The use of marks as evidence was not as new as the water ordeal. But it is a rather curious thing that in the two series of cases involving water ordeal the other process was also emphasized. In these two instances it would seem as if the advice of the Dæmonologie had been taken very directly by the accusers.[19] There was one other instance of this test.[20] The remarkable thing, however, is that in the most important trial of the time, that at Lancaster in 1612, there was an utter absence, at least so far as the extant record goes, of female juries or of reports from them.[21] This method of determining guilt was not as yet widely accepted in the courts. We can hardly doubt that it had been definitely forbidden at Lancaster.[22] The evidence of the use of evil spirits, against which the statute of the first year of James I had been especially framed, was employed in such a large proportion of trials that it is not worth while to go over the cases in detail.
The law forbade to take up any dead person or the skin, bone, or other part thereof for use in witchcraft. Presumably some instance of this form of witchcraft had been responsible for the phrase, but we have on record no case of the sort until a few years after the passage of the statute. It was one of the principal charges against Johanna Harrison of Royston in 1606 that the officers found in her possession "all the bones due to the Anatomy of man and woman."[23] This discovery brought out other charges and she was hanged. At the famous Lancashire trials in 1612 the arch-witch Chattox was declared to have had in her possession three scalps and eight teeth. She was guilty on other counts, but she escaped the executioner by death.
These are illustrations of the point that the Dæmonologie and the statute of James I find their commentary in the evidence offered at the trials. It goes without saying that these illustrations represent only a few of the forms of testimony given in the courts. It may not, therefore, be amiss to run over some other specimens of the proof that characterized the witch trials of the reign. With most of them we are already familiar. The requirement that the witch should repeat certain words after the justice of the peace was used once in the reign of James. It was an unusual method at best.[24] A commoner form of proof was that adduced from the finding or seeing clay or waxen images in the possession of the accused.[25] The witness who had found such a model on the premises of the defendant or had seen the defendant handling it, jumped readily to the conclusion that the image represented some individual. If it should be asked how we are to account for this sort of evidence, the answer is an easy one. Every now and then in the annals of witchcraft it came out that a would-be accuser had hidden a waxen or clay figure in the house of the person he wished to accuse and had then found it. No doubt some cases started in this way. No doubt, too, bitter women with grudges to satisfy did experiment with images and were caught at it. But this was rare. In the greater number of cases the stories of images were pure fabrications. To that category belong almost certainly the tales told at Lancaster.[26]
"Spectral evidence" we have met with in the Elizabethan period. That reign saw two or three instances of its employment, and there were more examples of it in the reign of James. Master Avery of Northampton, who with his sister was the principal accuser in the trials there, saw in one of his fits a black wart on the body of Agnes Brown, a wart which was actually found "upon search."[27] Master Avery saw other spectres, but the most curious was that of a bloody man desiring him to have mercy on his Mistress Agnes and to cease impeaching her.[28] At Bedford, Master Enger's servant had a long story to tell, but the most thrilling part concerned a visit which the young Mary Sutton (whom he was accusing) made to him. On a "moonshine night" she came in at the window in her "accustomed and personall habite and shape" and knitted at his side. Then drawing nearer, she offered him terms by which he could be restored to his former health, terms which we are to understand the virtuous witness refused. It is pleasant to know that Master Enger was "distrustfull of the truth" of this tale. One fears that these spectres were not the products of overwrought imagination, as were many others, but were merely fabrics of elaborate fiction.[29] In any case they were not the groundwork of the proof. In the Fairfax prosecutions at York in 1622 the charges against the six women accused rested entirely upon a great tissue of spectral evidence. The three children had talked to the spectres, had met them outdoors and at church and in the kitchen. The spectres were remarkably wise and named visitors whom the family did not know. They struggled with the children, they rolled over them in bed, they followed them to the neighbors.
Somewhat akin to the evidence from apparitions was that from the effect of a witch's glance. This is uncommonly rare in English witchcraft, but the reign of James offers two instances of it. In Royston, Hertfordshire, there was "an honest fellow and as boone a companion ... one that loved the pot with the long necke almost as well as his prayers." One day when he was drinking with four companions Johanna Harrison came in and "stood gloating upon them." He went home and at once fell sick.[30] At Northampton the twelve-year-old Hugh Lucas had looked "stark" upon Jane Lucas at church and gone into convulsions when he returned home.[31]
One other form of proof demands notice. In the trial of Jennet Preston at York it was testified that the corpse of Mr. Lister, whom she was believed to have slain by witchcraft, had bled at her presence. The judge did not overlook this in summarizing the evidence. It was one of three important counts against the woman, indeed it was, says the impressive Mr. Potts, quoting the judge, of more consequence than all the rest.[32] Of course Mistress Preston went to the gallows.
It will occur to the reader to ask whether any sort of evidence was ruled out or objected to. On this point we have but slight knowledge. In reporting the trial of Elizabeth Sawyer of Edmonton in 1621 the Reverend Henry Goodcole wrote that a piece of thatch from the accused woman's house was plucked and burned, whereupon the woman presently came upon the scene.[33] Goodcole characterized this method as an "old ridiculous custome" and we may guess that he spoke for the judge too. In the Lancashire cases, Justice Altham, whose credulity knew hardly any bounds, grew suddenly "suspitious of the accusation of this yong wench, Jennet Device," who had been piling up charges against Alice Nutter. The girl was sent out of the room, the witches were mixed up, and Jennet was required on coming in again to pick out Alice Nutter. Of course that proved an easy matter.[34] At another time, when Jennet was glibly enumerating the witches that had assembled at the great meeting at Malking Tower, the judge suddenly asked her if Joane-a-Downe were there. But the little girl failed to rise to the bait and answered negatively, much to the satisfaction of everybody, and especially of the righteous Mr. Potts.[35]
This is all we know directly about any tendency to question evidence at Lancaster in 1612, but a good deal more may be inferred from what is not there. A comparison of that trial with other contemporary trials will convince any one that Justices Altham and Bromley must have ruled out certain forms of evidence. There were no experiments made of any sort nor any female juries set inspecting.[36] This, indeed, is not to say that all silly testimony was excluded. There is enough and more of sheer nonsense in the testimony to prove the contrary.
We turn now from the question of evidence to a brief consideration of several less prominent features of Jacobean witchcraft. We shall note the character of the sentences, the distribution of the trials, the personnel and position in life of the accused, and lastly the question of jurisdiction.