To put it in a nutshell, England was in a state of judicial anarchy.[107] Local authorities were in control. But local authorities had too often been against witches. The coming of Hopkins and Stearne gave them their chance, and there was no one to say stop.

This explanation fits in well with the fact, to which we shall advert in another chapter, that no small proportion of English witch trials took place in towns possessing separate rights of jurisdiction. This was especially true in the seventeenth century. The cases in Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick, and Canterbury, are all instances in point. Indeed, the solitary prosecution in Hopkins's own time in which he had no hand was in one of those towns, Faversham in Kent. There the mayor and "local jurators" sent not less than three to the gallows.[108]

One other aspect of the Hopkins crusade deserves further attention. It has been shown in the course of the chapter that the practice of torture was in evidence again and again during this period. The methods were peculiarly harrowing. At the same time they were methods which the rationale of the witch belief justified. The theory need hardly be repeated. It was believed that the witches, bound by a pact with the Devil, made use of spirits that took animal forms. These imps, as they were called, were accustomed to visit their mistress once in twenty-four hours. If the witch, said her persecutors, could be put naked upon a chair in the middle of the room and kept awake, the imps could not approach her. Herein lay the supposed reasonableness of the methods in vogue. And the authorities who were offering this excuse for their use of torture were not loth to go further. It was, they said, necessary to walk the creatures in order to keep them awake. It was soon discovered that the enforced sleeplessness and the walking would after two or three days and nights produce confessions. Stearne himself describes the matter graphically: "For the watching," he writes, "it is not to use violence or extremity to force them to confesse, but onely the keeping is, first, to see whether any of their spirits or familiars come to or neere them; for I have found that if the time be come, the spirit or Impe so called should come, it will be either visible or invisible, if visible, then it may be discerned by those in the Roome, if invisible, then by the party. Secondly, it is for this end also, that if the parties which watch them, be so carefull that none come visible nor invisible but that may be discerned, if they follow their directions then the party presently after the time their Familiars should have come, if they faile, will presently confesse, for then they thinke they will either come no more or have forsaken them. Thirdly it is also to the end, that Godly Divines and others might discourse with them, for if any of their society come to them to discourse with them, they will never confesse.... But if honest godly people discourse with them, laying the hainousnesse of their sins to them, and in what condition they are in without Repentance, and telling them the subtilties of the Devil, and the mercies of God, these ways will bring them to Confession without extremity, it will make them break into confession hoping for mercy."[109]

Hopkins tells us more about the walking of the witches. In answer to the objection that the accused were "extraordinarily walked till their feet were blistered, and so forced through that cruelty to confesse," "he answered that the purpose was only to keepe them waking: and the reason was this, when they did lye or sit in a chaire, if they did offer to couch downe, then the watchers were only to desire them to sit up and walke about."

Now, the inference might be drawn from these descriptions that the use of torture was a new feature of the witchcraft persecutions characteristic of the Civil War period. There is little evidence that before that time such methods were in use. A schoolmaster who was supposed to have used magic against James I had been put to the rack. There were other cases in which it is conjectured that the method may have been tried. There is, however, little if any proof of such trial.

Such an inference would, however, be altogether unjustified. The absence of evidence of the use of torture by no means establishes the absence of the practice. It may rather be said that the evidence of the practice we possess in the Hopkins cases is of such a sort as to lead us to suspect that it was frequently resorted to. If for these cases we had only such evidence as in most previous cases has made up our entire sum of information, we should know nothing of the terrible sufferings undergone by the poor creatures of Chelmsford and Bury. The confessions are given in full, as in the accounts of other trials, but no word is said of the causes that led to them. The difference between these cases of 1645 and other cases is this, that Hopkins and Stearne accused so large a body of witches that they stirred up opposition. It is through those who opposed them and their own replies that we learn about the tortures inflicted upon the supposed agents of the Devil.

The significance of this cannot be insisted upon too strongly. A chance has preserved for us the fact of the tortures of this time. It is altogether possible—it is almost probable—that, if we had all the facts, we should find that similar or equally severe methods had been practised in many other witch cases.

We have been very minute in our descriptions of the Hopkins crusade, and by no means brief in our attempt to account for it. But it is safe to say that it is easily the most important episode in that series of episodes which makes up the history of English witchcraft. None of them belong, of course, in the larger progress of historical events. It may seem to some that we have magnified the point at which they touched the wider interests of the time. Let it not be forgotten that Hopkins was a factor in his day and that, however little he may have affected the larger issues of the times, he was affected by them. It was only the unusual conditions produced by the Civil Wars that made the great witchfinder possible.

[1] See J. O. Jones, "Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder," in Thomas Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men (London, 1894).

[2] See Notes and Queries, 1854, II, 285, where a quotation from a parish register of Mistley-cum-Manningtree is given: "Matthew Hopkins, son of Mr. James Hopkins, Minister of Wenham, was buried at Mistley August 12, 1647." See also John Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, 61 (cited hereafter as "Stearne").

[3] Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Advance of Money, 1642-1656, I, 457. Cf. Notes and Queries, 1850, II, 413.

[4] The oft-repeated statement that he had been given a commission by Parliament to detect witches seems to rest only on the mocking words of Butler's Hudibras:

"Hath not this present Parliament A Ledger to the Devil sent, Fully empower'd to treat about Finding revolted Witches out?"

(Hudibras, pt. ii, canto 3.)

To these lines an early editor added the note: "The Witch-finder in Suffolk, who in the Presbyterian Times had a Commission to discover Witches." But he names no authority, and none can be found. It is probably a confusion with the Commission appointed for the trial of the witches in Suffolk (see below, p. 178). Even his use of the title "witch-finder-general" is very doubtful. "Witch-finder" he calls himself in his book; only the frontispiece has "Witch Finder Generall." Nor is this title given him by Stearne, Gaule, or any contemporary record. It is perhaps only a misunderstanding of the phrase of Hopkins's title-page, "for the benefit of the whole kingdome"—a phrase which, as the punctuation shows, describes, not the witch-finder, but his book. Yet in County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc., 1893), 178, there is an extract about John Lowes from a Brandeston MS.: "His chief accuser was one Hopkins, who called himself Witchfinder-General." But this is of uncertain date, and may rest on Hutchinson.

[5] This is evident enough from his incessant use of Scripture and from the Calvinistic stamp of his theology; but he leaves us no doubt when (p. 54) he describes the Puritan Fairclough as "an able Orthodox Divine."

[6] Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches (London, 1647), 2—cited hereafter as "Hopkins."

[7] One of them was Sir Harbottle Grimston, a baronet of Puritan ancestry, who had been active in the Long Parliament, but who as a "moderate man" fell now somewhat into the background. The other was Sir Thomas Bowes. Both figure a little later as Presbyterian elders.

[8] Hopkins, 3.

[9] Hopkins, 2; Stearne, 14-16.

[10] It must, however, be noted that the oaths of the four women are put together, and that one of the men deposed merely that he confirmed Stearne's particulars.

[11] Although Hopkins omitted in his testimony the first animal seen by Stearne. He mentioned it later, calling it Holt. Stearne called it Lought. See Hopkins, 2; Stearne, 15. But Stearne calls it Hoult in his testimony as reproduced in the True and exact Relation of the severall Informations, Examinations and Confessions of the Late Witches ... at Chelmesford ... (London, 1645), 3-4.

[12] Despite this record Anne West is described by Stearne (p. 39) as one of the very religious people who make an outward show "as if they had been Saints on earth."

[13] The confession of Rebecca West is indeed dated "21" March 1645, the very day of Elizabeth Clarke's arrest; but all the context suggests that this is an error. In spite of her confessions, which were of the most damaging, Rebecca West was eventually acquitted.

[14] It must not for a moment, however, be forgotten that these confessions had been wrung from tortured creatures.

[15] Richard Carter and Henry Cornwall had testified that Margaret Moone confessed to them. Probably she did, as she was doubtless at that time under torture.

[16] The evidence offered against her well suggests on what slender grounds a witch might be accused. "This Informant saith that the house where this Informante and the said Mary did dwell together, was haunted with a Leveret, which did usually sit before the dore: And this Informant knowing that one Anthony Shalock had an excellent Greyhound that had killed many Hares; and having heard that a childe of the said Anthony was much haunted and troubled, and that the mother of the childe suspected the said Mary to be the cause of it: This Informant went to the said Anthony Shalock and acquainted him that a Leveret did usually come and sit before the dore, where this Informant and the said Mary Greenleife lived, and desired the said Anthony to bring downe his Greyhound to see if he could kill the said Leveret; and the next day the said Anthony did accordingly bring his Greyhound, and coursed it, but whether the dog killed it this Informant knows not: But being a little before coursed by Good-man Merrils dog, the dog ran at it, but the Leveret never stirred, and just when the dog came at it, he skipped over it, and turned about and stood still, and looked on it, and shortly after that dog languished and dyed."

[17] See Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs ... (London, 1682; Oxford, 1853), ed. of 1853, I, 501.

[18] "H. F."'s publication is the True and exact Relation cited above (note 11). He seems to have written it in the last of May, but inserted verdicts later in the margin. Arthur Wilson, who was present, says that 18 were executed; Francis Peck, Desiderata Curiosa (London, 1732-1735; 1779), ed. of 1779, II, 476. But Hopkins writes that 29 were condemned at once and Stearne says about 28; quite possibly there were two trials at Chelmsford. There is only one other supposition, i. e., that Hopkins and Stearne confused the number originally accused with the number hanged. For further discussion of the somewhat conflicting evidence as to the number of these Essex witches and the dates of their trial see appendix C, under 1645.

