was in old times an established institution. In 1666 the Chamberlain of the Worcester Corporation spent £10. 14s. in an entertainment to Mr. Gratrix, "an Irishman famous for helping and curing many lame and diseased people only by stroking of their maladies with his hand, and therefore sent for to this and many other places." Valentine Gratrix—surnamed the Stroker—was a great proficient and master of the art; and by a letter of his (still in existence) to the Archbishop of Dublin, it appears that he believed himself to be inspired by God for the purpose of curing this disease. He was entertained with great hospitality at many of our citizens' houses, and was thus fortunate in having a long start of the mesmerizers of the present day. The parish register of Chaddesley Corbett contains a "Mem. That Nov. 24, 1685, a certificate was granted to Gervase Burford, to be touched for the King's evil;" and two years later King James II was at Worcester, and attended at the Cathedral for the purpose of touching persons affected with the evil. From the Worcestershire county records it appears that in 1688 one Susannah Rose petitioned the Court of Quarter Sessions on behalf of her brother, George Gilbert, a blacksmith, of Stourbridge, upon whose toes a hammer having fallen, had disabled him from work, and "after much suffering he was persuaded it was gone to the King's evil, went to London, and was touched by his Majesty, but afterwards was forced to go to a surgeon, at Rushock, under cure for above half-a-year, when he left him off, and would not let him be entertained in the parish any longer," and the poor petitioner being unable to provide for him, prays for his settlement at Bellbroughton, where he was born and apprenticed. In the parish records of St. Nicholas, it is stated that in 1711, one Walker, a pauper, was sent to London to be touched; and I believe that Dr. Johnson was touched by Queen Ann, as late as 1712. In the reign of Charles II a royal proclamation was issued stating the time when that monarch would touch persons afflicted with this disease. A broadside containing a printed copy of this proclamation still exists at Painswick, in Gloucestershire, in the possession of Mr. Gyde, the surgeon there. William of Malmesbury, who flourished in the twelfth century, alleges the origin of the Royal touch to have been on this wise: a young married woman, having some enormous glandular swellings on her neck, was admonished in a dream to have it washed by the King (Edward the Confessor). His Majesty readily fulfilled this labour of love by rubbing her neck with his fingers dipped in water, and before a week had expired, the tumour subsided and a fair new skin covered the affected part, so that a perfect cure was the result—and not only that, but the woman, who had been previously childless, in less than another year became the mother of twins, which (the sage chronicler gravely remarks) "greatly increased the admiration of Edward's holiness. Those who knew him more intimately affirm that he often cured this complaint in Normandy; whence appears how false is their notion who in our times assert that the cure of this disease does not proceed from personal sanctity but from hereditary virtue in the Royal line."
WITCHCRAFT.
"A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng on my memory,
Of calling shapes and beck'ning shadows dire,
And aery tongues, that syllable men's names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses."
A lingering belief in witchcraft still remains among the most ignorant of our population, both rural and urban. Some particulars relative to the existence of this superstition in this county in the seventeenth century will be found among the county records in the early part of this volume. The law against witchcraft, passed in the time of James I, being very stringent, the driving out evil spirits, allaying of ghosts, and abjuring witches, became, for nearly a century, a profitable employment. Witch-finders existed as public officers; and beside the public executions which disgraced every assizes, multitudes of accused were destroyed by popular resentment, while others were drowned by the test applied, for if, on being thrown into the water, they did not sink, they were presumed witches, and either killed on the spot or reserved for burning at the assizes. In the year 1649, four persons were tried at Worcester for this supposed offence, and all were executed, two of them confessing their crime, viz.: Margaret Landis and Susan Cook; Rebecca West and Rose Holybred died obstinate. The custom at Worcester was to duck the accused in the Severn (Cooken Street, or "Cucken Street," as it is spelt in some old maps, being no doubt the line of route on these occasions).
Baxter, in his "World of Spirits," speaks of those men who told of things stolen and lost, and who showed the face of a thief in a glass, and caused the goods to be brought back, who were commonly called "white witches." "When I lived (he says) at Dudley, Hodges, at Sedgley, two miles off, was long and commonly accounted such a one; and when I lived at Kederminster, one of my neighbours affirmed that, having his yarn stolen, he went to Hodges, ten miles off, and he told him that at such an hour he should have it brought home again and put in at the window, and so it was; and as I remember he showed him the person's face in a glass. Yet I do not think that Hodges made any known contract with the devil, but thought it an effect of art."
