NOTES. (continued 2)

R 3 a. "My Lord Gerrard."] Thomas Gerard, son and heir of Sir Gilbert Gerard, Master of the Robes 23d Elizabeth, was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Gerard of Gerard's Bromley, in Staffordshire, 1603. He died 1618.

S a. "Kniues, Elsons, and Sickles." In the Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 138, to Elsyn (elsyng^k) Sibula, Mr. Way appends this note: "This word occurs in the Gloss on Gautier de Bibelesworth, Arund. MS. 220, where a buckled girdle is described:—

"An elsyne,—acus, subula. Cath. Ang. Sibula, an elsyn, an alle or a bodkyn. Ortus. In the inventory of the goods of a merchant at Newcastle, A.D. 1571, occur, 'vj. doss' elsen heftes, 12d; 1 clowte and ½ a C elsen blades, viijs. viijd; xiij. clowtes of talier, needles, &c.' Wills and Inventories published by the Surtees Society, l. 361. The term is derived from the French alene; elson for cordwayners, alesne. Palsg. In Yorkshire and some other parts of England an awl is still called an elsen."

S b. "Which the said Alizon confessing."] In the case of this paralytic pedlar, John Law, his mishap could scarcely be called such, as it would for the remainder of his life, be an all-sufficient stock-in-trade for him, and popular wonder and sympathy, without the judge's interposition, would provide for his relief and maintenance. The near apparent connection and correspondence of the damnum minatum and damnum secutum, in this instance, imposed upon this unfortunate woman, as it had done upon many others, and gave to her confession an earnestness which would appear to the unenlightened spectator to spring only from reality and truth.

S 3 b. "Margaret Pearson."] This Padiham witch fared better than her neighbours, being sentenced only to the pillory. Nothing affords a stronger proof of the vindictive pertinacity with which these prosecutions were carried on than the fact of this old and helpless creature being put on her trial three several times upon such evidence as follows. Chattox, like many other persons in her situation, was disposed to have as many companions in punishment, crime or no crime, as she could compass, and denounced her accordingly: "The said Pearson's wife is as ill as shee."

T a. "The said Margerie did carrie the said Toade out of the said house in a paire of tonges."] This toad was disposed of more easily than that of Julian Cox, as to which see Glanvil's Collection of Relations, p. 192:—

Another witness swore, that as he passed by Cox her door, she was taking a pipe of tobacco upon the threshold of her door, and invited him to come in and take a pipe, which he did. And as he was talking Julian said to him, Neighbour, look what a pretty thing there is. He look't down, and there was a monstrous great toad betwixt his leggs, staring him in the face. He endeavoured to kill it by spurning it, but could not hit it. Whereupon Julian bad him forbear, and it would do him no hurt. But he threw down his pipe and went home, (which was about two miles off of Julian Cox her house,) and told his family what had happened, and that he believed it was one of Julian Cox her devils. After, he was taking a pipe of tobacco at home, and the same toad appeared betwixt his leggs. He took the toad out to kill it, and to his thinking cut it in several pieces, but returning to his pipe, the toad still appeared. He endeavoured to burn it, but could not. At length he took a switch and beat it. The toad ran several times about the room to avoid him he still pursuing it with correction. At length the toad cryed and vanish't, and he was never after troubled with it.

Dr. More's comment on the circumstance is written with all the seriousness so important a part of a witch's supellex deserves. He commences defending the huntsman, who swore that he hunted a hare, and when he came to take it up, he found it to be Julian Cox:

Those half-witted people thought he swore false, I suppose because they imagined that what he told implied that Julian Cox was turned into an hare. Which she was not, nor did his report imply any such real metamorphosis of her body, but that these ludicrous dæmons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and his doggs the shape of an Hare, one of them turning himself into such a form, and others hurrying on the body of Julian near the same place, and at the same swiftness, but interposing betwixt that hare-like spectre and her body, modifying the air so that the scene there, to the beholders sight, was as if nothing but air were there, and a shew of earth perpetually suited to that where the hare passed. As I have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in an huge large landskip, so lively that the birds have flown against it, thinking it free air, and so have fallen down. And if painters and juglers by the tricks of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight, it is no wonder that these airy invisible spirits as far surpass them in all such præstigious doings as the air surpasses the earth for subtilty.