[19] A Diary or an Exact Journall, July 24-31, 1645, pp. 5-6.

[20] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches at St. Edmundsbury ... (London, 1645), 9.

[21] Ibid., 6.

[22] Ibid.

[23] John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts (London, 1646), 78, 79.

[24] Queries 8 and 9 answered by Hopkins to the Norfolk assizes confirm Gaule's description. See Hopkins, 5. "Query 8. When these ... are fully discovered, yet that will not serve sufficiently to convict them, but they must be tortured and kept from sleep two or three nights, to distract them, and make them say anything; which is a way to tame a wilde Colt, or Hawke." "Query 9. Beside that unreasonable watching, they were extraordinarily walked, till their feet were blistered, and so forced through that cruelty to confess." Hopkins himself admitted the keeping of Elizabeth Clarke from sleep, but is careful to insert "upon command from the Justice." Hopkins, 2-3. On p. 5 he again refers to this point. Stearne, 61, uses the phrase "with consent of the justices."

[25] Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, Proceedings, X, 378. Baxter seems to have started the notion that Lowes was a "reading parson," or Anglican.

[26] Ibid.

[27] See A Magazine of Scandall, or a heape of wickednesse of two infamous Ministers (London, 1642), where there is a deposition, dated August 4, 1641, that Lowes had been twice indicted and once arraigned for witchcraft, and convicted by law as "a common Barrettor" at the assizes in Suffolk. Stearne, 23, says he was charged as a "common imbarritor" over thirty years before.

[28] This account of the torture is given, in a letter to Hutchinson, by a Mr. Rivet, who had "heard it from them that watched with him." It is in some measure confirmed by the MS. history of Brandeston quoted in County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc.), 178, which adds the above-quoted testimony as to his litigiousness.

[29] Stearne, 24.

[30] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches, 5; Moderate Intelligencer, September 4-11, 1645.

[31] See Samuel Clarke, Lives of sundry Eminent Persons ... (London, 1683), 172. In writing the life of Samuel Fairclough, Clarke used Fairclough's papers; see ibid., 163.

[32] Fairclough was a Non-Conformist, but not actively sympathetic with Presbyterianism. Calamy was counted a Presbyterian.

[33] Hopkins, 5-6; Stearne, 18.

[34] One of these was Lowes.

[35] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches.

[36] Stearne, 14.

[37] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches, 5.

[38] Ibid.; Stearne, 25.

[39] Hutchinson speaks of repeated sessions. Stearne, 25, says: "by reason of an Allarum at Cambridge, the gaol delivery at Burie St. Edmunds was adjourned for about three weeks." As a matter of fact, the king's forces seem not to have got farther east than Bedford and Cambridge. See Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 501.

[40] Stearne, 11, speaks of 68 condemnations. On p. 14 he tells of 18 who were executed at Bury, but this may have referred to the first group only. A MS. history of Brandeston quoted in County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc.), 178, says that Lowes was executed with 59 more. It is not altogether certain, however, that this testimony is independent. Nevertheless, it contains pieces of information not in the other accounts, and so cannot be ignored.

[41] Moderate Intelligencer, September 4-11, 1645.

[42] Howell, Familiar Letters (I use the ed. of Joseph Jacobs, London 1890-1892) II, 506, 515, 551. The letters quoted are dated as of Feb., 1646 (1647), and Feb., 1647 (1648 of our calendar); but, as is well known, Howell's dates cannot be trusted. The first was printed in the volume of his letters published in 1647, the others in that published in 1650.

[43] Joseph Hall, Soliloquies (London, 1651), 52-53.

[44] Thomas Ady, Candle in the Dark (London, 1656), 101-105.

[45] The Rev. John Worthington attended the trial. In mentioning it in his diary, he made no comment. Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington, I (Chetham Soc., no. 13, 1847), 22.

[46] So, at least, says Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 487.

[47] J. G. Nall, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft (London, 1867), 92, note, quotes from the Yarmouth assembly book. Nall makes very careless statements, but his quotations from the assembly book may be depended upon.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, IX, pt. i, 320.

[50] The Collection of Modern Relations says that sixteen were hanged, but this compilation was published forty-seven years after the events: the number 6 had been changed to 16. One witch seems to have suffered later, see Stearne, 53. The statement about the 16 witches hanged at Yarmouth may be found in practically all accounts of English witchcraft, e. g., see the recent essay on Hopkins by J. O. Jones, in Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men, 60. They can all be traced back through various lines to this source.

[51] H. Manship, History of Great Yarmouth, continued by C. J. Palmer (Great Yarmouth, 1854-1856), where the Yarmouth records about Hopkins are given in full. See also H. Harrod, in Norfolk Archaeology (Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Soc., 1847-1864), IV, 249.

[52] The Lawes against Witches and Conjuration ... (London, 1645), 4. J. O. Jones, in his account of Hopkins, loc. cit., says that "many were hanged or burned in Ipswich." I believe that no authority can be cited for this statement.

[53] The first is in, A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches, 5. We of course do not know that the sentence was carried out.

[54] The master of a ship had been "sutor" for her grandchild; The Lawes against Witches, 8. She was a "professour of Religion, a constant hearer of the Word for these many years."

[55] Ibid.

[56] I. e., The Lawes against Witches (London, 1645). See below, appendix A, Sec. 4.

[57] N. F. Hele, Notes or Jottings about Aldeburgh (Ipswich, 1890), 43-44.

[58] This was doubtless the fee to the executioner. Mr. Richard Browne and Mr. Newgate, who were either the justices of the peace or the local magistrates, received L4 apiece for their services in trying the witches.

[59] A. G. Hollingsworth, History of Stowmarket (Ipswich, 1844), 170.

[60] For a list of these towns, see below, appendix C, under 1645, Suffolk.

[61] Stearne, 45, two instances.

[62] Ibid., 37, 39, 45.

[63] Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 135.

[64] Stearne, 39.

[65] His whole confession reads like the utterance of a tortured man.

[66] He had previously been found with a rope around his neck. This was of course attributed to witchcraft. Stearne, 35.

[67] Ibid., 11.

[68] John Wynnick and Joane Wallis made effective confessions. The first, when in the heat of passion at the loss of a purse, had signed his soul away (Stearne, 20-21; see also the pamphlet, the dedication of which is signed by John Davenport, entitled, The Witches of Huntingdon, their Examinations and Confessions ... London, 1646, 3). The latter maintained a troop of imps, among whom Blackeman, Grissell, and Greedigut figured most prominently. The half-witted creature could not recall the names on the repetition of her confessions, but this failing does not seem to have awakened any doubt of her guilt. Stearne could not avoid noticing that some of those who suffered were very religious. One woman, who had kept an imp for twenty-one years, "did resort to church and had a desire to be rid of her unhappy burden."

[69] I. e., witches.

[70] This letter is printed by Gaule at the opening of his Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts.

[71] Stearne, 11; cf. below, appendix C, 1646 (pp. 405-406).

[72] That it was done by the justices of the peace is a probable conclusion from Stearne's language. See his account of Joane Wallis, p. 13, also his account of John Wynnick, pp. 20-21. That the examinations were in March and April (see John Davenport's account, The Witches of Huntingdon) and the executions in May is a fact confirmatory of this; see Stearne, 11. But it is more to the point that John Davenport dedicates his pamphlet to the justices of the peace for the county of Huntingdon, and says: "You were present, and Judges at the Tryall and Conviction of them."

[73] The swimming ordeal was perhaps unofficial; see Stearne, 19. Another case was that of Elizabeth Chandler, who was "duckt"; Witches of Huntingdon, 8.

[74] Tilbrooke-bushes, Stearne, 11; Risden, ibid., 31.

[75] This may be inferred from Stearne's words: "but afterward I heard that she made a very large confession," ibid., 31.

[76] Thomas Wright, John Ashton, J. O. Jones, and the other writers who have dealt with Hopkins, speak of the Worcester trials, in 1647, in which four women are said to have been hanged. Their statements are all based upon a pamphlet, The Full Tryals, Examination, and Condemnation of Four Notorious Witches at the Assizes held at Worcester on Tuseday the 4th of March.... Printed for I. W. What seems to have been the first edition of this brochure bears no date. In 1700 another edition was printed for "J. M." in Fleet Street. Some writer on witchcraft gained the notion that this pamphlet belonged in the year 1647 and dealt with events in that year. Wright, John Ashton, and W. H. Davenport Adams (Witch, Warlock, and Magician, London, 1889), all accept this date. An examination of the pamphlet shows that it was cleverly put together from the True and Exact Relation of 1645. The four accused bear the names of four of those accused at Chelmsford, and make, with a few differences, the same confessions. See below, appendix A, Sec. 4, for a further discussion of this pamphlet. It is strange that so careful a student as Thomas Wright should have been deceived by this pamphlet, especially since he noticed that the confessions were "imitations" of those in Essex.

[77] A. Gibbons, ed., Ely Episcopal Records (Lincoln, 1891), 112-113.

[78] Stearne, 37.

[79] That there were assizes is proved by the statement that "Moore's wife" confessed before the "Judge, Bench, and Country," ibid., 21-22, as well as by the reference in the Ely Episcopal Records, 113, to the "assizes."

