Part 22 (1/2)
[84] See above, pp. 152-157.
[85] See above, pp. 160-162.
CHAPTER XI.
WITCHCRAFT UNDER CHARLES II AND JAMES II.
No period of English history saw a wider interest in both the theory and the practice of witchcraft than the years that followed the Restoration.
Throughout the course of the twenty-eight years that spanned the second rule of the Stuarts, the Devil manifested himself in many forms and with unusual frequency. Especially within the first half of that regime his appearances were so thrilling in character that the enemies of the new king might very well have said that the Evil One, like Charles, had come to his own again. All over the realm the witches were popping up. If the total number of trials and of executions did not foot up to the figures of James I's reign or to those of the Civil War, the alarm was nevertheless more widely distributed than ever before. In no less than twenty counties of England witches were discovered and fetched to court.
Up to this time, so far at any rate as the printed records show, the southwestern counties had been but little troubled. Now Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall were the storm centre of the panic. In the north Yorks.h.i.+re began to win for itself the reputation as a centre of activity that had long been held by Lancas.h.i.+re. Not that the witch was a new criminal in Yorks.h.i.+re courts. During the Civil Wars and the troubled years that followed the discoverers had been active. But with the reign of Charles II their zeal increased mightily. Yet, if they had never before fetched in so many ”suspected parties” to the court of the justice of the peace, they had never before been so often baffled by the outcome. Among the many such cases known to us during this time there is no mention of a conviction.[1] In Kent there was a flickering revival of the old hatred of witches. In the year that Charles gained the throne the city of Canterbury sent some women to the gibbet. Not so in Ess.e.x. In that county not a single case during this period has been left on record. In Middles.e.x, a county which from the days of Elizabeth through to the Restoration had maintained a very even pace--a stray conviction now and then among many acquittals--the reign of Charles II saw nothing more serious than some commitments and releases upon bail. In the Midland counties, where superst.i.tion had flourished in the days of James I, there were now occasional tales of possession and vague charges which rarely reached the ears of the a.s.size judges. Northampton, where an incendiary witch was sentenced, const.i.tuted the single exception. In East Anglia there was just enough stir to prove that the days of Matthew Hopkins had not been forgotten.
It needs no pointing out that a large proportion of the cases were but a repet.i.tion of earlier trials. If a difference is discernible, it is in the increased number of accusations that took their start in strange diseases called possessions. Since the close of the sixteenth century and the end of John Darrel's activities, the accounts of possession had fallen off sensibly, but the last third of the seventeenth century saw a distinct revival of this tendency to a.s.sign certain forms of disease to the operation of the Devil. We have references to many cases, but only in exceptional instances are the details given. Oliver Heywood, one of the eminent Dissenters of northern England, fasted and prayed with his co-workers over the convulsive and hysterical boys and girls in the West Riding. Nathan Dodgson was left after long fastings in ”a very sensible melting frame,”[2] but the troubles returned and led, as we shall see in another connection, to very tragic results. The Puritan clergymen do not seem, however, to have had any highly developed method of exorcism or to have looked upon cases of possession in a light very different from that in which they would have looked upon ordinary illnesses.
Among the Baptists of Yorks.h.i.+re there was a possession that roused wide comment. Mary Hall of Little Gaddesden in Hertfords.h.i.+re, daughter of a smith, was possessed in the fall of 1663 with two spirits who were said to have come to her riding down the chimney upon a stick. The spirits declared through the girl that Goodwife Harwood had sent them, and when that suspected woman was brought into the girl's presence the spirits cried out, ”Oh, Goodwife Harwood, are you come?--that is well; ... we have endeavored to choak her but cannot,” and, when Mistress Harwood left, the spirits begged to go with her.[3]
In Southwark James Barrow, the son of John Barrow, was long possessed, and neither ”doctors, astrologers, nor apothecaries” could help him. He was taken to the Catholics, but to no purpose. Finally he was cast among a ”poor dispirited people whom the Lord owned as instruments in his hand to do this great work.”[4] By the ”poor dispirited people” the Baptists were almost certainly meant.[5] By their a.s.sistance he seems to have been cured. So also was Hannah Crump of Warwick, who had been afflicted by witchcraft and put in a London hospital. Through prayer and fasting she was entirely recovered.
