DOLL BILBY AND HER COMPEER.[145]
Burton Agnes, in the county of York, was troubled; for Faith Corbet, the young daughter of Henry Corbet, was taken violently ill, and Alice Huson and Doll Bilby had bewitched her. Good Mrs. Corbet—beyond her age in generous unbelief—refused to entertain her daughter’s suspicions; indeed she had chidden her some years ago for calling old Alice a witch, for she had a liking to the poor widow, and kept her about the house, looking after her young turkeys, &c., and was kind and liberal to her, and sought to make her wasting life pass as easily as might be. But Miss Faith hated the old woman, and cried out against her as a witch; and when she lost her gloves, swore that Alice had taken them to play cantrips with, and that she should never be well again. Then she began to fall into fits, when she would be so terribly tormented that it took two or three to hold her; and she would screech and cry out vehemently, and bite and scratch anything she could lay hold of, all the while exclaiming, “Ah, Alice, old witch, have I gotten thee!” And sometimes she would lie down, all drawn together in a round, and be speechless and half swooning for days together; and then she would be wildly merry, and as full of antics as a monkey. Physicians were consulted, but none came near to her disorder; and though her father carried her about hither and thither, for change of air, nothing would cure her, she said, so long as Alice Huson and Doll Bilby remained at liberty. Still the father and mother held out, until, one day, before a whole concourse of people come to look at her in her fits, she cried out, “Oh Faithless and incredulous People! shall I never be believed till it be past Time? For I am as near Death as possibly may be, and when they have got my Life you will repent when it is past Time.” On hearing this the father went to the minister of Burton Agnes, Mr. Wellfet, and he, Sir Fr. Boynton—a justice of the peace—and Mr. Corbet himself at last dragged the old woman Huson into Faith’s chamber. At which Miss Faith gave a great screech, but presently called for toast and beer; then for cordials; and having taken a somewhat large quantity of both, she got up, dressed herself, and came down stairs. This, too, after she had been so weak that she could not turn herself in bed: which proved that Mother Huson had some extraordinary influence over the girl—an influence more potent than holy said the bystanders. This happy state did not continue. Faith said she should never be well while the two women were at liberty; and so it proved; for when they were at last arrested, and held in strict security and durance, the young lady pronounced herself healed, and gave no one any more trouble. Then Alice Huson was got to make confession to Mr. Wellfet, the minister, and thus sealed her own doom, and saved the prosecution the pain of conviction.
She said that for three years she had had intercourse with the devil, who, one day as she was on the moor, appeared to her in the form of a black man riding on horseback. He told her she should never want if she would follow his ways and give herself up to him: which Alice promised to do. Then he sealed the bargain by giving her five shillings; at another time he gave her seven; and often—indeed six or seven times—repeating his gifts to the like munificent extent. He was like a black man with cloven feet, riding on a black horse, and Alice fell down and worshipped him, as she had covenanted. And she had hurt Faith Corbet by her evil spirit, for she did, in her apprehension, ride her; and when Mr. Wellfet examined her once before, the devil stood by, and gave her answers; and she was under the Corbets’ window as a cat when Mrs. Corbet said she was—for even her kindly faith was shaken at last; and Doll Bilby had a hand in all this evil too; for Doll wanted to kill Faith outright, but old Alice interposed, thinking they had done enough harm already. She confessed to killing Dick Warmers “by my wicked heart and wicked eyes;” and to having lent Lancelot Harrison eight shillings of the ten which the devil had given her at Baxter’s door, a fortnight ago, “about twilight or daygate;” and she had a bigge, or witch mark, where the devil sucked from supper-time till after cockcrowing, twitching at her heart as if it was drawn with pincers the while; and she meant to practise witchcraft four years ago, when she begged old clothes of Mrs. Corbet, and the children refused her; and the devil told her not to tell of Doll Bilby. And to all this raving Timothy Wellfet, minister of Burton Agnes, set his name, and so hanged Alice Huson and Doll Bilby at the next York assizes: after which Miss Faith Corbet was for ever rid of her fits and fancies.
THE ASTRAL SPIRIT’S ASSAULT.
Can we wonder at anything which it might please those servants of the devil, the witches, to do, when even a spirit—a disembodied ghost—a mere appearance—a spectre—an apparition—could audibly box a lad’s ears before a whole room full of spectators, and at last box them so soundly as to break his neck, and kill him? Baxter’s “World of Spirits” gives this story as happening to a barber’s apprentice in Cambridge, in the year 1662. The spectre who killed the boy was in the garb and appearance of a gentlewoman; and at about the same hour, as near as they could guess, when it boxed the boy’s ears and broke his neck at Cambridge, while the father was sitting at dinner with the boy’s master at Ely, “the appearance of a Gentlewoman comes in, looking very angrily, taking a Turn or two, disappeared.” It seems that the spectre had that night been endeavouring to persuade the boy to leave his apprenticeship and return home to Ely, where she and he were very free and had long been wont to disport together, even while company was in the room, and while the father, a minister named Franklin, was sitting there. After some treaty the boy resolutely said he would not go home, whereupon the spirit gave him a sounding box on the ear, which made him very ill; but he rose as usual when the morning came, though unfit for work or even play. When the master heard the story, he rode over to Ely to see Mr. Franklin, and confer with him respecting the uncomfortable and inconvenient desires of the spirit; and in the forenoon of the day, the boy sitting by the kitchen fire, his mistress being by, suddenly cried out, “O, mistress, look: there’s the gentlewoman!” The mistress looked, but saw nothing, yet soon after heard a noise as of a great box on the ears, and turning round saw the boy bending down his neck: and presently he died. This is the story gravely told by Baxter, in the fullest faith that all was as he narrated, and that there was no natural explanation possible to a circumstance which derived its only importance from its supernaturalism.
