In the next year, 1669, John Wagstaffe, a graduate of Oriel College who had applied himself to "the study of learning and politics," issued a little book, The Question of Witchcraft Debated. Wagstaffe was a university man of no reputation. "A little crooked man and of a despicable presence," he was dubbed by the Oxford wags the little wizard.[25] Nevertheless he had something to say and he gained no small hearing. Many of his arguments were purely theological and need not be repeated. But he made two good points. The notions about witches find their origin in "heathen fables." This was an undercutting blow at those who insisted on the belief in witchcraft as an essential of Christian faith; and Wagstaffe, moreover, made good his case. His second argument was one which no less needed to be emphasized. Coincidence, he believed, accounts for a great deal of the inexplicable in witchcraft narratives.[26]

Within two years the book appeared again, much enlarged, and it was later translated into German. It was answered by two men—by Casaubon in the second part of his Credulity[27] and by an author who signed himself "R. T."[28] Casaubon added nothing new, nor did "R. T.," who threshed over old theological straw. The same can hardly be said of Lodowick Muggleton, a seventeenth-century Dowie who would fain have been a prophet of a new dispensation. He put out an exposition of the Witch of Endor that was entirely rationalistic.[29] Witches, he maintained, had no spirits but their own wicked imaginations. Saul was simply the dupe of a woman pretender.

An antidote to this serious literature may be mentioned in passing. There was published at London, in 1673,[30] A Pleasant Treatise of Witches, in which a delightful prospect was opened to the reader: "You shall find nothing here of those Vulgar, Fabulous, and Idle Tales that are not worth the lending an ear to, nor of those hideous Sawcer-eyed and Cloven-Footed Divels, that Grandmas affright their children withal, but only the pleasant and well grounded discourses of the Learned as an object adequate to thy wise understanding." An outline was offered, but it was nothing more than a thread upon which to hang good stories. They were tales of a distant past. There were witches once, of course there were, but that was in the good old days. Such was the author's implication.

Alas that such light treatment was so rare! The subject was, in the minds of most, not one for laughter. It called for serious consideration. That point of view came to its own again in The Doctrine of Devils proved to be the grand apostacy of these later Times.[31] The Dutch translator of this book tells us that it was written by a New England clergyman.[32] If that be true, the writer must have been one of the least provincial New Englanders of his century, for he evinces a remarkable knowledge of the witch alarms and witch discussions in England. Some of his opinions betray the influence of Scot, as for instance his interpretation of Christ's casting out of devils.[33] The term "having a devil" was but a phrase for one distracted. The author made, however, some new points. He believed that the importance of the New Testament miracles would be overshadowed by the greater miracles wrought by the Devil.[34] A more telling argument, at least to a modern reader, was that the solidarity of society would be endangered by a belief that made every man afraid of his neighbor.[35] The writer commends Wagstaffe's work, and writes of Casaubon, "If any one could possibly have bewitcht me into the Belief of Witchcraft, this reverend person, of all others, was most like to have done it." He decries the "proletarian Rabble," and "the great Philosophers" (More and Glanvill, doubtless), who call themselves Christians and yet hold "an Opinion that Butchers up Men and Women without Fear or Witt, Sense or Reason, Care or Conscience, by droves;" but he praises "the reverend judges of England, now ... much wiser than before," who "give small or no encouragement to such accusations."

We come now to the second great figure among the witch-ologists of the Restoration, John Webster. Glanvill and Webster were protagonist and antagonist in a drama where the others played somewhat the role of the Greek chorus. It was in 1677 that Webster put forth The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft.[36] A Non-Conformist clergyman in his earlier life, he seems to have turned in later years to the practice of medicine. From young manhood he had been interested in the subject of witchcraft. Probably that interest dates from an experience of his one Sunday afternoon over forty years before he published his book. It will be recalled that the boy Robinson, accuser of the Lancashire women in 1634, had been brought into his Yorkshire congregation at an afternoon service and had come off very poorly when cross-questioned by the curious minister. From that time Webster had been a doubter. Now and again in the course of his Yorkshire and Lancashire pastorates he had come into contact with superstition. He was no philosopher, this Yorkshire doctor of souls and bodies, nor was he more than a country scientist, and his reasoning against witchcraft fell short—as Professor Kittredge has clearly pointed out[37]—of scientific rationalism. That was a high mark and few there were in the seventeenth century who attained unto it. But it is not too much to say that John Webster was the heir and successor to Scot. He carried weight by the force of his attack, if not by its brilliancy.[38] He was by no means always consistent, but he struck sturdy blows. He was seldom original, but he felled his opponents.

Many of his strongest arguments, of course, were old. It was nothing new that the Witch of Endor was an impostor. It was Muggleton's notion, and it went back indeed to Scot. The emphasizing of the part played by imagination was as old as the oldest English opponent of witch persecution. The explanation of certain strange phenomena as ventriloquism—a matter that Webster had investigated painstakingly—this had been urged before. Webster himself did not believe that new arguments were needed. He had felt that the "impious and Popish opinions of the too much magnified powers of Demons and Witches, in this Nation were pretty well quashed and silenced" by various writers and by the "grave proceedings of many learned judges." But it was when he found that two "beneficed Ministers," Casaubon and Glanvill, had "afresh espoused so bad a cause" that he had been impelled to review their grounds.

As the reader may already have guessed, Webster, like so many of his predecessors, dealt largely in theological and scriptural arguments. It was along this line, indeed, that he made his most important contribution to the controversy then going on. Glanvill had urged that disbelief in witchcraft was but one step in the path to atheism. No witches, no spirits, no immortality, no God, were the sequences of Glanvill's reasoning. In answer Webster urged that the denial of the existence of witches—i. e., of creatures endued with power from the Devil to perform supernatural wonders—had nothing to do with the existence of angels or spirits. We must rely upon other grounds for a belief in the spirit world. Stories of apparitions are no proof, because we cannot be sure that those apparitions are made or caused by spirits. We have no certain ground for believing in a spirit world but the testimony of Scripture.[39]

But if we grant the existence of spirits—to modernize the form of Webster's argument—we do not thereby prove the existence of witches. The New Testament tells of various sorts of "deceiving Imposters, Diviners, or Witches," but amongst them all "there were none that had made a visible league with the Devil." There was no mention of transformation into cats, dogs, or wolves.[40] It is hard to see how the most literal students of the Scriptures could have evaded this argument. The Scriptures said a great deal about the Devil, about demoniacs, and about witches and magicians—whatever they might mean by those terms. Why did they not speak at all of the compacts between the Devil and witches? Why did they leave out the very essential of the witch-monger's lore?

All this needed to be urged at a time when the advocates of witchcraft were crying "Wolf! wolf!" to the Christian people of England. In other words, Webster was rendering it possible for the purely orthodox to give up what Glanvill had called a bulwark of religion and still to cling to their orthodoxy.

It is much to the credit of Webster that he spoke out plainly concerning the obscenity of what was extorted from the witches. No one who has not read for himself can have any notion of the vile character of the charges and confessions embodied in the witch pamphlets. It is an aspect of the question which has not been discussed in these pages. Webster states the facts without exaggeration:[41] "For the most of them are not credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean stories ...? Surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to overthrow the credibility of it, especially among Christians." Professor Burr has said that "it was, indeed, no small part of the evil of the matter, that it so long debauched the imagination of Christendom."[42]

We have said that Webster denied the existence of witches, that is, of those who performed supernatural deeds. But, like Scot, he explicitly refrained from denying the existence of witches in toto. He was, in fact, much more satisfactory than Scot; for he explained just what was his residuum of belief. He believed that witches were evil-minded creatures inspired by the Devil, who by the use of poisons and natural means unknown to most men harmed and killed their fellow-beings.[43] Of course he would have insisted that a large proportion of all those charged with being such were mere dealers in fraud or the victims of false accusation, but the remainder of the cases he would have explained in this purely natural way.

Now, if this was not scientific rationalism, it was at least straight-out skepticism as to the supernatural in witchcraft. Moreover there are cases enough in the annals of witchcraft that look very much as if poison were used. The drawback of course is that Webster, like Scot, had not disabused his mind of all superstition. Professor Kittredge in his discussion of Webster has pointed this out carefully. Webster believed that the bodies of those that had been murdered bleed at the touch of the murderer. He believed, too, in a sort of "astral spirit,"[44] and he seems to have been convinced of the truth of apparitions.[45] These were phenomena that he believed to be substantiated by experience. On different grounds, by a priori reasoning from scriptural premises, he arrived at the conclusion that God makes use of evil angels "as the executioners of his justice to chasten the godly, and to restrain or destroy the wicked."[46]

This is and was essentially a theological conception. But there was no small gap between this and the notion that spirits act in supernatural ways in our every-day world. And there was nothing more inconsistent in failing to bridge this gap than in the position of the Christian people today who believe in a spirit world and yet discredit without examination all that is offered as new evidence of its existence.

The truth is that Webster was too busy at destroying the fortifications of his opponents to take the trouble to build up defences for himself. But it is not too much to call him the most effective of the seventeenth century assailants of witch persecution in England.[47] He had this advantage over all who had gone before, that a large and increasing body of intelligent people were with him. He spoke in full consciousness of strong support. It was for his opponents to assume the defensive.

We have called John Webster's a great name in the literature of our subject, and we have given our reasons for so thinking. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that he created any such sensation in his time as did his arch-opponent, Glanvill. His work never went into a second edition. There are but few references to it in the writings of the time, and those are in works devoted to the defence of the belief. Benjamin Camfield, a Leicestershire rector, wrote an unimportant book on Angels and their Ministries,[48] and in an appendix assailed Webster. Joseph Glanvill turned fiercely upon him with new proofs of what he called facts, and bequeathed the work at his death to Henry More, who in the several following editions of the Sadducismus Triumphatus attacked him with no little bitterness.

