James I and Witchcraft.
Some one has remarked that witchcraft came into England with the Stuarts and went out with them. This offhand way of fixing the rise and fall of a movement has just enough truth about it to cause misconception. Nothing is easier than to glance at the alarms of Elizabeth's reign and to see in them accidental outbreaks with little meaning, isolated affairs presaging a new movement rather than part of it. As a matter of fact, any such view is superficial. In previous chapters the writer has endeavored to show just how foreign ideas and conditions at home gave the impulse to a movement which within a single reign took very definite form.
Yet so much was the movement accelerated, such additional impetus was given it by James I, that the view that James set the superstition going in England, however superficial, has some truth in it. If Elizabeth had ever given the matter thought, she had not at least given it many words. James had very definite opinions on the subject and hesitated not at all to make them known. His views had weight. It is useless to deny that the royal position swayed the courts. James's part in the witch persecution cannot be condoned, save on the ground that he was perfectly honest. He felt deeply on the matter. It was little wonder. He had grown up in Scotland in the very midst of the witch alarms. His own life, he believed, had been imperilled by the machinations of witches. He believed he had every reason to fear and hate the creatures, and we can only wonder that he was so moderate as we shall later find him to have been. The story of the affair that stirred up the Scottish king and his people has often been told, but it must be included here to make his attitude explicable. In 1589 he had arranged for a marriage with the Princess Anne of Denmark. The marriage had been performed by proxy in July, and it was then provided that the princess was to come to England. She set out, but was driven on to the coast of Norway by a violent storm, and detained there by the continuance of the storms. James sailed to Upsala, and, after a winter in the north of the Continent, brought his bride to Scotland in the spring, not without encountering more rough weather. To the people of the time it was quite clear that the ocean was unfriendly to James's alliance. Had Scotland been ancient Greece, no doubt Neptune would have been propitiated by a sacrifice. But it was Scotland, and the ever-to-be-feared Satan was not so easily propitiated. He had been very active of late in the realm.
Moreover it was a time when Satanic and other conspiracies were likely to come to light. The kingdom was unsettled, if not discontented. There were plots, and rumors of plots. The effort to expose them, as well as to thwart the attacks of the evil one on the king, led to the conception and spread of the monstrous story of the conspiracy of Dr. Fian. Dr. Fian was nothing less than a Scottish Dr. Faustus. He was a schoolmaster by profession. After a dissolute youth he was said to have given soul to the Devil. According to the story he gathered around him a motley crowd, Catholic women of rank, "wise women," and humble peasant people; but it was a crew ready for evil enterprise. It is not very clear why they were supposed to have attacked the king; perhaps because of his well known piety, perhaps because he was a Protestant. In any case they set about, as the story went, to destroy him, and thought to have found their opportunity in his trip to Denmark. They would drown him in a storm at sea. There was a simple expedient for raising a storm, the throwing of cats into the sea. This Scottish method of sacrificing to Neptune was duly carried out, and, as we have seen, just fell short of destroying the king. It was only the piety of the king, as Dr. Fian admitted in his confession, that overmatched the power of the evil one.[1]
Such is the story that stirred Scotland from end to end. It is a story that is easily explained. The confessions were wrung from the supposed conspirators by the various forms of torture "lately provided for witches in that country." Geillis Duncane had been tried with "the torture of the pilliwinkes upon her fingers, which is a grievous torture, and binding or wrinching her head with a cord or roape." Agnes Sampson had suffered terrible tortures and shameful indignities until her womanly modesty could no longer endure it and she confessed "whatsoever was demanded of her." Dr. Fian was put through the ordinary forms of torture and was then "put to the most severe and cruel pain in the world, called the bootes," and thereby was at length induced to break his silence and to incriminate himself. At another time, when the king, who examined him in person, saw that the man was stubborn and denied the confessions already made, he ordered him to be tortured again. His finger nails were pulled off with a pair of pincers, and under what was left of them needles were inserted "up to the heads." This was followed by other tortures too terrible to narrate.[2]
It is a little hard to understand how it was that the king "took great delight to be present at the examinations," but throughout the whole wretched series of trials he was never wanting in zeal. When Barbara Napier, sister-in-law to the laird of Carshoggil, was to be executed, a postponement had been granted on account of her approaching accouchement. Afterwards, "nobody insisting in the pursute of her, she was set at libertie." It seems also that the jury that had before condemned her had acquitted her of the main charge, that of treasonable witchcraft against the king. The king was angered at the default of justice, went to the Tolbooth, and made an address on the subject. He spoke of "his own impartiality, the use of witchcraft, the enormity of the crime, ... the ignorance of thinking such matters mere fantasies, the cause of his own interference in the matter, the ignorance of the assizes in the late trial, his own opinion of what witches really are."[3]
It was only a few years later that James put that opinion into written form. All the world knows that the king was a serious student. With unremitting zeal he studied this matter, and in 1597, seven years after the Dr. Fian affair, he published his Dæmonologie.[4] It was expressly designed to controvert the "damnable opinions of two principally in our age"—Scot, who "is not ashamed in publick Print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft," and Wierus, "a German physician," who "sets out a publicke apologie for all these craft-folkes whereby ... he plainly bewrayes himself to have been one of that profession."
