Joan Cariden, widow, said that about three quarters of a year since, “as she was in the bed about twelve or one of the clocke in the night, there lay a ‘rugged soft thing’ upon her bosome which was very soft, and she thrust it off with her hand; and she saith that when she had thrust it away she thought God forsooke her, and she could never pray so well since as she could before; and further saith that shee verily thinks it was alive.” On a second examination she said that the divell came to her in the shape of a “black rugged Dog in the night time, and crept into the bed to her, and spake to her in a mumbling tongue.” Two days after she made further revelations of how “within these two daies,” she had gone to Goodwife Pantery’s house, where were other good wives, and where the divell sat at the upper end of the table.
Jane Hot said that a thing like a “hedg-hog” had usually visited her for these twenty years. It sucked her in her sleep, and pained her, so that she awoke: and lay on her breast, when she would strike it off. It was as soft as a cat. On coming into the gaol she was very urgent on the others to confess, but stood out sturdily for her own innocence; saying, “that she would lay twenty shillings that if she was swum she would sink.” She was swum and she floated; whereat a gentleman asked her “how it was possible that she could be so impudent as not to confesse herselfe?” to whom she answered, “That the Divell went with her all the way, and told her that she should sinke; but when she was in the Water he sat upon a Crosse beame, and laughed at her.” “These three were executed on Munday last,” says the tract in emphatic italics.
It now came to the turn of Elizabeth Harris. She said that nineteen years ago the devil came to her in the form of a muse (mouse) and told her she should be revenged. And she was revenged on all who offended her; on Goodman Chilman, who said she had stolen a pigge, and who therefore she wished might die—and her Impe destroyed him; on Goodman Woodcot, in whose High (hoy?) her son had been drowned, when “she wished that God might be her revenger, which was her watchword to the Divell”—and the hoy was cast away, as she conceived, in consequence of her wish. And did not Joan Williford’s imp tell her that “though the Boate went chearfully oute it should not come so chearfully home?” She said further that sundry good wives, named, had “ill tongues;” and that she had made a covenant with the devil, written in the blood which she had scratched with her nails from out her breast.
Alexander Sussums of Melford, Sussex, said he had things which drew his marks, and that he could not help being a witch, for all his kindred were naught—his mother and aunt hanged, his grandmother burnt, and ten others questioned and hanged. At Faversham about this time, three witches were hanged, one of whom had an imp-dog, Bun; and on the 9th of September[135] Jane Lakeland was burnt at Ipswich for having bewitched to death her husband, and Mrs. Jennings’ maid, who once refused her a needle and dunned her for a shilling. Jane Lakeland had contracted with the devil twenty years ago. He came to her when between sleeping and waking, speaking to her in a hollow voice, and offering her her will if she would covenant with him. To which she, assenting, he then stroke his claw into her hand and with her blood wrote out the covenant. She had bewitched men and women and cows and corn, and sunk ships, and played all the devilries of her art, but remained ever unsuspected, holding the character of a pious woman, and going regularly to church and sacrament. She had three imps—two little dogs and a mole—and Hopkins burnt her as the best way of settling the question of her sanity or disease.
It would have been well for all these poor people if their respective judges—Sir Matthew Hale included—had had only as much liberality and common sense as Mr. Gaule, the minister of Stoughton in Huntingdonshire; for though Gaule was no wise minded to give up his belief either in the devil or in witches, he utterly repudiated Matthew Hopkins and his tribe and his ways, and condemned his whole manner of proceeding, from first to last. He preached against him, and when he heard a rumour of his visiting Stoughton he strongly opposed him, whereupon Matthew wrote this insolent letter, which Mr. Gaule printed as a kind of preface to his book of “Select Cases,” put out soon after.
