Gifford, Cotta, and Ady had brought in a few new arguments to be used in attacking superstition, but in general the assailants looked to Scot. On the other side, only Perkins and More had contributed anything worth while to the defence that had been built up. Yet, the reader will notice that there had been progress. The centre of struggle had shifted to a point within the outer walls. The water ordeal and the evidence of marks were given up by most, if not all. The struggle now was over the transportation of witches through the air and the battle was going badly for the defenders.
We turn now to the incidental indications of the shifting of opinion. In one sense this sort of evidence means more than the formal literature. Yet its fragmentary character at best precludes putting any great stress upon it.
If one were to include all the references to witchcraft in the drama of the period, this discussion might widen out into a long chapter. Over the passages in the playwrights we must pass with haste; but certain points must be noted. Shakespeare, in Macbeth, which scholars have usually placed at about 1606, used a great body of CHAPTER X.
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witch lore. He used it, too, with apparent good faith, though to conclude therefrom that he believed in it himself would be a most dangerous step.[51] Thomas Middleton, whose Witch probably was written somewhat later, and who is thought to have drawn on Shakespeare for some of his witch material, gives absolutely no indication in that play that he did not credit those tales of witch performances of which he availed himself. The same may be said of Dekker and of those who collaborated with him in writing The Witch of Edmonton.[52]
We may go further and say that in none of these three plays is there any hint that there were disbelievers. But when we come to Ben Jonson we have a different story. His various plays we cannot here take up. Suffice it to say, on the authority of careful commentators, that he openly or covertly ridiculed all the supposedly supernatural phenomena of his time.[53] Perhaps a search through the obscurer dramatists of the period might reveal other evidences of skepticism. Such a search we cannot make. It must, however, be pointed out that Thomas Heywood, in The late Lancashire Witches[54] a play which is described at some length in an earlier chapter, makes a character say:[55] "It seemes then you are of opinion that there are witches. For mine own part I can hardly be induc'd to think there is any such kinde of people."[56] The speech is the more notable because Heywood's own belief in witchcraft, as has been observed in another connection, seems beyond doubt.
The interest in witchcraft among literary men was not confined to the dramatists. Three prose writers eminent in their time dealt with the question. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy[57] admits that "many deny witches at all, or, if there be any, they can do no harm." But he says that on the other side are grouped most
"Lawyers, Divines, Physitians, Philosophers." James Howell, famous letter-writer of the mid-century, had a similar reverence for authority: "I say ... that he who denies there are such busy Spirits and such poor passive Creatures upon whom they work, which commonly are call'd Witches ... shews that he himself hath a Spirit of Contradiction in him."[58] There are, he says, laws against witches, laws by Parliament and laws in the Holy Codex.
Francis Osborne, a literary man whose reputation hardly survived his century, but an essayist of great fame in his own time,[59] was a man who made his fortune by sailing against rather than with the wind. It was conventional to believe in witches and Osborne would not for any consideration be conventional. He assumed the skeptical attitude,[60] and perhaps was as influential as any one man in making that attitude fashionable.
From these lesser lights of the literary world we may pass to notice the attitude assumed by three men of influence in their own day, whose reputations have hardly been dimmed by time, Bacon, Selden, and Hobbes.
Not that their views would be representative of their times, for each of the three men thought in his own way, and all three were in many respects in advance of their day. At some time in the reign of James I Francis Bacon wrote his Sylva Sylvarum and rather incidentally touched upon witchcraft. He warned judges to be wary about believing the confessions of witches and the evidence against them. "For the witches themselves are imaginative and believe oft-times they do that which they do not; and people are credulous in that point, and ready to impute accidents and natural operations to witchcraft. It is worthy the observing, that ... the great wonders which they tell, of carrying in the air, transporting themselves into other bodies, &c., are still reported to be wrought, not by incantations, or ceremonies, but by ointments, and anointing themselves all over. This may justly move a man to think that these fables are the effects of imagination."[61]
Surely all this has a skeptical sound. Yet largely on the strength of another passage, which has been carelessly read, the great Bacon has been tearfully numbered among the blindest leaders of the blind.[62] A careful comparison of his various allusions to witchcraft will convince one that, while he assumed a belief in the practice,[63] partly perhaps in deference to James's views,[64] he inclined to explain many reported phenomena from the effects of the imagination[65] and from the operation of "natural causes" as yet unknown.[66]
Bacon, though a lawyer and man of affairs, had the point of view of a philosopher. With John Selden we get CHAPTER X.
