Between these two cases one occurred wherein the best legal intellect of the day was engaged—and with no better result. In March 1665, Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, widows, were indicted at the Assizes at Bury St. Edmunds for bewitching certain people. Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, presided. “Still his name is of account.” To an earlier time he seemed a judge “whom for his integrity, learning, and law, hardly any age, either before or since, could parallel.” William Durant, an infant, was one victim; his mother had promised Amy Duny a penny to watch him, but she was strictly charged not to give him suck. To what end? queried the court reflecting on Amy’s age. The mother replied: firstly, Amy had the reputation of a witch, and secondly, it was a custom of old women thus to please the child, “and it did please the child, but it sucked nothing but wind, which did the child hurt.” The two women had a quarrel on the subject: Amy was enraged, and departed after some dark sayings, and the boy forthwith fell into “strange fits of swounding.” Dr. Jacob, of Yarmouth, an eminent witch-doctor, advised “to hang up the child’s blanket in the chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put the child to bed to put it into the said blanket, and if she found anything in it she should not be afraid, but throw it into the fire.” The blanket was duly hung up, and taken down, when a great toad fell out, which being thrown into the fire made (not unnaturally) “a great and horrible noise;” followed a crack and a flash, and—exit the toad! The court with solemn foolishness inquired if the substance of the toad was not seen to consume? and was stoutly answered “No.” Next day Amy was discovered sitting alone in her house in her smock without any fire. She was in “a most lamentable condition,” having her face all scorched with fire. This deponent had no doubt as to the witch’s guilt, “for that the said Amy hath been long reputed to be a witch and a person of very evil behaviour, whose kindred and relations have been many of them accused for witchcraft, and some of them have been condemned.”
Elizabeth Pacy was another bewitched child. By direction of the judge, Amy Duny was made to touch her, whereupon the child clawed the Old Beldam till the blood came—a portentous fact, for everybody knew that the bewitched would naturally scratch the tormentor’s face and thus obtain relief. The father of the child, Samuel Pacy (whose soberness and moderation are specially commended by the reporter), now told how Amy Duny thrice came to buy herrings, and, being as often refused, “went away grumbling, but what she said was not perfectly understood.” Immediately his child Deborah fell sick, whereupon Amy was set in the stocks. Here she confessed that, when any of her offspring were so afflicted, “she had been fain to open her child’s mouth with a tap to give it vitals,” which simple device the sapient Pacy practised upon his brats with some effect, but still continuing ill they vomited “crooked pins and one time a twopenny nail with a very broad head, which pins, amounting to forty or more, together with the twopenny nail, were produced in court,” so what room was there for doubt? The children, continually accusing Amy Duny and Rose Cullender as cause of their sickness, were packed off by their distracted father to his sister at Yarmouth, who now took up the wondrous tale. When the younger child was taking the air out of doors, “presently a little thing like a bee flew upon her face, and would have gone into her mouth.” She rushed indoors, and incontinent vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head, whose presence she accounted for thus: “the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth”; from all which the guilt of the witches was ever more evident.
Even that age had its sceptics. Some people in court, chief among them Mr. Serjeant Keeling, whose position and learning made it impossible to disregard their opinion, “seemed much unsatisfied.” The learned serjeant pointed out that even if the children were bewitched, there was no real evidence to connect the prisoners with the fact. Then Dr. Browne, of Norwich, “a person of great knowledge” (no other, alas! than the Sir Thomas Browne of the Religio Medici), made a very learned if confusing dissertation on Witchcraft in general, with some curious details as to a late “great discovery of witches” in Denmark; which no whit advanced the matter. Then there was another experiment. Amy Duny was brought to one of the children whose eyes were blinded. The child was presently touched by another person, “which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the court.” The sceptical Keeling and his set now roundly declared the whole business a sham, which “put the court and all persons into a stand. But at length Mr. Pacy did declare that possibly the maid might be deceived by a suspicion that the witch touched her when she did not.” This was the very point the sceptics were making, and was anything but an argument in reply, though it seems to have been accepted as such. And how to suppose, it was urged, that innocent children would tell such terrible lies? It was the golden age of the rod; never was there fitter occasion for its use. Once fancies a few strokes had produced remarkable confessions from the innocents! However, the court went on hearing evidence. The judge summed up with much seeming impartiality, much wooden wisdom, and the usual judicial platitudes, all which after more than two centuries you read with considerable irritation. The jury upon half an hour’s deliberation returned a verdict of guilty. Next morning the children were brought to the judge, “and Mr. Pacy did affirm that within less than half an hour after the witches were convicted they were all of them restored.” After this, what place was left for doubt? “In conclusion the judge and all the court were fully satisfied with the verdict, and thereupon gave judgment against the witches that they should be hanged.” Three days afterwards the poor unfortunates went to their death. “They were much urged to confess, but would not.”