And the like præstigiæ may be in the toad. It might be a real toad (though actuated and guided by a dæmon) which was cut in pieces, and that also which was whipt about, and at last snatcht out of sight (as if it had vanished) by these aerial hocus-pocus's. And if some juglers have tricks to take hot coals into their mouth without hurt, certainly it is not surprising that some small attempt did not suffice to burn that toad. That such a toad, sent by a witch and crawling up the body of the man of the house as he sate by the fire's side, was overmastered by him and his wife together, and burnt in the fire; I have heard credibly reported by one of the Isle of Ely. Of these dæmoniack vermin, I have heard other stories also, as of a rat that followed a man some score of miles trudging through thick and thin along with him. So little difficulty is there in that of the toad.—Glanvil's Collection of Relations, p. 200.

T 2 a 1. "Isabel Robey." This person was of Windle, in the parish of Prescot, a considerable distance from Pendle. The Gerards were lords of the manor of Windle. Sir Thomas Gerard, before whom the examinations were taken, was created baronet, 22nd May, 9th James I.; and thrice married. From him the present Sir John Gerard, of New Hall, near Warrington, is descended. Sir Thomas was determined that the hundred of West Derby should have its witch as well as the other parts of the county. A more melancholy tissue of absurd and incoherent accusations than those against this last of the prisoners convicted on this occasion, it would not be easy to find; who was hanged, for all that appears, because one person was suddenly "pinched on her thigh, as she thought, with four fingers and a thumb," and because another was "sore pained with a great warch in his bones."

T 2 a 2. "This Countie of Lancaster, which now may lawfully bee said to abound asmuch in Witches of diuers kindes as Seminaries, Iesuites, and Papists."] Truly, the county palatine was in sad case, according to Master Potts's account. If the crop of each of these was over abundant, it was from no fault of the learned judges, who, in their commissions of Oyer and Terminer, subjected it pretty liberally to the pruning-hook of the executioner.

T 2 a 3. "This lamentable and wofull Tragedie, wherein his Maiestie hath lost so many Subjects, Mothers their Children, Fathers their Friends and Kinsfolk." The Lancashire bill of mortality, under the head witchcraft, so far as it can be collected from this tract, will run thus:—

1. Robert Nutter, of Greenhead, in Pendle. 2. Richard Assheton, son of Richard Assheton, of Downham, Esquire. 3. Child of Richard Baldwin, of Wheethead, within the forest of Pendle. 4. John Device, or Davies, of Pendle. 5. Anne Nutter, daughter of Anthony Nutter, of Pendle. 6. Child of John Moore, of Higham. 7. Hugh Moore, of Pendle. 8. John Robinson, alias Swyer. 9. James Robinson. 10. Henry Mytton, of the Rough Lee. 11. Anne Townley, wife of Henry Townley, of the Carr, gentleman. 12. John Duckworth. 13. John Hargraves, of Goldshaw Booth. 14. Blaze Hargraves, of Higham. 15. Christopher Nutter. 16. Anne Folds, of Colne.

Sixteen persons reported dead of this common epidemic, besides a countless number with pains and "starkness in their limbs," and "a great warch in their bones!" No wonder that Doctors Bromley and Potts thought active treatment necessary, with a decided preference for hemp, as the leading specific.

T 3 b. "With great warch in his bones."] Warch is a word well known and still used in this sense, i.e., pain, in Lancashire.

T 4 b 1. "The said Peter was now satisfied that the said Isabel Robey was no Witch, by sending to one Halseworths, which they call a wiseman."] I honour the memory of this Halsworth, or Houldsworth, as I suppose it should be spelled, for he was indeed a wise man in days when wisdom was an extremely scarce commodity.

T 4 b 2. "To abide vpon it."] i.e., my abiding opinion is.

X a. "Elizabeth Astley, John Ramsden, Alice Gray, Isabel Sidegraues, Lawrence Hay."] The specific charges against these persons, with the exception of Alice Gray, do not appear, nor is it said where their places of residence were. Alice Gray was reputed to have been at the meeting of witches at Malkin's Tower, and to her the judge refers, perhaps, in particular, when he says, "Without question, there are amongst you that are as deepe in this action as any of them that are condemned to die for their offences."

X b. "The Execution of the Witches."] We could have dispensed with many of the flowers of rhetoric with which the pages of this discovery are strewed, if Master Potts would have favoured us with a plain, unvarnished account of what occurred at this execution. It is here, in the most interesting point of all, that his narrative, in other respects so full and abundant, stops short, and seems curtailed of its just proportions. The "learned and worthy preacher," to whom the prisoners were commended by the judge, was probably Mr. William Leigh, of Standish, before mentioned. Amongst his papers or correspondence, if they should happen to have been preserved, some account may eventually be found of the sad closing scene of these melancholy victims of superstition.