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more directly the standpoint of a legal man. In his Table Talk[67] that eminent jurist wrote a paragraph on witches. "The Law against Witches," he declared, "does not prove there be any; but it punishes the Malice of those people that use such means to take away mens Lives. If one should profess that by turning his Hat thrice and crying Buz, he could take away a man's life (though in truth he could do no such thing) yet this were a just Law made by the State, that whosoever should turn his Hat thrice and cry Buz, with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death."[68] As to the merits of this legal quip the less said the better; but it is exceedingly hard to see in the passage anything but downright skepticism as to the witch's power.[69]
It is not without interest that Selden's point of view was exactly that of the philosopher Hobbes. There is no man of the seventeenth century, unless it be Oliver Cromwell or John Milton, whose opinion on this subject we would rather know than that of Hobbes. In 1651 Hobbes had issued his great Leviathan. It is unnecessary here to insist upon the widespread influence of that work. Let it be said, however, that Hobbes was not only to set in motion new philosophies, but that he had been tutor to Prince Charles[70] and was to become a figure in the reign of that prince.[71] Hobbes's work was directed against superstition in many forms, but we need only notice his statement about witchcraft, a statement that did not by any means escape his contemporaries. "As for Witches," he wrote, "I think not that their witchcraft is any reall power; but yet that they are justly punished for the false beliefe they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can."[72] Perhaps the great philosopher had in mind those pretenders to diabolic arts who had suffered punishment, and was so defending the community that had rid itself of a preying class. In any case, while he defended the law, he put himself among the disbelievers in witchcraft.
From these opinions of the great we may turn to mark the more trivial indications of the shifting of opinion to be found in the pamphlet literature. It goes without saying that the pamphlet-writers believed in that whereof they spoke. It is not in their outspoken faith that we are interested, but rather in their mention of those opponents at whose numbers they marvelled, and whose incredulity they undertook to shake. Nowhere better than in the prefaces of the pamphleteers can evidence be found of the growing skepticism. The narrator of the Northampton cases in 1612 avowed it his purpose in writing to convince the "many that remaine yet in doubt whether there be any Witches or no."[73] That ardent busybody, Mr. Potts, who reported the Lancaster cases of 1612, very incidentally lets us know that the kinsfolk and friends of Jennet Preston, who, it will be remembered, suffered at York, declared the whole prosecution to be an act of malice.[74] The Yorkshire poet and gentleman, Edward Fairfax, who made such an ado about the sickness of his two daughters in 1622 and would have sent six creatures to the gallows for it, was very frank in describing the opposition he met. The accused women found supporters among the "best able and most understanding."[75] There were, he thought, three kinds of people who were doubters in these matters: those who attributed too much to natural causes and who were content to call clear cases of bewitchment convulsions, those who when witchcraft was broached talked about fairies and "walking ghosts," and lastly those who believed there were no witches. "Of this opinion I hear and see there be many, some of them men of worth, religious and honest."[76]
The pamphlet-writers of James's reign had adjusted themselves to meet opposition. Those of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth were prepared to meet ridicule.[77] "There are some," says the narrator of a Yorkshire story, "who are of opinion that there are no Divells nor any witches.... Men in this Age are grown so wicked, that they are apt to believe there are no greater Divells than themselves."[78] Another writer, to bolster up his story before a skeptical public, declares that he is "very chary and hard enough to believe passages of this nature."[79]
We have said that the narrators of witch stories fortified themselves against ridicule. That ridicule obviously must have found frequent expression in conversation, but sometimes it even crept into the newspapers and tracts of the day. The Civil Wars had developed a regular London press. We have already met with expressions of serious opinion from it.[80] But not all were of that sort. In 1654 the Mercurius Democritus, the Punch of its time, took occasion to make fun of the stories of the supernatural then in circulation. There was, it declared, a strange story of a trance and apparition, a ghost was said to be abroad, a woman had hanged herself in a tobacco pipe. With very broad humor the journal took off the strange reports of the time and CHAPTER X.
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concluded with the warning that in "these distempered times" it was not safe for an "idle-pated woman" to look up at the skies.[81]
The same mocking incredulity had manifested itself in 1648 in a little brochure entitled, The Devil seen at St.
Albans, Being a true Relation how the Devill was seen there in a Cellar, in the likeness of a Ram; and how a Butcher came and cut his throat, and sold some of it, and dressed the rest for himselfe, inviting many to supper, who did eat of it.[82] The story was a clever parody of the demon tracts that had come out so frequently in the exciting times of the wars. The writer made his point clear when he declared that his story was of equal value with anything that "Britannicus" ever wrote.[83] The importance of these indications may be overestimated. But they do mean that there were those bold enough to make fun. A decade or two later ridicule became a two-edged knife, cutting superstition right and left. But even under the terribly serious Puritans skepticism began to avail itself of that weapon, a weapon of which it could hardly be disarmed.
