by Eliza Lynn Linton (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.16 #385 (08 Aug 1857).
Witchcraft in England was very much the same thing as witchcraft everywhere else. The same rites were gone through, and the same ceremonies observed; and "Little Martin," whether as a goat with a man's voice, or a man with a goat's legs, received the same homage from the English witches as he did at Blockula and at Auldearne, on Walpurgis night in Germany, and All-Hallowmas-een in Scotland. Indeed the uniformity of practice and belief was one of the most singular phenomena of this wonderful delusion; and widely different as every social habit and observance might be between (for instance) Sweden and Scotland, the customs and creed of the witch population are found to be singularly uniform. Ditches dug with their nails and filled with the blood of a black lamb; images of clay or wax "pricked to the quick;" unchristened children dug up from the grave and parted into lots for charms; perforated stones; ancient relics; herbs, chiefly poisonous or medicinal; toads and loathsome insects; strange unusual matters, such as the bones of a green frog, a cat's brains, owl's eyes and eggs, bats' wings, and so forth; these were, in all countries, more or less prominent in the alphabet of sorcery. While everywhere it was believed that witches could control the elements, command the fruits of the earth, transform themselves and others into what animals they would, bewitch by spells and muttered charms, and conjure up the devil at will; that they possessed familiars whom they nourished on their own bodies; that they denied their baptismal vows, and took on them the sacraments of the devil; that they were bound to deliver to their master a certain tale of victims, generally unborn or unchristened infants; that they could creep through keyholes; make straws and broom-handles into horses: that they were all marked on their second or infernal baptism, which mark was known by being insensible to the "pricking pin;" that while this mark was undiscovered, they had the power of denial or silence, but that on its discovery the charm was broken, and they must perforce confess—which was the meaning of the searching, pricking, and shaving practised on suspected witches; that they could not shed tears, or at best no more than three from the left eye; and that, if they were "swum," the water, being the sacred element used in Christian baptism, would reject them from its bosom and leave them floating on the surface. Such at least was the theory respecting the alleged buoyancy of witches, and the original meaning of that cruel custom. These articles of faith are to be found, with very little modification wherever witches and warlocks formed part of the social creed, and their habits and peculiarities were catalogued, credited, and made the rule of life. There were three classes of witches distinguished, like jockeys in a race, by their colours. White witches were helpful and beneficent. They charmed away diseases; they assisted tired Industry in its work, and caused stolen goods to be restored; but they were not averse to a little harmless mischief. Dryden sings:
At least as little honest as he could;
And, like white witches, mischievously good.
Black witches did nothing but harm; and gray witches capriciously did good at one time, and evil at another.
The Duchess of Gloucester, proud and dark Dame Eleanor, was among the earliest of our notable witches. After her, came Jane Shore; though, in both these instances (as with Lady Glammis and Euphemia Macalzean) so much of party and personal feeling was mixed up with the charge of witchcraft, that we can scarcely determine now, how much was real superstition and how much political enmity. The Duke of Buckingham in fifteen hundred and twenty-one, and Lord Hungerford a few years later, were also high names to be taken to the scaffold on the charge of trafficking with sorcerers; while the Maid of Kent, Mildred Norrington the Maid of Westall, and Richard Dugdale the Surrey impostor, were all cases of possession rather than of true witchcraft: though all three were afterwards confessed to be proved cheats. In fifteen hundred and ninety-three, the terrible tragedy of the Witches of Warbois was played before the world; and with that begins our record of English witchcraft, properly so called.
