After the last mentioned affair we hear no more of these horrid doings at Lynn till 1645, when Dorothy Lee, and Grace Wright, as Mackerel informs us, were hanged here for witchcraft. But we suspect that this is misdated, and that this bloody scene did not take place till the following year, (1646) as it appears, from the Town Records, that on the 11th. of May, that year, it was “ordered that alderman Thomas Rivett be requested to send for Mr. Hopkins, the Witch-discoverer, to come to Lynn, and his charges and recompense to be borne by the town.” We may presume that he did not hesitate to come, and that it was in consequence of his coming the prosecution and execution of those poor unhappy creatures took place. It must have been a sad time when such arch-villains as this Hopkins were caressed by the magistrates, and employed to assist them in the administration of justice!—Of him we shall hereafter give some further account.
Those two women were probably the last that were put to death here for witchcraft: but great numbers suffered afterwards for the same imaginary crime in other parts of the kingdom, to the great disgrace of both the makers and the administrators of our laws. Even till within these sixty or seventy years, if we are not mistaken, there have been instances among us of poor defenceless beings doomed to capital punishment for the same pretended offence: and though our legislators and rulers seem no longer to have any faith in the existence of witches, yet the common people in many places are as much in that belief as ever, and would be very glad, no doubt, to have the old sanguinary laws still put in execution. A melancholy instance of the present existence of such a superstitious belief among our country people occurred but about two years ago at Great Paxton in Huntingdonshire, of which we shall, perhaps, in another place take some further notice.
Section II.
Brief account of some of the principal witch-finders, or witch discoverers, as they were sometimes called, those pests of society, who were a disgrace to the country and to the age in which they lived.
It would appear perhaps incredible, that those infernal beings called witch-finders should ever have been tolerated and encouraged in any country calling itself christian and protestant, had we not seen characters no less detestable and diabolical countenanced, caressed, and patronised in such countries. The execrable reign of Charles II swarmed with Spies and informers, whose talents were employed to promote religious uniformity, and suppress liberty of conscience. Like the witch finders, they were countenanced by the magistrates, patronized by the gentry, and enriched by the wages of unrighteousness, and the ruin of innocent persons and families. Our own time has seen such wretches, and poor Ireland has been not a little prolific of them. Even among our financial or revenue agents some of the same family have made their appearance, which some are apt to consider as an evil and a grievance of no small magnitude. If our own time has abounded with such characters, and if they have been really countenanced and cherished by rulers and magistrates, we must not be too severe upon our ancestors for the course which they pursued in regard to those called witches and witch-finders: for we do not seem to have yet gone so far beyond them in wisdom and virtue as we are sometimes apt to think.
Among those called witch-finders, the first place seems due to Matthew Hopkins, of Maningtree, in Essex, who has been already mentioned, as invited here by the magistrates, to assist them in the discovery, or detection and conviction of witches, and the suppression of witchcraft. This man, as we are told, was witch-finder for the associated counties, (Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk,) and hanged in one year no less than sixty reputed witches in his own county. The old, the ignorant, and the indigent; such as could neither plead their own cause nor hire an advocate; were the miserable victims of this wretch’s avarice and villany. He pretended to be a great critic in special marks; which were only moles, scorbutic spots, or warts, which frequently grew large and pendulous in old age, but were absurdly supposed to be teats to suckle imps. His ultimate method of proof was by tying together the thumbs and toes of the suspected person, about whose waist was fastened a cord, the ends of which were held, on the banks of a river, by two persons, in whose power it was to straighten or slacken it. Swimming, upon this experiment, was deemed a full proof of guilt; for which king James, (who is said to have recommended it, if he did not invent it,) assigned the following sage reason: “That as such persons have renounced their baptism by water, so the water refuses to receive them.” Sometimes those who were accused of diabolical practices were tied neck and heels and tossed into a pond. If they floated they were consequently guilty, and therefore taken out and burnt: if they were innocent they were only drowned. The experiment of swimming was at length tried upon Hopkins himself, in his own way, and he was in the event condemned, and, as it seems, executed as a wizard; [727] an end or retribution which he appears to have richly merited. But how far he was (if at all) convinced of that, at his exit, we are not informed. If we are not mistaken, there was also, about the same time, a noted witch-finder at Ipswich, who found pretty full employment, but as we have no account either of his mode of proceeding or exploits, or yet of his exit, we can say no more about him.
