The Project Gutenberg eBook of Notes on witchcraft, by George Lyman
Kittredge
Title: Notes on witchcraft
Author: George Lyman Kittredge
Release Date: June 2, 2023 [eBook #70895]
Language: English
Produced by: Carol Brown, Carla Foust and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT ***
NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT
BY
GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE
REPRINTED FROM THE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
VOLUME XVIII
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
THE DAVIS PRESS
1907
NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT.
BY GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE.
We are all specialists now-a-days, I suppose. The good old times of
the polymath and the Doctor Universalis are gone forever. Yet signs
are not wanting that some of us are alive to the danger of building
our party-walls too high. In one respect, at all events, there can be
no doubt that the investigators of New England antiquities are aware
of their peril, though they occasionally shut their eyes to it,--I
mean, the tendency to consider the Colonists as a peculiar people,
separated from the Mother Country not only geographically, but also
with regard to those currents of thought and feeling which are the most
significant facts of history. True, there is more or less justification
for that kind of study which looks at the annals of America as
ends-in-themselves; but such study is ticklish business, and it now
and then distorts the perspective in a rather fantastic way. This is
a rank truism. Still, commonplaces are occasionally steadying to the
intellect, and Dr. Johnson--whose own truths have been characterized by
a brilliant critic as “too true”--knew what he was about when he said
that men usually need not so much to be informed as to be reminded.
The darkest page of New England history is, by common consent, that
which is inscribed with the words Salem Witchcraft. The hand of the
apologist trembles as it turns the leaf. The reactionary writer who
prefers iconoclasm to hero-worship sharpens his pen and pours fresh
gall into his inkpot when he comes to this sinister subject. Let us try
to consider the matter, for a few minutes, unemotionally, and to that
end let us pass in review a number of facts which may help us to look
at the Witchcraft Delusion of 1692 in its due proportions,--not as an
abnormal outbreak of fanaticism, not as an isolated tragedy, but as a
mere incident, a brief and transitory episode in the biography of a
terrible, but perfectly natural, superstition.
In the first place, we know that the New Englanders did not invent the
belief in witchcraft.[1] It is a universally human belief. No race or
nation is exempt from it. Formerly, it was an article in the creed of
everybody in the world, and it is still held, in some form or other,
and to a greater or less extent, by a large majority of mankind.[2]
Further, our own attitude of mind toward witchcraft is a very modern
attitude indeed. To us, one who asserts the existence, or even the
possibility, of the crime of witchcraft staggers under a burden of
proof which he cannot conceivably support. His thesis seems to us
unreasonable, abnormal, monstrous; it can scarcely be stated in
intelligible terms; it savors of madness. Now, before we can do any
kind of justice to our forefathers,--a matter, be it remembered, of no
moment to them, for they have gone to their reward, but, I take it, of
considerable importance to us,--we must empty our heads of all such
rationalistic ideas. To the contemporaries of William Stoughton and
Samuel Sewall the existence of this crime was not merely an historical
phenomenon, it was a fact of contemporary experience. Whoever denied
the occurrence of witchcraft in the past, was an atheist; whoever
refused to admit its actual possibility in the present, was either
stubbornly incredulous, or destitute of the ability to draw an
inference. Throughout the seventeenth century, very few persons could
be found--not merely in New England, but in the whole world--who would
have ventured to take so radical a position. That there had been
witches and sorcerers in antiquity was beyond cavil. That there were,
or might be, witches and sorcerers in the present was almost equally
certain. The crime was recognized by the Bible, by all branches of the
Church, by philosophy, by natural science, by the medical faculty, by
the law of England. I do not offer these postulates as novelties. They
are commonplaces. They will not be attacked by anybody who has even a
slight acquaintance with the mass of testimony that might be adduced to
establish them.
It is a common practice to ascribe the tenets of the New Englanders in
the matter of witchcraft to something peculiar about their religious
opinions,--to what is loosely called their Puritan theology. This is a
very serious error. The doctrines of our forefathers differed, in this
regard, from the doctrines of the Roman and the Anglican Church in no
essential,--one may safely add, in no particular. Lord Bacon was not
a Puritan,--yet he has left his belief in sorcery recorded in a dozen
places. James I. was not a Puritan,[3] but his Dæmonologie (1597) is a
classic treatise, his zeal in prosecuting sorcerers is notorious, and
his statute of 1603[4] was the act under which Matthew Hopkins, in the
time of the Commonwealth, sent two hundred witches to the gallows in
two years,--nearly ten times as many as perished in Massachusetts from
the first settlement to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-Finder General, apparently _was_ a Puritan.
Indeed, it is his career, more than anything that ever happened in New
England, which has led to the reiterated statement that Puritanism was
especially favorable, by its temper and its tenets, to prosecution for
witchcraft. For his activity falls in the time of the Commonwealth,
and the Parliament granted a Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer,
in 1645, to try some of the witches that he had detected, and Edmund
Calamy was associated with the Commission. But, on the other hand,
it must be noted that John Gaule, who opposed Hopkins and is usually
credited with most influence in putting an end to his performances, was
also a Puritan,--and a minister likewise, and a believer in witches
as well. The Hopkins outbreak, as we shall see, must be laid to the
disturbed condition of the country rather than to the prevalence of
any particular system of theology.[5] Under Cromwell’s government,
witch trials languished, not because the belief in witchcraft changed,
but because there was order once more. So in Scotland, the conquest
by Cromwell checked one of the fiercest prosecutions ever known. The
Restoration was followed, both in England and in Scotland, by a marked
recrudescence of prosecution.[6]
But we must return to Matthew Hopkins. Let us see how his discoveries
affected James Howell. In 1647 Howell writes to Endymion Porter: “We
have likewise multitudes of _Witches_ among us, for in _Essex_ and
_Suffolk_ there were above two hundred indicted within these two
years, and above the one half of them executed: More, I may well
say, than ever this Island bred since the Creation, I speak it with
horror. God guard us from the Devil, for I think he was never so busy
upon any part of the Earth that was enlightned with the beams of
_Christianity_; nor do I wonder at it, for there’s never a Cross left
to fright him away.”[7] In the following year, Howell writes to Sir
Edward Spencer an elaborate defence of the current tenets in witchcraft
and demonology.[8] One striking passage demands quotation:--“Since the
beginning of these unnatural Wars, there may be a cloud of Witnesses
produc’d for the proof of this black Tenet: For within the compass of
two years, near upon three hundred Witches were arraign’d, and the
major part executed in _Essex_ and _Suffolk_ only. _Scotland_ swarms
with them now more than ever, and Persons of good Quality executed
daily.”
It is confidently submitted that nobody will accuse Howell of
Puritanism. The letters from which our extracts are taken were written
while he was a prisoner in the Fleet under suspicion of being a
Royalist spy.[9] His mention of the disappearance of crosses throughout
England will not be overlooked by the discriminating reader. It will be
noted also that he seems to have perceived a connection--a real one,
as we shall see later--[10] between the increase in witchcraft and the
turmoil of the Civil War.
Jeremy Taylor was surely no Puritan; but he believed in witchcraft. It
is a sin, he tells us, that is “infallibly desperate,”[11] and in his
Holy Living (1650) he has even given the weight of his authority to the
reality of sexual relations between witches and the devil.[12]
It was not in Puritan times, but in 1664, four years after the
Restoration, that Sir Matthew Hale, then Chief Baron of the Exchequer,
pronounced from the bench the following opinion in the Bury St. Edmunds
case:--“That there were such Creatures as _Witches_ he made no doubt
at all; For _First_, the Scriptures had affirmed so much. _Secondly_,
The wisdom of all Nations had provided Laws against such Persons, which
is an Argument of their confidence of such a crime. And such hath been
the judgment of this Kingdom, as appears by that Act of Parliament[13]
which hath provided Punishments proportionable to the quality of
the Offence. And desired them [the jury], strictly to observe their
Evidence; and desired the great God of Heaven to direct their Hearts in
this weighty thing they had in hand: _For to Condemn the Innocent, and
to let the Guilty go free, were both an Abomination to the Lord_.”[14]
Hale’s words were fraught with momentous consequences, for he was
“allowed on all hands to be the most profound lawyer of his time,”[15]
and the Bury case became a precedent of great weight. “It was,”
writes Cotton Mather, “a Tryal much considered by the Judges of New
England.”[16]
Hale’s conduct on this occasion has of course subjected him to severe
criticism. Lord Campbell, for example, goes so far as to declare
that he “murdered” the old women,--a dictum which shows but slight
comprehension of the temper of the seventeenth century. More creditable
to Campbell’s historical sense is the following passage:--“Although, at
the present day, we regard this trial as a most lamentable exhibition
of credulity and inhumanity, I do not know that it at all lowered
Hale in public estimation in his own life.”[17] Bishop Burnet, as is
well-known, makes no mention of the case in his Life of Hale.[18]
One might surmise that he omitted it out of respect for his hero’s
memory, since his little book is rather an obituary tribute than a
biography. More probably, however, Burnet did not regard the case as
any more significant than many other decisions of Hale’s which he
likewise passed over in silence. Unequivocal evidence that the Bury
trial did not injure Hale’s reputation may be found in the silence of
Roger North. North’s elaborate character of Hale, in his Life of the
Lord Keeper Guilford,[19] is notoriously prejudiced in the extreme.
Though admitting Hale’s legal learning and many good qualities, North
loses no opportunity to attack his record. Besides, North praises
the Lord Keeper for his conduct in procuring the acquittal of an
alleged witch. If, then, the Bury case had seemed to him especially
discreditable, or if he had thought that it afforded an opening for
hostile criticism, we cannot doubt that he would have spoken out in
condemnation. His complete silence on the subject is therefore the
most emphatic testimony to the general approval of Hale’s proceedings.
Highly significant, too, is the fact that even Lord Campbell does not
blame Hale for believing in witchcraft, but only for allowing weight
to the evidence in this particular case. “I would very readily have
pardoned him,” he writes, “for an undoubting belief in witchcraft,
and I should have considered that this belief detracted little from
his character for discernment and humanity. The Holy Scriptures teach
us that, in some ages of the world, wicked persons, by the agency of
evil spirits, were permitted, through means which exceed the ordinary
powers of nature, to work mischief to their fellow-creatures.... In the
reign of Charles II., a judge who from the bench should have expressed
a disbelief in [magic and the black art] would have been thought to
show little respect for human laws, and to be nothing better than an
atheist.” We may profitably compare what Guilford himself (then Francis
North, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) wrote of the Devonshire
witches in 1682,--nearly twenty years after the Bury case:--“We cannot
reprieve them, without appearing to deny the very being of witches,
which, as it is contrary to law, so I think it would be ill for his
Majesty’s service, for it may give the faction occasion to set afoot
the old trade of witch-finding, that may cost many innocent persons
their lives which the justice will prevent.”[20]
Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici, was no Puritan,
and he was one of the leading scientific men of his day. Yet he gave
his opinion, as an expert, at the request of the Court in this same
Bury St. Edmunds case, to the following effect:--“That the Devil
in such cases did work upon the Bodies of Men and Women, upon a
Natural Foundation, (that is) to stir up, and excite such humours
super-abounding in their Bodies to a great excess,”[21] and further,
that “he conceived, that these swouning Fits were Natural, and nothing
else but what they call the Mother,[22] but only heightned to a great
excess by the subtilty of the Devil, co-operating with the Malice
of these which we term Witches, at whose Instance he doth these
Villanies.”[23]
Browne has been much blamed for this dictum, but there is nothing
unreasonable or unscientific in it, if one merely grants the actuality
of demoniacal possession, which was then to all intents and purposes
an article of faith. If the devil can work upon our bodies at all, of
course he can intensify any natural fits or spasms from which we happen
to be suffering. Thus Browne’s diagnosis of the disease in this case
as hysteria, by no means excluded the hypothesis of _maleficium_. But
most modern writers refuse to discuss such subjects except _de haut en
bas_,--from the vantage-ground of modern science.
Sir Thomas Browne’s view was, it seems, substantially identical
with that of his predecessor, the famous Robert Burton,--no Puritan
either!--who has a whole subsection “Of Witches and Magitians, how
they cause Melancholy,” asserting that what “they can doe, is as much
almost as the Diuell himselfe, who is still ready to satisfie their
desires, to oblige them the more vnto him.”[24]
Joseph Glanvill, the author of The Vanity of Dogmatizing, was no
Puritan,[25] but a skeptical philosopher, a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles II.; neither was
his friend, Dr. Henry More, the most celebrated of the Cambridge
Platonists. Yet these two scholars and latitudinarians joined forces
to produce that extraordinary treatise, Saducismus Triumphatus: or, A
Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions. This book,
an enlarged form of Glanvill’s Philosophical Considerations concerning
Witchcraft (1666), was published in 1681, and went through no less than
five editions, the last appearing as late as 1726.[26] It was thought
to have put the belief in apparitions and witchcraft on an unshakable
basis of science and philosophy.[27] No English work on the subject had
a more powerful influence. When the Rev. John Hale, of Beverley, wrote
his Modest Enquiry,[28] which deplored the Salem excesses and protested
against spectral evidence,--a notable treatise, published, with a
prefatory epistle from the venerable Higginson,[29] in 1702,--he was
able to condense the affirmative part of his argument, because, as he
himself says, Glanvill “hath strongly proved the being of Witches.”[30]
Dr. Meric Casaubon, Prebend of Canterbury, was not a Puritan; yet the
second part of his Credulity and Incredulity (1668) contains a vigorous
assertion of demonology and witch-lore, and was republished in 1672
under the alluring title, A Treatise Proving Spirits, Witches and
Supernatural Operations by Pregnant Instances and Evidences.[31]
Ralph Cudworth, the antagonist of Hobbes, was not a Puritan. Yet in his
great Intellectual System he declares for the existence of sorcery,
and even admits a distinction between its higher operations--as in the
θεουργία [Greek: theourgia] of Apollonius of Tyana[32]--and the vulgar
performances of everyday wizards.[33] There is some reason, too, for
supposing that Cudworth took part with Henry More in examining certain
witches at Cambridge, and heard one of them try to recite the Creed and
the Lord’s Prayer, as she had offered to do “as an argument she was no
witch.”[34]
Robert Boyle, the improver of the air-pump and the discoverer of
Boyle’s Law, had “particular and considerable advantages to persuade
[him], upon good grounds” that some witch stories are true, and he
thought that Glanvill’s investigations would do “a good service to
religion.”[35] This was in 1677. In the following year Boyle declared
his belief[36] in the performances of the devil of Mascon.[37] Boyle’s
religious views did not hinder him from being a leader in that fervor
of scientific experimentation which is one of the glories of the latter
half of the seventeenth century. And he too was not a Puritan.
Isaac Barrow, the master of Newton, was not a Puritan. Yet he left on
record, in one of his sermons, one of the most powerful and eloquent
of all protests against disbelief in the kind of phenomena which our
ancestors are so often attacked for crediting. The passage is long, but
must be quoted in full, for every word is of weight:--
“I may adjoin to the former sorts of extraordinary actions,
some other sorts, the consideration of which (although
not so directly and immediately) may serve our main
design; those (which the general opinion of mankind hath
approved, and manifold testimony hath declared frequently
to happen) which concern apparitions from another world,
as it were, of beings unusual; concerning spirits haunting
persons and places, (these discerned by all senses, and
by divers kinds of effects;) of which the old world (the
ancient poets and historians) did speak so much, and of
which all ages have afforded several attestations very
direct and plain, and having all advantages imaginable
to beget credence; concerning visions made unto persons
of especial eminency and influence, (to priests and
prophets;) concerning presignifications of future events
by dreams; concerning the power of enchantments, implying
the cooperation of invisible powers; concerning all sorts
of intercourse and confederacy (formal or virtual) with
bad spirits: all which things he that shall affirm to be
mere fiction and delusion, must thereby with exceeding
immodesty and rudeness charge the world with extreme both
vanity and malignity; many, if not all, worthy historians,
of much inconsiderateness or fraud; most lawgivers, of
great silliness and rashness; most judicatories, of high
stupidity or cruelty; a vast number of witnesses, of the
greatest malice or madness; all which concurred to assert
these matters of fact.
“It is true, no question, but there have been many vain
pretences, many false reports, many unjust accusations, and
some undue decisions concerning these matters; that the
vulgar sort is apt enough to be abused about them; that
even intelligent and considerate men may at a distance
in regard to some of them be imposed upon; but, as there
would be no false gems obtruded, if there were no true ones
found in nature; as no counterfeit coin would appear, were
there no true one current; so neither can we well suppose
that a confidence in some to feign, or a readiness in most
to believe, stories of this kind could arise, or should
subsist, without some real ground, or without such things
having in gross somewhat of truth and reality. However,
that the wiser and more refined sort of men, highest in
parts and improvements both from study and experience,
(indeed the flower of every commonwealth; statesmen,
lawgivers, judges, and priests,) upon so many occasions
of great importance, after most deliberate scanning such
pretences and reports, should so often suffer themselves
to be deluded, to the extreme injury of particular persons
concerned, to the common abusing of mankind, to the hazard
of their own reputation in point of wisdom and honesty,
seems nowise reasonable to conceive. In likelihood rather
the whole kind of all these things, were it altogether
vain and groundless, would upon so frequent and so mature
discussions have appeared to be so, and would consequently
long since have been disowned, exploded, and thrust out of
the world; for, as upon this occasion it is said in Tully,
‘Time wipeth out groundless conceits, but confirms that
which is founded in nature, and real.’
“Now if the truth and reality of these things, (all or any
of them,) inferring the existence of powers invisible, at
least inferior ones, though much superior to us in all sort
of ability, be admitted, it will at least (as removing the
chief obstacles of incredulity) confer much to the belief
of that supreme Divinity, which our Discourse strives to
maintain.”[38]
Dr. George Hickes, of Thesaurus fame, was one of the most eminent
scholars of his time. He was also a Non-juror, and titular Bishop of
Thetford. In other words, he was not a Puritan. Yet in 1678 Hickes
published an account of the infamous Major Weir, the most celebrated
of all Scottish wizards, which betrays no skepticism on the cardinal
points of sorcery.[39] There is also an extremely interesting letter
from the Doctor to Mr. Pepys, dated June 19, 1700, which indicates a
belief in witchcraft and second sight. The most curious part of this
letter, however, deals with Elf Arrows. “I have another strange story,”
writes Dr. Hickes, “but very well attested, of an Elf arrow, that was
shot at a venerable Irish Bishop by an Evil Spirit in a terrible noise,
louder than thunder, which shaked the house where the Bishop was; but
this I reserve for his son to tell you, who is one of the deprived
Irish Clergymen, and very well known, as by other excellent pieces, so
by his late book, entitled, ‘The Snake in the Grass.’”[40] What would
the critics say if this passage were found in a work of Cotton Mather’s?
