This story succeeded so well, that the father of the boy took him round to the neighbouring churches, where he placed him standing on a bench after service, and bade him look round and see what he could observe. The device, however clumsy, succeeded; and no less than seventeen persons were apprehended at the boy’s election, and conducted, as witches, to Lancaster Castle. These seventeen persons were tried at the assizes and found guilty; but the judge, whose name has unfortunately been lost, unlike Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, saw something in the case that excited his suspicion, and, though the juries had not hesitated in any one instance, respited the convicts, and sent up a report of the affair to the government. Twenty-two years had not elapsed since the former case, in vain. Four of the prisoners were, by the judge’s recommendation, sent for to the metropolis, and were examined, first by the king’s physician, and then by Charles the First, in person. The boy’s story was strictly scrutinised, and in the end, he confessed that it was all an imposture, in which he had been instructed by his father; and the whole seventeen prisoners received the royal pardon.
So late as the year 1679, several unfortunate persons were tried and executed at Borrostowness in Scotland, for witchcraft, four of them being poor widows. The following is a literal copy of the indictment upon which they were arraigned--
“Annaple Thomsone, widow in Borrostowness, Margaret Pringle, relect of the deceast John Campbell, seivewright there, &c. &c.
“Aye, and ilk ane of you, are indigtted and accused, that, whereas, notwithstanding the law of God particulurlie sett down in the 20th chapter of Leveticus and the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy, and be the lawes and actes of parliament of this kingdome and constant practis thereof, particularlie to the 27 act, 29 parliament Q. Marie, the cryme of witchcraft is declaired to be one horreid, abominable, and capitall cryme, punishable with the pains of death and confiscatiown of moveables:—nevertheless it is of veritie, that you have comitted and are gwyltie of the said crime of witchcraft, in awa far ye have entered in practicion with the devile, the enemie of your salvatiown, and have renownced our blessed Lord and Savior, and your baptizme, and have given yoursellfes, both soulles and bodies, to the devile, and swyndrie wyth witches, in divers places. And particularlie ye, the said Annaple Thompsone, had a metting with the devile the time of your weidowhood, before you were married to your last husband, in your coming betwixt Linlithgow and Borrostowness, where the devile, in the lykeness of one black man, told you, that you was one poor puddled bodie, and had one lyiff and difficulties to win throu the world; and promesed iff ye wald followe him, and go alongst with him, you should never want, but have one better lyiff; and about fyve wekes thereafter the devile appeared to you, when you was going to the coal-hill, abowt sevin a-clock in the morning. Having renewed his former temtatiown, you did condeshend thereto and declared yourselff content to follow him and become his servant; whereupon the devile * * * and ye and each persone of you wis at several metting with the devile, in the linkes of Borrostowness, and in the house of you, Bessie Vicker; and ye did eate and drink with the devile, and with one another, and with witches in her howss in the night tyme; and the said Wm. Crow brought the ale, which ye drank, extending about sevin gallons, from the howss of Elizabeth Hamilton; and you, the said Annaple, had another metting about fyve wekes ago, when you wis goeing to the coal-hill of Grange, and he inveitted you to go alongst and drink with him in the Grange farmes; and you, the said Margaret Pringle, have bein one witch this many yeeres by gone, hath renownced your baptizme and becum the devile’s servant, and promeis to follow him; and the devile took you by the right hand, whereby it was for eight days greivowslie pained, but, having it twitched new again, it immedeatelie became haill; and you, the said Margaret Hamilton has bein the devile’s servant these eight or nine years by gone, and he appeared and conversed with you at the town well of Borrostowness, and several times at your owin howss, and drank several choppens of ale with you. * * and the devile gane you ane fyne merk piece of gold, which a lyttle after becam are skleite stone; and you, the said Margaret Hamilton, relict of James Pullevart, has been ane witch, and the devile’s servant, thertie yeres since, hath renounced your baptisme, as said is
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And ye, and ilk of you, was at a meeting with the devile and other witches, at the croce of Murestain, above Renneil, upon the threttein of October last, where you all danced, and the devile acted the piper, and where you endevored to have destroyed Androw Mitchell, sone to John Mitchell, elder in dean of Kenneil.”
The charges thus made against the “poor puddled bodies,” Annaple Thomsone and her associates, however ludicrous they may seem, were substantiated to the satisfaction of a jury; and for so meeting, and dancing, and drinking, and frolicking with his satanic majesty (who condescended to act the piper), the unfortunate defendants were solemnly condemned, “to be taken to the west end of Borrostowness, the ordinary place of execution there, upon Tuesday, the 23rd day of December current, betwixt two and four in the afternoon, and then to be wirried at a steack [that is, like a bull or a badger, by dogs in human shape] till they be dead, and thereafter to have their bodies burned to ashes.”
The strange and eventful history of the Witches of New England is, perhaps, generally known to the educated and informed; still there must be many who are not aware of all its melancholy details. As a story of witchcraft, without any poetry in it, without anything to amuse the imagination, or interest the fancy, it, perhaps, surpasses everything upon record. The prosecutions for witchcraft in New England were numerous, and they continued, with little intermission, principally at Salem, during the greater part of the year 1692. The accusations were of the most vulgar and contemptible sort—invisible pinchings and blows, fits, with the blastings and mortality of cattle, and wains stuck fast in the ground, or losing their wheels. A conspicuous feature in nearly the whole of these stories, was what they named “the spectral sight,” or, in other words, that the profligate accusers first feigned, for the most part, the injuries they received, and next saw the figures and action of the persons who inflicted them, when they were invisible to every one else. Hence the miserable prosecutors gained the power of gratifying the wantonness of their malice, by pretending that they suffered by the hand of any one against whom they had an ill will. The persons so charged, though unseen by any one but the accuser, and who in their corporal presence were at a distance of miles, and were doubtless wholly unconscious of the mischief that was hatching against them, were immediately taken up, and cast into prison. And what was more monstrous and incredible, there stood the prisoner on trial for his life, while the witnesses were permitted to swear that his spectre had haunted them, and afflicted them with all manner of injuries!
The first specimen of this sort of accusation was given by one Paris, a minister of a church at Salem, in the end of the year 1691, who had two daughters, one nine years old, the other eleven, who were afflicted with fits and convulsions. The first person fixed on as the mysterious author of these evils, was Tituba, a female slave in the family, and she was harassed by her master into a confession of unlawful practices and spells. The girls then fixed on Sarah Good, a female, known to be the victim of a morbid melancholy, and Osborne, a poor man who had for a considerable time been bed-ridden, as persons whose spectres had perpetually haunted and tormented them, and Good was, twelve months afterwards, hanged on this accusation.
A person, who was one of the first to fall under the imputation, was one George Burroughs, also a minister of Salem. He had, it seems, buried two wives, both of whom the busy gossips said he had used ill in their life-time, and, consequently, it was whispered he had murdered them. He was accustomed, foolishly, to vaunt that he knew what people said of him in his absence, and this was brought as a proof that he dealt with the devil. Two women, who were witnesses against him, interrupted their testimony with exclaiming that they saw the ghosts of the murdered wives present (who had promised them they would come), though no one else in the court saw them; and this was taken in evidence. Burroughs conducted himself in a very injudicious way on his trial; but, when he came to be hanged, made so impressive a speech on the ladder, with fervent protestations of innocence, as melted many of the spectators into tears.