Part 1 (2/2)
Certainly not until a good deal later--if negative evidence is at all trustworthy--was a clear distinction made between sorcery and witchcraft. The witches searched for by Henry IV, the professor of divinity, the friar, the clerk, and the witch of Eye, who were hurried before the Council of Henry VI, that unfortunate d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester who had to walk the streets of London, the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, the conspirators against Edward IV who were supposed to use magic, the unlucky mistress of Edward IV--none of these who through the course of two centuries were charged with magical misdeeds were, so far as we know, accused of those dreadful relations with the Devil, the nauseating details of which fill out the later narratives of witch history.
The truth seems to be that the idea of witchcraft was not very clearly defined and differentiated in the minds of ordinary Englishmen until after the beginning of legislation upon the subject. It is not impossible that there were English theologians who could have set forth the complete philosophy of the belief, but to the average mind sorcery, conjuration, enchantment, and witchcraft were but evil ways of mastering nature. All that was changed when laws were pa.s.sed. With legislation came greatly increased numbers of accusations; with accusations and executions came treatises and theory. Continental writers were consulted, and the whole system and science of the subject were soon elaborated for all who read.
With the earlier period, which has been sketched merely by way of definition, this monograph cannot attempt to deal. It limits itself to a narrative of the witch trials, and incidentally of opinion as to witchcraft, after there was definite legislation by Parliament. The statute of the fifth year of Elizabeth's reign marks a point in the history of the judicial persecution at which an account may very naturally begin. The year 1558 has been selected as the date because from the very opening of the reign which was to be signalized by the pa.s.sing of that statute and was to be characterized by a serious effort to enforce it, the persecution was preparing.
Up to that time the crime of sorcery had been dealt with in a few early instances by the common-law courts, occasionally (where politics were involved) by the privy council, but more usually, it is probable, by the church. This, indeed, may easily be ill.u.s.trated from the works of law.
Britton and Fleta include an inquiry about sorcerers as one of the articles of the sheriff's tourn. A note upon Britton, however, declares that it is for the ecclesiastical court to try such offenders and to deliver them to be put to death in the king's court, but that the king himself may proceed against them if he pleases.[5] While there is some overlapping of procedure implied by this, the confusion seems to have been yet greater in actual practice. A brief narrative of some cases prior to 1558 will ill.u.s.trate the strangely unsettled state of procedure. Pollock and Maitland relate several trials to be found in the early pleas. In 1209 one woman accused another of sorcery in the king's court and the defendant cleared herself by the ordeal. In 1279 a man accused of killing a witch who a.s.saulted him in his house was fined, but only because he had fled away. Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield and treasurer of Edward I, was accused of sorcery and homage to Satan and cleared himself with the compurgators. In 1325 more than twenty men were indicted and tried by the king's bench for murder by tormenting a waxen image. All of them were acquitted. In 1371 there was brought before the king's bench an inhabitant of Southwark who was charged with sorcery, but he was finally discharged on swearing that he would never be a sorcerer.[6]
It will be observed that these early cases were all of them tried in the secular courts; but there is no reason to doubt that the ecclesiastical courts were quite as active, and their zeal must have been quickened by the statute of 1401, which in cases of heresy made the lay power their executioner. It was at nearly the same time, however, that the charge of sorcery began to be frequently used as a political weapon. In such cases, of course, the accused was usually a person of influence and the matter was tried in the council. It will be seen, then, that the crime was one that might fall either under ecclesiastical or conciliar jurisdiction and the particular circ.u.mstances usually determined finally the jurisdiction. When Henry IV was informed that the diocese of Lincoln was full of sorcerers, magicians, enchanters, necromancers, diviners, and soothsayers, he sent a letter to the bishop requiring him to search for sorcerers and to commit them to prison after conviction, or even before, if it should seem expedient.[7] This was entrusting the matter to the church, but the order was given by authority of the king, not improbably after the matter had been discussed in the council. In the reign of Henry VI conciliar and ecclesiastical authorities both took part at different times and in different ways. Thomas Northfield, a member of the Order of Preachers in Worcester and a professor of divinity, was brought before the council, together with all suspected matter belonging to him, and especially his books treating of sorcery.
