Part 4 (2/2)
The a.s.sault was directed indeed against the centre of the opposing entrenchments, the belief in the continuance of miracles. Scot declared that with Christ and his apostles the age of miracles had pa.s.sed, an opinion which he supported by the authority of Calvin and of St.
Augustine. What was counted the supernatural a.s.sumed two forms--the phenomena exhibited by those whom he cla.s.sed under the wide term of ”couseners,” and the phenomena said to be exhibited by the ”poor doting women” known as witches. The tricks and deceits of the ”couseners” he was at great pains to explain. Not less than one-third of his work is given up to setting forth the methods of conjurers, card tricks, sleight-of-hand performances, illusions of magic, materializations of spirits, and the wonders of alchemy and astrology. In the range of his information about these subjects, the discoverer was encyclopedic. No current form of dabbling with the supernatural was left unexposed.
In his attack upon the phenomena of witchcraft he had a different problem. He had to deal with phenomena the so-called facts of which were not susceptible of any material explanation. The theory of a Devil who had intimate relations with human beings, who controlled them and sent them out upon maleficent errands, was in its essence a theological conception and could not be absolutely disproved by scientific observation. It was necessary instead to attack the idea on its _a priori_ grounds. This attack Scot attempted to base on the nature of spirits. Spirits and bodies, he urged, are ant.i.thetical and inconvertible, nor can any one save G.o.d give spirit a bodily form. The Devil, a something beyond our comprehension, cannot change spirit into body, nor can he himself a.s.sume a bodily form, nor has he any power save that granted him by G.o.d for vengeance. This being true, the whole belief in the Devil's intercourse with witches is undermined. Such, very briefly, were the philosophic bases of Scot's skepticism. Yet the more cogent parts of his work were those in which he denied the validity of any evidence so far offered for the existence of witches. What is witchcraft? he asked; and his answer is worth quoting. ”Witchcraft is in truth a cousening art, wherin the name of G.o.d is abused, prophaned and blasphemed, and his power attributed to a vile creature. In estimation of the vulgar people, it is a supernaturall worke, contrived betweene a corporall old woman, and a spirituall divell. The maner thereof is so secret, mysticall, and strange, that to this daie there hath never beene any credible witnes thereof.”[19] The want of credible evidence was indeed a point upon which Scot continually insisted with great force. He pictured vividly the course which a witchcraft case often ran: ”One sort of such as are said to bee witches are women which be commonly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles; ... they are leane and deformed, shewing melancholie in their faces; ... they are doting, scolds, mad, divelish.... These miserable wretches are so odious unto all their neighbors, and so feared, as few dare offend them, or denie them anie thing they aske: whereby they take upon them, yea, and sometimes thinke, that they can doo such things as are beyond the abilitie of humane nature. These go from house to house, and from doore to doore for a pot of milke, yest, drinke, pottage, or some such releefe; without the which they could hardlie live.... It falleth out many times, that neither their necessities, nor their expectation is answered.... In tract of time the witch waxeth odious and tedious to hir neighbors; ... she cursseth one, and sometimes another; and that from the maister of the house, his wife, children, cattell, etc. to the little pig that lieth in the stie.... Doubtlesse (at length) some of hir neighbours die, or fall sicke.”[20] Then they suspect her, says Scot, and grow convinced that she is the author of their mishaps. ”The witch, ... seeing things sometimes come to pa.s.se according to hir wishes, ...
being called before a Justice, ... confesseth that she hath brought such things to pa.s.se. Wherein, not onelie she, but the accuser, and also the Justice are fowlie deceived and abused.”[21] Such indeed was the epitome of many cases. The process from beginning to end was never better described; the ease with which confessions were dragged from weak-spirited women was never pictured more truly. With quite as keen insight he displayed the motives that animated witnesses and described the prejudices and fears that worked on jurors and judges. It was, indeed, upon these factors that he rested the weight of his argument for the negative.[22]
The affirmative opinion was grounded, he believed, upon the ignorance of the common people, ”a.s.sotted and bewitched” by the jesting or serious words of poets, by the inventions of ”lowd liers and couseners,” and by ”tales they have heard from old doting women, or from their mother's maids, and with whatsoever the grandfoole their ghostlie father or anie other morrow ma.s.se preest had informed them.”[23]
By the same method by which he opposed the belief in witchcraft he opposed the belief in possession by an evil spirit. The known cases, when examined, proved frauds. The instances in the New Testament he seemed inclined to explain by the a.s.sumption that possession merely meant disease.[24]
That Scot should maintain an absolute negative in the face of all strange phenomena would have been too much to expect. He seems to have believed, though not without some difficulty, that stones had in them ”certaine proper vertues which are given them of a speciall influence of the planets.” The unicorn's horn, he thought, had certain curative properties. And he had heard ”by credible report” and the affirmation of ”many grave authors” that ”the wound of a man murthered reneweth bleeding at the presence of a deere freend, or of a mortall enimie.”[25]
His credulity in these points may be disappointing to the reader who hopes to find in Scot a scientific rationalist. That, of course, he was not; and his leaning towards superst.i.tion on these points makes one ask, What did he really believe about witchcraft? When all the fraud and false testimony and self-deception were excluded, what about the remaining cases of witchcraft? Scot was very careful never to deny _in toto_ the existence of witches. That would have been to deny the Bible.