Finally, it is not amiss to remember that the tolerant, moderate,
and scholarly John Evelyn, whom nobody will accuse of being a
Puritan, made the following entry in his Diary under February 3d,
1692-3:--“Unheard-of stories of the universal increase of Witches in
New England; men, women and children devoting themselves to the devil,
so as to threaten the subversion of the government. At the same time
there was a conspiracy amongst the negroes in Barbadoes to murder all
their masters, discovered by overhearing a discourse of two of the
slaves, and so preventing the execution of the designe.” There is no
indication that Evelyn regarded either of these conspiracies as less
possible of occurrence than the other.[41]
Most of these passages are sufficiently well known, and their
significance in the abstract is cheerfully granted, I suppose, by
everybody. But the cumulative effect of so much testimony from
non-Puritans is, I fear, now and then disregarded or overlooked by
writers who concern themselves principally with the annals of New
England. Yet the bearing of the evidence is plain enough. The Salem
outbreak was not due to Puritanism; it is not assignable to any
peculiar temper on the part of our New England ancestors; it is no
sign of exceptional bigotry or abnormal superstition. Our forefathers
believed in witchcraft, not because they were Puritans, not because
they were Colonials, not because they were New Englanders,--but because
they were men of their time. They shared the feelings and beliefs of
the best hearts and wisest heads of the seventeenth century. What more
can be asked of them?[42]
I am well aware that there are a few distinguished names that are
always entered on the other side of the account, and some of them we
must now consider. It would be unpardonable to detract in any manner
from the dear-bought fame of such forerunners of a better dispensation.
But we must not forget that they were forerunners. They occupy a much
more conspicuous place in modern books than they occupied in the minds
of their contemporaries.[43] Further, if we listen closely to the words
of these voices in the wilderness, we shall find that they do not sound
in unison, and that then testimony is not in all cases precisely what
we should infer from the loose statements often made about them.
Johann Wier, or Weyer (1515-1588), deserves all the honor he has ever
received. He devoted years to the study of demonology, and brought
his great learning, and his vast experience as a physician, to bear
on the elucidation of the whole matter.[44] He held that many of the
performances generally ascribed to devils and witches were impossible,
and that the witches themselves were deluded. But there is another
side to the picture. Wier’s book is crammed full of what we should
now-a-days regard as the grossest superstition. He credited Satan and
his attendant demons with extensive powers. He believed that the fits
of the so-called bewitched persons were due in large part to demoniacal
possession or obsession, and that the witches themselves, though
innocent of what was alleged against them, were in many cases under
the influence of the devil, who made them think that they had entered
into infernal compacts, and ridden through the air on broomsticks, and
killed their neighbors’ pigs, and caused disease or death by occult
means. And further, he was convinced that such persons as Faust, whom
he called _magi_, were acquainted with strange and damnable arts, and
that they were worthy of death and their books of the fire. One example
may serve to show the world-wide difference between Wier’s mental
attitude and our own.
One of the best known symptoms of bewitchment was the vomiting of
bones, nails, needles, balls of wool, bunches of hair, and other
things, some of which were so large that they could not have passed
through the throat by any natural means.[45] Such phenomena, Wier
tells us, he had himself seen. How were they to be explained? Easily,
according to Wier’s general theory. Such articles, he says, are put
into the patient’s mouth by the devil; one after another, as fast as
they come out. We cannot see him do this,--either because he acts so
rapidly that his motions are invisible, or because he fascinates our
sight, or because he darkens our eyes, perhaps by interposing between
them and the patient some aërial body.[46]
The instability of Wier’s position should not be brought against him
as a reproach, since he was far in advance of his contemporaries, and
since his arguments against the witch dogma are the foundation of
all subsequent skepticism on the subject.[47] Besides, it is certain
that such a thorough-going denial of the devil’s power as Bekker
made a century later would have utterly discredited Wier’s book
and might even have prevented it from being published at all.[48]
Yet, when all is said and done, it must be admitted that Wier’s
doctrines have a half-hearted appearance, and that they seemed to most
seventeenth-century scholars to labor under a gross inconsistency. This
inconsistency was emphasized by Meric Casaubon. “As for them,” writes
Dr. Casaubon, “who allow and acknowledge _supernatural operations_ by
Devils and Spirits, as _Wierius_; who tells as many strange stories of
them, and as _incredible_, as are to be found in any book; but stick at
the business of _Witches_ only, whom they would not have thought the
Authors of those mischiefs, that are usually laid to their charge, but
the Devil only; though this opinion may seem to some, to have more of
_charity_, than _Incredulity_; yet the contrary will easily appear to
them, that shall look into it more carefully.” And Casaubon dwells upon
the fact that Wier grants “no small part of what we drive at, when he
doth acknowledge _supernatural operations_, by Devils and Spirits.”[49]
Indeed, the apparent contradiction in Wier’s theories may also excuse
Casaubon for the suggestion he makes that Wier’s intention “was not so
much to favour _women_, as the _Devil_ himself, with whom, it is to be
feared, that he was too well acquainted.”[50] This reminds us of what
King James had already written of “Wierus, a German Physition,” who
“sets out a publike Apologie for all these craftes-folkes, whereby,
procuring for their impunitie, he plainely bewrayes himselfe to have
bene one of that profession.”[51]
Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft appeared in 1584. Scot, who
was largely indebted to Wier, goes much farther than his Continental
predecessor. Of course he does not deny the existence of evil
spirits;[52] but he does not believe, like Wier, that evil spirits are
continually occupied in deluding mankind by all manner of false (or
præstigious) appearances. Such deceits he ascribes to juggling, and he
accordingly gives elaborate directions for the performance of various
tricks of legerdemain.[53]
There seems to be a more or less prevalent impression that Scot’s book
explodes witchcraft so thoroughly that the whole delusion might soon
have come to an end in England if James I. had not mounted the throne
a short time after it was published. True, King James’s Dæmonologie
is expressly directed “against the damnable opinions” of Wier and
Scot.[54] But, to tell the truth, Scot’s treatise did not require
a royal refutation. To us moderns, who are converted already and
need no repentance, its general air of reasonableness, together with
its humor and the raciness of the style, makes the Discoverie seem
convincing enough. But this is to look at the matter from a mistaken
point of view. The question is, not how Scot’s arguments affect us,
but how they were likely to affect his contemporaries. Now, if the
truth must be told, the Discoverie is deficient in one very important
respect. It makes no satisfactory answer to the insistent questions:
“What are these evil spirits of which the Bible and the philosophers
tell us, and which everybody believes in, and always has believed
in, from the beginning of time? And what are they about? If they are
powerful and malignant, why is it not likely that the effects which
everybody ascribes to them are really their work? And if they are eager
not only to torment but to seduce mankind, why is it not reasonable
to suppose that they accomplish both ends at the same time--kill
two birds with one stone--by procuring such evil effects by means
of witches, or by allowing themselves to be utilized by witches as
instruments of malice?” It was quite proper to ask these questions of
Scot. He admitted the existence of evil spirits, but declared that
we know little or nothing about them, denied that they can produce
the phenomena then generally ascribed to their agency, and alleged
fraud and delusion to account for such phenomena. Even to us, with
our extraordinary and very modern incredulity toward supernatural
occurrences, the lacuna in Scot’s reasoning is clear enough if we only
look at his argument as a whole. This we are not inclined to do; at
least, no historian of witchcraft has ever done it. It is easier and
more natural for us to accept such portions of Scot’s argument as agree
with our own view, to compliment him for his perspicacity, and to pass
on, disregarding the inadequacy of what he says about evil spirits.
Or, if we notice that his utterances on this topic are halting and
uncertain, we are tempted to regard such hesitancy as further evidence
of his rational temper. He could not quite deny the existence of
devils, we feel,--that would have been too much to expect of him; but
he waves them aside like a sensible man.[55] A moment’s consideration,
however, will show us that this defect in Scot’s case, trifling as it
appears to us now-a-days, was in fact a very serious thing. To us,
who never think of admitting the intervention of evil spirits in the
affairs of this world, the question whether there are any such spirits
at all has a purely theoretical interest. Indeed, we practically deny
their existence when we ignore them as we do: _de non apparentibus et
non existentibus eadem est lex_.--But to Scot’s contemporaries, the
question of the existence of evil spirits involved the whole matter in
debate,--and Scot granted their existence.
A curious particular in the history of Scot’s Discoverie should also
be considered in estimating its effect on the seventeenth century. The
appearance of a new edition in 1665, shortly after the famous Bury St.
Edmunds case,[56] may at first sight seem to indicate powerful and
continuing influence on the part of the Discoverie. When we observe
from the title-page, however, that the publisher has inserted nine
chapters at the beginning of Book xv, and has added a second
book to the Treatise on Divels and Spirits, our curiosity is excited.
Investigation soon shows that these additions were calculated to
destroy or minimize the total effect of Scot’s book. The prefixed
chapters contain directions for making magical circles, for calling up
“the ghost of one that hath hanged himself,” and for raising various
orders of spirits. These chapters are thrust in without any attempt
to indicate that they are not consistent with Scot’s general plan and
his theories. They appear to be, and are, practical directions for
magic and necromancy. The additional book is even more dangerous to
Scot’s design. It is prefaced by the remark:--“Because the Author in
his foregoing Treatise, upon the _Nature of Spirits and Devils_, hath
only touched the subject thereof superficially, omitting the more
material part; and with a brief and cursory Tractat, hath concluded
to speak the least of this subject which indeed requires most amply
to be illustrated; therefore I thought fit to adjoyn this subsequent
discourse; as succedaneous to the fore-going, and conducing to the
compleating of the whole work.”[57]
How far “this subsequent discourse” is really fitted to complete
Scot’s work may be judged by a statement which it makes on the very
first page, to the effect that bad spirits “are the grand Instigators,
stirring up mans heart to attempt the inquiry after the darkest, and
most mysterious part of Magick, or Witchcraft.” And again a little
later:--“Great is the villany of Necromancers, and wicked Magicians,
in dealing with the spirits of men departed; whom they invocate, with
certain forms, and conjurations, digging up their Carkasses again,
or by the help of Sacrifices, and Oblations to the infernal Gods;
compelling the Ghost to present it self before them.”[58] All this
is quite opposed to Scot’s view and the whole intention of his book.
The insertion of such worthless matter was, of course, a mere trick
of the bookseller to make a new edition go off well. But the fact of
its insertion shows that Scot was thought to have left his treatise
incomplete or unsatisfactory in a most important point. And the
inserted matter itself must have gone far to neutralize the effect of
republication in a witch-haunted period. And so we may leave Reginald
Scot, with our respect for his courage and common sense undiminished,
but with a clear idea of the slight effect which his treatise must have
had on the tone and temper of the age that we are studying.
John Webster’s Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, which appeared in
1677--the Preface is dated “February 23. 1673”--was particularly
directed against Glanvill and Meric Casaubon. It holds a distinguished
place in the history of witchcraft, and demands our careful scrutiny.
What is usually thought of it has been eloquently expressed by the late
Mr. James Crossley. “In this memorable book,” writes Mr. Crossley, “he
exhausts the subject, as far as it is possible to do so, by powerful
ridicule, cogent arguments, and the most varied and well applied
learning, leaving to [Francis] Hutchinson, and others who have since
followed in his track, little further necessary than to reproduce his
facts and reasonings in a more popular, it can scarcely be said, in a
more effective form.”[59]
A few of Webster’s opinions must be specified, that the reader may
judge how far The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft deserves to rank as
a work of sober and scientific reason, and to what extent the author
merits the position that seems to be traditionally assigned to him as
an uncompromising assailant of superstition.
Angels, good and bad, are “really and truly corporeal” and not
spirits, except “in a relative and respective” sense.[60] Since devils
are corporeal, Webster admits that “they may move and agitate other
bodies.” Their strength, however, is limited, “for though one Devil
may be supposed to move or lift up that which would load an Horse, yet
it will not follow that he can move or lift up as much as would load
a Ship of a thousand Tun.”[61] Webster grants that “God doth make use
of evil Angels to punish the wicked, and to chastise and afflict the
godly, and in the effecting of these things that they have a power
given them to hurt the earth and the Sea and things therein, as to
bring tempests, thunder, lightning, plague, death, drought and the
like.”[62]
Webster has a profound belief in apparitions and tells some capital
ghost stories[63]--“unquestionable testimonies,” he calls them, “either
from our own Annals, or matters of fact that we know to be true of our
own certain knowledge, that thereby it may undoubtedly appear, that
there are effects that exceed the ordinary power of natural causes, and
may for ever convince all Atheisticall minds.”[64] One of these tales
concerns the murder of one Fletcher by Ralph Raynard, an innkeeper, and
Mark Dunn, a hired assassin. One day “the spirit of _Fletcher_ in his
usual shape and habit did appear unto [Raynard], and said, Oh _Raph_,
repent, repent, for my revenge is at hand.” The result was a full
confession. “I have recited this story punctually,” writes Webster, “as
a thing that hath been very much fixed in my memory, being then but
young, and as a certain truth, I being (with many more) an ear-witness
of their confessions and an eye-witness of their Executions, and
likewise saw _Fletcher_ when he was taken up, where they had buried him
in his cloaths, which were a green fustian doublet pinkt upon white,
gray breeches, and his walking boots and brass spurrs without rowels.”
The spectre, Webster is convinced, was an “extrinsick apparition to
_Raynard_,” and not the mere effect of a guilty conscience “which
represented the shape of _Fletcher_ in his fancy.” The thing could not,
he thinks, “be brought to pass either by the Devil, or _Fletchers_
Soul,” and therefore he “concludes that either it was wrought by the
Divine Power, ... or that it was the Astral or Sydereal Spirit of
_Fletcher_, seeking revenge for the murther.”[65]
Webster also believes fully in the “bleeding or cruentation of the
bodies of those that have been murthered,” particularly at the touch of
the murderer or in his presence, and he gives a very curious collection
of examples, in some of which “the murtherers had not been certainly
known but by the bleeding of the body murthered.”[66] The most probable
explanation of such phenomena he finds in the existence of the astral
spirit, “that, being a middle substance, betwixt the Soul and the Body
doth, when separated from the Body, wander or hover near about it,
bearing with it the irascible and concupiscible faculties, wherewith
being stirred up to hatred and revenge, it causeth that ebullition and
motion in the blood, that exudation of blood upon the weapon, and those
other wonderful motions of the Body, Hands, Nostrils and Lips, thereby
to discover the murtherer, and bring him to condign punishment.”[67]
In some cases, however, Webster holds that the soul has not actually
departed, “and God may in his just judgment suffer the Soul to stay
longer in the murthered Body, that the cry of blood may make known the
murtherer, or may not so soon, for the same reason, call it totally
away.”[68]
These specimens of Webster’s temper of mind might perhaps suffice
to show with what slight justification he has been regarded as a
scientific rationalist. We must not dismiss him, however, until we
have scrutinized his views on the subject of witchcraft itself. He
passes for a strong denier of the whole business of sorcery. We shall
find that this is a great mistake. So far from denying the existence
of witches, Webster is indignant at the imputation that his theories
and those of other like-minded scholars should be interpreted in any
such sense. “If I deny that a Witch cannot flye in the air, nor be
transformed or transubstantiated into a Cat, a Dog, or an Hare, or
that the Witch maketh any visible Covenant with the Devil, or that he
sucketh on their bodies, or that the Devil hath carnal Copulation with
them; I do not thereby deny either the Being of Witches, nor other
properties that they may have, for which they may be so called: no
more than if I deny that a dog hath rugibility (which is only proper
to a Lion) doth it follow that I deny the being of a Dog, or that he
hath latrability?”[69] This sentence contains, in effect, the sum and
substance of Webster’s negative propositions on the subject.[70] Let us
see what he holds as affirmatives.
Though rejecting the theory of an external covenant between the
devil and a witch, Webster acknowledges “an internal, mental, and
spiritual League or Covenant betwixt the Devil and all wicked
persons.” Further, “this spiritual League in some respects and in
some persons may be, and is an explicit League, that is, the persons
that enter into it, are or may be conscious of it, and know it to be
so.”[71] Now there are certain persons, commonly called witches, who
are full of “hatred, malice, revenge and envy,” of which the devil
is the “author and causer,”[72] and these, by Satan’s instigation,
“do secretly and by tradition learn strange poysons, philters and
receipts whereby they do much hurt and mischief. Which most strange
wayes of poysoning, tormenting, and breeding of unwonted things in
the stomach and bellies of people, have not been unknown unto many
learned men and Philosophers.”[73] Among these effects of “an art more
than Diabolical,” which has “been often practiced by most horrible,
malevolent, and wicked persons,” is the production of the plague.
There is no doubt of the fact. There are “undeniable examples.” An
unguent may be prepared which is of such power that when it is smeared
upon the handles of doors, “those that do but lightly touch them are
forthwith infected.” In 1536 there was a conspiracy of some forty
persons in Italy, who caused the death of many in this way.[74] To
such arts Webster ascribes the dreadful outbreak of jail-fever at the
Oxford assizes in 1579. This was not, and could not be, the ordinary
“prison infection.” It was brought about by the contrivances of one
Roland Jenks, “a Popish recusant,” who was condemned for seditious
words against the queen. Jenks, it seems, had procured strange poisons
of a local apothecary, and had made a kind of candle out of them. As
soon as he was condemned, he lighted his candle, from which there arose
such a “damp,” or steam, that the pestilence broke out as we have
seen.[75] It is manifest, Webster holds, “that these kind of people
that are commonly called Witches, are indeed (as both the Greek and
Latin names doe signifie) Poysoners, and in respect of their Hellish
designs are Diabolical, but the effects they procure flow from natural
Causes.”[76] This last proposition is, indeed, perhaps the chief point
of Webster’s book. Witches exist, and they do horrible things, but they
accomplish their ends, not by the actual intervention of the devil and
his imps, but by virtue of an acquaintance with little-known laws of
nature. Another example, which cannot be quoted in detail, will make
Webster’s position perfectly clear. A man was afflicted with a dreadful
disease. The cause was discovered to be the presence of an oaken pin
in the corner of a courtyard. The pin was destroyed and the man drank
birchen ale. He made a complete recovery. It is plain, according to
Webster, that the pulling up and burning of the oaken pin “was with
the help of the Birchen Ale the cure; but it can no wayes be judged
necessary that the Devil should fix the Oak pin there, but that the
Witch might do it himself. Neither can it be thought to be any power
given by the Devil to the Oaken pin, that it had not by nature, for in
all probability it will constantly by a natural power produce the same
effect; only thus far the Devil had a hand in the action, to draw some
wicked person to fix the pin there ..., thereby to hurt and torture
him.”[77]
One is tempted to still further quotations from Webster’s utterances
on this topic, especially because his book has been much oftener
mentioned than read. But we must rest content with one passage which
sums up the whole matter:--“The opinions that we reject as foolish and
impious are those we have often named before, to wit, that those that
are vulgarly accounted Witches, make a visible and corporeal contract
with the Devil, that he sucks upon their bodies, that he hath carnal
copulation with them, that they are transubstantiated into Cats, Dogs,
Squirrels, and the like, or that they raise tempests, and fly in the
air. Other powers we grant unto them, to operate and effect whatsoever
the force of natural imagination joyned with envy, malice and vehement
desire of revenge, can perform or perpetrate, or whatsoever hurt may be
done by secret poysons and such like wayes that work by meer natural
means.”[78]
It is true that Webster opposed some of the current witch dogmas of
his time. There are passages enough in his elaborate treatise which
insist on the prevalence of fraud and melancholia. In his Epistle
Dedicatory, which is addressed to five Yorkshire justices of the peace,
he lays particular stress on the necessity of distinguishing between
impostors and those unfortunate persons who are “under a mere passive
delusion” that they are witches, and warns the magistrates not to
believe impossible confessions. For all this he deserves honor.[79]
Nor do I intend for a moment to suggest that the queer things (as
we regard them now-a-days) which I have cited are in any manner
discreditable to Webster. He was not exceptionally credulous, and he
belonged to that advanced school of English physicians who, in the
second half of the seventeenth century, upheld the general theories
of Paracelsus and van Helmont in opposition to the outworn follies of
the Galenists or regulars. He was a man of great erudition, of vast
and varied experience, of uncommon mental gifts, and of passionate
devotion to the truth. I admire him, but I must be pardoned if I am
unable to see how he can be regarded as a tower of skeptical strength
in the great witchcraft controversy. Even his admissions on the subject
of the fallen angels are enough to destroy the efficiency of his
denial of current notions about witchcraft. Once grant, as Webster
does, that our atmosphere is peopled by legions upon legions of evil
angels, delighting in sin, eager to work mischief, inimical to God and
man, furnished with stores of acquired knowledge, and able to devise
wicked thoughts and put them into our minds,[80] and it was idle to
deny--in the face of the best philosophic and theological opinion
of the ages--that these demonic beings can make actual covenants
with witches or furnish them with the means of doing injury to their
fellow-creatures.