“My Service to your Worship presented. I have this Day received a letter, &c., to come to a Town called Great Stoughton, to search for evil disposed Persons, called Witches (though I heare your Minister is farre against us through Ignorance:) I intend to come the sooner to heare his singular Judgement in the Behalfe of such Parties; I have known a Minister in Suffolk preach as much against this Discovery in a Pulpit, and forced to recant it, (by the Committee) in the same place. I much marvaile such evil Members should have any (much more any of the Clergy) who should dayly preach Terrour to convince such Offenders, stand up to take their Parts, against such as are Complainants for the King and Sufferers themselves, with their Families and Estates. I intend to give your Towne a visite suddenly. I am to come to Kimbolton this Week, and it shall be tenne to one, but I will come to your Town first, but I would certainly know afore, whether your Town affords many Sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to give and afford as good Welcome and Entertainment, as other where I have beene, else I shall wave your Shire, (not as yet beginning in any Part of it myself) and betake me to such Places, where I doe, and may persist without Controle, but with Thanks and Recompense. So I humbly take my leave and rest, Your Servant to be Commanded,
“Matthew Hopkins.”
I have not been able to find what was the result of this letter, but I do not suppose that Hopkins, who was a great coward like all tyrants, cared to brave even the small danger of one minister’s opposition, not knowing how many “sticklers for such cattle” might be at his back. In his Apology, or “Certaine Queries Answered, which have been and are likely to be objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out Witches,” he says that “he never went to any towne or place, but they rode, writ, or sent often for him, and were (for ought he knew) glad of him;” and if this was true, Mr. Gaule most likely was rid of him at Great Stoughton, and one rood of English land left undefiled. Besides, his hands were full elsewhere; for when we think that at Bury St. Edmunds eighteen persons were hanged on one day alone, and a hundred and twenty more left lying in prison, all through his instrumentality, we must imagine that he had enough to do in places where he was caressed and desired, not to forbear troubling those where he was abhorred and might run some danger.
MR. CLARK’S EXAMPLES.
A few other men, too, were about as sane as Mr. Gaule on this maddest of all mad subjects. Mr. Clark, a minister—and the ministers were generally the worst—had a marvellous allowance of common sense, remembering the times. A certain parishioner of his cried out that she was grievously beset by a neighbour who came in the spirit, that is, as an apparition, to teaze and torment her. Mr. Clark, the minister, knew the accused woman, and believed in her innocency; but it happened one day, by one of those curious coincidences which, by-the-bye, are so often exaggerated into far more significance than they deserve, that the suspected woman while milking her cow was struck by it on the forehead, and naturally fell a-bleeding. At that moment, or said to be at that moment, her “spectre” appeared to the afflicted person, and she, pointing out the place where it stood, desired some of those who were with her to strike at it. They did so, and she said they fetched blood. Hereupon a posse of them went to the supposed witch, and found her with her forehead bleeding, just as the afflicted had said. There was no question now of doubt, and they rushed off to Mr. Clark to tell them what they had seen, and demand that she be put to the proof. Mr. Clark went to the woman and asked what had made her forehead bleed? She told him, a blow from her cow’s horn; “whereby he was satisfy’d that it was a Design of Satan to render an innocent person suspected.” Another instance of the same kind of thing happened at Cambridge. A man believed that a certain widow sent her imps, as cats, to bewitch and torment him. One night as he lay in bed one of these imps came within reach, and he struck it on the back: when it vanished away, as was to be expected. The next day the man sent to inquire of his old enemy, and found that she had a sore back; at which he rejoiced exceedingly, having now in his hands the clew which would guide him to revenge and her to justice and the scaffold. But Mr. Day, her surgeon, stopped his triumph before it was ripe, and cut the clew before it had spun out; telling him that the sore back was nothing but a boil, which had gathered, headed, and healed, like any other boil, and that it could have had no connexion whatever with the blow which he had so valiantly given the cat-imp when in bed. So this bit of cruelty was put a stop to, and the poor old creature, with a boil on her back, slept her last sleep unhastened by the hangman. Another wretched being who had been kept without sleep or food for twenty-four hours, pricked, tried, and tortured into a state of temporary imbecility, at last confessed to her imp Nan; but a gentleman in the neighbourhood, very indignant at the folly and barbarity of the whole thing, rescued the poor victim, and made her eat some meat and go to sleep. When she woke up she said she knew nothing of what she had confessed, but that she had a pullet which she sometimes called Nan, and which of a surety was no imp, but an honest little hen that had to lay good eggs some day, and be eaten at table when her work was done.