And what may be called the religious belief in witches[[560]]—a very different thing from the torturing of them—outlived the penal laws concerning them.[[561]] The Rev. John Brown of Haddington (1703–1791)[[561]] complained of the repeal of King James’s Act,[[562]] and even John Wesley (1722–1787) declared that giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible.[[563]] On page 366 of the journal[[564]] which he edited we read: “With my latest breath will I bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world. I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages”;[[565]] and Huxley[[566]] alluded to a contemporary clergyman who had been preaching diabolical agency. Nor did the actual persecutions cease altogether, and though the last legal trial in England took place in 1712[[567]] (the last execution in Europe is given by Lecky[[568]] as occurring in Switzerland in 1782; another authority mentions Posen,[[569]] with date 1793), sporadic outrages continued in the country, and persist in a modified form to the present day.[[570]] At Clonmel, Ireland, in 1895,[[571]] a poor old woman was placed upon the kitchen fire by her own family and burned, so that she died from the effects.[[572]] But what were once pious customs and duties had at length become crimes, and the chief mover in this latest witch trial got (to the best of my recollection) twenty years’ penal servitude.
A belief so universal as that in witchcraft must clearly be founded upon positive phenomena. It will not serve our purpose to discuss what yet unknown supernormal powers might be attained under special conditions, or how much more there may be to discover beyond X-rays and wireless telegraphy. For while old ideas as to imps and devils, brooms and black cats, were manifestly ridiculous, and although the abnormal powers, whatever they may have been, could work no rescue in the hour of need, there may be many things in heaven and earth undreamed of in our present state of knowledge. But ordinary witch cases appear to have been resolvable into the examination of—
(a) Hysterical subjects—sometimes crowds of them—who might imagine anything and accuse anybody, including themselves. Such people were (and are) often given to swallowing needles and other things, some of which found their way through the body and emerged from all parts of it.[[573]] This would have been considered strong evidence of diabolical agency. Many of these would be subject to epilepsy, catalepsy—accompanied sometimes by that strange insensibility to pain[[574]] which is a well-marked symptom in hysteria, and which was remarked on by the torturers—and to obscure nerve diseases generally.
(b) “Wise women,”[[575]] midwives, doctors good and bad, who may, according to the custom of the times in which, as among savages, magic[[576]] and medicine were inextricably mingled, have resorted to charms[[577]] (as are still employed by old women to cure warts), and sometimes, doubtless, to preparing and administering actual poisons;[[578]] and who, whenever anything remarkable occurred, were always liable to be accused of having in some way trafficked with the all-explaining devil.[[579]] They sometimes claimed to possess the powers of witches, and tried to gain support or protection from being feared, deceiving others and often themselves as well.[[580]]
(c) Private enemies,[[581]] whom an accusation of witchcraft,[[582]] or of any of the little group of offences[[583]] which were always supposed to be closely allied with it,[[584]] was the readiest way to ruin.[[585]]
(d) People accused for the sake of gain by means of deliberate plots and conspiracies. Feigning to be bewitched, and naming some (known to be) innocent person as the cause of the mischief, was a mean crime that was by no means uncommon, and many flagrant instances are given of it by early criticisers.[[586]]
(e) The main body of the victims.[[587]] Old women who had outlived family and friends, who were helpless and solitary,[[588]] ugly from age, unclean from infirmities, eccentric in wisdom, crazy with delusions, palsied in limbs, or wandering in mind.[[589]] All these, or nearly half the old folks in the land, were always liable to accusation on account of their misfortunes.[[590]] They were the wretched scapegoats of those times, on whom was laid whatever might befall, from epileptic fits to summer hail.[[591]]
It was a crime imputed with so much ease and repelled with so much difficulty, that the powerful, whenever they wanted to ruin the weak, ... had only to accuse them of witchcraft to secure their destruction.—C. Mackay, Popular Delusions, p. 109. A certain G. Naudé, “late Library Keeper to Cardinal Mazarin,” wrote a book, entitled The History of Magic, “By way of apology for all the wise men who have unjustly been reputed magicians from the creation to the present age.” Englished by J. Davies. London, 1657.]
(f) The people denounced by prisoners under torture. As we have seen, accusation meant examination, and this had two objects: to extort a “confession” from the suspected witch, and to compel her to reveal accomplices. Some might confess at once, and did so in the hope of execution (the kind of confession required was already well known, and the more monstrous and elaborate it might be, the better would be the chance of escaping torture). Others would naturally deny taking part in abominations in which they had not engaged, and most of which were beyond possibility. And no doubt nearly all would make a long and desperate struggle against incriminating their unfortunate friends, who might, however innocent of crime, be also other people’s enemies. And so the accursed ingenuity of man was practised on these miserable victims of his ignorance and superstition. One hideous device[[592]] tried by a Frankish king was to drive sharp spikes underneath the nails;[[593]] this, he contended, always induced confession from the intense anguish. Very likely it did.
Other inquisitors went their own sweet way, and used all possible varieties of the question, that they might make out of the shrieks and ravings the sort of story they expected and prompted,[[594]] and lash more suspects down upon the rack. No wonder, then, that persecution spread;[[595]] the aged and the disordered were always there, and any one of these might be thought a witch,[[596]] or find herself denounced from the torture-room—perhaps by a lifelong friend.