A N D T R I A L L OF
I e n n e t P r e s t o n, Of
GISBORNE IN CRAVEN,
in the Countie of Yorke.
At the Assises and Generall Gaole-
Deliuerie holden at the Castle of Yorke
in the Countie of Yorke, the xxvij. day of
Iuly last past, Anno Regni Regis Iacobi
Angliæ, &c. Decimo, & Scotiæ
quadragesimo quinto.
Before
Sir I a m e s A l t h a m Knight, one
of the Barons of his Maiesties Court of Exchequer;
and Sir E d w a r d B r o m l e y Knight, another of
the Barons of his Maiesties Court of Exchequer;
his Maiesties Iustices of Assise, Oyer and Terminer,
and generall Gaole-Deliuerie, in the Circuit
of the North-parts.
LONDON.
Printed by W. Stansby for Iohn Barnes, and
are to be sold at his Shoppe neere Holborne
Conduit. 1612.
THE ARRAIGNMENT
and Triall of Iennet Preston
of Gisborne in Crauen, in the Countie of Yorke, at
the Assises and generall Gaole-deliuerie, holden at the
Castle of Yorke, in the Countie of Yorke, the seuen and
twentieth day of Iuly last past. Anno Regni Regis Iacobi
Angliæ &c. Decimo & Scotiæ xlvj.
Jennet Preston.
ANY haue vndertaken to write great discourses of Witches and many more dispute and speake of them. And it were not much if as many wrote of them as could write at al, to set forth to the world the particular Rites and Secrets of their vnlawfull Artes, with their infinite and wonderfull practises which many men little feare till they seaze vpon them. As by this late wonderfull discouerie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster may appeare, wherein I find such apparant matter to satisfie the World, how dangerous and malitious a Witch this Iennet Preston was, How vnfit to liue, hauing once so great mercie extended to her: And againe to reuiue her practises, and returne to her former course of life; that I thinke it necessarie not to let the memorie of her life and death die with her; But to place her next to her fellowes and to set forth the Arraignement Triall and Conviction of her, with her offences for which she was condemned and executed.
And although shee died for her offence before the rest, I yet can afford her no better place then in the end of this Booke in respect the proceedings was in an other Countie;
You that were husband to this Iennet Preston; her friends and kinsfolkes, who haue not beene sparing to deuise so scandalous a slander out of the malice of your hearts, as that shee was maliciously prosecuted by Master Lister and others; Her life vniustly taken away by practise; and that (euen at the Gallowes where shee died impenitent and void of all feare or grace) she died an Innocent woman, because she would confesse nothing: You I say may not hold it strange, though at this time, being not only moued in conscience, but directed, for example sake, with that which I haue to report of her, I suffer you not to wander any further, but with this short discourse oppose your idle conceipts able to seduce others: And by Charmes of Imputations and slander, laid vpon the Iustice of the Land, to cleare her that was iustly condemned and executed for her offence; That this Iennet Preston was for many yeares well thought of and esteemed by Master Lister who afterwards died for it Had free accesse to his house, kind respect and entertainment; nothing denied her she stood in need of. Which of you that dwelleth neare them in Crauen but can and will witnesse it? which might haue incouraged a Woman of any good condition to haue runne a better course.
The fauour and goodnesse of this Gentleman Master Lister now liuing, at his first entrance after the death of his Father extended towards her, and the reliefe she had at all times, with many other fauours that succeeded from time to time, are so palpable and euident to all men as no man can denie them. These were sufficient motiues to haue perswaded her from the murder of so good a friend.
But such was her execrable Ingratitude, as euen this grace and goodnesse was the cause of his miserable and vntimely death. And euen in the beginning of his greatest fauours extended to her, began shee to worke this mischiefe, according to the course of all Witches.
This Iennet Preston, whose Arraignment and Triall, with the particular Euidence against her I am now to set forth vnto you, one that liued at Gisborne in Crauen, in the Countie of Yorke, neare Master Lister of Westbie, against whom she practised much mischiefe; for hauing cut off Thomas Lister Esquire, father to this gentleman now liuing,[Ya1] shee reuenged her selfe vpon his sonne: who in short time receiued great losse in his goods and cattell by her meanes.
These things in time did beget suspition, and at the Assizes and Generall Gaole deliuerie holden at the Castle of Yorke in Lent last past, before my Lord Bromley, shee was Indicted and Arraigned for the murder of a Child of one Dodg-sonnes,[Ya2] but by the fauour and mercifull consideration of the Iurie thereof acquited.
But this fauour and mercie was no sooner extended towardes her, and shee set at libertie, But shee began to practise the utter ruine and ouerthrow of the name and bloud of this Gentleman.
And the better to execute her mischiefe and wicked intent, within foure dayes after her deliuerance out of the Castle at Yorke, went to the great Assembly of Witches at Malking-Tower vpon Good-friday last: to praye aide and helpe, for the murder of Master Lister, in respect he had prosecuted against her at the same Assizes.
Which it pleased God in his mercie to discouer, and in the end, howsoeuer he had blinded her, as he did the King of Ægypt and his Instruments, for the brighter euidence of his own powerfull glory: Yet by a Iudiciall course and triall of the Law, cut her off, and so deliuered his people from the danger of her Deuilish and wicked practises: which you shall heare against her, at her Arraignement and Triall, which I shall now set forth to you in order as it was performed, with the wonderfull signes and tokens of God, to satisfie the Iurie to finde her guiltie of this bloudie murther, committed foure yeares since.
Indictment.
THis Iennet Preston being Prisoner in the Castle at Yorke, and indicted, for that shee felloniously had practised, vsed, and exercised diuerse wicked and deuillish Arts, called Witchcrafts, Inchauntments, Charmes, and Sorceries, in and vpon one Thomas Lister of Westby in Crauen, in the Countie of Yorke Esquire, and by force of the same Witchcraft felloniously the said Thomas Lister had killed, Contra Pacem &c. beeing at the Barre, was arraigned.
To this Indictment vpon her Arraignement, shee pleaded not guiltie, and for the Triall of her life put her selfe vpon God and her Countrey.
Whereupon my Lord Altham commaunded Master Sheriffe of the Countie of Yorke, in open Court to returne a Iurie of sufficient Gentlemen of vnderstanding, to passe betweene our Soueraigne Lord the Kings Majestie and her, and others the Prisoners, vpon their liues and deaths; who were afterwards sworne, according to the forme and order of the Court, the prisoner being admitted to her lawfull challenge.
Which being done, and the Prisoner at the Barre to receiue her Tryall, Master Heyber,[Y2a] one of his Maiesties Iustices of Peace in the same County, hauing taken great paines in the proceedings against her; and being best instructed of any man of all the particular points of Euidence against her, humbly prayed, the witnesses hereafter following might be examined against her, and the seuerall Examinations, taken before Master Nowel, and certified, might openly bee published against her; which hereafter follow in order, viz.
The Euidence for the Kings Maiestie
Against
Iennet Preston, Prisoner at the Barre.
HEreupon were diuerse Examinations taken and read openly against her, to induce and satisfie the Gentlemen of the Iurie of Life and Death, to finde she was a Witch; and many other circumstances for the death of M. Lister. In the end Anne Robinson and others were both examined, who vpon their Oathes declared against her, That M. Lister lying in great extremitie, vpon his death bedde, cried out vnto them that stood about him; that Iennet Preston was in the house, looke where shee is, take hold of her: for Gods sake shut the doores, and take her, shee cannot escape away. Looke about for her, and lay hold on her, for shee is in the house: and so cryed very often in his great paines, to them that came to visit him during his sicknesse.
Anne Robinson,
and
Thomas Lister,
Being examined further, they both gaue this in euidence against her, That when Master Lister lay vpon his death-bedde, hee cryed out in great extremitie; Iennet Preston lyes heauie vpon me, Prestons wife lies heauie vpon me; helpe me, helpe me: and so departed, crying out against her.
These, with many other witnesses, were further examined, and deposed, That Iennet Preston, the Prisoner at the Barre, being brought to M. Lister after hee was dead, & layd out to be wound vp in his winding-sheet, the said Iennet Preston comming to touch the dead corpes, they bled fresh bloud presently,[Y3a] in the presence of all that were there present: Which hath euer beene held a great argument to induce a Iurie to hold him guiltie that shall be accused of Murther, and hath seldome, or neuer, fayled in the Tryall.
But these were not alone: for this wicked and bloud-thirstie Witch was no sooner deliuered at the Assises holden at Yorke in Lent last past, being indicted, arraigned, and by the fauor and mercie of the Iurie found not guiltie, for the murther of a Child by Witch-craft: but vpon the Friday following, beeing Good-Friday, shee rode in hast to the great meeting at Malking-Tower, and there prayed aide for the murther of M. Thomas Lister: as at large shall appeare, by the seuerall Examinations hereafter following; sent to these Assises from Master Nowel and other his Maiesties Iustices of Peace in the Countie of Lancaster, to be giuen in euidence against her, vpon her Triall, viz.
The Examination and Euidence of
Iames Device, of the Forrest of Pendle, in the Countie
of Lancaster, Labourer, taken at the house of Iames
Wilsey, of the Forrest of Pendle in the Countie of
Lancaster, the seuen and twentieth day of Aprill, Anno
Reg. Regis Iacobi Angliæ, &c. Decimo ac Scotiæ
quadragesimo quinto.
Before
Roger Nowel and Nicholas Banester,
Esquires, two of his Maiesties Iustices of the Peace
within the Countie of Lancaster, viz.
THis Examinate saith, That vpon Good-Friday last about twelue of the clocke in the day-time, there dined in this Examinates said mothers house a number of persons, whereof three were men, with this Examinate, and the rest women: and that they met there for these three causes following (as this Examinates said mother told this Examinate): First was for the naming of the Spirit, which Alizon Deuice, now Prisoner at Lancaster, had, but did not name him, because shee was not there. The second cause was for the deliuery of his said Grand-mother, this Examinates said sister Alizon, the said Anne Chattox, and her daughter Redferne: Killing the Gaoler at Lancaster; and before the next Assizes to blow vp the Castle there; to that end the aforesaid Prisoners might by that meanes make an escape and get away. All which this Examinate then heard them conferre of. And the third cause was, for that there was a woman dwelling in Gilburne Parish, who came into this Examinates said Grand-mothers house, who there came, and craued assistance of the rest of them that were then there, for the killing of Master Lister of Westby: because, as she then said, he had borne malice vnto her, and had thought to haue put her away at the last Assizes at Yorke; but could not. And then this Examinat heard the said woman say, that her power was not strong enough to doe it her selfe, being now lesse then before time it had beene.
And he also further saith, that the said Prestons wife had a Spirit with her like unto a white Foale, with a blacke-spot in the forehead. And further, this Examinat saith, That since the said meeting, as aforesaid, this Examinate hath beene brought to the wife of one Preston in Gisburne Parish aforesaid, by Henry Hargreiues of Goldshey, to see whether shee was the woman that came amongst the said Witches, on the said last Good-Friday, to craue their aide and assistance for the killing of the said Master Lister: and hauing had full view of her; hee this Examinate confesseth, That shee was the selfe-same woman which came amongst the said Witches on the said last Good-Friday, for their aide for the killing of the said Master Lister; and that brought the Spirit with her, in the shape of a White Foale, as aforesaid.
And this Examinate further saith, That all the said Witches went out of the said house in their owne shapes and likenesses, and they all, by that they were forth of the doores, were gotten on horse-backe like vnto Foales, some of one colour, some of another, and Prestons wife was the last; and when she got on horse-backe, they all presently vanished out of this Examinats sight: and before their said parting away, they all appointed to meete at the said Prestons wifes house that day twelue-month; at which time the said Prestons wife promised to make them a great feast; and if they had occasion to meet in the meane time, then should warning bee giuen that they all should meete vpon Romles-Moore. And this Examinate further saith, That at the said feast at Malking-Tower, this Examinat heard them all giue their consents to put the said Master Thomas Lister of Westby to death: and after Master Lister should be made away by Witchcraft, then al the said Witches gaue their consents to ioyne altogether to hancke Master Leonard Lister,[Za] when he should come to dwell at the Sowgill, and so put him to death.
The Examination of Henrie Hargreives
of Goldshey-booth, in the Forrest of
Pendle, in the Countie of Lancaster Yeoman, taken the
fifth day of May, Anno Reg. Regis Iacobi Angliæ,
&c. Decimo, ac Scociæ quadragesimo quinto.
Before
Roger Nowel, Nicholas Bannester,
and Robert Holden, Esquires; three of his
Maiesties Iustices of Peace within the said Countie.
THis Examinat vpon his oath saith, That Anne Whittle, alias Chattox, confessed vnto him, that she knoweth one Prestons wife neere Gisburne, and that the said Prestons wife should haue beene at the said feast, vpon the said Good-Friday, and that shee was an ill woman, and had done Master Lister of Westby great hurt.
The Examination of Elizabeth
Device, mother of Iames Device, taken before
Roger Nowel and Nicholas Banester,
Esquires, the day and yeare aforesaid, viz.
THe said Elizabeth Deuice vpon her Examination confesseth, That vpon Good-Friday last, there dined at this Examinats house, which she hath said are Witches, and doth verily thinke them to be Witches; and their names are those whom Iames Deuice hath formerly spoken of to be there.
She also confesseth in all things touching the killing of Master Lister of Westby, as the said Iames Deuice hath before confessed.
And the said Elizabeth Deuice also further saith, That at the said meeting at Malking-Tower, as aforesaid, the said Katherine Hewyt and Iohn Bulcock, with all the rest then there, gaue their consents, with the said Prestons wife, for the killing of the said Master Lister. And for the killing of the said Master Leonard Lister, she this Examinate saith in all things, as the said Iames Deuice hath before confessed in his Examination.
The Examination of Iennet Device,
daughter of Elizabeth late wife of Iohn
Device, of the Forrest of Pendle, in the Countie of Lancaster,
about the age of nine yeares or thereabouts, taken
the day and yeare aboue-said:
Before
Roger Nowel and Nicholas Banester,
Esquires, two of his Maiesties Iustices of Peace in
the Countie of Lancaster.
THe said Examinate vpon her Examination saith, that vpon Good-friday last there was about twenty persons, whereof only two were men, to this Examinats remembrance, at her said Grand-mothers house, called Malking-Tower aforesaid, about twelue of the clocke: all which persons, this Examinates said mother told her were Witches, and that she knoweth the names of diuers of the said Witches.
AFter all these Examinations, Confessions, and Euidence, deliuered in open Court against her, His Lordship commanded the Iurie to obserue the particular circumstances;[Z2a] first, Master Lister in his great extremitie, to complaine hee saw her, and requested them that were by him to lay hold on her.
After he cried out shee lay heauie vpon him, euen at the time of his death.
But the Conclusion is of more consequence then all the rest, that Iennet Preston being brought to the dead corps, they bled freshly. And after her deliuerance in Lent, it is proued shee rode vpon a white Foale, and was present in the great assembly at Malkin Tower with the Witches, to intreat and pray for aide of them, to kill Master Lister, now liuing, for that he had prosequuted against her.