X 2 a. "Neither can I paint in extraordinarie tearmes."] The worthy clerk is too modest. He is a great painter, the Tintoretto of witchcraft.

Y a 1. "Hauing cut off Thomas Lister, Esquire, father to this gentleman now liuing."] Thomas Lister, of Westby, ancestor of the Listers, Lords Ribblesdale, married Jane, daughter of John Greenacres, Esquire, of Worston, county of Lancaster, and was buried at Gisburn, February 8th, 1607. His son, Thomas Lister, referred to as the "gentleman now living," married Jane, daughter of Thomas Heber, Esq., of Marton, after mentioned, and was buried at Gisburn, July 10th, 1619.

Y a 2. "Was Indicted and Arraigned for the murder of a Child of one Dodg-sonnes."] One acquittal was no protection to these unhappy creatures. It caused only additional exasperation, and, sooner or later, they were brought within what Donne calls "the hungry statutes' gaping jaws." Whether superstition or malice prompted this prosecution, on the part of Mr. Lister, it is difficult to say. Some grudge he entertained, or cause of offence he had taken up against this Jennet Preston, might be her death warrant in those days, when it was penal for a woman to be old, helpless, ugly, and poor. She was not so fortunate as the females tried at York, nine years afterwards, for bewitching the children of Edward Fairfax, of Fuyston, in the forest of Knaresborough, to whom we owe the only English translation of Tasso worthy of the name. These females, six in number, were indicted at two successive assizes, and every effort was made by the

to procure their conviction. Never was a more unequal contest. On the one side was a relentless antagonist, armed with wealth, influence, learning, and accomplishments, and whose family connections gave him an unlimited power in the county; and on the other, six helpless persons, whose sex, age, and poverty were almost sufficient for their condemnation, without any evidence at all. Yet, owing to the magnanimous firmness of the judge, whose name, deserving of immortal honour, I regret has not been preserved, these efforts were frustrated, and the women accused delivered from the gulph which yawned before them. The disappointment he experienced in this instance, in being defrauded, as he thought, of a conviction for which he had strained every nerve and sinew, and in not being allowed to render the forest of Knaresborough as famous as that of Pendle, cast a gloom of despondency over the remaining days of this admirable poet, who has left a narration of the whole transaction, of most singular interest and curiosity, yet unpublished. The MSS. now in my possession, and which came from Mr. Bright's collection, consists of seventy-eight closely-written folio pages. It is entitled "A Discourse of Witchcraft, as it was enacted in the family of Mr. Edward Fairfax, of Fuystone, coun. Ebor, 1621." From page 78 to 144 are a series of ninety-three most extraordinary and spirited sketches, made with the pen, of the witches, devils, monsters, and apparitions referred to in the narrative.

Y 2 a. "Master Heyber."] This was Thomas Hayber, or Heber, of Marton, in Craven, Esquire, who was buried at Marton, 7th February, 1633. He was the ancestor of Bishop Reginald Heber and the late Richard Heber, Esq.

Y 3 a. "The said Iennet Preston comming to touch the dead corpes, they bled fresh bloud presently."] On the popular superstition of touching the corpse of a murdered person, as an ordeal or test for the discovery of the innocence or guilt of suspected murderers, the reader cannot better be referred than to the very learned and elaborate essay in Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 182-189. Amongst the authors there quoted, Webster is omitted, who, (see Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, p. 304,) discusses the point at considerable length, and with an earnest and implicit faith singularly at variance with his enlightened scepticism in other matters. But there were regions of superstition in which even this Sampson of logic became imbecile and powerless. The rationale of the bleeding of a murdered corpse at the touch of the murderer is given by Sir Kenelm Digby with his usual force and spirit:

To this cause, peradventure, may be reduced the strange effect which is frequently seen in England, when, at the approach of the Murderer, the slain body suddenly bleedeth afresh. For certainly the Souls of them that are treacherously murdered by surprise, use to leaue their bodies with extreme unwillingness, and with vehement indignation against them that force them to so unprovided and abhorred a passage! That Soul, then, to wreak its evil talent against the hated Murderer, and to draw a just and desired revenge upon his head, would do all it can to manifest the author of the fact! To speak it cannot—for in itself it wanteth the organs of voice; and those it is parted from are now grown too heavy, and are too benummed, for to give motion unto: Yet some change it desireth to make in the body, which it hath so vehement inclination to; and therefore is the aptest for it to work upon. It must then endeavour to cause a motion in the subtilest and most fluid parts (and consequently the most moveable ones) of it. This can be nothing but the blood, which then being violently moved, must needs gush out at those places where it findeth issue!

