“We intended to write a particular Treatise concerning the effects of this Eclips, which is the greatest this Age hath beheld, and in that Booke to have delivered unto Posterity a Method whereby they might have judged what manner of Effects should have been signified by any Defect of either of the two Luminaries; but our time at this present being otherwise taken up, we are confined to a narrow scantling of Paper: we hope some well-wishers unto Astrology will perfect what we intended on that Subject, being desirous to see the Labours of other Men abroad, the whole burthen hereof being too heavy for one Anglicus.”
The idlest tales were believed and credited as facts, and men more cunning than the common herd thrived by magical and cabalistic spells they were supposed to cast upon evil spirits. The clergy dealt in exorcisms, and in surplice and stole performed the rites of the Church. They condemned witchcraft, however, as heresy; and as early as the reign of Henry VIII. a statute was passed which enacted that any person, after the day therein named, devising, practising, or exercising “any invocations, or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries, to the intent to get or find money or treasure, or to waste, consume, or destroy any person in his body, members, or goods, or to provoke any person to unlawful love, or for any other unlawful intent or purpose, or by occasion or colour of such things or any of them, or for despite of Christ, or lucre of money, dig up or pull down any cross, or crosses, or by such invocations or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorcery, or any of them, take upon them to tell or declare where goods stolen or lost shall be come—that then all and every person or persons offending as before is mentioned, shall be deemed, accepted, and adjudged a felon or felons, without benefit of clergy.” This act was carefully worded, inasmuch as it only extends to witchcraft or enchantment practised with a criminal or unlawful intent.
Men with very much less learning than the author quoted, lived by their wits, from their supposed knowledge of the stars, and from being able, as they professed, to consult the planets and to restore lost property. Men, and women too, would take long journeys to consult one who could “read the stars,” or “rule the planets.” From a conversation recorded by a close observer of men and manners in the beginning of the present century, for instance, we learn that one of these wise men who lived as far off as Oswestry was occasionally consulted by the inhabitants here. Of course it was easy with a little tact for the wife to worm out the main facts in one room whilst the husband listened and gathered them up for use in another. Tom Bowlegs having missed a five-pound note from his cupboard holds the following conversation with a friend, who tells him he cannot help thinking that the note has been mislaid, not stolen, and says:—
“The five-pound peaper is not stolen but lost, and thee’lt be sartin to find it.
No sich thing Yedart, replies Bowlegs; for I went to the wise-mons and he tow’d me all about it.
The wise-mon! what wise-mon?
Dick Spot that lives slip side Hodgistry the yed of aw the conjurors in Shropshire.
Aye, and what did he tell thee?
Well, thee shalt hear:
As a five-pound paper was a jell for a poor mon to lose, I determined to know all about it, so off I set for Dick Spot’s house. After knocking at the door it was opened by an owd woman, as ugly as the divil himself, with a face as black as the easter. At first seet I thought I was tean to, and was for bowting; but wishing to know all about the paper, I mustered aw my courage, and went in. Pray, said I, is the Wise-mon a-whoam. No, said she, but he will directly; sit down; I suppose you have lost something, and wants to know where it is. Yes, said I, you bin reet. What is it that you have lost? So I up and tow’d her, aw abowt it. Just as I had finished, in comes the wise-mon; and he (to my great surprise) said—follow me into this room; while I was scraping wi mi foot, dewking mi yed, and stroking my yarr down, amounting altogether to a nation fine beawe, he said—I was consulting the planets this morning and found that a £5 Shiffnal bank note had been stolen from under a sugar bason in your cupboard on Wednesday morning last, between the hours of nine and ten o’clock, by a tall mon, with a long visage marked by the small pox, gray eyes, and black beard. (Wonderful! said I, that is the very mon I suspect!) You will therefore, on your return home, make it known in his neighbourhood that if the bill is not returned in one week from this day, that he will lose one of his legs in a few weeks after. If this comes to his ears I have no doubt the bill will be returned immediately, but if he does not, he shall be marked as I have told you, and in that case the bill will be irrecoverable. I knew by the planets that you would be here at 12 o’clock to-day, and having overstaid my time at Hodgistry (here he wiped the sweat from his face). I ran all the way to be in time to meet you.”
The devil, or “divil,” seems to have been an important personage, often making bargains, in which he not unfrequently got worsted. There were too familiar imps or demons, according to John Heywood’s homely rhymes,—
“Such as we
Pugs and Hobgoblins call; their dwellings be
In corners of old houses least frequented,
Or beneath stacks of wood; and these convented
Make fearful noise in butteries and in dairies,
Robin Goodfellows some, some call them fairies.
In solitarie rooms these uproars keep,
And beat at doors to wake men from their sleep,
Seeming to force locks be they ne’re so strong
And keeping Christmasse gambols all night long.”
That merry wanderer, Puck, even as late as the present century, was common to our fields, where he seems to have had a partiality for simple countrymen, market-fresh, whom he led many a weary dance in fields out of which they could not find their way. He was occasionally domiciled in the kitchen, and was useful in sweeping up the hearth while housewives snored in bed. Farmhouses were favourite residences; but woe to the dairymaid who happened to offend them! Her milk was sure to turn sour. They haunted mines sometimes, and used the pick to help forward the midnight task, or became malignant and caused inundations of water, or let loose noxious vapours to destroy both mine and miners. On one occasion a miner named Bagley, who preferred being let down when all the rest had ascended the shaft, in order to have the assistance of an imp, was watched by another, who concealed himself for the purpose. But the imp, who was working whilst the man rested, discovered him and called upon his friend to bump him against the timber for his intrusion. On being caught a second time, the imp raised an alarm—“He peeps again, Bagley; bump him!” showing that the sprite or whatever he was could speak English. As a supposed proof of the truth of this, Bagley was called “Bump him, Bagley!” to his dying day.
An old inhabitant of Madeley who believed thoroughly in such things told us that he once looked through a hole into an old building on a moonlight night, and saw a score of spirits of this kind dancing right merrily! He also assured us that an old woman, whose name he gave us, but which we do not remember, was accounted a witch, and had the power to change herself into a hare; and that on one occasion she was hunted by the hounds, who ran her to her cottage, on the Brockton road, where she took the chimney, and was found sitting by the fire, her hands and feet bleeding from the run. [121]
If the clergy of those days believed in evil eyes, witchcraft, and ghosts, it was to be expected that the people would do so, too. They stood alone on a mental as on a religious eminence. The knell of ecclesiastical authority had not then been rung; civil incapacity and inferiority was the tacit proscription of all outside the pale of the Church; and what we glean of morals and manners under the rigid system of godly discipline then prevailing is not much in its favour.
Madeley, towards the latter end of the past and beginning of the present century was favoured above many neighbouring parishes in its clergy. It had men who led tranquil, holy lives, and some who proclaimed the conscience of the individual to be the only judge in matters of the soul,—men who were, it is true, ill-rewarded for their pains, but who lived beneficent lives, and rendered disinterested service.