In following the history of opinion we must needs mention again some of the incidents of certain cases dealt with in earlier chapters, incidents that indicate the growing force of doubt. The reader has hardly forgotten the outcome of the Lancashire cases in 1633. There Bishop Bridgeman and the king, if they did not discredit witchcraft, discredited its manifestation in the particular instance.[84] As for William Harvey, he had probably given up his faith in the whole business after the little incident at Newmarket.[85] When we come to the time of the Civil Wars we cannot forget that Stearne and Hopkins met opposition, not alone from the Huntingdon minister, but from a large party in Norfolk, who finally forced the witchfinder to defend himself in court. Nor can we forget the witch-pricker of Berwick who was sent a-flying back to his native northern soil, nor the persistent Mrs. Muschamp who tramped over Northumberland seeking a warrant and finding none.
The course of opinion is a circuitous one. We have followed its windings in and out through more than half a century. We have listened as respectfully as possible to the vagaries of country parsons and university preachers, we have heard from scholars, from gentlemen, from jurists and men of affairs, from physicians and philosophers. It matters little now what they thought or said, but it did matter then. We have seen how easy a thing it was to fall into the error that a middle course was nearest truth. Broad was the way and many there were that walked therein. Yet even those who travelled that highway found their direction shifting. For there was progress in opinion. With every decade the travellers, as well those who strayed aside as those who followed the crowd, were getting a little nearer to truth.
[1] "Printed by Cantrel Legge, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge" (1608, 1610).
[2] See Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, ch. VII, sect. I.
[3] His literary executor, Thomas Pickering, late of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and now "Minister of Finchingfield in Essex," who prepared the Discourse for the press (both in its separate form and as a part of Perkins's collected works), and who dedicates it to Sir Edward Coke, is, however, equally silent as to James, though in his preface he mentions Scot by name.
[4] Ibid. , ch. IV, sect. I. See also ch. II.
[5] Ibid. , ch. VII, sect. II.
[6] Ibid. , ch. VI.
[7] Ibid. , ch. VII, sect. II.
[8] Ibid. , ch. VII, sect. II.
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[9] James Mason, "Master of Artes," whose Anatomie of Sorcerie ("printed at London by John Legatte, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge," 1612), puts him next to Perkins in chronological order, needs only mention in passing. He takes the reality of sorcery for granted, and devotes himself to argument against its use.
[10] ... Shewing the True and Right Methode of the Discovery. Cotta was familiar with the more important trials of his time. He knew of the Warboys, Lancaster, and York trials and he probably had come into close contact with the Northampton cases. He had read, too, several of the books on the subject, such as Scot, Wier, and Perkins. His omission of King James's work is therefore not only curious but significant. A second edition of his book was published in 1625.
[11] See Triall of Witchcraft, ch. XIV.
[12] See ibid. , p. 48.
[13] Ibid. , 66-67.
[14] See ibid. , ch. VI. Cotta speaks of the case as six years earlier.
[15] Ibid. , 62, 66.
[16] A Short Discoverie, 70.
[17] Triall of Witchcraft, 83-84.
[18] A Short Discoverie, 51-53.
[19] Triall of Witchcraft, 70.
[20] Roberts's explanation of the proneness of women to witchcraft deserves mention in passing. Women are more credulous, more curious, "their complection is softer," they have "greater facility to fall," greater desire for revenge, and "are of a slippery tongue." Treatise of Witchcraft, 42-43.
[21] "In Cheshire and Coventry," he tells us. "Hath not Coventrie," he asks (p. 16), "beene usually haunted by these hellish Sorcerers, where it was confessed by one of them, that no lesse than three-score were of that confedracie?... And was I not there enjoyned by a necessity to the discoverie of this Brood?"
[22] For the whole case see Howell, State Trials, II.
[23] See article on Bernard in Dict. Nat. Biog.
[24] See below, appendix C, list of witch cases, under 1626.
[25] See Guide to Grand-Jurymen, Dedication.
[26] Ibid. , 11-12.
[27] Ibid. , 53.
[28] Ibid. , 214.
[29] This he did on the authority of a repentant Mr. Edmonds, of Cambridge, who had once been questioned by the University authorities for witchcraft. Ibid. , 136-138.