We may skip over three lesser writers on witchcraft. During the early eighties John Brinley, Henry Hallywell, and Richard Bovet launched their little boats into the sea of controversy. Brinley was a bold plagiarist of Bernard, Hallywell a logical but dull reasoner from the Bible, Bovet a weakened solution of Glanvill.[49]

We turn now from the special literature of witchcraft to a sketch of the incidental evidences of opinion. Of these we have a larger body than ever before, too large indeed to handle in detail. It would be idle to quote from the chap-books on witch episodes their raisons d'etre. It all comes to this: they were written to confute disbelievers. They refer slightingly and even bitterly to those who oppose belief, not however without admitting their numbers and influence. It will be more to our purpose to examine the opinions of men as they uttered them on the bench, in the pulpit, and in the other walks of practical life.

We have already had occasion to learn what the judges were thinking. We listened to Matthew Hale while he uttered the pronouncement that was heard all over England and even in the North American colonies. The existence of witches, he affirmed solemnly, is proved by Scripture and by the universality of laws against them. Justice Rainsford in the following years and Justice Raymond about twenty years later seem to have taken Hale's view of the matter. On the other side were to be reckoned Sir John Reresby and Francis North. Neither of them was quite outspoken, fearing the rage of the people and the charge of atheism. Both sought to save the victims of persecution, but rather by exposing the deceptions of the accusers than by denying witchcraft itself. From the vast number of acquittals in the seventies and the sudden dropping off in the number of witch trials in the eighties we know that there must have been many other judges who were acquitting witches or quietly ignoring the charges against them. Doubtless Kelyng, who, as a spectator at Bury, had shown his skepticism as to the accusations, had when he later became a chief justice been one of those who refused to condemn witches.

From scientific men there were few utterances. Although we shall in another connection show that a goodly number from the Royal Society cherished very definite beliefs—or disbeliefs—on the subject, we have the opinions of but two men who were professionally scientists, Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Robert Boyle. Browne we have already met at the Bury trial. It may reasonably be questioned whether he was really a man of science. Certainly he was a physician of eminence. The attitude he took when an expert witness at Bury, it will be recalled, was quite consistent with the opinion given in his Commonplace Book. "We are noways doubtful," he wrote, "that there are witches, but have not always been satisfied in the application of their witchcrafts."[50] So spoke the famous physician of Norwich. But a man whose opinion was of much more consequence was Sir Robert Boyle. Boyle was a chemist and "natural philosopher." He was the discoverer of the air pump, was elected president of the Royal Society, and was altogether one of the greatest non-political figures in the reign of Charles II. While he never, so far as we know, discussed witchcraft in the abstract, he fathered a French story that was brought into England, the story of the Demon of Mascon. He turned the story over to Glanvill to be used in his list of authentic narratives; and, when it was later reported that he had pronounced the demon story an imposture, he took pains to deny the report in a letter to Glanvill.[51]

Of literary men we have, as of scientists, but two. Aubrey, the "delitescent" antiquarian and Will Wimble of his time, still credited witchcraft, as he credited all sorts of narratives of ghosts and apparitions. It was less a matter of reason than of sentiment. The dramatist Shadwell had the same feeling for literary values. In his preface to the play, The Lancashire Witches, he explained that he pictured the witches as real lest the people should want "diversion," and lest he should be called "atheistical by a prevailing party who take it ill that the power of the Devil should be lessen'd."[52] But Shadwell, although not seriously interested in any side of the subject save in its use as literary material, included himself among the group who had given up belief.

What philosophers thought we may guess from the all-pervading influence of Hobbes in this generation. We have already seen, however, that Henry More,[53] whose influence in his time was not to be despised, wrote earnestly and often in support of belief. One other philosopher may be mentioned. Ralph Cudworth, in his True Intellectual System, touched on confederacies with the Devil and remarked in passing that "there hath been so full an attestation" of these things "that those our so confident Exploders of them, in this present Age, can hardly escape the suspicion of having some Hankring towards Atheism."[54] This was Glanvill over again. It remains to notice the opinions of clergymen. The history of witch literature has been in no small degree the record of clerical opinion. Glanvill, Casaubon, Muggleton, Camfield, and Hallywell were all clergymen. Fortunately we have the opinions of at least half a dozen other churchmen. It will be remembered that Oliver Heywood, the famous Non-Conformist preacher of Lancashire, believed, though not too implicitly, in witchcraft.[55] So did Samuel Clarke, Puritan divine and hagiographer.[56] On the same side must be reckoned Nathaniel Wanley, compiler of a curious work on The Wonders of the Little World.[57] A greater name was that of Isaac Barrow, master of Trinity, teacher of Isaac Newton, and one of the best preachers of his time. He declared that to suppose all witch stories fictions was to "charge the world with both extreme Vanity and Malignity."[58] We can cite only one divine on the other side. This was Samuel Parker, who in his time played many parts, but who is chiefly remembered as the Bishop of Oxford during the troubles of James II with the university. Parker was one of the most disliked ecclesiastics of his time, but he deserves praise at any rate for his stand as to witchcraft. We do not know the details of his opinions; indeed we have nothing more than the fact that in a correspondence with Glanvill he questioned the opinions of that distinguished protagonist of witchcraft.[59]

By this time it must be clear that there is possible no hard and fast discrimination by groups between those that believed in witchcraft and those that did not. We may say cautiously that through the seventies and eighties the judges, and probably too the justices of the peace,[60] were coming to disbelieve. With even greater caution we may venture the assertion that the clergy, both Anglican and Non-Conformist, were still clinging to the superstition. Further generalization would be extremely hazardous. It looks, however, from the evidence already presented, as well as from some to be given in another connection—in discussing the Royal Society[61]—as if the scientists had not taken such a stand as was to be expected of them.

When we examine the attitude of those who scoffed at the stories vouched for by Glanvill and More it becomes evident that they assumed that practically all thinking men were with them. In other words, they believed that their group comprised the intellectual men of the time. Now, it would be easy to rush to the conclusion that all men who thought in conventional ways would favor witchcraft, and that those who took unconventional views would be arrayed on the other side, but this would be a mistake. Glanvill was an exceedingly original man, while Muggleton was uncommonly commonplace; and there were numbered among those who held to the old opinion men of high intelligence and brilliant talents.

We must search, then, for some other basis of classification. Glanvill gives us an interesting suggestion. In withering tone he speaks of the "looser gentry and lesser pretenders to wit." Here is a possible line of cleavage. Might it be that the more worldly-minded among the county families, that those too who comprised what we may call, in the absence of a better term, the "smart set," and the literary sets of London, were especially the "deriders" of superstition? It is not hard to believe that Shadwell, the worldly Bishop Parker, and the polished Sir William Temple[62] would fairly reflect the opinions of that class. So too the diarist Pepys, who found Glanvill "not very convincing." We can conceive how the ridicule of the supernatural might have become the fad of a certain social group. The Mompesson affair undoubtedly possessed elements of humor; the wild tales about Amy Duny and Rose Cullender would have been uncommonly diverting, had they not produced such tragic results. With the stories spun about Julian Cox the witch accusers could go no farther. They had reached the culmination of nonsense. Now, it is conceivable that the clergyman might not see the humor of it, nor the philosopher, nor the scholar; but the worldly-minded Londoner, who cared less about texts in Leviticus than did his father, who knew more about coffee-houses and plays, and who cultivated clever people with assiduity, had a better developed sense of humor. It was not strange that he should smile quizzically when told these weird stories from the country. He may not have pondered very deeply on the abstract question nor read widely—perhaps he had seen Ady's book or glanced over Scot's—but, when he met keen men in his group who were laughing quietly at narratives of witchcraft, he laughed too. And so, quite unobtrusively, without blare of trumpets, skepticism would slip into society. It would be useless for Glanvill and More to call aloud, or for the people to rage. The classes who mingled in the worldly life of the capital would scoff; and the country gentry who took their cue from them would follow suit.

Of course this is theory. It would require a larger body of evidence than we can hope to gather on this subject to prove that the change of opinion that was surely taking place spread at first through the higher social strata and was to reach the lower levels only by slow filtration. Yet such an hypothesis fits in nicely with certain facts. It has already been seen that the trials for witchcraft dropped off very suddenly towards the end of the period we are considering. The drop was accounted for by the changed attitude of judges and of justices of the peace. The judges avoided trying witches,[63] the justices were less diligent in discovering them. But the evidence that we had about men of other occupations was less encouraging. It looked as if those who dispensed justice were in advance of the clergy, of the scholars, physicians, and scientists of their time. Had the Master of Trinity, or the physician of Norwich, or the discoverer of the air pump been the justices of the peace for England, it is not incredible that superstition would have flourished for another generation. Was it because the men of the law possessed more of the matter-of-factness supposed to be a heritage of every Englishman? Was it because their special training gave them a saner outlook? No doubt both elements help to explain the difference. But is it not possible to believe that the social grouping of these men had an influence? The itinerant justices and the justices of the peace were recruited from the gentry, as none of the other classes were. Men like Reresby and North inherited the traditions of their class; they spent part of the year in London and knew the talk of the town. Can we doubt that their decisions were influenced by that fact? The country justice of the peace was removed often enough from metropolitan influences, but he was usually quick to catch the feelings of his own class.