[80] Stearne, 17, 21-22.

[81] For a clear statement of this point of view, see ibid., 40-50.

[82] Stearne, 46-47.

[83] Ibid., 50.

[84] Ibid., 17.

[85] Ibid., 13.

[86] Ibid., 14.

[87] Hopkins, 5. But Hopkins was not telling the exact truth here. When he was at Aldeburgh in September (8th) the accused were watched day and night. See chamberlain's accounts, in N. F. Hele, Notes or Jottings about Aldeburgh, 43.

[88] Hopkins, 7.

[89] Hopkins, 9.

[90] Stearne, 18. Hopkins did not attempt to deny the use of the ordeal. He supported himself by quoting James; see Hopkins, 6.

[91] Stearne, 18. He means, of course, Serjeant Godbolt.

[92] See Stearne, in his preface to the reader, also p. 61; and see also the complete title of Hopkins's book as given in appendix A (p. 362).

[93] A similar case was that of Anne Binkes, to whom Stearne refers on p. 54. He says she confessed to him her guilt. "Was this woman fitting to live?... I am sure she was living not long since, and acquitted upon her trial."

[94] Not until after Stearne was already busy elsewhere. Stearne, 58.

[95] It would seem, too, that Stearne was sued for recovery of sums paid him. "Many rather fall upon me for what hath been received; but I hope such suits will be disannulled." Stearne, 60.

[96] Hopkins, 11.

[97] County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc.) 176, quoting from J. T. Varden in the East Anglian Handbook for 1885, p. 89.

[98] James Howell, Familiar Letters, II, 551. Howell, of course, may easily have counted convictions as executions. Moreover, it was a time when rumors were flying about, and Howell would not have taken the pains to sift them. Yet his agreement with Stearne in numbers is remarkable. Somewhat earlier, (the letter is dated February 3, 1646/7) Howell had written that "in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hundred indicted within these two years and above the one half executed" (ibid., 506). But, as noted above, his dates are not to be trusted.

[99] See his History of Rationalism.

[100] A name no greater, however, than that of Glanvill, who was a prominent Anglican.

[101] It does not belong in this connection, but it should be stated, that one of the strongest reasons for supposing the Presbyterian party largely responsible for the persecution of witches lies in the large number of witches in Scotland throughout the whole period of that party's ascendancy. This is an argument that can hardly be successfully answered. Yet it is a legitimate question whether the witch-hunting proclivities of the north were not as much the outcome of Scottish laws and manners as of Scottish religion.

[102] The Magazine of Scandall, speaking of Lowes and another man, says: "Their Religion is either none, or else as the wind blows: If the ceremonies be tending to Popery, none so forward as they, and if there be orders cleane contrary they shall exceed any Round-head in the Ile of great Brittain." See also above, pp. 175-177.

[103] Yet it must not be overlooked that Stearne himself, who must have known well the religious sympathies of his opponents, asks, p. 58, "And who are they that have been against the prosecution ... but onely such as (without offence I may speak it) be enemies to the Church of God?" He dares not mention names, "not onely for fear of offence, but also for suits of Law."

[104] Scott has pictured this very well in Woodstock. For a good example of it see The [D]Ivell in Kent, or His strange Delusions at Sandwitch (London, 1647).

[105] See below, note 107.

[106] The witches of Aldeburgh were tried at the "sessions," N. F. Hele, op. cit., 43-44. Mother Lakeland was probably condemned by the justices of the peace; see The Lawes against Witches. The witches of Huntingdon were tried by the justices of the peace; see above, note 73. As for the trials in Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, it is fairly safe to reason that they were conducted by the justices of the peace from other evidence which we have that there were no assizes during the last half of 1645 and the first five months of 1646; see Whitelocke, Memorials, II, 31, 44, 64.

[107] For a few of the evidences of this situation during these years see James Thompson, Leicester (Leicester, 1849), 401; Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 109-110, 322; XIII, 4, p. 216 (note gaps in the records); Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 436; II, 31, 44, 64, 196; III, 152. Innumerable other references could be added to prove this point. F. A. Inderwick in his Interregnum (London, 1891), 153, goes so far as to say that "from the autumn of 1642 to the autumn of 1646 no judges went the circuits." This seems rather a sweeping statement.

[108] See The Examination, Confession, etc. (London, 1645). Joan Williford, Joan Cariden, and Jane Hott were tried. The first two quickly confessed to the keeping of imps. Not so Jane Hott, who urged the others to confess and "stoode to it very perversely that she was cleare." When put to the swimming test she floated, and is said to have then declared that the Devil "had sat upon a Cross beame and laughed at her." Elizabeth Harris was examined, and gave some damaging evidence against herself. She named several goodwives who had very loose tongues.

[109] Stearne, 13, 14.



CHAPTER IX.

WITCHCRAFT DURING THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE.

We have, in the last chapter, traced the history of witchcraft in England through the Hopkins episode of 1645-1647. From the trials at Ely in the autumn of 1647 to the discoveries at Berwick in the summer of 1649 there was a lull in the witch alarms. Then an epidemic broke out in the north of England. We shall, in this chapter, describe that epidemic and shall carry the narrative of the important cases from that time to the Restoration. In doing this we shall mark off two periods, one from 1649 to 1653, when the executions were still numerous, and a second from 1653 to 1659 when there was a rapid falling off, not only in death penalties for witchcraft, but even in accusations. To be sure, this division is somewhat artificial, for there was a gradual decline of the attack throughout the two periods, but the year 1653 more nearly than any other marks the year when that decline became visible.

The epidemic of 1649 came from Scotland. Throughout the year the northern kingdom had been "infested."[1] From one end of that realm to the other the witch fires had been burning. It was not to be supposed that they should be suddenly extinguished when they reached the border. In July the guild of Berwick had invited a Scotchman who had gained great fame as a "pricker" to come to Berwick, and had promised him immunity from all violence.[2] He came and proceeded to apply his methods of detection. They rested upon the assumption that a witch had insensible spots on her body, and that these could be found by driving in a pin. By such processes he discovered thirty witches, who were sent to gaol. Some of them made confessions but refused to admit that they had injured any one.[3] On the contrary, they had assisted Cromwell, so some of the more ingenious of them claimed, at the battle of Preston.[4] Whether this helped their case we do not know, for we are not told the outcome. It seems almost certain, however, that few, if any, of them suffered death. But the pricker went back to Scotland with thirty pounds, the arrangement having been that he was to receive twenty shillings a witch.

He was soon called upon again. In December of the same year the town of Newcastle underwent a scare. Two citizens, probably serjeants, applied the test with such success that in March (1649/50) a body of citizens petitioned the common council that some definite steps be taken about the witches. The council accepted the suggestion and despatched two serjeants, doubtless the men already engaged in the work, to Scotland to engage the witch-pricker. He was brought to Newcastle with the definite contract that he was to have his passage going and coming and twenty shillings apiece for every witch he found. The magistrates did everything possible to help him. On his arrival in Newcastle they sent the bellman through the town inviting every one to make complaints.[5] In this business-like way they collected thirty women at the town hall, stripped them, and put them to the pricking test. This cruel, not to say indelicate, process was carried on with additions that must have proved highly diverting to the base-minded prickers and onlookers.[6] Fourteen women and one man were tried (Gardiner says by the assizes) and found guilty. Without exception they asserted their innocence; but this availed not. In August of 1650 they were executed on the town moor[7] of Newcastle.[8]

The witchfinder continued his activities in the north, but a storm was rising against him. Henry Ogle, a late member of Parliament, caused him to be jailed and put under bond to answer the sessions.[9] Unfortunately the man got away to Scotland, where he later suffered death for his deeds, probably during the Cromwellian regime in that country.[10]

We have seen that Henry Ogle had driven the Scotch pricker out of the country. He participated in another witch affair during this same period which is quite as much to his credit. The children of George Muschamp, in Northumberland, had been troubled for two years (1645-1647) with strange convulsions.[11] The family suspected Dorothy Swinow, who was the wife of Colonel Swinow. It seems that the colonel's wife had, at some time, spoken harshly to one of the children. No doubt the sick little girl heard what they said. At any rate her ravings began to take the form of accusations against the suspected woman. The family consulted John Hulton, "who could do more then God allowed," and he accused Colonel Swinow's wife. But unfortunately for him the child had been much better during his presence, and he too was suspected. The mother of the children now rode to a justice of the peace, who sent for Hulton, but not for Mistress Swinow. Then the woman appealed to the assizes, but the judge, "falsely informed," took no action. Mrs. Muschamp was persistent, and in the town of Berwick she was able, at length, to procure the arrest of the woman she feared. But Dorothy Swinow was not without friends, who interfered successfully in her behalf. Mrs. Muschamp now went to a "counsellor," who refused to meddle with the matter, and then to a judge, who directed her to go to Durham. She did so and got a warrant; but it was not obeyed. She then procured a second warrant, and apparently succeeded in getting an indictment. But it did her little good: Dorothy Swinow was not apprehended.

