[734a] Andrews 2. 46.
[734b] He was probably superior to the generality of his brethren, and therefore became suspected of being in league with Satan and the infernal powers, according to the curious and absurd notions which then prevailed.
[736a] The author did not advert to the date of this law, when the last sheet was printed, or he would have said seventy or eighty, instead of sixty or seventy years, in page [725].
[736b] Blackstone, iv. 61.—It is somewhat remarkable that France set us the example of prohibiting those bloody prosecutions for witchcraft, even in the reign of Lewis xiv. who thought proper by an edict, to restrain the tribunals of justice from receiving informations of witchcraft. It was right certainly to follow Lewis xiv, and the French in this instance; but one could have wished we had set the example to them, and not they to us.
[737] And if such was not always the case, they must, in those exceptions, have proceeded from extreme ignorance, or self delusion, as is the case also with many religious visionaries, who pretend to extraordinary gifts and divine revelations. In either case, therefore, it must have been extremely hard and cruel to take their confessions as any evidence of their reputed or supposed guilt, or proof that they had actually made a contract with the devil, and had been endued by him with extraordinary knowledge and miraculous powers.
[739] See Encyl. Brit. vol. 18. under Witchcraft.—The above sketch may suffice to give the uninformed reader an idea of what is called witchcraft; of the existence of which the present writer has expressed his disbelief. He is aware, however, that the word is used in our translation of the scriptures, but thinks it there misused, and applied to a different matter from what our language meant by that term.
[740] Even such men as Henry More and Dr. Cudworth could brand as atheists those who denied or doubted the reality of witchcraft.
[742] See Encycl. Brit. as before; where other matters relating to this vile subject, and equally disgusting, are related. The above statement reflects no honour on the memory of our ancestors. But that we are better, or less brutal and savage than they cannot be proved from our Indian history, our American War, our blowing up the Spanish frigates, our sacking and burning Copenhagen, or the recent cruelties exercised in Ireland.
[744] The circumstances which led, as it is said, to this trial, being not a little remarkable, may be here related for the reader’s edification.
“Lord chief justice Holt, who had been wild in his youth, was once out with some of his raking companions on a journey into the country. Having spent all their money it was resolved that they should part company and try their fortune separately. Holt got to an inn at the end of a straggling village, and putting a good face on the matter, ordered his horse to be well taken care of, called for a room, bespoke a supper, and looked after his bed. He then strolled into the kitchen, where he saw a lass about thirteen years old shivering with an ague; he inquired of his landlady, a widow, who the girl was, and how long she had been ill. The good woman told him that she was her daughter, an only child, and had been ill near a year, notwithstanding all the assistance she could procure from physic, at an expence which almost ruined her. He shook his head at the doctors, and bade the landlady be under no further concern, for that her daughter should never have another fit. He then wrote a few unintelligible words in court hand on a scrap of parchment which had been the directions to a hamper, and rolling it up, ordered that it should be bound upon the girl’s wrist, and remain there till she was well. As it happened the ague returned no more; and Holt, having continued there a week, now called for his bill, with as much courage as if his pockets had been filled with gold. ‘Ah! God bless you,’ said the landlady, ‘you are nothing in my debt, I’m sure; I wish I was able to pay you for the cure you have performed upon my daughter; and if I had had the happiness to see you ten months ago, it would have saved me forty pounds in my pocket.’ Holt, after some altercation, accepted of his week’s accommodation as a gratuity, and rode away. It happened that many year’s afterwards, when he was lord chief justice of the king’s bench, he went a circuit into the same county; and among other criminals whom he had to try, there was an old woman who was charged with witchcraft: to support this charge several witnesses swore that she had a spell with which she could either cure such cattle as were sick, or destroy those that were well: in the use of this spell they said she had been lately detected, and it having been seized upon her, was ready to be produced in court: the judge then desired it might be handed up to him: it appeared to be a dirty ball, covered with rags and bound many times round with pack-thread: these coverings he removed with great deliberation, one after another, and at last found a piece of parchment, which he knew to be the same that he had used as an expedient to supply his want of money. At the recollection of this incident he changed colour, and sat silent: at length, recollecting himself, he addressed the jury to this effect: ‘Gentlemen, I must now relate a particular of my life, which very ill suits my present character, and the station in which I now sit: but to conceal it would be to aggravate the folly for which I ought to atone, to endanger innocence, and countenance superstition: this bauble, which you suppose to have the power of life and death, is a senseless scrawl which I wrote with my own hand and gave the woman, whom, for no other cause, you accuse for a witch.’ He then related the particular circumstances of the transaction, and expatiated on the evil of such prosecutions: and it had such an effect upon the minds of the people, who now blushed at the folly and the cruelty of their zeal, that the poor woman was acquitted, and was the last that ever was tried for witchcraft in that county, and, as some say, in this kingdom.”