“_A Witch_,” according to Glanvill’s definition, “_is one, who can
do or seems to do strange things, beyond the known Power of Art and
ordinary Nature, by vertue of a Confederacy with Evil Spirits_.... The
_strange things_ are _really_ performed, and are not all _Impostures_
and _Delusions_. The Witch _occasions_, but is not the _Principal_
Efficient, she seems to do it, but the _Spirit_ performs the wonder,
sometimes immediately, as in _Transportations_ and _Possessions_,
sometimes by applying other Natural Causes, as in raising _Storms_, and
inflicting _Diseases_, sometimes using the _Witch_ as an _Instrument_,
and either by the Eyes or Touch, conveying Malign Influences: And
these things are done by vertue of a _Covenant_, or _Compact_ betwixt
the _Witch_ and an _Evil Spirit_. A _Spirit_, viz. an _Intelligent
Creature_ of the Invisible World, whether one of the Evil Angels called
_Devils_, or an Inferiour _Dæmon_ or _Spirit_, or a wicked _Soul_
departed; but one that is able and ready for mischief, and whether
altogether Incorporeal or not, appertains not to this Question.”[81]
Glanvill’s book was well known to the Mathers. So was Webster’s
Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft.[82] Could there be a moment’s doubt
which of the two would appeal the more powerfully to their logical
sense? Why, even we ourselves, if we look at the matter fairly,--taking
into consideration Webster’s whole case, and not merely such parts of
it as accord with our preconceived opinions,--are forced to admit that
Glanvill’s position is much the stronger.
In a well-known passage, in which the intellectual temper of
Massachusetts before 1660 is contrasted with that of the next
generation,[83] our classic New England essayist remarks that after
1660 the Colonists “sank rapidly into provincials, narrow in thought,
in culture, in creed.” “Such a pedantic portent as Cotton Mather,”
Lowell continues, “would have been impossible in the first generation;
he was the natural growth of the third.” To discuss these epigrammatic
theses would take us far beyond the limits of our present subject.
One thing, however, must be said. Pedantry in the latter half of the
seventeenth century was not confined to New England, nor to the ranks
of those who were controversially styled the witchmongers. Meric
Casaubon and Joseph Glanvill were not pedantic, but John Webster’s
Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft--which in some respects comes very
near to being a great book--is a monument of pedantry, and John Webster
was not a product of New England.
In Thomas Hobbes, whom we may next consider, we find a philosopher
who was altogether incredulous on the subject of witchcraft. “As for
witches,” he writes, “I think not that their witchcraft is any real
power; but yet that they are justly punished, for the false belief that
they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose
to do it if they can; their trade being nearer to a new religion
than to a craft or science.”[84] This dictum may accord with reason,
but one must admit that it was cold comfort for persons accused of
diabolical arts. And so was the more famous remark of Selden: “The
Law against Witches 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.”[85] Bayle, shortly after
the beginning of the eighteenth century, agreed with Selden as to the
justice of putting “sorciers imaginaires” to death.[86] Thomas Ady,
believing (like Scot, to whom he often refers) that the witches and
sorcerers of the Bible were mere cheats, and that the same is true of
all who pretend to similar arts in modern times, is ready to admit the
justice of the death penalty in cases of fraud. In describing the case
of a certain Master of Arts who was “condemned only for using himself
to the study and practice of the Jugling craft,” he concludes:--“If
he had been a Jugler, or practiser of that Craft to this end, to
withstand the Prophets when they wrought true miracles, as _Pharaohs_
Juglers withstood _Moses_, or if he were one that practised it to
seduce the people after lying delusions, to magnifie himself as a
false Prophet, like _Simon Magus_ in the _Acts_, or to cause people to
ascribe miraculous power to him, or to seek to the Devil as our common
Deceivers, called good Witches, do, he was deservedly condemned.”[87]
Four dissenters from the current witchcraft dogma we must pass over
in silence--John Wagstaffe, Sir Robert Filmer, Robert Calef, and Dr.
Francis Hutchinson. Calef came too late to be really significant in our
discussion; Filmer’s tract is a kind of _jeu d’esprit_, not likely to
have had any influence except upon lawyers;[88] and Wagstaffe’s book
is a quite inconsiderable affair. Yet, in parting, we must not neglect
an odd remark concerning two out of the four--as well as one other,
John Webster, whose lucubrations we have already criticised--a remark
which, occurring as it does in a work of much learning and unusual
distinction, illustrates in striking fashion the inaccuracy which we
have already had occasion to notice, now and again, in recent writers
who have busied themselves with the abstruse and complicated subject of
witchcraft. President White, in his Warfare of Science with Theology,
expresses his admiration for Webster, Wagstaffe, and Hutchinson in the
following terms:--“But especially should honour be paid to the younger
men in the Church, who wrote at length against the whole system:
such men as Wagstaffe and Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler
ranks of the clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that
by so doing they were making their own promotion impossible.”[89]
Of the three men whom Dr. White thus commends for renouncing all
hope of ecclesiastical preferment, the first, John Webster, was
sixty-seven years old when he published his book; he had long been
a Non-Conformist, and he describes himself on his title-page as
“Practitioner in Physick.” The second, John Wagstaffe, was a gentleman
of independent means who damaged his health by “continual bibbing of
strong and high tasted liquors”[90] and who was not in orders at all;
the third. Dr. Francis Hutchinson, was Chaplain in Ordinary to King
George I. when he published his Essay and was advanced to a bishopric
two years after the first edition of the book appeared.[91]
When in 1692 and 1693, we come to The Enchanted World (De Betoverde
Weereld)[92] of the Dutch preacher and theologian Balthasar Bekker,
we arrive at a method of opposing the witch dogma different from
anything we have so far examined. Bekker was fully aware of the
difficulties of his theme, and he had an uncommonly logical head. His
method is perfect. He first sets forth the spiritual beliefs of the
Greeks and Romans and their practices in the way of sorcery. Then he
shows--with an anticipation of the process so often used by the modern
anthropological school--that the same doctrines and practices are
found among “the pagans of the present day,”--in Northern Europe, in
Asia, in Africa, and in America, as well as among the ancient Jews.
The Manichæan heresy, he contends, was a mélange of pagan and Jewish
doctrines. These doctrines--heathen, Jewish, and Manichæan--early
became current among Christians. Hence, Christians in general now hold
that all sorts of extraordinary happenings are due to the activity of
the devil. Thus Bekker succeeds in explaining the primary conceptions
of modern demonology and witchcraft as derived from heathen sources.[93]
Bekker’s next task is to define body and spirit, according to reason
and the Bible. Both body and spirit are creatures. God, being perfect
and increate, is neither body nor spirit, but superior to both. He is
called a spirit in the Bible, simply because there is no better word
to express the divine nature, but that nature is different from what
is ordinarily meant by the term. God being the governor of the world,
we have no ground for believing that there are demigods (_dæmons_
in the Greek sense) or vice-gods. Apart from the Scriptures, reason
affords us no proof that there are any spirits except men’s souls. The
Scriptures, however, teach that there are good angels, of whom Michael
is the chief, and bad angels, whose prince is the devil. Beyond this,
we learn practically nothing from the Bible with regard to a hierarchy
of angels or of devils. Demoniacal possession was a natural disease: it
had nothing to do with evil spirits. Such devils as are mentioned in
Scripture are not said to be vassals of Satan; in many cases we are to
understand the word “devil” merely as a figure of speech for a wicked
man. There is no warrant in Holy Writ for the belief that Satan can
appear to mortals under different forms, nor for the powers vulgarly
ascribed to him and his supposed demonic household. In particular,
there is no scriptural warrant for the opinion that Satan or his imps
can injure men bodily or even suggest evil thoughts to them. The devil
and the evil angels are damned in hell; they have not the power to
move about in this world. The only way in which Satan is responsible
for the sins which we commit is through his having brought about the
fall of Adam, so that men are now depraved creatures, prone to sin.
There is no place in the divine government for particular suggestions
to wickedness, made from time to time, since the Fall, either by Satan
himself or by any of his train. Diabolical influence upon mankind
was confined to the initial temptation in Eden. Since Adam, neither
Satan nor any evil spirit has been active in this world in any manner
whatever, spiritual or corporeal. God rules, and the devil is not a
power to be reckoned with at all. These revolutionary propositions
Bekker proves, to his own satisfaction, not only from reason, but from
the Word of God.[94]
Here at last we have a rational method. Bekker is not content with
half-measures; he lays the axe to the root. There is a devil, to be
sure, and there are fallen angels; but neither the one nor the other
can have anything to do with the life and actions of mortal men.
Practically, then, the devil is non-existent. We may disregard him
entirely. If Bekker’s propositions are admitted, the stately fabric
of demonology and witchcraft crumbles in an instant. And nothing
less drastic than such propositions will suffice to make witchcraft
illogical or incredible. Bekker’s argument, we see at once, is utterly
different from anything that his predecessors had attempted.
It now becomes necessary for Bekker to proceed to discuss those
passages in the Bible which appear to justify the common beliefs in
sorcery and witchcraft. These beliefs are contrary to reason, but, if
they rest upon revelation, they must still be accepted, for Bekker
regards himself as an orthodox Christian of the Dutch Reformed Church.
Accordingly Bekker takes up every scriptural passage which mentions
witches, enchanters, diviners, and the like, and interprets them all in
such a way that they lend no support to current beliefs in the reality
of compacts with the devil, of magic, or of witchcraft. Whatever
magicians and witches, so-called, may think of their own performances,
there is nothing in Scripture, as interpreted by this bold and expert
theologian and unsurpassed dialectician, to warrant us in believing in
intercourse with Satan, or in his intervention, with or without the
mediation of sorcerers and witches, in human life as it is to-day.[95]
But, Bekker hastens to admit, there remains a huge mass of recent
testimony which is regarded by almost everybody as sufficient to
establish the existence of sorcery and witchcraft, whether such things
are recognized in the Bible or not. To this testimony Bekker devotes
the Fourth (and last) Book of his treatise.
He first points out that all such testimony is prejudiced, since it
comes from persons who have a fixed and, so to speak, an inherited
belief in the truth of the marvels whose very existence is in
question. He then examines a great body of material, with splendid
sobriety and common sense. This is perhaps the most interesting part
of his work to us,--though in fact it is less original than much of
what precedes, since all opponents of the witch dogma, beginning
with Wier, had attacked the evidence in many particulars, and since
even those scholars and theologians who supported the dogma most
effectively--like Glanvill--had granted without hesitation that fraud
and delusion played a large part in the accumulation of testimony.
Bekker’s treatment of the subject, however, is better than anything
of the kind that had been written before. Fraud, terror, hysteria,
insanity, illusion of the senses,--due to disease or to what we should
now call hypnotic or semi-hypnotic conditions,--unknown laws of
nature--these are the sources from which he derives his interpretation
of the evidence. This part of his work, then, has a singularly modern
tone, and gives the author a valid claim to rank as an enlightened
psychologist.
It has seemed advisable to give particular attention to Bekker’s
Enchanted World because of its singular merits, as well as on account
of the distinguished position which it deservedly holds among the books
which oppose the belief in witchcraft. In strictness, however, we are
not bound to include this work in our survey of seventeenth-century
opinion, since it did not appear in season to exert any influence on
New England at the time of the Salem prosecution. The first two Books
of Bekker’s work were published in 1691; the second two, which deal
specifically with witchcraft, in 1693. The trouble in Salem began in
February, 1692, and the prosecution collapsed in January, 1693. It is
certain that New England scholars knew nothing about the first two
Books when they were engaged in witch trials, and the last two were
not published until the trials had come to an end. But this matter
of dates need not be insisted on. Even if our ancestors had received
advance sheets of The Enchanted World, their opinions would not, in
all probability, have been in the slightest degree affected. Indeed,
the reception which Bekker’s treatise met with in his own country is
a plain indication of the temper of the times in this business of
witchcraft. The publication of the first two Books in 1691 was the
signal for a storm of denunciation. The Dutch press teemed with replies
and attacks. Bekker was instantly called to account by the authorities
of the Reformed Church. Complicated ecclesiastical litigation ensued,
with the result that the Synod of North Holland issued a decree
declaring Bekker “intolerable as teacher in the Reformed Church” and
expelling him from his ministerial office (August 7, 1692).[96] Soon
after, the Church Council of Amsterdam voted to exclude him from the
Lord’s Supper (August 17),[97] and he was never admitted to communion
again. He died on June 11, 1698.[98]
Another reason for going so fully into Bekker’s arguments is that they
give us an excellent chance to take up a question which is of cardinal
importance in weighing the whole matter of witchcraft. I refer, of
course, to the question of Biblical exegesis.
If we wish to treat our forefathers fairly, we are required to
criticise the few opponents of the witch dogma in a really impartial
way. We ought not to commend such portions of their argument as chance
to square with our own ideas, and ignore the rest. We must review their
case as a whole, so as to discover how far it was right or reasonable
on the basis of their own postulates. We must test the correctness of
their premises, as well as the accuracy of their logic.
This process we have gone through with already in several instances.
We have seen that all the opponents of witchcraft so far examined
struggle to maintain a position that is strategically indefensible,
either because they admit too much, or because they ignore certain
difficulties, or because they are frankly eccentric. It does not help
their case to contend that what they admit or what they ignore does not
signify from our present scientific point of view. It _did_ signify
_then_. The only man whose argument covers the ground completely and
affords a thorough and consistent theory on which a seventeenth-century
Christian was logically justified in rejecting witchcraft and
demoniacal possession as facts of everyday experience is Balthasar
Bekker.
Now the truth or falsity of Bekker’s very radical conclusions
hinged--for Bekker himself and for his contemporaries--on the soundness
of his Biblical exegesis. If his way of disposing of those passages
which mention devils and witches and diviners and familiar spirits is
not justifiable--if the Biblical writers did not mean what he thinks
they meant--then his whole case goes to pieces. In discussing the
witchcraft dogma of the seventeenth century, we must accept the Bible,
for the nonce, as the men of the seventeenth century (Bekker included)
accepted it--as absolutely true in every detail, as dynamically
inspired by the Holy Ghost, as a complete rule of faith and practice.
Modern views on this subject have no _locus standi_.
Now, if we only keep these fundamental principles firmly in mind, we
shall have no doubt as to the outcome. Beyond question, the Bible
affords ample authority for belief in demoniacal possession, in
necromancy, in the ability of Satan and his cohorts to cause physical
phenomena, and in the power of sorcerers to work miracles.[99] True,
not all the details of the witchcraft dogma rest upon Biblical
authority, but enough of them do so rest to make the case of those
who uphold the traditional opinion substantially unassailable, except
upon the purely arbitrary assumption that all these wonders, though
formerly actual, have ceased in recent times.[100] Bekker’s exegesis
is erroneous in countless particulars and presents an altogether
mistaken view of Biblical doctrines. As interpreters of the language
of Scripture, the orthodox theologians of his time, who pinned their
faith to witchcraft, were nearer right than he was. And what is true
of Bekker’s exegesis, is equally true of that followed by all previous
opponents of the witchcraft dogma. My reason for not referring to this
point in criticising their books is obvious. Bekker has gone farther,
and succeeded better, in explaining away the testimony of Scripture
than any of the others. It is more than fair to them to rest this part
of the case upon his success or failure. If Bekker falls, all of them
certainly fall,--and Bekker falls.[101]
From our cursory examination of the works put forth by some of the
chief opponents of the witch dogma, it must be evident that none of
these works can have had a very profound influence on the beliefs
of the seventeenth century,--their function was rather, by keeping
discussion alive, to prepare for the change of sentiment which took
place soon after 1700, in what we are accustomed to call “the age of
prose and reason.” Such an examination as we have given to these books
was necessary to establish the proposition with which we set out,--that
our ancestors in 1692 were in accord with the practically universal
belief of their day. It has shown more than this, however,--it has
demonstrated that their position was logically and scripturally
stronger than that of their antagonists, provided we judge the matter
(as we are in honor bound to do) on the basis of those doctrines as
to supernaturalism and the inspiration of the Bible that were alike
admitted by both sides. We may repeat, then, with renewed confidence,
the statement already made:--Our forefathers believed in witchcraft,
not because they were Puritans, not because they were Colonials, not
because they were New Englanders, but because they were men of their
own time and not of ours.
Another point requires consideration if we would arrive at a just
judgment on the Salem upheaval. It is frequently stated, and still
oftener assumed, that the outbreak at Salem was peculiar in its
virulence, or, at all events, in its intensity. This is a serious
error, due, like other misapprehensions, to a neglect of the history
of witchcraft as a whole. The fact is, the Salem excitement was the
opposite of peculiar,--it was perfectly typical. The European belief in
witchcraft, which our forefathers shared without exaggerating it, was
a constant quantity. It was always present, and continuously fraught
with direful possibilities. But it did not find expression in a steady
and regular succession of witch trials. On the contrary, it manifested
itself at irregular intervals in spasmodic outbursts of prosecution.
