Credulous as James I. was, yet he could not swallow lycanthropy:
‘But to tell you simply my opinion in this, if any such thing hath beene, I take it to haue proceeded but of a naturall super-aboundance of Melancholie, which, as we reade, that it hath made some thinke themselues Pitchers, and some, horses, and some, one kinde of beast or other. So suppose I, that it hath so viciat the imagination and memory of some, as per lucida interualla, it hath so highly occupied them, that they haue thought themselues very Woolfes indeed, at these times: and so haue counterfeited their actiones in going on their hands and feete, preassing to deuoure women and barnes,[34] fighting and snatching with all the towne dogges, and in using such like other bruitish actiones, and so to become beastes by a strong apprehension as Nabucad-netzar was seuen yeares.’
But popular opinion still inclined to the belief in the ability of witches to change their form: and we will take only one instance, which occurs in the play of ‘The Late Lancashire Witches,’ by Heywood and Broome (London, 1634):
‘Meg. Then list yee well, the hunters are
This day, by vow, to kill a hare,
Or else the sport they will forsweare;
And hang their dogs up.
Mawd. Stay, but where
Must the long threatened hare be found?
Gil. They’l search in yonder meadow ground.
Meg. There will I be, and like a wily wat,
Untill they put me up, ile squat.’
And this belief has descended to quite modern times, for Mr. E. J. Wood, writing in Notes and Queries, October 25, 1862, says:
‘In a certain hollow, or “bottom,” not many miles from Sevenoaks, lived an old woman (now deceased) who had the local reputation of being a witch, and who could, according to the vulgar belief, convert herself into a hare at will. Her cottage had a drain-hole, or aperture, through which hole the so-called witch used to pass when she had metamorphosed herself into a “puss.”’
To the outside world, a witch, be she young or old, looked like another woman, but to the cognoscenti there were certain marks about her which proclaimed her as a servant to the devil. All authorities agree that a witch had certain marks upon her which no one could mistake, and Scot sums it up very tersely:
‘Item, if she haue anie priuie mark under hir arme pokes, under hir haire, under hir lip, or in hir buttocke, &c., it is a presumption for the iudge to proceed and giue sentence of death upon hir.’
But perhaps we find the fullest details of these marks in the abominable book ‘The Discovery of Witches,’ by the wretch Matthew Hopkins, the professional ‘witch-finder.’
‘Query 5. Many poore People are condemned for having a Pap or Teat about them, whereas many People, (especially antient People) are, and have been, a long time, troubled with naturall wretts[35] on severall parts of their bodies, and other natural excresscencies, and these shall be judged only by one man alone, and a woman, and so accused or acquitted?