Robert Berewold in the pillory.
So far we have been dealing with genuine, if inaccurate, magicians, but a case that occurred in London in 1382 shows that there were impostors even in that learned profession. Mistress Alice Trig having lost her Paris kerchief suspected Alice Byntham of having stolen it, and apparently not without good reason. The two women seem to have been fairly intimate, and Alice Byntham went to a cobbler, William Northamptone, and gave him information of certain very private matters concerning the other Alice. William then went round to Mistress Trig and posed as a wise man, which he may have been, skilled in magic, which he was not, and revealed to her his knowledge of her private affairs. She, being duly impressed, asked him who had stolen her kerchief, to which he replied, whoever it was it certainly was not Alice Byntham, and launching out rashly into prophecy told his questioner that she would be drowned within a month. The dismal prospect almost terrified her into an early grave, but in the end she survived to see William standing in the pillory.
A case that is recorded in Lincolnshire in the sixteenth century is interesting as showing the more than local reputation enjoyed by some of these cunning men. The church of Holbeach having been robbed, the parishioners consulted their fellow-townsman John Lamkyn, a man known to have ‘resonable knowledg in the sciens of gramer,’ which he taught to the children of the neighbourhood, and said to have a knowledge not so reasonable of such arts as enchantment, witchcraft, and sorcery. He, at the request of the churchwardens, went off to consult Edmund Nash, a wheeler, famed as ‘an expert man in the knowleg of thynges stolen,’ who lived at ‘Cicestre,’ which may have been either Chichester or Cirencester, as it is called in one place ‘Chechestre’ and in another ‘Circetter,’ but was in any case a very long way off. Lamkyn took with him a pair of leather gloves found in the vestry after the robbery, and Nash made certain deductions therefrom, which caused suspicion to fall upon John Partridge, who complained that he had lost friends and reputation and been ‘brought into infamy and slander and owte of credenz.’ Lamkyn’s version of the story made out Nash to be merely a private detective following up clues without recourse to magic, and also hinted that Partridge’s reputation was no great loss. There is as little reason to believe one as the other.
Probably the most popular method of ascertaining the whereabouts of lost property and the identity of the thief was by the use of astrology. Some years ago, when I was in one of those bookshops in which at that time I spent much of my spare time and all of my spare money, I was offered a manuscript volume, formerly the property of William Lilly, in which that famous but shifty astrologer had recorded some scores of investigations made by him for clients and mostly concerned with the recovery of stolen goods. The figures were neatly drawn up, and the interpretation written below, but, if my memory serves me, there was nothing to show in how many cases the investigations led to any practical result. There are, I believe, two similar volumes in the Bodleian, but what became of this particular copy I do not know; whether it was due to the unfair incidence of taxation under the budget of that year or to more permanent causes, my funds did not permit of its acquisition, and I left it sorrowfully in company with a much-desired Augsburg Missal and Pine’s edition of Horace—the rare edition of the ‘post est’ blunder. I did, however, secure Fludd’s Macrocosm, by aid of which I might myself, if time and my mastery of the movements of the whirling spheres permitted, open a branch of the heavenly Scotland Yard.
‘... sware “gret othes” and took himself by the hair.’
The early astrologers, thanks to the cautious vagueness of their statements, seem to have avoided the clutches of the law, into which other magicians fell. The stars reveal no names, recording only, by an anticipation of the Bertillon procedure, the measurements and physical peculiarities of the thieves. If from these particulars the querent jumps to a false conclusion and accuses the wrong man, so much the worse for him—the stars and their interpreters are not to blame. No one said hard words of the London astrologers whom Robert Cooke consulted. Cooke was a carrier from Kendale who came south in 1528 with £30 in money, much of it belonging to other men, in a ‘bogett,’ and put up at John Balenger’s house in St. Ives. During the course of the day he opened his packs, bought and sold and drank with his customers, allowing a number of people in quite a casual way to feel the weight of his ‘bogett,’ but not opening it. It was late that night before they got to bed at John Balenger’s, for ‘it was ten of the clok or they went to soper, for as much as every man pakked up his wares or they sooped,’ and when they went up to their rooms the house was apparently pretty full, as Cooke shared a bed with John Foster, a draper, and there were others in the same chamber. Next morning, as they were putting their packs on their horses, Cooke suddenly noticed that one of his packs was fastened with a different kind of knot from that which he used. Thereupon he suddenly exclaimed, ‘My pak is wrong knyt, by the passhion of God, sith yesternight,’ and opening it took out the precious ‘bogett’ and found it full of stones. So he sware ‘gret othes’ and took himself by the hair and altogether carried on mightily, and finally ‘made his advow that he would never ete fisshe ne fleissh until he had been at Saint Rynyons in Scotland if he might here of his goodes.’ Then, with his bed-companion of the previous night, he rode over to Cambridge ‘to make calculacion for the said goodes,’ but at that seat of learning ‘they coude find noo clerk or other person that wold take on hand to calcle for the said money.’ However, when Robert Cooke got to London he had no difficulty in finding astrologers, who expressed the utmost confidence in their ability to ‘calcle,’ and told him that ‘he shulde by the crafte of astronomye, if he wold, have hys eye or arme or other joynte of hys body thatt hadd robbed hym, att hys pleasure.’ This ferocious promise, it may be pointed out, merely meant that the astronomer could give a description of any particular physical traits necessary to indentify the robber. In this particular instance the description was that of a fair man with large eyes, hair neither curly nor straight, and a large nose, of medium height, good looking, with a bright expression, and having one or more black teeth. This elaborate account the astronomer, with becoming modesty, had submitted to the judgment of others more learned and experienced than himself, and they guaranteed its accuracy. It was found to correspond with the appearance of John Balenger the younger, son of Cooke’s host, except that the latter ‘hath no blak toth in his hed as yt apperith iff ony lust to serch therfor,’ and in order to prove this ‘the said John Balenger was caused to sytte down and in large wyse to gape and open his jowes to be duely seen ... and after due serch therin made yt appeared that the said John had alle his teth whyte and in good maner proporconed.’ Adding to this the fact that he was ‘callid a good young man and wele ruled, not slaundered neither with dicyng, carding ne other misrule,’ and the rather suspicious circumstance that the biggest stone found in Cooke’s ‘bogett’ after the supposed robbery was a piece of ironstone of a kind not found within forty miles of St. Ives but very plentiful in Kendale, it is not surprising that the magistrates should have dismissed the case against the younger John Balenger. After all, a black tooth is like a finger-tip print—damning evidence if present but powerful for acquittal if absent, and who is a Justice of the Peace that he should contradict Jupiter?