One can hardly refrain from smiling a little at the unhappy Mrs. Muschamp and her zealous assistants, the "physician" and the two clergymen. But her poor daughters grew worse, and the sick child, who had before seen angels in her convulsions, now saw the colonel's wife and cried out in her ravings against the remiss judge.[12] The case is at once pathetic and amusing, but it has withal a certain significance. It was not only Mrs. Swinow's social position that saved her, though that doubtless carried weight. It was the reluctance of the north-country justices to follow up accusations. Not that they had done with trials. Two capital sentences at Durham and another at Gateshead, although perhaps after-effects of the Scotch pricker's activity, showed that the witch was still feared; but such cases were exceptions. In general, the cases resulted in acquittals. We shall see, in another chapter, that the discovery which alarmed Yorkshire and Northumberland in 1673 almost certainly had this outcome; and the cases tried at that time formed the last chapter in northern witchcraft.

But, if hanging witches was not easy in the north, there were still districts in the southwest of England where it could be done, with few to say nay. Anne Bodenham,[13] of Fisherton Anger in Wiltshire, had not the social position of Dorothy Swinow, but she was the wife of a clothier who had lived "in good fashion," and in her old age she taught children to read. She had, it seems, been in earlier life an apt pupil of Dr. Lambe, and had learned from him the practice of magic lore. She drew magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances.

Now, Mistress Bodenham did all these things for money and roused no antagonism in her community until she was unfortunate enough to have dealings with a maid-servant in a Wiltshire family. It is impossible to get behind the few hints given us by the cautious writer. The members of the family, evidently one of some standing in Wiltshire, became involved in a quarrel among themselves. It was believed, indeed, by neighbors that there had been a conspiracy on the part of some of the family to poison the mother-in-law. At all events, a maid in the family was imprisoned for participation in such a plot. It was then that Anne Bodenham first came into the story. The maid, to judge from the few data we have, in order to distract attention from her own doings, made a confession that she had signed a book of the Devil's with her own blood, all at the instigation of Anne Bodenham. Moreover, Anne, she said, had offered to send her to London in two hours. This was communicated to a justice of the peace, who promptly took the accused woman into custody. The maid-servant, successful thus far, began to simulate fits and to lay the blame for them on Mistress Anne. Questioned as to what she conceived her condition, she replied, "Oh very damnable, very wretched." She could see the Devil, she said, on the housetop looking at her. These fancies passed as facts, and the accused woman was put to the usual humiliations. She was searched, examined, and urged to confess. The narrator of the story made effort after effort to wring from her an admission of her guilt, but she slipped out of all his traps. Against her accuser she was very bitter. "She hath undone me ... that am an honest woman, 'twill break my Husband's heart, he grieves to see me in these Irons: I did once live in good fashion."

The case was turned over by the justices of the peace to the assizes at Salisbury, where Chief Baron John Wylde of the exchequer presided.[14] The testimony of the maid was brought in, as well as the other proofs.[15] All we know of the trial is that Anne was condemned, and that Judge Wylde was so well satisfied with his work that he urged Edmund Bower, who had begun an account of the case, but had hesitated to expose himself to "this Censorious Age," to go on with his booklet. That detestable individual had followed the case closely. After the condemnation he labored with the woman to make her confess. But no acknowledgment of guilt could be wrung from the high-spirited Mistress Bodenham, even when the would-be father confessor held out to her the false hope of mercy. She made a will giving gifts to thirty people, declared she had been robbed by her maids in prison, lamented over her husband's sorrow, and requested that she be buried under the gallows. Like the McPherson who danced so wantonly and rantingly beneath the gallows tree, she remained brave-hearted to the end. When the officer told her she must go with him to the place of execution, she replied, "Be you ready, I am ready." The narrator closes the account with some moral reflections. We may close with the observation that there is no finer instance of womanly courage in the annals of witchcraft than that of Anne Bodenham. Doubtless she had used charms, and experimented with glasses; it had been done by those of higher rank than she.

As for the maid, she had got herself well out of trouble. When Mistress Bodenham had been hanged, the fits ceased, and she professed great thankfulness to God and a desire to serve him.

The case of Joan Peterson, who was tried at the Old Bailey in 1652, is another instance of the struggle of a spirited woman against too great odds. Joan, like Mistress Bodenham, kept various kinds of powders and prescribed physic for ailing neighbors.[16] It was, however, if we may believe her defender, not on account of her prescriptions, but rather on account of her refusal to swear falsely, that her downfall came. One would be glad to know the name of the vigorous defender who after her execution issued A Declaration in Answer to severall lying Pamphlets concerning the Witch of Wapping. His narrative of the plot against the accused woman offers a plausible explanation of the affair and is not improbably trustworthy. As he tells the story, there were certain relatives of Lady Powell who had been disappointed that her estate had been bequeathed to Mrs. Anne Levingston. They conspired to get rid of the heiress, went to a cunning woman, and offered to pay her liberally if she would swear that Mrs. Levingston had used sorcery to take away the life of Lady Powell. Unfortunately for the conspirators, the cunning woman betrayed their schemes. Not discouraged, however, they employed another woman, who, as their representative, went to Joan Peterson and offered her a hundred pounds to swear that Mrs. Levingston had procured from her "certain powders and bags of seeds." Joan refused the proposition, and the plotters, fearing a second exposure of their plans, determined that Mistress Peterson should also be put out of the way. They were able to procure a warrant to have her arrested and searched. Great pressure was put upon her to confess enough to implicate Mrs. Levingston and she was given to understand that if she would do so she would herself be spared. But Joan refused their proffers and went to her trial. If the narrative may be at all trusted there was little effort to give her a fair hearing. Witnesses against her were purchased in advance, strangers were offered money to testify against her, and those who were to have given evidence on her side were most of them intimidated into staying away from the trial. Four physicians and two surgeons signed a certificate that Lady Powell had died from perfectly natural causes. It was of no avail. Joan was convicted and died bravely, denying her guilt to the end.[17] Her defender avers that some of the magistrates in the case were involved in the conspiracy against her. One of these was Sir John Danvers, a member of Cromwell's council. In the margin of his account the pamphleteer writes: "Sir John Danvers came and dined at the Sessions house and had much private discourse with the Recorder and many of the Justices and came and sate upon the Bench at her Trial, where he hath seldom or never been for these many years."

In July of 1652 occurred another trial that attracted notice in its own time. Six Kentish women were tried at the assizes at Maidstone before Peter Warburton.[18] We know almost nothing of the evidence offered by the prosecution save that there was exhibited in the Swan Inn at Maidstone a piece of flesh which the Devil was said to have given to one of the accused, and that a waxen image of a little girl figured in the evidence. Some of the accused confessed that they had used it in order to kill the child. Search was instituted for it, and it was found, if the narrator may be trusted, under the door where the witches had said it would be.[19] The six were all condemned and suffered execution. Several others were arraigned, but probably escaped trial.

If the age was as "censorious" of things of this nature as Edmund Bower had believed it to be, it is rather remarkable that "these proceedings," which were within a short distance of London, excited so little stir in that metropolis. Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and delver in astrology, attended the trials, with John Tradescant, traveller and gardener.[20] He left no comments. The Faithful Scout, in its issue of July 30-August 7, mentioned the trial and the confessions, but refrained from any expression of opinion.

There were other trials in this period; but they must be passed over rapidly. The physicians were quite as busy as ever in suggesting witchcraft. We can detect the hand of a physician in the attribution of the strange illness of a girl who discharged great quantities of stones to the contrivance of Catherine Huxley, who was, in consequence, hanged at Worcester.[21] In a case at Exeter the physician was only indirectly responsible. When Grace Matthews had consulted him about her husband's illness, he had apparently given up the case, and directed her to a wise woman.[22] The wise woman had warned Mistress Matthews of a neighbor "tall of stature and of a pale face and blinking eye," against whom it would be well to use certain prescribed remedies. Mrs. Matthews did so, and roused out the witch, who proved to be a butcher's wife, Joan Baker. When the witch found her spells thwarted, she turned them against Mrs. Matthews's maid-servant, who in consequence died. This was part of the evidence against Joan, and it was confirmed by her own kinsfolk: her father-in-law had seen her handling toads. She was committed, but we hear no more of the case.

That random accusations were not feared as they had been was evidenced by the boldness of suspected parties in bringing action against their accusers, even if boldness was sometimes misjudged. We have two actions of this sort.