In the two following Scotch cases of witchcraft, this test was resorted to. The first was that of

Marioun Peebles,[79] alias Pardone, spouse to Swene, in Hildiswick, who was, on March 22, 1644, sentenced to be strangled at a stake, and burnt to ashes, at the Hill of Berrie, for Witchcraft and Murder. Marion and her husband having 'ane deadlie and venefical malice in her heart' against Edward Halero in Overure, and being determined 'to destroy and put him down,' being 'transformed in the lyknes of ane pellack-quhaill, (the Devill changing her spirit, quhilk fled in the same quhaill,') and the said Edward and other four individuals being in a fishing-boat, coming from the Sea, at the North-banks of Hildiswick, 'on ane fair morning, did cum under the said boat, and overturnit her with ease, and drowned and devoired thame in the sey, right at the shore, when there wis na danger wtherwayis.' The bodies of Halero and another of these hapless fishermen having been found, Marion and Swene 'wir sent for, and brought to see thame, and to lay thair hands on thame, ... dayis after said death and away-casting, quhaire thair bluid was evanished and desolved, from every natural cours or caus, shine, and run; the said umquhill Edward bled at the collir-bain or craig-bane, and the said ...,[80] in the hand and fingers, gushing out bluid thairat, to the great admiration of the beholders—and revelation of the judgement of the Almytie! And by which lyk occasionis and miraculous works of God, made manifest in Murders and the Murderers; whereby, be many frequent occasiones brought to light, and the Murderers, be the said proof brought to judgment, conuict and condemned, not only in this Kingdom, also this countrie, but lykwayis in maist forrin Christiane Kingdomis; and be so manie frequent precedentis and practising of and tuitching Murderis and Murdereris, notourlie known: So, the forsaid Murder and Witchcraft of the saidis persons, with the rest of their companions, through your said Husband's deed, art, part, rad,[81] and counsall, is manifest and cleir to all, not onlie through and by the foirsaid precedentis of your malice, wicked and malishes[82] practises, by Witchcraft, Confessionis, and Declarationis of the said umquill Janet Fraser, Witch, revealed to her, as said is, and quha wis desyrit by him to concur and assist with you to the doing thereof; but lykways be the declaration and revelation of the justice and judgementis of God, through the said issuing of bluid from the bodies!' &c.

A similar and very remarkable instance is related in the following Triall: In the Dittay of Christian Wilson, alias the Lanthorne,[83] accused of Murder, Witchcraft, &c., (which is founded upon the examinations of James Wilson, Abraham Macmillan, William Crichton, and Fyfe and George Erskine, &c. led before Sir William Murray of Newtoun, and other Commissioners, at Dalkeith, Jun. 14, 1661,) it is stated, that 'Ther being enimitie betuixt the said Christiane and Alexander Wilsone, her brother, and shoe having often tymes threatned him, at length, about 7 or 8 monthes since, altho' the said Alexander was sene that day of his death, at three houres afternoone, in good health, walking about his bussnesse and office; yitt, at fyve howres in that same night, he was fownd dead, lying in his owne howse, naked as he was borne, with his face torne and rent, without any appearance of a spot of blood either wpon his bodie or neigh to it. And altho' many of the neiboures in the toune (Dalkeith) come into his howse to see the dead corpe, yitt shoe newar offered to come, howbeit her dwelling was nixt adjacent thairto; nor had shoe so much as any seiming greiff for his death. Bot the Minister and Bailliffes of the towne, taking great suspitione of her, in respect of her cairiage comand it that shoe showld be browght in; bot when shoe come, shoe come trembling all the way to the howse—bot shoe refuised to come nigh the corps or to tuitch it saying, that shoe "nevir tuitched a dead corpe in her lyfe!" Bot being arnestly desyred by the Minister, Bailliffes, and hir brother's friends who was killed, that shoe wold "bot tuitch the corpes softlie," shoe granted to doe it—but before shoe did it, the Sone being shyning in at the howse, shoe exprest her selfe thus, humbly desyring, that "as the Lord made the Sone to shyne and give light into that howse, that also he wald give light to discovering of that Murder!" And with these words, shoe tuitcheing the wound of the dead man, verie saftlie, it being whyte and cleane, without any spot of blod or the lyke!—yitt imediatly, whill her fingers was wpon it, the blood rushed owt of it, to the great admiratioune[84] of all the behoulders, who tooke it for discoverie of the Murder, according to her owne prayers.—For ther was ane great lumpe of flesh taken out of his cheik, so smowthlie, as no rasor in the world cowld have made so ticht ane incisioune, wpon flesh, or cheis—and ther wes no blood at all in the wownd—nor did it at all blead, altho' that many persones befor had tuitched it, whill[85] shoe did tuitche it! And the howse being searched all over, for the shirt of the dead man, yitt it cowld not be found; and altho' the howse was full of people all that night, ever vatching the corpes;[86] neither did any of them tuitch him that night—which is probable[87]—yitt, in the morneing, his shirt was fownd tyed fast abowt his neck, as a brechame,[88] non knowing how this come to pass! And this Cristian did immediatlie transport all her owne goods owt of her own howse into her dowghter's, purposing to flie away—bot was therwpon apprehendit and imprisoned.'—Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 194.

