THE YOUGHAL WITCH.
About this time, too, or rather two years before old Julian Cox had been seen flying in at her window in full proportion, one Florence Newton, of Youghal, was overhauled for her misdeeds towards Mary Longdon. Mary was John Pyne’s servant, and deposed that one day Florence came to where she lived and asked her for a bit of beef out of the powdering tub, to which Mary would not consent (these witnessing servants were always so moral and honest!), saying she had no right to give away her master’s beef. The witch, being angry, muttered, “Thou had’st as good have given it me,” and went away grumbling. A few days after, meeting with Mary going to the water with a pail of cloth on her head, she came full against her, and violently kissed her, and said, “Mary, I pray thee let thee and I be friends, for I bear thee no ill will, and I pray thee do thou bear me none.” Mary does not give her reply, but says that she went home, and in a few days after “saw a Woman with a Vail over her Face stand by her bedside, and one standing by her like a little old Man in silk Cloaths, and that this Man, whom she took to be a Spirit, drew the Vail from off the Woman’s Face, and then she knew it to be Goody Newton; and that the Spirit spake to the Deponent, and would have had her promise him to follow his Advice, and she should have all things after her own Heart; to which she says she answered ‘That she would have nothing to say to him, for her Trust was in the Lord.’” After this Mary Longdon was taken very ill, vomiting pins and needles and horse-nails and stubbs and wool and straw, while small stones followed her about the room, and from place to place, striking her sharply on her head and shoulders and arms, then vanishing away. She was also strangely put upon by beds, and other such assailants. Sometimes she was forcibly carried from one bed to another; sometimes taken to the top of the house, or laid on a board betwixt two sollar beams, or put into a chest, or laid under a parcel of wool, or betwixt two feather beds, or (in the day time) between the bed and the mat in her master’s room. All of these pranks done by Florence Newton’s Astral Spirit, by which Mary maid was bewitched. Florence Newton also bewitched to his death David Jones, who had constituted himself one of her watchers while she was in “bolts” in prison. David took great pains to teach her the Lord’s Prayer, but Florence, being a witch, could not repeat it correctly; at last she called out to him, “David! David! come hither; I can say the Lord’s Prayer now.” Not that she could, for when she came to the clause “Forgive us our Trespasses,” she skipped over it, or boggled at it, or got round it in some way or other that was not holy; then seizing David’s hand between the bars of the grate she kissed it thankfully; and thus and there possessed him, so that he died fourteen days after of that strange languishing disease known to all the world as a bewitchment.
THE WITCHES OF STYLES’S KNOT.[147]
Elizabeth Hill, aged thirteen, had strange fits. She was much convulsed and contorted; she writhed, foamed, and could with difficulty be held or mastered; she had moreover swellings and holes in her flesh, which were made she said by thorns, and whence the bystanders averred they saw the child hook out thorns. Even the clergyman of the parish, William Parsons rector of Stoke Trister, added his testimony to the rest: and on the 26th of January, 1664, in an examination taken before Robert Hunt, vouched for the truth of the fits, and the swellings, and the black thorns in the midst of the swellings; but he did not add to this testimony the further assertion that it was Elizabeth Styles who had bewitched the child, though she herself “cried out” on her, and said that she tormented her in her fits. Elizabeth Styles was further accused of causing Richard Hill’s horse to sit down and paw with his fore feet when attempted to be crossed, and of having bewitched Agnes Vining by means of a rosy-cheeked apple, which was no sooner eaten than it caused a grievous pricking in Agnes’ thigh, who forthwith languished and died, “her hip rotted, and one of her eyes swelled out.” These are signs of a worse bewitchment than poor old Mother Styles’s rosy-cheeked apple—signs of the deadly sorcery of scrofula induced by the poverty, dirt, bad food and worse lodging of the times; for the effects of which many a poor wretch lost her life who yet had done no more harm than the nursling at the breast. Robert Hunt the Justice, and one of our fine old English gentlemen, did not take this materialistic view of the matter. When told of Agnes Vining’s illness and manner of disease, and seeing Elizabeth Styles looking appalled and concerned, he said to her: “You have been an old sinner, you deserve little mercy.” To which the poor soul answered, humbly, “I have asked God for it.” She then said that the devil had seduced her, and so began her confession on the 26th of January—three days after the first accusation by the Hills. She said that about ten years ago the devil appeared to her as a handsome man changing afterwards to the shape of a black dog; “that he promised her money, and that she should live gallantly, and have the Pleasures of the World for twelve years,” if only she would sign a certain bond with her blood, give him her soul, obey his laws, and let him suck her blood. To all of which she consented after four solicitations, whereupon he pricked her finger—the mark thereof to be seen at this time—and she, with her own blood signed the paper with an O, when the devil gave her sixpence and vanished with the bond. Since then he appeared to her constantly, under the forms of a man, a cat, a dog, or a “fly like a millar” (a large white moth), as