Notable examples occurred at Geneva from 1542 to 1546;[102] at
Wiesensteig, Bavaria, in 1562 and 1563;[103] in the Electorate of Trier
from 1587 to 1593;[104] among the Basques of Labourd in 1609;[105] at
Mohra in Sweden in 1669 and 1670.[106] In the district of Ortenau, in
Baden, witchcraft prosecutions suddenly broke out, after a considerable
interval, in 1627, and there were seventy-three executions in three
years.[107] From the annals of witchcraft in Great Britain one may cite
the following cases:--1581, at St. Osith’s, in Essex;[108] 1590-1597,
in Scotland;[109] 1612, at Lancaster,[110] and again in 1633;[111]
1616, in Leicestershire;[112] 1645-1647, the Hopkins prosecution;[113]
1649-1650, at Newcastle-on-Tyne;[114] 1652, at Maidstone, in
Kent;[115] 1682, at Exeter.[116] The sudden outbreak of witch trials in
the Bermudas in 1651 is also worthy of attention.[117]
It is unnecessary for us to consider how much of the evidence offered
at witch trials in England was actually true. Some of the defendants
were pretty bad characters, and it would be folly to maintain that
none of them tried to cause the sickness or death of their enemies by
maltreating clay images or by other arts which they supposed would
avail. Besides, now and then an injury is testified to which may well
have been inflicted without diabolical aid. Thus Ann Foster, who was
hanged for witchcraft at Northampton in 1674, confessed that she
had set a certain grazier’s barns on fire, and there is much reason
to believe her, for she was under considerable provocation.[118] As
to occult or super-normal powers and practices, we may leave their
discussion to the psychologists. With regard to this aspect of the
Salem troubles, we must accept, as substantially in accordance with
the facts, the words of Dr. Poole: “No man of any reputation who lived
in that generation, and saw what transpired at Salem Village and its
vicinity, doubted that there was some influence then exerted which
could not be explained by the known laws of matter or of mind.”[119]
Even Thomas Brattle, in speaking of the confessing witches, many of
whom he says he has “again and again seen and heard,” cannot avoid the
hypothesis of demoniacal action. They are, he feels certain, “deluded,
imposed upon, and under the influence of some evil spirit; and
therefore unfit to be evidences either against themselves, or any one
else.”[120]
One common misapprehension to which the historians of witchcraft
are liable comes from their failure to perceive that the immediate
responsibility for actual prosecution rests frequently, if not in
the majority of instances, on the rank and file of the community or
neighborhood. This remark is not made in exculpation of prosecutors
and judges,--for my purpose in this discussion is not to extenuate
anybody’s offences or to shift the blame from one man’s shoulders to
another. What is intended is simply to remind the reader of a patent
and well-attested fact which is too often overlooked in the natural
tendency of historians to find some notable personage to whom their
propositions, commendatory or damaging, may be attached. A prosecution
for witchcraft presupposes a general belief among the common people in
the reality of the crime. But this is not all. It presupposes likewise
the existence of a body of testimony, consisting of the talk of the
neighborhood, usually extending back over a considerable stretch of
years, with regard to certain persons who have the reputation of being
witches, cunning men, and so on. It also presupposes the belief of
the neighborhood that various strange occurrences,--such as storms,
bad crops, plagues of grass-hoppers and caterpillars, loss of pigs or
cattle, cases of lunacy or hysteria or chorea or wasting sickness,--are
due to the malice of those particular suspects and their unknown
confederates. These strange occurrences, be it remembered, are not
the fictions of a superstitious or distempered imagination, they
are--most of them--things that have really taken place; they are the
_res gestae_ of the prosecution, without which it could never have
come about, or, having begun, could never have continued. And further,
in very many instances of prosecution for witchcraft, there have been
among the accused, persons who believed themselves to be witches,--or
who had, at any rate, pretended to extraordinary powers and--in many
instances--had either used their uncanny reputation to scare their
enemies or to get money by treating diseases of men and cattle. And
finally, the habit of railing and brawling, of uttering idle but
malignant threats, and, on the other hand, the habit of applying vile
epithets--including that of “witch,”--to one’s neighbors in the heat
of anger--customs far more prevalent in former times than now--also
resulted in the accumulation of a mass of latent or potential testimony
which lay stored up in people’s memories ready to become kinetic
whenever the machinery of the law should once begin to move.[121]
Nobody will ask for evidence that railing and brawling went on in
colonial New England, that our forefathers sometimes called each other
bad names, or that slander was a common offence.[122] That suspicion
of witchcraft was rife in various neighborhoods years before the Salem
outbreak, is proved, not only by the records of sporadic cases that
came before the courts,[123] but by some of the evidence in the Salem
prosecution itself.
That the initial responsibility for prosecution usually rested with
the neighborhood or community might further be shown by many specific
pieces of testimony. The terrible prosecution in Trier toward the close
of the sixteenth century is a case in point. “Since it was commonly
believed,” writes Linden, an eyewitness, “that the continued failure
of the crops for many years was caused by witches and wizards through
diabolical malice, the whole country rose up for the annihilation of
the witches.”[124] To like purpose are the words of the admirable
Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, in the closing chapter of the most powerful
and convincing protest against witch trials ever written--that
chapter which the author begged every magistrate in Germany to mark
and weigh, whether he read the rest of the book or not:--“Incredible
are the superstition, the envy, the slanders and backbitings, the
whisperings and gossip of the common people in Germany, which are
neither punished by magistrates nor reproved by preachers. These
are the causes that first rouse suspicion of witchcraft. All the
punishments of divine justice with which God has threatened men in the
Holy Scriptures are held to come from witches. God and nature no longer
do anything,--witches, everything. Hence it is that all demand, with
violent outcry, that the magistracy shall proceed against the witches,
whom only their own tongues have made so numerous.”[125]
As for England, the annals of witchcraft are full of instances which
show where the initial responsibility rests in particular prosecutions.
Two examples will serve as well as many.
Roger North, the distinguished lawyer, who was at Exeter in 1682,
when a famous witch trial occurred,[126] gives a vivid account of
the popular excitement:--[127] “The women were very old, decrepit,
and impotent, and were brought to the assizes with as much noise and
fury of the rabble against them as could be shewed on any occasion.
The stories of their acts were in everyone’s mouth, and they were
not content to belie them in the country, but even in the city where
they were to be tried miracles were fathered upon them, as that the
judges’ coach was fixed upon the castle bridge, and the like. All
which the country believed, and accordingly persecuted the wretched
old creatures. A less zeal in a city or kingdom hath been the overture
of defection and revolution, and if these women had been acquitted,
it was thought that the country people would have committed some
disorder.”[128]
Our second example is a very notable case, which occurred in
1712,--that of Jane Wenham, the last witch condemned to death in
England. Jane Wenham had a dispute with a neighboring farmer, who
called her a witch. She complained to the local magistrate, Sir Henry
Chauncy. He referred the dispute to the parson of the parish, who,
after hearing both sides, admonished the wranglers to live at peace
and sentenced the farmer to pay Jane a shilling. The old crone was not
pleased. Shortly after, one of the clergyman’s servants, a young woman,
was strangely afflicted. Jane was brought to trial. Every effort seems
to have been made by the court to put a stop to the affair, but the
local feeling was so strong, and the witnesses and complainants were
so many (including the clergymen of two parishes) that nothing could
be done. The official who drew up the indictment endeavored to make
the whole affair ridiculous by refusing to use any other phraseology
in describing the alleged crime than “conversing with the devil in the
form of a cat.” But the well-meant device only intensified the feeling
against the witch. Mr. Justice Powell, who presided, did what he could
to induce the jury to acquit, but in vain. They brought in a verdict of
guilty, and he was obliged to pass sentence of death. He suspended the
execution of the sentence, however, and secured the royal pardon,--to
the intense indignation of the neighborhood. Here we have a jury of the
vicinage, accurately reflecting the local sentiment, and insisting on
carrying out its belief in witchcraft to the bitter end, despite all
that the judge could do.[129] It is well to note that the clergymen
involved in the prosecution were not New England Puritans, and that
the whole affair took place just ten years after the last execution
of a witch in Massachusetts. Of itself, this incident might suffice
to silence those who ascribe the Salem outbreak to the influence of
certain distinguished men, as well as those who maintain that the New
Englanders were more superstitious than their fellow-citizens at home,
that their Puritanism was somehow to blame for it, and that witchcraft
was practically dead in the Mother Country when the Salem outbreak took
place.[130]
Yet Thomas Wright--never to be mentioned without honor--speaks of the
New England troubles as “exemplifying the horrors and the absurdities
of the witchcraft persecutions more than anything that had occurred
in the old world,”[131] and Dr. G. H. Moore,--in an important article
on The Bibliography of Witchcraft in Massachusetts--declares that
the Salem outbreak “was the _epitome_ of witchcraft! whose ghastly
records may be challenged to produce any parallel for it in the world’s
history!”[132] In further refutation of such reckless statements I
need add but a single instance. In 1596 there was an outbreak of some
pestilence or other in Aberdeen. The populace ascribed the disease to
the machinations of a family long suspected of witchcraft. A special
commission was appointed by the Privy Council, “and before April 1597,
twenty-three women and one man had been burnt, one woman had died under
the torture, one had hanged herself in prison, and four others who were
acquitted on the capital charge, were yet branded on the cheek and
banished from the sheriffdom.”[133]
There was a very special reason why troubles with the powers of
darkness were to be expected in New England--a reason which does
not hold good for Great Britain or, indeed, for any part of Western
Europe. I refer, of course, to the presence of a considerable heathen
population--the Indians. These were universally supposed to be
devil-worshippers--not only by the Colonists but by all the rest of
the world--for paganism was held to be nothing but Satanism.[134]
Cotton Mather and the Jesuit fathers of Canada were at one on this
point.[135] The religious ceremonies of the Indians were, as we know,
in large part an invocation of spirits, and their powwows, or medicine
men, supposed themselves to be wizards,--_were_ wizards, indeed, so
far as sorcery is possible.[136] The Colonial government showed itself
singularly moderate, however, in its attitude toward Indian practices
of a magical character. Powwowing was, of course, forbidden wherever
the jurisdiction of the white men held sway, but it was punishable
by fine only, nor was there any idea of inflicting the extreme
penalty[137]--although the offence undoubtedly came under the Mosaic
law, so often quoted on the title-pages of books on witchcraft, “Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
The existence of all these devil-worshipping neighbors was a constant
reminder of the possibility of danger from witchcraft. One is
surprised, therefore, to find that there was no real outbreak until so
late in the century. It argues an uncommon degree of steadiness and
common sense among our forefathers that they held off the explosion so
long. Yet even this delay has been made to count against them, as if,
by 1692, they ought to have known better, even if they might have been
excusable some years before. In point of fact, the New Englanders, as
we have seen, made an end of trying witches nearly ten years earlier
than their English fellow-citizens. But we shall come back to this
question of dates presently.
Much has been written of the stupendous and criminal foolishness of
our ancestors in admitting “spectral evidence” at the Salem trials.
Nothing, of course, can be said in defence of such evidence in itself;
but a great deal might be said in defence of our ancestors on this
score. The fact is,--and it should never be lost sight of,--there was
nothing strange in their admitting such evidence. It was a matter of
course that they should admit it. To do so indeed, was one of the best
established of all legal principles. Spectral evidence was admitted,
for example, in England, either in examinations or in actual trials,
in 1593,[138] 1612,[139] 1616,[140] 1621,[141] 1633,[142] 1645,[143]
1650,[144] 1653,[145] 1654,[146] 1658,[147] 1660,[148] 1661,[149]
1663,[150] 1664,[151] 1665,[152] 1667,[153] 1670,[154] 1672,[155]
1673,[156] 1680,[157] 1683.[158] Even Chief Justice Holt, whose
honorable record in procuring the acquittal of every witch he tried
is well-known,[159] did not exclude spectral evidence: it was offered
and admitted in at least two of his cases--in 1695 and 1696[160]--both
later than the last witch trial in Massachusetts. In the 1697 edition
of that very popular manual, Michael Dalton’s Country Justice, spectral
evidence (“Their Apparition to the Sick Party in his Fits”) is
expressly mentioned as one of the proofs of witchcraft.[161] What may
fairly be called spectral evidence was admitted by Mr. Justice Powell,
anxious as he was to have the defendant acquitted, in the trial of Jane
Wenham in 1712.[162] The question, then, was not whether such evidence
might be heard, but what weight was to be attached to it. Thus, in Sir
Matthew Hale’s case, Mr. Serjeant Keeling was “much unsatisfied” with
such testimony, affirming that, if it were allowed to pass for proof,
“no person whatsoever can be in safety.”[163] He did not aver that it
should not have been admitted, but only protested against regarding it
as decisive, and in the end he seems to have become convinced of the
guilt of the defendants.[164] It is, therefore, nothing against our
ancestors that they heard such evidence, for they were simply following
the invariable practice of the English courts. On the other hand, it
is much to their credit that they soon began to suspect it, and that,
having taken advice, they decided, in 1693, to allow it no further
weight. We may emphasize the folly of spectral evidence as much as we
like.[165] Only let us remember that in so doing we are attacking, not
New England in 1692, but Old England from 1593 to 1712. When, on the
other hand, we distribute compliments to those who refused to allow
such evidence to constitute full proof, let us not forget that with
the name of Chief Justice Holt we must associate those of certain
Massachusetts worthies whom I need not specify. It is not permissible
to blame our ancestors for an error of judgment that they shared with
everybody, and then to refuse them commendation for a virtue which they
shared with a very few wise heads in England. That would be to proceed
on the principle of “heads I win, tails you lose,”--a method much
followed by Matthew Hopkins and his kind, but of doubtful propriety in
a candid investigation of the past. We shall never keep our minds clear
on the question of witchcraft in general, and of the Salem witchcraft
in particular, until we stop attacking and defending individual persons.
Sir John Holt, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench from 1682 to 1710, has
a highly honorable name in the annals of English witchcraft. A dozen
or twenty cases came before him, and in every instance the result was
an acquittal.[166] Chief Justice Holt deserves all the credit he has
received; but it must be carefully noted that his example cannot be
cited to the shame and confusion of our ancestors in Massachusetts, for
most of his cases,--all but one, so far as I can ascertain,--occurred
after the release of the New England prisoners and the abandonment of
the prosecution here. As to that single case of acquittal, we must not
forget that there were also acquittals in New England,--in 1674 and
1676, for example.[167] As to acquittals in England _after_ 1693, let
it be remembered that there were _no trials at all for witchcraft_ in
New England subsequent to that year. If Chief Justice Holt is to be
commended for procuring the acquittal of a dozen witches between 1693
and 1702, what is to be ascribed to our forefathers for bringing no
cases to trial during that period?
The most remarkable things about the New England prosecution were the
rapid return of the community to its habitually sensible frame of mind
and the frank public confession of error made by many of those who
had been implicated. These two features, and especially the latter,
are without a parallel in the history of witchcraft. It seems to be
assumed by most writers that recantation and an appeal to heaven for
pardon were the least that could have been expected of judge and jury.
In fact, as I have just ventured to suggest, no action like Samuel
Sewall’s on the part of a judge and no document like that issued by the
repentant Massachusetts jurymen have yet been discovered in the witch
records of the world.[168]
But it is not for the sake of lauding their penitential exercises that
I lay stress upon the unexampled character of our forefathers’ action.
There is another aspect from which the outcome of the Salem trials
ought to be regarded. They fell at a critical moment, when witchcraft
was, for whatever reason, soon to become a crime unknown to the English
courts. They attracted attention instantly in the Mother Country.[169]
Can there be any question that the sensational recovery of the Province
from its attack of prosecuting zeal, accompanied as that recovery was
by retraction and by utterances of deep contrition, had a profound
effect in England? The mere dropping of the prosecution would not have
had this effect. In 1597, James I., alarmed at the extent to which
witch trials were going in Scotland, revoked all the existing special
commissions that were engaged in holding trials for this offence.[170]
But the evil was soon worse than ever. What was efficacious in the
New England instance was the unheard-of action of judge and jury in
recanting. This made the Salem troubles the best argument conceivable
in the hands of those reformers who, soon after 1700, began to make
actual headway in their opposition to the witch dogma.
I am not reasoning _a priori_. By common consent one of the most
effective arraignments of the superstition that we are discussing is
the Historical Essay on Witchcraft of Dr. Francis Hutchinson, which
appeared in 1718.[171] Now Hutchinson, who gives much space to the New
England trials, refers to Sewall’s action, and prints the recantation
of the jurors in full. Nor does he leave in us doubt as to the purpose
for which he adduces these testimonies. “And those Towns,” he writes,
“having regained their Quiet; and this Case being of that Nature, that
Facts and Experience are of more weight than meer rational Arguments;
it will be worth our while to observe some Passages that happened after
this Storm, when they had Time to look back on what had passed.”[172]
Whatever may be thought of these considerations, one fact cannot be
assailed. In prosecuting witches, our forefathers acted like other men
in the seventeenth century. In repenting and making public confession,
they acted like themselves. Their fault was the fault of their time;
their merit is their own.
We must not leave this subject without looking into the question of
numbers and dates. The history of the Salem Witchcraft is, to all
intents and purposes, the sum total of witchcraft history in the whole
of Massachusetts for a century. From the settlement of the country, of
course, our fathers believed in witchcraft, and cases came before the
courts from time to time, but, outside of the Salem outbreak, not more
than half-a-dozen executions can be shown to have occurred. It is not
strange that there should have been witch trials. It is inconceivable
that the Colony should have passed through its first century without
some special outbreak of prosecution--inconceivable, that is to say,
to one who knows what went on in England and the rest of Europe during
that time. The wonderful thing is, not that an outbreak of prosecution
occurred, but that it did not come sooner and last longer.
From the first pranks of the afflicted children in Mr. Parris’s house
(in February, 1692) to the collapse of the prosecution in January,
1693, was less than a year. During the interval twenty persons had
suffered death, and two are known to have died in jail.[173] If to
these we add the six sporadic cases that occurred in Massachusetts
before 1692, there is a total of twenty-eight; but this is the whole
reckoning, not merely for a year or two but for a complete century.
The concentration of the trouble in Massachusetts within the limits of
a single year has given a wrong turn to the thoughts of many writers.
This concentration makes the case more conspicuous, but it does not
make it worse. On the contrary, it makes it better. It is astonishing
that there should have been only half-a-dozen executions for witchcraft
in Massachusetts before 1692, and equally astonishing that the
delusion, when it became acute, should have raged for but a year, and
that but twenty-two persons should have lost their lives. The facts are
distinctly creditable to our ancestors,--to their moderation and to
the rapidity with which their good sense could reassert itself after a
brief eclipse.[174]
Let us compare figures a little. For Massachusetts the account is
simple--twenty-eight victims in a century. No one has ever made an
accurate count of the executions in England during the seventeenth
century, but they must have mounted into the hundreds.[175] Matthew
Hopkins, the Witch-finder General, brought at least two hundred to the
gallows from 1645 to 1647.[176] In Scotland the number of victims
was much larger. The most conscientiously moderate estimate makes out
a total of at least 3,400 between the years 1580 and 1680, and the
computer declares that future discoveries in the way of records may
force us to increase this figure very much.[177] On the Continent many
thousands suffered death in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Mannhardt reckons the victims from the fourteenth to the seventeenth
century at millions,[178] and half a million is thought to be a
moderate estimate. In Alsace, a hundred and thirty-four witches and
wizards were burned in 1582 on one occasion, the execution taking
place on the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 28th of October.[179] Nicholas Remy
(Remigius) of Lorraine gathered the materials for his work on the
Worship of Demons,[180] published in 1595, from the trials of some 900
persons whom he had sentenced to death in the fifteen years preceding.