Finally, you have this much less tragic business. In the first year of Queen Anne’s reign (1702), Richard Hathaway was tried at the Surrey Assizes before Lord Chief Justice Holt for falsely accusing Sarah Morduck of bewitching him. The offence being a misdemeanour, the prisoner had counsel, an advantage not then fully given to those charged with felony. The trial reads like one in our own day. The case for the Crown had been carefully put together. Possibly the authorities were striking at accusations of and prosecutions for Witchcraft. Sarah Morduck had been tried and acquitted at Guildford Assizes for bewitching Hathaway, whereupon this prosecution had been ordered. Dr. Martin, parish minister in Southwark, an able and enlightened divine, had saved Sarah from the mob, and so was led on to probe the matter. He found Hathaway apparently blind and dumb, but giving his assent by a sign to the suggestion that he should scratch Morduck, and so (according to the superstition already noted) obtain relief. Dr. Martin brought Sarah and a woman of the same height called Johnson to the room where the impostor lay, seemingly, at death’s door. Morduck announced her willingness to be scratched, and then Johnson’s hand was put into his. Hathaway was suspicious, and felt the arm very carefully, whereat the parson “spoke to him somewhat eagerly: If you will not scratch I will begone.” Whereupon he clawed so lustily that Johnson near fainted. She was forthwith hustled out of the room and Morduck pushed forward; but the rogue, fearing a trap, lay quiet till Dr. Martin encouraged him by simulated admiration. Then he opened wide his eyes, “caught hold of the apron of Sarah Morduck, and looked her in the face,” thus implying that his supposed scratching of her had restored his eyesight. Being informed of his blunder he “seemed much cast down,” but his native impudence soon asserting itself, he gave himself out for worse than ever, whilst Sarah Morduck, anxious to be clear at any cost, declared that not she but Johnson was the witch. The popular voice roundly abused Dr. Martin for a stubborn sceptic. Charges of bribery against him, as well as against the judge and jury who had acquitted Morduck, were freely bandied about. Dr. Martin had got Bateman a friend of his to see Hathaway, one of whose symptoms was the vomiting of pins. His evidence was that the rogue scattered the pins about the room by sleight of hand; Bateman had taken several parcels of them, almost by force, out of his pocket. Kensy, a surgeon, further told how Hathaway, being committed to his care, at first would neither eat nor drink. Kensy being afraid that he would starve himself to death sooner than have his cheat discovered, arranged a pretended quarrel with his maid Baker, who supplied the patient with food as if against his orders. Indeed, she plied him so well with meat and drink that, so she told the court, “he was very merry and danced about, and took the tongs and played upon them, but after that he was mightily sick and vomited sadly”—but there were no pins and needles! She further told how four gentlemen, privily stored away in the buttery and coal-hole, witnessed Hathaway’s gastronomic feats. Serjeant Jenner for the defence called several witnesses, who testified to the prisoner’s abstinence from food for quite miraculous periods. The force of this evidence was much shaken by the pertinent cross-examination of the judge, who asked the jury in his summing up, “Whether you have any evidence to induce you to believe it to be in the power of all the witches in the world, or all the Devils in Hell, to fast beyond the usual time that nature will allow: they cannot invert the order of nature.” The jury, “without going from the bar, brought him in Guilty.” He was sentenced to a fine, a sound flogging, the pillory, and imprisonment with hard labour. The last conviction for Witchcraft in England was that of Jane Wenham, at Hertford, in 1712. She was respited by the judge and afterwards pardoned. The case is not here reported.
