Notes on witchcraft

by George Lyman Kittredge

There seems to be a more or less prevalent impression that Scot’s book explodes witchcraft so thoroughly that the whole delusion might soon have come to an end in England if James I. had not mounted the throne a short time after it was published. True, King James’s Dæmonologie is expressly directed “against the damnable opinions” of Wier and Scot.[54] But, to tell the truth, Scot’s treatise did not require a royal refutation. To us moderns, who are converted already and need no repentance, its general air of reasonableness, together with its humor and the raciness of the style, makes the Discoverie seem convincing enough. But this is to look at the matter from a mistaken point of view. The question is, not how Scot’s arguments affect us, but how they were likely to affect his contemporaries. Now, if the truth must be told, the Discoverie is deficient in one very important respect. It makes no satisfactory answer to the insistent questions: “What are these evil spirits of which the Bible and the philosophers tell us, and which everybody believes in, and always has believed in, from the beginning of time? And what are they about? If they are powerful and malignant, why is it not likely that the effects which everybody ascribes to them are really their work? And if they are eager not only to torment but to seduce mankind, why is it not reasonable to suppose that they accomplish both ends at the same time—kill two birds with one stone—by procuring such evil effects by means of witches, or by allowing themselves to be utilized by witches as instruments of malice?” It was quite proper to ask these questions of Scot. He admitted the existence of evil spirits, but declared that we know little or nothing about them, denied that they can produce the phenomena then generally ascribed to their agency, and alleged fraud and delusion to account for such phenomena. Even to us, with our extraordinary and very modern incredulity toward supernatural occurrences, the lacuna in Scot’s reasoning is clear enough if we only look at his argument as a whole. This we are not inclined to do; at least, no historian of witchcraft has ever done it. It is easier and more natural for us to accept such portions of Scot’s argument as agree with our own view, to compliment him for his perspicacity, and to pass on, disregarding the inadequacy of what he says about evil spirits. Or, if we notice that his utterances on this topic are halting and uncertain, we are tempted to regard such hesitancy as further evidence of his rational temper. He could not quite deny the existence of devils, we feel,—that would have been too much to expect of him; but he waves them aside like a sensible man.[55] A moment’s consideration, however, will show us that this defect in Scot’s case, trifling as it appears to us now-a-days, was in fact a very serious thing. To us, who never think of admitting the intervention of evil spirits in the affairs of this world, the question whether there are any such spirits at all has a purely theoretical interest. Indeed, we practically deny their existence when we ignore them as we do: de non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex.—But to Scot’s contemporaries, the question of the existence of evil spirits involved the whole matter in debate,—and Scot granted their existence.

A curious particular in the history of Scot’s Discoverie should also be considered in estimating its effect on the seventeenth century. The appearance of a new edition in 1665, shortly after the famous Bury St. Edmunds case,[56] may at first sight seem to indicate powerful and continuing influence on the part of the Discoverie. When we observe from the title-page, however, that the publisher has inserted nine chapters at the beginning of Book XV, and has added a second book to the Treatise on Divels and Spirits, our curiosity is excited. Investigation soon shows that these additions were calculated to destroy or minimize the total effect of Scot’s book. The prefixed chapters contain directions for making magical circles, for calling up “the ghost of one that hath hanged himself,” and for raising various orders of spirits. These chapters are thrust in without any attempt to indicate that they are not consistent with Scot’s general plan and his theories. They appear to be, and are, practical directions for magic and necromancy. The additional book is even more dangerous to Scot’s design. It is prefaced by the remark:—“Because the Author in his foregoing Treatise, upon the Nature of Spirits and Devils, hath only touched the subject thereof superficially, omitting the more material part; and with a brief and cursory Tractat, hath concluded to speak the least of this subject which indeed requires most amply to be illustrated; therefore I thought fit to adjoyn this subsequent discourse; as succedaneous to the fore-going, and conducing to the compleating of the whole work.”[57]