It was to be expected that James would be an exponent of the current system of belief. He had read diligently, if not widely, in the Continental lore of the subject and had assimilated much of it. He was Scotch enough to be interested in theology and Stuart enough to have very definite opinions. James had, too, his own way of putting things. There was a certain freshness about his treatment, in spite of the fact that he was ploughing old fields. Nothing illustrates better his combination of adherence to tradition, of credulity, and of originality than his views on the transportation of witches, a subject that had long engaged the theorists in demonology. Witches could be transported, he believed, by natural means, or they could be carried through the air "by the force of the spirit which is their conducter," as Habakkuk was carried by the angel.[5] This much he could accept. But that they could be transformed into a "little beast or foule" and pierce through "whatsoever house or Church, though all ordinarie passages be closed," this he refused to believe. So far, however, there was nothing original about either his belief or his disbelief. But his suggestion on another matter was very probably his own. There had been long discussion as to how far through the air witches could go. It was James's opinion that they could go only so far as they could retain their breath.
But it was seldom that the royal demonologist wandered far from the beaten road. He was a conformist and he felt that the orthodox case needed defence: so he set about to answer the objectors. To the argument that it was a strange thing that witches were melancholy and solitary women (and so, he would have explained, offer the easiest object of attack) he interposed a flat denial: they are "some of them rich and worldly-wise, some of them fat or corpulent in their bodies." To the point that if witches had the power ascribed to them no one but themselves would be left alive in the world, he answered that such would be the case, were not the power of the Devil bridled by God. To the plea that God would not allow his children to be vexed by the Devil, he replied that God permits the godly who are sleeping in sin to be troubled; that He even allows the Evil One to vex the righteous for his own good—a conventional argument that has done service in many a theological controversy.
It is a curious circumstance that James seemingly recognized the reliability of the Romish exorcisms which the Church of England was about that time beginning to attack. His explanation of them is worthy of "the wisest fool in Christendom." The Papists could often effect cures of the possessed, he thought, because "the divell is content to release the bodily hurting of them, ... thereby to obtain the perpetual hurt of the soules."
That James should indulge in religious disquisitions rather than in points of evidence was to be expected. Although he had given up the Scottish theology, he never succeeded in getting it thoroughly out of his system. As to the evidence against the accused, the royal writer was brief. Two sorts of evidence he thought of value, one "the finding of their marke, and the trying the insensiblenes thereof, the other is their fleeting [floating] on the water." The latter sign was based, he said, on the fact that the water refuses to receive a witch—that is to say, the pure element would refuse to receive those who had renounced their baptism.[6] We shall see that the influence of the Dæmonologie can be fairly appraised by measuring the increased use of these two tests of guilt within his own reign and that of his son. Hitherto the evidence of the mark had been of rather less importance, while the ordeal by water was not in use.
The alleged witch-mark on the body had to do with the contracts between witches and the Devil. This loathsome side of witch belief we cannot go into. Suffice it to say that James insisted on the reality of these contracts and consequently upon the punishment that should be meted to those who had entered into them. All witches except children should be sentenced to death. The king shows a trace of conventional moderation, however, and admits that the magistrates should be careful whom they condemned. But, while he holds that the innocent should not be condemned, he warns officials against the sin of failing to convict the guilty.[7] We shall see that throughout his reign in England he pursued a course perfectly consistent with these principles.
A critical estimate of James's book it is somewhat hard to give. Students of witchcraft have given utterance to the most extravagant but widely divergent opinions upon it. The writer confesses that he has not that acquaintance with the witch literature of the Continent which would enable him to appraise the Dæmonologie as to its originality. So good an authority as Thomas Wright has declared that it is "much inferior to the other treatises on the subject," and that it was compiled from foreign works.[8] Doubtless a study of the Continental literature would warrant, at least in part, this opinion. Yet one gets the impression, from what may be learned of that great body of writing through the historians of witchcraft, that James's opinions were in some respects his own. He had, of course, absorbed the current belief, but he did not hesitate to give his own interpretation and explanation of phenomena. That interpretation is not wanting in shrewdness. It seems to one who has wandered through many tedious defences of the belief in witchcraft that James's work is as able as any in English prior to the time of Joseph Glanvill in 1668. One who should read Glanvill and James together would get a very satisfactory understanding of the position of the defenders of the superstition. Glanvill insisted upon what he believed were well authenticated facts of experience. James grounded his belief upon a course of theoretical reasoning.
