Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham
superstitious regrets too for the old establishment which, by a fortunate caprice, he abandoned and afterwards plundered, may have urged the tyrant, who persecuted the Catholics for questioning his supremacy, to burn the enemies of transubstantiation. Shortly before this enactment, eight persons had been hanged at Tyburn, not so much for sorcery as for a disagreeable prophecy. Elizabeth Barton, the principal, had been instigated to pronounce as revelation, that if the king went on in the divorce and married another wife, he should not be king a month longer, and in the estimation of Almighty God not one hour longer, but should die a villain's death. The Maid of Kent, with her accomplices—Richard Martin, parson of the parish of Aldington; Dr. Bocking, canon of Christ Church, Canterbury; Deering; Henry Gold, a parson in London; Hugh Rich, a friar, and others—was brought before the Star Chamber, and adjudged to stand in St. Paul's during sermon-time; the majority being afterwards executed. In Cranmer's 'Articles of Visitation,' 1549, an injunction is addressed to his clergy, that 'you shall inquire whether you know of any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments, witchcrafts, soothsaying, or any like craft, invented by the devil.'
During the brief reigns of Edward VI. and Mary I. in England, no conspicuous trials occur. As for the latter monarch, the queen and her bishops were too absorbed in the pressing business of burning for the real offence of heresy to be much concerned in discovering the concomitant crimes of devil-worship.97 An impartial judgment may decide that superstition, whether engaged in vindicating the dogmas of Catholicism or those of witchcraft, is alike contemptible and pernicious.
In the year of Elizabeth's accession, 1558, Strype ('Annals of the Reformation,' i. 8, and ii. 545) tells that Bishop Jewell, preaching before the queen, animadverted upon the dangerous and direful results of witchcraft. 'It may please your Grace,' proclaims publicly the courtly Anglican prelate, 'to understand that witches and sorcerers, within these last few years, are marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even to the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject.' For himself, the bishop declares, 'these eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness.' The annalist adds that this, no doubt, was the occasion of bringing in a bill the next Parliament, for making enchantments and witchcraft felony; and, under year 1578, we are informed that, whether it were the effect of magic, or proceeded from some natural cause, the queen was in some part of this year under excessive anguish by pains of her teeth, insomuch that she took no rest for divers nights, and endured very great torment night and day. The statute of 1562 includes 'fond and fantastic prophecies' (a very common sort of political offences in that age) in the category of forbidden arts. With unaccustomed lenity it punished a first conviction with the pillory only.
Witch-persecutions (which needed not any legal enactment) sprung up in different parts of the country; but they were not carried out with either the frequency or the ferocity of the next age, or as in Scotland, under the superintendence of James VI. A number of pamphlets unnecessarily enforced the obligatory duty of unwearied zeal in the work of discovery and extermination.98 Among the executions under Elizabeth's Government are specially noticed that of a woman hanged at Barking in 1575; of four at Abingdon; three at Chelmsford; two at Cambridge, 1579; of a number condemned at St. Osythes; of several in Derbyshire and Staffordshire. One of the best known is the case at Warboys, in Huntingdonshire, 1593.
The author of the 'Discoverie' relates a fact that came under his personal observation: it is a fair example of the trivial origin and of the facility of this sort of charges. 'At the assizes holden at Rochester, anno 1581, one Margaret Simons, wife of John Simons, of Brenchly in Kent, was arraigned for witchcraft, at the instigation and complaint of divers fond and malicious persons, and especially by the means of one John Farral, vicar of that parish, with whom I talked about the matter, and found him both fondly assotted in the cause and enviously bent towards her: and, which is worse, as unable to make a good account of his faith as she whom he accused. That which he laid to the poor woman's charge was this. His son, being an ungracious boy, and 'prentice to one Robert Scotchford, clothier, dwelling in that parish of Brenchly, passed on a day by her house; at whom, by chance, her little dog barked, which thing the boy taking in evil part, drew his knife and pursued him therewith even to her door, whom she rebuked with such words as the boy disdained, and yet nevertheless would not be persuaded to depart in a long time. At the last he returned to his master's house, and within five or six days fell sick. Then was called to mind the fray betwixt the dog and the boy: insomuch as the vicar (who thought himself so privileged as he little mistrusted that God would visit his children with sickness) did so calculate as he found, partly through his own judgment and partly (as he himself told me) by the relation of other witches, that his said son was by her bewitched. Yea, he told me that his son being, as it were, past all cure, received perfect health at the hands of another witch.' Not satisfied with this accusation, the vicar 'proceeded yet further against her, affirming that always in his parish church, when he desired to read most plainly his voice so failed him that he could scant be heard at all: which he could impute, he said, to nothing else but to her enchantment. When I advertised the poor woman thereof, as being desirous to hear what she could say for herself, she told me that in very deed his voice did fail him, specially when he strained himself to speak loudest. Howbeit, she said, that at all times his voice was hoarse and low; which thing I perceived to be true. But sir, said she, you shall understand that this our vicar is diseased with such a kind of hoarseness as divers of our neighbours in this parish not long ago doubted ... and in that respect utterly refused to communicate with him until such time as (being thereunto enjoined by the ordinary) he had brought from London a certificate under the hands of two physicians that his hoarseness proceeded from a disease of the lungs; which certificate he published in the church, in the presence of the whole congregation: and by this means he was cured, or rather excused of the shame of the disease. And this,' certifies the narrator, 'I know to be true, by the relation of divers honest men of that parish. And truly if one of the jury had not been wiser than the others, she had been condemned thereupon, and upon other as ridiculous matters as this. For the name of witch is so odious, and her power so feared among the common people, that if the honestest body living chanced to be arraigned thereupon, she shall hardly escape condemnation.'
91. A writer at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Cotta, Tryall of Witchcraft) says, 'This kind is not obscure at this day, swarming in this kingdom, whereof no man can be ignorant who lusteth to observe the uncontrouled liberty and licence of open and ordinary resort in all places unto wise men and wise women, so vulgarly termed for their reputed knowledge concerning such diseased persons as are supposed to be bewitched.' And (Short Discoverie of Unobserved Dangers, 1612) 'the mention of witchecraft doth now occasion the remembrance in the next place of a sort of practitioners whom our custom and country doth call wise men and wise women, reputed a kind of good and honest harmless witches or wizards, who, by good words, by hallowed herbs and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to allay and calm devils, practices of other witches, and the forces of many diseases.' Another writer of the same date considers 'it were a thousand times better for the land if all witches, but specially the blessing witch, might suffer death. Men do commonly hate and spit at the damnifying sorcerer as unworthy to live among them, whereas they fly unto the other in necessity; they depend upon him as their God, and by this means thousands are carried away, to their final confusion. Death, therefore, is the just and deserved portion of the good witch.'—Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, by Brand, ed. by Sir H. Ellis.
92. 'When orders had once been issued for the meeting of the sabbath, all the wizards and witches who failed to attend it were lashed by demons with a rod made of serpents or scorpions. In France and England the witches were supposed to ride uniformly upon broom-sticks; but in Italy and Spain, the devil himself, in the shape of a goat, used to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened according to the number of witches he was desirous of accommodating. No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath, could get out by a door or window were she