PREFACE. (continued 7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne Cooper was executed at Manningtree because she had three black imps, by name Wynow, Jeso, and Panu; because she gave her daughter Sarah a grey imp like a kite, and called Tomboy, telling her there was a cat for her to play with; because she cursed a colt and it broke its neck directly after; and because she sent one of her imps to kill little Mary Rous—which it did. Elizabeth Hare was condemned, but afterwards reprieved, for giving 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 7s. 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.

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.