The confession of Margaret Johnson, made on March 9, 1613, has been printed before, but it has so strong a psychological interest that I cannot omit it here. It may be taken as a type of the confessions made by the victims of credulity under similar circumstances:
‘Betweene seven or eight yeares since, shee being in her house at Marsden in greate passion and anger, and discontented, and withall oppressed with some want, there appeared unto her a spirit or devill in the similitude and proportion of a man, apparelled in a suite of black, tied about with silke pointes, whoe offered her, yff shee would give him her soule, hee would supply all her wantes, and bring to her whatsoever shee wanted or needed, and at her appointment would helpe her to kill and revenge her either of men or beastes, or what she desired; and, after a sollicitation or two, shee contracted and condicioned with the said devill or spiritt for her soule. And the said devill bad her call him by the name of Memillion, and when shee called hee would bee ready to doe her will. And she saith that in all her talke and conference shee called the said Memillion her god.
‘And shee further saith that shee was not at the greate meetinge of the witches at Hare-stones in the forest of Pendle on All Saintes Day last past, but saith shee was at a second meetinge the Sunday after All Saintes Day at the place aforesaid, where there was at that time betweene thirty and forty witches, which did all ride to the same meetinge. And thead of the said meetinge was to consult for the killing and hunting of men and beastes; and that there was one devill or spiritt that was more greate and grand devill than the rest, and yff anie witch desired to have such an one, they might have such an one to kill or hurt anie body. And she further saith, that such witches as have sharpe boanes are generally for the devill to prick them with which have no papps nor duggs, but raiseth blood from the place pricked with the boane, which witches are more greate and grand witches than they which have papps or dugs (!). And shee being further asked what persons were at their last meetinge, she named one Carpnell and his wife, Rason and his wife, Pickhamer and his wife, Duffy and his wife, and one Jane Carbonell, whereof Pickhamer’s wife is the most greate, grand, and anorcyent witch; and that one witch alone can kill a beast, and yf they bid their spiritt or devill to goe and pricke or hurt anie man in anie particular place, hee presently will doe it. And that their spiritts have usually knowledge of their bodies. And shee further saith the men witches have women spiritts, and women witches have men spiritts; that Good Friday is one of their constant daies of their generall meetinge, and that on Good Friday last they had a meetinge neere Pendle water-side; and saith that their spirit doeth tell them where their meetinge must bee, and in what place; and saith that if a witch desire to be in anie place upon a soddaine, that, on a dogg, or a tod, or a catt, their spiritt will presently convey them thither, or into anie room in anie man’s house.
‘But shee saith it is not the substance of their bodies that doeth goe into anie such roomes, but their spiritts that assume such shape and forme. And shee further saith that the devill, after hee begins to sucke, will make a papp or a dug in a short time, and the matter hee sucketh is blood. And further saith that the devill can raise foule wether and stormes, and soe hee did at their meetinges. And shee further saith that when the devill came to suck her pappe, he came to her in the likeness of a catt, sometimes of one collour, and sometimes of another. And since this trouble befell her, her spirit hath left her, and shee never saw him since.’
Happily, the judge who presided at the trial of these deluded and persecuted unfortunates was dissatisfied with the evidence, and reprieved them until he had time to communicate with the Privy Council, by whose orders Bridgman, Bishop of Chester, proceeded to examine into the principal cases. Three of the supposed criminals, however, had died of anxiety and suffering before the work of investigation began, and a fourth was sick beyond recovery. The cases into which the Bishop inquired were those of Margaret Johnson, Frances Dicconson, or Dickinson, Mary Spencer, and Mrs. Hargrave. Margaret Johnson the good Bishop describes as a widow of sixty, who was deeply penitent. ‘I will not add,’ she said, ‘sin to sin. I have already done enough, yea, too much, and will not increase it. I pray God I may repent.’ This victim of hallucination had confessed herself to be a witch, as we have seen, and was characterized by the Bishop as ‘more often faulting in the particulars of her actions.’ Frances Dicconson, however, and Mary Spencer, absolutely denied the truth of the accusations brought against them. Frances, according to the boy Robinson, had changed herself into a dog; but it transpired that she had had a quarrel with the elder Robinson. Mary Spencer, a young woman of twenty, said that Robinson cherished much ill-feeling against her parents, who had been convicted of witchcraft at the last assizes, and had since died. She repeated the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and declared that she defied the devil and all his works. A story had been set afloat that she used to call her pail to follow her as she ran. The truth was that she often trundled it down-hill, and called to it in jest to come after her if she outstripped it. She could have explained every circumstance in court, ‘but the wind was so loud and the throng so great, that she could not hear the evidence against her.’
This last touch, as Mr. S. R. Gardiner remarks, completes the tragedy of the situation. ‘History,’ as he says, ‘occupies itself perforce mainly with the sorrows of the educated classes, whose own peers have left the records of their wrongs. Into the sufferings of the mass of the people, except when they have been lashed by long-continued injustice into frenzy, it is hard to gain a glimpse. For once the veil is lifted, and we see, as by a lightning flash, the forlorn and unfriended girl, to whom the inhuman laws of her country denied the services of an advocate, baffled by the noisy babble around her in her efforts to speak a word on behalf of her innocence. The very Bishop who examined her was under the influence of the legal superstition that every accused person was the enemy of the King. He had heard, he said, that the father of the boy Robinson had offered, for forty shillings, to withdraw his charge against Frances Dicconson, “but such evidence being, as the lawyers speak, against the King,” he “thought it not meet without further authority to examine.”’
The Bishop, however, like the judge, was dissatisfied with the evidence; and the accused persons were eventually sent up to London, where they were examined by the King’s physicians, the Bishops, the Privy Council, and by King Charles himself. Some medical men and midwives reported that Margaret Johnson was deceived in her idea that she bore on her body a sign or mark that her blood had been sucked. Doubts as to the truth of the boy Robinson’s story being freely entertained, he was separated from his father, and he then revealed the whole invention to the King’s coachman. He had heard stories told of witches and their doings, and out of these had concocted his ghastly fiction to save himself a whipping for having neglected to bring home his mother’s cows. His father, perceiving at once how much might be made out of the tale, took it up and expanded it; manipulated it so as to serve his feelings of revenge or avarice, and then taught the boy how to repeat the enlarged and improved version. It was all a lie—from beginning to end. The day on which he pretended to have been carried to the Witches’ Sabbath at the Hoar-Stones, he was a mile distant, gathering plums in a farmer’s orchard. The accused were then admitted to the King’s presence, and assured that their lives were safe. Further than this Charles seems to have been unable to go; for as late as 1636 these innocent and ill-treated persons were still lying in Lancaster Castle. It is satisfactory to state, however, that both the boy Robinson and his father were thrown into prison.
Fresh cases of witchcraft sprang up in the Pendle district, and early in 1636 four more women were condemned to death at the Lancaster Assizes. Bishop Bridgman, who was again directed to make inquiries, found that two of them had died in gaol, and that of the two others, one had been convicted on a madman’s evidence, and that of a woman of ill fame; while the only proof alleged against the other was that a fleshy excrescence of the size of a hazel-nut grew on her right ear, and the end of it, being bloody, was supposed to have been sucked by a familiar spirit. The two women seem to have been pardoned; but, as in the former case, public opinion set too strongly against them to admit of their being released.
THE WITCHES OF SALMESBURY.
The singular circumstances connected with the supposed outbreak of witchcraft in Pendle Forest have, to a great extent, obscured the strange case of the witches of Salmesbury, though it presents several features worthy of consideration.