We have already indicated that James's book was influential in its time. It goes without saying that his position as a sovereign greatly enhanced its influence. This was particularly true after he took the throne of England. The dicta that emanated from the executive of the English nation could not fail to find a wide audience, and especially in England itself. His work offered a text-book to officials. It was a key to the character and methods of the new ruler, and those who hoped for promotion were quick to avail themselves of it. To prosecute witches was to win the sovereign's approval. The judges were prompted to greater activity. Moreover, the sanction of royalty gave to popular outbreaks against suspicious women greater consideration at the hands of the gentry. And it was in the last analysis the gentry, in the persons of the justices of the peace, who decided whether or no neighborhood whispering and rumors should be followed up.
But the king's most direct influence was in the passing of a new law. His first Parliament had been in session but eight days when steps were taken by the House of Lords towards strengthening the statute against witchcraft. The law in force, passed in the fifth year of Elizabeth's reign, imposed the death penalty for killing by witchcraft, and a year's imprisonment for injuring by witchcraft or by allied means. James would naturally feel that this law was merely one version of the statute against murder and did not touch the horrible crime of contract with the Devil and the keeping of imps.[9] Here was a sin beside which the taking of life was a light offence. It was needful that those who were guilty of it should suffer the severest penalty of the law, even if they had not caused the loss of a single life. It was to remedy this defect in the criminal code that a new statute was introduced.
It is not worth while to trace the progress of that bill from day to day. It can be followed in the journals of the Lords and Commons. The bill went to a large committee that included six earls and twelve bishops.[10] Perhaps the presence of the bishops was an evidence that witchcraft was still looked upon as a sin rather than as a crime. It was a matter upon which the opinion of the church had been received before and might well be accepted again. It was further arranged that the Lord Chief-Justice of the common pleas, Sir Edmund Anderson, and the attorney-general, the later so famous Sir Edward Coke, along with other eminent jurists, were to act with the committee. Anderson, it will be recalled, had presided over numerous trials and had both condemned and released witches. As to Coke's attitude towards this subject, we know not a thing, save that he served on this committee. The committee seems to have found enough to do. At any rate the proposed statute underwent revision.[11] Doubtless the privy council had a hand in the matter;[12] indeed it is not unlikely that the bill was drawn up under its direction. On the 9th of June, about two months and a half after its introduction, the statute passed its final reading in the Lords.[13] It repealed the statute of Elizabeth's reign and provided that any one who "shall use, practise or exercise any Invocation or Conjuration of any evill and wicked Spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertaine, employe, feede, or rewarde any evill and wicked Spirit to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, ... to be imployed or used in any manner of Witchcrafte" should suffer death as a felon. It further provided that any one who should "take upon him or them by Witchcrafte ... to tell or declare in what place any treasure of Golde or Silver should or might be founde ... or where Goods or Things loste or stollen should be founde or become, or to the intent to provoke any person to unlawfull love, or wherebie any Cattell or Goods of any person shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired, or to hurte or destroy any person in his or her bodie, although the same be not effected and done," should for the first offence suffer one year's imprisonment with four appearances in the pillory, and for the second offence, death. The law explains itself. Not only the killing of people by the use of evil spirits, but even the using of evil spirits in such a way as actually to cause hurt was a capital crime. The second clause punished white magic and the intent to hurt, even where it "be not effected," by a year's imprisonment and the pillory. It can be easily seen that one of the things which the framers of the statute were attempting to accomplish in their somewhat awkward wording was to make the fact of witchcraft as a felony depend chiefly upon a single form of evidence, the testimony to the use of evil spirits.
We have seen why people with James's convictions about contracts with the Devil might desire to rest the crime upon this kind of proof.[14] It can be readily understood, too, how the statute would work in practice. Hitherto it had been possible to arraign a witch on the accusations of her neighbors, but it was not possible to send her to the gallows unless some death in the vicinity could be laid to her charge. The community that hustled a suspicious woman to court was likely to suffer the expense of her imprisonment for a year. It had no assurance that it could be finally rid of her.
Under the new statute it was only necessary to prove that the woman made use of evil spirits, and she was put out of the way. It was a simpler thing to charge a woman with keeping a "familiar" than to accuse her of murder. The stories that the village gossips gathered in their rounds had the keeping of "familiars" for their central interest.[15] It was only necessary to produce a few of these gossips in court and the woman was doomed.