At the time when the belief and detestation of witchcraft were universal in this country there can be no doubt but the number of our pretended witch-finders was very considerable. It may be fairly supposed that there were more than one for every county, and even that they were no less numerous than our modern mountebanks and quack doctors. Some of them, however, would, in the natural course of things, outshine the rest, or far excel them in point of reputation or celebrity. Such a one was Hopkins, and such a one was that famous Scotchman, whose name we cannot at present make out, who found so much employment, in the way of his vile vocation, on this, as well as on the other side of the Tweed. Of him a curious account is given in a book entitled, England’s Grievance, &c. by Ralph Gardiner, Gent. of Chirton, in Northumberland. London: printed in 1655. Reprinted in 1796. Where we have the following information.
“In or about the year 1649 or 1650, the magistrates of Newcastle upon Tyne sent two of their sergeants, namely Thomas Shevel, and Cuthbert Nicholson, into Scotland, to agree with a Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to finde out witches by pricking them with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such who should be brought to him, and have 20s. a-piece for all he could condemn (or convict) as witches, and free passage thither and back again: [i.e. have his expenses borne to and fro.] When the sergeants had brought this witch-finder on horseback to town, the magistrates sent their bellman through the town ringing his bell, and crying, all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tryed by the person appointed. Thirty women were [accordingly] brought into the town-hall and stript, and then openly had pins thrust into their bodies, and most of them was (were) found guilty by him, and set aside.
“The said reputed witch-finder acquainted colonel Hobson that he knew women, whether they were witches or no, by their looks; and when he was searching a personable and good-like [or good looking] woman, the said colonel replied and said, Surely, this woman in none, and need not be tryed: but the scotchman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her; and presently, in sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the waste, [waist] with her cloaths over her head; by which fright and shame all her blood contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran a pin into her thigh, and suddenly let her coats fall, and then demanded whither she had nothing of his in her body, but did not bleed? But she being amazed, replied little. Then he put his hands up her coats and pulled out the pin, setting her aside, as a guilty person and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty.”
“Colonel Hobson perceiving the alteration of the foresaid woman, by her blood settling in her right parts, caused her to be brought again, and her cloaths pulled up to her thigh, and required the scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil. So soon as he had done, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland to try women there, where he got of some 3l. a-piece. But Henry Ogle Esq. a late member of parliament, laid hold on him, and required bond of him, to answer the sessions, but he got away for Scotland, and it was conceived, if he had staid, he would have made most of the women in the north witches, for money.”
The poor Newcastle women, whom this wretch had set aside and pronounced guilty, were put in prison till the assizes, when 14 of them, and one man, were condemned, and afterwards executed: all solemnly protesting their innocence. Their names are mentioned at page 115 of the said book. The truth of the above account is attested by three persons, whose names it is needless to insert here.—As to the infamous witch-finder himself, we are told that “he was afterwards taken up in Scotland, cast into prison, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such like villanie exercised in Scotland: and on the gallows confessed he had been the death of above 220 women, in England and Scotland, for the gain of 20s. a-piece, and beseeched forgiveness, and was executed.”
The author of the work from which this account is extracted, indignantly inquires, “by what law the magistrates of Newcastle could send to another nation for a mercenary person to try women for witches? and set the bellman to cry for them to be brought in?—and give 20s. a piece to the former to condemn them?” These queries we know not how to answer, but by supposing that the whole was a lawless, as well as a most iniquitous, barbarous, and scandalous business. The magistrates of Newcastle certainly appear on this occasion a vile and infamous crew, whose memory ought to be held up to the horror of perpetual detestation. How much better the magistrates of Lynn would have appeared, had we so particular an account of their proceedings, when they sent for Hopkins, it is impossible now to say. Their conduct, to say the least of it, appears sufficiently dark and despicable.