And against these people you may not expect such direct euidence, since all their workes are the workes of darkenesse, no witnesses are present to accuse them, therefore I pray God direct your consciences.
After the Gentlemen of the Iurie of Life and Death had
spent the most part of the day, in consideration of
the euidence against her, they returned into the
Court and deliuered vp their Verdict of
Life and Death.
* *
*
The Verdict of Life and Death.
WHo found Iennet Preston guiltie of the fellonie and murder by Witch-craft of Thomas Lister, Esquire; conteyned in the Indictment against her, &c.
Afterwards, according to the course and order of the Lawes, his Lordship pronounced Iudgement against her to bee hanged for her offence. And so the Court arose.
Ere was the wonderfull discouerie of this Iennet Preston, who for so many yeares had liued at Gisborne in Crauen, neare Master Lister: one thing more I shall adde to all these particular Examinations, and euidence of witnesses, which I saw, and was present in the Court at Lancaster, when it was done at the Assizes holden in August following.
My Lord Bromley being very suspicious of the accusation of Iennet Deuice, the little Wench, commanded her to looke vpon the Prisoners that were present, and declare which of them were present at Malkin Tower, at the great assembly of Witches vpon Good-Friday last: shee looked vpon and tooke many by the handes, and accused them to be there, and when shee had accused all that were there present, shee told his Lordship there was a Woman that came out of Crauen that was amongst the Witches at that Feast, but shee saw her not amongst the Prisoners at the Barre.
What a singular note was this of a Child, amongst many to misse her, that before that time was hanged for her offence, which shee would neuer confesse or declare at her death? here was present old Preston her husband, who then cried out and went away: being fully satisfied his wife had Iustice, and was worthie of death.
To conclude then this present discourse, I heartilie desire you, my louing Friends and Countrie-men, for whose particular instructions this is added to the former of the wonderfull discouerie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster: And for whose particular satisfaction this is published; Awake in time, and suffer not your selues to be thus assaulted.
Consider how barbarously this Gentleman hath been dealt withall; and especially you that hereafter shall passe vpon any Iuries of Life and Death, let not your conniuence, or rather foolish pittie, spare such as these, to exequute farther mischiefe.
Remember that shee was no sooner set at libertie, but shee plotted the ruine and ouerthrow of this Gentleman, and his whole Familie.
Expect not, as this reuerend and learned Iudge saith, such apparent proofe against them, as against others, since all their workes, are the workes of darkenesse: and vnlesse it please Almightie God to raise witnesses to accuse them, who is able to condemne them?
Forget not the bloud that cries out vnto God for reuenge, bring it not vpon your owne heads.
Neither doe I vrge this any farther, then with this, that I would alwaies intreat you to remember, that it is as great a crime (as Salomon sayth, Prov. 17.) to condemne the innocent, as to let the guiltie escape free.
Looke not vpon things strangely alledged, but iudiciously consider what is justly proued against them.
And that as well all you that were witnesses, present at the Arraignement and Triall of her, as all other strangers, to whome this Discourse shall come, may take example by this Gentlemen to prosecute these hellish Furies to their end:[Z3b1] labor to root them out of the Commonwealth, for the common good of your Countrey. The greatest mercie extended to them, is soone forgotten.
God graunt vs the long and prosperous cotinuance of these Honorable and Reuerend Iudges, vnder whose Gouernment we liue in these North parts: for we may say, that God Almightie hath singled them out, and set him on his Seat, for the defence of Iustice.
And for this great deliuerance, let vs all pray to
God Almightie, that the memorie of
these worthie Iudges may bee
blessed to all Posterities.
[Z3b2]
FINIS.
NOTES.
[The references are to the alphabetical letters or signatures at the bottom of each page: a is intended for the first and b the second page, marked with such letter or signature.]
Transcriber's Notes: In the original text, a single note reference sometimes applies to more than one note. For clarity's sake, in this e-text a number has been added to the end of such references to distinguish among the notes.
There are a few phrases in Greek. In the original text, some of the Greek characters have diacritical marks which do not display properly in some browsers, such as Internet Explorer. In order to make this e-text as accessible as possible, the diacritical marks have been ignored. All text in Greek has a mouse-hover transliteration, e.g., καλος.
[Dedication]. "The Right Honorable Thomas Lord Knyvet.">[ Sir Thomas Knivet, or Knyvet, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to James the First, was afterwards created Baron of Escricke, in the county of York. He it was who was intrusted to search the vaults under the Parliament House, and who discovered the thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, and apprehended Guido Fawkes, who declared to him, that if he had happened to be within the house when he took him, as he was immediately before, he would not have failed to blow him up, house and all. (Howell's State Trials, vol. ii., p. 202.) His courage and conduct on this occasion seem to have recommended him to the especial favour of James. Dying without issue, the title of Lord Howard of Escrick was conferred on Sir Edward Howard, son of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who had married the eldest daughter and co-heir of Sir H. Knivet; and, having been enjoyed successively by his two sons, ended in his grandson Charles, in the beginning of the last century. It must be admitted that the writer has chosen his patron very felicitously. Who so fit to have the book dedicated to him as one who had acted so conspicuous a part on the memorable occasion at Westminster? The blowing up of Lancaster Castle and good Mr. Covel, by the conclave of witches at Malkin's Tower, was no discreditable imitation of the grand metropolitan drama on provincial boards.
[A 2]. First Imprimatur. "Ja. Altham, Edw. Bromley.">[ These two judges were Barons of the Court of Exchequer, but neither of them seems to have left a name extraordinarily distinguished for legal learning. Altham was one of the assistants named in the commission for the trial of the Countess of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1616. Bromley appears, from incidental notices contained in the diary of Nicholas Assheton, (see Whitaker's Whalley, third edition, page 300,) and other sources, to have frequently taken the northern circuit. He was not of the family of Lord Chancellor Bromley, but of another stock.
[A 3]. Second Imprimatur: "Edward Bromley. I took upon mee to reuise and correct it.">[ This revision by the judge who presided at the trial gives a singular and unique value and authority to the work. We have no other report of any witch trial which has an equal stamp of authenticity. How many of the rhetorical flourishes interspersed in the book are the property of Thomas Potts, Esquier, and how many are the interpolation of the "excellent care" of the worthy Baron, it is scarcely worth while to investigate. Certainly never were judge and clerk more admirably paired. The Shallow on the bench was well reflected in the Master Slender below.
[B a]. "The number of them being knowen to exceed all others at any time heretofore at one time to be indicted, arraigned, and receiue their tryall.">[ Probably this was the case, at least in England; but a greater number had been convicted before, even in this country, at one time, than were found guilty on this occasion, as it appears from Scot, (Discovery of Witchcraft, page 543, edition 1584,) that seventeen or eighteen witches were condemned at once, at St. Osith, in Essex, in 1576, of whom an account was written by Brian Darcy, with the names and colours of their spirits.
[B b]. "She was a very old woman, about the age of fourescore.">[ Dr. Henry More would have styled old Demdike "An eximious example of Moses, his Mecassephah, the word which he uses in that law,—Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Margaret Agar and Julian Cox, (see Glanvill's Collection of Relations, p. 135, edition 1682,) on whom he dwells with such delighted interest, were very inferior subjects to what, in his hands, Elizabeth Sothernes would have made. They had neither of them the finishing attribute of blindness, so fearful in a witch, to complete the sketch; nor such a fine foreground for the painting as the forest of Pendle presented; nor the advantage, for grouping, of a family of descendants in which witchcraft might be transmitted to the third generation.
[B 2 a]. "Roger Nowell, Esquire.">[ This busy and mischievous personage who resided at Read Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood of Pendle, was sheriff of Lancashire in 1610. He married Katherine, daughter of John Murton, of Murton, and was buried at Whalley, January 31st, 1623. He was of the same family as Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul's, and Lawrence Nowell, the restorer of Saxon literature in England; and tarnished a name which they had rendered memorable, by becoming, apparently, an eager and willing instrument in that wicked persecution which resulted in the present trial. His ill-directed activity seems to have fanned the dormant embers into a blaze, and to have given aim and consistency to the whole scheme of oppression. From this man was descended, in the female line, one whose merits might atone for a whole generation of Roger Nowells, the truly noble-minded and evangelical Reginald Heber.
[B 2 b 1]. "Gouldshey,">[ so commonly pronounced, but more properly Goldshaw, or Goldshaw Booth.
[B 2 b 2]. "The spirit answered, his name was Tibb.">[ Bernard, who is learned in the nomenclature of familiar spirits, gives, in his Guide to Grand Jurymen, 1630, 12mo, the following list of the names of the more celebrated familiars of English witches. "Such as I have read of are these: Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smacke, Litefoote, Nonsuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Callico, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dicke, Prettie, Grissil, and Jacke." In the confession of Isabel Gowdie, a famous Scotch witch, (in Pitcairne's Trials, vol. iii. page 614,) we have the following catalogue of attendant spirits, rather, it must be confessed, a formidable band. "The names of our Divellis, that waited upon us, ar thes: first, Robert the Jakis; Sanderis, the Read Roaver; Thomas the Fearie; Swain, the Roaring Lion; Thieffe of Hell; Wait upon Hirself; Mak Hectour; Robert the Rule; Hendrie Laing; and Rorie. We would ken them all, on by on, from utheris. Some of theim apeirit in sadd dunn, som in grasse-grein, som in sea-grein, and some in yallow." Archbishop Harsnet, in his admirable Declaration of Popish Impostures, under the pretence of casting out Devils, 1605, 4to, a work unsurpassed for rich humour and caustic wit, clothed in good old idiomatic English, has a chapter "on the strange names of these devils," in which he observes, (p. 46,) "It is not amiss that you be acquainted with these extravagant names of devils, least meeting them otherwise by chance you mistake them for the names of tapsters, or juglers." Certainly, some of the names he marshalls in array smell strongly of the tavern. These are some of them: Pippin, Philpot, Modu, Soforce, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito, Lustie Huffe-cap, Killico, Hob, Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, and Lustie Jollie Jenkin.
[B 2 b 3]. "About Day-light Gate.">[ Day-light Gate, i.e. Evening, the down gate of daylight. See Promptuarium Parvulorum, (edited by Way for the Camden Society,) page 188, "Gate down, or downe gate of the Sunne or any other planet."—Occasus. Palgrave gives, "At the sonne gate downe; sur le soleil couchant."
[B 3 a 1]. "The said Deuill did get blood vnder her left arme.">[ It would seem (see Elizabeth Device's Examination afterwards) as if some preliminary search were made, in the case of this poor old woman, for the marks which were supposed to come by the sucking or drawing of the Spirit or Familiar. Most probably her confession was the result of this and other means of annoyance and torture employed in the usual unscrupulous manner, upon a blind woman of eighty. Of those marks supposed to be produced by the sucking of the Spirit or Familiar, the most curious and scientific (if the word may be applied to such a subject) account will be found in a very scarce tract, which seems to have been unknown to the writers on witchcraft. Its title is "A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, containing these several particulars; That there are Witches called bad Witches, and Witches untruly called good or white Witches, and what manner of people they be, and how they may be knowne, with many particulars thereunto tending. Together with the Confessions of many of those executed since May, 1645, in the several Counties hereafter mentioned. As also some objections Answered. By John Stearne, now of Lawshall, neere Burie Saint Edmunds in Suffolke, sometimes of Manningtree in Essex. Prov. xvii. 15, He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord. Deut. xiii. 14, Thou shall therefore enquire, and make search, and aske diligently whether it be truth and the thing certaine. London, Printed by William Wilson, dwelling in Little Saint Bartholomews, neere Smithfield, 1648, pages 61, besides preface." Stearne, in whom Remigius and De Lancre would have recognized a congenial soul, had a sort of joint commission with Hopkins, as Witch-finder, and tells us (see address to Reader) that he had been in part an agent in finding out or discovering about 200 witches in Essex, Suffolk, Northamptonshire, Huntingtonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely. He deals with the subject undoubtedly like a man whose extensive experience and practice had enabled him to reduce the matter to a complete system. (See his account of their marks, pp. 43 to 50.) He might, like John Kincaid in Tranent, (see Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 599,) have assumed the right of Common Pricker, i.e. Searcher for the devil's marks, and had his own tests, which were infallible. He complains, good man, "that in many places I never received penny as yet, nor any am like, notwithstanding I have hands for satisfaction, except I should sue; [he should have sued by all means, we might then have had his bill of particulars, which would have been curious;] but many rather fall upon me for what hath been received, but I hope such suits will be disannulled, and that where I have been out of moneys for Towns in charges and otherwise such course will be taken that I may be satisfied and paid with reason." He was doubtless well deserving of a recompense, and his neighbours were much to blame if he did not receive a full and ample one. Of the latter end of his coadjutor, Hopkins, whom Sir Walter Scott (see Somers's Tracts, vol. iii. p. 97, edit. 1810,) and several other writers represent as ultimately executed himself for witchcraft, he gives a very different, and no doubt more correct account; which, singularly enough, has hitherto remained entirely unnoticed. "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 falsely reported of him. He was the son of a godly minister, and therefore, without doubt, within the Covenant." Were not the interests of truth too sacred to be compromised, it might seem almost a pity to demolish that merited and delightful retribution which Butler's lines have immortalized.
[B 3 a 2]. "I will burne the one of you and hang the other.">[ The following extracts from that fine old play, "The Witch of Edmonton," bear a strong resemblance to the scene described in the text. Mother Sawyer, in whom the milk of human kindness is turned to gall by destitution, imbittered by relentless outrage and insult, and who, driven out of the pale of human fellowship, is thrown upon strange and fearful allies, would almost appear to be the counterpart of Mother Demdike. The weird sisters of our transcendant bard are wild and wonderful creations, but have no close relationship to the plain old traditional witch of our ancestors, which is nowhere represented by our dramatic writers with faithfulness and truth except in the Witch of Edmonton:—
Enter Elizabeth Sawyer, gathering sticks.
Saw. And why on me? why should the envious world
Throw all their scandalous malice upon me?
'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant,
And like a bow buckled and bent together,
By some more strong in mischiefs than myself,
Must I for that be made a common sink,
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues
To fall and run into? Some call me Witch,
And being ignorant of myself, they go
About to teach me how to be one; urging,
That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so)
Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn,
Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse.
This they enforce upon me; and in part
Make me to credit it; and here comes one
Of my chief adversaries.
Enter Old Banks.
Banks. Out, out upon thee, witch!
Saw. Dost call me witch?
Banks. I do, witch, I do; and worse I would, knew I a name more hateful. What makest thou upon my ground?
Saw. Gather a few rotten sticks to warm me.
Banks. Down with them when I bid thee, quickly; I'll make thy bones rattle in thy skin else.
Saw. You won't, churl, cut-throat, miser!—there they be; [Throws them down.] would they stuck across thy throat, thy bowels, thy maw, thy midriff.
Banks. Say'st thou me so, hag? Out of my ground!
[Beats her.
Saw. Dost strike me, slave, curmudgeon! Now thy bones aches, thy joints cramps, and convulsions stretch and crack thy sinews!
