We have said that the narrators of witch stories fortified themselves against ridicule. That ridicule obviously must have found frequent expression in conversation, but sometimes it even crept into the newspapers and tracts of the day. The Civil Wars had developed a regular London press. We have already met with expressions of serious opinion from it.[80] But not all were of that sort. In 1654 the Mercurius Democritus, the Punch of its time, took occasion to make fun of the stories of the supernatural then in circulation. There was, it declared, a strange story of a trance and apparition, a ghost was said to be abroad, a woman had hanged herself in a tobacco pipe. With very broad humor the journal took off the strange reports of the time and concluded with the warning that in "these distempered times" it was not safe for an "idle-pated woman" to look up at the skies.[81]
The same mocking incredulity had manifested itself in 1648 in a little brochure entitled, The Devil seen at St. Albans, Being a true Relation how the Devill was seen there in a Cellar, in the likeness of a Ram; and how a Butcher came and cut his throat, and sold some of it, and dressed the rest for himselfe, inviting many to supper, who did eat of it.[82] The story was a clever parody of the demon tracts that had come out so frequently in the exciting times of the wars. The writer made his point clear when he declared that his story was of equal value with anything that "Britannicus" ever wrote.[83] The importance of these indications may be overestimated. But they do mean that there were those bold enough to make fun. A decade or two later ridicule became a two-edged knife, cutting superstition right and left. But even under the terribly serious Puritans skepticism began to avail itself of that weapon, a weapon of which it could hardly be disarmed.
In following the history of opinion we must needs mention again some of the incidents of certain cases dealt with in earlier chapters, incidents that indicate the growing force of doubt. The reader has hardly forgotten the outcome of the Lancashire cases in 1633. There Bishop Bridgeman and the king, if they did not discredit witchcraft, discredited its manifestation in the particular instance.[84] As for William Harvey, he had probably given up his faith in the whole business after the little incident at Newmarket.[85] When we come to the time of the Civil Wars we cannot forget that Stearne and Hopkins met opposition, not alone from the Huntingdon minister, but from a large party in Norfolk, who finally forced the witchfinder to defend himself in court. Nor can we forget the witch-pricker of Berwick who was sent a-flying back to his native northern soil, nor the persistent Mrs. Muschamp who tramped over Northumberland seeking a warrant and finding none.
The course of opinion is a circuitous one. We have followed its windings in and out through more than half a century. We have listened as respectfully as possible to the vagaries of country parsons and university preachers, we have heard from scholars, from gentlemen, from jurists and men of affairs, from physicians and philosophers. It matters little now what they thought or said, but it did matter then. We have seen how easy a thing it was to fall into the error that a middle course was nearest truth. Broad was the way and many there were that walked therein. Yet even those who travelled that highway found their direction shifting. For there was progress in opinion. With every decade the travellers, as well those who strayed aside as those who followed the crowd, were getting a little nearer to truth.
[1] "Printed by Cantrel Legge, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge" (1608, 1610).
[2] See Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, ch. VII, sect. I.
[3] His literary executor, Thomas Pickering, late of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and now "Minister of Finchingfield in Essex," who prepared the Discourse for the press (both in its separate form and as a part of Perkins's collected works), and who dedicates it to Sir Edward Coke, is, however, equally silent as to James, though in his preface he mentions Scot by name.
[4] Ibid., ch. IV, sect. I. See also ch. II.
[5] Ibid., ch. VII, sect. II.