Another spirit, a few years later—in 1667—took to haunting a man’s house at Kinton, six miles from Worcester; and boxed his ears as he sat by the fire over against the maid. At which the man cried out, and went away to his son’s in the town, not caring to continue where a ghost could make itself equal to a living body with bones and muscles, and give him undeniable proofs of the same. A minister of the place, Charles Hatt, went to the house to exorcise the ghost by prayer, and had not been there long before “there was a great noise in the said room, of groaning, or rather gruntling, like a Hog, and then a lowd Shriek.” Mr. Charles Hatt prayed on; and after the spectre had done its best to frighten him with noises, but finding that the louder it gruntled the louder he prayed, it died away, and the man was troubled no more to the day of his death, which happened about two years after.
If this was a book on spirits instead of on witchcraft many stories from Baxter could be given bearing on the question; but, fascinating as they are, they are somewhat foreign to my design; so I must pass them by, and go on to the more material, and more guilty, records of the witchcraft superstition. All the mere spectre or ghost stories are both tame and innocent compared to the witch delusions. At least they caused no bloodshed; and if they broke hearts it was not through shame and despair and ruin.
JULIAN’S TOADS.[146]
At the Taunton assizes, in 1663, Julian Cox, about seventy years old, was indicted before Judge Archer for practising her arts of witchcraft upon a “young Maid, whereby her Body languished, and was impaired of Health.” And first were taken proofs of her witchcraft. One witness, a huntsman, swore that one day, as he was hunting not far from Julian’s house, he started a hare, which the dogs ran very close till it came to a bush; when, going round to the other side to keep it from the dogs, he perceived Julian Cox grovelling on the ground, panting and out of breath. She was the hare, and had had just time enough to say the magic stave which changed her back to woman’s form again, ere the dogs had caught her. Another man swore that one day, passing her house as “she was taking a Pipe of Tobacco upon the Threshold of the Door,” she invited him to come in and join her; which he did; when presently she cried out, “Neighbour, look what a pretty thing there is!” and there was “a monstrous great Toad betwixt his Legs, staring him in the Face.” He tried to hit it, but could not, whereupon Julian told him to desist striking it and it would do him no hurt; but he was frightened, and went off to his family, telling them that he had seen one of Julian Cox her devils. Yet even when he was at home this same toad appeared again betwixt his legs, and though he took it out, and cut it in several pieces, still, when he returned to his pipe, there was the toad. He tried to burn it, but could not; then to beat it with a switch, but the toad ran about the room to escape him; presently it gave a cry and vanished, and he was never after troubled with it. A third witness swore that one day, when milking, Julian Cox passed by the yard where he was, and “stooping down scored upon the ground for some small time, during which time his Cattle ran Mad, and some of them ran their Heads against the Trees, and most of them died speedily.” Concluding by which signs that they were bewitched, he cut off their ears to burn them, and, while they were on the fire, Julian Cox came in a great heat and rage, crying out that they abused her without cause; but, going slily up to the fire, she took off the ears, and then was quiet. By the laws of witchcraft it was she who was burning, not the beasts’ ears. A fourth, as veracious as the former, swore to having seen her “fly into her own Chamber-window in her full proportion;” all of which testimony gave weight and substance to the maid’s charge.
The maid was servant at a certain house, where Julian came one day to ask for alms; but the maid gave her a cross answer, and said she should have none; so Julian told the maid she should repent her incivility before night. And she did; for she was taken with convulsions, and cried out to the people of the house to save her from Julian, for she saw her following her. In the night she became worse, saying that she saw Julian Cox and the black man by her bedside, and that they tempted her to drink, but “she defy’d the Devil’s Drenches.” The next night, expecting the same kind of conflict, she took up a knife and laid it at the head of her bed. In the middle of the night came the spiritual Julian and the black man, as before, so the maid took the knife, and stabbed at Julian, whom she said she had wounded in the leg. The people, riding out to see, found Julian in her own house with a fresh wound on her leg, and blood was also on the maid’s bed. The next day Julian appeared to the maid and forced her to eat pins. Her apparition was on the house wall; and “all the Day the Maid was observ’d to convey her Hand to the House wall, and from the Wall to her Mouth, and she seem’d by the motion of her Mouth as if she did eat something.” So towards night, still crying out on Julian, she was undressed, and all over her body were seen great swellings and bunches in which were huge pins—as many as thirty or more—which she said Julian Cox, when in the house wall, had forced her to eat. Was not all this enough to hang a dozen Julian Coxes? Judge Archer thought so; especially when was added to this testimony Julian’s own enforced confession, of how she had been often tempted by the devil to become a witch, but would never consent; yet how one evening, walking about a mile from her house, she met three persons riding on broom-staves, borne up about a yard and a half from the ground, two of whom she knew—a witch and a wizard, hanged for witchcraft several years ago—but the third, a black man, she did not then know. He however tempted her to give up her soul, which she did by pricking her finger and signing her name with her blood. So that, by her own showing, as well as by the unimpeachable testimony of reputable witnesses, she was a witch and one coming under the provisions of the Awful Verse. And further, as she could not repeat the Lord’s Prayer, but stumbled over the clause “And lead us not into Temptation,” which she made into “And lead us into temptation,” or “And lead us not into no temptation,” but could in no manner repeat correctly, the judge and jury had but one conclusion to come to, which was that she be hanged four days after her trial. But some of the less blind and besotted spoke harsh words of Judge Archer for his zeal and precipitancy, and openly declared poor Julian’s innocence when advocacy could do her strangled corpse no good.