For the village scold[[510]] they kept the brank or bridle of iron, which contained a flat (and for the unfortunate witches[[511]] occasionally a spiked and painful) gag that went into the mouth and pressed down the tongue. They might also be placed in the local ducking chair[[512]] and immersed in water. A remarkable illustration[[513]] of the intensely individual and personal aspect of primitive penalties[[514]] is furnished where—as it sometimes happened—the prosecutor had himself to execute his convict assailant, “or dwelle in prison with the felon unto the time that he wyll do that office or else find a hangman.”[[515]]
CHAPTER II
THE WITCH TRIALS
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century there lived at Manningtree a certain Matthew Hopkins, whose name deserves perhaps to be recorded. Not that he stands by any means apart, a veritable Lucifer among the devils. Sprenger in Germany, Torquemada in Spain, Grillandus in Italy, de l’Ancre in France, and other persecutors over Christendom, were better known and had killed more people. But Hopkins went to work on English ground. The people were then professing the same creed that the majority do now. Shakespeare had been in his grave more than a generation, and trees may have been standing as bushes in the fields and lanes of Essex which will yet renew leaves and branches at the kiss of coming spring. Hopkins reveals the spirit of his time, for it has been wisely observed that every society has the criminals it deserves. His kind remain with us still as spies and blackmailers, traitors and “friendly natives” of the tribe of Judas generally. But they derive their power to harm from the community in which they live. Parasites need a proper “host” to flourish in. A dark and superstitious age it must have been to countenance this man; for he was a professional “discoverer,” or, as he was sometimes called and styled, Witch-Finder General. He began with the destruction of some half-dozen persons in his native hamlet. We cannot determine what had marked them down—perhaps they were his private enemies—moral reform has always been a ready pretext to work vengeance with, and has been much employed in these latter days. They may have been old, eccentric, isolated, or insane; in any case, once seized they had to die, and in their torments implicated others, most likely any names conveniently suggested to them. The fame of the new discoverer spread far and wide. Towns and hundreds in the eastern county, and even places far outside its boundaries, sent to this fell apostle, saying, “Come over and help us,” and on the track of blood the monster went. It was his wont to ride upon these expeditions accompanied by another man, and by a female searcher, whose services would be required in the minute personal examinations which were carried out, especially on women. He made an open charge of twenty shillings for each village visited, but no doubt in this nefarious calling there were other and more profitable ways of extorting money. Can we not well imagine what sums may have been paid to him (as they are to the “sex” blackmailers of to-day) to avoid accusation? How many may have yielded their little all to save some one who was dear to them from common ill-usage, probable death, and certain disgrace, which such a charge involved? Who knows how extorted gold might influence the ordeals enforced? Who shall say what may have come by stealth to the witch-finders to bring ruin upon some enemy, perhaps upon some rival? Who, indeed? From place to place swooped this bird of prey, descending on peaceful homesteads and capturing whom he chose. Woe to the man, and still more to the woman, who lived alone, who kept a black cat, or who was found to carry birthmarks on her body, or to be the least out of the normal in physical structure! Woe to the person who was eccentric, subject to fits or trances, or who might be in any way deranged or of weak intellect! Woe, in fact, to the unhappy creature who by any means came in for accusation! The Pishogue mark would thenceforth be upon them; relations would drop away as from contamination with the plague[[516]]; and the most brutal rabble of that time would jostle round, intent upon the chase, with their fierce lust for blood not the less keen from the idea that there was something Christian in their cruelty. The victim would then be seized and carried off to further interrogation, ill-treatment, and torture. Parents and children, comrades and lovers, might weep in secret, and the boldest might even venture to denounce the senseless iniquity of the proceedings—at which they would incur no little danger. But they would speak unheeded, and have to linger around the gallows till the final act, when something swayed and dangled from a cord.
But somehow good Master Matthew began to be unpopular, and many reasons might account for it. Perhaps he had been unwise in the selection of his “subjects”—it looks like it, for one was an old clergyman—and lived to find out that some of them had not been quite so friendless as he may have counted on. Perhaps the supply of lonely or defenceless folk had given out, or that in pushing his profession so far afield he could not estimate the new material. “Discoveries,” of course, had to be made to keep up his reputation and his income, and as he pursued his way through a wide area it may be that quite a large number of people began to feel themselves open to accusation, and so were ready to consider it suspicious that he alone had such an eye for witches. And then a whispering rose up amongst them, until it reached the persecutor’s ears: For sure this man is aided by the Devil, or else he would not ferret out so many. And he may well have started when he saw the anger-light in the fierce eyes around him, and when he felt at last the frightful superstitions, which he had kindled and well thriven on, were out of hand, turned hard against himself. So he produced a little book which bears the date of 1647, printed, he tells us, “For the benefit of the whole Kingdome.” It has upon the title-page the somewhat troublesome quotation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Exodus xxii. 18. We cannot do better than glance through its pages and at the “Certain queries answered which have been and which are likely to be objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out witches.”
Querie I.—That he must needs be the greatest witch, sorcerer, and wizzard himself, else hee could not doe it.
Answer.—If Satan’s Kingdome be divided against itself how shall it stand?
The next paragraph is interesting as once more emphasising the crude and absolutely material notions conceived of the spiritual world.
Querie II.—If he never went so farre as is before stated, yet for certaine he met with the devill and cheated him of his booke, wherein were written all the witches’ names in England, and if he looks at any witch he can tell by her countenance what she is; so by this his helpe is from the devill.
Answer.—If he had been too hard for the devill and got his booke it had been to his great commendation and no disgrace at all.