Pike does not tell us the outcome.[8] In the same year there were summoned before the council three humbler sorcerers, Margery Jourdemain, John Virley, a cleric, and John Ashwell, a friar of the Order of the Holy Cross. It would be hard to say whether the three were in any way connected with political intrigue. It is possible that they were suspected of sorcery against the sovereign. They were all, however, dismissed on giving security.[9] It was only a few years after this instance of conciliar jurisdiction that a much more important case was turned over to the clergy. The story of Eleanor Cobham, d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, is a familiar one. It was determined by the enemies of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester to attack him through his wife, who was believed to be influential with the young king. The first move was made by arresting a Roger Bolingbroke who had been connected with the duke and the d.u.c.h.ess, and who was said to be an astronomer or necromancer. It was declared that he had cast the d.u.c.h.ess's horoscope with a view to ascertaining her chances to the throne. Bolingbroke made confession, and Eleanor was then brought before ”certayne bisshoppis of the kyngis.” In the mean time several lords, members of the privy council, were authorized to ”enquire of al maner tresons, sorcery, and alle othir thyngis that myghte in eny wise ... concerne harmfulli the kyngis persone.”[10] Bolingbroke and a clergyman, Thomas Southwell, were indicted of treason with the d.u.c.h.ess as accessory. With them was accused that Margery Jourdemain who had been released ten years before. Eleanor was then reexamined before the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Norwich, she was condemned as guilty, and required to walk barefoot through the streets of London, which she ”dede righte mekely.” The rest of her life she spent in a northern prison. Bolingbroke was executed as a traitor, and Margery Jourdemain was burnt at Smithfield.[11]
The case of the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford--another instance of the connection between sorcery and political intrigue--fell naturally into the hands of the council. It was believed by those who could understand in no other way the king's infatuation that he had been bewitched by the mother of the queen. The story was whispered from ear to ear until the d.u.c.h.ess got wind of it and complained to the council against her maligners. The council declared her cleared of suspicion and ordered that the decision should be ”enacted of record.”[12]
The charge of sorcery brought by the protector Richard of Gloucester against Jane Sh.o.r.e, who had been the mistress of Edward IV, never came to trial and in consequence ill.u.s.trates neither ecclesiastical nor conciliar jurisdiction. It is worthy of note however that the accusation was preferred by the protector--who was soon to be Richard III--in the council chamber.[13]
It will be seen that these cases prove very little as to procedure in the matter of sorcery and witchcraft. They are cases that arose in a disturbed period and that concerned chiefly people of note. That they were tried before the bishops or before the privy council does not mean that all such charges were brought into those courts. There must have been less important cases that were never brought before the council or the great ecclesiastical courts. It seems probable--to reason backward from later practice--that less important trials were conducted almost exclusively by the minor church courts.[14]
This would at first lead us to suspect that, when the state finally began to legislate against witchcraft by statute, it was endeavoring to wrest jurisdiction of the crime out of the hands of the church and to put it into secular hands. Such a supposition, however, there is nothing to justify. It seems probable, on the contrary, that the statute enacted in the reign of Henry VIII was pa.s.sed rather to support the church in its struggle against sorcery and witchcraft than to limit its jurisdiction in the matter. It was to a.s.sist in checking these pract.i.tioners that the state stepped in. At another point in this chapter we shall have occasion to note the great interest in sorcery and all kindred subjects that was springing up over England, and we shall at times observe some of the manifestations of this interest as well as some of the causes for it. Here it is necessary only to urge the importance of this interest as accounting for the pa.s.sage of a statute.[15]
Chapter VIII of 33 Henry VIII states its purpose clearly: ”Where,”
reads the preamble, ”dyvers and sundrie persones unlawfully have devised and practised Invocacions and conjuracions of Sprites, pretendyng by suche meanes to understande and get Knowlege for their owne lucre in what place treasure of golde and Silver shulde or mought be founde or had ... and also have used and occupied wichecraftes, inchauntmentes and sorceries to the distruccion of their neighbours persones and goodes.” A description was given of the methods practised, and it was enacted that the use of any invocation or conjuration of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries should be considered felony.[16] It will be observed that the law made no graduation of offences. Everything was listed as felony. No later piece of legislation on the subject was so sweeping in its severity.