Banks. Cursing, thou hag! take that, and that.
[Beats her, and exit.
Saw. Strike, do!—and wither'd may that hand and arm
Whose blows have lamed me, drop from the rotten trunk!
Abuse me! beat me! call me hag and witch!
What is the name? where, and by what art learn'd,
What spells, what charms or invocations?
May the thing call'd Familiar be purchased?
* * * * * * *
Saw. Still vex'd! still tortured! that curmudgeon Banks
Is ground of all my scandal; I am shunn'd
And hated like a sickness; made a scorn
To all degrees and sexes. I have heard old beldams
Talk of familiars in the shape of mice,
Rats, ferrets, weasels, and I wot not what,
That have appear'd, and suck'd, some say, their blood;
But by what means they came acquainted with them,
I am now ignorant. Would some power, good or bad,
Instruct me which way I might be revenged
Upon this churl, I'd go out of myself,
And give this fury leave to dwell within
This ruin'd cottage, ready to fall with age!
Abjure all goodness, be at hate with prayer,
And study curses, imprecations,
Blasphemous speeches, oaths, detested oaths,
Or anything that's ill; so I might work
Revenge upon this miser, this black cur,
That barks and bites, and sucks the very blood
Of me, and of my credit. 'Tis all one,
To be a witch, as to be counted one:
Vengeance, shame, ruin light upon that canker!
Enter a Black Dog.
Dog. Ho! have I found thee cursing? now thou art
Mine own.
Saw. Thine! what art thou?
Dog. He thou hast so often
Importuned to appear to thee, the devil.
Saw. Bless me! the devil!
Dog. Come, do not fear; I love thee much too well
To hurt or fright thee; if I seem terrible,
It is to such as hate me. I have found
Thy love unfeign'd; have seen and pitied
Thy open wrongs, and come, out of my love,
To give thee just revenge against thy foes.
Saw. May I believe thee?
Dog. To confirm't, command me
Do any mischief unto man or beast.
And I'll effect it, on condition
That, uncompell'd, thou make a deed of gift
Of soul and body to me.
Saw. Out, alas!
My soul and body?
Dog. And that instantly,
And seal it with thy blood: if thou deniest,
I'll tear thy body in a thousand pieces.
Saw. I know not where to seek relief: but shall I,
After such covenants seal'd, see full revenge
On all that wrong me?
Dog. Ha, ha! silly woman!
The devil is no liar to such as he loves—
Didst ever know or hear the devil a liar
To such as he affects?
Saw. Then I am thine; at least so much of me
As I can call mine own—
Dog. Equivocations?
Art mine or no? speak, or I'll tear—
Saw. All thine.
Dog. Seal't with thy blood.
[She pricks her arm, which he sucks.—Thunder and lightning.
See! now I dare call thee mine!
For proof, command me: instantly I'll run
To any mischief; goodness can I none.
Saw. And I desire as little. There's an old churl,
One Banks—
Dog. That wrong'd thee: he lamed thee, call'd thee witch.
Saw. The same; first upon him I'd be revenged.
Dog. Thou shalt; do but name how?
Saw. Go, touch his life.
Dog. I cannot.
Saw. Hast thou not vow'd? Go, kill the slave!
Dog. I will not.
Saw. I'll cancel then my gift.
Dog. Ha, ha!
Saw. Dost laugh!
Why wilt not kill him?
Dog. Fool, because I cannot.
Though we have power, know, it is circumscribed,
And tied in limits: though he be curst to thee,
Yet of himself, he is loving to the world,
And charitable to the poor; now men, that,
As he, love goodness, though in smallest measure,
Live without compass of our reach: his cattle
And corn I'll kill and mildew; but his life
(Until I take him, as I late found thee,
Cursing and swearing) I have no power to touch.
Saw. Work on his corn and cattle then.
Dog. I shall.
The Witch of Edmonton shall see his fall.
Ford's Plays, edit. 1839, p. 190.
[B 3 a 3]. "Alizon Device.">[ Device is merely the common name Davies spelled as pronounced in the neighbourhood of Pendle.
[B 3 b]. "Is to make a picture of clay.">[
Hecate. What death is't you desire for Almachildes?
Duchess. A sudden and a subtle.
Hecate. Then I've fitted you.
Here be the gifts of both; sudden and subtle:
His picture made in wax and gently molten
By a blue fire kindled with dead men's eyes
Will waste him by degrees.
Duchess. In what time, prithee?
Hecate. Perhaps in a moon's progress.
Middleton's Witch, edit. 1778, p. 100.
None of the offices in the Witches rubric had higher classical warrant than this method, a favourite one, it appears, of Mother Demdike, but in which Anne Redfern had the greatest skill of any of these Pendle witches, of victimizing by moulding and afterwards pricking or burning figures of clay representing the individual whose life was aimed at. Horace, Lib. i. Sat. 8, mentions both waxen and woollen images—
Lanea et effigies erat altera cerea, &c.
And it appears from Tacitus, that the death of Germanicus was supposed to have been sought by similar practices. By such a Simulachrum, or image, the person was supposed to be devoted to the infernal deities. According to the Platonists, the effect produced arose from the operation of the sympathy and synergy of the Spiritus Mundanus, (which Plotinus calls τον μεγαν γοητα, the grand magician,) such as they resolve the effect of the weaponsalve and other magnetic cures into. The following is the Note in Brand on this part of witchcraft:—
King James, in his "Dæmonology," book ii., chap. 5, tells us, that "the Devil teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay, that, by roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or dried away by continual sickness."
See Servius on the 8th Eclogue of Virgil; Theocritus, Idyll, ii., 22; Hudibras, part II., canto ii., l. 351.
Ovid says:
"Devovet absentes, simulachraque cerea figit
Et miserum tenues in jecur urget acus."
Heroid. Ep. vi., l. 91.
See also "Grafton's Chronicle," p. 587, where it is laid to the charge (among others) of Roger Bolinbrook, a cunning necromancer, and Margery Jordane, the cunning Witch of Eye, that they, at the request of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, had devised an image of wax, representing the king, (Henry the Sixth,) which by their sorcery a little and a little consumed; intending thereby in conclusion to waste and destroy the king's person. Shakspeare mentions this, Henry VI., P. II., act i., sc. 4.
It appears, from Strype's "Annals of the Reformation,", vol. i., p. 8, under anno 1558, that Bishop Jewel, preaching before the queen, said, "It may please your grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few last years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. Your grace's subjects pine away, even unto 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." "This," Strype adds, "I make no doubt was the occasion of bringing in a bill, the next parliament, for making enchantments and witchcraft felony." One of the bishop's strong expressions is, "These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness."
It appears from the same work, vol. iv., p. 6, sub anno 1589, that "one Mrs. Dier had practised conjuration against the queen, to work some mischief to her majesty; for which she was brought into question: and accordingly her words and doings were sent to Popham, the queen's attorney, and Egerton, her solicitor, by Walsingham, the secretary, and Sir Thomas Heneage, her vice-chamberlain, for their judgment, whose opinion was that Mrs. Dier was not within the compass of the statute touching witchcraft, for that she did no act, and spake certain lewd speeches tending to that purpose, but neither set figure nor made pictures." Ibid., vol. ii., p. 545, sub anno 1578, Strype says: "Whether it were the effect of magic, or proceeded from some natural cause, but 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."
Andrews, in his "Continuation of Henry's History of Great Britain," 4to, p. 93, tells us, speaking of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, who in the reign of Queen Elizabeth died by poison, "The credulity of the age attributed his death to witchcraft. The disease was odd, and operated as a perpetual emetic; and a waxen image, with hair like that of the unfortunate earl, found in his chamber, reduced every suspicion to certainty."
"The wife of Marshal d'Ancre was apprehended, imprisoned, and beheaded for a witch, upon a surmise that she had inchanted the queen to dote upon her husband; and they say the young king's picture was found in her closet, in virgin wax, with one leg melted away. When asked by her judges what spells she had made use of to gain so powerful an ascendancy over the queen, she replied, 'that ascendancy only which strong minds ever gain over weak ones.'" Seward's "Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons," &c., vol. ii., p. 215.
Blagrave, in his "Astrological Practice of Physick," p. 89, observes that "the way which the witches usually take for to afflict man or beast in this kind is, as I conceive, done by image or model, made in the likeness of that man or beast they intend to work mischief upon, and by the subtlety of the devil made at such hours and times when it shall work most powerfully upon them, by thorn, pin, or needle, pricked into that limb or member of the body afflicted."
This is farther illustrated by a passage in one of Daniel's Sonnets:
"The slie inchanter, when to work his will
And secret wrong on some forspoken wight,
Frames waxe, in forme to represent aright
The poore unwitting wretch he meanes to kill,
And prickes the image, framed by magick's skill,
Whereby to vex the partie day and night."
Son. 10; from Poems and Sonnets annexed to "Astrophil and Stella," 4to, 1591.
Again, in "Diaria, or the Excellent Conceitful Sonnets of H.C.," (Henry Constable,) 1594:
"Witches, which some murther do intend,
Doe make a picture, and doe shoote at it;
And in that part where they the picture hit,
The parties self doth languish to his end."
Decad. II., Son. ii.
Coles, in his "Art of Simpling," &c., p. 66, says that witches "take likewise the roots of mandrake, according to some, or, as I rather suppose, the roots of briony, which simple folke take for the true mandrake, and make thereof an ugly image, by which they represent the person on whom they intend to exercise their witchcraft." He tells us, ibid., p. 26, "Some plants have roots with a number of threads, like beards, as mandrakes, whereof witches and impostors make an ugly image, giving it the form of the face at the top of the root, and leave those strings to make a broad beard down to the feet."—Brand's Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 9.
Ben Johnson has not forgotten this superstition in his learned and fanciful Masque of Queens, in which so much of the lore of witchcraft is embodied. There are few finer things in English poetry than his 3rd Charm:—
The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And the frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,
The spindle is now a turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,
But all the sky is a burning:
The ditch is made, and our nails the spade,
With pictures full, of wax and of wool;
Their livers I stick, with needles quick;
There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood.
Quickly, dame, then bring your part in,
Spur, spur upon little Martin,
Merrily, merrily, make him sail,
A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail,
Fire above, and fire below,
With a whip in your hand, to make him go.
Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 121.
Meric Casaubon, who is always an amusing writer, and whose works, notwithstanding his appetite for the wonderful, do not merit the total oblivion into which they have fallen, is very angry with Jerome Cardan, an author not generally given to scepticism, for the hesitation he displays on the subject of these waxen images:—
I know some who question not the power of devils or witches; yet in this particular are not satisfied how such a thing can be. For there is no relation or sympathy in nature, (saith one, who hath written not many years ago,) between a man and his effigies, that upon the pricking of the one the other should grow sick. It is upon another occasion that he speaks it; but his exception reacheth this example equally. A wonder to me he should so argue, who in many things hath very well confuted the incredulity of others, though in some things too credulous himself. If we must believe nothing but what we can reduce to natural, or, to speak more properly, (for I myself believe the devil doth very little, but by nature, though to us unknown,) manifest causes, he doth overthrow his own grounds, and leaves us but very little of magical operations to believe. But of all men, Cardan had least reason to except against this kind of magick as ridiculous or incredible, who himself is so full of incredible stories in that kind, upon his own credit alone, that they had need to be of very easie belief that believe him, especially when they know (whereof more afterwards) what manner of man he was. But I dare say, that from Plato's time, who, among other appurtenances of magic, doth mention these, κηρινα μιμηματα that is, as Ovid doth call them, Simulachra cerea, or as Horace, cereas imagines, (who also in another place more particularly describes them,) there is not any particular rite belonging to that art more fully attested by histories of all ages than this is. Besides, who doth not know that it is the devil's fashion (we shall meet with it afterwards again) to amuse his servants and vassals with many rites and ceremonies, which have certainly no ground in nature, no relation or sympathy to the thing, as for other reasons, so to make them believe, they have a great hand in the production of such and such effects; when, God knows, many times all that they do, though taught and instructed by him, is nothing at all to the purpose, and he, in very deed, is the only agent, by means which he doth give them no account of. Bodinus, in his preface to his "Dæmonology," relateth, that three waxen images, whereof one of Queen Elizabeth's, of glorious memory, and two other, Reginæ proximorum, of two courtiers, of greatest authority under the queen, were found in the house of a priest at Islington, a magician, or so reputed, to take away their lives. This he doth repeat again in his second book, chap. 8, but more particularly that it was in the year of the Lord 1578, and that Legatus Angliæ and many Frenchmen did divulge it so; but withal, in both places he doth add, that the business was then under trial, and not yet perfectly known. I do not trust my memory: I know my age and my infirmities. Cambden, I am sure, I have read; and read again; but neither in him, nor in Bishop Carleton's "Thankful Remembrancer," do I remember any such thing. Others may, perchance. Yet, in the year 1576, I read in both of some pictures, representing some that would have kill'd that glorious queen with a motto, Quorsum hæc, alio properantibus! which pictures were made by some of the conspiracy for their incouragement; but intercepted, and showed, they say, to the queen. Did the time agree, it is possible these pictures might be the ground of those mistaken, if mistaken, waxen images, which I desire to be taught by others who can give a better account.—Casaubon's (M.) Treatise, proving Spirits, Witches, and Supernatural Operations, 1672. 12mo., p. 92.
In Scotland this practice was in high favour with witches, both in ancient and modern times. The lamentable story of poor King Duff, as related by Hector Boethius, a story which has blanched the cheek and spoiled the rest of many a youthful reader, is too well known to need extracting. Even so late as 1676, Sir George Maxwell, of Pollock, (See Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 323,) apparently a man of melancholy and valetudinarian habits, believed himself bewitched to death by six witches, one man and five women, who were leagued for the purpose of tormenting a clay image in his likeness. Five of the accused were executed, and the sixth only escaped on account of extreme youth.
Isabel Gowdie, the famous Scotch witch before referred to, in her confessions gives a very particular account of the mode in which these images were manufactured. It is curious, and worth quoting:—
Johne Taylor and Janet Breadhead, his wyff, in Bellnakeith, Bessie Wilsone, in Aulderne, and Margret Wilsone, spows to Donald Callam in Aulderne, and I, maid an pictur of clay, to distroy the Laird of Parkis meall[62] children. Johne Taylor browght hom the clay, in his plaid newk;[63] his wyff brak it verie small, lyk meall,[64] and sifted it with a siew,[65] and powred in water among it, in the Divellis nam, and vrought it werie sore, lyk rye-bowt;[66] and maid of it a pictur of the Lairdis sones. It haid all the pairtis and merkis of a child, such as heid, eyes, nose, handis, foot, mowth, and little lippes. It wanted no mark of a child; and the handis of it folded down by its sydes. It was lyk a pow,[67] or a flain gryce.[68] We laid the face of it to the fyre, till it strakned;[69] and a cleir fyre round abowt it, till it ves read lyk a cole.[70] After that, we wold rest it now and then; each other day[71] ther wold be an piece of it weill rosten. The Laird of Parkis heall maill children by it ar to suffer, if it be not gotten and brokin, als weill as thes that ar borne and dead alreadie. It ves still putt in and taken out of the fyre, in the Divellis name. It wes hung wp wpon an knag. It is yet in Johne Taylor's hows, and it hes a cradle of clay abowt it. Onlie Johne Taylor and his wyff, Janet Breadhead, Bessie and Margret Wilsones in Aulderne, and Margret Brodie, thair, and I, were onlie at the making of it. All the multitud of our number of Witches, of all the Coevens, kent[72] all of it, at owr nixt meitting after it was maid.