If our theory be true that the jurists were in advance of other professions and that they were sprung of a higher stock, it is of course some confirmation of the larger theory that witchcraft was first discredited among the gentry. Yet, as we have said before, this is at best a guess as to how the decline of belief took place and must be accepted only provisionally. We have seen that there are other assertions about the progress of thought in this period that may be ventured with much confidence. There had been great changes of opinion. It would not be fair to say that the movement towards skepticism had been accelerated. Rather, the movement which had its inception back in the days of Reginald Scot and had found in the last days of James I a second impulse, which had been quietly gaining force in the thirties, forties, and fifties, was now under full headway. Common sense was coming into its own.

[1] Ferris Greenslet, Joseph Glanvill (New York, 1900), 153. The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Greenslet's excellent book on Glanvill.

[2] The Scepsis Scientifica was really The Vanity of Dogmatising (1661) recast.

[3] See, for example, the introductory essay by John Owen in his edition (London, 1885), of the Scepsis Scientifica, xxvii, xxix. See also Sadducismus Triumphatus (citations are all from the edition of 1681), 7, 13.

[4] So at least says Leslie Stephen, Dict. Nat. Biog. Glanvill himself, in Essays on Several Important Subjects (1676), says that the sixth essay, "Philosophical Considerations against Modern Sadducism," had been printed four times already, i. e., before 1676. The edition of 1668 had been revised.

[5] This edition was dedicated to Charles, Duke of Richmond and Lenox, since His Grace had been "pleased to commend the first and more imperfect Edition."

[6] Sadducismus Triumphatus, Preface, F 3 verso, F 4; see also p. 10. In the second part see Preface, Aa 2—Aa 3. In several other places he has insisted upon this point.

[7] See ibid., 9 ff., 18 ff., 21 ff., 34 ff.

[8] Ibid., 32, 34.

[9] Ibid., 11-13.

[10] See, for example, ibid., 88-89.

[11] Ibid., 25-27.

[12] Sadducismus Triumphatus, 39.

[13] Ibid., 52-53.

[14] To the argument that witches are not mentioned in the New Testament he retorted that neither is North America (ibid., 82).

[15] Ibid., 78.

[16] Nevertheless he took up some of Scot's points.

[17] Sadducismus Triumphatus, Preface.

[18] Sadducismus Triumphatus, pt. ii, 3.

[19] See ibid., pt. ii, Relation VIII.

[20] Scepsis Scientifica (ed. of 1885), 179.

[21] London, 1668. It was reprinted in 1672 with the title A Treatise proving Spirits, Witches, and Supernatural Operations by pregnant instances and evidences.

[22] See above, pp. 239-240.

[23] Of Credulity and Incredulity, 29, 30.

[24] He characterizes Reginald Scot as an illiterate wretch, but admits that he had never read him. It was Wierus whom he chiefly sought to confute.

[25] He was given also to "strong and high tasted liquors." Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1691-1692; 3d ed., with additions, London, 1813-1820), ed. of 1813-1820, III, 11-14.

[26] The Question of Witchcraft Debated (London, 1669), 64.

[27] 1670 (see above, p. 293).

[28] The Opinion of Witchcraft Vindicated. In an Answer to a Book Intituled The Question of Witchcraft Debated (London, 1670).

[29] A True Interpretation of the Witch of Endor (London, 1669).

[30] "By a Pen neer the Convent of Eluthery."

[31] London, 1676.

[32] To Professor Burr I owe my knowledge of this ascription. The translator (the English Quaker, William Sewel, all his life a resident of Holland), calls him "N. Orchard, Predikant in Nieuw-Engeland."

[33] See Doctrine of Devils, chaps. VII, VIII, and cf. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 512-514.

[34] Glanvill had answered a somewhat similar argument, that the miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of the Devil.

[35] He said also that, if the Devil could take on "men's shapes, forms, habits, countenances, tones, gates, statures, ages, complexions ... and act in the shape assumed," there could be absolutely no certainty about the proceedings of justice.

[36] The book had been written four years earlier.

[37] See G. L. Kittredge, "Notes on Witchcraft," in American Antiquarian Soc., Proceedings, n. s., XVIII (1906-1907), 169-176.

[38] There is, however, no little brilliance and insight in some of Webster's reasoning.

[39] Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 38-41.

[40] Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 53.

[41] Ibid., 68.

[42] The Witch-Persecutions (University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints, vol. III, no. 4), revised ed. (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 1.

[43] Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 247-248.

[44] Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 308, 312 ff. The astral spirit which he conceived was not unlike More's and Glanvill's "thin and tenuous substance."

[45] Ibid., 294 ff.

[46] Ibid., 219-228.

[47] The author of The Doctrine of Devils (see above, note 32), was thorough-going enough, but his work seems to have attracted much less attention.

[48] London, 1678.

[49] John Brinley, "Gentleman," brought out in 1680 A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches and Astrologers. Portions of his book would pass for good thinking until one awakens to the feeling that he has read something like this before. As a matter of fact Brinley had stolen the line of thought and much of the phrasing from Richard Bernard (1627, see above, pp. 234-236), and without giving any credit. A second edition of Brinley's work was issued in 1686. It was the same in every respect save that the dedication was omitted and the title changed to A Discourse Proving by Scripture and Reason and the Best Authors Ancient and Modern that there are Witches.

Henry Hallywell, a Cambridge master of arts and sometime fellow of Christ's College, issued in 1681 Melampronoea, or a Discourse of the Polity and Kingdom of Darkness, Together with a Solution of the chiefest Objections brought against the Being of Witches. Hallywell was another in the long list of Cambridge men who defended superstition. He set about to assail the "over-confident Exploders of Immaterial Substances" by a course of logical deductions from Scripture. His treatise is slow reading.

Richard Bovet, "Gentleman," gave the world in 1684 Pandaemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster; being a further Blow to Modern Sadduceism. There was nothing new about his discussion, which he dedicates to Dr. Henry More. His attitude was defensive in the extreme. He was consumed with indignation at disbelievers: "They oppose their simple ipse dixit against the most unquestionable Testimonies"; they even dare to "affront that relation of the Daemon of Tedworth." He was indeed cast down over the situation. He himself relates a very patent instance of witchcraft in Somerset; yet, despite the fact that numerous physicians agreed on the matter, no "justice was applyed." One of Bovet's chief purposes in his work was to show "the Confederacy of several Popes and Roman Priests with the Devil." He makes one important admission in regard to witchcraft; namely, that the confessions of witches might sometimes be the result of "a Deep Melancholy, or some Terrour that they may have been under."

[50] Works, ed. of 1835-1836, IV, 389.

[51] For Boyle's opinions see also Webster, Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 248.

[52] He says also: "For my part I am ... somewhat cotive of belief. The evidences I have represented are natural, viz., slight, and frivolous, such as poor old women were wont to be hang'd upon." The play may be found in all editions of Shadwell's works. I have used the rare privately printed volume in which, under the title of The Poetry of Witchcraft (Brixton Hill, 1853), J. O. Halliwell [-Phillips] united this play of Shadwell's with that of Heywood and Brome on The late Lancashire Witches. These two plays, so similar in title, that of Heywood and Brome in 1634, based on the case of 1633, and that of Shadwell in 1682, based on the affair of 1612, must not be confused. See above pp. 121, 158-160, 244-245.

[53] See above, pp. 238-239.

[54] The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), 702.

[55] See above, p. 256 and note.

[56] See his Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons (London, 1683), 172; also his Mirrour or Looking Glass, Both for Saints and Sinners (London, 1657-1671), I, 35-38; II, 159-183.

[57] London, 1678; see pp. 515-518.

[58] Works (ed. of Edinburgh, 1841), II, 162.

[59] Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, 80.

[60] By the eighties it is very clear that the justices were ceasing to press charges against witches.

[61] In an article to be published separately.

[62] See his essay "Of Poetry" in his Works (London, 1814), III, 430-431.

[63] Justice Jeffreys and Justice Herbert both acquitted witches according to F. A. Inderwick, Sidelights on the Stuarts (2d ed., London, 1891), 174.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE FINAL DECLINE.

In the history of witchcraft the years from 1688 to 1718 may be grouped together as comprising a period. This is not to say that the year of the Revolution marked any transition in the course of the superstition. It did not. But we have ventured to employ it as a convenient date with which to bound the influences of the Restoration. The year 1718 derives its importance for us from the publication, in that year, of Francis Hutchinson's Historical Essay on Witchcraft, a book which, it is not too much to say, gave the final blow to the belief in England.[1]

We speak of fixing a date by which to bound the influences of the Restoration. Now, as a matter of fact, there is something arbitrary about any date. The influences at work during the previous period went steadily on. The heathen raged, and the people imagined a vain thing. The great proletariat hated witches as much as ever. But the justices of the peace and the itinerant judges were getting over their fear of popular opinion and were refusing to listen to the accusations that were brought before them. The situation was in some respects the same as it had been in the later seventies and throughout the eighties. Yet there were certain features that distinguished the period. One of them was the increased use of exorcism. The expelling of evil spirits had been a subject of great controversy almost a century before. The practice had by no means been forgotten in the mean time, but it had gained little public notice. Now the dispossessors of the Devil came to the front again long enough to whet the animosity between Puritans and Anglicans in Lancashire. But this never became more than a pamphlet controversy. The other feature of the period was far more significant. The last executions for witchcraft in England were probably those at Exeter in 1682.[2] For a whole generation the courts had been frowning on witch prosecution. Now there arose in England judges who definitely nullified the law on the statute-book. By the decisions of Powell and Parker, and most of all by those of Holt, the statute of the first year of James I was practically made obsolete twenty-five or fifty years before its actual repeal in 1736. We shall see that the gradual breaking down of the law by the judges did not take place without a struggle. At the famous trial in Hertford in 1712 the whole subject of the Devil and his relation to witches came up again in its most definite form, and was fought out in the court room and at the bar of public opinion. It was, however, but the last rallying and counter-charging on a battle-field where Webster and Glanvill had led the hosts at mid-day. The issue, indeed, was now very specific. Over the abstract question of witchcraft there was nothing new to be said. Here, however, was a specific instance. What was to be done with it? Over that there was waged a merry war. Of course the conclusion was foregone. It had indeed been anticipated by the action of the bench.

