This, then, was the wise and liberal manner in which an impossible sin was discovered, and judgment executed, in those fatal years when Matthew Hopkins ruled the mind of England; yet years wherein Harvey was patiently at work on his grand physiological discovery, and when Wallis, and Wilkins, and Boyle were founding the Royal Society of liberal art and free discussion. It was only a piece of poetical justice that in the future he should be “swum” cross-bound in his own manner, and found to float according to the hydrostatics of witches. The shame and fear of this trial hastened the consumption to which he was hereditarily predisposed; and after this stringent test we hear no more of this vile impostor and impudent deceiver, this canting hypocrite, who cloaked his cruelty and covetousness under the garb of religion, and professed to be serving God and delivering man from the power of the devil when he was pandering to the worst passions of the time, and sacrificing to his own corrupt heart. The blood money, for which he sent so many hapless wretches to the gallows (he charged twenty shillings a town for his labours), though not an exceeding bribe, as he himself boasts, was money pleasantly earned and pleasantly spent; for what man would object to travel through a beautiful country, surrounded by friends, and carrying influence and importance wherever he went, and have all his expenses paid into the bargain?
In 1664[130] we find him at Yarmouth, accusing sixteen women in a batch, among whom was an old woman easily got to confess. She said she used to work for Mr. Moulton, a stocking merchant and alderman of the town; but one day, going for work, she found him from home, and his man refused to let her have any till his return, which would not be for a fortnight. She, being exasperated against the man, applied to the maid to let her have some knitting to do, but the maid gave her the like answer: upon which she went home sorely discontented with both. In the middle of the night some one knocked at the door: on her rising to open it she saw a tall black man, who told her that she should have as much work from him as she would, if she would write her name in his book. He then scratched her hand with a penknife, and filled the pen with her blood—guiding her hand while she made her mark. This done, he asked what he could do for her: but when she desired to have her revenge on Mr. Moulton’s man, he told her he had no power over him, because he went constantly to church to hear Whitfield and Brinsley, and said his prayers morning and evening. The same of the maid; but there was a young child in the house more easy to be dealt with, for whom he would make an image of wax which then they must bury in the churchyard, and as the waxen image wasted and consumed, so would the child; which was done, and the child thrown into a languishing condition in consequence; so bad, indeed, that they all thought it was dying. But as soon as the witch confessed, the little one lifted up its head and laughed, and from that instant began to recover. The waxen image was found where she said she and the devil had buried it, and thus the whole of the charm was destroyed, and the child was saved; but the poor old crazy woman with her blackbird imp, and her fifteen compeers with their whole menagerie of imps, were hung at Yarmouth, amid the rejoicings of the multitude.
At Edmonsbury, that same year, another witch had a little black smooth imp dog, which she sent to play with the only child of some people she hated. At first the child refused to play with its questionable companion, but soon got used to its daily appearance, and lost all fear. So the dog-imp, watching its opportunity, got the boy one day to the water, when it dragged him underneath and drowned him. The witch was hanged: could they do less in such a clear case as this?
Another woman was hanged at Oxford for a story as wild as any to be found in Grimm or Mother Bunch. There were two sisters, left orphans but well provided for. The eldest, somewhat prodigal, married a man as bad or worse than herself, who spent her money and afterwards deserted her, leaving her with one child and in extreme poverty. The younger, being very serious and religious, waited for two or three years before she settled herself, then married a good, honest, sober farmer, with whom she lived well and prosperously; her gear increasing yearly, and herself the happy mother of a pretty child. Her sister was moved to envy to see all this prosperity and contentment, and in her passion made a compact with the devil, by which she became a witch for the purpose of killing her sister’s child as the greatest despite she could do them. For this purpose she used to mount a bedstaff, which, by the uttering of certain magical words, carried her to her sister’s room; but she could never harm the child, because it was so well protected by the prayers of its parents. Her own daughter, a little one of about seven, watched her mother in her antics with the bedstaff, and from watching took to imitating—going through the air one night after its dame, and in like fashion. However, it chanced that she was left behind in her uncle’s house; so presently she fell a-crying, her powers being apparently limited to going, not including the magic words that insured the return. Her uncle and aunt, hearing a child cry where never a child should be, took a candle and discovered the whole matter. Next day the child was taken before the magistrate, to whom it told its tale, and the mother was apprehended. On the trial this little creature of seven years old was admitted as the chief evidence against her mother; and after they had made the poor woman mad among them, she confessed, and was hanged quite quietly. These were only two out of the hundreds whom that miserable man, Matthew Hopkins, gent., contrived to send to the gallows. Beaumont, in his Treatise on Spirits, mentions that “thirty-six were arraigned at the same time before Judge Coniers, An. 1645, and fourteen of them hanged, and an hundred more detained in several prisons in Suffolk and Essex.” But the most celebrated and the saddest of all the trials in which Hopkins played a part was that of
THE MANNINGTREE WITCHES,
held before Sir Matthew Hale in 1645—Hopkins’s great witch-year.