Joan Read of Devizes had been reported to be a witch, and on that account had been refused by the bakers the privilege of using their bakeries for her dough.[23] She threw down the glove to her accusers by demanding that they should be brought by warrant to accuse her. No doubt she realized that she had good support in her community, and that her challenge was not likely to be accepted. But a woman near Land's End in Cornwall seems to have overestimated the support upon which she could count. She had procured a warrant against her accusers to call the case before the mayor. The court sided with the accusers and the woman was brought to trial. Caught herself, she proceeded to ensnare others. As a result, eight persons were sent to Launceston,[24] and some probably suffered death.[25]

We have already seen what a tangled web Mrs. Muschamp wove when she set out to imprison a colonel's wife. It would be easy to cite cases to show the same reluctance to follow up prosecution. Four women at Leicester searched Ann Chettle and found no evidence of guilt.[26] In Durham a case came up before Justice Henry Tempest.[27] Mary Sykes was accused. Sara Rodes, a child, awakening from sleep in a fright, had declared to her mother that "Sikes' wife" had come in "att a hole att the bedd feete" and taken her by the throat. Of course Sara Rodes fell ill. Moreover, the witch had been seen riding at midnight on the back of a cow and at another time flying out of a "mistall windowe." But the woman, in spite of the unfavorable opinion of the women searchers, went free. There were cases that seem to have ended the same way at York, at Leeds, and at Scarborough. They were hints of what we have already noticed, that the northern counties were changing their attitude.[28] But a case in Derbyshire deserves more attention because the justice, Gervase Bennett, was one of the members of Cromwell's council. The case itself was not in any way unusual. A beggar woman, who had been liberally supported by those who feared her, was on trial for witchcraft. Because of Bennett's close relation to the government, we should be glad to know what he did with the case, but the fact that the woman's conviction is not among the records makes it probable that she was not bound over to the assizes.[29]

We come now to examine the second of the sub-periods into which we have divided the Interregnum. We have been dealing with the interval between the war and the establishment of the Protectorate, a time that shaded off from the dark shadows of internecine struggle towards the high light of steady peace and security. By 1653 the equilibrium of England had been restored. Cromwell's government was beginning to run smoothly. The courts were in full swing. None of those conditions to which we have attributed the spread of the witch alarms of the Civil Wars were any longer in operation. It is not surprising, then, that the Protectorate was one of the most quiet periods in the annals of witchcraft. While the years 1648-1653 had witnessed thirty executions in England, the period of the Protectorate saw but half a dozen, and three of these fell within the somewhat disturbed rule of Richard Cromwell.[30] In other words, there was a very marked falling off of convictions for witchcraft, a falling off that had indeed begun before the year 1653. Yet this diminution of capital sentences does not by any means signify that the realm was rid of superstition. In Middlesex, in Somerset and Devon, in York, Northumberland, and Cumberland, the attack upon witches on the part of the people was going on with undiminished vigor. If no great discoveries were made, if no nests of the pestilent creatures were unearthed, the justices of the peace were kept quite as busy with examinations as ever before.

To be sure, an analysis of cases proves that a larger proportion of those haled to court were light offenders, "good witches" whose healing arts had perhaps been unsuccessful, dealers in magic who had aroused envy or fear. The court records of Middlesex and York are full of complaints against the professional enchanters. In most instances they were dismissed. Now and then a woman was sent to the house of correction,[31] but even this punishment was the exception.

Two other kinds of cases appeared with less frequency. We have one very clear instance at Wakefield, in York, where a quarrel between two tenant farmers over their highway rights became so bitter that a chance threat uttered by the loser of the lawsuit, "It shall be a dear day's work for you," occasioned an accusation of witchcraft.[32] In another instance the debt of a penny seems to have been the beginning of a hatred between two impecunious creatures, and this brought on a charge.[33]

The most common type of case, of course, was that where strange disease or death played a part. In Yorkshire, in Hertfordshire, and in Cornwall there were trials based upon a sort of evidence with which the reader is already quite familiar. It was easy for the morbid mother of a dead child to recall or imagine angry words spoken to her shortly before the death of her offspring. It was quite as natural for a sick child to be alarmed at the sight of a visitor and go into spasms. There was no fixed rule, however, governing the relation of the afflicted children and the possible witches. When William Wade was named, Elizabeth Mallory would fly into fits.[34] When Jane Brooks entered the room, a bewitched youth of Chard would become hysterical.[35] It was the opposite way with a victim in Exeter,[36] who remained well only so long as the witch who caused the trouble stayed with him.[37]

Closely related to these types of evidence was what has been denominated spectral evidence, a form of evidence recurrent throughout the history of English witchcraft. In the time of the Protectorate we have at least three cases of the kind. The accused woman appeared to the afflicted individual now in her own form, again in other shapes, as a cat, as a bee, or as a dog.[38] The identification of a particular face in the head of a bee must have been a matter of some difficulty, but there is no ground for supposing that any objection was made to this evidence in court. At all events, the testimony went down on the official records in Yorkshire. In Somerset the Jane Brooks case,[39] already referred to, called forth spectral evidence in a form that must really have been very convincing. When the bewitched boy cried out that he saw the witch on the wall, his cousin struck at the place, upon which the boy cried out, "O Father, Coz Gibson hath cut Jane Brooks's hand, and 'tis bloody." Now, according to the story, the constable proceeded to the woman's house and found her hand cut.

As to the social status of the people involved in the Protectorate trials there is little to say, other than has been said of many earlier cases. By far the larger number of those accused, as we have already pointed out, were charmers and enchanters, people who made a penny here and twopence there, but who had at best a precarious existence. Some of them, no doubt, traded on the fear they inspired in their communities and begged now a loaf of bread and now a pot of beer. They were the same people who, when begging and enchanting failed, resorted to stealing.[40] In one of the Yorkshire depositions we have perhaps a hint of another class from which the witches were recruited. Katherine Earle struck a Mr. Frank between the shoulders and said, "You are a pretty gentleman; will you kisse me?" When the man happened to die this solicitation assumed a serious aspect.[41]

Witchcraft was indeed so often the outcome of lower-class bickering that trials involving the upper classes seem worthy of special record. During the Protectorate there were two rather remarkable trials. In 1656 William and Mary Wade were accused of bewitching the fourteen-year-old daughter of Elizabeth Mallory of Studley Hall. The Mallorys were a prominent family in Yorkshire. The grandfather of the accusing child had been a member of Parliament and was a well known Royalist colonel. When Mistress Elizabeth declared that her fits would not cease until Mary Wade had said that she had done her wrong, Mary Wade was persuaded to say the words. Elizabeth was well at once, but Mary withdrew her admission and Elizabeth resumed her fits, indeed "she was paste holdinge, her extreamaty was such." She now demanded that the two Wades should be imprisoned, and when they were "both in holde" she became well again. They were examined by a justice of the peace, but were probably let off.[42]

The story of Diana Crosse at Exeter is a more pathetic one. Mrs. Crosse had once kept a girls' school—could it be that there was some connection between teaching and witchcraft?[43]—had met with misfortune, and had at length been reduced to beggary. We have no means of knowing whether the suspicion of witchcraft antedated her extreme poverty or not, but it seems quite clear that the former school-teacher had gained an ill name in the community. She resented bitterly the attitude of the people, and at one time seems to have appealed to the mayor. It was perhaps by this very act that she focussed the suspicion of her neighbors. To go over the details of the trial is not worth while. Diana Crosse probably escaped execution to eke out the remainder of her life in beggary.[44]

The districts of England affected by the delusion during this period have already been indicated. While there were random cases in Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Cumberland, and Northumberland, by far the greatest activity seems to have been in Middlesex, Cornwall, and Yorkshire. To a layman it looks as if the north of England had produced the greater part of its folk-lore. Certain it is that the witch stories of Yorkshire, as those of Lancaster at another time, by their mysterious and romantic elements made the trials of the south seem flat, stale, and unprofitable. Yet they rarely had as serious results.

To the historian the Middlesex cases must be more interesting because they should afford some index of the attitude of the central government. Unhappily we do not know the fate of the Yorkshire witches, though it has been surmised, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that they all escaped execution.[45] In Middlesex we know that during this period only one woman, so far as our extant records go, was adjudged guilty. All the rest were let go free. Now, this may be significant and it may not. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the Middlesex quarter sessions were in harmony with the central government. Yet this can be no more than a guess. It is not easy to take bearings which will locate the position of the Cromwellian government. The protector himself was occupied with weightier matters, and, so far as we know, never uttered a word on the subject. He was almost certainly responsible for the pardon of Margaret Gyngell at Salisbury in 1655,[46] yet we cannot be sure that he was not guided in that case by special circumstances as well as by the recommendation of subordinates.

We have but little more evidence as to the attitude of his council of state. It was three years before the Protectorate was put into operation that the hesitating sheriff of Cumberland, who had some witches on his hands, was authorized to go ahead and carry out the law.[47] But on the other hand it was in the same period that the English commissioners in Scotland put a quietus on the witch alarms in that kingdom. In fact, one of their first acts was to take over the accused women from the church courts and demand the proof against them.[48] When it was found that they had been tortured into confessions, the commission resolved upon an enquiry into the conduct of the sheriff, ministers, and tormentors who had been involved. Several women had been accused. Not one was condemned. The matter was referred to the council of state, where it seems likely that the action of the commissioners was ratified. Seven or eight years later, in the administration of Richard Cromwell, there was an instance where the council, apparently of its own initiative, ordered a party of soldiers to arrest a Rutlandshire witch. The case was, however, dismissed later.[49]

To draw a definite conclusion from these bits of evidence would be rash. We can perhaps reason somewhat from the general attitude of the government. Throughout the Protectorate there was a tendency, which Cromwell encouraged, to mollify the rigor of the criminal law. Great numbers of pardons were issued; and when Whitelocke suggested that no offences should be capital except murder, treason, and rebellion, no one arose in holy horror to point out the exception of witchcraft,[50] and the suggestion, though never acted upon, was favorably considered.[51]

When we consider this general attitude towards crime in connection with what we have already indicated about the rapid decline in numbers of witch convictions, it seems a safe guess that the Cromwellian government, while not greatly interested in witchcraft, was, so far as interested, inclined towards leniency.

[1] Whitelocke, Memorials, III, 63, 97, 99, 113.

[2] See an extract from the Guild Hall Books in John Fuller, History of Berwick (Edinburgh, 1799), 155-156.

[3] Thomas Widdrington's letter to Whitelocke (Whitelocke, Memorials, III, 99). Widdrington said the man professed himself "an artist that way." The writer was evidently somewhat skeptical.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ralph Gardiner, England's Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade (London, 1655), 108.

[6] Ibid.