In the parish of Warbois lived an old man and his wife, called Samuel, with their only daughter: a young, and, as it would seem, high-spirited and courageous woman. One of the daughters of a Mr. Throgmorton, seeing Mother Samuel in a black knitted cap, and being nervous and unwell at the time, took a fancy to say that she had bewitched her; and her younger sisters, taking up the cry, there was no help for the Samuels but to brand them as malignant sorcerers. The Throgmorton children said they were haunted by nine spirits, "Pluck, Hardname, Catch, Blue, and three Smacks, cousins." One of the Smacks was in love with Miss Joan, the eldest Throgmorton girl, and fought with the others on her account. Once, he came to her from a terrible round, wherein Pluck had his head broken, Blue was set limping, and Catch had his arm in a sling; the results of Mr. Smack's zeal on behalf of his young mistress. "I wonder," says Mrs. Joan, "that you are able to beat them: you are little and they are very big." But the valiant Smack assured her that he cared not for that; he would beat the best two of them all, and his cousins would beat the other two. The Throgmorton parents were naturally anxious to free their children from this terrible visitation: more especially Mrs. Joan who, being but just fifteen, was getting no good from the addresses of her spiritual adorer. The father, therefore, dragged Dame Samuel, the sender of the spirits and the cause of all the mischief, to the house by force: and when they saw her, these lying children desired to scratch and torment her and draw her blood, as the witch-creed of the time allowed. The poor old woman was submissive enough. She only asked leave to quit the house; but otherwise she made no resistance. Not even when Lady Cromwell, her landlady, taking part with the children, tore her cap from her head, and with foul epithets and unstinted abuse cut off part of her hair to be used in a counter-charm. Lady Cromwell died a year and a day after this outrage: and this was additional proof of the wicked sorcery of Dame Samuel; who of course had killed her. Terrified out of her few poor wits, Dame Samuel was induced to repeat expressions dictated to her, which put her life in the power of those wretched girls. She was made to say to the spirit of one of them: "As I am a witch, and a causer of Lady Cromwell's death, I charge thee to come out of this maiden." As the girl gave no sign of life, being so holden by the spirit as to appear dead, the poor old woman had only confessed herself a witch without getting any credit for her skill, or any mercy because of her exorcism. At last, tortured, confused, bewildered, she made her confession, and was condemned. Her husband and daughter were condemned with her. The last was advised to put in a plea for mercy, at least for respite, by declaring that she was about to become a mother. The proud disdainful answer of that ignorant English girl, who refused to buy her life by her dishonour, may be classed among those unnoted heroisms of life which are equal in grandeur, if not in importance, to the most famous anecdotes of history. But, what the high-minded courage of the daughter refused to do, the baffled weakness of the poor old mother consented to: to gain time, in the hope that popular opinion would turn to her favour, she announced her own approaching maternity. A loud laugh rang through the court, in which the old victim herself joined; but, it was soon gravely argued that it might be so, and that if it were so, the Devil was the father. However the plea was set aside; and on the fourth of April, fifteen hundred and ninety-three, the whole family was condemned. Sir Samuel Cromwell left an annual rent-charge of forty shillings for a sermon on witchcraft to be preached every year by a D.D. or a B.D. of Queen's College, Cambridge.
In sixteen hundred and eighteen, Margaret and Philip Flower, daughters of Joan Flower, deceased, were executed at Lincoln, for having destroyed Henry Lord Rosse by witchcraft, and for having grievously tormented Francis, Earl of Rutland. It seems that Joan and her two daughters were much employed at Beavor Castle, as charwomen, and Margaret was finally taken into the house as keeper of the poultry-yard. Their good fortune raised them up a host of enemies, who, discovering that Joan was an Atheist and a witch, Margaret a thief, and Philip no better than she should be, at last so wrought on the Countess, that she turned against her former favourites, and making Margaret a small present, dismissed her from her service. Which, says the pamphlet containing the account of the whole transaction, "did turne her loue and liking toward this honourable earle and his family, into hate and rancour," and the death of one and all was decided on. Philip, in her confession, deposed that "her mother and sister maliced the Earle of Rutlande, his Countesse, and their children, because her sister Margaret was put out of the ladies seruice of Laundry, and exempted from other seruices about the house, whereupon, our said sister, by the commaundement of her mother, brought from the castle the right hand gloue of the Lord Henry Rosse, which she delivered to her mother, who presently rubbed it on the backe of her Spirit Rutterkin, and then put it into hot boyling water; afterwai'd she prick'd it often, and buried it in the yard, wishing the Lorde Rosse might neuer thriue, and so her sister Margaret continued with her mother, where she often saw the Cat Rutterkin leape on her shoulder and sucke her necke." Philip herself had a spirit like a white rat. Margaret was soon brought to confess also; there was no examination of the mother, who had died on her way to the gaol. She had two spirits, she said, and she had in very deed charmed away Lord Henry's life by means of his right hand glove. She tried the same charm on Lord Francis, but without success, beyond tormenting him with a grievous sickness; but, when she took a piece of Lady Katherine's handkerchief, and putting it into hot water, rubbed it on Rutterkin, bidding him "flye and goe, Rutterkin whined and cryed mew;" for the evil spirits had no
power over Lady Katherine to hurt her. The two women were executed, Margaret raving wildly of certain apparitions, one like an ape, with a black head, which had come to her in gaol, muttering words that she could not understand: as how indeed should she, poor raving maniac that she was!
