In an old print of this execrable character, he is represented with two witches. One of them, named Holt, is supposed to say, “My Impes are, 1. Ilemauzyr; 2. Pyewackett; 3. Pecke in the Crown; 4. Griezell Griediegutt.” Four animals attend: Jarmara, a black dog; Sacke and Sugar, a hare; Newes, a ferret; Vinegar Tom, a bull-headed greyhound. This print is in the Pepysian library.
Amongst a number of women (as many as sixteen) whom Hopkins, in the year 1644, accused at Yarmouth, was one, of whom the following account is given. It appears that she used to work for Mr. Moulton (a stocking merchant, and alderman of the town), and upon a certain day went to his house for work; but he being from home, his man refused to let her have any till his master returned; whereupon, being exasperated against the man, she applied herself to the maid, and desired some knitting-work of her; and when she returned the like answer, she went home in great discontent against them both. That night, when she was in bed, she heard a knock at her door, and going to her window, she saw (it being moon-light) a tall black man there: and asked what he would have? He told her that she was discontented, because she could not get work; and that he would put her into a way that she should never want anything. On this, she let him in, and asked him what he had to say to her? He told her he must first see her hands; and taking out something like a penknife, he gave it a little scratch, so that a little blood followed, a scar being still visible when she told the story; then he took some of the blood in a pen, and pulling a book out of his pocket, bid her write her name; and when she said she could not, he said he would guide her hand. When this was done, he bid her now ask what she would have. And when she desired first to be revenged on the man, he promised to give her an account of it next night, and so leaving her some money went away. The next night he came to her again, and told her he could do nothing against the man, for he went constantly to church, and said his prayers morning and evening. Then she desired him to revenge her on the maid; and he again promised her an account thereof the next night: but he said the same of the maid, and that therefore he could not hurt her. But she said that there was a young child in the house, which was more easy to be dealt with. Whereupon she desired him to do what he could against it. The next night he came again, and brought with him an image of wax, and told her they must go and bury that in the church-yard, and then the child, which he had put in great pain already, should waste away as that image wasted. Whereupon they went together and buried it. The child having laid in a languishing condition for about eighteen months, and being very near death, the minister sent this woman with this account to the magistrates, who thereupon sent her to Mr. Moulton’s, where, in the same room that the child lay, almost dead, she was examined concerning the particulars aforesaid; all which she confessed, and had no sooner done, but the child, who was three years old, and was thought to be dead or dying, laughed, and began to stir and raise up itself: and from that instant began to recover. The woman was convicted upon her own confession, and was executed accordingly.
A more melancholy tale does not occur in the annals of necromancy, than that of the Lancashire Witches, in 1612. The scene of the story is in Penderbury Forest, four or five miles from Manchester, remarkable for its picturesque and gloomy situation. It had long been of ill repute, as a consecrated haunt of diabolical intercourse, when a country magistrate, Roger Nowel by name, took it into his head that he should perform a great public service by routing out a nest of witches, who had rendered the place a terror to all the neighbouring vulgar. The first persons he seized on, were Elizabeth Demdike and Ann Chattox. The former was eighty years of age, and had for some years been blind, and principally subsisted by begging, though she had a miserable hovel on the spot, which she called her own. Anne Chattox was of the same age, and had for some time been threatened with the calamity of blindness. Demdike was held to be so hardened a witch that she had trained all her family to the mystery: namely, Elizabeth Device, her daughter, and James and Alison Device, her great-grandchildren. These, together with John Balcock, and Jane his mother, Alice Natter, Catherine Hewitt, and Isabel Roby, were successively apprehended by the diligence of Nowel, and one or two neighbouring magistrates, and were all of them by some means induced, some to make a more liberal, and others a more restricted confession of their misdeeds in witchcraft, and were afterwards hurried away to Lancaster Castle, fifty miles off, to prison. Their crimes were said to have universally proceeded from malignity and resentment; and it was reported to have repeatedly happened for poor old Demdike to be led by night from her habitation into the open air, by some member of her family, where she was left alone for an hour to curse her victim, and pursue her unholy incantations, and was then sought and brought back again to her hovel, her curses never failing to produce the desired effect.
The poor wretches had been but a short time in prison, when information was given that a meeting of witches was held on Good-Friday, at Malkin’s Tower, the habitation of Elizabeth Device, to the number of twenty persons, to consult how, by infernal machinations, to kill one Lovel, an officer, to blow up Lancaster Castle, deliver the prisoners, and to kill another man, of the name of Lister. The last object was effected; the other plans, by some means, which are not related, were prevented.
The prisoners were kept in jail till the summer assizes; but in the mean time, the poor blind Demdike died in confinement.
The other prisoners were severally indicted for killing by witchcraft certain persons who were named, and were all found guilty. The principal witnesses against Elizabeth Device were James Device and Jennet Device, her grandchildren, the latter only nine years of age. When this girl was put into the witness-box, the grandmother, on seeing her, set up so dreadful a yell, intermixed with dreadful curses, that the child declared that she could not go on with her evidence, unless the prisoner was removed. This was agreed to, and both brother and sister swore that they had been present, when the Devil came to their grandmother, in the shape of a black dog, and asked her what she desired. She said the death of John Robinson; when the dog told her to make an image of Robinson in clay, and after crumble it into dust, and as fast as the image perished, the life of the victim should waste away, and in conclusion the man should die. This testimony was received; and upon the conviction, which followed, ten persons were led to the gallows, on the twentieth of August, Anne Chattox, of eighty years of age, among the rest, the day after the trials, which lasted two days, were finished.
The judges who presided on these trials were Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, barons of the exchequer.
Guluim, who gives the most simple and interesting account of this melancholy case, conjectures, with much reason, that the old women had played at the game of commerce with the Devil, in order to make their simpler neighbours afraid of them; and that they played the game so long, that in an imperfect degree they deceived themselves. But when one of them actually saw her grandchild of nine years old placed in the witness-box, with the intention of consigning her to a public and ignominious death, then the reveries of the imagination vanished, and she deeply felt the reality, that, when she had been somewhat imposing on the child, in devilish sport, she had been whetting the dagger that was to take her own life. It was then no wonder that she uttered a supernatural yell, and poured curses from her heart.
Such was the first case of the Lancashire Witches. In that which follows, the accusation was clearly traced to be founded on a most villanous conspiracy.
About the year 1634, a boy named Edmund Robinson, whose father, a very poor man, dwelt in Pendle Forest, the scene of the alleged witching, declared that, while gathering wild-flowers in one of the glades of the forest, he saw two greyhounds, which he supposed to belong to a gentleman in the neighbourhood. Seeing nobody following them, the boy alleged that he proposed to have a course; but, though a hare was started, the dogs refused to run. Young Robinson was about to punish them with a switch, when one Dame Dickenson, a neighbour’s wife, started up instead of the one greyhound; and a little boy instead of the other. The witness averred that Mother Dickenson offered him money to conceal what he had seen, which he refused, saying, ‘Nay; thou art a witch!’ Apparently, she was determined he should have full evidence of the truth of what he said, for she pulled out of her pocket a bridle, and shot it over the head of the boy, who had so lately represented the other greyhound. He was then directly changed into a horse; Mother Dickenson mounted, and took Robinson before her. They made to a large house or barn, called Hours town, into which the boy entered with the others. He there saw six or seven persons pulling at halters, from which, as they pulled them, meat ready-dressed came flying in quantities, together with lumps of butter, porringers of milk, and whatever else might, in his fancy, complete a rustic feast. He declared that, while engaged in the charm, they made such ugly faces and looked so fiendish, that he was frightened.