There is no need to multiply instances. During the sittings of the Long Parliament, as many as three thousand persons are said to have been executed, exclusive of those who were “done to death” by enraged mobs. In 1640 a witch is described in a contemporary publication as—
“the devil’s otter-hound living both on land and sea, and doing mischief in either; she kills more beasts than a licensed butcher in Lent, yet is nere the fatter; she’s but a dry nurse in the flesh, yet gives such to the spirit. A witch rides many times poast on hellish business, yet if a ladder do but stop her, she will be hanged ere she goes any further.”
The last judicial execution took place in England in 1716, when a woman and her daughter, aged nine, were put to death at Huntingdon, accused of selling their souls to the devil. But years after this date the persecution continued, and women were assailed by the rabble as witches, frequently dying of the injuries they received. The penal statutes against witchcraft were repealed in 1751. This, however, did not do away with the belief which was held by people in various classes of life. John Wesley was perhaps the last noted person who clung to what eventually became a mere superstition, which only survived in obscure places.
After the Restoration came in a different temper and view of life. On the one side were the gay and frivolous, who mocked at the grim Puritan with his terrific beliefs; on the other were the philosophers and the intellectual world, who explained by natural causes the so-called supernatural appearances. The Anglican Church held a middle course between the sceptics and the fanatics. There were some, like Joseph Glanvil, who, in 1681, took up the defence of witchcraft; and there were bishops who promulgated persecution. The clergy had a strong leaning to superstition, and inclined to the side of the fanatics; but they were restrained from the greatest excesses of the Puritans by the influence of the educational portion, whose learning and enlightenment reflected credit on the Church at a period when it greatly needed strengthening.
CHAPTER X.
WOMEN AND THE ARTS.
Development of the arts in the seventeenth century—Introduction of women on the stage—Corruption of the period—Character of the drama—Wearing masks by spectators—The French company at Blackfriars Theatre—The first English company with women players—Famous actresses—English female artists in the Stuart period—Foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts—Angelica Kaufmann and Mary Moser elected members—Their career—Fanny Reynolds—Sir Joshua’s opinion of his sister’s work—Mrs. Cosway—Mrs. Carpenter—Character of eighteenth-century work—Women’s place in musical art—Musical education in early times—Love of music in the sixteenth century—Instruments played by women—Music abolished by the Puritans—Musical maidservants in the seventeenth century—The first English opera—Purcell’s early work—Performance at a ladies’ school.
It is in the seventeenth century, remarkable for political and religious strife, and a general unsettling of society, that the history of the fine arts, as far as women are concerned, really begins. There is, in fact, very little to record of the progress of the arts in England before this period. Unfavourable as the age seemed for artistic progress when the public mind was so largely occupied with momentous questions affecting the national life, it was signalized by three notable events, viz. the introduction of women to the stage, the commencement of English opera, and the uprising of female painters. The dramatic revolution, as it may be called, being the most striking of these events, will be touched upon first.
The middle of the seventeenth century, when women first began to appear on the stage in England, was a period of unexampled laxity. It was not simply that morality was at a low ebb, and that the passions reigned uppermost. That was the case in feudal times when the intellectual side of humanity was only half awakened, and the range of interests and ideas, of taste and knowledge, was limited by physical obstacles. The world was a sealed book to mediæval men and women. But the seventeenth century had no such excuse. It had opened the clasps; it had the power of choice, but it hugged the sins of past ages to its breast. Seeing the good, it chose the evil.