[7] See John Brand, History and Antiquities of ... Newcastle (London, 1789), II, 478, or the Chronicon Mirabile (London, 1841), 92, for an extract from the parish registers, giving the names. A witch of rural Northumberland was executed with them.

[8] The witches of 1649 were not confined to the north. Two are said to have been executed at St. Albans, a man and a woman; one woman was tried in Worcestershire, one at Gloucester, and two in Middlesex. John Palmer and Elizabeth Knott, who suffered at St. Albans, had gained some notoriety. Palmer had contracted with the Devil and had persuaded his kinswoman to assist him in procuring the death of a woman by the use of clay pictures. Both were probably practitioners in magic. Palmer, even when in prison, claimed the power of transforming men into beasts. The woman seems to have been put to the swimming test. Both were condemned. Palmer, at his execution, gave information about a "whole colledge of witches," most of them, no doubt, practisers like himself, but his random accusations were probably passed over. See The Divels Delusions or A faithfull relation of John Palmer and Elizabeth Knott ... (1649).

[9] Ralph Gardiner, op. cit., 109.

[10] See ibid. At his execution, Gardiner says, he confessed that he had been the death of 220 witches in Scotland and England. Either the man was guilty of unseemly and boastful lying, which is very likely, or Scotland was indeed badly "infested." See above, note 1.

[11] This narrative is contained in Wonderfull News from the North, Or a True Relation of the Sad and Grievous Torments Inflicted upon ... three Children of Mr. George Muschamp ... (London, 1650).

[12] The story of the case was sent down to London and there published, where it soon became a classic among the witch-believing clergy.

[13] See the two pamphlets by Edmond Bower described below in appendix A, Sec. 5, and Henry More, Antidote against Atheisme, bk. III, ch. VII.

[14] Wylde was not well esteemed as a judge. On the institution of the protectorate he was not reappointed by Cromwell.

[15] Aubrey (who had it from an eye-witness) tells us that "the crowd of spectators made such a noise that the judge could not heare the prisoner, nor the prisoner the judge; but the words were handed from one to the other by Mr. R. Chandler and sometimes not truly repeated." John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme ... (ed. J. Britten, Folk Lore Soc. Publications, IV, 1881), 261.

[16] For the case see The Tryall and Examinations of Mrs. Joan Peterson ...; The Witch of Wapping, or an Exact ... Relation of the ... Practises of Joan Peterson ...; A Declaration in Answer to severall lying Pamphlets concerning the Witch of Wapping ..., (as to these pamphlets, all printed at London in 1652, see below, appendix A, Sec. 5); French Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1652; Weekly Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1652; The Faithful Scout, April 9-16, 1652; Mercurius Democritus, April 7-17, 1652.

[17] The French Intelligencer tells us the story of her execution: "She seemed to be much dejected, having a melancholy aspect; she seemed not to be much above 40 years of age, and was not in the least outwardly deformed, as those kind of creatures usually are."

[18] For an account of this affair see A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the ... Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone ... (London, 1652).

[19] It was "supposed," says the narrator, that nine children, besides a man and a woman, had suffered at their hands, L500 worth of cattle had been lost, and much corn wrecked at sea. Two of the women made confession, but not to these things.

[20] See Ashmole's diary as given in Charles Burman, Lives of Elias Ashmole, Esq., and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves ... (London, 1774), 316.

[21] In his Certainty of the World of Spirits (London, 1691), 44, 45, Richard Baxter, who is by no means absolutely reliable, tells us about this case. It should be understood that it is only a guess of the writer that the physician was to blame for the accusation; but it much resembles other cases where the physician started the trouble.

[22] William Cotton, Gleanings from the Municipal and Cathedral Records Relative to the History of the City of Exeter (Exeter, 1877), 149-150.

[23] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 127.

[24] Mercurius Politicus, November 24-December 2, 1653. One of these witches was perhaps the one mentioned as from Launceston in Cornwall in R. and O. B. Peter, The Histories of Launceston and Dunheved (Plymouth, 1885), 285: "the grave in w^ch the wich was buryed."

[25] Richard Burthogge, An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (London, 1694), 196, writes that he has the confessions in MS. of "a great number of Witches (some of which were Executed) that were taken by a Justice of Peace in Cornwall above thirty Years agoe." It does not seem impossible that this is a reference to the same affair as that mentioned by the Launceston record.

[26] Leicestershire and Rutland Notes and Queries (Leicester, 1891, etc.), I, 247.

[27] James Raine, ed., A Selection from the Depositions in Criminal Cases taken before the Northern Magistrates, from the Originals preserved in York Castle (Surtees Soc., no. 40, 1861), 28-30. Cited hereafter as York Depositions.

[28] Yet in 1650 there had been a scare at Gateshead which cost the rate payers L2, of which a significant item was 6 d. for a "grave for a witch." Denham Tracts (Folk Lore Soc.), II, 338. At Durham, in 1652, two persons were executed. Richardson, Table Book (London, 1841), I, 286.

[29] J. C. Cox, Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals (London, 1890), II, 88. Cox, however, thinks it probable that she was punished.

[30] It is of course not altogether safe to reason from the absence of recorded executions, and it is least safe in the time of the Civil Wars and the years of recovery.

[31] Middlesex County Records, ed. by J. C. Jeaffreson (London, 1892), III, 295; Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 129.

[32] York Depositions, 74.

[33] Hertfordshire County Sessions Rolls, compiled by W. J. Hardy (Hertford, 1905), I, 126. It is not absolutely certain in the second case that the committal was to the house of correction.

[34] York Depositions, 76-77.

[35] Joseph Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681), pt. ii, 122.

[36] Cotton, Gleanings ... relative to the History of ... Exeter, 152.

[37] In the famous Warboys case of 1593 it was the witch's presence that relieved the bewitched of their ailments.

[38] York Depositions, 64-67.

[39] Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, pt. ii, 120-121.

[40] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 120.

[41] York Depositions, 69.

[42] Ibid., 75-78.

[43] See the story of Anne Bodenham.

[44] Cotton, Gleanings ... Relative to the History of ... Exeter, 150-152.

[45] James Raine, editor of York Depositions, writes that he has found no instance of the conviction of a witch. Preface, xxx. The Criminal Chronology of York Castle, with a Register of Criminals capitally Convicted and Executed (York, 1867), contains not a single execution for witchcraft.

[46] Inderwick, Interregnum, 188-189.

[47] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1650, 159.

[48] There are several secondary accounts of this affair. See F. Legge in Scottish Review, XVIII, 267. But a most important primary source is a letter from Clarke to Speaker Lenthall, published by the Scottish History Society in its volume on Scotland and the Commonwealth (Edinburgh, 1895), 367-369. See also a tract in Brit. Mus. Thomason collection, Two Terrible Sea Fights (London, 1652). See, too, the words of Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 105.

[49] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1658-1659, 169.

[50] When the council of state, however, in 1652 had issued an act of general pardon, witchcraft had been specifically reserved, along with murder, treason, piracy, etc. Cal. St. P., Dom., 1651-1652, 106.

[51] Inderwick, Interregnum, 231.



CHAPTER X.

THE LITERATURE OF WITCHCRAFT FROM 1603 TO 1660.

No small part of our story has been devoted to the writings of Scot, Gifford, Harsnett, and King James. It is impossible to understand the significance of the prosecutions without some acquaintance with the course of opinion on the subject. In this chapter we shall go back as far as the opening of the reign of James and follow up to the end of the Commonwealth the special discussions of witchcraft, as well as some of the more interesting incidental references. It will be recalled that James's Daemonologie had come out several years before its author ascended the English throne. With the coming of the Scottish king to Westminster the work was republished at London. But, while James by virtue of his position was easily first among those who were writing on the subject, he by no means occupied the stage alone. Not less than four other men gained a hearing within the reign and for that reason deserve consideration. They were Perkins, Cotta, Roberts, and Cooper.

William Perkins's Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft came first in order, indeed it was written during the last years of Elizabeth's reign; but it was not published until 1608, six years after the author's death.[1] William Perkins was a fellow of Christ's College at Cambridge and an eminent preacher in that university. He holds a high place among Puritan divines. His sermons may still be found in the libraries of older clergymen and citations from them are abundant in commentaries. It was in the course of one of his university sermons that he took up the matter of witchcraft. In what year this sermon was preached cannot definitely be said. That he seems to have read Scot,[2] that however he does not mention King James's book,[3] are data which lead us to guess that he may have uttered the discourse between 1584 and 1597. His point of view was strictly theological and his convictions grounded—as might be expected—upon scriptural texts. Yet it seems not unfair to suppose that he was an exponent of opinion at Cambridge, where we have already seen evidences of strong faith in the reality of witchcraft. It seems no less likely that a perusal of Reginald Scot's Discoverie prompted the sermon. Witches nowadays, he admitted, have their patrons. His argument for the existence of witches was so thoroughly biblical that we need not go over it. He did not, however, hold to all current conceptions of them. The power of the evil one to transform human beings into other shapes he utterly repudiated. The scratching of witches[4] and the testing of them by water he thought of no value.[5] In this respect it will be seen that he was in advance of his royal contemporary. About the bodily marks, the significance of which James so emphasized, Perkins seems to have been less decided. He believed in the death penalty,[6] but he warned juries to be very careful as to evidence.[7] Evidence based upon the accusations of "good witches," upon the statements of the dying, or upon the charges of those who had suffered ill after threats, he thought ought to be used with great caution. It is evident that Perkins—though he doubtless would not have admitted it himself—was affected by the reading of Scot. Yet it is disappointing to find him condoning the use of torture[8] in extreme instances.[9]