The wordis which we spak, quhan we maid the pictur, for distroyeing of the Laird of Parkis meall-children, wer thus:
'In the Divellis nam, we powr in this water among this mowld (meall,)[73]
For lang duyning and ill heall;
We putt it into the fyre,
That it mey be brunt both stik and stowre.
It salbe brunt, with owr will,
As any stikle[74] wpon a kill.'
The Divell taught ws the wordis; and quhan ve haid learned them, we all fell downe wpon owr bare kneyis, and owr hair abowt owr eyes, and owr handis lifted wp, looking steadfast wpon the Divell, still saying the wordis thryse ower, till it wes maid. And then, in the Divellis nam, we did put it in, in the midst of the fyre. Efter it had skrukned[75] a little before the fyre, and quhan it ves read lyk a coale, we took it owt in the Divellis nam. Till it be broken, it will be the deathe of all the meall children that the Laird of Park will ewer get. Cast it ower an Kirk, it will not brak quhill[76] it be broken with an aix, or som such lyk thing, be a man's handis. If it be not broken, it will last an hundreth yeir. It hes ane cradle about it of clay, to preserue it from skaith;[77] and it wes rosten each vther day, at the fyr; som tymes on pairt of it, som tymes an vther pairt of it; it vold be a litle wat with water, and then rosten. The bairn vold be brunt and rosten, ewin as it ves by ws.—Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, Vol. iii. pp. 605 and 612.
[B 4 b 1]. "And sayd that she should haue gould, siluer, and worldly wealth at her will.">[ These familiars, to use Warburton's expression, always promised with the lavishness of a young courtier, and performed with the indifference of an old one. Nothing seems to puzzle Dr. Dee more, in the long and confidential intercourse he carried on so many years with his spirits, than to account for the great scarcity of specie they seemed to be afflicted with, and the unsatisfactory and unfurnished state of their exchequer. Bills, to be sure, they gave at long dates; but these constantly required renewing, and were never honoured at last. Any application for present relief, in good current coin of the realm, was invariably followed by what Meric Casaubon very significantly calls "sermonlike stuff." The learned professor in witchery, John Stearne, seems to fix six shillings as the maximum of money payment at one time which in all his experience he had detected between witches and their familiars. He was examining Joan Ruccalver, of Powstead, in Suffolk, who had been promised by her spirit that she should never want meat, drink, clothes, or money. "Then I asked her whether they brought her any money or no; and she said sometimes four shillings at a time, and sometimes six shillings at a time; but that is but seldom, for I never knew any that had any money before, except of Clarke's wife, of Manningtree, who confessed the same, and showed some, which, she said, her impe brought her, which was proper money." Confirmation, page 27. Judging from the anxiety which this worthy displays to be "satisfied and paid with reason" for his itinerant labours, such a scanty and penurious supply would soon have disgusted him, if he had been witch, instead of witch-finder.
[B 4 b 2]. "She had bewitched to death Richard Ashton, sonne of Richard Ashton, of Downeham, Esquire.">[ Richard Assheton, (as the name is more properly spelled,) thus done to death by witchcraft, was the son of Richard Assheton, of Downham, an old manor house, the scite of which is now supplied by a modern structure, which Dr. Whitaker thinks, in point of situation, has no equal in the parish of Whalley. Richard, the son, married Isabel, daughter and heiress of Mr. Hancock, of Pendleton Hall, and died without offspring. The family estate accordingly descended to the younger brother, Nicholas Assheton, whose diary for part of the year 1617 and part of the year following is given, page 303 of Whitaker's History of Whalley, edition 1818, and is a most valuable record of the habits, pursuits, and course of life of a Lancashire country gentleman of that period. It well deserves detaching in a separate publication, and illustrating with a more expanded commentary.
[C b]. "Piggin full.">[ Piggin is properly a sort of bowl, or pail, with one of the staves much longer than the rest, made for a handle, to lade water by, and used especially in brewhouses to measure out the liquor with.
[C 2 a]. "Nicholas Banister.">[ Dr. Whitaker, in the pedigree of the Banisters, of Altham, (genealogy was, it is well known, one of the vulnerable parts of this Achilles of topography,) erroneously states this Nicholas Banister to have been buried at Altham, December 7, 1611. It appears, however, from a deed, an inspection of which I owe to the kindness of my friend, Dr. Fleming, that his will was dated the 15th August, 1612. In all probability he did not die for some years after that date. He married, first, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Richard Elston, of Brockall, Esq.; and, second, Catherine, daughter of Edmund Ashton, of Chaderton, Esq. The manor house of Altham, for more than five centuries the residence of this ancient family, stands, to use Dr. Whitaker's words, upon a gentle elevation on the western side of the river Calder, commanding a low and fertile domain. It has been surrounded, according to the prudence or jealousy of the feudal times, with a very deep quadrangular moat, which must have included all the apparatus of the farm.
[C 3 a]. "At Malking Tower, in the forrest of Pendle.">[ Malkin Tower was the habitation of Mother Demdike, the situation of which is preserved, for the structure no longer exists, by local tradition. Malkin is the Scotch or north country word for hare, as this animal was one into which witches were supposed to be fond of transforming themselves. Malkin Tower is, in fact, the Witches' Tower. The term is used in the following passage in Morison's Poems, p. 7, which bears upon the above explanation:—
"Or tell the pranks o' winter's nights,
How Satan blazes uncouth lights;
Or how he does a core convene
Upon a witch-frequented green,
Wi' spells and cauntrips hellish rantin',
Like mawkins thro' the fields they're janting."
[C 4 b]. "We want old Demdike, who dyed in the castle before she came to her tryall.">[ Worn out most probably with her imprisonment, she having been committed in April, and the cruelties she had undergone, both before and after her commitment. Master Nowell and Master Potts both wanted her, we may readily conceive, to fill up the miserable pageant; but she was gone where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. With the exception of Alice Nutter, in whom interest is excited from very different grounds, Mother Demdike attracts attention in a higher degree than any other of these Pendle witches. She was, beyond dispute, the Erictho of Pendle. Mother Chattox was but second in rank. There is something fearfully intense in the expression of the former,—blind, on the last verge of the extreme limit of human existence, and mother of a line of witches,—"that she would pray for the said Baldwin, both still and loud." She is introduced in Shadwell's play, the Lancashire Witches, 1682, as a persona dramatis, along with Mother Dickinson and Mother Hargrave, two of the witches convicted in 1633, but without any regard to the characteristic circumstances under which she appears in the present narrative. The following invocation, which is put into her mouth, is rather a favourable specimen of that play, certainly not one of the worst of Shadwell's, in which there are many vigorous strokes, with an alloy of coarseness not unusual in his works, and some powerful conceptions of character:
Come, sisters, come, why do you stay?
Our business will not brook delay;
The owl is flown from the hollow oak,
From lakes and bogs the toads do croak;
The foxes bark, the screech-owl screams,
Wolves howl, bats fly, and the faint beams
Of glow-worms light grows bright a-pace;
The stars are fled, the moon hides her face.
The spindle now is turning round,
Mandrakes are groaning under ground:
I'th' hole i'th' ditch (our nails have made)
Now all our images are laid,
Of wax and wooll, which we must prick,
With needles urging to the quick.
Into the hole I'le poure a flood
Of black lambs bloud, to make all good.
The lamb with nails and teeth wee'l tear.
Come, where's the sacrifice? appear.
* * * *
Oyntment for flying here I have,
Of childrens fat, stoln from the grave:
The juice of smallage, and night-shade,
Of poplar leaves, and aconite, made
With these.
The aromatic reed I boyl,
With water-parsnip and cinquefoil;
With store of soot, and add to that
The reeking blood of many a bat.
Lancashire Witches, pp. 10, 41.
One of the peculiarities of Shadwell's play is the introduction of the Lancashire dialect, which he makes his clown Clod speak. The subjoined extract may perhaps amuse my readers. Collier would have enjoyed it:
Clod. An yeow been a mon Ay'st talk wy ye a bit, yeow mun tack a care o your sells, the plecs haunted with Buggarts, and Witches, one of 'em took my Condle and Lanthorn out of my hont, and flew along wy it; and another Set me o top o'th tree, where I feel dawn now, Ay ha well neegh brocken my theegh.
Doubt. The fellows mad, I neither understand his words, nor his Sence, prethee how far is it to Whalley?
Clod. Why yeow are quite besaid th' road mon, yeow Shoulden a gon dawn th' bonk by Thomas o Georges, and then ee'n at yate, and turn'd dawn th' Lone, and left the Steepo o'th reeght hont.
Bell. Prithee don't tell us what we should have done, but how far is it to Whalley?
Clod. Why marry four mail and a bit.
Doubt. Wee'l give thee an Angel and show us the way thither.
Clod. Marry thats Whaint. I canno see my hont, haw con Ay show yeow to Whalley to neeght.
Bell. Canst thou show us to any house where we may have Shelter and Lodging to night? we are Gentlemen and strangers, and will pay you well for't.
Clod. Ay byr Lady con I, th' best ludging and diet too in aw Lancashire. Yonder at th' hough where yeow seen th' leeghts there.
Doubt. Whose house is that?
Clod. Why what a pox, where han yeow lived? why yeow are Strongers indeed! why, 'tis Sir Yedard Harfourts, he Keeps oppen hawse to all Gentry, yeou'st be welcome to him by day and by neeght he's Lord of aw here abauts.
Bell. My Mistresses Father, Luck if it be thy will, have at my Isabella, Canst thou guide us thither?
Clod. Ay, Ay, there's a pawer of Company there naw, Sir Jeffery Shaklehead, and the Knight his Son, and Doughter.
Doubt. Lucky above my wishes, O my dear Theodosia, how my heart leaps at her! prethee guide us thither, wee'l pay thee well.
Clod. Come on, I am e'n breed aut o my sences, I was ne'er so freeghtened sin I was born, give me your hont.—Lancashire Witches, p. 14.
[D b]. "Ann Whittle, alias Chattox.">[ Chattox, from her continually chattering.
[D 2 a 1]. "Her lippes euer chattering and walking.">[ Walking, i.e., working. Old Chattox might have sat to Archbishop Harsnet for her portrait. What can exceed the force and graphic truth, the searching wit and sarcasm, of the picture he sketches in 1605?
Out of these is shaped vs the true Idœa of a Witch, an old weather-beaten Croane, hauing her chinne, & her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow eyed, vntoothed, furrowed on her face, hauing her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgottē her pater noster, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee haue learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: Pax, max, fax, for a spel: or can say Sir Iohn of Grantams curse, for the Millers Eeles, that were stolne: All you that haue stolne the Millers Eeles, Laudate dominum de cœlis: And all they that haue consented thereto, benedicamus domino: Why then ho, beware, looke about you my neighbours; if any of you haue a sheepe sicke of the giddies, or an hogge of the mumps, or an horse of the staggers, or a knauish boy of the schoole, or an idle girle of the wheele, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porredge, nor her father, and mother, butter enough for their bread; and she haue a little helpe of the Mother, Epilepsie, or Cramp, to teach her role her eyes, wrie her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, holde her armes and hands stiffe, make anticke faces, grine, mow, and mop like an Ape, tumble like a Hedge-hogge, and can mutter out two or three words of gibridg, as obus, bobus: and then with-all old mother Nobs hath called her by chaunce, idle young huswife, or bid the deuill scratch her, then no doubt but mother Nobs is the Witch: the young girle is Owle-blasted, and possessed: and it goes hard but ye shall haue some idle adle, giddie, lymphaticall, illuminate dotrel, who being out of credite, learning, sobriety, honesty, and wit, will take this holy aduantage, to raise the ruines of his desperate decayed name, and for his better glory wil be-pray the iugling drab, and cast out Mopp the deuil.
They that haue their braines baited, and their fancies distempered with the imaginations, and apprehensions of Witches, Coniurers, and Fayries, and all that Lymphatical Chimæra: I finde to be marshalled in one of these fiue rankes, children, fooles, women, cowards, sick, or blacke, melancholicke, discomposed wits. The Scythians being a warlike Nation (as Plutarch reports) neuer saw any visions.—Harsnet's Declaration, p. 136.
[D 2 a 2]. "From these two sprung all the rest in order.">[ The descent from these two rival witch stocks, between which a deadly feud and animosity prevailed, which led to the destruction of both families, is shewn as follows:
| Elizabeth Sothernes, alias Old Demdike, died in prison in 1612, about 80 years old. | Anne Whittle, alias Chattox, executed at Lancaster, 1612, about 80 years old. | ||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | ||||||||||
| Christopher == Eliz. Howgate. Both of them were reputed to be at the witches meeting on Good Friday, 1612, but were not indicted. Perhaps they were the "one Holgate and his wife" mentioned amongst the witches in 1633. | Elizabeth, executed at Lancaster, 1612. | == | John Device, or Davies, supposed to have been bewitched to death, by Widow Chattox, because he had not paid her his yearly aghen dole of meal. | Anne, executed in 1612. | == | Thomas Redferne. | |||||
| Mary. | |||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |||||||||
| James Device, or Davies, executed at Lancaster in 1612. | Alizon, executed at Lancaster in 1612. | Jennet, 9 years old in 1612, and an evidence in the present trial. Condemned herself, along with 16 other persons, for witchcraft, in 1633, when she appears to have been unmarried, but not executed. | |||||||||
[D 3 a]. "Commaunded this examinate to call him by the name of Fancie.">[ The fittest name for a familiar she could possibly have chosen. Sir Walter Scott (Letters on Demonology, p. 242) unaccountably speaks of Fancie as a female devil. Master Potts would have told him, (see [M 2 b],) "that Fancie had a very good face, and was a very proper man."
[D 3 b 1]. "The wife of Richard Baldwin, of Pendle.">[ Richard Baldwin was the miller who accosted Old Dembdike so unceremoniously.