About the year 1672 a prebend of Worcester (Joseph Glanville) seriously wrote a book, entitled, "Some considerations touching the being of Witches and Witchcraft," which engaged him in a controversy that lasted as long as his life. The statute 9th George II, chap. 5 (1736), at length repealed the disgraceful Witch Act, and stopped all legal prosecutions against persons charged with conjuration, sorcery, &c.; yet what has once taken so firm a hold of the popular mind is not to be so easily eradicated; and Dr. Nash, who wrote his "Worcestershire" towards the close of the last century, asserts that not many years previously a poor woman, who happened to be very ugly, was almost drowned in the neighbourhood of Worcester, upon a supposition of witchcraft; and had not Mr. Lygon, a gentleman of singular humanity and influence, interfered in her behalf, she would certainly have been drowned, upon a presumption that a witch could not sink. Later still, Mr. Allies informs us, that when the late Mr. Spooner kept a pack of hounds, whenever they passed through a certain field in Leigh Sinton, the hounds would invariably run after something which nobody could see, until they came to the cottage of an old woman named Cofield, when they would turn back again, the old witch having then got safely into her own "sanctum." The exploits of Mrs. Swan, of Kidderminster, who pretended to discover stolen property for everybody else except what she herself had lost, and who died in an awfully tempestuous night in November, 1850, when her cats so mysteriously disappeared, cannot yet be forgotten; nor the recent existence of "the wise man of Dudley," and many others of the same class, though not quite so celebrated, who are now living. Some of the Mathon people still believe that witchcraft makes their pigs waste away; and, when convinced of the fact, they kill the animal, and burn a part of the flesh, to prevent any ill effects to those who eat the remainder. Mr. Lees informs us of a pear tree in Wyre Forest, the fruit of which is even now hung up in the houses of the peasantry as a protection against witchcraft. The witch elm (Ulmus montana) was the one commonly employed for the purpose, as most easily attainable. That was good; the mountain ash or witten tree was better; and the sorb tree or true service (Pyrus domestica) was the strongest of all. Nine withes of witch hazel, banded together, is used as a rustic appliance to guard against witching influence. There is a place called "Witchery Hole," in Little Shelsley, concerning which, whenever a violent wind blows from the north, the people say, "The wind comes from Witchery Hole," insinuating that certain "broomstick hags" had something to do with raising the wind. For a baker to cross the flour before he commences baking is regarded as a security against the witch entering the bread. The horse-shoe is still seen over doors, in many places, and fastened to bedsteads to keep witches away. At the Police Office, at Stourbridge, only a few months ago, a woman named Wassall charged a Mrs. Cartwright, a poor woman afflicted with paralysis, with threatening to do her some bodily injury. The defendant alleged that the affliction under which she was suffering was caused by the complainant, who had bewitched her; and that when she begged her to remove the spell, complainant told her it had been upon her for twelve weeks, and it should continue six weeks longer. Finding entreaties vain, the defendant made use of some idle threat, which led to the summons. A "charm" was shown to the Court, which the deluded creature had worn by the advice of a "wise" man to remove the spell; it was a small black silk bag, containing pieces cut out from the Prayer Book and Bible, and some hair, evidently from a cat's back. The Bench endeavoured to assuage the fears of the poor woman, and told her not to impute her affliction to the evil machinations of any one, at the same time severely lecturing the complainant for practising such deceit upon an ignorant and afflicted fellow-creature.
There were reputed witches at Malvern in the last generation; and at Colwall the common people are said even now to dislike peewits (lapwings) which visit that place, believing that their cry is "bewitch'd, bewitch'd;" and should any person capture one of these birds he is strongly recommended not to keep it for fear of misfortune or accident. Peewits are believed to be departed spirits who still haunt the earth in consequence of something that troubles them.
GHOSTS.
At Beoley, about half a century ago, the ghost of a reputed murderer managed to keep undisputed possession of a certain house, until a conclave of the clergy chained him to the bed of the Red Sea for fifty years. When that term was expired the ghost reappeared (two or three years ago), and more than ever frightened the natives of the said house—slamming the doors, and racing through the ceilings. The inmates, however, took heart, and chased him, by stamping on the floor from one room to another, under the impression that, could they once drive him to a trap-door opening into the cheese-room (for which, if the ghost happened to be a rat, he had a very natural penchant), he would disappear for a season. The beadle of the parish, who also combined with that office the scarcely less important one of pig-sticker, declared to the writer that he dared not go by the house now in the morning till the sun was up. (It was an ancient superstition that evil spirits flew away at cock-crowing.)