To be sure, this is theory. The practical question is, not how would the law operate, but how did it operate? This brings us again into the dangerous field of statistics. Now, if we may suppose that the witch cases known to us are a safe basis of comparison, the reign of James, as has already been intimated, shows a notable increase in witch executions over that of Elizabeth. We have records of between forty and fifty people who suffered for the crime during the reign of James, all but one of them within the first fifteen years. It will be seen that the average per year is nearly double that of the executions known to us in the first part of Elizabeth's rule, and of course several times that of those known in the last part. This increased number we are at once inclined to assign to the direct and indirect influence of the new king. But it may very fairly be asked whether the new statute passed at the king's suggestion had not been in part responsible for the increased number. This question can be answered from an examination of those cases where we have the charges given. Of thirty-seven such cases in the reign of James I, where the capital sentence was given, seventeen were on indictments for witchcrafts that had not caused death. In the other twenty cases, the accused were charged with murder.[16]
This means that over two-fifths of those who are known to have been convicted under the new law would have escaped death under the Elizabethan statute. With all due allowance for the incompleteness of our statistics, it seems certain that the new law had added very considerably to the number of capital sentences. Subtract the seventeen death sentences for crimes of witchcraft that were not murder from the total number of such sentences, and we have figures not so different from those of Elizabeth's reign.
This is a sufficient comment on the effectiveness of the new law as respects its particularly novel features. A study of the character of the evidence and of the tests of guilt employed at the various trials during the reign will show that the phrasing of the law, as well as the royal directions for trying guilt, influenced the forms of accusation and the verdicts of the juries. In other words the testimony rendered in some of the well known trials of the reign offers the best commentary upon the statute as well as upon the Dæmonologie. This can be illustrated from three of the processes employed to determine guilt. The king had recommended the water ordeal. Up to this time it had not been employed in English witch cases, so far as we know. The first record of its use was in 1612, nine years after James ascended the English throne. In that year there was a "discoverie" of witches at Northampton. Eight or nine women were accused of torturing a man and his sister and of laming others. One of them was, at the command of a justice of the peace, cast into the water with "her hands and feete bound," but "could not sink to the bottome by any meanes." The same experiment was applied to Arthur Bill and his parents. He was accused of bewitching a Martha Aspine. His father and mother had long been considered witches. But the "matter remaining doubtful that it could not be cleerly tryed upon him," he (and his parents) were tied with "their thumbes and great toes ... acrosse" and thrown into the water. The suspicion that was before not well grounded was now confirmed.[17] To be sure, this was done by the justices of the peace and we do not know how much it influenced the assize court.[18]
These are the only instances given us by the records of James's reign where this test was employed by the authorities. But in the very next year after the Northampton affair it was used in the adjoining county of Bedford by private parties. A land-owner who had suffered ills, as he thought, from two tenants, Mother Sutton and her daughter, took matters into his own hands. His men were ordered to strip the two women "in to their smocks," to tie their arms together, and to throw them into the water. The precaution of a "roape tyed about their middles" was useless, for both floated. This was not enough. The mother, tied toe and thumb, was thrown into the water again. She "sunke not at all, but sitting upon the water turned round about like a wheele.... And then being taken up, she as boldly as if she had beene innocent asked them if they could doe any more to her."
The use of marks as evidence was not as new as the water ordeal. But it is a rather curious thing that in the two series of cases involving water ordeal the other process was also emphasized. In these two instances it would seem as if the advice of the Dæmonologie had been taken very directly by the accusers.[19] There was one other instance of this test.[20] The remarkable thing, however, is that in the most important trial of the time, that at Lancaster in 1612, there was an utter absence, at least so far as the extant record goes, of female juries or of reports from them.[21] This method of determining guilt was not as yet widely accepted in the courts. We can hardly doubt that it had been definitely forbidden at Lancaster.[22] The evidence of the use of evil spirits, against which the statute of the first year of James I had been especially framed, was employed in such a large proportion of trials that it is not worth while to go over the cases in detail.
The law forbade to take up any dead person or the skin, bone, or other part thereof for use in witchcraft. Presumably some instance of this form of witchcraft had been responsible for the phrase, but we have on record no case of the sort until a few years after the passage of the statute. It was one of the principal charges against Johanna Harrison of Royston in 1606 that the officers found in her possession "all the bones due to the Anatomy of man and woman."[23] This discovery brought out other charges and she was hanged. At the famous Lancashire trials in 1612 the arch-witch Chattox was declared to have had in her possession three scalps and eight teeth. She was guilty on other counts, but she escaped the executioner by death.