[D 3 b 2]. "Robert Nutter.">[ The family of the Nutters, of Pendle, bore a great share in the proceedings referred to in this trial. It seems to have been a family of note amongst the inferior gentry or yeomanry of the forest. A Nutter held courts for many years about this period, as deputy steward at Clitheroe. (See Whitaker's Whalley, p. 307.) Three of the name are stated in the evidence to have been killed by witchcraft, Christopher Nutter, Robert Nutter, and Anne, the daughter of Anthony Nutter; and one of the unfortunate persons convicted is Alice Nutter. The branch to which Robert belonged is shewn in the following table:
| Robert Nutter, the elder, ofPendle, called old Robert Nutter. | = | Elizabeth, who is reputed tohave employed Anne Chattox, Loomeshaw's wife, and Jane Boothman to bewitch to deathyoung Robert Nutter, that other relations might inherit. | |||||||
| Christopher, reputed to havedied of witchcraft about 18 years before. | |||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |||||||
| Robert, of Greenhead, inPendle, a retainer of Sir Richard Shuttleworth, reputed to have been bewitched todeath 18 or 19 years before the trial took place. | = | Mary | John, of Higham Booth | Margaret | = | Crooke | |||
| gaveevidence at the trial | |||||||||
[D 4 a]. "One Mr. Baldwyn (the late Schoole-maister at Coulne) did by his learning, stay the sayd Loomeshaws wife, and therefore had a Capon from Redfearne.">[ I regret that I can give no account of this learned Theban, who appears to have stayed the plague, and who taught at the school at which Archbishop Tillotson was afterwards educated. He well deserved his capon. Had he continued at Colne up to the time of this trial, he might perhaps, on the same easy terms, have kept the powers of darkness in check, and prevented some imputed crimes which cost ten unfortunates their lives.
[E b 1]. "Iames Robinson.">[ Baines, in his History of Lancashire, vol. i. p. 605, speaks of Edmund Robinson, the father of the boy on whose evidence the witches were convicted in 1633, as if he had been a witness at the present trial; which is probably a mistake for this James Robinson, as no Edmund Robinson appears amongst the witnessses whose depositions are given.
[E b 2]. "Anne Whittle alias Chattox was hired by this examinates wife to card wooll.">[ She seems to have been by occupation a carder of wool, and to have filled up the intervals, when she had no employment, by mendicancy.
[E 2 a]. "Sir Richard Shuttleworth."} Of the family of the Shuttleworths of Gawthorp, "where they resided" Whitaker observes, "in the condition of inferior gentry till the lucrative profession of the law raised them, in the reign of Elizabeth, to the rank of knighthood and an estate proportioned to its demands." Sir Richard was Sergeant-at-law, and Chief Justice of Chester, 31st Elizabeth, and died without issue about 1600.
[E 2 b]. "A Charme.">[ Evidently in so corrupted a state as to bid defiance to any attempt at elucidation.
[E 3 a 1]. "Perceiuing Anthonie Nutter of Pendle to fauour Elizabeth Sothernes alias Dembdike.">[ The Sothernes and Davies's and the Whittles and Redfernes were the Montagus and Capulets of Pendle. The poor cottager whose drink was forsepoken or bewitched, or whose cow went mad, and who in his attempt to propitiate one of the rival powers offended the other, would naturally exclaim from the innermost recesses of his heart, "A plague on both your houses."
[E 3 a 2]. "Gaping as though he would haue wearied this Examinate.">[ Wearied for worried.
[E 3 b]. "Examination of Iames Device.">[ This is a very curious examination. The production of the four teeth and figure of clay dug up at the west-end of Malkin Tower would look like a "damning witness" to the two horror-struck justices and the assembled concourse at Read, who did not perhaps consider how easily such evidences may be furnished, and how readily they who hide may find. The incident deposed to at the burial at the New Church in Pendle is a wild and striking one.
[E 4 a]. "About eleuen yeares agoe, this Examinate and her mother had their firehouse broken.">[ The inference intended is, that Whittle's family committed the robbery from Old Demdike's house. This was, in all probability, the origin of their feuds. The abstraction of the coif and band, tempting articles to the young daughter of Old Chattox, not destitute, if we may judge from one occurrence deposed to, of personal attractions, may be said to have convulsed Lancashire from the Leven to the Mersey,—to have caused a sensation, the shock of which, after more than two centuries, has scarcely yet subsided, and to have actually given a new name to the fair sex.
[E 4 b 1]. "One Aghen-dole of meale.">[ This Aghen-dole, a word still, I believe, in use for a particular measure of any article, was, I presume, a kind of witches' black mail. My friend, the Rev. Canon Parkinson, informs me that Aghen-dole, sometimes pronounced Acken-dole, signifies an half-measure of anything, from half-hand-dole. Mr. Halliwell has omitted it in his Glossary, now in progress.
[E 4 b 2]. "Iohn Moore of Higham, Gentleman.">[ Sir Jonas Moore, of whom an account is contained in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 479, and whom he characterizes as a sanguine projector, was born in Pendle Forest, and was probably of this family.
[E 4 b 3]. "She would meet with the said Iohn Moore, or his.">[ i.e. She would be equal with him.
[F a 1]. "Charne.">[ i.e. Charm.
[F a 2]. "With weeping teares she humbly acknowledged them to be true.">[ She seems to have confessed in the hope of saving her daughter, Anne Redfern. But from such a judge as Sir Edward Bromley, mercy was as little to be expected as common sense from his "faithful chronicler," Thomas Potts.
[F 2 b]. "Sparing no man with fearefull execrable curses and banning.">[ Nothing seems to shock the nerves of these witch historiographers so much as the utter want of decorum and propriety exhibited by these unhappy creatures in giving vent to these indignant outbreaks, which a sense of the wicked injustice of their fate, and seeing their own offspring brought up in evidence against them, through the most detestable acts, and by the basest subornation, would naturally extort from minds even of iron mould. If ever Lear's or Timon's power of malediction could be justifiably called into exercise, it would be against such a tribunal and such witnesses as they had generally to encounter.
[F 4 a]. "That at the third time her Spirit.">[ Something seems to be wanting here, as she does not state what occurred at the two previous interviews. The learned judge may have exercised a sound discretion in this omission, as the particulars might be of a nature unfit for publication. The present tract is, undoubtedly, remarkably free from those disgusting details of which similar reports are generally full to overflowing.
[F 4 b]. "The said Iennet Deuice, being a yong Maide, about the age of nine yeares.">[ This child must have been admirably trained, (some Master Thomson might have been near at hand to instruct her,) or must have had great natural capacity for deception. She made an excellent witness on this occasion. What became of her after the wholesale extinction of her family, to which she was so mainly instrumental, is not now known. In all likelihood she dragged on a miserable existence, a forlorn outcast, pointed at by the hand of scorn, or avoided with looks of horror in the wilds of Pendle. As if some retributive punishment awaited her, she is reported to have been the Jennet Davies who was condemned in 1633, on the evidence of Edmund Robinson the younger, with Mother Dickenson and others, but not executed. Her confession, if she made one at the second trial, might not have been unsimilar to that of Alexander Sussums, of Melford in Suffolk, who, Hearne tells us, confessed "that he had things which did draw those marks I found upon him, but said he could not help it, for that all his kinred were naught. Then I asked him how it was possible they could suck without his consent. He said he did consent to that. Then I asked him again why he should do it when as God was so merciful towards him, as I then told him of, being a man whom I had been formerly acquainted withal, as having lived in town. He answered again, he could not help it, for that all his generation was naught; and so told me his mother and aunt were hanged, his grandmother burnt for witchcraft, and ten others of them questioned and hanged. This man is yet living, notwithstanding he confessed the sucking of such things above sixteen years together."—Confirmation, p. 36.
[G 3 a]. "Anne Crouckshey.">[ Anne Cronkshaw.
[G 3 b 1]. "Vpon Good Friday last there was about twentie persons.">[ This meeting, if not a witches' Sabbath, was a close approximation to one. On the subject of the Sabbath, or periodical meeting of witches, De Lancre is the leading authority. He who is curious cannot do better than consult this great hierophant, (his work is entitled Tableau de l'Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons. Paris, 1613, 4to.) whose knowledge and experience well qualified him to have been constituted the Itinerant Master of Ceremonies, an officer who, he assures us, was never wanting on such occasions. In that singular book, The History of Monsieur Oufle, p. 288, (English Translation, 1711, 8vo.) are collected from various sources all the ceremonies and circumstances attending the holding the Sabbath. It appears that non-attendance invariably incurred a penalty, which is computed upon the average at the eighth part of a crown, or in French currency at ten sous—that, though the contrary has been maintained by many grave authors, egress and ingress by the chimney (De Lancre had depositions without number, he tells us, vide p. 114, on this important head,) was not a matter of solemn obligation, but was an open question—that no grass ever grows upon the place where the Sabbath is kept; which is accounted for by the circumstance of its being trodden by so many of those whose feet are constitutionally hot, and therefore being burnt up and consequently very barren—that two devils of note preside on the occasion, the great negro, who is called Master Leonard, and a little devil, whom Master Leonard sometimes substitutes in his place as temporary vice-president; his name is Master John Mullin. (De Lancre, p. 126.) With regard to a very important point, the bill of fare, great difference of opinion exists: some maintaining that every delicacy of the season, to use the newspaper phrase, is provided; others stoutly asserting that nothing is served up but toads, the flesh of hanged criminals, dead carcases fresh buried taken out of Churchyards, flesh of unbaptized infants, or beasts which died of themselves—that they never eat with salt, and that their bread is of black millet. (De Lancre, pp. 104, 105.) In this diversity of opinion I can only suggest, that difference of climate, habit, and fashion, might possibly have its weight, and render a very different larder necessary for the witches of Pendle and those of Gascony or Lorrain. The fare of the former on this occasion appears to have been of a very substantial and satisfactory kind, "beef, bacon, and roasted mutton:" the old saying so often quoted by the discontented masters of households applying emphatically in this case:—
"God sends us good meat, but the devil sends cooks."
We find in the present report no mention made of the
"Dance and provencal song"
which formed one great accompaniment of the orgies of the southern witches. Bodin's authority is express, that each, the oldest not excused, was expected to perform a coranto, and great attention was paid to the regularity of the steps. We owe to him the discovery, which is not recorded in any annals of dancing I have met with, that the lavolta, a dance not dissimilar, according to his description, to the polka of the present day, was brought out of Italy into France by the witches at their festive meetings. Of the language spoken at these meetings, De Lancre favours us with a specimen, valuable, like the Punic fragment in the Pœnolus, for its being the only one of the kind. In nomine patrica araguenco petrica agora, agora, Valentia jouando goure gaiti goustia. As it passes my skill, I can only commend it to the especial notice of Mr. Borrow against his next journey into Spain. What was spoken at Malkin Tower was, doubtless, a dialect not yet obsolete, and which Tummus and Meary would have had no difficulty in comprehending. On the subject of these witches' Sabbaths, Dr. Ferriar remarks, in his curious and agreeable Essay on Popular Illusions, (see Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, vol. iii., p. 68,) a sketch which it is much to be regretted that he did not subsequently expand and revise, and publish in a separate form:—
The solemn meetings of witches are supposed to be put beyond all doubt by the numerous confessions of criminals, who have described their ceremonies, named the times and places of meeting, and the persons present, and who have agreed in their relations, though separately delivered.[78] But I would observe, first, that the circumstances told of those festivals are ridiculous and incredible in themselves; for they are represented as gloomy and horrible, yet with a mixture of childish and extravagant fancies, more likely to disgust and alienate than to conciliate the minds of the guests. They have every appearance of uneasy dreams; sometimes the devil and his subjects say mass, sometimes he preaches to them, more commonly he was seen in the form of a black goat, surrounded by imps in a thousand frightful shapes; but none of these forms are new, they all resemble known quadrupeds or reptiles. Secondly, I observe, that there is direct proof furnished even by demonologists, that all these supposed journies and entertainments are nothing more than dreams. Persons accused of witchcraft have been repeatedly watched, about the time which they had fixed for the meeting; they have been seen to anoint themselves with soporific compositions, after which they fell into profound sleep, and on awaking, several hours afterwards, they have related their journey through the air, their amusement at the festival, and have named the persons whom they saw there. In the instance told by Hoffman, the dreamer was chained to the floor. Common sense would rest satisfied here, but the enthusiasm of demonology has invented more than one theory to get rid of these untoward facts. Dr. Henry More, as was formerly mentioned, believed that the astral spirit only was carried away: other demonologists imagined that the witch was really removed to the place of meeting, but that a cacodemon was left in her room, as an ειδωλον, to delude the spectators. Thirdly, some stories of the festivals are evidently tricks. Such is that related by Bodinus, with much gravity: a man is found in a gentleman's cellar, and apprehended as a thief; he declares his wife had brought him thither to a witch-meeting, and on his pronouncing the name of God, she and all her companions had vanished, and left him inclosed. His wife is immediately seized, on this righteous evidence, and hanged, with several other persons, named as present at the meeting.
[G 3 b 2]. "Christopher Iackes, of Thorny-holme, and his wife.">[ This would appear to be Christopher Hargreaves, called here Christopher Jackes, for o' or of Jack, according to the Lancashire mode of forming patronymics.
[G 4 a]. "The first was, for the naming of the Spirit, which Alizon Deuice, now Prisoner at Lancaster, had: But did not name him, because shee was not there.">[ Gaule says, speaking of the ceremonies at the witches' solemn meetings: "If the witch be outwardly Christian, baptism must be renounced, and the party must be rebaptized in the Devil's name, and a new name is also imposed by him; and here must be godfathers too, for the Devil takes them not to be so adult as to promise and vow for themselves." (Cases of Conscience touching Witches, page 59. 1646, 12mo.) But Gaule does not mention any naming or baptism of spirits and familiars on such occasions.
[G 4 b]. "Romleyes Moore.">[ Romilly's or Rumbles Moor, a wild and mountainous range in Craven, not unaptly selected for a meeting on a special emergency of a conclave of witches.
[H 2 a 1]. "Was so insensible, weake, and vnable in all thinges, as he could neither speake, heare, or stand, but was holden vp.">[ Pitiable, truly, was the situation of this unhappy wretch. Brought out from the restraint of a long imprisonment, before and during which he had, as we may conjecture, been subjected to every inhumanity, in a state more dead than alive, into a court which must have looked like one living mass, with every eye lit up with horror, and curses, not loud but deep, muttered with harmonious concord from the mouths of every spectator.
[H 2 a 2]. "Anne Towneley, wife of Henrie Townely, of the Carre.">[ Would this be Anne, the daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Catterall, of Catterall and Little Mitton, Esq., who married Henry Townley, the son of Lawrence Townley? (See Whitaker's Whalley, p. 396.) The Townleys of Barnside and Carr were a branch of the Townleys, of Townley. Barnside, or Barnsete, is an ancient mansion in the township of Colne, which, Whitaker observes, was abandoned by the family, for the warmer situation of Carr, about the middle of the last century.
[H 2 a 3]. "Master Nowel humbly prayed Master Towneley might be called.">[ It is to be regretted we have no copy of the viva voce examination of Mr. Townley, the husband of the lady whose life was said to have been taken away by witchcraft. The examinations given in this tract are altogether those of persons in a humble rank of life. The contrast between their evidence and that of an individual occupying the position of the descendant of one of the oldest families in the neighbourhood, with considerable landed possessions, might have been amusing and instructive.
[H 2 a 4]. "Master Nowell humbly prayed, that the particular examinations taken before him and others might be openly published and read in court.">[ This kind of evidence, the witnesses being in court, and capable of being examined, would not be received at the present day. At that time a greater laxity prevailed.
[H 3 a]. "Sheare Thursday.">[ The Thursday before Easter, and so called, for that, in the old Fathers' days, the people would that day, "shave their hedes, and clypp their berdes, and pool their heedes, and so make them honest against Easter Day."—Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i., p. 83, edition 1841.