In 1609, de Lancre and his associate are said to have condemned 700
in the Basque country in four months.[181] The efforts of the Bishop
of Bamberg from 1622 to 1633 resulted in six hundred executions;
the Bishop of Würzburg, in about the same period, put nine hundred
persons to death.[182] These figures, which might be multiplied almost
indefinitely,[183] help us to look at the Salem Witchcraft in its true
proportions,--as a very small incident in the history of a terrible
superstition.
These figures may perhaps be attacked as involving a fallacious
comparison, inasmuch as we have not attempted to make the relative
population of New England and the several districts referred to a
factor in the equation. Such an objection, if anybody should see fit
to make it, is easily answered by other figures. The total number of
victims in Massachusetts from the first settlement to the end of the
seventeenth century was, as we have seen, twenty-eight,--or thirty-four
for the whole of New England. Compare the following figures, taken from
the annals of Great Britain and Scotland alone. In 1612, ten witches
were executed belonging to a single district of Lancashire.[184] In
1645 twenty-nine witches were condemned at once in a single Hundred in
Essex,[185] eighteen were hanged at once at Bury in Suffolk[186] “and a
hundred and twenty more were to have been tried, but a sudden movement
of the king’s troops in that direction obliged the judges to adjourn
the session.”[187] Under date of July 26, 1645, Whitelocke records that
“20 Witches in Norfolk were executed”,[188] and again, under April
15, 1650, that “at a little Village within two Miles [of Berwick] two
Men and three Women were burnt for Witches, and nine more were to be
burnt, the Village consisting of but fourteen Families, and there were
as many witches” and further that “twenty more were to be burnt within
six Miles of that place.”[189] If we pass over to the Continent, the
numbers are appalling. Whether, then, we take the computation in gross
or in detail, New England emerges from the test with credit.
The last execution for witchcraft in Massachusetts took place in 1692,
as we have seen; indeed, twenty of the total of twenty-six cases fell
within the limits of that one year. There were no witch trials in
New England in the eighteenth century. The annals of Europe are not
so clear. Six witches were burned in Renfrewshire in 1697.[190] In
England, Elinor Shaw and Mary Phillips, “two notorious witches,” were
put to death at Northampton in 1705 (or 1706).[191] In 1712 Jane Wenham
was condemned to death for witchcraft, but she was pardoned.[192] Two
clergymen of the Church of England, as well as a Bachelor of Arts of
Cambridge,[193] gave evidence against her. Just before the arrest of
Jane Wenham, Addison in the Spectator for July 11, 1711, had expressed
the creed of a well-bred and sensible man of the world: “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.” Blackstone, it will be remembered, subscribed to the same
doctrine, making particular reference to Addison.[194] Prompted, one
may conjecture, by the stir which the Wenham trial made, the Rev. J.
Boys, of Coggeshall Magna, in Essex, transcribed, in this same year,
from his memoranda, A Brief Account of the Indisposition of the Widow
Coman. This case had occurred in his own parish in 1699, and he had
given it careful investigation. Both in 1699, when he jotted down
the facts, and in 1712, Mr. Boys was clearly of the opinion that his
unfortunate parishioner was a witch. His narrative, which remained in
manuscript until 1901,[195] may be profitably compared with Cotton
Mather’s account of his visit to Margaret Rule in 1693.[196] Such a
comparison will not work to the disadvantage of the New England divine.
Incidentally it may be mentioned that the mob “swam” the widow Coman
several times, and that “soon after, whether by the cold she got in the
water or by some other means, she fell very ill, and dyed.” Let it not
be forgotten that this was six years after the end of the witchcraft
prosecutions in Massachusetts. In 1705 a supposed witch was murdered
by a mob at Pittenween in Scotland.[197] In 1730, another alleged
witch succumbed to the water ordeal in Somersetshire.[198] The English
and Scottish statutes against witchcraft were repealed in 1736,[199]
but in that same year Joseph Juxson, vicar, preached at Twyford, in
Leicestershire, a Sermon upon Witchcraft, occasioned by a late Illegal
Attempt to discover Witches by Swimming,[200] and in 1751 Ruth Osborne,
a reputed witch, was murdered by a mob in Hertfordshire.[201] The last
execution for witchcraft in Germany took place in 1775. In Spain the
last witch was burned in 1781, In Switzerland Anna Göldi was beheaded
in 1782 for bewitching the child of her master, a physician. In Poland
two women were burned as late as 1793.[202]
That the belief in witchcraft is still pervasive among the peasantry of
Europe, and to a considerable extent among the foreign-born population
in this country, is a matter of common knowledge.[203] Besides,
spiritualism and kindred delusions have taken over, under changed
names, many of the phenomena, real and pretended, which would have been
explained as due to witchcraft in days gone by.[204]
Why did the Salem outbreak occur? Of course there were many
causes--some of which have already suggested themselves in the
course of our discussion. But one fact should be borne in mind
as of particular importance. The belief in witchcraft, as we
have already had occasion to remark, was a constant quantity; but
outbreaks of prosecution came, in England--and, generally speaking,
elsewhere--spasmodically, at irregular intervals. If we look at Great
Britain for a moment, we shall see that such outbreaks are likely to
coincide with times of political excitement or anxiety. Thus early in
Elizabeth’s reign, when everything was more or less unsettled, Bishop
Jewel, whom all historians delight to honor, made a deliberate and
avowed digression, in a sermon before the queen, in order to warn
her that witchcraft was rampant in the realm, to inform her (on the
evidence of his own eyes) that her subjects were being injured in their
goods and their health, and to exhort her to enforce the law.[205] The
initial zeal of James I. in the prosecution of witches stood in close
connection with the trouble he was having with his turbulent cousin
Francis Bothwell.[206] The operations of Matthew Hopkins (in 1645-1647)
were a mere accompaniment to the tumult of the Civil War; the year in
which they began was the year of Laud’s execution and of the Battle
of Naseby. The Restoration was followed by a fresh outbreak of witch
prosecution,--mild in England, though far-reaching in its consequences,
but very sharp in Scotland.
With facts like these in view, we can hardly regard it as an accident
that the Salem witchcraft marks a time when the Colony was just
emerging from a political struggle that had threatened its very
existence. For several years men’s minds had been on the rack. The
nervous condition of public feeling is wonderfully well depicted in a
letter written in 1688 by the Rev. Joshua Moodey in Boston to Increase
Mather, then in London as agent of the Colony. The Colonists are much
pleased by the favor with which Mather has been received, but they
distrust court promises. They are alarmed by a report that Mather and
his associates have suffered “a great slurr” on account of certain
over-zealous actions. Moodey rejoices in the death of Robert Mason,
“one of the worst enemies that you & I & Mr. Morton had in these
parts.” Then there are the Indians:--“The cloud looks very dark and
black upon us, & wee are under very awfull circumstances, which render
an Indian Warr terrible to us.” The Colonists shudder at a rumor that
John Palmer, one of Andros’s Council, is to come over as Supreme Judge,
and know not how to reconcile it with the news of the progress their
affairs have been making with the King. And finally, the writer gives
an account of the case of Goodwin’s afflicted children, which, as we
know, was a kind of prologue to the Salem outbreak:--“Wee have a very
strange th[ing] among us, which we know not what to make of, except it
bee Witchcraft, as we think it must needs bee.”[207] Clearly, there
would have been small fear, in 1692, of a plot on Satan’s part to
destroy the Province, if our forefathers had not recently encountered
other dangers of a more tangible kind.
* * * * *
In conclusion, I may venture to sum up, in the form of a number of
brief theses, the main results at which we appear to have arrived in
our discussion of witchcraft:--
1. The belief in witchcraft is the common heritage of humanity. It is
not chargeable to any particular time, or race, or form of religion.
2. Witchcraft in some shape or other is still credited by a majority of
the human race.
3. The belief in witchcraft was practically universal in the
seventeenth century, even among the educated; with the mass of the
people it was absolutely universal.
4. To believe in witchcraft in the seventeenth century was no more
discreditable to a man’s head or heart than it was to believe in
spontaneous generation or to be ignorant of the germ theory of disease.
5. The position of the seventeenth century believers in witchcraft was
logically and theologically stronger than that of the few persons who
rejected the current belief.
6. The impulse to put a witch to death comes from the instinct of
self-preservation. It is no more cruel or otherwise blameworthy, in
itself, than the impulse to put a murderer to death.
7. The belief in witchcraft manifests itself, not in steady and
continuous prosecution, but in sudden outbreaks occurring at irregular
intervals.
8. Such outbreaks are not symptoms of extraordinary superstition or of
a peculiarly acute state of unreason. They are due, like other panics,
to a perturbed condition of the public mind. Hence they are likely to
accompany, or to follow, crises in politics or religion.
9. The responsibility for any witch prosecution rests primarily on the
community or neighborhood as a whole, not on the judge or the jury.
10. No jury, whether in a witch trial or in any other case, can be more
enlightened than the general run of the vicinage.
11. Many persons who have been executed for witchcraft have supposed
themselves to be guilty and have actually been guilty in intent.
12. Practically every person executed for witchcraft believed in the
reality of such a crime, whether he supposed himself to be guilty of it
or not.
13. The witch beliefs of New England were brought over from the Mother
Country by the first settlers.
14. Spectral evidence had been admitted in the examinations and trials
of witches in England for a hundred years before the Salem prosecutions
took place.
15. Trials, convictions, and executions for witchcraft occurred in
England after they had come to an end in Massachusetts, and they
occurred on the Continent a hundred years later than that time.
16. Spectral evidence was admitted in English witch trials after such
trials had ceased in Massachusetts.
17. The total number of persons executed for witchcraft in New England
from the first settlement to the end of the century is inconsiderable,
especially in view of what was going on in Europe.
18. The public repentance and recantation of judge and jury in
Massachusetts have no parallel in the history of witchcraft.
19. The repentance and recantation came at a time which made them
singularly effective arguments in the hands of the opponents of the
witch dogma in England.
20. The record of New England in the matter of witchcraft is highly
creditable, when considered as a whole and from the comparative point
of view.
21. It is easy to be wise after the fact,--especially when the fact is
two hundred years old.
[1] That the New Englanders brought their views on
demonology and witchcraft with them from the Mother Country
is a self-evident proposition, but it may be worth while
to refer to a striking instance of the kind. The Rev. John
Higginson, writing from Salem to Increase Mather in 1683,
sends him two cases for his Illustrious Providences,--both
of which he “believes to be certain.” The first is an
account of how a mysterious stranger, thought to be the
devil, once lent a conjuring book to “godly Mr. [Samuel]
Sharp, who was Ruling Elder of the Church of Salem allmost
30 years.” The incident took place when Sharp was a
young man in London. The second narrative Mr. Higginson
“heard at Gilford from a godly old man yet living. He
came from Essex, and hath been in N. E. about 50 years.”
It is a powerfully interesting legend of the Faust type,
localised in Essex. In a postscript Mr. Higginson adds,
“I had credible information of one in Leicestershire, in
the time of the Long Parliament, that gave his soul to
the Divel, upon condition to be a Famous Preacher, which
he was for a time, &c., but I am imperfect in the story.”
(Mather Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series,
VIII, 285-287). See also the cases of witchcraft before
1692 collected in S. G. Drake’s Annals of Witchcraft in
New England. Dr. Poole is far nearer the truth in saying
that “the New-England colonists had no views concerning
witchcraft and diabolical agency which they did not bring
with them from the Old World” (Witchcraft in Boston, in
Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, II, 131) than President
White is when he remarks that “the life of the early
colonists in New England was such as to give rapid growth
to the germs of the doctrine of possession brought from the
mother country” (Warfare of Science with Theology, II, 145).
[2] A masterly short account of the various elements
which made up the fully developed doctrine of witchcraft
as it was held during the three centuries of especial
prosecution (1400-1700), and of the sources from which
these elements were derived, may be found in the first
chapter of Joseph Hansen’s Zauberwahn, Inquisition und
Hexenprozess im Mittelalter (Munich and Leipzig, 1900).
A learned and able essay by Professor George L. Burr,
The Literature of Witchcraft, reprinted from the Papers
of the American Historical Association, New York, 1890,
should also be consulted. Professor Burr emphasises the
sound and necessary distinction between witchcraft and
magic. But he seems to go too far in his insistence on
this distinction as vital in the history of witchcraft:
“Magic itself is actual and universal. But witchcraft never
was. It was but a shadow, a nightmare: the nightmare of a
religion, the shadow of a dogma. Less than five centuries
saw its birth, its vigor, its decay” (p. 238; p. 38 of
reprint). This statement is true if by witchcraft is meant
(and this is Professor Burr’s sense) the fully developed
and highly complicated system set forth in the Malleus
Maleficarum and in Del Rio’s Disquisitiones Magicae--what
Hansen (p. 35) calls “der verhängnisvolle Sammelbegriff des
Hexenwesens,”--which was not possible until scholasticism
had schematised the diversified elements of belief in
magic and demonology and sorcery and devil-worship which
Christian theology and Christian superstition had derived
from the most various sources--from Judaism, classical
antiquity, Neo-Platonism, and the thousand-and-one beliefs
of pagan converts. But, important as this fully developed
system was--and true though it may be that without the
schematising influence of scholastic philosophy the
witch-prosecution which was epidemic in Europe from
1400 to 1700 could hardly have taken place--we should
never forget that the essential element in witchcraft is
_maleficium_--the working of harm to the bodies and goods
of one’s fellow-men by means of evil spirits or of strange
powers derived from intercourse with such spirits. This
belief in _maleficium_ was once universal; it was rooted
and grounded in the minds of the people before they became
Christians; it is still the creed of most savages and
of millions of so-called civilised men. Throughout the
history of witchcraft (in whatever sense we understand
that word), it remained the ineradicable thing,--the
solid foundation, unshakably established in popular
belief, for whatever superstructure might be reared by the
ingenuity of jurisconsults, philosophers, theologians, or
inquisitors. Without this popular belief in _maleficium_,
the initial suspicions and complaints which form the basis
and starting-point of all prosecutions would have been
impossible and inconceivable. _With_ this popular belief,
the rest was easy. The error into which Professor Burr
has fallen is due, no doubt, to his keeping his eye too
exclusively on the Continent, where the prosecutions were
most extensive, where, in truth, the fully developed system
was most prevalent, and where the inquisitorial methods
of procedure give to the witch-trials a peculiar air of
uniformity and theological schematism. Thus he has been
led, like many other historians, to over-emphasise the
learned or literary side of the question. For us, however,
as the descendants of Englishmen and as students of the
history of English colonies in America, it is necessary to
fix our attention primarily on the Mother Country. And, if
we do this, we cannot fail to perceive that the obstinate
belief of the common people in _maleficium_--a belief
which, it cannot be too often repeated, is not the work of
theologians but the universal and quasi-primitive creed
of the human race--is the root of the whole matter. (On
savage witchcraft see the anthropologists _passim_. Good
examples may be found in Karl von den Steinen, Unter den
Naturvölkern Brasiliens, 1894, pp. 339 ff.)
On _maleficium_ see especially Hansen, pp. 9 ff. Nothing
could be truer than his words:--“Wie viel auch immer im
Laufe der Zeit in den Begriff der Zauberei und Hexerei
hineingetragen worden ist, so ist doch sein Kern stets
das Maleficium geblieben. Aus dieser Vorstellung erwächst
die angstvolle Furcht der Menschen und das Verlangen nach
gesetzlichem Schutze und blutig strenger Strafe; von ihr
hat die strafrechtliche Behandlung dieses Wahns ihren
Ausgang genommen” (p. 9). “Das Maleficium, mit Ausnahme
des Wettermachens, ist ohne alle Unterbrechung von der
kirchlichen und bis in das 17. Jahrhundert auch von der
staatlichen Autorität als Realität angenommen, seine Kraft
ist nie ernstlich in Abrede gestellt worden; es bildet den
roten Faden auch durch die Geschichte der strafrechtlichen
Verfolgung” (p. 13). Everybody knows that the most
convincing evidence of witchcraft--short of confession
or of denunciation by a confederate--was held to be the
_damnum minatum_ and the _malum secutum_.
The difference between England and the Continent in the
development of the witchcraft idea and in the history
of prosecution is recognised by Hansen (p. 34, note 1).
President White, like Professor Burr, has his eye primarily
on the Continent (Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896,
I, 350 ff.). His treatment of demoniacal possession,
however, is much to our purpose (II, 97 ff., 135 ff.).
[3] King James’s connection with the history of
witchcraft almost deserves a monograph for it has never
been adequately discussed, and various misconceptions
on the subject are afloat. Thus Mr. H. M. Doughty, in
an interesting but one-sided essay on Witchcraft and
Christianity (Blackwood’s Magazine, March, 1898, CLXIII,
388), remarks that “the new King James had long lived in
abject fear of witches”--an assertion that he would find it
impossible to prove, even if it were true, as it seems not
to be.
[4] The act of 5 Eliz. c. 16 (after reciting that 33
Henr. VIII. c. 8 had been repealed by 1 Edw. VI. c. 12)
prescribes the penalty of death for witchcraft which
destroys life, imprisonment for that which causes bodily
injury (death for the second offence); in certain harmless
kinds of sorcery (such as accompanied the search for
treasure or stolen goods) the second offence is punished
by imprisonment for life. 1 Jac. I. c. 12 follows 5 Eliz.
c. 16 in the main. Its chief differences are,--greater
detail in defining witchcraft; the insertion of a passage
about digging up dead bodies for purposes of sorcery;
death for the first offence in cases of witchcraft which
causes bodily injury; death for the second offence
in treasure-seeking sorcery and the like. Before one
pronounces the new statute much severer than the old, it
would be well to examine the practical operation of the
two. In particular, one ought to determine how many witches
were executed under the law of James I. who would not
have been subject to the death penalty under the law of
Elizabeth. This is not the place for such an examination.
On treasure-seeking sorcery see the learned and
entertaining essay of Dr. Augustus Jessopp, Hill-Digging
and Magic (in his Random Roaming and Other Papers, 1893).
[5] See p. 64 below. Strictly speaking, the Commonwealth
did not begin until 1649, but this point need not be
pressed.
[6] See F. Legge, Witchcraft in Scotland (Scottish Review,
XVIII, 267); Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and
Witchcraft, Chap. xxv. Whitelocke, under date of Oct. 4,
1652, notes “Letters that sixty Persons Men and Women were
accused before the Commissioners for Administration of
Justice in _Scotland_ at the last Circuit for Witches; but
they found so much Malice and so little Proof against them
that none were condemned” (Memorials, 1732, p. 545). Cf.
also his very important entry on the same subject under
Oct. 29, 1652 (pp. 547-548).