We shall see that with the nullification of the law the common people began to take the law into their own hands. We shall note that, as a consequence, there was an increase in the number of swimming ordeals and other illegal procedures.

The story of the Lancashire demonomania is not unlike the story of William Somers in Nottingham a century before. In this case there was no John Darrel, and the exorcists were probably honest but deluded men. The affair started at the village of Surey, near to the superstition-brewing Pendle Forest. The possessed boy, Richard Dugdale, was a gardener and servant about nineteen years of age.[3] In April, 1689, he was seized with fits in which he was asserted to speak Latin and Greek and to preach against the sins of the place. Whatever his pretensions were, he seemed a good subject for exorcism. Some of the Catholics are said to have tampered with him, and then several Puritan clergymen of the community took him in hand. For eight months they held weekly fasts for his recovery; but their efforts were not so successful as they had hoped. They began to suspect witchcraft[4] and were about to take steps towards the prosecution of the party suspected.[5] This came to nothing, but Dugdale at length grew better. He was relieved of his fits; and the clergymen, who had never entirely given up their efforts to cure him, hastened to claim the credit. More than a dozen of the dissenting preachers, among them Richard Frankland, Oliver Heywood,[6] and other well known Puritan leaders in northern England, had lent their support to Thomas Jollie, who had taken the leading part in the praying and fasting. From London, Richard Baxter, perhaps the best known Puritan of his time, had sent a request for some account of the wonder, in order to insert it in his forthcoming book on the spirit world. This led to a plan for printing a complete narrative of what had happened; but the plan was allowed to lapse with the death of Baxter.[7] Meantime, however, the publication in London of the Mathers' accounts of the New England trials of 1692[8] caused a new call for the story of Richard Dugdale. It was prepared and sent to London; and there in some mysterious way the manuscript was lost.[9] It was, however, rewritten and appeared in 1697 as The Surey Demoniack, or an Account of Strange and Dreadful Actings in and about the Body of Richard Dugdale. The preface was signed by six ministers, including those already named; but the book was probably written by Thomas Jollie and John Carrington.[10] The reality of the possession was attested by depositions taken before two Lancashire justices of the peace. The aim of the work was, of course, to add one more contemporary link to the chain of evidence for the supernatural. It was clear to the divines who strove with the possessed boy that his case was of exactly the same sort as those in the New Testament. Moreover, his recovery was a proof of the power of prayer.

Now Non-Conformity was strong in Lancashire, and the Anglican church as well as the government had for many years been at no little pains to put it down. Here was a chance to strike the Puritans at one of their weakest spots, and the Church of England was not slow to use its opportunity. Zachary Taylor, rector of Wigan and chaplain to the Bishop of Chester, had already familiarized himself with the methods of the exorcists. In the previous year he had attacked the Catholics of Lancashire for an exorcism which they claimed to have accomplished within his parish.[11] Pleased with his new role, he found in Thomas Jollie a sheep ready for the shearing.[12] He hastened to publish The Surey Impostor,[13] in which, with a very good will, he made an assault upon the reality of Dugdale's fits, charged that he had been pre-instructed by the Catholics, and that the Non-Conformist clergymen were seeking a rich harvest from the miracles they should work. Self-glorification was their aim. He made fun of the several divines engaged in the affair, and accused them of trickery and presumption in their conduct of the case.[14]

Of course Taylor was answered, and with a bitterness equal to his own. Thomas Jollie replied in A Vindication of the Surey Demoniack. "I will not foul my Paper," wrote the mild Jollie, "and offend my reader with those scurrilous and ridiculous Passages in this Page. O, the Eructations of an exulcerated Heart! How desperately wicked is the Heart of Man!"[15]

We shall not go into the details of the controversy, which really degenerated into a sectarian squabble.[16] The only discussion of the subject that approached fairness was by an anonymous writer,[17] who professed himself impartial and of a different religious persuasion from Jollie. To be sure, he was a man who believed in possession by spirits. It may be questioned, too, whether his assumption of fair dealing towards the Church of England was altogether justified. But, at any rate, his work was free from invective and displayed moderation. He felt that the Dissenting clergymen were probably somewhat deluded. But they had acted, he believed, under good motives in attempting to help one who had appealed to them. Some of them were not only "serious good Men," but men well known in the nation. This, indeed, was true. The Dissenters had laid themselves open to attack, and doubtless some of them saw and regretted their mistake. At least, it seems not without significance that neither Oliver Heywood nor Richard Frankland nor any other of the Dissenters was sure enough of his ground to support Jollie in the controversy into which he had been led.[18]

We have gone into some detail about the Dugdale affair because of its importance in its time, and because it was so essentially characteristic of the last era of the struggle over the power of the Devil. There were cases of possession not only in Lancashire but in Somersetshire and in and around London. Not without a struggle was His Satanic Majesty surrendering his hold.

We turn from this controversy to follow the decisions of those eminent judges who were nullifying the statute against witches. We have already mentioned three names, those of Holt, Powell, and Parker. This is not because they were the only jurists who were giving verdicts of acquittal—we know that there must have been others—but because their names are linked with significant decisions. Without doubt Chief Justice Holt did more than any other man in English history to end the prosecution of witches. Justice Powell was not so brave a man, but he happened to preside over one of the most bitterly contested of all trials, and his verdict served to reaffirm the precedents set by Holt. It was Justice Parker's fortune to try the last case of witchcraft in England.

Holt became chief justice of the king's bench on the accession of William and Mary. Not one of the great names in English judicial rolls, his decided stand against superstition makes him great in the history of witchcraft. Where and when he had acquired his skeptical attitude we do not know. The time was past when such an attitude was unusual. In any case, from the moment he assumed the chief justiceship he set himself directly against the punishment of witchcraft. As premier of the English judiciary his example meant quite as much as his own rulings. And their cumulative effect was not slight. We know of no less than eleven trials where as presiding officer he was instrumental in securing a verdict of acquittal. In London, at Ipswich, at Bury, at Exeter, in Cornwall, and in other parts of the realm, these verdicts were rendered, and they could not fail to influence opinion and to affect the decisions of other judges. Three of the trials we shall go over briefly—those at Bury, Exeter, and Southwark.

In 1694 he tried Mother Munnings at Bury St. Edmunds,[19] where his great predecessor Hale had condemned two women. Mother Munnings had declared that a landlord should lie nose upward in the church-yard before the next Saturday, and, sure enough, her prophecy had come true. Nevertheless, in spite of this and other testimony, she was acquitted. Two years later Holt tried Elizabeth Horner at Exeter, where Raymond had condemned three women in 1682. Bishop Trelawny of Exeter had sent his sub-dean, Launcelot Blackburne (later to be Archbishop of York), to look into the case, and his report adds something to the account which Hutchinson has given us.[20] Elizabeth was seen "three nights together upon a large down in the same place, as if rising out of the ground." It was certified against her by a witness that she had driven a red-hot nail "into the witche's left foot-step, upon which she went lame, and, being search'd, her leg and foot appear'd to be red and fiery." These testimonies were the "most material against her," as well as the evidence of the mother of some possessed children, who declared that her daughter had walked up a wall nine feet high four or five times backwards and forwards, her face and the fore part of her body parallel to the ceiling, saying that Betty Horner carried her up. In closing the narrative the archdeacon wrote without comment: "My Lord Chief Justice by his questions and manner of hemming up the evidence seem'd to me to believe nothing of witchery at all, and to disbelieve the fact of walking up the wall which was sworn by the mother." He added, "the jury brought her in not guilty."

The case of Sarah Moordike of London versus Richard Hathaway[21] makes even clearer the attitude of Holt. Sarah Moordike, or Morduck, had been accused years before by a Richard Hathaway of causing his illness. On several occasions he had scratched her. Persecuted by the rabble, she had betaken herself from Southwark to London. Thither Richard Hathaway followed her and soon had several churches praying for his recovery. She had appealed to a magistrate for protection, had been refused, and had been tried at the assizes in Guildford, where she was acquitted. By this time, however, a good many people had begun to think Hathaway a cheat. He was arrested and put under the care of a surgeon, who watched him closely and soon discovered that the fasts which were a feature of his pretended fits were false. This was not the first time that he had been proved an impostor. On an earlier occasion he had been trapped into scratching a woman whom he erroneously supposed to be Sarah Morduck. In spite of all exposures, however, he stuck to his pretended fits and was at length brought before the assizes at Southwark on the charge of attempting to take away the life of Sarah Moordike for being a witch. It is refreshing to know that a clergyman, Dr. Martin, had espoused the cause of the witch and had aided in bringing Hathaway to judgment. Chief Justice Holt and Baron Hatsell presided over the court,[22] and there seems to have been no doubt about the outcome. The jury "without going from the bar" brought Hathaway in guilty.[23] The verdict was significant. Pretenders had got themselves into trouble before, but were soon out. The Boy of Bilston had been reproved; the young Robinson, who would have sent to the gallows a dozen fellow-creatures, thought it hard that he was kept a few months confined in London.[24] A series of cases in the reign of Charles I had shown that it was next to impossible to recover damages for being slandered as a witch, though in the time of the Commonwealth one woman had come out of a suit with five shillings to her credit. Of course, when a man of distinction was slandered, circumstances were altered. At some time very close to the trial of Hathaway, Elizabeth Hole of Derbyshire was summoned to the assizes for accusing Sir Henry Hemloke, a well known baronet, of witchcraft.[25] Such a charge against a man of position was a serious matter. But the Moordike-Hathaway case was on a plane entirely different from any of these cases. Sarah Morduck was not a woman of position, yet her accuser was punished, probably by a long imprisonment. It was a precedent that would be a greater safeguard to supposed witches than many acquittals.

