We cannot point out the same similarity between the Huntingdonshire witchcrafts of 1716 and the Chelmsford cases. The narrative of the Huntingdon case is, however, somewhat remarkable. Mr. Hicks was taking his nine-year-old daughter to Ipswich one day, when she, seeing a sail at sea, took a "basin of water," stirred it up, and thereby provoked a storm that was like to have sunk the ship, had not the father made the child cease. On the way home, the two passed a "very fine Field of Corn." "Quoth the child again, 'Father, I can consume all this Corn in the twinkling of an Eye.' The Father supposing it not in her Power to do so, he bid to shew her infernal skill." The child did so, and presently "all the Corn in the Field became Stubble." He questioned her and found that she had learned witchcraft from her mother. The upshot of it was that at Mr. Hicks's instance his wife and child were prosecuted and hanged. The story has been called remarkable. Yet it is not altogether unique. In 1645 at Bury St. Edmunds just after the Chelmsford trial there were eighteen witches condemned, and one of them, it will be remembered, was Parson Lowes of Brandeston in Suffolk, who confessed that "he bewitched a ship near Harwidge; so that with the extreme tempestuous Seas raised by blusterous windes the said ship was cast away, wherein were many passengers, who were by this meanes swallowed up by the merciless waves." It will be observed that the two stories are not altogether similar. The Huntingdon narrative is a better tale, and it would be hardly safe to assert that it drew its inspiration from the earlier story. Yet, when it is remembered how unusual is the story in English witch-lore, the supposition gains in probability. There is a further resemblance in the accounts. The Hicks child had bewitched a field of corn. One of the Bury witches, in the narrative which tells of parson Lowes, "confessed that She usually bewitcht standing corne, whereby there came great loss to the owners thereof." The resemblance is hardly close enough to merit notice in itself. When taken, however, in connection with the other resemblances it gives cumulative force to the supposition that the writer of the Huntingdon pamphlet had gone to the narratives of the Hopkins cases for his sources.
There are, however, other reasons for doubting the Huntingdon story. A writer in Notes and Queries, 2d series, V, 503-504, long ago questioned the narrative because of the mention of a "Judge Wilmot," and showed that there was no such judge on the bench before 1755. An examination of the original pamphlet makes it clear, however, that in this form the objection is worth nothing. The tract speaks only of a "Justice Wilmot," who, from the wording of the narrative, would seem to have conducted the examination preliminary to the assizes as a justice of the peace would. A justice of the peace would doubtless, however, have belonged to some Huntingdonshire county family. Now, the writer has searched the various records and histories of Huntingdonshire—unfortunately they are but too few—and among the several hundred Huntingdonshire names he has found no Wilmots (and, for that matter, no Hickes either). This would seem to make the story more improbable.
In an earlier number of Notes and Queries (1st series, V, 514), James Crossley, whose authority as to matters relating to witchcraft is of the highest, gives cogent reasons why the Huntingdonshire narrative could not be true. He recalls the fact that Hutchinson, who made a chronological table of cases, published his work in 1718. Now Hutchinson had the help of two chief-justices, Parker and King, and of Chief-Baron Bury in collecting his cases; and yet he says that the last execution for the crime in England was in 1682. Crossley makes the further strong point that the case of Jane Wenham in 1712 attracted wide attention and was the occasion of numerous pamphlets. "It is scarcely possible," he continues, "that in four years after two persons, one only nine years old, ... should have been tried and executed for witchcraft without public attention being called to the circumstance." He adds that neither the Historical Register for 1716 nor the files of two London newspapers for that year, though they enumerate other convictions on the circuit, record the supposed cases.
It will be seen that exactly the same arguments apply to the Northampton trials of 1705. Hutchinson had been at extraordinary pains to find out not only about Jane Wenham, but about the Moordike case of 1702. It is inconceivable that he should have quite overlooked the execution of two women at Northampton.
We have observed that the Northampton, Huntingdon, and Worcester pamphlets have curious resemblances in wording to one another (resemblances that point to a common authorship), that the Worcester narrative can be proved to be fictitious, and that the Huntingdon narrative almost certainly belongs in the same category. We have shown, further, that the Northampton and Huntingdon stories present features of witchcraft characteristic of the Chelmsford and Bury cases of 1645, from the first of which the material of the Worcester pamphlet is drawn; and this fact points not only to the common authorship of the three tracts, but to the imaginary character of the Huntingdon and Northampton cases.
Against these facts there is to be presented what at first blush seems a very important piece of evidence. In the Northamptonshire Historical Collections, 1st series (Northampton, 1896), there is a chapter on witchcraft in Northamptonshire, copied from the Northamptonshire Handbook for 1867. That chapter goes into the trials of 1705 in detail, making copious extracts from the pamphlets. In a footnote the writers say: "To show that the burning actually took place in 1705, it may be important to mention that there is an item of expense entered in the overseers' accounts for St. Giles parish for faggots bought for the purpose." This in itself seems convincing. It seems to dispose of the whole question at once. There is, however, one fact that instantly casts a doubt upon this seemingly conclusive evidence. In England, witches were hanged, not burned. There are not a half-dozen recorded exceptions to this rule. Mother Lakeland in 1645 was burned. That is easy to explain. Mother Lakeland had by witchcraft killed her husband. Burning was the method of execution prescribed by English law for a woman who killed her husband. The other cases where burnings are said to have taken place were almost certainly cases that came under this rule. But it does not seem possible that the Northampton cases came under the rule. The two women seem to have had no husbands. "Ralph Davis," the ostensible writer of the account, who professed to have known them from their early years, and who was apparently glad to defame them in every possible way, accused them of loose living, but not of adultery, as he would certainly have done, had he conceived of them as married. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that they could not have been burned.
There is a more decisive answer to this argument for the authenticity of the pamphlet. The supposed confirmation of it in the St. Giles parish register is probably a blunder. The Reverend R. M. Serjeantson of St. Peter's Rectory has been kind enough to examine for the writer the parish register of St. Giles Church. He writes: "The St. Giles accounts briefly state that wood was bought from time to time—probably for melting the lead. There is no mention of faggots nor witches in the Church wardens' overseers-for-the-poor accounts. I carefully turned out the whole contents of the parish chest." Mr. Serjeantson adds at the close this extract: "1705 P'd for wood 5/ For taking up the old lead 5/." It goes without saying that Mr. Serjeantson's examination does not prove that there never was a mention of the faggots bought for burning witches; but, when all the other evidence is taken into consideration, this negative evidence does establish a very strong presumption to that effect. Certainly the supposed passage from the overseers' accounts can no longer be used to confirm the testimony of the pamphlet. It looks very much as if the compilers of the Northamptonshire Handbook for 1867 had been careless in their handling of records.
It seems probable, then, that the pamphlet of 1705 dealing with the execution of Mary Phillips and Elinor Shaw is a purely fictitious narrative. The matter derives its importance from the fact that, if the two executions in 1705 be disproved, the last known execution in England is put back to 1682, ten years before the Salem affair in Massachusetts. This would of course have some bearing on a recent contention (G. L. Kittredge, "Notes on Witchcraft," Am. Antiq. Soc., Proc., XVIII), that "convictions and executions for witchcraft occurred in England after they had come to an end in Massachusetts."