Z a. "Master Leonard Lister."] This Leonard Lister was the brother of Master Thomas Lister, for whose murder Jennet Preston was indicted; and married Ann, daughter of —— Loftus, of Coverham Abbey, county of York.

Z 2 a. "His Lordship commanded the Iurie to obserue the particular circumstances."] The judge in this case was Altham, who seems even to have been more superstitious, bigotted, and narrow-minded than his brother in commission, Bromley. Fenner, who tried the witches of Warbois, and Archer, before whom the trial of Julian Cox took place, are the only judges I can meet with, quite on a level with this learned baron in grovelling absurdity, upon whom "Jennet Preston would lay heavy at the time of his death," whether she had so lain upon Mr. Thomas Lister or not, if bigotry, habit, and custom did not render him seared and callous to conscience and pity.

Z 3 b 1. "Take example by this Gentlemen to prosecute these hellish Furies to their end."] It is marvellous that Potts does not, like Delrio, recommend the rack to be applied to witches "in moderation, and according to the regulations of Pope Pius the Third, and so as not to cripple the criminal for life." Not that this learned Jesuit is much averse to simple dislocations occasioned by the rack. These, he thinks, cannot be avoided in the press of business. He is rather opposed, though in this he speaks doubtfully and with submission to authority, to those tortures which fracture the bones or lacerate the tendons. Verily, the Catholic and the Protestant author might have shaken hands; they were, beyond dispute, pœne Gemelli.

Z 3 b 2. "Posterities."] Master Potts, of the particulars of whose life nothing is known, made, as far as can be discovered, no further attempt to acquire fame in the character of an author. No subject so interesting probably again occurred, as that which had diversified his legal pursuits "in his lodgings in Chancery-lane," from the pleasing recollections associated with his Summer Circuit of 1612. He was not, however, the only person of the name of Pott, or Potts, who distinguished himself in the field of Witchcraft. The author of the following tract, in my possession, might have garnished it with various flowers from the work now reprinted, if he had been aware of such a repository: "Pott (Joh. Henr.) De nefando Lamiarum cum Diabolo coitu." 4to. Lond. 1689. The other celebrated cases of supposed witchcraft occurring in the county of Lancaster, besides those connected with the foregoing republication, are, the extraordinary one of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, who died at Latham in 1594, for which the reader is referred to Camden's Annals of Elizabeth, years 1593, 1594; Kennet, 2. 574, 580; or Pennant's Tour from Downing to Alston Moor, p. 29;—the case of Edmund Hartley, hanged at Lancaster in 1597, for bewitching some members of the family of Mr. Starkie, of Cleworth, which will be fully considered in the proposed republication of the Chetham Society, which gives the history of that event;—and lastly, that of a person of the name of Utley, (Whitaker, p. 528; Baines, vol. i. p. 604,) who was hanged at Lancaster about 1630, for having bewitched to death Richard, the son of Ralph Assheton, Esq., Lord of Middleton, of whose trial, unfortunately, no report is in existence. Webster also mentions two supposed witches as having been put to death at Lancaster, within eighteen years before his Displaying of supposed Witchcraft was published; and which occurrence, not referred to by any other historian, must therefore have taken place about the year 1654.

Manchester: Printed by Charles Simms and Co.