Justice Powell was not to wield the authority of Holt: yet he made one decision the effects of which were far-reaching. It was in the trial of Jane Wenham at Hertford in 1712. The trial of this woman was in a sense her own doing. She was a widow who had done washing by the day. For a long time she had been suspected of witchcraft by a neighboring farmer, so much so that, when a servant of his began to act queerly, he at once laid the blame on the widow. Jane applied to Sir Henry Chauncy, justice of the peace, for a warrant against her accuser. He was let off with a fine of a shilling, and she was instructed by Mr. Gardiner, the clergyman, to live more peaceably.[26] So ended the first act. In the next scene of this dramatic case a female servant of the Reverend Mr. Gardiner's, a maid just getting well of a broken knee, was discovered alone in a room undressed "to her shift" and holding a bundle of sticks. When asked to account for her condition by Mrs. Gardiner, she had a curious story to tell. "When she was left alone she found a strange Roaming in her head, ... her Mind ran upon Jane Wenham and she thought she must run some whither ... she climbed over a Five-Bar-Gate, and ran along the Highway up a Hill ... as far as a Place called Hackney-Lane, where she look'd behind her, and saw a little Old Woman Muffled in a Riding-hood." This dame had asked whither she was going, had told her to pluck some sticks from an oak tree, had bade her bundle them in her gown, and, last and most wonderful, had given her a large crooked pin.[27] Mrs. Gardiner, so the account goes, took the sticks and threw them into the fire. Presto! Jane Wenham came into the room, pretending an errand. It was afterwards found out that the errand was fictitious.

All this raised a stir. The tale was absolutely original, it was no less remarkable. A maid with a broken knee had run a half-mile and back in seven minutes, very good time considering the circumstances. On the next day the maid, despite the knee and the fits she had meantime contracted, was sent out on an errand. She met Jane Wenham and that woman quite properly berated her for the stories she had set going, whereupon the maid's fits were worse than ever. Then, while several people carefully watched her, she repeated her former long distance run, leaping over a five-bar gate "as nimbly as a greyhound."

Jane Wenham was now imprisoned by the justice of the peace, who collected with all speed the evidence against her. In this he was aided by the Reverend Francis Bragge, rector of Walkerne, and the Reverend Mr. Strutt, vicar of Audley. The wretched woman asked the justice to let her submit to the ordeal of water,[28] but he refused, pronouncing it illegal and unjustifiable. Meantime, the Rev. Mr. Strutt used the test of the Lord's Prayer,[29] a test that had been discarded for half a century. She failed to say the prayer aright, and alleged in excuse that "she was much disturbed in her head," as well she might be. But other evidence came in against her rapidly. She had been caught stealing turnips, and had quite submissively begged pardon, saying that she had no victuals that day and no money to buy any.[30] On the very next day the man who gave this evidence had lost one of his sheep and found another "taken strangely, skipping and standing upon its head."[31] There were other equally silly scraps of testimony. We need not go into them. The two officious clergymen busied themselves with her until one of them was able to wring some sort of a confession from her. It was a narrative in which she tried to account for the strange conduct of Anne Thorne and made a failure of it.[32] A few days later, in the presence of three clergymen and a justice of the peace, she was urged to repeat her confession but was "full of Equivocations and Evasions," and when pressed told her examiners that they "lay in wait for her Life."

Bragge and Strutt had shown a great deal of energy in collecting evidence. Yet, when the case came to trial, the woman was accused only of dealing with a spirit in the shape of a cat.[33] This was done on the advice of a lawyer. Unfortunately we have no details about his reasons, but it would look very much as if the lawyer recognized that the testimony collected by the ministers would no longer influence the court, and believed that the one charge of using a cat as a spirit might be substantiated. The assizes were largely attended. "So vast a number of People," writes an eye-witness, "have not been together at the Assizes in the memory of Man."[34] Besides the evidence brought in by the justice of the peace, who led the prosecution with vigor, the Rev. Mr. Bragge, who was not to be repressed because the charges had been limited, gave some most remarkable testimony about the stuffing of Anne Thorne's pillow. It was full of cakes of small feathers fastened together with some viscous matter resembling much the "ointment made of dead men's flesh" mentioned by Mr. Glanvill. Bragge had done a piece of research upon the stuff and discovered that the particles were arranged in geometrical forms with equal numbers in each part.[35] Justice Powell called for the pillow, but had to be content with the witness's word, for the pillow had been burnt. Arthur Chauncy, who was probably a relative of the justice of the peace, offered to show the judge pins taken from Anne Thorne. It was needless, replied the judge, he supposed they were crooked pins.[36] The leaders of the prosecution seem to have felt that the judge was sneering at them throughout the trial. When Anne Thorne was in a fit, and the Reverend Mr. Chishull, being permitted to pray over her, read the office for the visitation of the sick, Justice Powell mockingly commented "That he had heard there were Forms of Exorcism in the Romish Liturgy, but knew not that we had any in our Church."[37] It must have been a great disappointment to these Anglican clergymen that Powell took the case so lightly. When it was testified against the accused that she was accustomed to fly, Powell is said to have said to her, "You may, there is no law against flying."[38] This indeed is quite in keeping with the man as described by Swift: "an old fellow with grey hairs, who was the merriest old gentleman I ever saw, spoke pleasing things, and chuckled till he cried again."

In spite of Powell's obvious opinion on the trial, he could not hinder a conviction. No doubt the jury were greatly swayed by the crowds. The judge seems to have gone through the form of condemning the woman, but took pains to see that she was reprieved.[39] In the mean time her affair, like that of Richard Dugdale, had become a matter of sectarian quarrel. It was stated by the enemies of Jane Wenham that she was supported in prison by the Dissenters,[40] although they said that up to this time she had never been a church-going woman. It was the Dugdale case over again, save that the parties were reversed. Then Puritans had been arrayed on the side of superstition; now some of the Anglicans seem to have espoused that cause.[41] Of course the stir produced was greater. Mistress Jane found herself "the discourse of the town" in London, and a pamphlet controversy ensued that was quite as heated as that between Thomas Jollie and Zachary Taylor. No less than ten brochures were issued. The justice of the peace allowed his story of the case to be published and the Reverend Mr. Bragge rushed into print with a book that went through five editions. Needless to say, the defenders of Jane Wenham and of the judge who released her were not hesitant in replying. A physician who did not sign his name directed crushing ridicule against the whole affair,[42] while a defender of Justice Powell considered the case in a mild-mannered fashion: he did not deny the possibility of witchcraft, but made a keen impeachment of the trustworthiness of the witnesses against the woman.[43]

But we cannot linger over the details of this controversy. Justice Powell had stirred up a hornets' nest of opposition, but it meant little.[44] The insects could buzz; but their stingers were drawn.

The last trial for witchcraft was conducted in 1717 at Leicester by Justice Parker.[45] Curiously enough, the circumstances connected with it make it evident that crudest forms of superstition were still alive. Decency forbids that we should narrate the details of the methods used to demonstrate the guilt of the suspected parties. No less than twenty-five people banded themselves against "Old woman Norton and daughter" and put them through tests of the most approved character. It need hardly be said that the swimming ordeal was tried and that both creatures "swam like a cork." The persecutors then set to work to "fetch blood of the witches." In this they had "good success," but the witches "would be so stubborn, that they were often forced to call the constable to bring assistance of a number of persons to hold them by force to be blooded."[46] The "old witch" was also stripped and searched "publickly before a great number of good women." The most brutal and illegal of all forms of witch procedure had been revived, as if to celebrate the last appearance of the Devil. But the rest of the story is pleasanter. When the case came before the grand jury at the assizes, over which Justice Parker was presiding, "the bill was not found."

With this the story of English trials comes to an end. The statute of James I had been practically quashed, and, though it was not to be taken from the law books for nineteen years, it now meant nothing. It was very hard for the great common people to realize what had happened. As the law was breaking down they had shown an increasing tendency to take justice into their own hands. In the case with which we have just been dealing we have seen the accusers infringing the personal rights of the individual, and calling in the constables to help them in their utterly unlawful performances. This was not new. As early as 1691, if Hutchinson may be trusted, there were "several tried by swimming in Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire and some were drowned." It would be easy to add other and later accounts,[47] but we must be content with one.[48] The widow Coman, in Essex, had recently lost her husband; and her pastor, the Reverend Mr. Boys, went to cheer her in her melancholy. Because he had heard her accounted a witch he questioned her closely and received a nonchalant admission of relations with the Devil. That astounded him. When he sought to inquire more closely, he was put off. "Butter is eight pence a pound and Cheese a groat a pound," murmured the woman, and the clergyman left in bewilderment. But he came back in the afternoon, and she raved so wildly that he concluded her confession was but "a distraction in her head." Two women, however, worried from her further and more startling confessions. The minister returned, bringing with him "Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Grimes," two of the disbelieving "sparks of the age." The rest of the story may be told as it is given in another account, a diary of the time. "July 3d, 1699, the widow Coman was put into the river to see if she would sinke, ... and she did not sinke but swim, ... and she was tryed again July 19, and then she swam again. July 24 the widow was tryed a third time by putting her into the river and she swam. December 27. The widow Coman that was counted a witch was buried." The intervening links need hardly be supplied, but the Reverend Mr. Boys has given them: "whether by the cold she got in the water, or by some other means, she fell very ill and dyed."