In sixteen hundred and thirty-four, a boy called Edmund Robinson deposed that while gathering bullees (wild plums) in Pendle Forest, he saw two greyhounds, with no one following them. Liking the notion of a course, he started a hare; but the dogs refused to run: when, as he was about to strike them, Dame Dickenson, a neighbour's wife, started up instead of one hare, and a little boy instead of the other. The dame offered the lad a bribe if he would conceal the matter, but our virtuous Edmund refused, saying, "nay thou art a witch, Mother Dickenson;" whereon taking a halter out of her pocket, she shook it over the hare-boy's head, who instantly changed into a horse; and the witch mounting her human charger, took Robinson before her, and set off. They went to a large house or barn called Hourstoun, where there were several persons milking ropes; which as they milked, gave them meat ready cooked, bread, butter, milk, cheese, and all the adjuncts of a royal feast. The lad said they looked so ugly while thus milking out their dinner, that he was frightened. By many more lies, as impossible but as damnatory as this, the boy procured himself and his father a good livelihood, and caused some scores of innocent people to be carried off to prison. The magistrates and clergy adopted him; he was taken about the country to identify any hapless wretch he might choose to swear he had seen at these witch meetings; and he and his father lived at free charges, with money in their pockets besides, all the time the imposture lasted. Only Mr. Webster, Glanvil's great opponent, had the sense and courage to examine him, with the view of eliciting the truth, rather than of confirming his report; but the boy was rudely taken out of his hands. At last he confessed the truth—That he had been put up to the whole thing by his father and others; that he had never seen or heard a word of all he had deposed; and that when he swore he was at Hourstoun, he was stealing plums in a neighbour's orchard. This was the second great Lancashire witch trial; the first was in sixteen hundred and thirteen; the principal witch of this, Shadwell's Mother Demdike, died during the trial, and several of the meaner sort escaped.
And now the reign of Matthew Hopkins, witch-finder, begins. This infamous wretch was in Manningtree in sixteen hundred and forty-four, when the great witch persecution arose, and was mainly instrumental in exciting that persecution. He practised his trade as a legal profession, charging so much for every town he visited, besides his journeying expenses and the cost of his two assistants. He and John Kincaid in Scotland were the great "prickers;" that is, with a pin about three inches long, they pricked a suspected witch all over her body, until they found the mark—or said they found it—which mark was conclusive and irrefragable evidence of the Satanic compact. The following was his mode of treatment; quoting Mr. Gaul, the clergyman of Houghton; who, like Webster, was what Glanvil calls a "Sadducee," an "Atheist," and believed very sparsely in witchcraft.
"Having taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of the room, upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture, to which if she submits not she is bound with cords; there she is watched and kept without meat or sleep for four-and-twenty hours, for they say they shall, within that time, see her imp come and suck. A little hole is likewise made in the door for the imps to come in at; and, lest they should come in some less discernible shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or flies to kill them, and if they cannot kill them then they may be sure they are imps."
Such as was the familiar of Elizabeth Styles, which was seen by her watchers to settle on her poll in the form of a "large fly like a millar," or white moth. Speaking of familiars, Hopkins found several belonging to Elizabeth Clarke, whose deposition he took down, March the twenty-fifth, sixteen hundred and forty-five. She had Holt, like a white kitling; Jarmara, a fat spaniel without legs; Vinegar Tom, "a long-legged grey-hound, with a head like an oxe, with a long taile and broad eyes, who, when this Discoverer (Hopkins) spoke to, and bade him goe to the place provided for him and his angels, immediately transformed himself into the shape of a childe of foure yeares old without a heade, gaue half a dozen turnes about the house and vanished at the door." Sack-and-Sugar was like a rabbit, and Newes like a polecat: all of which imps, Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, gent., deposes on oath to having seen and spoken to. There were others of which he gives only the names: as Elemauzer, Pyewacket, Peck-in-the-Crown, Grizel Greedigut, &c. Elizabeth Clarke was executed, as a matter of course, following on the disclosures of the witchfinder respecting her imps. Ann Leech was executed the next month, chiefly because of the sudden death of Mr. Edwards' two cows and a child: also because of her possessing a grey imp. Anne Gate had four imps: James, Prickeare, Robyn, like mouses; and Sparrow, like a sparrow. For the which crime, besides their having killed divers children, she was executed at Chelmsford in that same year of sixteen hundred and forty-five. Rebecca Jones had three, like moles, having four feet apiece, but without tails and black; she shared the usual fate. Susan Cock had two, one like a mouse, called Susan, the other yellow and like a cat, called Bessie. Joyce Boanes had only one, a mouse-like imp called Rug; Rose Hallybread one, a small grey bird; while Marian Hocket had Little-man, Pretty-man, and Dainty; and Margaret Moore had twelve, all like rats. With many more in that fatal session than we can give the smallest note of. Six witches were hung in a row at Maidstone, in sixteen hundred and fifty-two; and two months after, three were hung at Faversham; but, before this, Hopkins had been seized and "swum" for a wizard, in his own manner—cross-bound—his left thumb tied to his right great toe, and his right thumb to his left great toe. From that time no more is heard of that worst and vilest of impostors, and cruelest of popular tyrants.
