Part 3 (2/2)
Pardons and reprieves were issued to women already condemned,[26] while some attempt was made to curb popular excitement. The att.i.tude of the queen towards the celebrated John Dee was an instance in point. Dee was an eminent alchemist, astrologer, and spiritualist of his time. He has left a diary which shows us his half mystic, half scientific pursuits.
In the earlier part of Mary's reign he had been accused of attempting poison or magic against the queen and had been imprisoned and examined by the privy council and by the Star Chamber. At Elizabeth's accession he had cast the horoscope for her coronation day, and he was said to have revealed to the queen who were her enemies at foreign courts. More than once afterwards Dee was called upon by the queen to render her services when she was ill or when some mysterious design against her person was feared. While he dealt with many curious things, he had consistently refused to meddle with conjuring. Indeed he had rebuked the conjurer Hartley and had refused to help the bewitched Margaret Byrom of Cleworth in Lancas.h.i.+re. Sometime about 1590 Dee's enemies--and he had many--put in circulation stories of his success as a conjurer. It was the more easy to do, because for a long time he had been suspected by many of unlawful dealings with spirits. His position became dangerous.
He appealed to Elizabeth for protection and she gave him a.s.surance that he might push on with his studies. Throughout her life the queen continued to stand by Dee,[27] and it was not until a new sovereign came to the throne that he again came into danger. But the moral of the incident is obvious. The privy council, so nervous about the conjurers in the days of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Catholic and Spanish plots, was now resting easier and refused to be affrighted.
We have already referred to the pardons issued as one of the evidences of the more lenient policy of the government. That policy appeared too in the lessening rigor of the a.s.size judges. The first half of Elizabeth's reign had been marked by few acquittals. Nearly half the cases of which we have record in the second part resulted in the discharge of the accused. Whether the judges were taking their cue from the privy council or whether some of them were feeling the same reaction against the cruelty of the prosecutions, it is certain that there was a considerable nullifying of the force of the belief. We shall see in the chapter on Reginald Scot that his _Discoverie of Witchcraft_ was said to have ”affected the magistracy and the clergy.” It is hard to lay one's finger upon influences of this sort, but we can hardly doubt that there was some connection between Scot's brave indictment of the witch-triers and the lessening severity of court verdicts. When George Gifford, the non-conformist clergyman at Maiden, wrote his _Dialogue concerning Witches_, in which he earnestly deprecated the conviction of so many witches, he dedicated the book ”to the Right Wors.h.i.+pful Maister Robert Clarke, one of her Maiesties Barons of her Highnesse Court of the Exchequer,” and wrote that he had been ”delighted to heare and see the wise and G.o.dly course used upon the seate of justice by your wors.h.i.+p, when such have bene arraigned.” Unfortunately there is not much evidence of this kind.
One other fact must not be overlooked. A large percentage of the cases that went against the accused were in towns judicially independent of the a.s.size courts. At Faversham, at Lynn, at Yarmouth, and at Leicester[28] the local munic.i.p.al authorities were to blame for the hanging of witches. The regular a.s.size courts had nothing to do with the matter. The case at Faversham in Kent was unusual. Joan Cason was indicted for bewitching to death a three-year-old child. Eight of her neighbors, seven of them women, ”poore people,” testified against her.
The woman took up her own cause with great spirit and exposed the malicious dealings of her adversaries and also certain controversies betwixt her and them. ”But although she satisfied the bench,” says Holinshed, ”and all the jurie touching hir innocencie ... she ...
confessed that a little vermin, being of colour reddish, of stature lesse than a rat ... did ... haunt her house.” She was willing too to admit illicit relations with one Mason, whose housekeeper she had been--probably the original cause of her troubles. The jury acquitted her of witchcraft, but found her guilty of the ”invocation of evil spirits,” intending to send her to the pillory. While the mayor was admonis.h.i.+ng her, a lawyer called attention to the point that the invocation of evil spirits had been made a felony. The mayor sentenced the woman to execution. But, ”because there was no matter of invocation given in evidence against hir, ... hir execution was staied by the s.p.a.ce of three daies.” Sundry preachers tried to wring confessions from her, but to no purpose. Yet she made so G.o.dly an end, says the chronicler, that ”manie now lamented hir death which were before hir utter enimies.”[29] The case ill.u.s.trates vividly the clumsiness of munic.i.p.al court procedure. The mayor's court was unfamiliar with the law and utterly unable to avert the consequences of its own finding. In the regular a.s.size courts, Joan Cason would probably have been sentenced to four public appearances in the pillory.
