"Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood; I take it wholly upon myself, my blood be upon my own head: and, as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison, or ever coming in credit again, through the temptation of the Devil, I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than live."
Sir George Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him, "under secresie," "that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her, and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the world." Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and, upon her knees, called God to witness to what she said.
A wretch, named Matthew Hopkins, rendered himself infamously conspicuous in the prosecutions for witchcraft that took place in the counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, in England, in the years 1645 and 1646. The title he assumed indicates the part he acted: it was "Witch-finder-general." He travelled from place to place; his expenses were paid; and he required, in addition, regular fees for the discovery of a witch. Besides pricking the body to find the witch-mark, he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours. He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot over the rough ground, thus overcoming them with extreme weariness and pain: but his favorite method was to tie the thumb of the right hand close to the great toe of the left foot, and draw them through a river or pond; if they floated, as they would be likely to do, while their heavier limbs were thus sustained and upborne by the rope, it was considered as conclusive proof of their guilt. This monster was encouraged and sanctioned by the government; and he procured the death, in one year and in one county, of more than three times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion. He and his exploits are referred to in the following lines, from that storehouse of good sense and keen wit, Butler's "Hudibras:"—
"Hath not this present Parliament
A leiger to the Devil sent,
Fully empowered to treat about
Finding revolted witches out?
And has he not within a year
Hanged threescore of them in one shire?"
The infatuated people looked upon this Hopkins with admiration and astonishment, and could only account for his success by the supposition, which, we are told, was generally entertained, that he had stolen the memorandum-book in which Satan had recorded the names of all the persons in England who were in league with him!
The most melancholy circumstance connected with the history of this creature is, that Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy—names dear and venerable in the estimation of all virtuous and pious men—were deceived and deluded by him: they countenanced his conduct, followed him in his movements, and aided him in his proceedings.
At length, however, some gentlemen, shocked at the cruelty and suspicious of the integrity of Hopkins, seized him, tied his thumbs and toes together, threw him into a pond, and dragged him about to their hearts' content. They were fully satisfied with the result of the experiment. It was found that he did not sink. He stood condemned on his own principles; and thus the country was rescued from the power of the malicious impostor.
Among the persons whose death Hopkins procured, was a venerable, gray-headed clergyman, named Lewis. He was of the Church of England, had been the minister of a congregation for more than half a century, and was over eighty years of age. His infirm frame was subjected to the customary tests, even to the trial by water ordeal: he was compelled to walk almost incessantly for several days and nights, until, in the exhaustion of his nature, he yielded assent to a confession that was adduced against him in Court; which, however, he disowned and denied there and at all times, from the moment of release from the torments, by which it had been extorted, to his last breath. As he was about to die the death of a felon, he knew that the rites of sepulture, according to the forms of his denomination, would be denied to his remains. The aged sufferer, it is related, read his own funeral service while on the scaffold. Solemn, sublime, and affecting as are passages of this portion of the ritual of the Church, surely it was never performed under circumstances so well suited to impress with awe and tenderness as when uttered by the calumniated, oppressed, and dying old man. Baxter had been tried for sedition, on the ground that one of his publications contained a reflection upon Episcopacy, and was imprisoned for two years. It is a striking and melancholy illustration of the moral infirmity of human nature, that the author of the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," and the "Call to the Unconverted," permitted such a vengeful feeling against the Establishment to enter his breast, that he took pleasure, and almost exulted, in relating the fate of this innocent and aged clergyman, whom he denominates, in derision, a "Reading Parson."
Baxter's writings are pervaded by his belief in all sorts of supernatural things. In the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," he declares his conviction of the reality and authenticity of stories of ghosts, apparitions, haunted houses, &c. He placed full faith in a tale, current among the people of his day, of the "dispossession of the Devil out of many persons together in a room in Lancashire, at the prayer of some godly ministers." In his "Dying Thoughts," he says, "I have had many convincing proofs of witches, the contracts they have made with devils, and the power which they have received from them;" and he seems to have credited the most absurd fables ever invented on the subject by ignorance, folly, or fraud.
The case to which he refers, as one of the "dispossession of devils," may be found in a tract published in London in 1697, entitled, "The Surey Demoniac; or, an Account of Satan's strange and dreadful actings, in and about the body of Richard Dugdale, of Surey, near Whalley, in Lancashire. And how he was dispossessed by God's blessing on the Fastings and Prayers of divers Ministers and People. The matter of fact attested by the oaths of several creditable persons, before some of his Majestie's Justices of the Peace in the said county." The "London Monthly Repository" (vol. v., 1810) describes the affair as follows: "These dreadful actings of Satan continued above a year; during which there was a desperate struggle between him and nine ministers of the gospel, who had undertaken to cast him out, and, for that purpose, successively relieved each other in their daily combats with him: while Satan tried all his arts to baffle their attempts, insulting them with scoffs and raillery, puzzling them sometimes with Greek and Latin, and threatening them with the effects of his vengeance, till he was finally vanquished and put to flight by the persevering prayers and fastings of the said ministers."