Mary Hall had been taken to Doctor Woodhouse of Berkhampstead, ”a man famous for curing bewitched persons.” Woodhouse's name comes up now and again in the records of his time. He was in fact a very typical specimen of the witch doctor. When Mary Hall's case had been submitted to him he had cut off the ends of her nails and ”with somewhat he added” hung them in the chimney over night before making a diagnosis.[6] He professed to find stolen goods as well and fell foul of the courts in one instance, probably because the woman who consulted him could not pay the s.h.i.+lling fee.[7] He was arraigned and spent a term in prison. No doubt many of the witch physicians knew the inside of prisons and had returned afterwards to successful practice. Redman, ”whom some say is a Conjurer, others say, He is an honest and able phisitian,” had been in prison, but nevertheless he had afterwards ”abundance of Practice” and was much talked about ”in remote parts,” all this in spite of the fact that he was ”unlearned in the languages.”[8]
Usually, of course, the witch doctor was a poor woman who was very happy to get a penny fee now and then, but who ran a greater risk of the gallows than her male compet.i.tors. Her reputation, which brought her a little money from the sick and from those who had lost valuables, made her at the same time a successful beggar. Those whom she importuned were afraid to refuse her. But she was in constant peril. If she resented ill treatment, if she gave in ill wishes as much as she took, she was sure to hear from it before a stern justice of the peace. It can hardly be doubted that a large proportion, after the Restoration as in every other period, of those finally hanged for witchcraft, had in fact made claims to skill in magic arts. Without question some of them had even traded on the fear they inspired. Not a few of the wretched creatures fetched to York castle to be tried were ”inchanters.”
Very often, indeed, a woman who was nothing more than a midwife, with some little knowledge of medicine perhaps, would easily be cla.s.sed by the public among the regular witch doctors and so come to have a bad name. Whether she lived up to her name or not--and the temptation to do so would be great--she would from that time be subject to suspicion, and might at length become a prey to the justice of the peace. Mrs. Pepper was no more than a midwife who made also certain simple medical examinations, but when one of her patients was ”strangely handled” she was taken to court.[9] Margaret Stothard was probably, so far as we can piece together her story, a woman who had been successful in calming fretful children and had so gained for herself a reputation as a witch.
Doubtless she had acquired in time a few of the charmer's tricks that enhanced her reputation and increased her practice. This was all very well until one of her patients happened to die. Then she was carried to Newcastle and would probably have suffered death, had it not been for a wise judge.[10]
These are typical cases. The would-be healer of the sick ran a risk, and it was not always alone from failure to cure. If a witch doctor found himself unable to bring relief to a patient, it was easy to suggest that some other witch doctor--and such were usually women--was bewitching the patient. There are many instances, and they are not confined to the particular period with which we are dealing, in which one ”good witch”
started the run on the other's reputation. Even the regular physician may sometimes have yielded to the temptation to crush compet.i.tion.
Of course, when all the cases are considered, only a very small part of the ”good witches” ever fell into the clutches of the law. The law prescribed very definite penalties for their operations, but in most instances no action was taken until after a long acc.u.mulation of ”suspicious circ.u.mstances,” and, even if action was taken, the chances, as we have seen, were by this time distinctly in favor of the accused.
This is not to say, by any means, that the judges and juries of England had come over to the side of the witch. The period with which we are dealing was marked by a variety of decision which betrays the perplexity of judges and juries. It is true, indeed, that out of from eighty to one hundred cases where accusations are on record less than twenty witches were hanged. This does not mean that six times out of every seven the courts were ruling against the fact of witchcraft. In the case of the six released there was no very large body of evidence against them to be considered, or perhaps no strong popular current to be stemmed. In general, it may be said that the courts were still backing up the law of James I.
To show this, it is only necessary to run over some of the leading trials of the period. We shall briefly take up four trials conducted respectively by Justice Archer, Chief Baron Hale, Justice Rainsford, and Justice Raymond.
Julian c.o.x, who was but one of the ”pestilent brood” of witches ferreted out in Somerset by the aggressive justice, Robert Hunt, was tried in 1663 at Taunton before Justice Archer.[11] The charges against her indeed excited such interest all over England, and elicited, upon the part of disbelievers, so much derision, that it will be worth our while to go over the princ.i.p.al points of evidence. The chief witness against her was a huntsman who told a strange tale. He had started a hare and chased it behind a bush. But when he came to the bush he had found Julian c.o.x there, stooped over and quite out of breath. Another witness had a strange story to tell about her. She had invited him to come up on her porch and take a pipe of tobacco with her. While he was with her, smoking, he saw a toad between his legs. On going home he had taken out a pipe and smoked again and had again seen what looked to be the same toad between his legs. ”He took the Toad out to kill it, and to his thinking cut it in several pieces, but returning to his Pipe the Toad still appeared.... At length the Toad cryed, and vanish'd.” A third witness had seen the accused fly in at her window ”in her full proportion.” This tissue of evidence was perhaps the absurdest ever used against even a witch, but the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. It is not unpleasant to know that Justice Archer met with a good deal of criticism for his part in the affair.
In the following year occurred the trials at Bury St. Edmunds, which derive their interest and importance largely from the position of the presiding judge, Sir Matthew Hale, who was at this time chief baron of the exchequer, and was later to be chief justice of the king's bench. He was allowed, according to the admission of one none too friendly to him, ”on all hands to be the most profound lawyer of his time.”[12] Hale had been a Puritan from his youth, though not of the rigid or theologically minded sort. In the Civil Wars and the events that followed he had remained non-partisan. He accepted office from Cromwell, though without doubt mildly sympathizing with the king. One of those who had a.s.sisted in recalling Charles II, he rose shortly to be chief baron of the exchequer. Famous for his careful and reasoned interpretation of law, he was to leave behind him a high reputation for his justice and for the exceptional precision of his judgments. It is not too much to say that he was one of the greatest legal figures of his century and that his decisions served in no small degree to fix the law.
