's 'Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft.' Boulton's 'History of Magic.' Harsent's 'Discovery of the Fravdvlent Practises of J. Darrel.' 'A True Relation of the Strange and Grevovs Vexation by the Devil of 7 Persons in Lancashire, and William Somers of Nottingham.' By John Darrel. 1600.

[109] 'A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcrafts.' 1603.

[110] This is an old story, found in all books on witchcraft.

[111] George Sinclair's 'Satan's Invisible World Displayed.'

[112] Hutchinson's 'Essay on Witchcraft.'

[113] 'The Witches of Northamptonshire.'

Agnes Browne, } Arthur Bill, } } } Witches. Ioane Vaughan,} Hellen Ienkinson,}

Mary Barber.

Who were all executed at Northampton the 22 of Iuly last, 1612.

'London. Printed by Tho. Purfoot for Arthur Iohnson. 1612.' A rare and valuable little black-letter tract.

[114] 'The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancaster.' By Thomas Potts. 1613. Thomas Wright's 'Narrative of Sorcery and Magic.' 1851.

[115] "Ligh in," perhaps lykinge, lusty, or craske.

[116] "Leath," flexible.

[117] The chrism was the white cloth placed over the brow of a newly-baptized child in the Roman Catholic service. When children died within the month they were called chrisoms.

[118] "Farrandly," fair, handsome.

[119] "Harne panne," brain case, cranium.

[120] Gethsemane.

[121] "Deere," hurt.

[122] Potts's 'Discovery.' Webster's 'Displaying.'

[123] A 'Treatise of Witchcraft.' By Alexander Roberts, B.D., and Preacher of God's word at King's Linne in Norfolk. 1616.

[124] Tract. Printed at London by G. Eld for I. Barnes, dwelling in the long Walke, neare Christ-Church. 1619.

[125] Wright and Hutchinson.

[126] Wright, quoting Lord Londesborough's MSS.

[127] Wright.

[128] Webster. Wright. Harleian MSS.

[129] 'A most Certain Strange and true Discovery of a witch, being taken by some Parliamentary Forces as she was standing on a small planck-board and sayling on it over the River of Newberry. 1643.' Evidently a political matter, and perhaps with no substratum of truth in the story at all.

[130] A collection of Modern Relations. 1693.

[131] Matthew's own account of them in a little tract called 'Certaine Queries Answered, which have been and are likely to be objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out witches,' was slightly different.--1. Holt, like a white kitling.--2. Jarmara, a fat spaniel without any legs at all, which she said she kept fat, for he sucked good blood from her body.--3. Vinegar Tom, a long-legged greyhound with an head like an ox, a long tail and broad eyes, who, when Hopkins spoke to, and bade him go to the place provided for him and his angels, transformed himself into the shape of a child of foure years without a head, and gave half a dozen turns about the house and vanished at the door.--4. Sack-and-sugar, like a black rabbit; and 5. Newes, like a polecat. Also he said that no mortal could invent such names as Elemauzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, Griezel Greedigut, &c., which, however, one of our great word-masters, Charles Dickens, would find no difficulty in doing, and which certainly have no very infernal sound in them.

[132] Baxter, Hutchinson, &c.

[133] Baxter.

[134] Tract.

[135] 'The Laws against Witches.' Published by Authority, 1645.

[136] 'Collection of Modern Relations.'

[137] 'The Devil's Delusion.' 1649.

[138] Baxter.

[139] Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits.'

[140] 'A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the Arraignment, Tryall, Confession, and Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone, in Kent, at the Assizes held there in July, Fryday 30, this present year 1652. Before the Right Honourable Peter Warburton, one of the Justices of the Common Pleas. Collected from the Observations of E. G. Gent, a learned Person, present at their Conviction and Condemnation, and digested by H. F. Gent.' London: Printed for Richard Harper in Smithfield, 1652.

[141] A true Relation of one Mrs. Atkins, a Mercer's Wife in Warwick, who was strangely carried away from her house in July last, and hath not since been heard of.

[142] Dr. George More's 'Antidote to Atheism.' Dr. Lamb's 'Darling.' By James Bower. 1653.

[143] Glanvil's 'Saducismus Triumphatus.'

[144] Reginald Scot.

[145] 'Collection of Modern Relations.'

[146] Glanvil

[147] Glanvil.

[148] Glanvil.

[149] Tract; Published 1682.

[150] Baxter's 'World of Spirits.'

[151] 'Hartfordshire Wonder; or, Strange News from Ware.' London. Printed for John Clark, at the Bible and Harp, in West-Smith-Field, near the Hospital Gate. 1669.

[152] Boulton's 'Compleat History of Magick.'

[153] Baxter, Hutchinson.

[154] Dr. Hutchinson.

[155] That date seems wrong: ought it not to be 1699?

[156] Boulton's 'Compleat History of Magick.' Dr. Hutchinson's 'Historical Essay.'

[157] Surrey in Lancashire.

[158] A Tract of one leaf in a collection of trials.

[159] Various Tracts--and 'Thomas Wright's Narrative.'

[160] Thomas Wright.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

Superscripted letters are enclosed within brackets (example: y{e} indicates the "e" is superscripted).

Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.

Some quotation marks are not paired in the original. Obvious errors have been corrected without comment, while those requiring interpretation have been left as they were.

Footnote 160 (page 424) has no in-text marker in the original.

The following misprints have been corrected: "withcraft" corrected to "witchcraft" (page 163) "hat" corrected to "that" (page 218) "cying" corrected to "crying" (page 242) "expeperience" corrected to "experience" (page 404) "sen" corrected to "sent" (page 418)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original text.