[K b 1]. "A Charme.">[ Sinclair, in his Satan's Invisible World Discovered, informs us, that "At night, in the time of popery, when folks went to bed, they believed the repetition of this following prayer was effectual to preserve them from danger, and the house too.
"Who sains the house the night,
They that sains it ilka night.
Saint Bryde and her brate,
Saint Colme and his hat,
Saint Michael and his spear,
Keep this house from the weir;
From running thief,
And burning thief;
And from and ill Rea,
That be the gate can gae;
And from an ill weight,
That be the gate can light
Nine reeds about the house;
Keep it all the night,
What is that, what I see
So red, so bright, beyond the sea?
'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands,
Through the feet, through the throat,
Through the tongue;
Through the liver and the lung.
Well is them that well may
Fast on Good-friday."
which lines are not unlike some of those in the present "charme," which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in poetical spirit.
[K b 2]. "Ligh in leath wand.">[ Leath is no doubt lithe, flexible. What "ligh in" is intended for, unless it be lykinge, which the Promptorium Parvulorum (vide part i. p. 304) explains by lusty, or craske, Delicativus, crassus, I am unable to conjecture. It is clear, that the wand in one hand is to steck, i.e. stake, or fasten, the latch of hell door, while the key in his other hand is to open heaven's lock.
[K b 3]. "Let Crizum child goe to it Mother mild.">[ The chrisom, according to the usual explanation, was a white cloth placed upon the head of an infant at baptism, when the chrism, or sacred oil of the Romish Church, was used in that sacrament. If the child died within a month of its birth, that cloth was used as a shroud; and children so dying were called chrisoms in the old bills of mortality.
[K b 4]. "A light so farrandly.">[ Farrandly, or farrantly, a word still in use in Lancashire, and which is equivalent to fair, likely, or handsome. (See Lancashire Dialect and Glossary.) "Harne panne," i.e., cranium.—Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 237.
[K 2 a 1]. "Vpon the ground of holy weepe.">[ I know not how to explain this, unless it mean the ground of holy weeping, i.e., the Garden of Gethsemane.
[K 2 a 2]. "Shall neuer deere thee.">[ The word to dere, or hurt, says Mr. Way, Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 119, is commonly used by Chaucer and most other writers until the sixteenth century:
"Fyr he schal hym nevyr dere."
Cœur de Lion, 1638.
Fabyan observes, under the year 1194, "So fast besyed this good Kyng Richarde to vex and dere the infydelys of Sury." Palsgrave gives, "To dere or hurte a noye nuire, I wyll never dere you by my good wyll." Ang. Sax.,
nocere,
læsio.
[K 3 a]. "The Witches of Salmesbvry.">[ Or, more properly, Samlesbury. This wicked attempt on the part of this priest, or Jesuit, Thompson, alias Southworth, to murder the three persons whose trial is next reported, by suborning a child of the family to accuse them of what, in the excited state of the public mind at the time, was almost certain to consign them to a public execution, has few parallels in the annals of atrocity. The plot was defeated, and the lives of the persons accused, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, saved, by no sagacity of the judge or wisdom of the jury, but by the effect of one simple question, wrung from the intended victims on the verge of anticipated condemnation, and which, natural as it might appear, was one the felicity of which Garrow or Erskine might have envied. It demolished, like Ithuriel's spear, the whole fabric of imposture, and laid it open even to the comprehension of Sir Edward Bromley and Master Thomas Potts. This was a case which well deserved Archbishop Harsnet for its historian. His vein of irony, which Swift or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had, from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute 1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have accomplished at once what was slowly and with difficulty brought about by the arguments of Scot and Webster, the establishment of the Royal Society, and a century's growth of intelligence and knowledge.
[K 3 b 1]. "A Seminarie Priest.">[ Of this Thompson, alias Southworth, I find no account in Dodd's Catholic Church History. A John Southworth is noticed, vol. iii. p. 303, who is described as of an ancient family in Lancashire, and who was executed at Tyburn, June 28th, 1655. His dying speech is to be found in the same volume, p. 360. The interval of time, as well as the difference of surname, excludes the presumption of his being identical with the person referred to in the text, the hero of this extraordinary conspiracy, and who was probably of the family of Sir John Southworth, after mentioned.
[K 3 b 2]. "A Iesuite, whereof this Countie of Lancaster hath good store.">[ Lancashire was, about this period, the great hot-bed of Popish recusants. From the very curious list of recusants given (Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 541,) it would seem that Samlesbury was one of their strongholds:—
James Cowper a seminarie prieste receipted releived and mainteined att the lodge of Sir John Southworthe in Samlesburie Parke by Mr. Tho: Southworthe, one of the younger sonnes of the said Sir John. And att the howse of John Warde dwellinge in Samlesburie Park syde. And the said Prieste sayeth Masse att the said lodge and att the said Wards howse. Whether resorte, Mr. Sowthworthe, Mres. An Sowthworthe, John Walmesley servante to Sir John Southworthe, Tho. Southworthe dwellinge in the Parke, John Gerrerde, servante to Sir John Southworthe, John Singleton, John Wrighte, James Sherples iunior, John Warde of Samlesburie, John Warde of Medler thelder, Henrie Potter of Medler, John Gouldon of Winwicke, Thomas Gouldon of the same, Roberte Anderton of Samlesburie and John Sherples of Stanleyhurst in Samlesburie.—Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 543.
Att the lodge in Samlesburie Parke there be masses daylie and Seminaries dyuerse Resorte thither as James Cowpe, Harrisson Bell and such like, The like vnlawfull meetings are made daylie att the howse of John Warde by the Parke syde of Samlesburie all wiche matters, masses, resorte to Masses, receipting of Seminaries wilbe Justifyed by Mr. Adam Sowtheworthe Thomas Sherples and John Osbaldston.—Ibid., p. 544.
[K 4 b]. "Picked her off.">[ Threw her off.
[L a]. "Hugh Walshmans.">[ The wife of Hugh Walshman, of Samlesbury, is mentioned in the list of recusants; Baines, vol. i. p. 544.
[L 2 a 1]. "Brought a little child.">[ The evidence against the Pendle witches exhibits meagreness and poverty of imagination compared with the accumulated horrors with which the Jesuit, fresh, it may be, from Bodin and Delrio, made his "fire burn and cauldron bubble." With respect to this old story of the magical use made of the corpses of infants, Ben Jonson, in a note on
"I had a dagger: what did I with that?
Killed an infant to have his fat;"
tells us with great gravity:
Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a lust to do murder. Sprenger in Mal. Malefic. reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of the three witches in Rem. Dæmonola lib. cap. 3, about the end of the chapter. And M. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich Quæst. 8. And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia, Epod. Horat. lib. ode 5, and Lucan, lib. 6, whose admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:—
Nec cessant à cæde manus, si sanguine vivo
Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto.
Nec refugit cædes, vivum si sacra cruorem
Extaque funereæ poscunt trepidantia mensæ.
Vulnere si ventris, non quâ natura vocabat,
Extrahitur partus calidus ponendus in aris;
Et quoties sævis opus est, et fortibus umbris
Ipsa facit maneis. Hominum mors omnis in usu est.
Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 130.
[L 2 a 2]. "They said they would annoint themselues.">[ Ben Jonson informs us:
When they are to be transported from place to place, they use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride on. Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, Remig. Dæmonolatriæ lib. 1. cap. 14. Delrio, Disquis. Mag. l. 2. quæst. 16. Bodin Dæmonoman. lib. 2 c. 14. Barthol. de Spina. quæst. de Strigib. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich. quæst. 10. Paracelsus in magn. et occul. Philosophia, teacheth the confection. Unguentum ex carne recens natorum infantium, in pulmenti, forma coctum, et cum herbis somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta, &c. And Giov. Bapti. Porta, lib. 2. Mag. Natur. cap. 16.—Ben Jonson's Works by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 119.
[L 3 a]. "Did carrie her into the loft.">[ There is something in this strange tissue of incoherencies, for knavery has little variety, which forcibly reminds us of the inventions of Elizabeth Canning, who ought to have lived in the days when witchcraft was part of the popular creed. What an admirable witch poor old Mary Squires would have made, and how brilliantly would her persecutor have shone in the days of the Baxters and Glanvilles, who acquitted herself so creditably in those of the Fieldings and the Hills.
[L 4 b 1]. "Robert Hovlden, Esquire.">[ This individual would be of the ancient family of Holden, of Holden, the last male heir of which died without issue, 1792. (See Whitaker's Whalley, 418.)
[L 4 b 2]. "Sir John Southworth.">[ In this family the manor of Samlesbury remained for three hundred and fifty years. This was, probably, the John (for the pedigree contained in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 430, does not give the clearest light on the subject) who married Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Sherburne, of Stonyhurst, and who took a great lead amongst the Catholics of Lancashire. What was the degree of relationship between Sir John and the husband of the accused, Jane Southworth, there is nothing in the descent to show. Family bickering might have a share, as well as superstition, in the opinion he entertained, "that she was an evil woman." Of the old hall at Samlesbury, the residence of the Southworths, a most interesting account will be found in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 431. He considers the centre of very high antiquity, probably not later than Edward III; and observes, "There is about the house a profusion and bulk of oak that must almost have laid prostrate a forest to erect it."
[M 1 b]. "The particular points of the Evidence.">[ What a waste of ingenuity Master Potts displays in this recapitulation, where he is merely slaying the slain, and where his wisdom was not needed. Had he applied it to the service of the Pendle witches, he would have found still grosser contrarieties, and as great absurdity. But in that case, there was no horror of Popery to sharpen his faculties, or Jesuit in the background to call his humanity into play.
[M 2 a]. "The wrinkles of an old wiues face is good euidence to the Iurie against a Witch.">[ Si sic omnia! For once the worthy clerk in court has a lucid interval, and speaks the language of common sense.
[M 2 b]. "But old Chattox had Fancie.">[ A great truth, though Master Potts might not be aware of the extent of it.
[M 4 a]. "M. Leigh, a very religious Preacher.">[ Parson of Standish, a man memorable in his day. He published several pieces, amongst others the two following: 1. "The Drumme of Devotion," by W. Leigh, of Standish, 1613.—2. "News of a Prodigious Monster in Aldington, in the Parish of Standish, in Lancashire," 1613, 4to, which show him to have been an adept in the science of title-making. He was one of the tutors of Prince Henry, and was great-grandfather of Dr. Leigh, author of the History of Lancashire.
[N 3 b]. "The Arraignment and Triall of Anne Redferne.">[ This poor woman seems to have been regularly hunted to death by her prosecutors, who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years before, by witchcraft; the only evidence, true or false, being, that she had been seen, about the same period, making figures of clay or marl. Her real offence, it may well be conjectured, was her having rejected the improper advances of the ill-conditioned young man whose death she was first indicted for procuring, and to which circumstance the rancour of his relations, the prosecutors, may evidently be traced. It is gratifying to know that she had firmness of mind to persist in the declaration of her innocence to the last.
[O 3 a]. "Alice Nutter.">[ We now come to a person of a different description from any of those who have preceded as parties accused, and on whose fate some extraordinary mystery seems to hang. Alice Nutter was not, like the others, a miserable mendicant, but was a lady of large possessions, of a respectable family, and with children whose position appears to have been such as, it might have been expected, would have afforded her the means of escaping the fate which overtook her humbler companions.
"I knew her a good woman and well bred,
Of an unquestion'd carriage, well reputed
Amongst her neighbours, reckoned with the best."
Heywood's Lancashire Witches.
She is described as the wife of Richard Nutter of the Rough Lee, and mother of Miles Nutter, who were in all likelihood nearly related to the other Nutters whose descent has been given. The tradition is, that she was closely connected by relationship or marriage with Eleanor Nutter, the daughter of Ellis Nutter of Pendle Forest, the grandmother of Archbishop Tillotson. That she was the victim of a foul and atrocious conspiracy, in which the movers were some of her own family, there seems no reason to doubt. The anxiety of her children to induce her to confess may possibly have originated in no impure or sinister motive, but it is difficult altogether to dismiss from the mind the suspicion that her wealth was her great misfortune; and that to secure it within their grasp her own household were passive, if not active, agents in her destruction. Any thing more childish or absurd than the evidence against her—as, for instance, that she joyned in killing Henry Mitton because he refused a penny to Old Demdike—it would not be easy, even from the records of witch trials, to produce. As regards Alice Nutter, Potts is singularly meagre, and it is to be lamented that the deficiency of information cannot at present be supplied. Almost the only fact he furnishes us with is, that she died maintaining her innocence. It would have been most interesting to have had the means of ascertaining how she conducted herself at her trial and after her condemnation; and how she met the iniquitous injustice of her fate, sharpened, as it must have been, by the additional bitterness of the insults and execrations of the blind and infuriated populace at her execution. It is far from improbable that some of the correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county hitherto unpublished may ultimately furnish these particulars.
Alice Nutter was doubtless the original of the story of which Heywood availed himself in The Late Lancashire Witches, 1634, 4to, which is frequently noticed by the writers of the 17th century—that the wife of a Lancashire country gentleman had been detected in practising witchcraft and unlawful arts, and condemned and executed. In that play there can be little hesitation in ascribing to Heywood the scenes in which Mr. Generous and his wife are the interlocutors, and to Broome, Heywood's coadjutor, the subordinate and farcical portions. It is a very unequal performance, but not destitute of those fine touches, which Heywood is never without, in the characters of English country gentlemen and the pathos of domestic tragedy. The following scene, which I am tempted to extract, though very inferior to the noble ones in his Woman Killed by Kindness, between Mr. and Mrs. Frankford, which it somewhat resembles in character, is not unworthy of this great and truly national dramatic writer:—
Mr. Generous. Wife. Robin, a groom.
Gen. My blood is turn'd to ice, and all my vitals
Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity
Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested
That vigorous agitation, which till now
Exprest a life within me. I, methinks,
Am a meer marble statue, and no man.
Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread;
Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent;
That, being made an infant once again,
I may begin to know. What, or where am I,
To be thus lost in wonder?
Wife. Sir.
Gen. Amazement still pursues me, how am I chang'd,
Or brought ere I can understand myself
Into this new world!
Rob. You will believe no witches?
Gen. This makes me believe all, aye, anything;
And that myself am nothing. Prithee, Robin,
Lay me to myself open; what art thou,
Or this new transform'd creature?
Rob. I am Robin;
And this your wife, my mistress.
Gen. Tell me, the earth
Shall leave its seat, and mount to kiss the moon;
Or that the moon, enamour'd of the earth,
Shall leave her sphere, to stoop to us thus low.
What, what's this in my hand, that at an instant
Can from a four-legg'd creature make a thing
So like a wife!
Rob. A bridle; a jugling bridle, Sir.
Gen. A bridle! Hence, enchantment.
A viper were more safe within my hand,
Than this charm'd engine.—
A witch! my wife a witch!
The more I strive to unwind
Myself from this meander, I the more
Therein am intricated. Prithee, woman,
Art thou a witch?
Wife. It cannot be denied,
I am such a curst creature.