The law remained on the statute-book only six years. In the early part of the reign of Edward VI, when the protector Somerset was in power, a policy of great leniency in respect to felonies was proposed. In December of 1547 a bill was introduced into Parliament to repeal certain statutes for treason and felony. ”This bill being a matter of great concern to every subject, a committee was appointed, consisting of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the lord chancellor, the lord chamberlain, the Marquis of Dorset, the Earls of Shrewsbury and Southampton, the Bishops of Ely, Lincoln, and Worcester, the Lords Cobham, Clinton, and Wentworth, with certain of the king's learned council; all which n.o.blemen were appointed to meet a committee of the Commons ... in order to treat and commune on the purport of the said bill.”[17] The Commons, it seems, had already prepared a bill of their own, but this they were willing to drop and the Lords' measure with some amendments was finally pa.s.sed. It was under this wide repeal of felonies that chapter VIII of 33 Henry VIII was finally annulled. Whether the question of witchcraft came up for special consideration or not, we are not informed. We do know that the Bishops of London, Durham, Ely, Hereford, and Chichester, took exception to some amendments that were inserted in the act of repeal,[18] and it is not impossible that they were opposed to repealing the act against witchcraft. Certainly there is no reason to suppose that the church was resisting the encroachment of the state in the subject.
As a matter of fact it is probable that, in the general question of repeal of felonies, the question of witchcraft received scant attention. There is indeed an interesting story that seems to point in that direction and that deserves repeating also as an ill.u.s.tration of the protector's att.i.tude towards the question. Edward Underhill gives the narrative in his autobiography: ”When we hade dyned, the maior sentt to [two] off his offycers with me to seke Alene; whome we mett withalle in Poles, and toke hym with us unto his chamber, wheare we founde fygures sett to calke the nativetie off the kynge, and a jugementt gevyne off his deathe, wheroff this folyshe wreche thoughte hymselfe so sure thatt he and his conselars the papistes bruted it all over. The kynge laye att Hamtone courte the same tyme, and me lord protector at the Syone; unto whome I caryed this Alen, with his bokes off conejuracyons, cearkles, and many thynges beloungynge to thatt dyvlyshe art, wiche he affyrmed before me lorde was a lawfulle cyens [science], for the statute agaynst souche was repealed. 'Thow folyshe knave! (sayde me lorde) yff thou and all thatt be off thy cyens telle me what I shalle do to-morow, I wylle geve the alle thatt I have'; commaundynge me to cary hym unto the Tower.” Alen was examined about his science and it was discovered that he was ”a very unlearned a.s.se, and a sorcerer, for the wiche he was worthye hangynge, sayde Mr. Recorde.” He was however kept in the Tower ”about the s.p.a.ce off a yere, and then by frends.h.i.+pe delyvered. So scapithe alwayes the weked.”[19]
But the wicked were not long to escape. The beginning of Elizabeth's reign saw a serious and successful effort to put on the statute-book definite and severe penalties for conjuration, sorcery, witchcraft, and related crimes. The question was taken up in the very first year of the new reign and a bill was draughted.[20] It was not, however, until 1563 that the statute was finally pa.s.sed. It was then enacted that those who ”shall use, practise, or exercise any Witchecrafte, Enchantment, Charme or Sorcerie, whereby any person shall happen to bee killed or destroyed, ... their Concellors and Aidours, ... shall suffer paynes of Deathe as a Felon or Felons.” It was further declared that those by whose practices any person was wasted, consumed, or lamed, should suffer for the first offence one year's imprisonment and should be put in the pillory four times. For the second offence death was the penalty. It was further provided that those who by witchcraft presumed to discover treasure or to find stolen property or to ”provoke any person to unlawfull love”
should suffer a year's imprisonment and four appearances in the pillory.
With this law the history of the prosecution of witchcraft in England as a secular crime may well begin. The question naturally arises, What was the occasion of this law? How did it happen that just at this particular time so drastic a measure was pa.s.sed and put into operation? Fortunately part of the evidence exists upon which to frame an answer. The English churchmen who had been driven out of England during the Marian persecution had many of them sojourned in Zurich and Geneva, where the extirpation of witches was in full progress, and had talked over the matter with eminent Continental theologians. With the accession of Elizabeth these men returned to England in force and became prominent in church and state, many of them receiving bishoprics. It is not possible to show that they all were influential in putting through the statute of the fifth year of Elizabeth. It is clear that one of them spoke out plainly on the subject. It can hardly be doubted that he represented the opinions of many other ecclesiastics who had come under the same influences during their exile.[21] John Jewel was an Anglican of Calvinistic sympathies who on his return to England at Elizabeth's accession had been appointed Bishop of Salisbury. Within a short time he came to occupy a prominent position in the court. He preached before the Queen and accompanied her on a visit to Oxford. It was in the course of one of his first sermons--somewhere between November of 1559 and March of 1560[22]--that he laid before her his convictions on witchcraft. It is, he tells her, ”the horrible using of your poor subjects,” that forces him to speak. ”This kind of people (I mean witches and sorcerers) within these few last years are marvellously increased within this your grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore, your poor subjects' most humble pet.i.tion unto your highness is, that the laws touching such malefactors may be put in due execution.”