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[30] Guide to Grand-Jurymen, 22-28.
[31] He was "for the law, but agin' its enforcement."
[32] Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcraft (London, 1646).
[33] Ibid. , 92.
[34] Ibid. , 94, 97. That Gaule was a Puritan, as has been asserted, appears from nothing in his book. If he dedicated his Select Cases to his townsman Colonel Walton, a brother-in-law of Cromwell, and his Mag-astro-mancer (a later diatribe against current superstitions) to Oliver himself, there is nothing in his prefatory letters to show him of their party. Nor does the tone of his writings suggest a Calvinist. That in 1649
we find Gaule chosen to preach before the assizes of Huntingdon points perhaps only to his popularity as a leader of the reaction against the work of Hopkins.
[35] Antidote to Atheisme, 129.
[36] Ibid. , 127-130.
[37] Ibid. , ch. VIII, 134.
[38] Ibid. , 135.
[39] See p. 118. This Treatise was first published in 1655. Four years later, in 1659, he published A True and faithful Relation of what passed ... between Dr. John Dee, ... and some spirits. In the preface to this he announced his intention of writing the work which he later published as Of Credulity and Incredulity.
[40] In passing we must mention Richard Farnworth, who in 1655 issued a pamphlet called Witchcraft Cast out from the Religious Seed and Israel of God. Farnworth was a Quaker, and wrote merely to warn his brethren against magic and sorcery. He never questioned for a moment the facts of witchcraft and sorcery, nor the Devil's share in them. As for the witches, they were doomed everlastingly to the lake of fire.
[41] Dæmonologie and Theologie. The first, the Malady ..., The Second, The Remedy (London, 1650).
[42] Ibid. , 42.
[43] Ibid. , 16.
[44] See the Introduction to the Advertisement.
[45] Filmer noted further that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew word for witch as "an Apothecary, a Druggister, one that compounds poysons."
[46] London, 1656.
[47] In Ady's second edition, A Perfect Discovery of Witches (1661), 134, Gaule's book having meanwhile come into his hands, he speaks of Gaule as "much inclining to the Truth" and yet swayed by traditions and the authority of the learned. He adds, "Mr. Gaule, if this work of mine shall come to your hand, as yours hath come to mine, be not angry with me for writing God's Truth."
[48] "... few men or women being tied hand and feet together can sink quite away till they be drowned"
( Candle in the Dark, 100); "... very few people in the World are without privie Marks" ( Ibid. , 127).
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[49] Ibid. , 129.
[50] In giving "The Reason of the Book" he wrote, "The Grand Errour of these latter Ages is ascribing power to Witches."
[51] See a recent discussion of a nearly related topic by Professor Elmer Stoll in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXII, 201-233. Of the attitude of the English dramatists before Shakespeare something may be learned from Mr. L. W. Cushman's The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare (Halle, 1900).
[52] About 1622 or soon after.
[53] See, for instance, Mr. W. S. Johnson's introduction to his edition of The Devil is an Ass (New York, 1905).
[54] 1634. This play was written, of course, in cooperation with Brome; see above, pp. 158-160. For other expressions of Heywood's opinions on witchcraft see his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 598, and his
[Greek: GYNAIKEION]: or Nine Books of Various History concerning Women (London, 1624), lib. viii, 399, 407, etc.
[55] Act I, scene 1.
[56] In another part of the same scene: "They that thinke so dreame," i. e. they who believe in witchcraft.
[57] First published in 1621--I use, however, Shilleto's ed. of London, 1893, which follows that of 1651-1652; see pt. I, sect. II, memb. I, sub-sect. 3.
[58] James Howell, Familiar Letters, II, 548.
[59] His Advice to a Son, first published in 1656-1658, went through edition after edition. It is very entertaining. His strongly enforced advice not to marry made a sensation among young Oxford men.
[60] Works of Francis Osborne (London, 1673), 551-553.
[61] Works of Bacon (ed. Spedding, London, 1857-1858), II, 642-643.
[62] "The ointment that witches use is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out of their graves; of the juices of smallage, wolf-bane, and cinque-foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat; but I suppose that the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it." See Sylva Sylvarum, cent. X, 975, in Works, ed. Spedding, II, 664.
But even this passage shows Bacon a skeptic. His suggestion that the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it means that he thinks the delusions of witches subjective and produced by drugs. For other references to the subject see Works, II, 658, 660; VII, 738.
[63] De Argumentis, bk. II, ch. II, in Works, IV, 296; see also ibid. , III, 490.
[64] Advancement of Learning, bk. II; ibid. , III, 490.