We should like to know how far he had been brought into contact with the subject of witchcraft, but we can do no more than guess. His early career had been moulded in no small degree by Selden, who, as has been noted in an earlier chapter, believed in the punishment of those who claimed to be witches. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Puritans with whom he had been thrown were all of them ready to quote Scripture against the minions of Satan. We know that he had read some of the works of Henry More,[13] and, whether or not familiar with his chapters on witchcraft, would have deduced from that writer's general philosophy of spirits the particular application.
The trial concerned two women of Lowestoft, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender.
The first had been reputed a witch and a ”person of very evil behaviour.” She was in all probability related to some of those women who had suffered at the hands of Hopkins, and to that connection owed her ill name. Some six or seven years before the date of the trial she had got herself into trouble while taking care of the child of a tradesman in Lowestoft. It would seem that, contrary to the orders of the mother, she had suckled the child. The child had that same night been attacked by fits, and a witch doctor of Yarmouth, who was consulted, had prescribed for it. The reader will note that this ”suspicious circ.u.mstance” happened seven years earlier, and a large part of the evidence presented in court concerned what had occurred from five to seven years before.
We can not go into the details of a trial which abounded in curious bits of evidence. The main plot indeed was an old one. The accused woman, after she had been discharged from employment and reproved, had been heard to mutter threats, close upon which the children of those she cursed, who were now the witnesses against her, had fallen ill. Two of the children had suffered severely and were still afflicted. They had thrown up pins and even a two-penny nail. The nail, which was duly offered as an exhibit in court, had been brought to one of the children by a bee and had been forced into the child's mouth, upon which she expelled it. This narrative was on a level with the other, that flies brought crooked pins to the child. Both flies and bee, it will be understood, were the witches in other form. A similar sort of evidence was that a toad, which had been found as the result of the witch doctor's directions, had been thrown into the fire, upon which a sharp crackling noise ensued. When this incident was testified to in the court the judge interrupted to ask if after the explosion the substance of the toad was not to be seen in the fire. He was answered in the negative. On the next day Amy Duny was found to have her face and body all scorched.
She said to the witness that ”she might thank her for it.” There can be no doubt in the world that this testimony of the coincident burning of the woman and the toad was regarded as d.a.m.ning proof, nor is there any reason to believe that the court deemed it necessary to go behind the mere say-so of a single witness for the fact. Along with this sort of unsubstantial testimony there was presented a monotonous ma.s.s of spectral evidence. Apparitions of the witches were the constant occasions for the paroxysms of the children. In another connection it will be observed that this form of proof was becoming increasingly common in the last part of the seventeenth century. It can hardly be doubted that in one way or another the use of such evidence at Bury influenced other trials and more particularly the Salem cases in the New World, where great importance was attached to evidence of this sort.
The usual nauseating evidence as to the Devil's marks was introduced by the testimony of the mother of one of the children bewitched. She had been, a month before, a member of a jury of matrons appointed by a justice of the peace to examine the body of the accused. Most d.a.m.ning proof against the woman had been found. It is very hard for us to understand why Hale allowed to testify, as one of the jury of examining matrons, a woman who was at the same time mother of one of the bewitched children upon whom the prosecution largely depended.
So far the case for the prosecution had been very strong, but it was in the final experiments in court, which were expected to clinch the evidence, that a very serious mishap occurred. A bewitched child, eleven years old, had been fetched into court. With eyes closed and head reclining upon the bar she had remained quiet until one of the accused was brought up, when she at once became frantic in her effort to scratch her. This was tried again and again and in every instance produced the same result. The performance must have had telling effect. But there happened to be present at the trial three Serjeants of the law. One of them, Serjeant John Kelyng, a few years later to become chief justice of the king's bench, was ”much dissatisfied.” He urged the point that the mere fact that the children were bewitched did not establish their claim to designate the authors of their misfortune. There were others present who agreed with Kelyng in suspecting the actions of the girl on the stand. Baron Hale was induced, at length, to appoint a committee of several gentlemen, including Serjeant Kelyng, to make trial of the girl with her eyes covered. An outside party was brought up to her and touched her hand. The girl was expecting that Amy Duny would be brought up and flew into the usual paroxysms. This was what the committee had expected, and they declared their belief that the whole transaction was a mere imposture. One would have supposed that every one else must come to the same conclusion, but Mr. Pacy, the girl's father, offered an explanation of her mistake that seems to have found favor. The maid, he said, ”might be deceived by a suspicion that the Witch touched her when she did not.” One would suppose that this subtle suggestion would have broken the spell, and that Mr. Pacy would have been laughed out of court. Alas for the rarity of humor in seventeenth-century court rooms!