The differences between the first half and the second half of Elizabeth's reign have not been deemed wide enough by the writer to justify separate treatment. The whole reign was a time when the superst.i.tion was gaining ground. Yet in the span of years from Reginald Scot to the death of Elizabeth there was enough of reaction to justify a differentiation of statistics. In both periods, and more particularly in the first, we may be sure that some of the records have been lost and that a thorough search of local archives would reveal some trials of which we have at present no knowledge. It was a time rich in mention of witch trials, but a time too when but few cases were fully described.
Scot's incidental references to the varied experiences of Sir Roger Manwood and of his uncle Sir Thomas Scot merely confirm an impression gained from the literature of the time that the witch executions were becoming, throughout the seventies and early eighties, too common to be remarkable. For the second period we have record of probably a larger percentage of all the cases. For the whole time from 1563, when the new law went into effect, down to 1603, we have records of nearly fifty executions. Of these just about two-thirds occurred in the earlier period, while of the acquittals two-thirds belong to the later period.
It would be rash to attach too much significance to these figures. As a matter of fact, the records are so incomplete that the actual totals have little if any meaning and only the proportions can be considered.[30] Yet it looks as if the forces which caused the persecution of witches in England were beginning to abate; and it may fairly be inquired whether some new factor may not have entered into the situation. It is time to speak of Reginald Scot and of the exorcists.
[1] Who from a confession made in 1579 seems to have been her sister.
See the pamphlet _A Detection of d.a.m.nable driftes, practised by three Witches arraigned at Chelmsforde in Ess.e.x at the last a.s.sizes there holden, which were executed in Aprill, 1579_ (London, 1579).
[2] _E. g._: ”I was afearde for he [the dog with horns] skypped and leaped to and fro, and satte on the toppe of a nettle.”
[3] Whether Agnes Waterhouse had a ”daggar's knife” and whether the dog had the face of an ape.
[4] An offer which indicates that he was acting as judge.
[5] She was questioned on her church habits. She claimed to be a regular attendant; she ”prayed right hartely there.” She admitted, however, that she prayed ”in laten” because Sathan would not let her pray in English.
[6] There is of course the further possibility that the pamphlet account was largely invented. A critical examination of the pamphlet tends to establish its trustworthiness. See appendix A, -- 1.
[7] Alice Chandler was probably hanged at this time. The failure to mention her name is easily explained when we remember that the pamphlet was issued in two parts, as soon as possible after the event. Alice Chandler's case probably did not come up for trial until the two parts of the pamphlet had already been published. See _A Detection of d.a.m.nable driftes_.
[8] Mother Staunton, who had apparently made some pretensions to the practice of magic, was arraigned on several charges. She had been refused her requests by several people, who had thereupon suffered some ills.
[9] It is possible that the whole affair started from the whim of a sick child, who, when she saw Elleine Smith, cried, ”Away with the witch.”
[10] A caution here. The pamphlets were hastily compiled and perhaps left out important facts.
[11] Her eight-year-old boy was probably illegitimate.
[12] Mother Waterhouse's knowledge of Latin, if that is more than the fiction of a Protestant pamphleteer, is rather remarkable.
[13] Allowance must be made for a very prejudiced reporter, _i. e._, the judge himself.
[14] These details were very probably suggested to her by the judge.
[15] Who promised her also ”favour.”
[16] The detestable methods of Justice Darcy come out in the case of a woman from whom he threatened to remove her imps if she did not confess, and by that means trapped her into the incriminating statement, ”That shal ye not.”
[17] William Hooke had heard William Newman ”bid the said Ales his wife to beate it away.” Comparable with this was the evidence of Margerie Sammon who ”sayeth that the saide widow Hunt did tell her that shee had harde the said Joan Pechey, being in her house, verie often to chide and vehemently speaking, ... and sayth that shee went in to see, ... shee founde no bodie but herselfe alone.”
[18] Reginald Scot, _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 542, says of this trial, ”In the meane time let anie man with good consideration peruse that booke published by W. W. and it shall suffice to satisfie him in all that may be required.... See whether the witnesses be not single, of what credit, s.e.x, and age they are; namelie lewd miserable and envious poore people; most of them which speake to anie purpose being old women and children of the age of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 yeares.”
[19] There can be no doubt that Brian Darcy either wrote the account himself or dictated it to ”W. W.” The frequent use of ”me,” meaning by that p.r.o.noun the judge, indicates that he was responsible.
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