These are illustrations of the point that the Dæmonologie and the statute of James I find their commentary in the evidence offered at the trials. It goes without saying that these illustrations represent only a few of the forms of testimony given in the courts. It may not, therefore, be amiss to run over some other specimens of the proof that characterized the witch trials of the reign. With most of them we are already familiar. The requirement that the witch should repeat certain words after the justice of the peace was used once in the reign of James. It was an unusual method at best.[24] A commoner form of proof was that adduced from the finding or seeing clay or waxen images in the possession of the accused.[25] The witness who had found such a model on the premises of the defendant or had seen the defendant handling it, jumped readily to the conclusion that the image represented some individual. If it should be asked how we are to account for this sort of evidence, the answer is an easy one. Every now and then in the annals of witchcraft it came out that a would-be accuser had hidden a waxen or clay figure in the house of the person he wished to accuse and had then found it. No doubt some cases started in this way. No doubt, too, bitter women with grudges to satisfy did experiment with images and were caught at it. But this was rare. In the greater number of cases the stories of images were pure fabrications. To that category belong almost certainly the tales told at Lancaster.[26]
"Spectral evidence" we have met with in the Elizabethan period. That reign saw two or three instances of its employment, and there were more examples of it in the reign of James. Master Avery of Northampton, who with his sister was the principal accuser in the trials there, saw in one of his fits a black wart on the body of Agnes Brown, a wart which was actually found "upon search."[27] Master Avery saw other spectres, but the most curious was that of a bloody man desiring him to have mercy on his Mistress Agnes and to cease impeaching her.[28] At Bedford, Master Enger's servant had a long story to tell, but the most thrilling part concerned a visit which the young Mary Sutton (whom he was accusing) made to him. On a "moonshine night" she came in at the window in her "accustomed and personall habite and shape" and knitted at his side. Then drawing nearer, she offered him terms by which he could be restored to his former health, terms which we are to understand the virtuous witness refused. It is pleasant to know that Master Enger was "distrustfull of the truth" of this tale. One fears that these spectres were not the products of overwrought imagination, as were many others, but were merely fabrics of elaborate fiction.[29] In any case they were not the groundwork of the proof. In the Fairfax prosecutions at York in 1622 the charges against the six women accused rested entirely upon a great tissue of spectral evidence. The three children had talked to the spectres, had met them outdoors and at church and in the kitchen. The spectres were remarkably wise and named visitors whom the family did not know. They struggled with the children, they rolled over them in bed, they followed them to the neighbors.
Somewhat akin to the evidence from apparitions was that from the effect of a witch's glance. This is uncommonly rare in English witchcraft, but the reign of James offers two instances of it. In Royston, Hertfordshire, there was "an honest fellow and as boone a companion ... one that loved the pot with the long necke almost as well as his prayers." One day when he was drinking with four companions Johanna Harrison came in and "stood gloating upon them." He went home and at once fell sick.[30] At Northampton the twelve-year-old Hugh Lucas had looked "stark" upon Jane Lucas at church and gone into convulsions when he returned home.[31]
One other form of proof demands notice. In the trial of Jennet Preston at York it was testified that the corpse of Mr. Lister, whom she was believed to have slain by witchcraft, had bled at her presence. The judge did not overlook this in summarizing the evidence. It was one of three important counts against the woman, indeed it was, says the impressive Mr. Potts, quoting the judge, of more consequence than all the rest.[32] Of course Mistress Preston went to the gallows.
It will occur to the reader to ask whether any sort of evidence was ruled out or objected to. On this point we have but slight knowledge. In reporting the trial of Elizabeth Sawyer of Edmonton in 1621 the Reverend Henry Goodcole wrote that a piece of thatch from the accused woman's house was plucked and burned, whereupon the woman presently came upon the scene.[33] Goodcole characterized this method as an "old ridiculous custome" and we may guess that he spoke for the judge too. In the Lancashire cases, Justice Altham, whose credulity knew hardly any bounds, grew suddenly "suspitious of the accusation of this yong wench, Jennet Device," who had been piling up charges against Alice Nutter. The girl was sent out of the room, the witches were mixed up, and Jennet was required on coming in again to pick out Alice Nutter. Of course that proved an easy matter.[34] At another time, when Jennet was glibly enumerating the witches that had assembled at the great meeting at Malking Tower, the judge suddenly asked her if Joane-a-Downe were there. But the little girl failed to rise to the bait and answered negatively, much to the satisfaction of everybody, and especially of the righteous Mr. Potts.[35]
This is all we know directly about any tendency to question evidence at Lancaster in 1612, but a good deal more may be inferred from what is not there. A comparison of that trial with other contemporary trials will convince any one that Justices Altham and Bromley must have ruled out certain forms of evidence. There were no experiments made of any sort nor any female juries set inspecting.[36] This, indeed, is not to say that all silly testimony was excluded. There is enough and more of sheer nonsense in the testimony to prove the contrary.
