A remarkable case tried at King’s Lynn in 1606 is reported in Howell’s ‘State Trials.’ I avail myself of the summary furnished by Mr. Inderwick.
Marie, wife of Henry Smith, grocer, confessed, under examination, that, being indignant with some of her neighbours because they prospered in their trade more than she did, she oftentimes cursed them; and that once, while she was thus engaged, the devil appeared in the form of a black man, and willed that she should continue in her malice, envy, and hatred, banning and cursing, and then he would see that she was revenged upon all to whom she wished evil. There was, of course, a compact insisted upon: that she should renounce God, and embrace the devil and all his works. After this he appeared frequently—once as a mist, once as a ball of fire, and twice he visited her in prison with a pair of horns, advising her to make no confession, but to rely upon him.
The evidence of the acts of witchcraft was as follows:
John Oakton, a sailor, having struck her boy, she cursed him roundly, and hoped his fingers would rot off, which took place, it was said, two years afterwards.
She quarrelled with Elizabeth Hancock about a hen, alleging that Elizabeth had stolen it. When the said Elizabeth denied the theft, she bade her go indoors, for she would repent it; and that same night Elizabeth had pains all over her body, and her bed jumped up and down for the space of an hour or more. Elizabeth then consulted her father, and was taken by him to a wizard named Drake, who taught her how to concoct a witch-cake with all the nastiest ingredients imaginable, and to apply it, with certain words and conjurations, to the afflicted parts. For the time Elizabeth was cured; but some time afterwards, when she had been married to one James Scott, a great cat began to go about her house, and having done some harm, Scott thrust it twice through with his sword. As it still ran to and fro, he smote it with all his might upon its head, but could not kill it, for it leaped upwards almost a yard, and then crept down. Even when put into a bag, and dragged to the muck-hill, it moved and stirred, and the next morning was nowhere to be found. And this same cat, it was afterwards sworn, sat on the chest of Cicely Balye, and nearly suffocated her, because she had quarrelled with the witch about her manner of sweeping before her door; and the said witch called the said Cicely ‘a fat-tailed sow,’ and said her fatness would shortly be abated, as, indeed, it was.
Edmund Newton swore that he had been afflicted with various sicknesses, and had been banged in the face with dirty cloths, because he had undersold Marie Smith in Dutch cheeses. She also sent to him a person clothed in russet, with a little bush beard and a cloven foot, together with her imps, a toad, and a crab. One of his servants took the toad and put it into the fire, when it made a groaning noise for a quarter of an hour before it was consumed, ‘during which time Marie Smith, who sent it, did endure (as was reported) torturing pains, testifying the grief she felt by the outcries she then made.’
Upon this evidence—such as it was—and upon her own confession, Marie Smith was convicted and sentenced to death. On the scaffold she humbly acknowledged her sins, prayed earnestly that God might forgive her the wrongs she had done her neighbours, and asked that a hymn of her own choosing—‘Lord, turn not away Thy face’—might be sung. Then she died calmly. It is, no doubt, a curious fact—if, indeed, it be a fact, but the evidence is by no means satisfactory—that she confessed to various acts of witchcraft, and to having made a compact with the devil; but even this alleged confession cannot receive our credence when we reflect on the inherent absurdity and impossibility of the whole affair.
In 1619, Joan Flower and her two daughters, Margaretta and Philippa, formerly servants at Belvoir Castle, were tried before Judges Hobart and Bromley, on a charge of having bewitched to death two sons of the sixth Earl of Rutland, and found guilty. The mother died in prison; the two daughters were executed at Lincoln.
THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES.
My chronological survey next brings me to the famous case of the Lancashire witches.
I have already told the story of the Dundikes and the Chattoxes, and their exploits in Pendle Forest. In the same locality, two-and-twenty years later, lived a man of the name of Robinson, to whom it occurred that the prevalent belief in witchcraft might be turned to account against his neighbours. In this design he made his son—a lad about eleven years old—his instrument. After he had been properly trained, he was instructed by his father, on February 10, 1633, to go before two justices of the peace, and make the following declaration:
That, on All Saints’ Day, while gathering wild plums in Wheatley Lane, he saw a black greyhound and a brown scamper across the fields. They came up to him familiarly, and he then discovered that each wore a collar shining like gold. As no one accompanied them, he concluded that they had broken loose from their kennels; and as at that moment a hare started up only a few paces from him, he thought he would set them to hunt it, but his efforts were all in vain; and in his wrath he took the strings that hung from their collars, tied both to a little bush, and then whipped them. Whereupon, in the place of the black greyhound, started up the wife of a man named Dickinson, and in that of the brown a little boy. In his amazement, young Robinson (so he said) would have run away, but he was stayed by Mistress Dickinson, who pulled out of her pocket ‘a piece of silver much like unto a fine shilling,’ and offered it to him, if he promised to be silent. But he refused, exclaiming: ‘Nay, thou art a witch!’ Whereupon, she again put her hand in her pocket, and drew forth a string like a jingling bridle, which she put over the head of the small boy, and, behold, he was turned into a white horse, with a change as quick as that of a scene in a pantomime. Upon this white horse the woman placed, by force, young Robinson, and rode with him as far as the Hoar-Stones—a house at which the witches congregated together—where divers persons stood about the door, while others were riding towards it on horses of different colours. These dismounted, and, having tied up their horses, all went into the house, accompanied by their friends, to the number of threescore. At a blazing fire some meat was roasting, and a young woman gave Robinson flesh and bread upon a trencher, and drink in a glass, which, after the first taste, he refused, and would have no more, saying it was nought. Presently, observing that certain of the company repaired to an adjoining barn, he followed, and saw six of them on their knees, pulling at six several ropes which were fastened to the top of the house, with the result that joints of meat smoking hot, lumps of butter, and milk ‘syleing,’ or straining from the said ropes, fell into basins placed underneath them. When these six were weary, came other six, and pulled right lustily; and all the time they were pulling they made such foul faces that they frightened the peeping lad, so that he was glad to steal out and run home.
No sooner was his escape discovered than a party of the witches, including Dickinson’s wife, the wife of a man named Loynds, and Janet Device, took up the pursuit, and over field and scaur hurried headlong, nearly overtaking him at a spot called Boggard Hole, when the opportune appearance of a couple of horsemen induced them to abandon their quarry. But young Robinson was not yet ‘out of the wood.’ In the evening he was despatched by his father to bring home the cattle, and on the way, in a field called the Ollers, he fell in with a boy who picked a quarrel with him, and they fought together until the blood flowed from his ears, when, happening to look down, he saw that his antagonist had cloven feet, and, much affrighted, set off at full speed to execute his commission. Perceiving a light like that of a lantern, he hastened towards it, in the belief it was carried by a neighbour; but on arriving at the place of its shining he found there a woman whom he recognised as the wife of Loynds, and immediately turned back. Falling in again with the cloven-footed boy, he thought it prudent to take to his heels, but not before he had received a blow on the back which pained him sorely.