[7] Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, Familiar Letters, edited by Joseph
Jacobs, 1890, book ii, letter 76, p. 506: “To my Honourable
Friend, Mr. E. P., at Paris” (cf. Jacobs’s notes pp.
783-784). The letter is dated “Fleet, 3 Feb. 1646.” This
is certainly Old Style. Howell is a queer dater, but a
reference in this letter to the departure of the Scottish
army (p. 505) proves that the letter was written after Dec.
21, 1646. There is a similar passage about witches in book
iii, letter 2, p. 515 (also to Porter), dated “Fleet, 20
Feb. 1646.”
[8] Letters, as above, book iii, no. 23, pp. 547 ff., dated
“Fleet, 20 Feb. 1647,” i. e. doubtless 1648.
[9] See Jacobs’s Introduction, pp. xlii-xliii. The question
whether Howell’s letters were actually sent to the persons
to whom they are addressed or whether they are to be
regarded merely as literary exercises composed during his
imprisonment (see Jacobs, pp. lxxi ff.) does not affect,
for our purposes, the value of the quotations here made,
since the letters to which we now refer actually purport to
have been written in the Fleet, and since they were first
published in the second edition (1650) in the additional
third volume and from the nature of things could not have
appeared in the first edition (1645). They must, at all
events, have been composed before 1650, and are doubtless
dated correctly enough.
[10] See p. 64, below.
[11] Sermon xvii (Whole Works, ed. Heber and Eden, 1861,
IV, 546).
[12] Whole Works, III, 57; cf. Sermon vii (Works, IV. 412).
[13] See p. 7, above, note 4.
[14] A Tryal of Witches, at the Assizes held at Bury St.
Edmonds ... 1664 (London, 1682), pp. 55-56. This report is
reprinted in Howell’s State Trials, VI, 647 ff., and (in
part) in H. L. Stephen’s State Trials Political and Social
(1899), I, 209 ff. See also Hutchinson, An Historical
Essay concerning Witchcraft, chap. viii. (1718, pp. 109
ff.; 2d ed., 1720, pp. 139 ff.); Thomas Wright, Narratives
of Sorcery and Witchcraft, II., 261 ff. Hale’s opinion
was regarded as settling the law beyond peradventure.
It is quoted, in A True and Impartial Relation of the
Informations against Three Witches ... Assizes holden
for the County of Devon at the Castle of Exon, Aug. 14,
1682 (London, 1682), Address to the Reader. For Roger
North’s comments on the Exeter case, see p. 192, below.
A Collection of Modern Relations of Matters of Fact,
concerning Witches & Witchcraft, Part I (London, 1693),
contains “A Discourse concerning the great Mercy of God, in
preserving us from the Power and Malice of _Evil Angels_.
_Written by Sir_ Matt. Hale _at Cambridge_ 26 Mar. 1661.
_Upon occasion of a Tryal of certain Witches before him
the Week before at St._ Edmund’s Bury.” The date is wrong
(1661 should be 1664), but the trial is identified with
that which we are considering by the anonymous compiler of
the Collection in the following words: “There is a Relation
of it in print, written by his Marshal, which I suppose
is very true, though to the best of my Memory, not so
compleat, as to some observable Circumstances, as what he
related to me at his return from that Circuit.” The date of
the trial is given as “the Tenth day of March, 1664” on the
title-page of the report (A Tryal of Witches) and on page
1 as “the Tenth day of March, in the Sixteenth Year of the
Reign of ... Charles II.” On page 57 the year is misprinted
“1662.” Howell’s State Trials, VI, 647, 687, makes it 1665,
but 16 Charles II. corresponds to Jan. 30, 1664--Jan. 29,
1665: hence 1664 is right. The (unfinished) Discourse just
mentioned must not be confused with Hale’s Motives to
Watchfulness, in reference to the Good and Evil Angels,
which may be found in his Contemplations Moral and Divine,
London, 1682 (licensed 1675-6), Part II, pp. 67 ff.
[15] Roger North, Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, ed.
1826, I, 121.
[16] Wonders of the Invisible World (London, 1693), p.
55. Mather also reproduces the substance of the report
above referred to (note 14) in the same work. Bragge,
too, reproduces it, in the main, in his tract, Witchcraft
Farther Display’d, 1712, in support of the accusation
against Jane Wenham.
[17] Lives of the Chief Justices, 1849, I, 561 ff., Chapter
xvii. See also the criticism of Hale in a letter of
George Onslow’s, 1770, 14th Report of the Historical MSS.
Commission, Appendix, Part IX, p. 480.
[18] Published in 1682.
[19] Edition of 1826, I, 117 ff.
[20] State Papers (Domestic), 1682, Aug. 19, bundle 427,
no. 67, as quoted by Pike. History of Crime in England, II,
238.
[21] A Tryal of Witches, as above, p. 41.
[22] That is, _hysteria_.
[23] A Tryal, as above, p. 42. Cf. the Supplementary
Memoir, in Simon Wilkin’s edition of Browne’s Works, 1852,
I, liv-lvi.
[24] Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, Part 1, section 2, member
1, subsection 3. I quote from the edition of 1624.
[25] The following short character of Glanvill, by Bishop
Kennet, may be quoted, not because it is just, but because
it might conceivably be brought forward by somebody in
rebuttal of this proposition:--“Mr. _Joseph Glanvill_ of
_Lincoln_ College, _Oxon_. Taking the Degree of M. A. in
the beginning of 1658, was about that Time made Chaplain to
old _Francis Rous_; one of _Oliver_’s Lords, and Provost
of _Eaton_ College.--He became a great Admirer of Mr.
_Richard Baxter_, and a zealous Person for a Commonwealth.
After his Majesty’s Restauration he turn’d about, became
a Latitudinarian,--Rector of _Bath_, Prebendary of
_Worcester_, and Chaplain to the King” (White Kennet, An
Historical Register, 1744, p. 931).
[26] See Dr. Ferris Greenslet’s Joseph Glanvill, A Study
in English Thought and Letters of the Seventeenth Century,
New York, 1900, especially Chap. vi. For a bibliography of
Glanvill, see Emanuel Green, Bibliotheca Somersetensis,
Taunton (Eng.), 1902, I, 206 ff.
[27] More’s theories on the subject of apparitions, demons,
and witches may also be read, at considerable length,
in his Antidote against Atheism, Book iii, Chaps. 2-13
(Philosophical Writings, 2d ed., 1662, pp. 89 ff.); cf. the
Appendix to the Antidote, Chaps. 12-13 (pp. 181 ff.) and
The Immortality of the Soul, Chap. 16 (pp. 129 ff.).
[28] A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft,
Boston, 1702.
[29] Dated 1697-8.
[30] P. 12.
[31] Meric Casaubon was born in 1599 and died in 1671. His
learned, lively, and vastly entertaining work, A Treatise
concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an Effect of Nature: but
is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or
Diabolicall Possession, appeared in 1655, and in a “Second
edition: revised, and enlarged” in 1656. It shows an open
mind and a temper rather skeptical than credulous. Passages
of interest in our present discussion may be found on
pp. 37-41, 44, 49, 94-95, 100, 118, 174 (Quakers), 286,
of the second edition. Of particular significance is the
Doctor’s account of his visit to a man who was thought to
be possessed but whom he believed to be suffering from some
bodily distemper (pp. 97 ff.). Casaubon’s treatise (in two
parts) Of Credulity and Incredulity, in Things Natural,
Civil, and Divine, came out in 1668, and was reissued, with
a new title-page (as above), in 1672. A third part, Of
Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual,
appeared in 1670. Webster’s assault upon Casaubon in his
Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft was made in apparent
ignorance of the fact that the venerable scholar had been
dead for some years (see p. 24, below).
[32] Compare Reginald Scot’s chapter “Of Theurgie, with a
Confutation thereof” (Discoverie of Witchcraft, book xv,
chap. 42, 1584, p. 466, ed. 1665, p. 280). See also Henry
Hallywell, 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,
1681, pp. 50-51.
[33] Cap. iv, §15, ed. Mosheim, 1773, I, 395-396.
[34] Sadducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1726, p. 336; see James
Crossley’s Introduction to Potts, Discovery of Witches in
the County of Lancaster, reprinted from the Edition of 1613
(Chetham Society, 1845), p. vi, note 2. This experiment
was twice tried as late as 1712, in the case of Jane
Wenham, by the Rev. Mr. Strutt, once in the presence of Sir
Henry Chauncy, and again in the presence of the Rev. Mr.
Gardiner. Its ill success is recorded by a third Anglican
clergyman,--Mr. Francis Bragge (A Full and Impartial
Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft,
Practis’d by Jane Wenham, London, 1712, pp. 11, 15).
[35] Letter to Glanvill, Sept. 18, 1677, Works, ed. Birch,
V, 244. Compare Dr. Samuel Collins’s letter to Boyle, Sept.
1, 1663 (Boyle’s Works, V, 633-634).
[36] In a letter to Glanvill (Works, V, 245).
[37] See Demonologie ou Traitte des Demons et Sorciers
... Par Fr. Perreaud. Ensemble l’Antidemon de Mascon, ou
Histoire Veritable de ce qu’un Demon a fait & dit, il y a
quelques années, en la maison dudit Sʳ. Perreaud à Mascon.
Geneva, 1653.
[38] Theological Works, ed. 1830, IV, 480-482.
[39] In his Ravillae Redivivus, reprinted in the Somers
Tracts, 2d ed., VIII, 510 ff. (see especially pp. 546 ff.).
Weir, who was unquestionably insane, was executed in 1670.
[40] Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, London,
1885, IV, 275. On elf-arrows cf. Pitcairn, Criminal Trials
in Scotland, I, ii, 192, 198; III, 607, 609, 615; W.
Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,
1879, pp. 185 ff.
[41] Evelyn may have derived his information from Sir
William Phips’s letter to the home government (Oct.
14, 1692), as Dr. G. H. Moore suggests (Final Notes on
Witchcraft in Massachusetts, N. Y., 1885, p. 66). For the
letter see Goodell, Essex Institute Collections, 2d Series,
I, ii, 86 ff. Phips’s second letter (Feb. 21, 1692-3, to
the Earl of Nottingham) is printed by Moore, pp. 90 ff.
[42] The remark, sometimes heard, that Calvinism was
especially responsible for witch trials is a loose
assertion which has to reckon with the fact that the last
burning for witchcraft at Geneva took place in 1652 (see
Paul Ladame, Procès criminel de la dernière Sorcière brulée
à Genève, Paris, 1888).
[43] Compare Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part I,
section 2, member 1, subsection 3:--“Many deny Witches at
all, or if there be any, they can doe no harme: of this
opinion is _Wierus, lib. 3. cap. 53, de præstig. dæm_.
Austin Lerchemer, a Dutch writer, _Biarmanus_, _Ewichius_,
_Euwaldus_, our countryman _Scot_ ... but on the contrary
are most Lawyers, Diuines, Physitians, Philosophers.”
[44] Wier’s great work, De Praestigiis Dæmonum, was
published in 1563, and was afterwards much enlarged. It
went through many editions.
[45] See the extraordinary list in William Drage,
Daimonomageia. A Small Treatise of Sicknesses and Diseases
from Witchcraft, and Supernatural Causes, 1665. Webster
considers this subject at length in Chap. xii of his
Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 1677, with a full
discussion of van Helmont’s views. Cf. Henry More, Antidote
against Atheism, Chaps. 4-5 (Philosophical Writings, 2d
ed., 1662, pp. 97 ff.).
[46] “Ea dæmonis subtilitate uelocitateque imperceptibili,
ori ingesta, nostris ad hæc oculis uel celeritate eius
uictis, uel fascino delusis, uel interiecto corpore aereo
aut aliter motis eo intus uel foris uel utrinque humoribus
aut spiritu caligantibus.” De Præstigiis Dæmonum (Basileæ,
1568), iv, 2, pp. 352-353.
[47] Even Bekker (see p. 35, below), who approaches the
subject from the philosophical direction, and whose logical
process is different from Wier’s, is greatly indebted to
him.
[48] Compare the fate of Bekker in 1692 (p. 39).
[49] A Treatise proving Spirits, Witches and Supernatural
Operations, 1672, p. 35.
[50] The same, p. 46.
[51] Dæmonologie, Workes, 1616, p. 92. On Wier in general,
see Carl Binz, Doctor Johann Weyer, ein rheinischer Arst,
der erste Bekämpfer des Hexenwahns, Berlin, 1896.
[52] He expressly asserts his belief in their existence (A
Discourse upon Divels and Spirits, chap. 32, p. 540; cf.
chap. 16, p. 514).
[53] Discoverie of Witchcraft, xiii, 22-34, ed. 1584, pp.
321 ff., ed. 1665, pp. 181-201 (with cuts). Most of the
tricks which Scot describes are identical with feats of
legerdemain that are the stock in trade of every modern
juggler:--“To throwe a peece of monie awaie, and to find
it againe where you list” (p. 326); “To make a groat or
a testor to sinke through a table, and to vanish out of
a handkercher very strangelie” (p. 327); “How to deliver
out foure aces, and to convert them into foure knaves”
(p. 333); “To tell one without confederacie what card he
thinketh” (p. 334); “To burne a thred, and to make it whole
againe with the ashes thereof” (p. 341); “To cut off ones
head, and to laie it in a platter, &c.: which the jugglers
call the decollation of John Baptist” (p. 349). The picture
of the apparatus required for the last-mentioned trick
is very curious indeed (p. 353). The references to Scot,
unless the contrary is stated, are to all the pages of
the first (1584) edition, as reprinted by Dr. Brinsley
Nicholson (London, 1886).
[54] King James remarks, in the Preface to his Dæmonologie,
that Scot “is not ashamed in publike Print to deny, that
there can be such a thing as Witch-craft: and so maintaines
the old errour of the Sadduces in denying of spirits”
(Workes, 1616, pp. 91-92).
[55] In what an orderly way one may proceed from an
admission of the doctrine of fallen angels to the final
results of the witch dogma may be seen, for instance, in
Henry Hallywell’s Melampronoea: or A Discourse of the
Polity and Kingdom of Darkness, 1681. Hallywell had been a
Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.
[56] See p. 9, above.
[57] P. 39. See Nicholson’s reprint of the 1584 edition, p.
xlii.
[58] Page 46.
[59] Introduction to the Chetham Society reprint of Potts’s
Discoverie of Witches, pp. xxxviii-xxxix.
[60] Pages 202-215.
[61] P. 228. Perhaps Webster is merely “putting a case”
here; but he certainly seems to be making an admission, at
least in theory.
[62] Page 230.
[63] Pages 294 ff.
[64] Page 294.
[65] Pages 297-298.
[66] Pages 302-310.
[67] P. 308. On the astral spirit, see also pp. 312 ff.
[68] Page 310.
[69] Pages 10-11.
[70] See also pp. 267 ff.
[71] Page 73.
[72] Page 231.
[73] Pages 242-243.
[74] Page 244.
[75] Pages 245-246.
[76] Page 247.
[77] Page 260.
[78] Page 267.
[79] Note, however, that the upholders of the current
beliefs on witchcraft are also many times emphatic enough
in similar cautionary remarks. A first-rate example is the
following characteristic passage from Dr. Casaubon, whom
Webster calls a “witchmonger”:--
“And indeed, that the denying of _Witches_, to them
that content themselves in the search of truth with a
superficial view, is a very plausible cause; it cannot be
denied. For if any thing in the world, (as we know all
things in the world are) be liable to fraud, and imposture,
and innocent mistake, through weakness and simplicity; this
subject of Witches and Spirits is.... How ordinary is it to
mistake natural melancholy (not to speak of other diseases)
for a Devil? And how much, too frequently, is both the
disease increased, or made incurable; and the mistake
confirmed, by many ignorant Ministers, who take every wild
motion, or phansie, for a suggestion of the Devil? Whereas,
in such a case, it should be the care of wise friends, to
apply themselves to the Physician of the body, and not to
entertain the other, (I speak it of _natural_ melancholy)
who probably may do more hurt, than good; but as the
learned Naturalist doth allow, and advise? Excellent is the
advice and counsel in this kind, of the Author of the book
_de morbo Sacro_ attributed to _Hippocrates_, which I could
wish all men were bound to read, before they take upon them
to visit sick folks, that are troubled with melancholy
diseases” (A Treatise proving Spirits, etc., 1672, pp.
29-30: cf. p. 14, note 31, above).
[80] Pages 219, 220, 224.
[81] Saducismus Triumphatus, Part II, ed. 1682, p. 4. (ed.
1726, pp. 225-226). Glanvill is here replying to Webster,
whose book, it will be remembered, appeared in 1677.
[82] Increase Mather’s copy is in the Harvard College
Library.
[83] Lowell, New England Two Centuries Ago, Writings,
Riverside edition, II, 73.
[84] Leviathan, i, 2 (English Works, ed. Molesworth, III,
9). Compare Hobbes’s Dialogue between a Philosopher and
a Student of the Common Law of England (English Works,
VI, 96):--“L. I know not. Besides these crimes, there is
conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery and enchantment; which are
capital by the statute I James, c. 12.--P. But I desire
not to discourse of that subject. For though without doubt
there is some great wickedness signified by those crimes;
yet I have ever found myself too dull to conceive the
nature of them, or how the devil hath power to do so many
things which witches have been accused of.” Wier is far
more humane, as well as more reasonable. If one holds, he
writes, that witches are to be severely punished for their
evil intent, let it be remembered that there is a great
difference between sane and insane will. “Quod si quis
contentiose uoluntatem seuerius puniendam defendat, is
primum distinguat inter uoluntatem hominis sani perfectam,
quae in actum uere dirigi coeperit: et inter uitiatae
mentis sensum, uel (si uoles) corruptam amentis uoluntatem:
cui suo opere, quasi alterius esset, colludit diabolus, nec
alius insulse uolentem subsequitur effectus.” De Præstigiis
Dæmonum, vi, 21, ed. 1568, pp. 641-642.
[85] Table-Talk, 1689, p. 59 (the first edition). Selden
died in 1654.
[86] Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. Heppe, II,
243.
[87] A Candle in the Dark: or, A Treatise concerning the
Nature of Witches & Witchcraft, 1656, p. 41.
[88] Sir Robert Filmer’s brief tract, An Advertisement to
the Jury-men of England, touching Witches, was occasioned,
according to the Preface, by “the late Execution of Witches
at the Summer Assizes in Kent.” It was first published in
1652, and may be found annexed to the Free-holders Grand
Inquest, 1679. The case which elicited Sir Robert’s little
book is reported in A Prodigious & Tragicall History of the
Arraignment, Tryall, Confession, and Condemnation of six
Witches at Maidstone, in Kent, at the Assizes there held
in July, Fryday 30, this present year, 1652 (London, 1652,
reprinted 1837).
[89] A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology, 1896, I, 362.
