Yes, the ignorance and infatuation had ceased to be "respectable," which fact, doubtless, has a marvellous influence on our mental and moral optics, when contemplating many other historical delusions, as well as those connected with supposed witches and their malevolent doings.
A singular instance of combined delusion and imposture with respect to witchcraft, is related in Ralph Gardiner's "malicious invective against the government of Newcastle-on-Tyne," entitled "England's Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal-Trade," and published in 1655. It appears that about five or six years previously, the magistrates of the borough had sent two of their sergeants into Scotland, "to agree with a Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to find out Witches by pricking them with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such who should be brought to him, and to have twenty shillings a peece for all he could condemn as witches, and free passage thither and back again." Many poor women were subjected to much indignity by this fellow, who caused them to be stripped partially naked, when he inserted pins into various parts of their flesh, to find a place from which no blood would issue, as he pretended. On one occasion, however, he was detected and compelled to acknowledge that a respectable woman, whom he had grossly treated and condemned, was "not a child of the Devil," as he had previously insisted. It appears that this worthy afterwards visited other parts of Northumberland, "to try women there, where he got some three pound a peece." The author adds, "it was conceived if he had staid he would have made most of the women in the North Witches for mony." He gives the names of fifteen poor wretches who were hanged at Newcastle at this impostor's instigation, and says, "These poor souls never confessed anything, but pleaded innocence: And one of them by name Margaret Brown beseeched God that some remarkable sign might be seen at the time of their execution, to evidence their innocence, and as soon as ever she was turned off the ladder, her blood gushed out upon the people to the admiration of the beholders!" The said witchfinder at length met with the fate he so richly merited. He was, in the words of the indignant author, "laid hold on in Scotland, cast into prison, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such like villainie exercised in Scotland. And upon the gallows he confessed he had been the death of about two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland for the gain of twenty shillings a peece, and beseeched forgiveness. And was executed." Singularly enough, our author himself met with a similar untimely fate, but for a very different crime, as appears from the following MS. note, in the copy of Gardiner's work before the present writer, purporting to be extracted from a "MS. Life of Barnes, p. 420":—"Upon some methods agreed on for reformation of Manners in the Town according to that clause in the charter which empowers them to make By-laws, there was one Gardiner writ a malicious Invective against the Government of Newcastle, but he got his Reward, being afterwards at York hanged for Coyning."
The celebrated "witchfinder," Hopkins, was equally unfortunate with his Scotch compeer. Some individuals, with more acumen than the superstitious masses, took it into their heads to experiment upon Hopkins himself. Accordingly they seized him, tied his thumbs and toes together, after his own fashion, when operating on others. On placing him on the water he swam as buoyantly as his victims. "This," says one writer, "cleared the country of him, and it was a great pity that they did not think of the experiment sooner." Hopkins's method of discovering witches is, at least, as old as the days of Pliny the elder.
In the "Covntrey Ivstice," by "Michael Dalton, Lincoln's Inn, Gent," published in 1618, are some curious illustrations of the state of the law with regard to witchcraft, at the period. The author says:—
"Now against these witches the Iustices of peace may not alwaies expect direct euidence, seeing all their works are the works of darknesse, and no witnesses present with them to accuse them: And therefore for their better discouerie, I thought good here to insert certaine obseruations out of the booke of discouery of the Witches that were arraigned at Lancaster, Ann. Dom. 1612, before Sir Iames Altham, and Sir Edw. Bromely Iudges of Assise there.
"1. They haue ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, which appeareth to them.
"2. Their said familiar hath some bigg or place vpon their body, where he sucketh them.
"3. They haue often pictures of clay, or waxe (like a man, &c.) found in their house.
"4. If the dead body bleed, vpon the Witches touching it.
"5. The testimony of the person hurt, vpon his death.