It must have been very diverting, this experimentation by water, and it had become so popular by the beginning of the eighteenth century that Chief Justice Holt[49] is said to have ruled that in the future, where swimming had fatal results, those responsible would be prosecuted for murder. Such a declaration perhaps caused some disuse of the method for a time, but it was revived in the second third of the eighteenth century.

Popular feeling still arrayed itself against the witch. If the increasing use of the swimming ordeal was the answer to the non-enforcement of the Jacobean statute, it was the answer of the ignorant classes. Their influence was bound to diminish. But another possible consequence of the breaking down of the law may be suggested. Mr. Inderwick, who has looked much into English witchcraft, says that "from 1686 to 1712 ... the charges and convictions of malicious injury to property in burning haystacks, barns, and houses, and malicious injuries to persons and to cattle increased enormously."[50] This is very interesting, if true, and it seems quite in accord with the history of witchcraft that it should be true. Again and again we have seen that the charge of witchcraft was a weapon of prosecutors who could not prove other suspected crimes. As the charges of witchcraft fell off, accusations for other crimes would naturally be multiplied; and, now that it was no longer easy to lay everything to the witch of a community, the number of the accused would also grow.

We are now at the end of the witch trials. In another chapter we shall trace the history of opinion through this last period. With the dismissal of the Norton women at Leicester, the courts were through with witch trials.

[1] See below, pp. 342-343.

[2] We are assuming that the cases at Northampton in 1705 and at Huntingdon in 1716 have no basis of fact. At Northampton two women, according to the pamphlet account, had been hanged and burnt; at Huntingdon, according to another account, a woman and her daughter. It is possible that these pamphlets deal with historical events; but the probabilities are all against that supposition. For a discussion of the matter in detail see below, appendix A, Sec. 10.

[3] For his early history see The Surey Demoniack, ... or, an Account of Satan's ... Actings, In and about the Body of Richard Dugdale.... (London, 1697).

[4] The Catholics do not seem, so far as the account goes, to have said anything about witchcraft.

[5] The Surey Demoniack, 49; Zachary Taylor, The Surey Impostor, being an answer to a ... Pamphlet, Entituled The Surey Demoniack (London, 1697), 21-22.

[6] "N. N.," The Lancashire Levite Rebuked, or a Vindication of the Dissenters from Popery.... (London, 1698), 3-4; see also the preface of The Surey Demoniack.

[7] Ibid.

[8] The Wonders of the Invisible World: being an Account of the Tryals of ... Witches ... in New England (London, 1693), by Cotton Mather, and A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches (London, 1693), by Increase Mather. See preface to The Surey Demoniack.

[9] Thomas Jollie told a curious tale about how the manuscript had been forcibly taken from the man who was carrying it to the press by a group of armed men on the Strand. See ibid.

[10] Alexander Gordon in his article on Thomas Jollie, Dict. Nat. Biog., says that the pamphlet was drafted by Jollie and expanded by Carrington. Zachary Taylor, in his answer to it (The Surey Impostor), constantly names Mr. Carrington as the author. "N. N.," in The Lancashire Levite Rebuked, also assumes that Carrington was the author.

[11] The Devil Turned Casuist, or the Cheats of Rome Laid open in the Exorcism of a Despairing Devil.... By Zachary Taylor, ... (London, 1696).

[12] It is interesting that Zachary Taylor's father was a Non-Conformist; see The Lancashire Levite Rebuked, 2.

[13] London, 1697.

[14] The Devil Turned Casuist.

[15] A Vindication of the Surey Demoniack, 17.

[16] Taylor replied to Jollie's Vindication of the Surey Demoniack in 1698 with a pamphlet entitled Popery, Superstition, Ignorance and Knavery ... very fully proved ... in the Surey Imposture. Then came The Lancashire Levite Rebuked, by the unknown writer, "N. N.," whose views we give in the text. Taylor seems to have answered in a letter to "N. N." which called forth a scathing reply (1698) in The Lancashire Levite Rebuked, or a Farther Vindication of the Dissenters.... Taylor's reply, which came out in 1699, was entitled Popery, Superstition, Ignorance, and Knavery Confess'd and fully Proved on the Surey Dissenters....

[17] "N. N." The Lancashire Levite Rebuked. The Rev. Alexander Gordon, in his article on Zachary Taylor, Dict. Nat. Biog., says that Carrington probably wrote this book. This seems impossible. The author of the book, in speaking of Mr. Jollie, Mr. R. Fr. [Frankland], and Mr. O. H. [Oliver Heywood], refers to Mr. C. as having "exposed himself in so many insignificant Fopperies foisted into his Narrative"—proof enough that Carrington did not write The Lancashire Levite Rebuked.

[18] Several dissenting clergymen had opposed the publication of The Surey Demoniack, and had sought to have it suppressed. See The Lancashire Levite Rebuked, 2.

[19] For an account of this case see Francis Hutchinson, Historical Essay on Witchcraft (London, 1718), 43. Hutchinson had made an investigation of the case when in Bury, and he had also Holt's notes of the trial.

[20] Hutchinson had Holt's notes on this case, as on the preceding; ibid., 45. Blackburne's letter is printed in Notes and Queries, 1st series, XI, 498-499, and reprinted in Brand, Popular Antiquities (1905), II, 648-649.

[21] See The Tryal of Richard Hathaway, ... For endeavouring to take away the Life of Sarah Morduck, For being a Witch ... (London, 1702), and A Full and True Account of the Apprehending and Taking of Mrs. Sarah Moordike, ... accused ... for having Bewitched one Richard Hetheway ...; see also Hutchinson, op. cit., 224-228.

[22] Ibid., 226.

[23] A somewhat similar case at Hammersmith met with the same treatment, if the pamphlet account may be trusted. Susanna Fowles pretended to be possessed in such a way that she could not use the name of God or Christ. The application of a red-hot iron to her head in the midst of her fits was drastic but effectual. She cried out "Oh Lord," and so proved herself a "notorious Lyar." She was sent to the house of correction, where, reports the unfeeling pamphleteer, "She is now beating hemp." Another pamphlet, however, gives a very different version. According to this account, Susan, under Papist influences, pretended to be possessed in such a way that she was continually blaspheming. She was indicted for blasphemy, fined, and sentenced to stand in the pillory. (For the graphic titles of these contradictory pamphlets and of a folio broadside on the same subject, see appendix A, Sec. 7).

[24] Probably not by any court verdict, but through the privy council.

[25] See J. C. Cox, Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals (London, 1890), II, 90.

[26] Jane Wenham (broadside); see also A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, Practis'd by Jane Wenham ... (London, 1712).

[27] This narrative is given in great detail in A Full and Impartial Account. It is of course referred to in nearly all the other pamphlets.

[28] Jane Wenham (broadside) see also A Full and Impartial Account, 12.

[29] Jane Wenham (broadside); see also A Full and Impartial Account, 10.

[30] Jane Wenham (broadside); see also A Full and Impartial Account, 14.

[31] Ibid., 14.

[32] It was suggested by some who did not believe Jane guilty, that she confessed from unhappiness and a desire to be out of the world, Witchcraft Farther Display'd. Containing (I) An Account of the Witchcraft practis'd by Jane Wenham, ... An Answer to ... Objections against the Being and Power of Witches ... (London, 1712), 37.

[33] A Full and Impartial Account, 24.

[34] An Account of the Tryal, Examination and Condemnation of Jane Wenham.

[35] A Full and Impartial Account, 27.

[36] A Full and Impartial Account, 26.

[37] Ibid., 25.

[38] For this story I have found no contemporary testimony. The earliest source that I can find is Alexander Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary (London, 1812-1827), XXV, 248 (s. v. Powell).

[39] After her release she was taken under the protection of Colonel Plummer of Gilston, who had followed the trial. Hutchinson, Historical Essay on Witchcraft, 130. On his death she was supported by the Earl and Countess of Cowper, and lived until 1730. Robert Clutterbuck, History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford (London, 1815-1827), II, 461, note.

[40] Witchcraft Farther Displayed, introduction.

[41] See the dedication to Justice Powell in The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd (London, 1712).

[42] A Full Confutation of Witchcraft: More particularly of the Depositions against Jane Wenham.... In a Letter from a Physician in Hertfordshire, to his Friend in London (London, 1712).

[43] The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd. For more as to these discussions see below, ch. XIV.

[44] It seems, however, that the efforts of Lady Frances —— to bring about Jane's execution in spite of the judge were feared by Jane's friends. See The Impossibility of Witchcraft, ... In which the Depositions against Jane Wenham ... are Confuted ... (London, 1712), 2d ed. (in the Bodleian), 36.

[45] See Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,838, f. 404.

[46] They could "get no blood of them by Scratching so they used great pins and such Instruments for that purpose."

[47] See Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 160; see also C. J. Bilson, County Folk Lore, Leicestershire and Rutland (Folk Lore Soc., 1895), 51-52.

[48] The Case of Witchcraft at Coggeshall, Essex, in the year 1699. Being the narrative of the Rev. J. Boys ... (London, 1901).

[49] By some Parker is given the credit. I cannot find the original authority.

[50] Inderwick, Sidelights on the Stuarts, 174, 175.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE CLOSE OF THE LITERARY CONTROVERSY.