A Cambridge man who wrote about a score of years after Perkins put forth opinions a good deal farther advanced. John Cotta was a "Doctor in Physicke" at Northampton who had taken his B. A. at Cambridge in 1595, his M. A. the following year, and his M. D. in 1603. Nine years after leaving Cambridge he had published A Short Discoverie of the Unobserved Dangers, in which he had devoted a very thoughtful chapter to the relation between witchcraft and sickness. In 1616 he elaborated his notions in The Triall of Witchcraft,[10] published at London. Like Perkins he disapproved of the trial by water.[11] He discredited, too, the evidence of marks, but believed in contracts with the Devil, and cited as illustrious instances the cases of Merlin and "that infamous woman," Joan of Arc.[12] But his point of view was of course mainly that of a medical man. A large number of accusations of witchcraft were due to the want of medical examination. Many so-called possessions could be perfectly diagnosed by a physician. He referred to a case where the supposed witches had been executed and their victim had nevertheless fallen ill again.[13] Probably this was the case of Mistress Belcher, on whose account two women had been hanged at Northampton.[14]

Yet Cotta believed that there were real witches and arraigned Scot for failing to distinguish the impostors from the true.[15] It was indeed, he admitted, very hard to discover, except by confession; and even confession, as he had pointed out in his first work, might be a "meane, poore and uncertain proofe," because of the Devil's power to induce false confession.[16] Here the theologian—it was hard for a seventeenth-century writer not to be a theologian—was cropping out. But the scientific spirit came to the front again when he made the point that imagination was too apt to color observations made upon bewitched and witch.[17] The suggestion that coincidence explained many of the alleged fulfillments of witch predictions[18] was equally in advance of his times.

How, then, were real cases of bewitchment to be recognized? The best assurance on such matters, Cotta answered, came "whensoever ... the Physicion shall truely discover a manifest transcending power."[19] In other words, the Northampton physician believed that his own profession could best determine these vexed matters. One who has seen the sorry part played by the physicians up to this time can hardly believe that their judgment on this point was saner than that of men in other professions. It may even be questioned if they were more to be depended upon than the so superstitious clergy.

In the same year as Cotta's second book, Alexander Roberts, "minister of God's word at King's Lynn" in Norfolk, brought out A Treatise of Witchcraft as a sort of introduction to his account of the trial of Mary Smith of that town and as a justification of her punishment. The work is merely a restatement of the conventional theology of that time as applied to witches, exactly such a presentation of it as was to be expected from an up-country parson who had read Reginald Scot, and could wield the Scripture against him.[20]

The following year saw the publication of a work equally theological, The Mystery of Witchcraft, by the Reverend Thomas Cooper, who felt that his part in discovering "the practise of Anti-Christ in that hellish Plot of the Gunpowder-treason" enabled him to bring to light other operations of the Devil. He had indeed some experience in this work,[21] as well as some acquaintance with the writers on the subject. But he adds nothing to the discussion unless it be the coupling of the disbelief in witchcraft with the "Atheisme and Irreligion that overflows the land." Five years later the book was brought out again under another title, Sathan transformed into an Angell of Light, ... [ex]emplified specially in the Doctrine of Witchcraft.

In the account of the trials for witchcraft in the reign of James I the divorce case of the Countess of Essex was purposely omitted, because in it the question of witchcraft was after all a subordinate matter. In the history of opinion, however, the views about witchcraft expressed by the court that passed upon the divorce can by no means be ignored. It is not worth while to rehearse the malodorous details of that singular affair. The petitioner for divorce made the claim that her husband was unable to consummate the marriage with her and left it to be inferred that he was bewitched. It will be remembered that King James, anxious to further the plans of his favorite, Carr, was too willing to have the marriage annulled and brought great pressure to bear upon the members of the court. Archbishop Abbot from the beginning of the trial showed himself unfavorable to the petition of the countess, and James deemed it necessary to resolve his doubts on the general grounds of the divorce.[22] On the matter of witchcraft in particular the king wrote: "for as sure as God is, there be Devils, and some Devils must have some power, and their power is in this world.... That the Devil's power is not so universal against us, that I freely confess; but that it is utterly restrained quoad nos, how was then a minister of Geneva bewitched to death, and were the witches daily punished by our law. If they can harm none but the papists, we are too charitable for avenging of them only." This was James's opinion in 1613, and it is worthy of note that he was much less certain of his ground and much more on the defensive about witchcraft than the author of the Daemonologie had been. It can hardly be doubted that he had already been affected by the more liberal views of the ecclesiastics who surrounded him. Archbishop Bancroft, who had waged through his chaplain the war on the exorcists, was not long dead. That chaplain was now Bishop of Chichester and soon to become Archbishop of York. It would be strange if James had not been affected to some degree by their opinions. Moreover, by this time he had begun his career as a discoverer of impostors.

The change in the king's position must, however, not be overrated. He maintained his belief in witches and seemed somewhat apprehensive lest others should doubt it. Archbishop Abbot, whom he was trying to win over to the divorce, would not have denied James's theories, but he was exceedingly cautious in his own use of the term maleficium. Abbot was wholly familiar with the history of the Anglican attitude towards exorcism. There can be little doubt that he was in sympathy with the policy of his predecessor. It is therefore interesting to read his carefully worded statement as to the alleged bewitchment of the Earl of Essex. In his speech defending his refusal and that of three colleagues to assent to the divorce, he wrote: "One of my lords (my lord of Winchester) hath avowed it, that he dislikes that maleficium; that he hath read Del Rio, the Jesuit, writing upon that argument, and doth hold him an idle and fabulous fellow.... Another of my lords (my lord of Ely) hath assented thereunto, and maleficium must be gone. Now I for my part will not absolutely deny that witches by God's permission may have a power over men, to hurt all, or part in them, as by God they shall be limited; but how shall it appear that this is such a thing in the person of a man." This was not, of course, an expression of disbelief in the reality or culpability of witchcraft. It was an expression of great reluctance to lay much stress upon charges of witchcraft—an expression upon the part of the highest ecclesiastical authority in England.

In the reign of Charles I prior to the Civil Wars we have to analyze but a single contribution to the literature of our subject, that made by Richard Bernard. Bernard had preached in Nottinghamshire and had gone from there to Batcombe in Somerset. While yet in Nottinghamshire, in the early years of James's reign, he had seen something of the exorcizers.[23] Later he had had to do with the Taunton cases of 1626; indeed, he seems to have had a prominent part in this affair.[24] Presumably he had displayed some anxiety lest the witches should not receive fair treatment, for in his Guide to Grand-Jurymen ... in cases of Witchcraft, published in 1627, he explained the book as a "plaine countrey Minister's testimony." Owing to his "upright meaning" in his "painstaking" with one of the witches, a rumor had spread that he favored witches or "were of Master Scots erroneous opinion that Witches were silly Melancholikes."[25] He had undertaken in consequence to familiarize himself with the whole subject and had read nearly all the discussions in English, as well as all the accounts of trials published up to that time. His work he dedicated to the two judges at Taunton, Sir John Walter and Sir John Denham, and to the archdeacon of Wells and the chancellor of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. The book was, indeed, a truly remarkable patchwork. All shades of opinion from that of the earnestly disbelieving Scot to that of the earnestly believing Roberts were embodied. Nevertheless Bernard had a wholesome distrust of possessions and followed Cotta in thinking that catalepsy and other related diseases accounted for many of them.[26] He thought, too, that the Devil very often acted as his own agent without any intermediary.[27] Like Cotta, he was skeptical as to the water ordeal;[28] but, strange to say, he accepted the use of a magical glass to discover "the suspected."[29] He was inclined to believe that the "apparition of the party suspected, whom the afflicted in their fits seem to see," was a ground for suspicion. The main aim of his discourse was, indeed, to warn judges and jurors to be very careful by their questions and methods of inquiring to separate the innocent from the guilty.[30] In this contention, indeed in his whole attitude, he was very nearly the mouthpiece of an age which, while clinging to a belief, was becoming increasingly cautious of carrying that belief too far into judicial trial and punishment.[31]

It is a jump of seventeen years from Bernard of Batcombe to John Gaule. It cannot be said that Gaule marks a distinct step in the progress of opinion beyond Bernard. His general position was much the same as that of his predecessor. His warnings were perhaps more earnest, his skepticism a little more apparent. In an earlier chapter we have observed the bold way in which the indignant clergyman of Huntingdonshire took up Hopkins's challenge in 1646. It was the Hopkins crusade that called forth his treatise.[32] His little book was in large part a plea for more caution in the use of evidence. Suspicion was too lightly entertained against "every poore and peevish olde Creature." Whenever there was an extraordinary accident, whenever there was a disease that could not be explained, it was imputed to witchcraft. Such "Tokens of Tryall" he deemed "altogether unwarrantable, as proceeding from ignorance, humor, superstition." There were other more reliable indications by which witches could sometimes be detected, but those indications were to be used with exceeding caution. Neither the evidence of the fact—that is, of a league with the Devil—without confession nor "confession without fact" was to be accounted as certain proof. On the matter of confession Gaule was extraordinarily skeptical for his time. It was to be considered whether the party confessing were not diabolically deluded, whether the confession were not forced, or whether it were not the result of melancholy. Gaule went even a little further. Not only was he inclined to suspect confession, but he had serious doubts about a great part of witch lore. There were stories of metamorphoses, there were narratives of "tedious journeys upon broomes," and a hundred other tales from old authors, which the wise Christian would, he believed, leave with the writers. To believe nothing of them, however, would be to belittle the Divine attributes. As a matter of fact there was a very considerable part of the witch theory that Gaule accepted. His creed came to this: it was unsafe to pronounce such and such to be witches. While not one in ten was guilty, the tenth was still to be accounted for.[33] The physician Cotta would have turned the matter over to the physicians; the clergyman Gaule believed that it belonged to the province of the "Magistracy and Ministery."[34]

During the period of the Commonwealth one would have supposed that intellectual men would be entirely preoccupied with more weighty matters than the guilt of witches. But the many executions that followed in the wake of Hopkins and Stearne had invested the subject with a new interest and brought new warriors into the fray. Half a dozen writers took up the controversy. On the conservative side three names deserve mention, two of them not unknown in other connections, Henry More and Meric Casaubon. For the defence of the accused witches appeared two men hardly so well known in their time, Robert Filmer and Thomas Ady.