What were these witches, then? Doubtless he would have answered that he had already cla.s.sified them under two heads: they were either ”couseners” or ”poor doting women”--and by ”couseners” he seems to have meant those who used trickery and fraud. In other words, Scot distinctly implied that there were no real witches--with powers given them by the Devil. Would he have stood by this when pushed into a corner? It is just possible that he would have done so, that he understood his own implications, but hardly dared to utter a straighforward denial of the reality of witchcraft. It is more likely that he had not altogether thought himself out.
The immediate impression of Scot's book we know little about. Such contemporary comment as we have is neutral.[26] That his book was read painstakingly by every later writer on the subject, that it shortly became the great support of one party in the controversy, that King James deemed it worth while to write an answer, and that on his accession to the throne he almost certainly ordered the book to be burned by the common hangman,[27] these are better evidence than absolutely contemporary notices to show that the _Discoverie_ exerted an influence.
We cannot better suggest how radical Scot's position must have seemed to his own time than by showing the point of view of another opponent of witchcraft, George Gifford, a non-conformist clergyman.[28] He had read the _Discoverie_ and probably felt that the theological aspect of the subject had been neglected. Moreover it had probably been his fortune, as Scot's, to attend the St. Oses trials. Three years after Scot's book he brought out _A Discourse of the Subtill Practises of Devilles by Witches_, and followed it six years later by _A Dialogue concerning Witches_,[29] a book in which he expounded his opinions in somewhat more popular fas.h.i.+on. Like Scot, he wrote to end, so far as possible, the punishment of innocent women;[30] like Scot, he believed that most of the evidence presented against them was worthless.[31] But on other points he was far less radical. There were witches. He found them in the Bible.[32] To be sure they were nothing more than p.a.w.ns for the Devil. He uses them ”onely for a colour,”[33] that is, puts them forward to cover his own dealings, and then he deludes them and makes them ”beleeve things which are nothing so.”[34] In consequence they frequently at their executions falsely accuse others of dreadful witchcrafts. It is all the work of the Devil. But he himself cannot do anything except through the power of G.o.d,[35] who, sometimes for vengeance upon His enemies and sometimes to try His own people,[36]
permits the Evil One to do harm.[37]
Gifford of course never made the impression that Scot had made.[38] But he represented the more conservative position and was the first in a long line of writers who deprecated persecution while they accepted the current view as to witchcraft; and therefore he furnishes a standard by which to measure Scot, who had nothing of the conservative about him.
Scot had many readers and exerted a strong influence even upon those who disagreed with him; but he had few or none to follow in his steps. It was not until nearly a century later that there came upon the scene a man who dared to speak as Scot had spoken. Few men have been so far ahead of their time.
[1] Where George Gifford, who wrote a little later on the subject, was also a student.
[2] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, Nicholson ed., introd., x.x.xv.
[3] That at least a part of it was written in 1583 appears from his own words, where he speaks of the treatise of Leonardus Vairus on fascination as ”now this present yeare 1583 newlie published,” _ibid._, 124.
[4] Elizabeth Barton (1506-1534) suffered from a nervous derangement which developed into a religious mania. She was taught by some monks, and then professed to be in communion with the Virgin Mary and performed miracles at stated times. She denounced Henry VIII's divorce and gained wide recognition as a champion of the queen and the Catholic church. She was granted interviews by Archbishop Warham, by Thomas More, and by Wolsey. She was finally induced by Cranmer to make confession, was compelled publicly to repeat her confession in various places, and was then executed; see _Dict. Nat. Biog._
[5] Illegitimate child.
[6] That is, very probably, Alice Norrington, the mother of Mildred.
[7] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 130.
[8] _Ibid._, 132.
[9] See _The discloysing of a late counterfeyted possession by the devyl in two maydens within the Citie of London_; see also Holinshed, _Chronicles_, ed. of 1807-1808, IV, 325, and John Stow, _Annals ... of England_ (London, 1615), 678.
[10] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 258, 259.
[11] The spot she chose for concealing the token of guilt had been previously searched.
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