In the last chapter we mentioned the controversy over Jane Wenham. In attempting in this chapter to show the currents and cross-currents of opinion during the last period of witch history in England, we cannot omit some account of the pamphlet war over the Hertfordshire witch. It will not be worth while, however, to take up in detail the arguments of the upholders of the superstition. The Rev. Mr. Bragge was clearly on the defensive. There were, he admitted sadly, "several gentlemen who would not believe that there are any witches since the time of our Saviour Jesus Christ." He struck the same note when he spoke of those who disbelieved "on the prejudices of education only." With great satisfaction the clergyman quoted the decision of Sir Matthew Hale in 1664.[1]

The opinions of the opposition are more entertaining, if their works did not have so wide a sale. The physician who wrote to his friend in London poked fun at the witchmongers. It was dangerous to do so, he admitted, "especially in the Country, where to make the least Doubt is a Badge of Infidelity."[2] As for him, he envied the privileges of the town. He proceeded to take up the case of Anne Thorne. Her seven-minute mile run with a broken knee was certainly puzzling. "If it was only a violent Extention of the Rotula, something might be allow'd: but it is hard to tell what this was, your Country Bone-Setters seldom plaguing their heads with Distinctions."[3] The "Viciousness of Anne Thorn's opticks,"[4] the silly character of the clergyman's evidence, and the spiritual juggles at exorcism,[5] all these things roused his merriment. As for Jane's confession, it was the result of ensnaring questions.[6] He seemed to hold the clergy particularly responsible for witch cases and advised them to be more conversant with the history of diseases and to inquire more narrowly into the physical causes of things.

A defender of Justice Powell, probably Henry Stebbing, later an eminent divine but now a young Cambridge master of arts, entered the controversy. He was not altogether a skeptic about witchcraft in general, but his purpose was to show that the evidence against Jane Wenham was weak. The two chief witnesses, Matthew Gilston and Anne Thorne, were "much disturbed in their Imaginations." There were many absurdities in their stories. He cited the story of Anne Thorne's mile run in seven minutes. Who knew that it was seven minutes? There was no one timing her when she started. How was it known that she went half a mile? And, supposing these narratives were true, would they prove anything? The writer took up piece after piece of the evidence in this way and showed its absurdity. Some of his criticisms are amusing—he attacked silly testimony in such a solemn way—yet he had, too, his sense of fun. It had been alleged, he wrote, that the witch's flesh, when pricked, emitted no blood, but a thin watery matter. "Mr. Chauncy, it is like, expected that Jane Wenham's Blood shou'd have been as rich and as florid as that of Anne Thorne's, or of any other Virgin of about 16. He makes no difference, I see, between the Beef and Mutton Regimen, and that of Turnips and Water-gruel."[7] Moreover, he urges, it is well known that fright congeals the blood.[8]

We need not go further into this discussion. Mr. Bragge and his friends re-entered the fray at once, and then another writer proved with elaborate argument that there had never been such a thing as witchcraft. The controversy was growing dull, but it had not been without value. It had been, on the whole, an unconventional discussion of the subject and had shown very clearly the street-corner point of view. But we must turn to the more formal treatises. Only three of them need be noticed, those of Richard Baxter, John Beaumont, and Richard Boulton. All of these writers had been affected by the accounts of the Salem witchcraft in New England. The opinions of Glanvill and Matthew Hale had been carried to America and now were brought back to fortify belief in England. Richard Baxter was most clearly influenced by the accounts of what had happened in the New World. The Mathers were his friends and fellow Puritans, and their testimony was not to be doubted for a minute. But Baxter needed no convincing. He had long preached and written about the danger of witches. In a sermon on the Holy Ghost in the fifties he had shown a wide acquaintance with foreign works on demonology.[9] In a Defence of the Christian Religion,[10] written several years later, he recognized that the malice of the accusers and the melancholy of the accused were responsible for some cases, but such cases were exceptions. If any one doubted that there were bona fide cases, let him talk to the judges and ministers yet living in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex. They could tell him of many of the confessions made in the Hopkins period. Baxter had not only talked on witchcraft with Puritan ministers, but had corresponded as well with Glanvill, with whom, although Glanvill was an Anglican, he seems to have been on very friendly terms.[11] Nor is it likely that in the many conversations he held with his neighbor, Sir Matthew Hale,[12] the evidence from witchcraft for a spiritual world had been neglected. The subject must have come up in his conversations with another friend, Robert Boyle.[13] Boyle's interest in such matters was of course a scientific one. Baxter, like Glanvill, looked at them from a religious point of view. In the classic Saint's Everlasting Rest he drew his fourth argument for the future happiness and misery of man from the Devil's compact with witches.[14] To this point he reverted in his Dying Thoughts. His Certainty of the World of Spirits, in which he took up the subject of witchcraft in more detail, was written but a few months before his death. "When God first awakened me, to think with preparing seriousness of my Condition after Death, I had not any observed Doubts of the Reality of Spirits.... But, when God had given me peace of Conscience, Satan Assaulted me with those worse Temptations.... I found that my Faith of Supernatural Revelation must be more than a Believing Man and that if it had not a firm foundation, ... even sure Evidence of Verity, ... it was not like ... to make my Death to be safe and comfortable.... I tell the Reader, that he may see why I have taken this Subject as so necessary, why I am ending my Life with the publication of these Historical Letters and Collections, which I dare say have such Evidence as will leave every Sadduce that readeth them, either convinced, or utterly without excuse."[15]

By the "Collection" he meant, of course, the narratives brought out in his Certainty of the World of Spirits—published in 1691. It is unnecessary to review its arguments here. They were an elaboration of those already used in earlier works. Too much has been made of this book. Baxter had the fever for publication. It was a lean year when he dashed off less than two works. His wife told him once that he would write better if he wrote less. Probably she was thinking of his style, and she was doubtless right. But it was true, too, of his thinking; and none of his productions show this more than his hurried book on, spirits and witches.[16]

Beaumont and Boulton may be passed over quickly. Beaumont[17] had read widely in the witch literature of England and other countries;[18] he had read indeed with some care, as is evidenced by the fact that he had compared Hopkins's and Stearne's accounts of the same events and found them not altogether consistent. Nevertheless Beaumont never thought of questioning the reality of witchcraft phenomena, and his chief aim in writing was to answer The World Bewitched, the great work of a Dutch theologian, Balthazar Bekker, "who laughs at all these things of this Nature as done by Humane contrivance."[19] Bekker's bold book was indeed gaining wide notice; but this reply to it was entirely commonplace. Richard Boulton, sometime of Brasenose College, published ten years later, in 1715, A Compleat History of Magic. It was a book thrown together in a haphazard way from earlier authors, and was written rather to sell than to convince. Seven years later a second edition was brought out, in which the writer inserted an answer to Hutchinson.

Before taking up Hutchinson's work we shall turn aside to collect those stray fragments of opinion that indicate in which direction the wind was blowing. Among those who wrote on nearly related topics, one comparatively obscure name deserves mention. Dr. Richard Burthogge published in 1694 an Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits, a book which was dedicated to John Locke. He touched on witchcraft in passing. "Most of the relations," he wrote, "do, upon impartial Examination, prove either Impostures of Malicious, or Mistakes of Ignorant and Superstitious persons; yet some come so well Attested that it were to bid defiance to all Human Testimony to refuse them belief."[20]

This was the last stand of those who still believed. Shall we, they asked, discredit all human testimony? It was practically the belief of Bishop William Lloyd of Worcester, who, while he urged his clergy to give up their notions about witches, was inclined to believe that the Devil still operates in the Gentile world and among the Pagans.[21] Joseph Addison was equally unwilling to take a radical view. "There are," he wrote in the Spectator for July 14, 1711, "some opinions in which a man should stand neuter.... It is with this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft.... I endeavour to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts.... I believe in general that there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time can give no credit to any particular instance of it."[22] The force of credulity among the country people he fully recognized. His Sir Roger de Coverley, who was a justice of the peace, and his chaplain were, he said, too often compelled to put an end to the witch-swimming experiments of the people.

If this was belief, it was at least a harmless sort. It was almost exactly the position of James Johnstone, former secretary for Scotland, who, writing from London to the chancellor of Scotland, declared his belief in the existence of witches, but called attention to the fact that the parliaments of France and other judicatories had given up the trying of them because it was impossible to distinguish possession from "nature in disorder."[23]

But there were those who were ready to assert a downright negative. The Marquis of Halifax in the Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections which he wrote (or, at least, completed) in 1694, noted "It is a fundamental ... that there were witches—much shaken of late."[24] Secretary of State Vernon and the Duke of Shrewsbury were both of them skeptical about the confessions of witches.[25] Sir Richard Steele lampooned the belief. "Three young ladies of our town," he makes his correspondent relate, "were indicted for witchcraft. One by spirits locked in a bottle and magic herbs drew hundreds of men to her; the second cut off by night the limbs of dead bodies and, muttering words, buried them; the third moulded pieces of dough into the shapes of men, women, and children and then heated them." They "had nothing to say in their own defence but downright denying the facts, which," the writer remarks, "is like to avail very little when they come upon their trials." "The parson," he continued, "will believe nothing of all this; so that the whole town cries out: 'Shame! that one of his cast should be such an atheist.'"[26]

The parson had at length assimilated the skepticism of the jurists and the gentry. It was, as has been said, an Anglican clergyman who administered the last great blow to the superstition. Francis Hutchinson's Historical Essay on Witchcraft, published in 1718 (and again, enlarged, in 1720), must rank with Reginald Scot's Discoverie as one of the great classics of English witch literature. Hutchinson had read all the accounts of trials in England—so far as he could find them—and had systematized them in chronological order, so as to give a conspectus of the whole subject. So nearly was his point of view that of our own day that it would be idle to rehearse his arguments. A man with warm sympathies for the oppressed, he had been led probably by the case of Jane Wenham, with whom he had talked, to make a personal investigation of all cases that came at all within the ken of those living. Whoever shall write the final story of English witchcraft will find himself still dependent upon this eighteenth-century historian.