We turn now from the question of evidence to a brief consideration of several less prominent features of Jacobean witchcraft. We shall note the character of the sentences, the distribution of the trials, the personnel and position in life of the accused, and lastly the question of jurisdiction.
We have in another connection indicated the approximate number of executions of which we have record in James's reign. That number, we saw, was certainly over forty and probably approached fifty. It represented, however, not quite half the total number of cases of accusation recorded. In consequence the other verdicts and sentences have significance. Especially is this true of the acquittals. They amounted to thirty, perhaps to forty. When we add the trials of which we do not know the outcome, we can guess that the number was close to the sum total of executions. Legally only one other outcome of a trial was possible, a year's imprisonment with quarterly appearances in the pillory. There were three or four instances of this penalty as well as one case where bond of good behavior was perhaps substituted for imprisonment.[37] Five pardons were issued,[38] three of them by the authorities at London, two of them by local powers apparently under compulsion.[39]
We come now to consider the personnel, sex, occupations, and positions in life of the accused. On certain of these matters it is possible to give statistical conclusions, but such conclusions must be accepted with great caution. By a count as careful as the insufficient evidence permits it would seem that about six times as many women were indicted as men. This was to be expected. It is perhaps less in accord with tradition that twice as many married women as spinsters seem to have figured in the witch trials of the Jacobean era. The proportion of widows to unmarried women was about the same, so that the proportion of unmarried women among the whole number accused would seem to have been small. These results must be accepted guardedly, yet more complete statistics would probably show that the proportion of married women was even greater.[40]
The position in life of these people was not unlike that of the same class in the earlier period. In the account of the Lancashire trials we shall see that the two families whose quarrels started the trouble were the lowest of low hill-country people, beggars and charmers, lax in their morals and cunning in their dealings. The Flower women, mother and daughter, had been charged with evil living; it was said that Agnes Brown and her daughter of Northampton had very doubtful reputations; Mother Sutton of Bedford was alleged to have three illegitimate children. The rest of the witches of the time were not, however, quite so low in the scale. They were household servants, poor tenants, "hog hearders," wives of yeomen, broomsellers, and what not.
Above this motley peasant crew were a few of various higher ranks. A schoolmaster who had experimented with sorcery against the king,[41] a minister who had been "busy with conjuration in his youth,"[42] a lady charged with sorcery but held for other sin,[43] a conjurer who had rendered professional services to a passionate countess,[44] these make up a strange group of witches, and for that matter an unimportant one. None of their cases were illustrations of the working of witch law; they were rather stray examples of the connection between superstition, on the one hand, and politics and court intrigue on the other. Not so, however, the prosecution of Alice Nutter in the Lancashire trials of 1612. Alice Nutter was a member of a well known county family. "She was," says Potts, "a rich woman, had a great estate and children of good hope."[45] She was moreover "of good temper, free from envy and malice." In spite of all this she was accused of the most desperate crimes and went to the gallows. Why family connections and influences could not have saved her is a mystery.
In another connection we spoke of two witches pardoned by local authorities at the instance of the government. This brings us to the question of jurisdiction. The town of Rye had but recently, it would seem, been granted a charter and certain judicial rights. But when the town authorities sentenced one woman to death and indicted another for witchcraft, the Lord Warden interfered with a question as to their power.[46] The town, after some correspondence, gave way and both women were pardoned. This was, however, the only instance of disputed jurisdiction. The local powers in King's Lynn hanged a witch without interference,[47] and the vicar-general of the Bishop of Durham proceeded against a "common charmer"[48] with impunity, as of course he had every right to do.
There is, in fact, a shred of evidence to show that the memory of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had not been lost. In the North Riding of Yorkshire the quarter sessions sentenced Ralph Milner for "sorcerie, witchcraft, inchantment and telling of fortunes" to confess his fault at divine service, "that he hath heighlie offended God and deluded men, and is heartily sorie."[49] There is nothing, of course, in the statute to authorize this form of punishment, and it is only accounted for as a reversion to the original ecclesiastical penalty for a crime that seemed to belong in church courts.
What we call nowadays mob law had not yet made its appearance—that is, in connection with witchcraft. We shall see plenty of it when we come to the early part of the eighteenth century. But there was in 1613 one significant instance of independence of any jurisdiction, secular or ecclesiastical. In the famous case at Bedford, Master Enger, whom we have met before, had been "damnified" in his property to the round sum of £200. He was at length persuaded that Mother Sutton was to blame. Without any authority whatsoever he brought her forcibly to his house and caused her to be scratched.[50] Not only so, but he threw the woman and her daughter, tied and bound, into his mill-pond to prove their guilt.[51] In the mean time the wretched creatures had been stripped of their clothes and examined for marks, under whose oversight we are not told, but Master Enger was responsible. He should have suffered for all this, but there is no record of his having done so. On the contrary he carried the prosecution of the women to a successful issue and saw them both hanged.