More was a young Cambridge scholar and divine who was to take rank among the English philosophers of the seventeenth century. Grounded in Plato and impregnated with Descartes, he became a little later thoroughly infected with the Cabalistic philosophy that had entered Europe from the East. It was the point of view that he acquired in the study of this mystic Oriental system that gave the peculiar turn to his witchcraft notions, a turn which through his own writings and those of Glanvill found wide acceptance. It was in 1653 that More issued An Antidote to Atheisme. The phenomena of witchcraft he reckoned as part of the evidence for the reality of the spirit world and used them to support religion, quite in the same manner as Sir Oliver Lodge or Professor Hyslop would today use psychical research to establish immortality. More had made investigations for himself, probably at Maidstone. In his own town of Cambridge there was a story—doubtless a college joke, but he referred to it in all seriousness—of "Old Strangridge," who "was carried over Shelford Steeple upon a black Hogge and tore his breeches upon the weather-cock."[35] He believed that he had absolute proof of the "nocturnal conventicles" of witches.[36] He had, however, none of that instinct for scientific observation that had distinguished Scot, and his researches did not prevent his being easily duped. His observations are not by any means so entertaining as are his theories. His effort to account for the instantaneous transportation of witches is one of the bright spots in the prosy reasonings of the demonologists. More was a thoroughgoing dualist. Mind and matter were the two separate entities. Now, the problem that arose at once was this: How can the souls of witches leave their bodies? "I conceive," he says, "the Divell gets into their body and by his subtile substance more operative and searching than any fire or putrifying liquor, melts the yielding Campages of the body to such a consistency ... and makes it plyable to his imagination: and then it is as easy for him to work it into what shape he pleaseth."[37] If he could do that, much more could he enable men to leave their bodies. Then arose the problem: How does this process differ from death? The writer was puzzled apparently at his own question, but reasoned that death was the result of the unfitness of the body to contain the soul.[38] But no such condition existed when the Devil was operating; and no doubt the body could be anointed in such fashion that the soul could leave and return.

Meric Casaubon, son of the eminent classical scholar and himself a well known student, was skeptical as to the stories told about the aerial journeys of witches which More had been at such pains to explain. It was a matter, he wrote in his Treatise concerning Enthusiasme,[39] of much dispute among learned men. The confessions made were hard to account for, but he would feel it very wrong to condemn the accused upon that evidence. We shall meet with Casaubon again.[40]

Nathaniel Homes, who wrote from his pastoral study at Mary Stayning's in London, and dedicated his work[41] to Francis Rous, member of Parliament, was no halfway man. He was a thoroughgoing disciple of Perkins. His utmost admission—the time had come when one had to make some concessions—was that evil spirits performed many of their wonders by tricks of juggling.[42] But he swallowed without effort all the nonsense about covenants, and was inclined to see in the activities of the Devil a presage of the last days.[43]

The reader can readily see that More, Casaubon, and Homes were all on the defensive. They were compelled to offer explanations of the mysteries of witchcraft, they were ready enough to make admissions; but they were nevertheless sticking closely to the main doctrines. It is a pleasure to turn to the writings of two men of somewhat bolder stamp, Robert Filmer and Thomas Ady. Sir Robert Filmer was a Kentish knight of strong royalist views who had written against the limitations of monarchy and was not afraid to cross swords with Milton and Hobbes on the origin of government. In 1652 he had attended the Maidstone trials, where, it will be remembered, six women had been convicted. As Scot had been stirred by the St. Oses trials, so Filmer was wrought up by what he had seen at Maidstone,[44] and in the following year he published his Advertisement to the Jurymen of England. He set out to overturn the treatise of Perkins. As a consequence he dealt with Scripture and the interpretation of the well known passages in the Old Testament. The Hebrew witch, Filmer declared, was guilty of nothing more than "lying prophecies." The Witch of Endor probably used "hollow speaking." In this suggestion Filmer was following his famous Kentish predecessor.[45] But Filmer's main interest, like Bernard's and Gaule's before him, was to warn those who had to try cases to be exceedingly careful. He felt that a great part of the evidence used was worth little or nothing.

Thomas Ady's Candle in the Dark was published three years later.[48] Even more than Filmer, Ady was a disciple of Scot. But he was, indeed, a student of all English writers on the subject and set about to answer them one by one. King James, whose book he persistently refused to believe the king's own handiwork, Cooper, who was a "bloudy persecutor," Gifford, who "had more of the spirit of truth in him than many," Perkins, the arch-enemy, Gaule, whose "intentions were godly," but who was too far "swayed by the common tradition of men,"[47] all of them were one after another disposed of. Ady stood eminently for good sense. It was from that point of view that he ridiculed the water ordeal and the evidence of marks,[48] and that he attacked the cause and effect relation between threats and illness. "They that make this Objection must dwell very remote from Neighbours."[49]

Yet not even Ady was a downright disbeliever. He defended Scot from the report "that he held an opinion that Witches are not, for it was neither his Tenent nor is it mine." Alas, Ady does not enlighten us as to just what was his opinion. Certainly his witches were creatures without power.[50] What, then, were they? Were they harmless beings with malevolent minds? Mr. Ady does not answer.

A hundred years of witchcraft history had not brought to light a man who was willing to deny in a printed work the existence of witches. Doubtless such denial might often have been heard in the closet, but it was never proclaimed on the housetop. Scot had not been so bold—though one imagines that if he had been quietly questioned in a corner he might have denied the thing in toto—and those who had followed in his steps never ventured beyond him.

The controversy, indeed, was waged in most of its aspects along the lines laid down by the first aggressor. Gifford, Cotta, and Ady had brought in a few new arguments to be used in attacking superstition, but in general the assailants looked to Scot. On the other side, only Perkins and More had contributed anything worth while to the defence that had been built up. Yet, the reader will notice that there had been progress. The centre of struggle had shifted to a point within the outer walls. The water ordeal and the evidence of marks were given up by most, if not all. The struggle now was over the transportation of witches through the air and the battle was going badly for the defenders.

We turn now to the incidental indications of the shifting of opinion. In one sense this sort of evidence means more than the formal literature. Yet its fragmentary character at best precludes putting any great stress upon it.

If one were to include all the references to witchcraft in the drama of the period, this discussion might widen out into a long chapter. Over the passages in the playwrights we must pass with haste; but certain points must be noted. Shakespeare, in Macbeth, which scholars have usually placed at about 1606, used a great body of witch lore. He used it, too, with apparent good faith, though to conclude therefrom that he believed in it himself would be a most dangerous step.[51] Thomas Middleton, whose Witch probably was written somewhat later, and who is thought to have drawn on Shakespeare for some of his witch material, gives absolutely no indication in that play that he did not credit those tales of witch performances of which he availed himself. The same may be said of Dekker and of those who collaborated with him in writing The Witch of Edmonton.[52]

We may go further and say that in none of these three plays is there any hint that there were disbelievers. But when we come to Ben Jonson we have a different story. His various plays we cannot here take up. Suffice it to say, on the authority of careful commentators, that he openly or covertly ridiculed all the supposedly supernatural phenomena of his time.[53] Perhaps a search through the obscurer dramatists of the period might reveal other evidences of skepticism. Such a search we cannot make. It must, however, be pointed out that Thomas Heywood, in The late Lancashire Witches[54] a play which is described at some length in an earlier chapter, makes a character say:[55] "It seemes then you are of opinion that there are witches. For mine own part I can hardly be induc'd to think there is any such kinde of people."[56] The speech is the more notable because Heywood's own belief in witchcraft, as has been observed in another connection, seems beyond doubt.

The interest in witchcraft among literary men was not confined to the dramatists. Three prose writers eminent in their time dealt with the question. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy[57] admits that "many deny witches at all, or, if there be any, they can do no harm." But he says that on the other side are grouped most "Lawyers, Divines, Physitians, Philosophers." James Howell, famous letter-writer of the mid-century, had a similar reverence for authority: "I say ... that he who denies there are such busy Spirits and such poor passive Creatures upon whom they work, which commonly are call'd Witches ... shews that he himself hath a Spirit of Contradiction in him."[58] There are, he says, laws against witches, laws by Parliament and laws in the Holy Codex.