Hutchinson's work was the last chapter in the witch controversy. There was nothing more to say.

[1] Witchcraft Farther Displayed.

[2] A Full Confutation of Witchcraft, 4.

[3] Ibid., 11.

[4] Ibid., 38.

[5] Ibid., 5.

[6] Ibid., 23-24.

[7] The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd, 72.

[8] If certain phrases may be trusted, this writer was interested in the case largely because it had become a cause of sectarian combat and he hoped to strike at the church.

[9] See Baxter's Works (London, 1827-1830), XX, 255-271.

[10] See ibid., XXI, 87.

[11] W. Orme in his Life of Richard Baxter (London, 1830), I, 435, says that the Baxter MSS. contain several letters from Glanvill to Baxter.

[12] See Memoirs of Richard Baxter by Dr. Bates (in Biographical Collections, or Lives and Characters from the Works of the Reverend Mr. Baxter and Dr. Bates, 1760), II, 51, 73.

[13] Ibid., 26; see also Baxter's Dying Thoughts, in Works, XVIII, 284, where he refers to the Demon of Mascon, a story for which Boyle, as we have seen, had stood sponsor in England.

[14] Ch. VII, sect. iv, in Works, XXII, 327.

[15] Certainty of the World of Spirits (London, 1691), preface.

[16] Two other collectors of witch stories deserve perhaps a note here, for each prefaced his collection with a discussion of witchcraft. The London publisher Nathaniel Crouch, who wrote much for his own press under the pseudonym of "R. B." (later expanded to "Richard Burton"), published as early as 1688 (not 1706, as says the Dict. Nat. Biog.) The Kingdom of Darkness: or The History of Daemons, Specters, Witches, ... Containing near Fourscore memorable Relations, ... Together with a Preface obviating the common Objections and Allegations of the Sadduces [sic] and Atheists of the Age, ... with Pictures. Edward Stephens, first lawyer, then clergyman, but always a pamphleteer, brought out in 1693 A Collection of Modern Relations concerning Witches and Witchcraft, to which was prefaced Sir Matthew Hale's Meditations concerning the Mercy of God in preserving us from the Malice and Power of Evil Angels and a dissertation of his own on Questions concerning Witchcraft.

[17] An Historical, Physiological, and Theological Treatise of Spirits, Apparitions, Witchcraft and other Magical Practices (London, 1705). Dedicated to "John, Earl of Carbury."

[18] See for example, ibid., 63, 70, 71, 75, 130-135, 165, 204, 289, 306.

[19] Balthazar Bekker's De Betoverde Weereld (Leeuwarden and Amsterdam, 1691-1693), was a most telling attack upon the reality of witchcraft, and, through various translations, was read all over Europe. The first part was translated and published in London in 1695 as The World Bewitched, and was republished in 1700 as The World Turn'd upside down.

[20] Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits, 195.

[21] G. P. R. James, ed., Letters Illustrative of the Reign of William III, ... addressed to the Duke of Shrewsbury, by James Vernon, Esq. (London, 1841), II, 302-303.

[22] Spectator, no. 117.

[23] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, XIV, 3, p. 132.

[24] H. C. Foxcroft, ed., Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (London, 1898), II, 493.

[25] G. P. R. James, ed., op. cit., II, 300. Shrewsbury's opinion may be inferred from Vernon's reply to him.

[26] See the Tatler, no. 21, May 28, 1709.



APPENDICES.



A.—PAMPHLET LITERATURE.

Sec. 1.—Witchcraft under Elizabeth (see ch. II).

A large part of the evidence for the trials of Elizabeth's reign is derived from the pamphlets issued soon after the trials. These pamphlets furnish a peculiar species of historical material, and it is a species so common throughout the history of English witchcraft that it deserves a brief examination in passing. The pamphlets were written of course by credulous people who easily accepted what was told them and whose own powers of observation were untrained. To get at the facts behind their marvellous accounts demands the greatest care and discrimination. Not only must the miraculous be ruled out, but the prejudices of the observer must be taken into account. Did the pamphleteer himself hear and see what he recorded, or was his account at second hand? Did he write soon after the events, when they were fresh in his memory? Does his narrative seem to be that of a painstaking, careful man or otherwise? These are questions to be answered. In many instances, however, the pamphlets were not narrative in form, but were merely abstracts of the court proceedings and testimony. In this case, too, care must be taken in using them, for the testimony damaging to the accused was likely to be accented, while the evidence on the other side, if not suppressed, was not emphasized. In general, however, these records of depositions are sources whose residuum of fact it is not difficult to discover. Both in this and in the narrative material the most valuable points may be gleaned from the incidental references and statements. The writer has made much use of this incidental matter. The position of the witch in her community, the real ground of the feeling against her upon the part of her neighbors, the way in which the alarm spread, the processes used to elicit confession—inferences of this sort may, the writer believes, be often made with a good deal of confidence. We have taken for granted that the pamphlets possess a substratum of truth. This may not always be the case. The pamphleteer was writing to sell. A fictitious narrative of witchcraft or of a witch trial was almost as likely to sell as a true narrative. More than once in the history of witch literature absolutely imaginary stories were foisted upon the public. It is necessary to be constantly on guard against this type of pamphlet. Fortunately nine-tenths of the witch accounts are corroborated from other sources. The absence of such corroboration does not mean that an account should be barred out, but that it should be subjected to the methods of historical criticism, and that it should be used cautiously even if it pass that test. Happily for us, the plan of making a witch story to order does not seem to have occurred to the Elizabethan pamphleteers. So far as we know, all the pamphlets of that time rest upon actual events. We shall take them up briefly in order.

The first was The examination and confession of certaine Wytches at Chensforde in the Countie of Essex before the Quenes maiesties Judges, the XXVI daye of July Anno 1566. The only original copy of this pamphlet is in the Lambeth Palace library at London and its binding bears the initials of R. B. [Richard Bancroft]. The versified introduction is signed by John Phillips, who presumably was the author. The pamphlet—a black letter one—was issued, in three parts, from the press of William Powell at London, two of them on August 13, the third on August 23, 1566. It has since been reprinted by H. Beigel for the Philobiblon Society, London, 1864-1865. It gives abstracts of the confessions and an account of the court interrogatories. There is every reason to believe that it is in the main an accurate account of what happened at the Chelmsford trials in 1566. Justice Southcote, Dr. Cole, Master Foscue, and Attorney-General Gerard are all names we can identify. Moreover, the one execution narrated is confirmed by the pamphlet dealing with the trials at Chelmsford in 1579.

The second pamphlet, also in black letter, deals with the Abingdon cases of 1579. It is entitled A Rehearsall both straung and true of hainous and horrible actes committed by Elizabeth Stile, alias Rockingham, Mother Dutten, Mother Devell, Mother Margaret. Fower notorious Witches apprehended at Winsore in the Countie of Barks, and at Abington arraigned, condemned and executed on the 28 daye of Februarie last anno 1579. This pamphlet finds confirmation by a reference in the privy council records to the same event (Acts P. C., n. s., XI, 22). Reginald Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, 17, 543, mentions another, a book of "Richard Gallis of Windesor" "about certaine witches of Windsore executed at Abington." This would seem to have been a different account of the Abingdon affair, because Scot also on p. 51 speaks of some details of the Abingdon affair as to be found "in a little pamphlet of the acts and hanging of foure witches in anno 1579." It is perhaps the one described by Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature (p. 2959) under the title The horrible Acts of Eliz. Style, alias Rockingham, Mother Dutton, Mother Dovell, and Mother Margaret, 4 Witches executed at Abingdon, 26 Feb. upon Richard Galis (London, 1579) or that mentioned in the Stationers' Registers, II (London, 1875), 352, under date of May 4, 1579, as A brief treatise conteyninge the most strange and horrible crueltye of Elizabeth Sule [sic] alias Bockingham [sic] and hir confederates executed at Abingdon upon Richard Galis etc.

The second Chelmsford trials were also in 1579. The pamphlet account was called A Detection of damnable driftes, practised by three Witches arraigned at Chelmsforde in Essex at the last Assizes there holden, whiche were executed in Aprill 1579. There are three references in this pamphlet to people mentioned in the earlier Chelmsford pamphlet, so that the two confirm each other.

The third Chelmsford trials came in 1589 and were narrated in a pamphlet entitled The apprehension and confession of three notorious Witches arraigned and by Justice condemnede in the Countye of Essex the 5 day of Julye last past. Joan Cunny was convicted, largely on the evidence of the two bastard sons of one of her "lewde" daughters. The eldest of these boys, who was not over ten or twelve, told the court that he had seen his grandmother cause an oak to be blown up by the roots during a calm. The charges against Joan Upney concerned chiefly her dealings with toads, those against Joan Prentice, who lived in an Essex almshouse, had to do with ferrets. The three women seem to have been brought first before justices of the peace and were then tried together and condemned by the "judge of the circuit." This narrative has no outside confirmation, but the internal evidence for its authenticity is good. Three men mentioned as sheriff, justice, and landowner can all be identified as holding those respective positions in the county.

The narrative of the St. Oses case appeared in 1582. It was called A True and just Recorde of the Information, Examination and Confession of all the Witches taken at St. Oses in the countie of Essex: whereof some were executed, and other some entreated according to the determination of Lawe.... Written orderly, as the cases were tryed by evidence, by W. W. The pamphlet is merely a record of examinations. It is dedicated to Justice Darcy; and from slips, where the judge in describing his action breaks into the first person, it is evident that it was written by the judge himself. Scot, who wrote two years later, had read this pamphlet, and knew of the case (Discoverie, 49, 542). There are many references to the case by later writers on witchcraft.