We now turn to the question of the distribution of witchcraft in the realm during James's reign. From the incidental references already given, it will be evident that the trials were distributed over a wide area. In number executed, Lancashire led with ten, Leicester had nine, Northampton five or more, Middlesex four,[52] Bedford, Lincoln, York, Bristol, and Hertford each two; Derby had several, the exact number we can not learn. These figures of the more serious trials seem to show that the alarm was drifting from the southeast corner of England towards the midlands. In the last half of Elizabeth's rule the centre had been to the north of London in the southern midlands. Now it seems to have progressed to the northern midlands. Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham may be selected as the triangle of counties that would fairly represent the centre of the movement. If the matter were to be determined with mathematical accuracy, the centre would need to be placed perhaps a little farther west, for Stafford, Cheshire, Bristol, and the remote Welsh Carnarvon all experienced witch alarms. In the north, York and Durham had their share of trials.
It will be easier to realize what had happened when we discover that, so far as records go, Kent and Essex were entirely quiet during the period, and East Anglia almost so. We shall later see that these counties had not at all forgotten to believe in witchcraft, but the witchfinders had ceased their activities for a while.
To be sure, this reasoning from the distribution of trials is a dangerous proceeding. Witch alarms, on they face of things, seem haphazard outbursts of excitement. And such no doubt they are in part; yet one who goes over many cases in order cannot fail to observe that an outbreak in one county was very likely to be followed by one in the next county.[53] This is perfectly intelligible to every one familiar with the essentially contagious character of these scares. The stories spread from village to village as fast as that personified Rumor of the poet Vergil, "than which nothing is fleeter"; nor did they halt with the sheriffs at the county boundaries.
We have now traced the growth of James's opinions until they found effect in English law, have seen the practical operation of that law, and have gone over the forms of evidence, as well as some other features of the witch trials of his reign. In the next chapter we shall take up some of the more famous Jacobean cases in detail as examples of witch alarms. We shall seek to find out how they started and what were the real causes at work.
[1] I have not attempted to give more than a brief résumé of this story, and have used Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic (London, 1851), I, 181-190, and Mrs. Lynn Linton, Witch Stories, 21-34. The pamphlet about Dr. Fian is a rare one, but may be found in several libraries. It has been reprinted by the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. XLIX (1779), by the Roxburghe Club (London, 1816), by Robert Pitcairn, in his Criminal Trials in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1829-1833), vol. I, and doubtless in many other places. Pitcairn has also printed a part of the records of his trial.
[2] This is all based upon the contemporary accounts mentioned above.
[3] Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, IV (Edinburgh, 1881), 644-645, note.
[4] A fresh edition was brought out at London in 1603. In 1616 it appeared again as a part of the handsome collection of his Workes compiled by the Bishop of Winchester.
[5] This story is to be found in the apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon. It played a great part in the discussions of the writers on witchcraft.
[6] H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force (4th ed., Philadelphia, 1892), 325 ff., gives some facts about the water ordeal on the Continent. A sharp dispute over its use in witch cases was just at this time going on there.
[7] He recommended torture in finding out the guilty: "And further experience daily proves how loth they are to confesse without torture, which witnesseth their guiltinesse," Dæmonologie, bk. ii, ch. i.
[8] Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, I, 197.
[9] Edward Fairfax, A Discourse of Witchcraft As it was acted in the Family of Mr. Edward Fairfax ... in the year 1621 (Philobiblon Soc., Miscellanies, V, ed. R. Monckton Milnes, London, 1858-1859), "Preface to the Reader," 26, explains the king's motive: His "Majesty found a defect in the statutes, ... by which none died for Witchcraft but they only who by that means killed, so that such were executed rather as murderers than as Witches."
[10] Journals of the House of Lords, II, 269; Wm. Cobbett, Parliamentary History, I, 1017, 1018.
[11] Lords' Journal, II, 271, 316; Commons' Journal, I, 203-204.
[12] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1603-1610, 117.
[13] It had passed the third reading in the Commons on June 7; Commons' Journal, I, 234.
[14] It can hardly be doubted that the change in the wording of the law was dictated not only by the desire to simplify the matter of proof but by a wish to satisfy those theologians who urged that any use of witchcraft was a "covenant with death" and "an agreement with hell" (Isaiah xxviii, 18).
[15] See Southworth case in Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the countie of Lancaster ... (London, 1613; reprinted, Chetham Soc., 1845), L 2 verso. Cited hereafter as Potts.
