Hutchinson, in his essay on witchcraft, says:—“It was very requisite that these witch-finders should take care to go to no towns but where they might do what they would without being controlled by sticklers; but if the times had not been as they were, they would have found but few towns where they might be suffered to use the trial of the stool, which was as bad as most tortures. Do but imagine a poor old creature, under all the weakness and infirmities of old age, set like a fool in the middle of a room, with a rabble of ten towns about her home; then her legs tied across, that all the weight of her body might rest upon her seat. By that means, after some hours, the circulation of the blood would be stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as the wooden horse. Then must she continue in pain four-and-twenty hours, without either sleep or meat; and since this was their ungodly way of trial, what wonder was it if, when they were weary of their lives, they confessed many tales that would please them, and many times they knew not what.”
Hopkins’ favourite and ultimate method of proof was by swimming, as before narrated. They tied together the thumbs and toes of the suspected person, about whose waist was fastened a cord, the ends of which were held on the banks of the river by two men, whose power it was to strain or slacken it. If they floated, they were witches. After a considerable course of wicked accusation on the part of Hopkins and his accomplices, testing all by these modes of trial, and ending in the cruel deaths of many wretched old persons, a reaction against him took place, probably at the instigation of some whose friends had been condemned innocently, or of those who were too wise to believe in his tests, and disgusted with his cold wickedness. His own famous and conclusive evidence—the experiment of swimming—was tried upon himself; and this wretch, who had sacrificed so many, by the same test, was found to be guilty, too. He was deservedly condemned, and suffered death himself as a wizard.
Dr. Harsenet, Archbishop of York, in his Declaration of Popish Impostures, says, “Out of those is shap’d us the true idea of a witch, an old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a staff, hollow ey’d, untooth’d, furrow’d on her face, having her lips trembling with the palsy, going mumbling in the streets—one that hath forgotten her pater-noster, and yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab!—if she hath learned of an old wife in a chimney end, pax, max, fax, for a spell, or can say Sir John Grantham’s curse for a nuller’s eels—‘All ye that have stolen the miller’s eels, Laudate Dominum de Cœlis, and they that have consented thereto, Benedicamus Domino,’ why then, beware, look about you, my neighbours. If any of you have a sheep sick of the giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porridge, or butter enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp to teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, etc. And then, when an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her ‘idle young housewife,’ or bid the devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young girl is owl-blasted, etc. They that have their brains baited, and their fancies distempered, with the imaginations and apprehensions of witches, conjurors, and fairies, and all that lymphatical chimera, I find to be marshalled in one of these five ranks:—Children, fools, women, cowards, sick or black melancholic discomposed wits.”
Many hundreds of poor old women, and many a Cat, were sacrificed to the zealous Master Hopkins, for Cats and Kittens were frequently said to be imps, who had taken that form. However, he was not the only scoundrel who made witch-finding a trade.
In Syke’s Local Recorder, mention is made of a Scotchman, who pretended great powers of discovering witchcraft, and was engaged by the townsmen of Newcastle to practise there; and one man and fifteen women were hanged by him. But he ultimately shared, as Hopkins did, the cruel fate he had awarded to so many others. “When the witch-finder had done in Newcastle, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland to try women there, and got three pounds a-piece; but Henry Doyle, Esq., laid hold on him, and required bond of him to answer at the Sessions. He escaped into Scotland, where he was made prisoner, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such-like villany exercised in Scotland, and confessed at the gallows that he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland.”
Here is an account of the death of a famous witch’s famous Cat:—
“Ye rats, in triumph elevate your ears!
Exult, ye mice! for Fate’s abhorred shears
Of Dick’s nine lives have slit the Cat-guts nine;
Henceforth he mews ’midst choirs of Cats divine!”
So sings Mr. Huddesford, in a “Monody on the death of Dick, an Academical Cat,” with this motto:—
“Mi-Cat inter omnes.”
Hor. Carm., Lib. i., Ode 12.
He brings his Cat, Dick, from the Flood, and consequently through Rutterkin, a Cat who was “cater-cousin to the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of Grimalkin, and first Cat in the Caterie of an old woman, who was tried for bewitching a daughter of the Countess of Rutland, in the beginning of the sixteenth century.” The monodist connects him with Cats of great renown in the annals of witchcraft; a science whereto they have been allied as closely as poor old women, one of whom, it appears, on the authority of an old pamphlet, entitled “Mewes from Scotland,” etc., printed in the year 1591, “confessed that she took a Cat and christened it, etc., and that in the night following, the said Cat was conveyed into the middest of the sea by all these witches sayling in their riddles, or cives, so left the said Cat right before the towne of Leith, in Scotland. This done, there did arise such a tempest at sea, as a greater hath not been seen since. Againe it is confessed that the said christened Cat was the cause of the Kinge’s majestie’s shippe, at his coming forthe of Denmark, had a contrarie winde to the rest of the shippes then being in his companie, which thing was most straunge and true, as the Kinge’s Majestie acknowledgeth, for when the rest of the shippes had a fair and good winde, then was the winde contrarie, and altogether against his Majestie,” etc.