Upon this evidence—such as it was—and upon her own confession, Marie Smith was convicted and sentenced to death. On the scaffold she humbly acknowledged her sins, prayed earnestly that God might forgive her the wrongs she had done her neighbours, and asked that a hymn of her own choosing—‘Lord, turn not away Thy face’—might be sung. Then she died calmly. It is, no doubt, a curious fact—if, indeed, it be a fact, but the evidence is by no means satisfactory—that she confessed to various acts of witchcraft, and to having made a compact with the devil; but even this alleged confession cannot receive our credence when we reflect on the inherent absurdity and impossibility of the whole affair.
In 1619, Joan Flower and her two daughters, Margaretta and Philippa, formerly servants at Belvoir Castle, were tried before Judges Hobart and Bromley, on a charge of having bewitched to death two sons of the sixth Earl of Rutland, and found guilty. The mother died in prison; the two daughters were executed at Lincoln.
THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES.
My chronological survey next brings me to the famous case of the Lancashire witches.
I have already told the story of the Dundikes and the Chattoxes, and their exploits in Pendle Forest. In the same locality, two-and-twenty years later, lived a man of the name of Robinson, to whom it occurred that the prevalent belief in witchcraft might be turned to account against his neighbours. In this design he made his son—a lad about eleven years old—his instrument. After he had been properly trained, he was instructed by his father, on February 10, 1633, to go before two justices of the peace, and make the following declaration:
That, on All Saints’ Day, while gathering wild plums in Wheatley Lane, he saw a black greyhound and a brown scamper across the fields. They came up to him familiarly, and he then discovered that each wore a collar shining like gold. As no one accompanied them, he concluded that they had broken loose from their kennels; and as at that moment a hare started up only a few paces from him, he thought he would set them to hunt it, but his efforts were all in vain; and in his wrath he took the strings that hung from their collars, tied both to a little bush, and then whipped them. Whereupon, in the place of the black greyhound, started up the wife of a man named Dickinson, and in that of the brown a little boy. In his amazement, young Robinson (so he said) would have run away, but he was stayed by Mistress Dickinson, who pulled out of her pocket ‘a piece of silver much like unto a fine shilling,’ and offered it to him, if he promised to be silent. But he refused, exclaiming: ‘Nay, thou art a witch!’ Whereupon, she again put her hand in her pocket, and drew forth a string like a jingling bridle, which she put over the head of the small boy, and, behold, he was turned into a white horse, with a change as quick as that of a scene in a pantomime. Upon this white horse the woman placed, by force, young Robinson, and rode with him as far as the Hoar-Stones—a house at which the witches congregated together—where divers persons stood about the door, while others were riding towards it on horses of different colours. These dismounted, and, having tied up their horses, all went into the house, accompanied by their friends, to the number of threescore. At a blazing fire some meat was roasting, and a young woman gave Robinson flesh and bread upon a trencher, and drink in a glass, which, after the first taste, he refused, and would have no more, saying it was nought. Presently, observing that certain of the company repaired to an adjoining barn, he followed, and saw six of them on their knees, pulling at six several ropes which were fastened to the top of the house, with the result that joints of meat smoking hot, lumps of butter, and milk ‘syleing,’ or straining from the said ropes, fell into basins placed underneath them. When these six were weary, came other six, and pulled right lustily; and all the time they were pulling they made such foul faces that they frightened the peeping lad, so that he was glad to steal out and run home.
No sooner was his escape discovered than a party of the witches, including Dickinson’s wife, the wife of a man named Loynds, and Janet Device, took up the pursuit, and over field and scaur hurried headlong, nearly overtaking him at a spot called Boggard Hole, when the opportune appearance of a couple of horsemen induced them to abandon their quarry. But young Robinson was not yet ‘out of the wood.’ In the evening he was despatched by his father to bring home the cattle, and on the way, in a field called the Ollers, he fell in with a boy who picked a quarrel with him, and they fought together until the blood flowed from his ears, when, happening to look down, he saw that his antagonist had cloven feet, and, much affrighted, set off at full speed to execute his commission. Perceiving a light like that of a lantern, he hastened towards it, in the belief it was carried by a neighbour; but on arriving at the place of its shining he found there a woman whom he recognised as the wife of Loynds, and immediately turned back. Falling in again with the cloven-footed boy, he thought it prudent to take to his heels, but not before he had received a blow on the back which pained him sorely.
In support of this extraordinary story, the elder Robinson deposed that he had certainly sent his son to bring in the kine; that, thinking he was away too long, he had gone in search of him, and discovered him in such a distracted condition that he knew neither his father nor where he was, and so continued for very nearly a quarter of an hour before he came to himself.
The persons implicated by the boy Robinson were immediately arrested, and confined in Lancaster Castle. Some of them—for he told various stories, and in each introduced new characters—he did not know by name, but he protested that on seeing them he should recognise them, and for this purpose he was carried about to the churches in the surrounding district to examine the congregations. The method adopted is thus described by Webster: ‘It came to pass that this said boy was brought into the church of Kildwick, a large parish church, where I (being then curate there) was preaching in the afternoon, and was set upon a stall (he being but about ten or eleven years old) to look about him, which moved some little disturbance in the congregation for awhile. And, after prayers, I inquiring what the matter was, the people told me it was the boy that discovered witches, upon which I went to the house where he was to stay all night, where I found him and two very unlikely persons that did conduct him and manage his business. I desired to have some discourse with the boy in private, but they utterly refused. Then, in the presence of a great many people, I took the boy near me and said: “Good boy, tell me truly, and in earnest, didst thou see and hear such strange things of the meeting of witches as is reported by many that thou dost relate, or did not some person teach thee to say such things of thyself?” But the two men, not giving the boy leave to answer, did pluck him from me, and said he had been examined by two able justices of the peace, and they did never ask him such a question; to whom I replied, the persons accused therefore had the more wrong.’
In all, some eighteen women, married and single—the charge was generally made against women, as probably less capable of self-defence, and more impressionable than men—were brought to trial at Lancaster Assizes. There was really no evidence against them but the boy Robinson’s, and to sustain it his unfortunate victims were examined for the stigmata, or devil-marks, which, of course, were found in ample quantity. Against seventeen a verdict of guilty was returned, one or two being convicted on their own confessions—the most perplexing incident in the whole case, for as these confessions were unquestionably false, they who made them were really lying away their own lives. By what impulse of morbid vanity, or diseased craving for notoriety, or strange mental delusion, were they inspired? And whence came the wild and even foul ideas which formed the staple of their delirious narratives? How did these quiet, stolid, unlettered Lancashire peasant-women become possessed of inventions worthy of the grimmest of German tales of diablerie? It is easier to ask these questions than to answer them; but when the witch mania was once kindled in a neighbourhood it seems, like a pestilential atmosphere, to have stricken with disease every mind that was predisposed to the reception of unwholesome impressions.