which last he usually sucked her poll about four in the morning; and hurt her terribly in doing so. She also said that when she wanted him to do anything for her, she called him by the name of “Robin,” adding, “O Satan give me my purpose!” which he never failed to do. It was he who stuck the thorns into Elizabeth Hill; but then she implicated three other women, Alice Duke, Ann Bishop, and Mary Penny, saying that they too had stuck thorns into an enchanted picture meant for Elizabeth Hill, one night when they had all met the devil on the common, he, as a man in black clothes with a little band, first anointing its forehead with oil, saying, “I baptize thee with this oyl.” After which they had a supper of wine, cakes, and roast meat, all brought by the man in black, and they ate and drank and danced and were merry. This they did always, whenever they would destroy any one obnoxious; and so had a merry time of it upon the whole. When they wanted to go to their meetings “they would anoint their wrists and foreheads with an oyl the spirit brings them, which smells raw,” after which they were carried off, saying: “Thout, tout, a tout, tout, throughout and about:” on their return changing the stave to “Rentum Tormentum,” which was the shibboleth to bring them back. But before they left they used to make obeisance to the man in black, who usually played to their dancing, saying, “A Boy! merry meet, merry part;” on which he vanished, and the conclave was broken up. She then told the “several grave and orthodox divines” who assisted Robert Hunt to take her examination, that Alice Duke’s familiar was a cat, and Ann Bishop’s a rat. Her own was a millar; concerning which Nicholas Lambert made some strange revelations. He said that as he and two others, hired to watch Elizabeth Styles in prison, were sitting near her as she crouched by the fire—he, Nicholas Lambert, reading in “The Practise of Piety”—about three in the morning they saw a “glistering bright fly,” about an inch in length, come from her head and pitch on the chimney: then instantly vanish. In less than a quarter of an hour after, in came two other flies and seemed to strike at his hand, but which dodged him cleverly when he struck at them with his book. At this, Styles’s countenance became very black and ghastly, and the fire also changed its colour; so the watchers, conceiving that her familiar was about her, and seeing also her hair shake very strangely, went to examine her poll, when out flew a great millar, which pitched on a table board and then vanished away. Her poll was red like raw beef, but presently regained its natural colour. Upon which Elizabeth confessed that it was her familiar, and that she had felt it tickle her poll. She was condemned, after having inculpated thirteen other persons, but “prevented execution by dying in gaol, a little before the expiring of the term her confederate dæmon had set for her enjoyment of Diabolical Pleasures.”
Alice Duke, “another witch of Styles’s Knot,” a widow living in Wincaunton, county of Somerset, was then apprehended and examined. She seems to have given no trouble, but to have come frankly to the point, and to have admitted whatever they liked to demand. She said that, eleven or twelve years ago, Ann Bishop persuaded her to go one night to the churchyard, and “being come thither to go backward round the church, which they did three times.” In their first round they met a man in black clothes who accompanied them: in their second a thing like a great black toad, which leaped up against Duke’s apron: in the third, “somewhat in the shape of a rat” which vanished away. After which they both went home, but before they went the man in black said something softly to Ann Bishop, yet what it was Alice did not hear. Soon after this she signed herself away in the same manner and for the same purposes as Elizabeth Styles had done; and the devil gave her sixpence as he had given Styles, and vanished away with the fatal paper. She confirmed all that Styles had said concerning the meetings on the common, the enchanted pictures and the greenish oil, the devil, the wine, and cakes, and music; she gave information, though, of many more such pictures which were to doom the unfortunate likenesses to death; and she said farther that Ann Bishop was the devil’s favourite, and that she sat next him, and wore “a green Apron, a French Waistcoat, and a red Petticoat.” She gave the same phrase that Elizabeth Styles had given, as the magic password which took them to and from the devil’s meetings; and she confessed that her familiar came to her each night, about seven o’clock, “in the shape of a little Cat of a dunnish colour, which is as smooth as a Want, and when she is suck’d she is in a kind of Trance.” She had hurt several people; specially Thomas Hanway’s daughter by giving her a pewter dish for a “good handsel” in the time of her lying in. This pewter dish was of such a malicious and venefical nature that when Thomas Hanway’s daughter used it to heat some deer suet and rose water for her breasts, she was put to extreme pain; which pain she had not when she heated the same deer suet and the same rose water in a common spoon. So, suspecting harm in the dish, she put it into the fire, “which then presently vanished, and nothing of it was afterwards to be found.” Alice Duke also said that she called the devil “Robin,” and demanded of him aid and help in her undertakings. Like Styles and many others, she said that when the devil vanished he left an ill smell behind him; which is explained as, “Those ascititious Particles he held together in his visible vehicle, being loosened at his vanishing, and so offending the Nostrils by their floating and diffusing themselves in the open air.”