[90] Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, III, 1114.
[91] Dr. Hutchinson’s admirable work, An Historical Essay
concerning Witchcraft, which still remains one of the
most valuable treatises on this subject that we have, was
published in 1718. It appeared in a second edition in 1720,
in which year he was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor.
[92] I have used a copy of the French translation,--Le
Monde Enchanté, Amsterdam, 1694. This was made by Bekker’s
direction and revised by him. Each of the four volumes has
a separate dedication, and each dedication (in the Harvard
College copy) is authenticated by Bekker’s autograph
signature.
[93] This concludes Bekker’s First Book.
[94] What precedes is, in substance, Bekker’s Book II.
[95] This is the substance of Bekker’s Third Book.
[96] “De Christelijke Synodus ... heeft, ... met
eenparigheyd van stemmen, den selven Dr. Bekker verklaart
intolerabel als Leeraar in de Gereformeerde Kerke; en
vervolgens hem van sijn Predik-dienst geremoveert” (decree
in W. P. C. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker de Bestrijder van het
Bijgeloof, the Hague, 1906, p. 315).
[97] Knuttel, p. 319.
[98] Knuttel, p. 357. Strictly speaking, it was not for his
denial of modern witchcraft that Bekker was punished, for
it is in the last two books of his treatise that he deals
particularly with this subject, and these did not appear
until after he had been unfrocked. Still, his Second Book,
which got him into trouble, contains all the essentials.
It denies the power of the devil and wicked spirits to
afflict men, and holds that the demoniacs of the New
Testament were neither possessed nor obsessed, but merely
sufferers from disease. For a full analysis of Bekker’s
work and an account of the opposition which it roused,
see Knuttel, chap. v, pp. 188 ff.; for the ecclesiastical
proceedings against Bekker, see chap. vi, pp. 270 ff. The
various editions and translations of De Betoverde Weereld
are enumerated by van der Linde in his Balthasar Bekker,
Bibliographie (the Hague, 1869), where may also be found a
long list of the books and pamphlets which the work called
forth. There is a good account of Bekker’s argument in
Soldan’s Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, neu bearbeitet von
Dr. Heinrich Heppe (Stuttgart, 1880), II, 233 ff. See also
Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, II, 445 ff.
[99] Theologians took infinite pains to distinguish between
miracles (_miracula_), which could be wrought by divine
power only, and the kind of wonders (_mira_) which Satan
worked. See, for example, William Perkins, A Discourse of
the Damned Art of Witchcraft, 1608, pp. 12 ff., 18 ff.;
Del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicæ, lib. ii, quæstio 7, ed.
1616, pp. 103 ff. Sir Robert Filmer, in An Advertisement
to the Jurymen of England, Touching Witches (appended to
The Free-holders Grand Inquest, 1679; cf. p. 34, note 88,
above), makes merry with such fine-spun distinctions. “Both
[Perkins and Del Rio],” he says, “seem to agree in this,
that he had need be an admirable or profound Philosopher,
that can distinguish between a Wonder and a Miracle; it
would pose _Aristotle_ himself, to tell us every thing that
can be done by the power of Nature, and what things cannot;
for there be daily many things found out, and daily more
may be, which our Fore-fathers never knew to be possible
in Nature” (pp. 322-323). Cf. Calef, More Wonders of the
Invisible World, 1700, p. 35.
[100] Cf. Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed.
Heppe, II, 243:--“Zu derjenigen freieren Kritik der
biblischen Schriften selbst sich zu erheben, welche
das Vorhandensein gewisser, aus den Begriffen der Zeit
geschöpfter dämonologischen Vorstellungen in der Bibel
anerkennt, ohne daraus eine bindende Norm für den Glauben
herzuleiten,--diese war freilich erst einem späteren
Zeitalter vorbehalten. Bekker kannte, um seine sich ihm
aufdringende philosophische Ueberzeugung mit der Bibel
zu versöhnen, keinen andern Weg, als den der Üblichen
Exegese, und daher kommt es, dass diese nicht überall eine
ungezwungene ist.” It is instructive to note the pains
which Sir Walter Scott takes, in his Second Letter on
Demonology and Witchcraft, to harmonise the Bible with his
views on these subjects.
[101] To avoid all possibility of misapprehension I shall
venture to express my own feelings. The two men who appeal
to me most in the whole affair of witchcraft are Friedrich
Spee, the Jesuit, and Balthasar Bekker, the “intolerable”
pastor of Amsterdam. But what I _feel_, and what all of
us feel, is not to the purpose. There has been too much
feeling in modern discussions of witchcraft already.
[102] Sigmund Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in
Bayern, Stuttgart, 1896, p. 143.
[103] Ibid.
[104] Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, revised by
Heppe, II, 37; cf. G. L. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade,
1891 (reprinted from the Papers of the American Historical
Association, V).
[105] Jean d’Espaignet and Pierre de Lancre, the special
commissioners, are said to have condemned more than 600
in four months (Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 162; cf. Baissac,
Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie, 1890, p. 401). I have
no certain evidence of the accuracy of these figures,
for I have seen only one of de Lancre’s two books, and I
find in it no distinct statement of the number of witches
convicted. He makes various remarks, however, which seem
to show that 600 is no exaggeration. Thus he says that the
Parliament of Bordeaux, under whose authority he acted,
condemned “an infinity” of sorcerers to death in 1609
(Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons,
Paris, 1613, p. 100). “On fait estat qu’il y a trente mille
ames en ce pays de Labourt, contant ceux qui sont en voyage
sur mer, & que parmy tout ce peuple, il y a bien peu de
familles qui ne touchent au Sortilege par quelque bout” (p.
38). The commission lasted from July to November (pp. 66,
456, 470); besides those that the two commissioners tried
during this period, they left behind them so many witches
and wizards that the prisons of Bordeaux were crowded and
it became necessary to lodge the defendants in the ruined
château du Hâ (pp. 144, 560). Cf. pp. 35 ff., 64, 92, 114,
546. The panic fear that witchcraft excites is described
by de Lancre in a striking passage:--“Qu’il n’y ayt qu’vne
seule sorciere dans vn grand village, dans peu de temps
vous voyez tant d’enfans perdus, tant de femmes enceintes
perdãs leur fruit, tant de haut mal donné à des pauures
creatures, tant d’animaux perdus, tant de fruicts gastes,
que le foudre ni autre fleau du ciel ne sont rien en
comparaison” (pp. 543-544).
[106] An Account of what Happened in the Kingdom of Sweden,
in the Years 1669, 1670 and Upwards, translated from the
German by Anthony Horneck, and included in Glanvill’s
Saducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1682 (ed. 1726, pp. 474 ff.).
Horneck’s version is from a tract entitled, Translation ...
Der Königl. Herren Commissarien gehaltenes Protocol uber
die entdeckte Zauberey in dem Dorff Mohra und umbliegenden
Orten, the Hague, 1670. Cf. Thomas Wright, Narratives of
Sorcery and Magic, II, 244 ff.; Soldan, ed. Heppe, II,
175 ff.; Vilhelm Bang, Hexevæsen og Hexeforfølgelser især
i Danmark, Copenhagen, 1896, pp. 48 ff. This is what Mr.
Upham calls Cotton Mather’s “favorite Swedish case” (Salem
Witchcraft and Cotton Mather, Morrisania, 1869, p. 20). It
was, in a manner, “Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s
Hero” toward the end of the seventeenth century, since
it was one of the most recent instances of witchcraft on
a large scale. The good angel in white who is one of the
features of the Mohra case appears much earlier in England:
see Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, 1613, Chetham
Society reprint, sig. L (a reference which may serve as a
note to Mr. Upham’s essay, just cited, p. 34).
[107] Frans Volk, Hexen in der Landvogtei Ortenau und
Reichsstadt Offenburg, Lahr, 1882, pp. 24-25, 58 ff.
[108] Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 543; F.
Hutchinson, Historical Essay, 2d ed., p. 38; W. W., A True
and Just Recorde, of the Information [etc.] of all the
Witches, taken at S. Oses (London, 1582). For extracts from
W. W.’s book I am indebted to Mr. Wallace Notestein, of
Yale University.
[109] F. Legge, The Scottish Review, XVIII, 261 ff.
[110] Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in
the Countie of Lancaster (London, 1613), reprinted by the
Chetham Society, 1845; Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery
and Magic, Chap. xxiii.
[111] Whalley Lancashire, by Whitaker, pp. 213 ff.; Chetham
Society reprint of Potts, as above, pp. lix ff.; Wright,
as above. Chap. xxiii; Heywood and Brome’s play, The
Late Lancashire Witches, 1634; Calendar of State Papers,
Domestic Series, 1634-1635, pp. 77-79, 98, 129-130, 141,
152; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 10th Report,
Appendix, Part IV, p. 433; 12th Report, Appendix, Part II,
p. 53, cf. p. 77; Notes and Queries, 3d Series, V, 259, 385.
[112] Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of
Leicester, II, 471.
[113] See pp. 7 and 58.
[114] Whitelocke’s Memorials, Dec. 13, 1649, ed. 1732, p.
434; Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Hazlitt, III, 80;
Ralph Gardner, England’s Grievance Discovered, in Relation
to the Coal-Trade, 1655 (reprinted, North Shields, 1849,
Chap. 53, pp. 168 ff.).
[115] A Prodigious & Tragicall History of the Arraignment
[etc.] of Six Witches at Maidstone.... Digested by H. F.
Gent, 1652 (reprinted in an Account, etc., London, 1837).
[116] A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations
against Three Witches, 1682.
[117] Sir J. H. Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and
Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, II, 601
ff.
[118] A Full and True Relation of the Tryal (etc.) of Ann
Foster, London, 1674 (Northampton, reprinted by Taylor
& Son, 1878). Cf. W. Ruland, Steirische Hexenprozesse,
in Steinhausen’s Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, 2.
Ergänzungsheft, Weimar, 1898, pp. 46 ff.
[119] N. E. Hist. Gen. Register. XXIV, 382.
[120] Letter of Oct. 8, 1692, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections,
V, 65. Compare, on the whole question, the remarks of
Professor Wendell in his interesting paper, Were the Salem
Witches Guiltless? (Historical Collections of the Essex
Institute, XXIX, republished in his Stelligeri and Other
Essays concerning America, New York, 1893) and in his
Cotton Mather, pp. 93 ff.
[121] A long and curious list of cases of defamation may be
seen in a volume of Depositions and other Ecclesiastical
Proceedings from the County of Durham, extending from
1311 to the Reign of Elisabeth, edited by James Raine for
the Surtees Society in 1845 (Publications, XXI). Thus, in
1566-67, Margaret Lambert accuses John Lawson of saying
“that she was a chermer” (p. 84); about 1569 Margaret
Reed is charged with calling Margaret Howhett “a horse
goodmother water wych” (p. 91); in 1572, Thomas Fewler
deposed that he “hard Elisabeth Anderson caull ... Anne
Burden ‘crowket handyd wytch.’ He saith the words was
spoken audiently there; ther might many have herd them,
beinge spoken so neigh the cross and in the towne gait as
they were” (p. 247). So in 1691 Alice Bovill complained of
a man who had said to her, “Thou bewitched my stot” (North
Riding Record Society, Publications, IX, 6). See also
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts
in Various Collections, I, 283; Lefroy, Bermudas or Somers
Islands, II, 629 (no. 15).
[122] See, for example, Mr. Noble’s edition of the Records
of the Court of Assistants, II, 43, 72, 85, 94, 95, 104,
131, 136,--all between 1633 and 1644.
[123] See Drake’s Annals of Witchcraft in New England;
Noble’s Records, as above, 1, 11, 31, 33, 159, 188, 228,
229, 233.
[124] “Quia vulgo creditum, multorum annorum continuatam
sterilitatem à strigibus et maleficis diabolicâ invidiâ
causari; tota patria in extictionem maleficarum
insurrexit” (as quoted from the autograph MS. in the Trier
Stadt-Bibliothek by G. L. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade,
p. 51, Papers of the American Historical Association, V).
[125] “Incredibile vulgi apud Germanos, & maxime (quod
pudet dicere) Catholicos superstitio, invidia, calumniæ,
detractationes, susurrationes & similia, quæ nec
Magistratus punit, nee concionatores arguunt, suspicionem
magiæ primum excitant. Omnes divinaæ punitiones, quas
in sacris literis Deus minatus est, à Sagis sunt. Nihil
jam amplius Deus facit aut natura, sed Sagæ omnia. 2.
Unde impetu omnes clamant ut igitur inquirat Magistratus
in Sagas, quas non nisi ipsi suis linguis tot fecerunt”
(Cautio Criminalis, seu de Processibus contra Sagas Liber,
2d ed., 1695, pp. 387-388; cf. Dubium xv, pp. 67-68, Dubium
xxxiv, pp. 231-232). Spee’s book came out anonymously in
1631, and, unlike most works on this side of the question,
had immediate results. Spee had no doubt of the existence
of witchcraft (Dubium i, pp. 1 ff., Dubium iii, pp. 7-8);
his experience, however, had taught him that most of those
condemned were innocent.
[126] The case is reported in A True and Impartial Relation
of the Informations against Three Witches [etc.], 1682,
which is reprinted in Howell’s State Trials, VIII, 1017 ff.
[127] Autobiography, chap. x, ed. Jessopp, 1887, pp.
131-132. North gives a similar account of the same trial,
with some general observations of great interest, in his
Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, I, 267-269 (ed. 1826). It
is not clear whether North was present at the trial or not.
It is important to notice that North wrote his biographies
late in life and that his death did not take place until
1736, the year in which the statute against witchcraft was
repealed.
[128] North remarks that Guilford (then Francis North,
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) “had really a concern
upon him at what happened; which was, that his brother
Raymond’s passive behavior should let those poor women die”
(Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, I, 267). Raymond was, to
be sure, the judge who presided at the trial, but Francis
North cannot be allowed to have all the credit which his
brother Roger would give him, for he refused to reprieve
the convicted witches (see his letter, quoted at p. 34,
above).
[129] The following pamphlets (all in the Harvard
College Library) appeared in London in 1712: (1) A Full
and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and
Witchcraft, practis’d by Jane Wenham of Walkerne in
Hertfordshire; (2) The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft
consider’d. Being an Examination of a Book, entitl’d, A
Full and Impartial Account [etc.]; (3) The Impossibility
of Witchcraft ... In which the Depositions against Jane
Wenham ... are Confuted and Expos’d; (4) The Belief of
Witchcraft Vindicated ... in Answer to a late Pamphlet,
Intituled, The Impossibility of Witchcraft. By G. R. A.
M.; (5) A Defense of the Proceedings against Jane Wenham.
By Francis Bragge; (6) Witchcraft Farther Display’d; (7)
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.
The first and fifth of these pamphlets are by Bragge, a
Cambridge graduate who gave evidence for the prosecution.
See also Memoirs of Literature, London, 1722, IV, 357;
Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Witchcraft, II, 319 ff.
Jane Wenham lived nearly twenty years after her trial; she
died in 1730 (Clutterbuck, History and Antiquities of the
County of Hertford, II, 461; W. B. Gerish, A Hertfordshire
Witch, p. 10).
[130] I refer to such remarks as the following:--“As
the devil lost his empire among us in the last age, he
exercised it with greater violence among the Indian
Pawwaws, and our New England colonists” (Richard Gough,
British Topography, 1780, II, 254, note ᵖ); “The colonists
of [Massachusetts] appear to have carried with them, in an
exaggerated form, the superstitious feelings with regard
to witchcraft which then [at the time of the settlement]
prevailed in the mother country” (Introduction to the
reprint of Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World,
in the Library of Old Authors, 1862); “In the dark and
dangerous forests of America the animistic instinct, the
original source of the superstition, operated so powerfully
in Puritan minds that Cotton Mather’s _Wonders of the
Invisible World_ and the Salem persecution surpassed
in credulity and malignity anything the mother country
could show” (Ferris Greenslet, Joseph Glanvill, New York,
1900, pp. 150-151); “The new world, from the time of its
settlement, has been a kind of health resort for the
worn-out delusions of the old.... For years prior to the
Salem excitement, European witchcraft had been prostrate on
its dying bed, under the watchful and apprehensive eyes of
religion and of law; carried over the ocean it arose to its
feet, and threatened to depopulate New England” (George M.
Beard, The Psychology of the Salem Witchcraft Excitement,
New York, 1882, p. 1).
[131] Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 284.
[132] Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, New Series,
V, 267.
[133] F. Legge, Witchcraft in Scotland, in The Scottish
Review, October, 1891, XVIII, 263.
[134] On modern savages as devil worshippers, see, for
example, Henry More, Divine Dialogues, 1668, I, 404 ff.
(Dialogue iii, sections 15-16).
[135] Magnalia, book i, chap. i, §2, ed. 1853, I. 42; book
vi, chap. vi, §3, III, 436; Jesuit Relations, ed. Thwaites,
I, 286; II, 76; VIII, 124, 126. See also Thomas Morton,
New English Canaan, 1637, chap. ix, ed. Adams, (Prince
Society), p. 150, with the references in Mr. Adams’s note.
Cf. Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, chap. vi, ed.
1795, I, 419 ff.; Diary of Ezra Stiles, June 13, 1773, ed.
Dexter, I, 385-386.
[136] Mayhew’s letter of Oct. 22, 1652, in Eliot and
Mayhew’s Tears of Repentance, 1653 (Mass. Hist. Soc.
Collections, 3d Series, IV, 203-206); Gookin, Historical
Collections of the Indians in New England (Mass. Hist.
Soc. Collections, I, 154). See the references in Mr.
Adams’s note to Morton’s New English Canaan, Prince
Society edition, p. 152, and compare the following places
in the Eliot Tracts (as reprinted in the Mass. Hist. Soc.
Collections, 3d Series, IV),--pp. 17, 19-20, 39, 50-51,
55-57, 77, 82, 113-116, 133-134, 156, 186-187. See, for
the impression that Indian ceremonies made on a devout man
in 1745, David Brainerd’s Journal, Mirabilia Dei inter
Indicos, Philadelphia, [1746,] pp. 49-57:--“I sat,” writes
Brainerd, “at a small Distance, not more than Thirty Feet
from them, (tho’ undiscover’d) with my Bible in my Hand,
resolving if possible to spoil their Sport, and prevent
their receiving any Answers from the _infernal_ world” (p.
50).
[137] Gookin, Historical Collections (Mass. Hist. Soc.
Collections, I, 154); Mass. Records, ed. Shurtleff, II,
177; III, 98.
[138] The Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the
Three Witches of Warboys, 1593, sig. B2 rᵒ. P vᵒ.
[139] Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches,
1613 (Chetham Society reprint, sig. S); The Arraignment and
Triall of Iennet Preston, of Gisborne in Craven, in the
Countie of York, London, 1612 (in same reprint, sig. Y 2).
[140] Mary Smith’s case, Alexander Roberts, A Treatise of
Witchcraft, 1616, pp. 52, 56, 57; the Husband’s Bosworth
case, Letter of Alderman Robert Heyrick, of Leicester, July
18, 1616, printed in Nichols, History and Antiquities of
the County of Leicester, II, 471*.