Gen. Keep aloof:
And do not come too near me. O my trust;
Have I, since first I understood myself,
Been of my soul so chary, still to study
What best was for its health, to renounce all
The works of that black fiend with my best force;
And hath that serpent twined me so about,
That I must lie so often and so long
With a devil in my bosom?
Wife. Pardon, Sir. [She looks down.]
Gen. Pardon! can such a thing as that be hoped?
Lift up thine eyes, lost woman, to yon hills;
It must be thence expected: look not down
Unto that horrid dwelling, which thou hast sought
At such dear rate to purchase. Prithee, tell me,
(For now I can believe) art thou a witch?
Wife. I am.
Gen. With that word I am thunderstruck,
And know not what to answer; yet resolve me.
Hast thou made any contract with that fiend,
The enemy of mankind?
Wife. O I have.
Gen. What? and how far?
Wife. I have promis'd him my soul.
Gen. Ten thousand times better thy body had
Been promis'd to the stake; aye, and mine too,
To have suffer'd with thee in a hedge of flames,
Than such a compact ever had been made. Oh—
Resolve me, how far doth that contract stretch?
Wife. What interest in this Soul myself could claim,
I freely gave him; but his part that made it
I still reserve, not being mine to give.
Gen. O cunning devil: foolish woman, know,
Where he can claim but the least little part,
He will usurp the whole. Thou'rt a lost woman.
Wife. I hope, not so.
Gen. Why, hast thou any hope?
Wife. Yes, sir, I have.
Gen. Make it appear to me.
Wife. I hope I never bargain'd for that fire,
Further than penitent tears have power to quench.
Gen. I would see some of them.
Wife. You behold them now
(If you look on me with charitable eyes)
Tinctur'd in blood, blood issuing from the heart.
Sir, I am sorry; when I look towards heaven,
I beg a gracious pardon; when on you,
Methinks your native goodness should not be
Less pitiful than they; 'gainst both I have err'd;
From both I beg atonement.
Gen. May I presume 't?
Wife. I kneel to both your mercies.
Gen. Knowest thou what
A witch is?
Wife. Alas, none better;
Or after mature recollection can be
More sad to think on 't.
Gen. Tell me, are those tears
As full of true hearted penitence,
As mine of sorrow to behold what state,
What desperate state, thou'rt fain in?
Wife. Sir, they are.
Gen. Rise; and, as I do you, so heaven pardon me;
We all offend, but from such falling off
Defend us! Well, I do remember, wife,
When I first took thee, 'twas for good and bad:
O change thy bad to good, that I may keep thee
(As then we past our faiths) 'till Death us sever.
O woman, thou hast need to weep thyself
Into a fountain, such a penitent spring
As may have power to quench invisible flames;
In which my eyes shall aid: too little, all.
Late Lancashire Witches, Act 4.
[P 2 a 1]. "Being examined by my Lord.">[ She had evidently learned her lesson well; but this was, with all submission to his Lordship, if adopted as a test, a mighty poor one. Jennet Device must have known well the persons of the parties she accused, and who were now upon their trial, as they were all her near neighbours.
[P 2 a 2]. "Whether she knew Iohan a Style?">[ His Lordship's introduction of this apocryphal legal personage on such an occasion is very amusing. Had he studied Littleton and Perkins a little less, and given some attention to the Lancashire dialect, and some also to the study of that great book, in which even a judge may find valuable matter, the book of human nature, he might have been more successfull in his examination. Jack's o' Dick's o' Harry's would have been more likely to have been recognised as a veritable person of this world by Jennet Device, than such a name as Johan a Style; which, though very familiar at Westminster, would scarcely have its prototype at Pendle. But Jennet Device, young as she was, in natural shrewdness was far more than a match for his lordship.
[P 3 a]. "Katherine Hewit, alias Movld-heeles.">[ Of this person, who comes next in the list of witches, our information is very scanty. She was not of Pendle, but of Colne; and as her husband is described as a "clothier," may be presumed to have been in rather better circumstances than Elizabeth Southernes or Anne Whittle's families. She made no confession.
[P 4 a 1]. "Anne Foulds of Colne. Michael Hartleys of Colne.">[ Folds and Hartley are still the names of families at and in the neighbourhood of Colne.
[P 4 a 2]. "Had then in hanck a child.">[ The meaning of this term is clear, the origin rather dubious. It may come from the Scotch word, to hanck, i.e. to have in holdfast or secure, vide Jamieson's Scotch Dictionary, tit. hanck, or from handkill, to murder, vide Jamieson, under that word; or lastly, may be metaphorically used, from hanck, also signifying a skein of yarn or worsted which is tied or trussed up.
[Q 2 a]. "Iohn Bulcocke, Iane Bulcocke his mother.">[ The condition of these persons is not stated. It may be conjectured that they were of the lowest class.
[Q 3 a 1]. "At the Barre hauing formerly confessed.">[ Why is not their confession given?
[Q 3 a 2]. "Crying out in very violent and outrageous manner, even to the gallowes.">[ The latter end of these unfortunate people was perhaps similar to that of Isobel Crawford, executed in Scotland the year after for witchcraft, who, on being sentenced, openly denied all her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance, offering repeated interruption to the minister in his prayer, and refusing to pardon the executioner.
[Q 4 a]. "Master Thomas Lister of Westby.">[ See note on p. [Y a].
[Q 4 b]. "The said Bulcockes wife doth know of some Witches to bee about Padyham and Burnley.">[ Precious evidence this to put the lives of two poor creatures into jeopardy.
[R a]. "Accused the said Iohn Bulcock to turne the Spitt there.">[ What a fact this would have been for De Lancre. With all his accurate statistics on the subject of the witches' Sabbath, he was not aware that a turnspit was a necessary officer on such occasions, as well as a master of ceremonies. This artful and well instructed jade, Jennet Device, must have borne especial malice against John Bulcock.
[R 1 b]. "The names of the Witches at the Great Assembly and Feast at Malking-Tower, viz. vpon Good-Friday last, 1612.">[ In this list of fourteen individuals, Master Potts has omitted "the painful steward so careful to provide mutton," James Device, who made up the number to fifteen. Of these persons seven were not indicted: Jennet Hargraves, the wife of Hugh Hargraves, of Barley under Pendle; Elizabeth Hargraves, the wife of Christopher Hargraves; Christopher Howgate, the son of Old Demdike; Christopher Hargraves, who is described as of Thurniholme, or Thornholme, and as Christopher o' Jacks, and was husband of Elizabeth Hargraves; Grace Hay, of Padiham; Anne Crunkshey, of Marchden, or more properly, Cronkshaw of Marsden; and Elizabeth Howgate, the wife of Christopher Howgate. The two Howgates were, it may be, the "one Holgate and his wife," mentioned in Robinson's deposition in 1633. Alice Graie, or Gray, included in the list, was indicted, though no copy of the indictment is afforded by Potts, and, singular as it may seem, acquitted. Richard Miles' wife, of the Rough Lee, stated to have been present in some of the depositions, ([G 3 b],) was, beyond doubt, Alice Nutter, so called as the wife of Richard and mother of Miles Nutter.
It may afford matter for speculation, whether any real meeting took place of any of the persons above enumerated, which gave occasion for the monstrous versions of the witnesses at this trial. It is far from unlikely, that on the apprehension and commitment of Old Demdike, Old Chattox, Alizon Device, and Anne Redfern to Lancaster, a meeting would take place of their near relations, and others who might attend from curiosity, or from its being rumoured that they were themselves implicated by the confessions of those apprehended, and who by such attendance sealed their dooms. In all similar fabrications there is generally some slight foundation of fact, some scintilla of homely truth, from which, like the inverted apex of a pyramid, the disproportioned fabric expands. It is possible that, from the simple occurrence of an unusual attendance at Malking Tower on Good Friday, not unnatural under the circumstances, some of the witnesses, ignorant and easily persuaded, might be afterwards led to believe in the existence of those monstrous superadditions with which the convention was afterwards clothed. However this may be, there must have been at hand for working up the materials into a plausible form, some drill sergeant of evidence behind the curtain, who had his own interest to serve or revenge to gratify. The two particulars in the narrative that one feels least disposed to question, are, that James Device stole a wether from John Robinson of Barley, to provide a family dinner on Good Friday, and that when the meat was roasted John Bulcock performed the humble, but very necessary, duty of turning the spit.
[R 3 a]. "My Lord Gerrard.">[ Thomas Gerard, son and heir of Sir Gilbert Gerard, Master of the Robes 23d Elizabeth, was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Gerard of Gerard's Bromley, in Staffordshire, 1603. He died 1618.
[S a]. "Kniues, Elsons, and Sickles." In the Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 138, to Elsyn (elsyngk) Sibula, Mr. Way appends this note: "This word occurs in the Gloss on Gautier de Bibelesworth, Arund. MS. 220, where a buckled girdle is described:—
"Een isy doyt le hardiloun (þe tunnge)
Passer par tru de subiloun (a bore of an alsene.)
"An elsyne,—acus, subula. Cath. Ang. Sibula, an elsyn, an alle or a bodkyn. Ortus. In the inventory of the goods of a merchant at Newcastle, A.D. 1571, occur, 'vj. doss' elsen heftes, 12d; 1 clowte and ½ a C elsen blades, viijs. viijd; xiij. clowtes of talier, needles, &c.' Wills and Inventories published by the Surtees Society, l. 361. The term is derived from the French alene; elson for cordwayners, alesne. Palsg. In Yorkshire and some other parts of England an awl is still called an elsen."
[S b]. "Which the said Alizon confessing.">[ In the case of this paralytic pedlar, John Law, his mishap could scarcely be called such, as it would for the remainder of his life, be an all-sufficient stock-in-trade for him, and popular wonder and sympathy, without the judge's interposition, would provide for his relief and maintenance. The near apparent connection and correspondence of the damnum minatum and damnum secutum, in this instance, imposed upon this unfortunate woman, as it had done upon many others, and gave to her confession an earnestness which would appear to the unenlightened spectator to spring only from reality and truth.
[S 3 b]. "Margaret Pearson.">[ This Padiham witch fared better than her neighbours, being sentenced only to the pillory. Nothing affords a stronger proof of the vindictive pertinacity with which these prosecutions were carried on than the fact of this old and helpless creature being put on her trial three several times upon such evidence as follows. Chattox, like many other persons in her situation, was disposed to have as many companions in punishment, crime or no crime, as she could compass, and denounced her accordingly: "The said Pearson's wife is as ill as shee."
[T a]. "The said Margerie did carrie the said Toade out of the said house in a paire of tonges.">[ This toad was disposed of more easily than that of Julian Cox, as to which see Glanvil's Collection of Relations, p. 192:—
Another witness swore, that as he passed by Cox her door, she was taking a pipe of tobacco upon the threshold of her door, and invited him to come in and take a pipe, which he did. And as he was talking Julian said to him, Neighbour, look what a pretty thing there is. He look't down, and there was a monstrous great toad betwixt his leggs, staring him in the face. He endeavoured to kill it by spurning it, but could not hit it. Whereupon Julian bad him forbear, and it would do him no hurt. But he threw down his pipe and went home, (which was about two miles off of Julian Cox her house,) and told his family what had happened, and that he believed it was one of Julian Cox her devils. After, he was taking a pipe of tobacco at home, and the same toad appeared betwixt his leggs. He took the toad out to kill it, and to his thinking cut it in several pieces, but returning to his pipe, the toad still appeared. He endeavoured to burn it, but could not. At length he took a switch and beat it. The toad ran several times about the room to avoid him he still pursuing it with correction. At length the toad cryed and vanish't, and he was never after troubled with it.
Dr. More's comment on the circumstance is written with all the seriousness so important a part of a witch's supellex deserves. He commences defending the huntsman, who swore that he hunted a hare, and when he came to take it up, he found it to be Julian Cox:
Those half-witted people thought he swore false, I suppose because they imagined that what he told implied that Julian Cox was turned into an hare. Which she was not, nor did his report imply any such real metamorphosis of her body, but that these ludicrous dæmons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and his doggs the shape of an Hare, one of them turning himself into such a form, and others hurrying on the body of Julian near the same place, and at the same swiftness, but interposing betwixt that hare-like spectre and her body, modifying the air so that the scene there, to the beholders sight, was as if nothing but air were there, and a shew of earth perpetually suited to that where the hare passed. As I have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in an huge large landskip, so lively that the birds have flown against it, thinking it free air, and so have fallen down. And if painters and juglers by the tricks of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight, it is no wonder that these airy invisible spirits as far surpass them in all such præstigious doings as the air surpasses the earth for subtilty.
And the like præstigiæ may be in the toad. It might be a real toad (though actuated and guided by a dæmon) which was cut in pieces, and that also which was whipt about, and at last snatcht out of sight (as if it had vanished) by these aerial hocus-pocus's. And if some juglers have tricks to take hot coals into their mouth without hurt, certainly it is not surprising that some small attempt did not suffice to burn that toad. That such a toad, sent by a witch and crawling up the body of the man of the house as he sate by the fire's side, was overmastered by him and his wife together, and burnt in the fire; I have heard credibly reported by one of the Isle of Ely. Of these dæmoniack vermin, I have heard other stories also, as of a rat that followed a man some score of miles trudging through thick and thin along with him. So little difficulty is there in that of the toad.—Glanvil's Collection of Relations, p. 200.
[T 2 a 1]. "Isabel Robey." This person was of Windle, in the parish of Prescot, a considerable distance from Pendle. The Gerards were lords of the manor of Windle. Sir Thomas Gerard, before whom the examinations were taken, was created baronet, 22nd May, 9th James I.; and thrice married. From him the present Sir John Gerard, of New Hall, near Warrington, is descended. Sir Thomas was determined that the hundred of West Derby should have its witch as well as the other parts of the county. A more melancholy tissue of absurd and incoherent accusations than those against this last of the prisoners convicted on this occasion, it would not be easy to find; who was hanged, for all that appears, because one person was suddenly "pinched on her thigh, as she thought, with four fingers and a thumb," and because another was "sore pained with a great warch in his bones."
[T 2 a 2]. "This Countie of Lancaster, which now may lawfully bee said to abound asmuch in Witches of diuers kindes as Seminaries, Iesuites, and Papists.">[ Truly, the county palatine was in sad case, according to Master Potts's account. If the crop of each of these was over abundant, it was from no fault of the learned judges, who, in their commissions of Oyer and Terminer, subjected it pretty liberally to the pruning-hook of the executioner.