The church historian, Strype, conjectures that this sermon was the cause of the law pa.s.sed in the fifth year of Elizabeth's reign, by which witchcraft was again made a felony, as it had been in the reign of Henry VIII.[23] Whatever weight we may attach to Strype's suggestion, we have every right to believe that Jewel introduced foreign opinion on witchcraft. Very probably there were many returned exiles as well as others who brought back word of the crusade on the Continent; but Jewel's words put the matter formally before the queen and her government.[24]
We can trace the effect of the ecclesiastic's appeal still further. The impression produced by it was responsible probably not only for the pa.s.sage of the law but also for the issue of commissions to the justices of the peace to apprehend all the witches they were able to find in their jurisdictions.[25]
It can hardly be doubted that the impression produced by the bishop's sermon serves in part to explain the beginning of the state's attack upon witches. Yet one naturally inquires after some other factor in the problem. Is it not likely that there were in England itself certain peculiar conditions, certain special circ.u.mstances, that served to forward the attack? To answer that query, we must recall the situation in England when Elizabeth took the throne. Elizabeth was a Protestant, and her accession meant the relinquishment of the Catholic hold upon England. But it was not long before the claims of Mary, Queen of Scots, began to give the English ministers bad dreams. Catholic and Spanish plots against the life of Elizabeth kept the government detectives on the lookout. Perhaps because it was deemed the hardest to circ.u.mvent, the use of conjuration against the life of the queen was most feared.
It was a method too that appealed to conspirators, who never questioned its efficacy, and who antic.i.p.ated little risk of discovery.
To understand why the English government should have been so alarmed at the efforts of the conjurers, we shall have to go back to the half-century that preceded the reign of the great queen and review briefly the rise of those curious traders in mystery. The earlier half of the fifteenth century, when the witch fires were already lighted in South Germany, saw the coming of conjurers in England. Their numbers soon evidenced a growing interest in the supernatural upon the part of the English and foreshadowed the growing faith in witchcraft. From the scattered local records the facts have been pieced together to show that here and there professors of magic powers were beginning to get a hearing. As they first appear upon the scene, the conjurers may be grouped in two cla.s.ses, the position seekers and the treasure seekers.
To the first belong those who used incantations and charms to win the favor of the powerful, and so to gain advancement for themselves or for their clients.[26] It was a time when there was every encouragement to try these means. Men like Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell had risen from humble rank to the highest places in the state. Their careers seemed inexplicable, if not uncanny. It was easy to believe that unfair and unlawful practices had been used. What had been done before could be done again. So the dealers in magic may have reasoned. At all events, whatever their mental operations, they experimented with charms which were to gain the favor of the great, and some of their operations came to the ears of the court.
The treasure seekers[27] were more numerous. Every now and then in the course of English history treasures have been unearthed, many of them buried in Roman times. Stories of lucky finds had of course gained wide circulation. Here was the opportunity of the bankrupt adventurer and the stranded promoter. The treasures could be found by the science of magic.
The notion was closely akin to the still current idea that wells can be located by the use of hazel wands. But none of the conjurers--and this seems a curious fact to one familiar with the English stories of the supernatural--ever lit upon the desired treasure. Their efforts hardly aroused public interest, least of all alarm. Experimenters, who fifty years later would have been hurried before the privy council, were allowed to conjure and dig as they pleased. Henry VIII even sold the right in one locality, and sold it at a price which showed how lightly he regarded it.[28]
Other forms of magic were of course practiced. By the time that Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, it is safe to say that the practice of forbidden arts had become wide-spread in England. Reginald Scot a little later declared that every parish was full of men and women who claimed to work miracles.[29] Most of them were women, and their performances read like those of the gipsy fortune-tellers today.
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