[141] Edward Fairfax, Dæmonologia, 1621 (first edited by W.
Grainge, Harrogate, 1882).
[142] Chetham Society Publications, V, lxiv.
[143] A True and Exact Relation of the Severall
Informations, [etc.] of the late Witches, London, 1645, p.
20; T. B. Howell. State Trials, IV. 846.
[144] Depositions from the Castle of York, [edited by James
Raine,] Surtees Society, 1861 (Publications, XL), pp. 28-30.
[145] The same, p. 58.
[146] The same, pp. 64-65, 67.
[147] Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1682,
Relations, pp. 96, 98, 100 (ed. 1726, pp. 286, 288, 289).
[148] York Depositions, p. 82.
[149] The same, pp. 88-89. 92.
[150] The same, pp. 112-114; Glanvill, ed. 1682, pp.
160-161 (ed. 1726, pp. 328-329).
[151] A Tryal of Witches ... at Bury St. Edmonds ... 1664,
London, 1682, pp. 18, 20, 23, 26, 29, 34, 38 (Sir Matthew
Hale’s case); York Depositions, pp. 124-125.
[152] Glanvill, ed. 1682, pp. 103-104, 109 (ed. 1726, p.
291).
[153] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1667-1668,
p. 4; York Depositions, p. 154.
[154] York Depositions, p. 176.
[155] Ann Tilling’s case, Gentleman’s Magazine for 1832,
Part I, CII, 489 ff.; Inderwick, Side-Lights on the
Stuarts, 2d ed., 1891, pp. 171-172, 191.
[156] York Depositions, pp. 192, 202-203.
[157] The same, p. 247.
[158] Margaret Stothard’s case, The Monthly Chronicle of
North-Country Lore and Legend, [II] 1888, p. 395.
[159] See page 54.
[160] F. Hutchinson, Historical Essay, 1718, pp. 44-45 (ed.
1720, pp. 61-62). There is a very interesting account of
the second of these trials (that of Elizabeth Horner or
Turner) in a letter to the Bishop of Exeter from Archdeacon
(?) Blackburne, who attended at the bishop’s request.
This letter, dated Sept. 14, 1696, has been printed by
Mr. T. Quiller-Couch in Notes and Queries, 1st Series,
XI, 498-499, and again in Brand’s Popular Antiquities,
ed. Hazlitt, III, 103-104. The spectral evidence comes
out clearly. Of Holt, Blackburne remarks: “My Lord Chief
Justice by his questions and manner of summing up the
Evidence seem’d to me to believe nothing of witchery at
all.”
[161] Chap. 160, sec. 5, p. 384. “The court justified
themselves from books of law, and the authorities of Keble,
Dalton and other lawyers, then of the first character,
who lay down rules of conviction as absurd and dangerous,
as any which were practiced in New England.” Hutchinson,
History of Massachusetts, ed. 1795, II, 27.
[162] James Burvile testified “That hearing the Scratchings
and Noises of Cats, he went out, and saw several of them;
that one of them had a Face like _Jane Wenham_; that he
was present several Times when _Anne Thorn_ said she saw
Cats about her Bed; and more he would have attested, but
this was thought sufficient by the Court” ([F. Bragge,]
A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery
and Witchcraft, practis’d by Jane Wenham, London, 1712,
p. 29). After the conviction of the witch, Ann was still
afflicted: “_Ann Thorn_ continues to be frequently troubl’d
with the Apparition either of _Jane Wenham_ in her own
Shape, or that of a Cat, which speaks to her, and tempts
her to destroy her self with a Knife that it brings along
with it” ([Bragge,] Witchcraft Farther Display’d, 1712,
Introduction). In 1711 spectral evidence was admitted at
the trial of eight witches at Carrickfergus, in Ireland (A
Narrative of some Strange Events that took place in Island
Magee, and Neighbourhood, in 1711, by an Eye Witness,
Belfast, 1822, Appendix, pp. 49-50).
[163] A Tryal of Witches, as above, p. 40.
[164] “The Judge and all the Court were fully satisfied
with the Verdict” (A Tryal, etc., p. 58).
[165] For a learned discussion of spectral evidence see J.
B. Thayer, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1890, LXV, 471 ff.
[166] Dr. Hutchinson, who acknowledges his indebtedness to
Holt, mentions six witches as tried by the Chief Justice
from 1691 to 1696, and adds, “Several others in other
Places, about Eleven in all, have been tried for Witches
before my Lord Chief Justice _Holt_, and have all been
acquitted. The last of them was _Sarah Morduck_, accused
by _Richard Hathaway_, and tried at _Guilford_ Assize,
_Anno_ 1701” (Historical Essay, 2d ed., pp. 58-63). It is
not clear whether the “eleven in all” includes the seven
previously mentioned. On the Morduck-Hathaway case, cf.
Howell, State Trials, XIV, 639 ff.
[167] Drake, Annals of Witchcraft in New England, pp. 136,
138.
[168] Compare Mr. Goodell’s remarks on the reversal of
attainder, in his Reasons for Concluding that the Act of
1711 became a Law, 1884. I have not considered here the
bearing of this reversal, or of the attempt to pay damages
to the survivors or their heirs, because these things
came somewhat later. It must be noted, however, that all
such measures of reparation, whatever may be thought of
their sufficiency, were unexampled in the history of witch
trials the world over, and that they came before the last
condemnation for witchcraft in England (1712). See the
references appended by Mr. Goodell to the Act of 1703 in
The Acts and Resolves of the Province of the Massachusetts
Bay, VI, 49-50.
[169] See p. 17, above.
[170] Legge, as above, p. 264.
[171] 2d ed., 1720.
[172] P. 83; 2d ed., p. 108.
[173] See W. F. Poole, in Winsor’s Memorial History of
Boston, II, 133. Dr. Poole finds twelve executions in New
England before 1692. This makes the total for all New
England, from 1620 to the present day, 34 (including two
who died in jail). Cf. C. W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft,
Boston, 1867, II, 351; S. G. Drake, Annals of Witchcraft,
pp. 191 ff. In this part of my paper I have made a few
quotations from a book of my own, The Old Farmer and his
Almanack (Boston, 1904).
[174] “They were the first of all people,” writes Mr.
Goodell, “to escape the thraldom” (Reasons for Concluding
that the Act of 1711 became a Law, 1884, p. 21).
[175] See Francis Hutchinson, Historical Essay, 2d edition,
1720, pp. 45 ff.
[176] John Stearne, Hopkins’s associate, speaks of what
he has himself “learned and observed since the 25. of
March 1645 as being in part an agent in finding out or
discovering some of those since that time, being about two
hundred in number, in Essex, Suffolke, Northamptonshire,
Huntingtonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolke, Cambridgeshire,
and the Isle of Ely in the County of Cambridge, besides
other places, justly and deservedly executed upon
their legall tryalls” (A Confirmation and Discovery of
Witch-craft, London, 1648, To the Reader). Stearne wrote
his book after the death of Hopkins, which took place
in 1647. In the life of Hopkins in the Dictionary of
National Biography, the Witch-Finder is said to have
begun operations in 1644. This is a manifest error.
Hopkins himself (Discovery of Witches, 1647, p. 2, see
below) says that his experiences began at Manningtree “in
_March_ 1644,” but Stearne’s statement makes it clear
that this is Old Style, for Stearne was also concerned
in the Manningtree business, and the year is completely
established by the report of the proceedings,--A True
and Exact Relation of the several Informations [etc.] of
the late Witches, London, 1645 (cf. T. B. Howell’s State
Trials, IV, 817 ff.). The traditional statement that
Hopkins was hanged as a wizard (cf. Hudibras, Part ii,
canto 3, 11. 139 ff.) is disproved by the following passage
in Stearne: “I am certain (not-withstanding whatsoever hath
been said of him) he died peaceably at Manningtree, after a
long sicknesse of a Consumption, as many of his generation
had done before him, without any trouble of conscience for
what he had done, as was falsly reported of him” (p. 61).
For the record of his burial, Aug. 12, 1647, see Notes and
Queries, 1st Series, X, 285. The notion that Hopkins was
“swum” and, since he floated, was subsequently hanged,
most likely originated in a document criticising his
performances which was brought before the Norfolk judges in
1646 or (more probably) in 1647. Hopkins printed a reply to
this document shortly before his death,--The Discovery of
Witches: in Answer to severall Queries, lately delivered
to the Judges of Assize for the County of Norfolk. And now
published by Matthew Hopkins, Witch-finder (London, 1647).
The first “query,” as printed by Hopkins, was this:--“That
he must needs be the greatest Witch, Sorcerer, and
Wizzard himselfe, else hee could not doe it.” Cf. Wright,
Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 145 ff.; Lives of
Twelve Bad Men, edited by Thomas Seccombe, London, 1894,
p. 64; Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 1656, pp. 101-102; James
Howell, as above (p. 8, note 7); Gough, British Topography,
1780, II, 254.
[177] Legge, Scottish Review, XVIII, 273-274. Ady (A
Candle in the Dark, 1656, p. 105) says: “A little before
the Conquest of _Scotland_ (as is reported upon good
intelligence) the Presbytery of _Scotland_ did, by their
own pretended authority, take upon them to Summon, Convent,
Censure, and Condemn people to cruel death for Witches and
(as is credibly reported) they caused four thousand to be
executed by Fire and Halter, and had as many in prison
to be tried by them, when God sent his conquering Sword
to suppress them.” The “conquest” to which Ady refers
is Cromwell’s in 1650. It is well known that from 1640
to Cromwell’s invasion, witch prosecution ran riot in
Scotland, but that during his supremacy there were very few
executions in that country (see Legge, pp. 266-267). Cf. p.
8, note 6, above.
[178] Die praktischen Folgen des Aberglaubens, p. 34.
[179] Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. Heppe, I,
492.
[180] Dæmonolatreia, Lugduni, 1595.
[181] See p. 42, above.
[182] Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. Heppe, II,
38 ff.
[183] See the extraordinary enumeration in Roskoff,
Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, II, 293 ff.; cf. S.
Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, pp. 141
ff., 283 ff.
[184] Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, 1613
(Chetham Society reprint).
[185] Matthew Hopkins, Discovery of Witches, 1647, p. 3.
[186] John Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of
Witchcraft, 1648, p. 14.
[187] Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, Chap. xxv.
[188] Memorials, 1732, p. 163.
[189] Page 450.
[190] A Relation of the Diabolical Practices of above
Twenty Wizards and Witches, 1697; Sadducismus Debellatus,
1698; A History of the Witches of Renfrewshire, 1877. A
seventh committed suicide in prison.
[191] An Account of the Tryals, Examination and
Condemnation, of Elinor Shaw, and Mary Phillips [etc.],
London [1705]; The Northamptonshire Witches. Being a true
and faithful Account of the Births [etc.] of Elinor Shaw,
and Mary Phillips, (The two notorious Witches) That were
executed at Northampton on Saturday, March the 17th,
1705.... Communicated in a Letter last Post, from Mr. Ralph
Davis, of Northampton ... London, 1705. The first tract is
dated March 8, 1705; the second, March 18th, 1705. Both are
signed “Ralph Davis.” I have used the reprints by Taylor &
Son, Northampton, 1866. On this case, see [F. Marshall,]
A Brief History of Witchcraft, with Especial Reference
to Northamptonshire, Northampton, 1866, pp. 13-15, 16;
Notes and Queries, 7th Series, IX, 117; Northamptonshire
Notes and Queries II, 19; Eugene Teesdale, in Bygone
Northamptonshire, edited by William Andrews, 1891, pp.
114-115; Gough, British Topography, 1780, II, 46.
[192] See p. 48, above. This was the last conviction for
witchcraft, and probably the last trial, in England. Mrs.
Mary Hickes and her daughter are said by Gough (British
Topography, 1780, I, 439, II, 254, note) to have been
executed for witchcraft on July 28, 1716, at Huntingdon.
Gough cites a contemporary pamphlet as authority. The
genuineness of this case is doubted (see Notes and Queries,
1st Series, V, 514; 2d Series, V, 503-504), but Mr. F. A.
Inderwick argues for its acceptance (Side-Lights on the
Stuarts, 2d ed., 1891, pp. 177-180), and it has certainly
never been disproved. The alleged executions at Northampton
in 1712 are certainly based on a slip of the pen in Gough,
British Topography, 1780, II, 52; the cases actually
occurred in 1612, and an account of them may be found in a
tract (The Witches of Northamptonshire) published in that
year, and reprinted by Taylor & Son, Northampton, 1867.
See also Thomas Sternberg, The Dialect and Folk-Lore of
Northamptonshire, London, 1851, p. 152; F. Marshall, A
Brief History of Witchcraft, Northampton, 1866, p. 16.
[193] That is, Francis Bragge, who was also a clergyman,
being Curate of Biggleswade according to Mr. W. B. Gerish
(A Hertfordshire Witch, p. 8).
[194] Commentaries, book iv, chap. 4, sec. 6 (4th ed.,
1770, IV, 60-61); cf. Dr. Samuel A. Green, Groton in the
Witchcraft Times, 1883, p. 29. In 1715 and 1716 there
appeared, in London, A Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery,
and Witchcraft, in two volumes, which asserted the truth,
and gave the particulars, of a long line of such phenomena,
from the case of the Witches of Warboys (in 1592) to the
Salem Witchcraft itself. The book was the occasion of Dr.
Francis Hutchinson’s Historical Essay, published in 1718,
and in a second edition in 1720. Richard Boulton, the
author of the Compleat History, returned to the charge in
1722, in The Possibility and Reality of Magick, Sorcery,
and Witchcraft, Demonstrated. Or, a Vindication of a
Compleat History of Magick, etc. The Compleat History came
out anonymously, but Boulton, who describes himself as
“sometime of Brazen-Nose College in Oxford,” acknowledges
the authorship in his reply to Hutchinson.
[195] The Case of Witchcraft at Coggeshall, Essex, in
the year, 1699, being the Narrative of the Rev. J. Boys,
Minister of that Parish. Printed from his Manuscript in the
possession of the Publisher. London, A. Russell Smith, 1901
(50 copies only).
[196] In Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700,
pp. 3 ff.
[197] An Answer of a Letter from a Gentleman in Fife,
1705; cf. also A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts on
Witchcraft and the Second Sight, Edinburgh, 1820, pp. 79 ff.
[198] Daily Journal, Jan. 15, 1731, as quoted in the
Gentleman’s Magazine for 1731, I, 29.
[199] Daines Barrington points with pride to this early
abolition of penalties:--“It is greatly to the honour of
this country, to have repealed all the statutes against
this supposed crime so long ago as the year 1736, when
laws of the same sort continue in full force against these
miserable and aged objects of compassion, in every other
part of Europe” (Observations on the More Ancient Statutes,
3d ed., 1769, p. 367. on 20 Henr. VI.).
[200] Gough, British Topography, 1780, I, 517.
[201] Gentleman’s Magazine for 1751, XXI, 186, 198; Wright,
Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 326 ff.; Gough, as
above, I, 431.
[202] Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 314, 322, 327.
[203] See, for example, A. Löwenstimm, Aberglaube und
Strafrecht, Berlin. 1897; W. Mannhardt, Die praktischen
Folgen des Aberglaubens, 1878 (Deutsche Zeit- und
Streit-Fragen, ed. by F. von Holstendorff, VII, nos. 97,
98); Wuttke, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart,
2d ed., 1869; the chapter on Hexerei und Hexenverfolgung
im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, in Soldan, Geschichte der
Hexenprozesse, ed. by Heppe, II, 330 ff; cf. The Monthly
Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, [II,] 1888, p.
394; North Riding Record Society, Publications, IV, 20,
note; History of Witchcraft, sketched from the Popular
Tales of the Peasantry of Nithsdale and Galloway (R. H.
Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 1810, pp.
272 ff.); H. M. Doughty, Blackwood’s Magazine, March,
1898, CLXIII, 394-395; Brand’s Popular Antiquities, ed.
Hazlitt, III, 71, 95, 96,100 ff.; The Antiquary, XLI, 363;
W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine, 1883; Miss Burne, Shropshire
Folk-Lore, Chap. xiii; W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore
of the Northern Counties, 1879, Chap. vi; J. G. Campbell,
Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands
of Scotland, 1902; Notes and Queries, 1st Series, VII,
613, XI, 497-498; 3rd Series, II, 325; 4th Series, III,
238, VII, 53, VIII, 44; 5th Series, V, 126, 223, IX, 433,
X, 205, XI, 66; 6th Series, I, 19, II, 145, IV, 510; 7th
Series, IX, 425, XI, 43; 8th Series, IV, 186, 192, V,
226, VI, 6, VII, 246; 9th Series, II, 466, XII, 187; the
journal, Folk-Lore, _passim_.
[204] Cf. Allen Putnam, Witchcraft of New England explained
by Modern Spiritualism, Boston, 1880.
[205] “And by the way, to touch but a word or two of
this matter, for that the horrible vsing of your poore
subiects inforceth thereunto: It may please your Grace to
vnderstand, that this kind of people, I meane witches, and
sorcerers, within these few last yeeres, are maruellously
increased within this your Graces realme. These eies haue
seene most euident and manifest marks of their wickednesse.
Your Graces subiects pine away euen vnto death, their
collour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is
benummed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore, your poore
subiects most humble petition vnto your Highnesse is, that
the lawes touching such malefactours, may be put in due
execution. For the shole of them is great, their doings
horrible, their malice intollerable, the examples most
miserable. And I pray God, they neuer practise further,
then vpon the subiect. But this only by the way, these
be the scholers of Beelzebub the chiefe captaine of the
Diuels” (Certaine Sermons, 1611, p. 204, in Workes of
Jewell; cf. Parker Society edition, Part II, p. 1028). I
cannot date this sermon. 1572, the year to which it is
assigned by Dr. Nicholson (in his edition of Reginald
Soot’s Discoverie, p. xxxii), is certainly wrong, for Jewel
died in 1571. Strype associates it rather vaguely with
the passage of the Witchcraft Act of 1563 (Annals of the
Reformation, I, 8; cf. I, 295).
[206] Legge, The Scottish Review, XVIII, 262. See also
Newes from Scotland declaring the Damnable Life of Dr.
Fian, 1591 (Roxburghe Club reprint).
[207] Mather Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th
Series, VIII, 366-368. This was the same Joshua Moodey, it
will be remembered, who afterwards assisted Philip English
and his family to escape from jail in Boston, and thus
saved them from being executed as guilty of witchcraft
(Sibley, Harvard Graduates, I, 376-377.)
Transcriber’s Note
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation
in the text. These have been left unchanged. Dialect, obsolete and
alternative spellings were left unchanged. Words and phrases in italics
are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Unprinted punctuation and final stops missing at the end of
abbreviations and sentences were added. Footnotes were moved to the end
of the book.
Spelling correction: “maner” changed to “manner” ... to detract in any
manner ...
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT ***
