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 CHAPTER XIII.
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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 rôle, 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 CHAPTER XIII.
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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 CHAPTER XIII.
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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 CHAPTER XIII.
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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."
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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, § 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).
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[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 Devi