The belief in witchcraft is a very ancient and deep-rooted one. From the earliest times, we can trace records of supposed acts of witchcraft, and their punishment. Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484, issued a bull, empowering the Inquisition to search for witches and burn them. From the time of this superstitious act, the executions for witchcraft increased. The pope had given sanction to the belief in this demoniacal power, and had asserted their possession of it. In 1485, forty-one poor women were burnt as witches in Germany; an inquisitor in Piedmont burnt a hundred more, and was proceeding so fast with others daily, that the people rose en masse, and chased him out of the country. About the same time, five hundred witches were executed at Geneva, in the course of three months.
Among the many who counterfeited possession by the devil, for the purpose of attracting pity or obtaining money, were Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder, who had counterfeited to be possessed by the devil, and vomited pins and rags; but were detected, and stood before the preacher at St. Paul’s Cross, and acknowledged their hypocritical counterfeiting: this happened in 1574.
In fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, Remigius burnt nine hundred reputed witches in Lorraine. In Germany, they tortured and burnt them daily, until many unfortunates destroyed themselves for fear of a death by torment, and others fled the country.
Ludovicus Paramo states, that the Inquisition, within the space of 150 years, had burnt thirty thousand of these reputed witches.
The superstition continued on the increase, and reached its culmination in the Puritanic time of the Commonwealth, when persons more cunning and wicked than the rest, gained a subsistence by discovering witches (by pretended marks and trials they used), and denouncing them to death. The chief of these persons was Mathew Hopkins, Witch Finder General, as he termed himself. He was a native of Manningtree, in Essex, and he devoted his pretended powers so zealously in the service of his country, that in 1644, sixteen witches, discovered by him, were burnt at Yarmouth; fifteen were condemned at Chelmsford, and hanged in that town and at Manningtree. Many more at Bury St. Edmunds, in 1645 and 1646, amounting to nearly forty in all at the several places of execution, and as many more in the country as made up threescore.
In this work he was aided by one John Stern, and a woman, who with the rest, pretended to have secret means of testing witchcraft; nor was their zeal unrewarded by the weak and superstitious parliament. Mr. Hopkins, in a book published in 1647, owns that he had twenty shillings for each town he visited to discover witches, and owns that he punished many: testing them by a water ordeal, to see if they would sink or swim. He says that he swam many, and watched them for four nights together, keeping them standing or walking till their feet were blistered; “the reason” as he says, “was to prevent their couching down; for indeed, when they be suffered to couch, immediately come their familiars in the room, and scareth the watchers, and heartneth (encourageth) the witch.”
This swimming experiment, which was deemed a full proof of guilt if any one subjected to it did not sink, but floated on the surface of the water, was one of the ordeals especially recommended by our king, James I., who, in a work upon the subject, among other things, assigned this somewhat ridiculous reason for its pretended infallibility:—“That as such persons had renounced their baptism by water, so the water refuses to receive them.” Consequently, those who were accused of diabolical practices, were tied neck and heels together, and tossed into a pond; if they floated or swam they were guilty, and therefore taken out and hanged or burnt; if they were innocent, they were drowned. Of this method of trial by water ordeal, Scot observes: “that a woman above the age of fifty years, and being bound both hand and foot, her clothes being upon her, and being laid softly upon the water, sinketh not a long time, some say not at all.” And Dr. Hutchinson confirms this, by saying, not one in ten even sink in that position of their bodies. Its utter fallacy was shown when the witch finders themselves were thus tested; and the last quoted writer says, that if the books written against witchcraft were tested by the same ordeal, they would in no degree come off more safely.
One of the most cruel cases was that of Mr. Lowes, a clergyman, who had reached the patriarchal age of eighty. He was one of those unfortunate ministers of the Gospel whose livings were sequestered by the parliament, and who was suspected as malignant because he preserved his loyalty and the homilies of the Church. It would have been well for him had this been the only suspicion; but he was accused of witchcraft; and it was asserted that he had sunk ships at sea by the power he possessed, and witnesses were found who swore to seeing him do it. He was seized and tested. They watched him, and kept him awake at night, and ran him backwards and forwards about the room until he was out of breath; then they rested him a little, and then ran him again. And thus they did for several days and nights together, until he was weary of his life, and was scarce sensible of what he said or did. They swam him twice or thrice, although that was no true rule to try him by, for they sent in unsuspected people at the same time, and they swam as well as he; yet was the unfortunate old clergyman condemned to death and executed.
In the book written some years after this, by Mr. Gaul, he mentions their mode of discovering witches, which was principally by marks or signs upon their bodies, which were in reality but moles, scorbutic spots, or warts, which frequently grow large and pendulous in old age, and were absurdly declared to be teats to suckle imps. Thus of one, Joane Willimot, in 1619, it was sworn that she had two imps, one in the form of a kitten, and another in that of a mole, “and they leapt on her shoulder, and the kitten sucked under her right ear, on her neck, and the mole on the left side, in the like place;” and at another time a spirit was seen “sucking her under the left ear, in the likeness of a little white dogge.” (See The Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcrafts of Margare and Philip Flower, 1619).
Another test was to place the suspected witch in the middle of a room, upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture, and if she were refractory, she was tied too by cords, and kept without meat or sleep for a space of four-and-twenty hours; all this time she was strictly watched, because it was believed that in the course of that time her imp would come to suck her, for whom some hole or ingress was provided. The watchers swept the room frequently, so that nothing might escape them; and should a fly or spider be found that had the activity to elude them, they were assured these were the imps. In 1645 one was hanged at Cambridge, who kept a tame frog which was sworn to be her imp; and one at Gloucester, in 1649, who was convicted for having suckled a sow in the form of a little black creature. In “a Tryal of Witches, at Bury St. Edmunds, 1664,” a witness deposed to having caught one of these imps in a blanket, waiting for her child, who slept in it and was bewitched; that it was in the form of a toad, and was caught and thrown into the fire, where “it made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard.” All of which was the simple natural result of this cruel proceeding, but which was received by judge and jury, at that time, of the poor toad being an imp!