One of the most melancholy things connected with this delusion, was the fearful part which children, by their falsehoods and fancies, bore in it. An old woman named Jane Brooks, was executed because one Richard Jones, "a sprightly youth of twelve," cried out against her for having bewitched him and counterfeited epileptic convulsions. Elizabeth Styles, the owner of the Millar imp, was condemned chiefly on account of a girl of thirteen, who played the part of "possessed" to the life. Julian Coxe was judicially murdered because—besides its being proved that she had been hunted when in the form of a hare; that she had a toad for a familiar; that she had been seen to fly out of her window; and that she could not repeat the Lord's Prayer—she had bewitched a young maid of scrofulous tendencies and nervous excitability, who would have sworn to the first falsehood that presented itself to her imagination. And these are only three out of hundreds and thousands of instances where those miserable afflicted children, as they were called, swore away the lives of harmless and unoffending people! During the Long Parliament alone, about three thousand people were executed in England for witchcraft; about thirty thousand were executed in all.
The year after Julian's execution, Sir Matthew Hale tried and condemned Anny Dunny and Rose Callender, at Saint Edmondsbury, on evidence and for supposed offences which a child of this century would not admit. One of the charges made against the first-named witch, was the sending of a bee with a nail to a child of nine years of age, which nail the bee forced the girl to swallow; to one of eleven, she sent flies with crooked pins; once she sent a mouse, on what errand does not appear; and once the younger child ran about the house flapping her apron and crying hush! hush! saying she saw a duck. There were numerous counts against the two women, of the same character as these; without any better evidence, without any sifting of this absurd testimony, without any medical inquiry, the grave, learned, and pious Sir Matthew Hale condemned them to death by the law of the land. A woman was hanged at Exeter on no other testimony but that of a neighbour, "who deposed that he saw a cat jump into the accused person's cottage window at twilight one evening, and that he verily believed the said cat to be the devil." And another witch, lying in York gaol, had the tremendous testimony against her of a scroll of paper creeping from under the prison-door, then changing itself into a monkey, and then into a turkey. To which veracious account the under-keeper swore.
The last execution in England for witchcraft was in seventeen hundred and sixteen, when Mrs. Hicks and her little daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil; for making their neighbours vomit pins; for pulling off their own stockings to make a lather of soap, and so to raise a storm, by which a certain ship was "almost" lost, and for other impossible crimes. It was not until after seventeen hundred and fifty-one that the final abolition of James the First's detestable statute was obtained. On the thirtieth of July in that year, three men were tried for the murder of one suspected witch, and the attempted murder of another. One of the men, named Colley, was executed. The rabble cursed the authorities, and made a riot about the gallows, praising Colley for having rid their parish of a malignant witch, and holding him up as deserving of reward, not punishment. And this murder led to the abolition of the Witch Laws.
All these are histories of long ago; so long as to be almost out of cognisance as belonging to ourselves. Yet, how many weeks have passed since those letters on modern witchcraft appeared in the Times? Since some not despicable intellects among us have openly adopted all the silliness and transparent deception of the so-called spirit-rappers? Since miracles have been publicly proclaimed in certain Catholic countries? Since one journal of this country gravely argued for the truth and the reality of diabolical possession, and distinct Satanic agency, as exemplified by the popular notion of witchcraft? With such instances against us, we have little cause of self-gratulation on the score of national exemption from superstition.