ROBIN AND HIS SERVANTS[148]
Somersetshire was sorely afflicted at this time. On the 2nd of March still in the year of grace, 1664, Christian Green, aged about thirty-three, and wife of Robert Green of Brewham, was taken before Robert Hunt, Esq., to be examined and induced to confess. She did confess, without torture as it would appear; at all events without more than the ordinary torture of “pricking” and sleeplessness always applied to witches. She said that about a year and a half ago, she being in great poverty, was induced by one Catherine Green (her husband’s sister?) to give her body and soul to the devil on condition that he would give her clothes, victuals, and money, as she might desire. She was to keep his secrets, and suffer him to suck her once in the twenty-four hours; to which at last she consented, the devil giving her fourpence-halfpenny as earnest money wherewith to buy bread in Brewham. Since this time he came to her ever at five o’clock in the morning, much in the likeness of a hedgehog bending, and sucked her left breast: a painful process, though she was generally in a kind of trance at the time. Christian Green gave no new particulars relative to the devil and his works. He was always as a man in black clothes; and he charmed pictures to the undoing of those for whom they were designed; and when he vanished he left an ill smell behind him; and he spake them very low when they arrived; and they did three horses to death by saying simply, “A Murrain on them Horses to death;” and they bewitched unlikely sinners by mere word or look: all of which processes we have read of twenty times before. Nor was there much more to be got out of “the villainous Feats of that rampant hag Margaret Agar,” of Brewham, tried also in 1664, whom poor hysterical Christian Green had delated, for she did nothing beyond curse her enemies and those who offended her, whereupon they died “as if stabbed with daggers,” or were “consumed and pined away;” some with one disease, some with another; but all dying without reprieve because of her curse. She also, in company with many others, was proved to have met “a little man in black clothes,” whom they called “Robin,” and to whom they all made obeisance, the little man putting his hand to his head, saying, “How do ye?” speaking low, but big. And they made “pictures” of wax into which the little black man stuck thorns, one in the crown, another in the breast, and a third in the side, which then Margaret would fling down saying, “This is Cornish’s figure with a murrain to it,” and Elizabeth Cornish would languish and die; or “This is Bess Hill’s;” or any other person’s whom it was desired to “forespeak” and destroy; who of course were forespoken and destroyed from that hour. Margaret Agar was a “rampant hag” indeed in one sense, being evidently an ill-conditioned old woman, quick at a curse, and passionately eager to avenge herself, but her magical arts appear to have been of the lowest possible order, and pale and lifeless compared with the more highly-coloured doings of others. Anything, however, was sufficient for the worshipful Master Robert Hunt and his fellow justices, and curses did as well as the rest; so poor old Margaret Agar was taken to the tree whereon grew the fatal fruit of death, to meditate there on Christian charity and the wise compassionateness of men, before learning by what steps the weary soul passes from earth to immortality. She was probably no great loss to the community, but her death placed her among the martyrs to superstition, and left her for ever as an object of historic pity.
SIR MATTHEW HALE’S JUDGMENT.[149]
At Bury St. Edmonds, in the county of Suffolk, a remarkable “Tryal of witches” was held on the tenth day of March, 1664, before Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, both widows and both of Leystoff, were indicted for bewitching Elizabeth and Ann Durent, Jane Bocking, Susan Chandler, William Durent, and Elizabeth and Deborah Pacy. William Durent, being an infant, was sworn by grace of his mother Dorothy, and she deposed that some little time ago, having occasion to go from home, she desired Amy, who was her neighbour, to look after her child, but expressly forbade her to suckle it in her absence. When asked by the court why she gave this caution to an old woman far past the age of performing such an office, Dorothy answered that Amy had long had the character of a witch who might suckle the devil himself or any of his imps; and that moreover old women were apt to give the breast to a crying child, to please it during its mother’s absence; a habit that made the children ill. But it seems that Amy disobeyed her, for when she came home the old woman told her that she had given the breast to her infant, which made Dorothy very cross, and a high quarrel ensued. And that very night her child was taken with “strange fits of swounding,” and was held in such a terrible manner that she expected to lose it every moment. Not knowing what to do or where to get it relief, she went to a certain Doctor Jacob, well known through the country for skill in helping children that were bewitched, and this Dr. Jacob advised her to hang up the child’s blanket in the chimney corner all the day, and to put the child into it at night, and not be afraid at anything she might see, but to throw it at once into the fire. Dorothy did as she was bid, and when she took the blanket from the chimney-corner, down fell a great toad, “which ran up and down the hearth, and she having a young youth only with her in the House, desired him to catch the Toad and throw it into the Fire; which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with the Tongs; and as soon as it was in the Fire it made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the Fire like Gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a Pistol, and thereupon the Toad was no more seen nor heard.” But Amy Duny sat by her fireside all smirched and scorched, and in revenge bewitched the little daughter Elizabeth to death, and further afflicted Dorothy herself with a lameness in both her legs, so that she was forced to go upon crutches. About which the strangest thing was, that though she had gone on them for three years now, no sooner was Amy Duny condemned than she cast them away and went home without them, “to the great admiration of all persons.” This was the first count completed.