[T 2 a 3]. "This lamentable and wofull Tragedie, wherein his Maiestie hath lost so many Subjects, Mothers their Children, Fathers their Friends and Kinsfolk." The Lancashire bill of mortality, under the head witchcraft, so far as it can be collected from this tract, will run thus:—
1. Robert Nutter, of Greenhead, in Pendle.
2. Richard Assheton, son of Richard Assheton, of Downham, Esquire.
3. Child of Richard Baldwin, of Wheethead, within the forest of Pendle.
4. John Device, or Davies, of Pendle.
5. Anne Nutter, daughter of Anthony Nutter, of Pendle.
6. Child of John Moore, of Higham.
7. Hugh Moore, of Pendle.
8. John Robinson, alias Swyer.
9. James Robinson.
10. Henry Mytton, of the Rough Lee.
11. Anne Townley, wife of Henry Townley, of the Carr, gentleman.
12. John Duckworth.
13. John Hargraves, of Goldshaw Booth.
14. Blaze Hargraves, of Higham.
15. Christopher Nutter.
16. Anne Folds, of Colne.
Sixteen persons reported dead of this common epidemic, besides a countless number with pains and "starkness in their limbs," and "a great warch in their bones!" No wonder that Doctors Bromley and Potts thought active treatment necessary, with a decided preference for hemp, as the leading specific.
[T 3 b]. "With great warch in his bones.">[ Warch is a word well known and still used in this sense, i.e., pain, in Lancashire.
[T 4 b 1]. "The said Peter was now satisfied that the said Isabel Robey was no Witch, by sending to one Halseworths, which they call a wiseman.">[ I honour the memory of this Halsworth, or Houldsworth, as I suppose it should be spelled, for he was indeed a wise man in days when wisdom was an extremely scarce commodity.
[T 4 b 2]. "To abide vpon it.">[ i.e., my abiding opinion is.
[X a]. "Elizabeth Astley, John Ramsden, Alice Gray, Isabel Sidegraues, Lawrence Hay.">[ The specific charges against these persons, with the exception of Alice Gray, do not appear, nor is it said where their places of residence were. Alice Gray was reputed to have been at the meeting of witches at Malkin's Tower, and to her the judge refers, perhaps, in particular, when he says, "Without question, there are amongst you that are as deepe in this action as any of them that are condemned to die for their offences."
[X b]. "The Execution of the Witches.">[ We could have dispensed with many of the flowers of rhetoric with which the pages of this discovery are strewed, if Master Potts would have favoured us with a plain, unvarnished account of what occurred at this execution. It is here, in the most interesting point of all, that his narrative, in other respects so full and abundant, stops short, and seems curtailed of its just proportions. The "learned and worthy preacher," to whom the prisoners were commended by the judge, was probably Mr. William Leigh, of Standish, before mentioned. Amongst his papers or correspondence, if they should happen to have been preserved, some account may eventually be found of the sad closing scene of these melancholy victims of superstition.
[X 2 a]. "Neither can I paint in extraordinarie tearmes.">[ The worthy clerk is too modest. He is a great painter, the Tintoretto of witchcraft.
[Y a 1]. "Hauing cut off Thomas Lister, Esquire, father to this gentleman now liuing.">[ Thomas Lister, of Westby, ancestor of the Listers, Lords Ribblesdale, married Jane, daughter of John Greenacres, Esquire, of Worston, county of Lancaster, and was buried at Gisburn, February 8th, 1607. His son, Thomas Lister, referred to as the "gentleman now living," married Jane, daughter of Thomas Heber, Esq., of Marton, after mentioned, and was buried at Gisburn, July 10th, 1619.
[Y a 2]. "Was Indicted and Arraigned for the murder of a Child of one Dodg-sonnes.">[ One acquittal was no protection to these unhappy creatures. It caused only additional exasperation, and, sooner or later, they were brought within what Donne calls "the hungry statutes' gaping jaws." Whether superstition or malice prompted this prosecution, on the part of Mr. Lister, it is difficult to say. Some grudge he entertained, or cause of offence he had taken up against this Jennet Preston, might be her death warrant in those days, when it was penal for a woman to be old, helpless, ugly, and poor. She was not so fortunate as the females tried at York, nine years afterwards, for bewitching the children of Edward Fairfax, of Fuyston, in the forest of Knaresborough, to whom we owe the only English translation of Tasso worthy of the name. These females, six in number, were indicted at two successive assizes, and every effort was made by the
"Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung,"
to procure their conviction. Never was a more unequal contest. On the one side was a relentless antagonist, armed with wealth, influence, learning, and accomplishments, and whose family connections gave him an unlimited power in the county; and on the other, six helpless persons, whose sex, age, and poverty were almost sufficient for their condemnation, without any evidence at all. Yet, owing to the magnanimous firmness of the judge, whose name, deserving of immortal honour, I regret has not been preserved, these efforts were frustrated, and the women accused delivered from the gulph which yawned before them. The disappointment he experienced in this instance, in being defrauded, as he thought, of a conviction for which he had strained every nerve and sinew, and in not being allowed to render the forest of Knaresborough as famous as that of Pendle, cast a gloom of despondency over the remaining days of this admirable poet, who has left a narration of the whole transaction, of most singular interest and curiosity, yet unpublished. The MSS. now in my possession, and which came from Mr. Bright's collection, consists of seventy-eight closely-written folio pages. It is entitled "A Discourse of Witchcraft, as it was enacted in the family of Mr. Edward Fairfax, of Fuystone, coun. Ebor, 1621." From page 78 to 144 are a series of ninety-three most extraordinary and spirited sketches, made with the pen, of the witches, devils, monsters, and apparitions referred to in the narrative.
[Y 2 a]. "Master Heyber.">[ This was Thomas Hayber, or Heber, of Marton, in Craven, Esquire, who was buried at Marton, 7th February, 1633. He was the ancestor of Bishop Reginald Heber and the late Richard Heber, Esq.
[Y 3 a]. "The said Iennet Preston comming to touch the dead corpes, they bled fresh bloud presently.">[ On the popular superstition of touching the corpse of a murdered person, as an ordeal or test for the discovery of the innocence or guilt of suspected murderers, the reader cannot better be referred than to the very learned and elaborate essay in Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 182-189. Amongst the authors there quoted, Webster is omitted, who, (see Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, p. 304,) discusses the point at considerable length, and with an earnest and implicit faith singularly at variance with his enlightened scepticism in other matters. But there were regions of superstition in which even this Sampson of logic became imbecile and powerless. The rationale of the bleeding of a murdered corpse at the touch of the murderer is given by Sir Kenelm Digby with his usual force and spirit:
To this cause, peradventure, may be reduced the strange effect which is frequently seen in England, when, at the approach of the Murderer, the slain body suddenly bleedeth afresh. For certainly the Souls of them that are treacherously murdered by surprise, use to leaue their bodies with extreme unwillingness, and with vehement indignation against them that force them to so unprovided and abhorred a passage! That Soul, then, to wreak its evil talent against the hated Murderer, and to draw a just and desired revenge upon his head, would do all it can to manifest the author of the fact! To speak it cannot—for in itself it wanteth the organs of voice; and those it is parted from are now grown too heavy, and are too benummed, for to give motion unto: Yet some change it desireth to make in the body, which it hath so vehement inclination to; and therefore is the aptest for it to work upon. It must then endeavour to cause a motion in the subtilest and most fluid parts (and consequently the most moveable ones) of it. This can be nothing but the blood, which then being violently moved, must needs gush out at those places where it findeth issue!
In the two following Scotch cases of witchcraft, this test was resorted to. The first was that of
Marioun Peebles,[79] alias Pardone, spouse to Swene, in Hildiswick, who was, on March 22, 1644, sentenced to be strangled at a stake, and burnt to ashes, at the Hill of Berrie, for Witchcraft and Murder. Marion and her husband having 'ane deadlie and venefical malice in her heart' against Edward Halero in Overure, and being determined 'to destroy and put him down,' being 'transformed in the lyknes of ane pellack-quhaill, (the Devill changing her spirit, quhilk fled in the same quhaill,') and the said Edward and other four individuals being in a fishing-boat, coming from the Sea, at the North-banks of Hildiswick, 'on ane fair morning, did cum under the said boat, and overturnit her with ease, and drowned and devoired thame in the sey, right at the shore, when there wis na danger wtherwayis.' The bodies of Halero and another of these hapless fishermen having been found, Marion and Swene 'wir sent for, and brought to see thame, and to lay thair hands on thame, ... dayis after said death and away-casting, quhaire thair bluid was evanished and desolved, from every natural cours or caus, shine, and run; the said umquhill Edward bled at the collir-bain or craig-bane, and the said ...,[80] in the hand and fingers, gushing out bluid thairat, to the great admiration of the beholders—and revelation of the judgement of the Almytie! And by which lyk occasionis and miraculous works of God, made manifest in Murders and the Murderers; whereby, be many frequent occasiones brought to light, and the Murderers, be the said proof brought to judgment, conuict and condemned, not only in this Kingdom, also this countrie, but lykwayis in maist forrin Christiane Kingdomis; and be so manie frequent precedentis and practising of and tuitching Murderis and Murdereris, notourlie known: So, the forsaid Murder and Witchcraft of the saidis persons, with the rest of their companions, through your said Husband's deed, art, part, rad,[81] and counsall, is manifest and cleir to all, not onlie through and by the foirsaid precedentis of your malice, wicked and malishes[82] practises, by Witchcraft, Confessionis, and Declarationis of the said umquill Janet Fraser, Witch, revealed to her, as said is, and quha wis desyrit by him to concur and assist with you to the doing thereof; but lykways be the declaration and revelation of the justice and judgementis of God, through the said issuing of bluid from the bodies!' &c.
A similar and very remarkable instance is related in the following Triall: In the Dittay of Christian Wilson, alias the Lanthorne,[83] accused of Murder, Witchcraft, &c., (which is founded upon the examinations of James Wilson, Abraham Macmillan, William Crichton, and Fyfe and George Erskine, &c. led before Sir William Murray of Newtoun, and other Commissioners, at Dalkeith, Jun. 14, 1661,) it is stated, that 'Ther being enimitie betuixt the said Christiane and Alexander Wilsone, her brother, and shoe having often tymes threatned him, at length, about 7 or 8 monthes since, altho' the said Alexander was sene that day of his death, at three houres afternoone, in good health, walking about his bussnesse and office; yitt, at fyve howres in that same night, he was fownd dead, lying in his owne howse, naked as he was borne, with his face torne and rent, without any appearance of a spot of blood either wpon his bodie or neigh to it. And altho' many of the neiboures in the toune (Dalkeith) come into his howse to see the dead corpe, yitt shoe newar offered to come, howbeit her dwelling was nixt adjacent thairto; nor had shoe so much as any seiming greiff for his death. Bot the Minister and Bailliffes of the towne, taking great suspitione of her, in respect of her cairiage comand it that shoe showld be browght in; bot when shoe come, shoe come trembling all the way to the howse—bot shoe refuised to come nigh the corps or to tuitch it saying, that shoe "nevir tuitched a dead corpe in her lyfe!" Bot being arnestly desyred by the Minister, Bailliffes, and hir brother's friends who was killed, that shoe wold "bot tuitch the corpes softlie," shoe granted to doe it—but before shoe did it, the Sone being shyning in at the howse, shoe exprest her selfe thus, humbly desyring, that "as the Lord made the Sone to shyne and give light into that howse, that also he wald give light to discovering of that Murder!" And with these words, shoe tuitcheing the wound of the dead man, verie saftlie, it being whyte and cleane, without any spot of blod or the lyke!—yitt imediatly, whill her fingers was wpon it, the blood rushed owt of it, to the great admiratioune[84] of all the behoulders, who tooke it for discoverie of the Murder, according to her owne prayers.—For ther was ane great lumpe of flesh taken out of his cheik, so smowthlie, as no rasor in the world cowld have made so ticht ane incisioune, wpon flesh, or cheis—and ther wes no blood at all in the wownd—nor did it at all blead, altho' that many persones befor had tuitched it, whill[85] shoe did tuitche it! And the howse being searched all over, for the shirt of the dead man, yitt it cowld not be found; and altho' the howse was full of people all that night, ever vatching the corpes;[86] neither did any of them tuitch him that night—which is probable[87]—yitt, in the morneing, his shirt was fownd tyed fast abowt his neck, as a brechame,[88] non knowing how this come to pass! And this Cristian did immediatlie transport all her owne goods owt of her own howse into her dowghter's, purposing to flie away—bot was therwpon apprehendit and imprisoned.'—Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 194.
[Z a]. "Master Leonard Lister.">[ This Leonard Lister was the brother of Master Thomas Lister, for whose murder Jennet Preston was indicted; and married Ann, daughter of —— Loftus, of Coverham Abbey, county of York.
[Z 2 a]. "His Lordship commanded the Iurie to obserue the particular circumstances.">[ The judge in this case was Altham, who seems even to have been more superstitious, bigotted, and narrow-minded than his brother in commission, Bromley. Fenner, who tried the witches of Warbois, and Archer, before whom the trial of Julian Cox took place, are the only judges I can meet with, quite on a level with this learned baron in grovelling absurdity, upon whom "Jennet Preston would lay heavy at the time of his death," whether she had so lain upon Mr. Thomas Lister or not, if bigotry, habit, and custom did not render him seared and callous to conscience and pity.
[Z 3 b 1]. "Take example by this Gentlemen to prosecute these hellish Furies to their end.">[ It is marvellous that Potts does not, like Delrio, recommend the rack to be applied to witches "in moderation, and according to the regulations of Pope Pius the Third, and so as not to cripple the criminal for life." Not that this learned Jesuit is much averse to simple dislocations occasioned by the rack. These, he thinks, cannot be avoided in the press of business. He is rather opposed, though in this he speaks doubtfully and with submission to authority, to those tortures which fracture the bones or lacerate the tendons. Verily, the Catholic and the Protestant author might have shaken hands; they were, beyond dispute, pœne Gemelli.
[Z 3 b 2]. "Posterities.">[ Master Potts, of the particulars of whose life nothing is known, made, as far as can be discovered, no further attempt to acquire fame in the character of an author. No subject so interesting probably again occurred, as that which had diversified his legal pursuits "in his lodgings in Chancery-lane," from the pleasing recollections associated with his Summer Circuit of 1612. He was not, however, the only person of the name of Pott, or Potts, who distinguished himself in the field of Witchcraft. The author of the following tract, in my possession, might have garnished it with various flowers from the [work] now reprinted, if he had been aware of such a repository: "Pott (Joh. Henr.) De nefando Lamiarum cum Diabolo coitu." 4to. Lond. 1689. The other celebrated cases of supposed witchcraft occurring in the county of Lancaster, besides those connected with the foregoing republication, are, the extraordinary one of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, who died at Latham in 1594, for which the reader is referred to Camden's Annals of Elizabeth, years 1593, 1594; Kennet, 2. 574, 580; or Pennant's Tour from Downing to Alston Moor, p. 29;—the case of Edmund Hartley, hanged at Lancaster in 1597, for bewitching some members of the family of Mr. Starkie, of Cleworth, which will be fully considered in the proposed republication of the Chetham Society, which gives the history of that event;—and lastly, that of a person of the name of Utley, (Whitaker, p. 528; Baines, vol. i. p. 604,) who was hanged at Lancaster about 1630, for having bewitched to death Richard, the son of Ralph Assheton, Esq., Lord of Middleton, of whose trial, unfortunately, no report is in existence. Webster also mentions two supposed witches as having been put to death at Lancaster, within eighteen years before his Displaying of supposed Witchcraft was published; and which occurrence, not referred to by any other historian, must therefore have taken place about the year 1654.
Manchester:
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