[65] Works, IV, 400-401.
[66] Ibid. , IV, 296.
[67] Selden, Table Talk (London, 1689). The book is supposed to have been written during the last twenty CHAPTER X.
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years of Selden's life, that is, between 1634 and 1654.
[68] Selden, Table Talk, s. v. "Witches."
[69] Nor did Selden believe in possessions. See his essay on Devils in the Table Talk.
[70] See article on Hobbes in Dict. Nat. Biog.
[71] See, for example, Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time (Oxford, 1823), I, 172, 322-323.
[72] Leviathan (1651), 7. See also his Dialogue of the Common Laws of England, in Works (ed. of London, 1750), 626: "But I desire not to discourse of that subject; for, though without doubt there is some great Wickedness signified by those Crimes, yet have I ever found myself too dull to conceive the nature of them, or how the Devil hath power to do many things which Witches have been accused of." See also his chapter on Dæmonology in the Leviathan, in Works, 384.
[73] He continues, "Some doe maintaine (but how wisely let the wiser judge) that all Witchcraft spoken of either by holy writers, or testified by other writers to have beene among the heathen or in later daies, hath beene and is no more but either meere Cousinage [he had been reading Scot], or Collusion, so that in the opinion of those men, the Devill hath never done, nor can do anything by Witches." The Witches of Northamptonshire, ... A 4.
[74] Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie ... , X 4 verso.
[75] Fairfax, A Discourse of Witchcraft (Philobiblon Soc.), 12.
[76] Ibid. , 20.
[77] One notable instance must be mentioned. "H. F.," the narrator of the Essex affair of 1645 ( A true and exact Relation) not only recognized the strong position of those who doubted, but was by no means extreme himself. "I doubt not," he wrote, "but these things may seeme as incredible unto some, as they are matter of admiration unto others.... The greatest doubt and question will be, whether it be in the power of the Devil to perform such asportation and locall translation of the bodies of Witches.... And whether these supernaturall works, which are above the power of man to do, and proper only to Spirits, whether they are reall or only imaginary and fained." The writer concludes that the Devil has power to dispose and transport bodies, but, as to changing them into animals, he thinks these are "but jugling transmutations."
[78] The most true and wonderfull Narration of two women bewitched in Yorkshire; ... (1658).
[79] "Relation of a Memorable Piece of Witchcraft at Welton near Daventry," in Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681), pt. ii, 263-268.
[80] See above, pp. 179-180, for an expression about the persecution in 1645.
[81] Mercurius Democritus, February 8-15, 1654.
[82] 1648. This must be distinguished from The Divels Delusion ... , 1649, (see above, ch. IX, note 8), which deals with two witches executed at St. Alban's.
[83] The truth is that the newspapers, pamphlets, etc., were full of such stories. And they were believed by many intelligent men. He who runs through Whitelocke's Memorials may read that the man was exceeding superstitious. Whether it be the report of the horseman seen in the air or the stories of witches at Berwick, CHAPTER X.
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Whitelocke was equally interested. While he was merely recording the reports of others, there is not a sign of skepticism.
[84] See above, pp. 152-157.
[85] See above, pp. 160-162.
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CHAPTER XI.
WITCHCRAFT UNDER CHARLES II AND JAMES II.
No period of English history saw a wider interest in both the theory and the practice of witchcraft than the years that followed the Restoration. Throughout the course of the twenty-eight years that spanned the second rule of the Stuarts, the Devil manifested himself in many forms and with unusual frequency. Especially within the first half of that régime his appearances were so thrilling in character that the enemies of the new king might very well have said that the Evil One, like Charles, had come to his own again. All over the realm the witches were popping up. If the total number of trials and of executions did not foot up to the figures of James I's reign or to those of the Civil War, the alarm was nevertheless more widely distributed than ever before. In no less than twenty counties of England witches were discovered and fetched to court. Up to this time, so far at any rate as the printed records show, the southwestern counties had been but little troubled. Now Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall were the storm centre of the panic. In the north Yorkshire began to win for itself the reputation as a centre of activity that had long been held by Lancashire. Not that the witch was a new criminal in Yorkshire courts. During the Civil Wars and the troubled years that followed the discoverers had been active. But with the reign of Charles II their zeal increased mightily. Yet, if they had never before fetched in so many "suspected parties" to the court of the justice of the peace, they had never before been so often baffled by the outcome. Among the many such cases known to us during this time there is no mention of a conviction.[1] In Kent there was a flickering revival of the old hatred of witches. In the year that Charles gained the throne the city of Ca