How far “this subsequent discourse” is really fitted to complete Scot’s work may be judged by a statement which it makes on the very first page, to the effect that bad spirits “are the grand Instigators, stirring up mans heart to attempt the inquiry after the darkest, and most mysterious part of Magick, or Witchcraft.” And again a little later:—“Great is the villany of Necromancers, and wicked Magicians, in dealing with the spirits of men departed; whom they invocate, with certain forms, and conjurations, digging up their Carkasses again, or by the help of Sacrifices, and Oblations to the infernal Gods; compelling the Ghost to present it self before them.”[58] All this is quite opposed to Scot’s view and the whole intention of his book. The insertion of such worthless matter was, of course, a mere trick of the bookseller to make a new edition go off well. But the fact of its insertion shows that Scot was thought to have left his treatise incomplete or unsatisfactory in a most important point. And the inserted matter itself must have gone far to neutralize the effect of republication in a witch-haunted period. And so we may leave Reginald Scot, with our respect for his courage and common sense undiminished, but with a clear idea of the slight effect which his treatise must have had on the tone and temper of the age that we are studying.

John Webster’s Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, which appeared in 1677—the Preface is dated “February 23. 1673”—was particularly directed against Glanvill and Meric Casaubon. It holds a distinguished place in the history of witchcraft, and demands our careful scrutiny. What is usually thought of it has been eloquently expressed by the late Mr. James Crossley. “In this memorable book,” writes Mr. Crossley, “he exhausts the subject, as far as it is possible to do so, by powerful ridicule, cogent arguments, and the most varied and well applied learning, leaving to [Francis] Hutchinson, and others who have since followed in his track, little further necessary than to reproduce his facts and reasonings in a more popular, it can scarcely be said, in a more effective form.”[59]

A few of Webster’s opinions must be specified, that the reader may judge how far The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft deserves to rank as a work of sober and scientific reason, and to what extent the author merits the position that seems to be traditionally assigned to him as an uncompromising assailant of superstition.

Angels, good and bad, are “really and truly corporeal” and not spirits, except “in a relative and respective” sense.[60] Since devils are corporeal, Webster admits that “they may move and agitate other bodies.” Their strength, however, is limited, “for though one Devil may be supposed to move or lift up that which would load an Horse, yet it will not follow that he can move or lift up as much as would load a Ship of a thousand Tun.”[61] Webster grants that “God doth make use of evil Angels to punish the wicked, and to chastise and afflict the godly, and in the effecting of these things that they have a power given them to hurt the earth and the Sea and things therein, as to bring tempests, thunder, lightning, plague, death, drought and the like.”[62]

Webster has a profound belief in apparitions and tells some capital ghost stories[63]—“unquestionable testimonies,” he calls them, “either from our own Annals, or matters of fact that we know to be true of our own certain knowledge, that thereby it may undoubtedly appear, that there are effects that exceed the ordinary power of natural causes, and may for ever convince all Atheisticall minds.”[64] One of these tales concerns the murder of one Fletcher by Ralph Raynard, an innkeeper, and Mark Dunn, a hired assassin. One day “the spirit of Fletcher in his usual shape and habit did appear unto [Raynard], and said, Oh Raph, repent, repent, for my revenge is at hand.” The result was a full confession. “I have recited this story punctually,” writes Webster, “as a thing that hath been very much fixed in my memory, being then but young, and as a certain truth, I being (with many more) an ear-witness of their confessions and an eye-witness of their Executions, and likewise saw Fletcher when he was taken up, where they had buried him in his cloaths, which were a green fustian doublet pinkt upon white, gray breeches, and his walking boots and brass spurrs without rowels.” The spectre, Webster is convinced, was an “extrinsick apparition to Raynard,” and not the mere effect of a guilty conscience “which represented the shape of Fletcher in his fancy.” The thing could not, he thinks, “be brought to pass either by the Devil, or Fletchers Soul,” and therefore he “concludes that either it was wrought by the Divine Power, ... or that it was the Astral or Sydereal Spirit of Fletcher, seeking revenge for the murther.”[65]

Webster also believes fully in the “bleeding or cruentation of the bodies of those that have been murthered,” particularly at the touch of the murderer or in his presence, and he gives a very curious collection of examples, in some of which “the murtherers had not been certainly known but by the bleeding of the body murthered.”[66] The most probable explanation of such phenomena he finds in the existence of the astral spirit, “that, being a middle substance, betwixt the Soul and the Body doth, when separated from the Body, wander or hover near about it, bearing with it the irascible and concupiscible faculties, wherewith being stirred up to hatred and revenge, it causeth that ebullition and motion in the blood, that exudation of blood upon the weapon, and those other wonderful motions of the Body, Hands, Nostrils and Lips, thereby to discover the murtherer, and bring him to condign punishment.”[67] In some cases, however, Webster holds that the soul has not actually departed, “and God may in his just judgment suffer the Soul to stay longer in the murthered Body, that the cry of blood may make known the murtherer, or may not so soon, for the same reason, call it totally away.”[68]