[16] See, below, appendix B. It should be added that six others who had been condemned by the judges for bewitching a boy were released at James's command.
[17] The Witches of Northamptonshire ... C 2 verso. The writer of this pamphlet, who does not tell the story of the ordeal so fully as the author of the MS. account, "A briefe abstract of the arraignment of nine witches at Northampton, July 21, 1612" (Brit. Mus., Sloane, 972), gives, however, proof of the influence of James in the matter. He says that the two ways of testing witches are by the marks and "the trying of the insensiblenesse thereof," and by "their fleeting on the water," which is an exact quotation from James, although not so indicated.
[18] The mother and father were apparently not sent to the assize court.
[19] The female jury was used at Northampton ("women sworn"), also at Bedford, but by a private party.
[20] It was used in 1621 on Elizabeth Sawyer of Edmonton. In this case it was done clearly at the command of the judge who tried her at the Old Bailey.
[21] Elizabeth Device, however, confessed that the "said Devill did get blood under her left arme," which raises a suspicion that this confession was the result of accusations against her on that score.
[22] See account in next chapter of the trial at Lancaster.
[23] This case must be used with hesitation; see below, appendix A, § 3.
[24] At Warboys the Samuels had been required to repeat: "If I be a witch and consenting to the death" of such and such a one. Alice Wilson, at Northampton in 1612, was threatened by the justice with execution, if she would not say after the minister "I forsake the Devil." She is said to have averred that she could not say this. See MS. account of the witches of Northampton.
[25] Well known is the practice ascribed to witches of making a waxen image, which was then pricked or melted before the fire, in the belief that the torments inflicted upon it would be suffered by the individual it represented.
[26] Potts, E 3 verso, F 4, G 2; also The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip Flower, ... (London, 1619), 21.
[27] See MS. account of the Northampton witches.
[28] Ibid.: "Sundry other witches appeared to him.... Hee heard many of them railing at Jane Lucas, laying the fault on her that they were thus accused."
[29] There was practically no spectral evidence in the Lancashire cases. Lister on his death-bed had cried out against Jennet Preston, and John Law was tormented with a vision of Alizon Device "both day and night"; Potts, Y 2 verso. But these were exceptional.
[30] See The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther committed by ... Annis Dell.... With the Severall Witch-crafts ... of one Johane Harrison and her Daughter (London, 1606).
[31] MS. account of the Northampton witches.
[32] See Potts, Z 2.
[33] The dramatist Dekker made use of this; see his Witch of Edmonton, act IV, scene I (Mermaid edition, London, 1904):
1st Countreyman.—This thatch is as good as a jury to prove she is a witch.
* * * * * * * *
Justice.—Come, come: firing her thatch? ridiculous!
Take heed, sirs, what you do; unless your proofs
Come better aimed, instead of turning her
Into a witch, you'll prove yourselves stark fools.
[34] See Potts, P 2.
[35] See ibid., Q verso. This, however, was the second time that the judge had tried this ruse; see ibid., P 2.
[36] See above, note 21.
[37] North Riding Record Soc., Quarter Sessions Records (London, 1883, etc.), III, 181.
[38] Two of them, however, were issued to the same woman, one in 1604 and one in 1610.
[39] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, XIII, 4 (Rye), pp. 136-137, 139-140, 144, 147-148.
[40] The term "spinster" was sometimes used of a married woman.
[41] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1619-1623, 125, Chamberlain to Carleton, February 26, 1620: "Peacock, a schoolmaster, committed to the Tower and tortured for practising sorcery upon the King, to infatuate him in Sir Thos. Lake's business." This is one of those rare cases in which we know certainly that torture was used.
[42] Sir Thomas Lake to Viscount Cranbourne, January 20, 1604, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 6177, fol. 403.
[43] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1623-1625, 474, 485, 497.
[44] T. B. and T. J. Howell, State Trials (London, 1809-1818), II.
[45] See Potts, O 3 verso.
[46] See Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, XIII, 4 (Rye), pp. 136-137, 139-140, 144, 147-148.
[47] See Alexander Roberts, A Treatise of Witchcraft ... (London, 1616), dedicated to the "Maior and Aldermen."
[48] M. A. Richardson, Table Book (London, 1841-1846), I, 245.
[49] North Riding Record Soc., Quarter Sessions Records, I, 58.
[50] "... neither had they authoritie to compell her to goe without a Constable."
[51] Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,674, fol. 148. This is a brief description of "how to discover a witch." It recommends the water ordeal and cites the case of Mr. Enger and Mary Sutton.
[52] In the case of three of these four we know only that they were sentenced.
[53] Before the Flower case at Lincoln came the Willimot-Baker cases at Leicester. The Bedford trial resembled much the Northampton trial of the previous year.