In a very scarce tract called ‘A true and exact relation of the severall Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the Late Witches Arraigned and Executed in the county of Essex, Published by Authoritie, and Printed by M. S. for Henry Overton and Benj. Allen, and are to be sold at their shops in Popes-head-alley, 1645,’ is an account of these Manningtree witches. One John Rivet’s wife, living in Manningtree, was taken sick and lame and with violent fits, and John swore before Sir Harbottel Grimston, one of the justices of the peace, that a cunning woman—wife of one Hovye at Hadleigh—told him that his wife was cursed by two women, near neighbours; of whom one was Elizabeth Clarke, alias Bedingfield. Elizabeth’s mother, and others of her kinsfolk, had been hanged for witchcraft in the bygone years: so it ran in the blood, and it was not to be wondered at if it broke out afresh now. Sir Harbottel Grimston and Sir Thomas Bowes, the two Justices before whom this deposition was taken, then admitted the evidence of Matthew Hopkins of Manningtree, gentleman and witch-finder, who deposed to having watched Elizabeth Clarke last night, being the 24th of March, 1645, when he and one Master Sterne, who watched with him, saw some strange things which he would presently tell their worships of. Elizabeth told this deponent and his companion that if they would stay and do her no harm, she would call one of her imps, and play with it in her lap; which at first they refused, but afterwards consenting, there appeared to them “an Impe like to a Dog, which was white, with some sandy spots, and seemed to be very fat and plump, with very short legges, who forthwith vanished away.” This was Jarmara. Then came Vinegar Tom, in the shape of a greyhound with very long legs; and then for a moment only came one for Master Sterne, a black imp which vanished instantly; then one like a polecat, only bigger.[131] Elizabeth now told them that she had five imps of her own, and two of Beldam West’s, and that they sucked turn and turn about: now she was sucked by Beldam West’s and now Beldam West by hers. She further said that Satan, whom she knew very much too well as “a proper Gentleman with a laced band, having the whole proportion of a Man,” would never let her have any peace till she slew the hogs of Mr. Edwards of Manningtree, and Mr. Taylor’s horse. When she had slain them Satan let her be quiet. Then of his own accord, Mr. Hopkins said that going from Mr. Edwards’s house to his own, that night at nine or ten, he saw the greyhound which he had with him jump as if after a hare; and coming up hurriedly, there was a white thing like a “kitlyn,” and his greyhound standing aloof from it; but by-and-by the white kitlyn came dancing round and about the greyhound, “and by all likelihood bit off a piece of the flesh of the shoulder of the greyhound; for the greyhound came shrieking and crying to this Informant, with a piece of fleshe torne from her shoulder.” To crown all, coming into his own yard, Mr. Hopkins saw a thing like a black cat, only three times as big, sitting on the strawberry-bed glaring at him; but when he went towards it, it leaped over the pale, ran right through the yard—his greyhound after it—then flung open a gate which was “underset with a paire of Tumbrell strings,” and so vanished, leaving the greyhound in a state of extreme terror. Which, if there was any truth at all in these depositions, and they were not merely arbitrary lies, would make one suspect that Master Matthew Hopkins had been drinking, and knew a few of the phenomena of delirium tremens.
John Sterne, Matthew’s slavey or attendant, then gave information. Watching with Matthew Hopkins, he asked Elizabeth Clarke if she were never afraid of her imps? to whom she made this notable answer, “What, doe you thinke I am afraid of my children?” His tale of imps was rather different to his patron’s: they had consulted hurriedly, or John’s memory was bad. The white imp was Hoult; Jarmara had red spots; Vinegar Tom was like a “dumbe Dogge;” and Sack-and-Sugar was a hard-working imp, which would tear Master John Sterne when it came. And it was well that Master Sterne was so quick, else this imp would have “soon skipped upon his face, and perchance had got into his throate, and then there would have been a feast of toades in this Informant’s belly.” Elizabeth had one imp, she said, for which she would fight up to her knees in blood before she would lose it; and when asked what the devil was like as a man, said he was a “proper man,” a deal “properer” than Matthew Hopkins.
Other witnesses affirmed that if Elizabeth smacked with her mouth then a white cat-like imp, would come, and that they saw five more imps, named as above. And furthermore that she confessed that old Beldam, meaning Ann West—which was a very disrespectful way of speaking of her gossip—had killed Robert Oakes’ wife and a clothier’s child of Dedham, both of whom had died about a week since; and also that “the said old Beldam Weste had the wife of one William Cole of Mannintree in handling, who deid not long since of a pining and languishing disease,” and that she had raised the wind which sunk the hoy in which was Tom Turner’s brother thirty months agone. She also said that Beldam West had taught her all she knew; for that one day as she was pitying her for her lameness—she had but one leg—and for her poverty, she told her how she might get imps and be rich, for that the imps would help her to a husband who would keep her ever after, so that she need not be put to such miserable shifts as gathering sticks for a living. Elizabeth Clarke then accused Elizabeth Gooding of being one of the tribe: and Robert Taylor came forward to give corroborative evidence against her. He said that nine weeks since, Elizabeth Gooding came to his shop for half a pound of cheese, on trust; that he denied it to her; whereupon she went away, “muttering and mumbling” to herself, and soon came back with the money. That very night his horse, which was in the stable, sound and in good condition, fell lame and in four days’ time died of a strange disease, and Elizabeth Gooding was the cause thereof. Elizabeth Gooding “is a lewd woman, and to this Informant’s knowledge, hath kept company with the said Elizabeth Clarke, Anne Leech, and Anne West, which Anne West hath been suspected for a Witch many years since, and suffered imprisonment for the same.” Elizabeth Gooding contented herself with saying quietly that she was not guilty of any one particular charged upon her in the examination of the said Robert Taylor. Nevertheless she was executed at Chelmsford.
Richard Edwards said that twelve months since he was driving his cows near to the house of Anne Leech, widow, when they both fell down and died in two days; the next day his white cow fell down within a rod of the same place, and died in a week after. In August last his child was out at nurse at goodwife Wyles’, who lived near Elizabeth Gooding and Elizabeth Clarke; which said child was taken very sick, with rolling of the eyes, strange fits, extending of the limbs, and in two days it died: and Elizabeth Gooding and Anne Leech were the cause of its death.