These specimens of Webster’s temper of mind might perhaps suffice to show with what slight justification he has been regarded as a scientific rationalist. We must not dismiss him, however, until we have scrutinized his views on the subject of witchcraft itself. He passes for a strong denier of the whole business of sorcery. We shall find that this is a great mistake. So far from denying the existence of witches, Webster is indignant at the imputation that his theories and those of other like-minded scholars should be interpreted in any such sense. “If I deny that a Witch cannot flye in the air, nor be transformed or transubstantiated into a Cat, a Dog, or an Hare, or that the Witch maketh any visible Covenant with the Devil, or that he sucketh on their bodies, or that the Devil hath carnal Copulation with them; I do not thereby deny either the Being of Witches, nor other properties that they may have, for which they may be so called: no more than if I deny that a dog hath rugibility (which is only proper to a Lion) doth it follow that I deny the being of a Dog, or that he hath latrability?”[69] This sentence contains, in effect, the sum and substance of Webster’s negative propositions on the subject.[70] Let us see what he holds as affirmatives.

Though rejecting the theory of an external covenant between the devil and a witch, Webster acknowledges “an internal, mental, and spiritual League or Covenant betwixt the Devil and all wicked persons.” Further, “this spiritual League in some respects and in some persons may be, and is an explicit League, that is, the persons that enter into it, are or may be conscious of it, and know it to be so.”[71] Now there are certain persons, commonly called witches, who are full of “hatred, malice, revenge and envy,” of which the devil is the “author and causer,”[72] and these, by Satan’s instigation, “do secretly and by tradition learn strange poysons, philters and receipts whereby they do much hurt and mischief. Which most strange wayes of poysoning, tormenting, and breeding of unwonted things in the stomach and bellies of people, have not been unknown unto many learned men and Philosophers.”[73] Among these effects of “an art more than Diabolical,” which has “been often practiced by most horrible, malevolent, and wicked persons,” is the production of the plague. There is no doubt of the fact. There are “undeniable examples.” An unguent may be prepared which is of such power that when it is smeared upon the handles of doors, “those that do but lightly touch them are forthwith infected.” In 1536 there was a conspiracy of some forty persons in Italy, who caused the death of many in this way.[74] To such arts Webster ascribes the dreadful outbreak of jail-fever at the Oxford assizes in 1579. This was not, and could not be, the ordinary “prison infection.” It was brought about by the contrivances of one Roland Jenks, “a Popish recusant,” who was condemned for seditious words against the queen. Jenks, it seems, had procured strange poisons of a local apothecary, and had made a kind of candle out of them. As soon as he was condemned, he lighted his candle, from which there arose such a “damp,” or steam, that the pestilence broke out as we have seen.[75] It is manifest, Webster holds, “that these kind of people that are commonly called Witches, are indeed (as both the Greek and Latin names doe signifie) Poysoners, and in respect of their Hellish designs are Diabolical, but the effects they procure flow from natural Causes.”[76] This last proposition is, indeed, perhaps the chief point of Webster’s book. Witches exist, and they do horrible things, but they accomplish their ends, not by the actual intervention of the devil and his imps, but by virtue of an acquaintance with little-known laws of nature. Another example, which cannot be quoted in detail, will make Webster’s position perfectly clear. A man was afflicted with a dreadful disease. The cause was discovered to be the presence of an oaken pin in the corner of a courtyard. The pin was destroyed and the man drank birchen ale. He made a complete recovery. It is plain, according to Webster, that the pulling up and burning of the oaken pin “was with the help of the Birchen Ale the cure; but it can no wayes be judged necessary that the Devil should fix the Oak pin there, but that the Witch might do it himself. Neither can it be thought to be any power given by the Devil to the Oaken pin, that it had not by nature, for in all probability it will constantly by a natural power produce the same effect; only thus far the Devil had a hand in the action, to draw some wicked person to fix the pin there ..., thereby to hurt and torture him.”[77]