[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.