Discover the Truth Behind Witchcraft Stories. William Godwin

      Chapter IX.

       Table of Contents

      Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus—His Sentiments on Witchcraft and Demonology—Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits,' &c.—Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir Matthew Hale, 1664—The Evidence adduced in Court—Two Witches hanged—Three hanged at Exeter in 1682—The last Witches judicially executed in England—Uniformity of the Evidence adduced at the Trials—Webster's Attack upon the Witch-Creed in 1677—Witch Trials in England at the end of the Seventeenth Century—French Parliaments vindicate the Diabolic Reality of the Crime—Witchcraft in Sweden.

      The bold licentiousness and ill-concealed scepticism of Charles II. and his Court, whose despotic prejudices, however, supported by the zeal of the Church, prosecuted dissenters from a form of religion which maintained 'the right divine of kings to govern wrong,' might be indifferent to the prejudice of witchcraft. But the princes and despots of former times have seldom been more careful of the lives than they have been of the liberties, of their subjects. The formal apology for the reality of that crime published by Charles II.'s chaplain-in-ordinary, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Glanvil, against the modern Sadducees (a very inconsiderable sect) who denied both ghosts and witches, their well-attested apparitions and acts, has been already noticed. His philosophic inquiry (so he terms it) into the nature and operations of witchcraft (Sadducismus Triumphatus, Sadduceeism Vanquished, or 'Considerations about Witchcraft'), was occasioned by a case that came under the author's personal observation—the 'knockings' of the demon of Tedworth in the house of a Mr. Mompesson. The Tedworth demon must have been of that sort of active spirits which has been so obliging of late in enlightening the spiritual séances of our time.

Glanvil traces the steps by which a well-meaning student may unwarily be involved in diablerie. This philosophical inquirer observes:—'Those mystical students may, in their first address to the science (astrology), have no other design than the satisfaction of their curiosity to know remote and hidden things; yet that in the progress, being not satisfied within the bounds of their art, doth many times tempt the curious inquirer to use worse means of information; and no doubt those mischievous spirits, that are as vigilant as the beasts of prey, and watch all occasions to get us within their envious reach, are more constant attenders and careful spies upon the actions and inclinations of such whose genius and designs prepare them for their temptations. So that I look on judicial astrology as a fair introduction to sorcery and witchcraft; and who knows but it was first set on foot by the infernal hunters as a lure to draw the curiosos into those snares that lie hid beyond it. And yet I believe it may be innocently enough studied.... I believe there are very few among those who have been addicted to those strange arts of wonder and prediction, but have found themselves attacked by some unknown solicitors, and enticed by them to the more dangerous actions and correspondencies. For as there are a sort of base and sordid spirits that attend the envy and malice of the ignorant and viler sort of persons, and betray them into compacts by promises of revenge; so, no doubt, there are a kind of more airy and speculative fiends, of a higher rank and order than those wretched imps, who apply themselves to the curious.... Yea, and sometimes they are so cautious and wary in their conversations with more refined persons, that they never offer to make any express covenant with them. And to this purpose, I have been informed by a very reverend and learned doctor that one Mr. Edwards, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, in Cambridge, being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his repentance that the demon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion, and never required any compact from him: and no doubt they sort themselves agreeably to the rate, post, and genius of those with whom they converse.'149

The sentiments of the royal chaplain on demonology are curious. 'Since good men,' he argues, 'in their state of separation are said to be ἰσάγγελοι, why the wicked may not be supposed to be ἰσοδαίμονες (in the worst sense of the word), I know nothing to help me to imagine. And if it be supposed that the imps of witches are sometimes wicked spirits of our own kind and nature, and possibly the same that have been witches and sorcerers in this life: this supposal may give a fairer and more probable account of many of the actions of sorcery and witchcraft than the other hypothesis, that they are always devils. And to this conjecture I will venture to subjoin another, which hath also its probability, viz. that it is not improbable but the familiars of witches are a vile kind of spirits of a very inferior constitution and nature; and none of those that were once of the highest hierarchy now degenerated into the spirits we call devils.... And that all the superior—yea, and inferior—regions have their several kinds of spirits, differing in their natural perfections as well as in the kinds and degrees of their depravities; which being supposed, 'tis very probable that those of the basest and meanest sorts are they who submit to the servilities.'150 It is a curious speculation how the old apologists of witchcraft would regard the modern 'curiosos'—the adventurous spirit-media of the present day, and whether the consulted spirits are of 'base and sordid rank,' or are 'a kind of airy and more speculative fiends.' It is fair to infer, perhaps, that they are of the latter class.

The author of the 'Saints' Everlasting Rest,' the moderate and conscientious Baxter, was a contemporary of the Anglican divine. In another and later work this voluminous theological writer more fully developed his spiritualistic ideas. 'The Certainty of the World of Spirits fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of Apparitions, Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c., proving the Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Misery of Devils and the Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the Conviction of Sadducees and Infidels,' was a formidable inscription which must have overawed, if it did not subdue, the infidelity of the modern Sadducees.151

      The sentence and execution of two old women at Bury St. Edmund's, in 1664, has been already noticed. This trial was carried on with circumstances