It will be noticed that he does not exactly deny even this report, or appear to consider it at all unusual to meet the devil walking about casually. “We must needs argue,” he continues later, “he is of long standing, above 6000 years, then he must needs be the best scholar in all knowledge of Arts and tongues, and so have the best skill in Physicke, etc.” Mr. Hopkins’ own skill, he pleads, was really forced on him. “This discoverer never travelled for it,” he writes in reply to Querie V., “but in March 1644 he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of witches living in the towne where he lived ... who every six weeks, in the night (being always on a Friday night), had their meetings[[517]] close by his house, and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the devill, one of which this discoverer heard speaking to her imps one night and bid them go to another witch, who was thereupon apprehended and searched by women who had for many years known the devill’s marks, and found to have three teats about her, which honest women have not. So upon command from the Justice they were to keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars, which the fourth night she called by their severall names,[[518]] and told them in what shape a quarter of an hour before they came in, there being ten of us in the roome.[[519]]
“The first she called was (1) Holt, who came in like a white Kitling. (2) Jamara, who came in like a fat Spaniel without any legs at all.... (3) Vinegar Tom, who was like a long legged grey hound with a head like an Oxe with a long taile and broad eyes, who, when this discoverer spoke to and bade him go to the place provided for him and his angels, immediately transformed himself into the shape of a child foure years old without a head and gave half a dozen turns about the house and vanished at the doore. (4) Sacke and Sugar, like a black rabbet. (5) Newes, like a Polcat. All these vanished away in a little while. Immediately after this witch confessed severall other witches from whom she had her imps and named to diverse women where their marks were ... and imps’ names such as Elimanzer Pyewacket, Peck-in-the-crown, Grizzell Greedigut, etc.; which no mortall could invent.... Twenty-nine were condemned at once, four brought twenty-five miles to be hanged where their discoverer lives, for sending the devill like a beare to kill him in his garden; so by seeing diverse of the men’s papps and trying various wayes with hundreds of them, he gained the experience.”
Although his dealings must be described as mild compared with the ghastly inconceivable tortures in vogue with the inquisitors upon the Continent,[[520]] his victims were yet baited and handled with the grossest cruelty. They were supposed not to weep,[[521]] being witches, though indeed cause enough was given them. It is remarkable in this connection that Shelley,[[522]] with how much accuracy I am not aware, alludes to the “dry fixed eyeball” of the tortured. Hutchinson[[523]] held this phenomenon to have been due to prolonged deprivation of sleep and exhaustion. Doubtless the weary length of the investigations, and often the age and senile desiccation of the victims, might easily explain a state of tearlessness whenever it was really prevalent.
They were supposed to possess an insensible part in their bodies,[[524]] and the examiners would prick over them to try to find it out. Especially, a witch was affirmed to have somewhere upon her person the “Devil’s mark.” “Some bigg or place upon their body where he” (the familiar, imp, or spirit) “sucketh them.”[[525]] This alleged “mark” might be almost anything or nothing; from an abnormal, and perhaps atavic, teat, down to a birthmark, mole, old scar, or even a tiny vein under an eyelid. They were supposed also to float upon being “swum.”
They were, for the most part, wizen, old creatures, clad in long-used, greasy garments.[[526]] Such skirts would retain much air; they might be bound so as to favour this, or spread, as with Ophelia, widely inflated. It was quite likely they should thus be upborne (and also, for they were mostly poor and thin, that the heavy, sometimes chained, Bible should outweigh them in the ordeal with scales). But ordeals are uncertain and dangerous unless they can be carefully manipulated. Mr. Hopkins had been keen on the water test; it was the finishing touch and proof at the end of a long series of torments and examinations.
But a day came, it is said, on which a few brave Englishmen, who had perhaps lost some one near and dear to them at his hands, laid hold upon the witch-finder himself, and binding him in a sack, cast him into a pool. It was a bold act, in those savage days, to interfere with any kind of inquisition. Catholic or Puritan, and was no doubt attended with great risk. But only for a moment in this case, for there before them bobbed the dread discoverer of witches, floating upon the surface of the water; and all declared the devil got his own. But such an end was altogether unexpected and unusual; it was downright bad luck and misfortune, from Mr. Hopkins’ point of view. His position appeared unassailable, and indeed probably would have been, if he had kept to the right sort of people, and practised on the isolated or unpopular, who could have been legitimately sacrificed. All he had done was quite lawful and regular.
Witchcraft, like many acts against religion and morality, had always been an ecclesiastical offence, and had been punished in the secular courts as leading to murder and personal injury,[[527]] and it was made a felony in 1541.[[528]] But it was the (then) recent law of 1603 that was much in force,[[529]] by which, in the quaint language of the statute, it was forbidden, upon pain of death, to “employ, feed, or reward an evil and wicked spirit.”[[530]] And since the High Court of Parliament had recognised witches,[[531]] it became necessary to investigate accusations and probe for “spirits” through the forms of law. Thus Hopkins could claim to be a moral reformer, putting in force the statute of the realm; he could quote Scripture clearly to his purpose, the justices and gaolers obeyed his call, assizes waited to condemn his prisoners. And if his method seemed superstitious or barbarous, he could perhaps cite Mr. Perkins’ way,[[532]] or could refer to Mr. Kincaid’s custom in these matters,[[533]] and could quote standard works with precedent on his side.[[534]]
So he seemed truly to have a safe task and a paying one, built up upon the prejudices of the people. But as by their superstitions he rose, so also by them he fell—utterly, and unpitied.[[535]] It was not his monstrous cruelties, but “God’s ordeal,” which showed him up, delivered to the devil; and, in the caustic words of Samuel Butler, as one “who after proved himself a witch, and made a rod for his own breech.”[[536]]
But now, dismissing this particular parasite, we may review the course of thought upon the question. Belief in witchcraft is so ancient and so universal,[[537]] that the existing religions, and perhaps all religions whatsoever, must have arisen in its atmosphere.
From time to time the Christian Church dealt with the question,[[538]] and had elaborated quite a ritual of tests and remedies. And it was after nearly fifteen hundred years of Christianity that Pope Innocent VIII.[[539]] issued a special Bull against all supposed witches (December 5, 1484), naming one Sprenger, a Dominican, and Krämar—whose name latinised to Institor—inquisitors to seek and punish them; and this they did with frightful cruelty. They wrote a text-book on their methods and discoveries about 1489, and kept the torture chambers busy and the faggots fiercely burning.