These trials throw a curious light on the ideas of the time; unfortunately they exhibit human nature in some of its worst aspects. The victims were women, old, poor, helpless, and the persecution to which they were subjected was due partly to superstition, partly to that delight in cruelty so strong in the natural man. The “confessions” of the accused are easily accounted for. The popular beliefs so impressed their imaginations that they believed in their own malevolent power, also the terror they inspired lacked not charm, it procured them consideration, some money, even some protection. Not seldom their “confessions” were merely terrified assents to statements made about them by witch-finders, clergymen, and justices. And the judges? Sometimes, alas! they callously administered a law in which they had no belief. Is there not still something inexplicable? Well, such things as mesmerism, thought-reading, and so forth exhibit remarkable phenomena. A former age ascribed all to Satan: we believe them natural though we cannot as yet solve all their riddles. I must add that the ancient popular horror of witches is partly explained by the hideous and grotesque details given at the trials, but those obscenities I dare not reproduce.
A Pair of Parricides
The State Trials—The Dry Bones of Romance—Pictures of the Past—Their Value for the Present—The Case of Philip Standsfield—The Place of the Tragedy—The Night of the Murder—The Scene in Morham Kirk—The Trial—“The Bluidy Advocate—Mackenzie”—The Fate of Standsfield—The Case of Mary Blandy, Spinster—The Villain of the Piece—The Maid’s Gossip—Death of Mr. Blandy—The “Angel” Inn at Henley-on-Thames—The Defence—Miss Blandy’s Exit.
There is a new series of State Trials continuing the old, and edited with a skill and completeness altogether lacking in its predecessor; yet its formal correctness gives an impression of dulness. You think with regret of Howell’s thirty-three huge volumes, that vast magazine of curiosities and horrors, of all that is best and worst in English history. How exciting life was long ago, to be sure, and how persistently it grows duller! What a price we pay for the smug comfort of our time! People shuddered of yore; did they yawn quite so often? Howell and the folk he edits knew how to tell a story. Judges, too, were not wont to exclude interesting detail for that it wasn’t evidence, and the compilers did not end with a man’s condemnation. They had too keen a sense of what was relished of the general: the last confession and dying speech, the exit on the scaffold or from the cart, are told with infinite gusto. What a terrible test earth’s great unfortunates underwent! Sir Thomas More’s delicate fencing with his judges, the exquisite courtesy wherewith he bade them farewell, make but half the record; you must hear the strange gaiety which flashed in the condemned cell and by the block ere you learn the man’s true nature. And to know Raleigh you must see him at Winchester under the brutal insults of Coke; “Thou art a monster, thou hast an English face but a Spanish heart;” again, “I thou thee, thou traitor!” and at Palace Yard, Westminster, on that dreary October morning urging the sheriff to hurry, since he would not be thought fear-shaken when it was but the ague; for these are all-important episodes in the life of that richly dressed, stately, and gallant figure your fancy is wont to picture in his Elizabethan warship sweeping the Spanish Main. Time would fail to tell of Strafford and Charles and Laud and a hundred others, for the collection begins with Thomas à Becket in 1163 and comes down to Thistlewood in 1820. Once familiar with those close packed, badly printed pages, you find therein a deeper, a more subtle charm than cunningest romance can furnish forth. The account of Mary Stuart’s ending has a finer hold than Froude’s magnificent and highly decorated picture—Study at first hand “Bloody Jeffreys,” his slogging of Titus Oates, with that unabashed rascal’s replies during his trial for perjury; or again, my Lord’s brilliant though brutal cross-examination of Dunn in the “Lady” Alice Lisle case, during the famous or infamous Western Circuit, and you will find Macaulay’s wealth of vituperative rhetoric, in comparison, tiresome and pointless verbiage. Also you will prefer to construct your own Braxfield from trials like those of Thomas Muir in 1793, and of Alexander Scott and Maurice Margarot in 1794, rather than accept the counterfeit presentment which Stevenson’s master-hand has limned in Weir of Hermiston.