This evidence, it is clear, failed to prove against the prisoners a single direct act of witchcraft; but so credulous were judge and jury in matters of this kind, that, notwithstanding the vague and suspicious character of the testimony brought forward, it would have gone hard with the accused, but for an accidental question which disclosed the fact that the girl, Grace Sowerbutts, had been prompted in her incoherent narrative, and taught to sham her fits of unconsciousness, by a Roman priest or Jesuit, named Thompson or Southworth, who was actuated by motives of fanaticism.
‘How well this project,’ exclaims the indignant Potts, ‘to take away the lives of these innocent poor creatures by practice and villainy, to induce a young scholar to commit perjury, to accuse her own grandmother, aunt, etc., agrees either with the title of a Jesuit or the duty of a religious Priest, who should rather profess sincerity and innocency than practise treachery. But this was lawful, for they are heretics accursed, to leave the company of priests, to frequent churches, hear the word of God preached, and profess religion sincerely.’ The horrors which he taught his promising pupil, Thompson probably gathered from the pages of Bodin and Delrio, or some of the other demonologists. Potts continues:
‘Who did not condemn these women upon this evidence, and hold them guilty of this so foul and horrible murder? But Almighty God, who in His providence had provided means for their deliverance, although the priest, by the help of the Devil, had provided false witnesses to accuse them; yet God had prepared and placed in the seat of justice an upright judge to sit in judgment upon their lives, who after he had heard all the evidence at large against the prisoners for the King’s Majesty, demanded of them what answer they could make. They humbly upon their knees, with weeping tears, desired him for God’s cause to examine Grace Sowerbutts, who set her on, or by whose means this accusation came against them.’
The countenance of Grace Sowerbutts immediately underwent a great change, and the witnesses began to quarrel and accuse one another. The judge put some questions to the girl, who, for the life of her, could make no direct or intelligible answer, saying, with obvious hesitation, that she was put to a master to learn, but he had told her nothing of this.
‘But here,’ continues Potts, ‘as his lordship’s care and pains was great to discover the practices of those odious witches of the Forest of Pendle, and other places, now upon their tribunal before him; so was he desirous to discover this damnable practice to accuse these poor women and bring their lives in danger, and thereby to deliver the innocent.
‘And as he openly delivered it upon the bench, in the hearing of a great audience: That if a Priest or Jesuit had a hand in one end of it, there would appear to be knavery and practice in the other end of it. And that it might better appear to the whole world, examined Thomas Sowerbutts what the Master taught his daughter: in general terms, he denied all.
‘The wench had nothing to say, but her Master told her nothing of this. In the end, some that were present told his lordship the truth, and the prisoners informed him how she went to learn with one Thompson, a Seminary Priest, who had instructed and taught her this accusation against them, because they were once obstinate Papists, and now came to Church. Here is the discovery of this Priest, and of his whole practice. Still this fire increased more and more, and one witness accusing another, all things were laid open at large.
‘In the end his lordship took away the girl from her father, and committed her to Mr. Leigh, a very religious preacher, and Mr. Chisnal, two Justices of the Peace, to be carefully examined.’
The examination was as follows:
‘Being demanded whether the accusation she laid upon her grandmother, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, of witchcraft, namely, of the killing of the child of Thomas Walshman with a nail in the navel, the boiling, eating, and oiling, thereby to transform themselves into divers shapes, was true; she doth utterly deny the same: or that ever she saw any such practices done by them.
‘She further saith, that one Master Thompson, which she taketh to be Master Christopher Southworth, to whom she was sent to learn her prayers, did persuade, counsel, and advise her, to deal as formerly hath been said against her said Grandmother, Aunt, and Southworth’s wife.
‘And further she confesseth and saith, that she never did know, or saw any Devils, nor any other Visions, as formerly by her hath been alleged and informed.
‘Also she confesseth and saith, that she was not thrown or cast upon the hen-ruff and hay-mow in the barn, but that she went up upon the Mow herself by the wall-side.
‘Being further demanded whether she ever was at the Church, she saith, she was not, but promised hereafter to go to the Church, and that very willingly.’
The three accused were also examined, and declared their belief that Grace Sowerbutts had been trained by the priest to accuse them of witchcraft, because they ‘would not be dissuaded from the Church.’
‘These examinations being taken, they were brought into the Court, and there openly in the presence of this great audience published and declared to the jury of life and death; and thereupon the gentlemen of their jury required to consider of them. For although they stood upon their Trial, for matter of fact of witchcraft, murther, and much more of the like nature: yet in respect all their accusations did appear to be practice, they were now to consider of them and to acquit them. Thus were these poor innocent creatures, by the great care and pains of this honourable Judge, delivered from the danger of this conspiracy; this bloody practice of the Priest laid open: of whose fact I may lawfully say, Etiam si ego tacuero clamabunt lapides.
‘These are but ordinary with Priests and Jesuits: no respect of blood, kindred, or friendship can move them to forbear their conspiracies; for when he had laboured treacherously to seduce and convert them, and yet could do no good, then devised he this means.
‘God of His great mercy deliver us all from them and their damnable conspiracies: and when any of his Majesty’s subjects, so free and innocent as these, shall come in question, grant them as honourable a trial, as reverend and worthy a judge to sit in judgment upon them, and in the end as speedy a deliverance.
‘And for that which I have heard of them, seen with my eyes, and taken pains to read of them, my humble prayer shall be to God Almighty, Vt convertantur ne pereant. Aut confundantur ne noceant.’43
I pass on to a remarkable trial for witchcraft which took place at Taunton Assizes in August, 1626, one Edward Ball and Joan Greedie being charged with having practised upon a certain Edward Dinham.
It seems that the complainant, when under the witch-spell, possessed no fewer than three voices—namely, his own natural voice, and two artificial voices, of which one was shrill and pleasant, the other deadly and hollow. These two voices belonged respectively to the good and evil spirits which alternately prevailed over him. As it is said that they spoke without any movement of the lips or tongue, it is probable the man was a natural ventriloquist, and made use of his gift to imperil the lives of Ball and Greedie, against whom he may have entertained a hostile feeling. He gave the following specimen of the conversation which took place between him and his spirits:
Good Spirit. How comes this man to be thus tormented?
Bad Spirit. He is bewitched.
Good. Who hath done it?
Bad. That I may not tell.
Good. Aske him agayne.
Dinham. Come, come, prithee, tell me who hath bewitched me.
Bad. A woman