A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 Part 26

[34] Glanvill had answered a somewhat similar argument, that the miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of the Devil.

[35] He said also that, if the Devil could take on "men's shapes, forms, habits, countenances, tones, gates, statures, ages, complexions ... and act in the shape a.s.sumed," there could be absolutely no certainty about the proceedings of justice.

[36] The book had been written four years earlier.

[37] See G. L. Kittredge, "Notes on Witchcraft," in American Antiquarian Soc., _Proceedings_, n. s., XVIII (1906-1907), 169-176.

[38] There is, however, no little brilliance and insight in some of Webster's reasoning.

[39] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 38-41.

[40] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 53.

[41] _Ibid._, 68.

[42] _The Witch-Persecutions_ (University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints, vol. III, no. 4), revised ed. (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 1.

[43] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 247-248.

[44] _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 308, 312 ff. The astral spirit which he conceived was not unlike More's and Glanvill's "thin and tenuous substance."

[45] _Ibid._, 294 ff.

[46] _Ibid._, 219-228.

[47] The author of _The Doctrine of Devils_ (see above, note 32), was thorough-going enough, but his work seems to have attracted much less attention.

[48] London, 1678.

[49] John Brinley, "Gentleman," brought out in 1680 _A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches and Astrologers_. Portions of his book would pa.s.s for good thinking until one awakens to the feeling that he has read something like this before. As a matter of fact Brinley had stolen the line of thought and much of the phrasing from Richard Bernard (1627, see above, pp. 234-236), and without giving any credit. A second edition of Brinley's work was issued in 1686. It was the same in every respect save that the dedication was omitted and the t.i.tle changed to _A Discourse Proving by Scripture and Reason and the Best Authors Ancient and Modern that there are Witches_.

Henry Hallywell, a Cambridge master of arts and sometime fellow of Christ's College, issued in 1681 _Melamp.r.o.noea, or a Discourse of the Polity and Kingdom of Darkness, Together with a Solution of the chiefest Objections brought against the Being of Witches_. Hallywell was another in the long list of Cambridge men who defended superst.i.tion. He set about to a.s.sail the "over-confident Exploders of Immaterial Substances"

by a course of logical deductions from Scripture. His treatise is slow reading.

Richard Bovet, "Gentleman," gave the world in 1684 _Pandaemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster; being a further Blow to Modern Sadduceism_. There was nothing new about his discussion, which he dedicates to Dr. Henry More.

His att.i.tude was defensive in the extreme. He was consumed with indignation at disbelievers: "They oppose their simple _ipse dixit_ against the most unquestionable Testimonies"; they even dare to "affront that relation of the Daemon of Tedworth." He was indeed cast down over the situation. He himself relates a very patent instance of witchcraft in Somerset; yet, despite the fact that numerous physicians agreed on the matter, no "justice was applyed." One of Bovet's chief purposes in his work was to show "the Confederacy of several Popes and Roman Priests with the Devil." He makes one important admission in regard to witchcraft; namely, that the confessions of witches might sometimes be the result of "a Deep Melancholy, or some Terrour that they may have been under."

[50] _Works_, ed. of 1835-1836, IV, 389.

[51] For Boyle's opinions see also Webster, _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, 248.

[52] He says also: "For my part I am ... somewhat cotive of belief. The evidences I have represented are natural, viz., slight, and frivolous, such as poor old women were wont to be hang'd upon." The play may be found in all editions of Shadwell's works. I have used the rare privately printed volume in which, under the t.i.tle of _The Poetry of Witchcraft_ (Brixton Hill, 1853), J. O. Halliwell [-Phillips] united this play of Shadwell's with that of Heywood and Brome on _The late Lancashire Witches_. These two plays, so similar in t.i.tle, that of Heywood and Brome in 1634, based on the case of 1633, and that of Shadwell in 1682, based on the affair of 1612, must not be confused. See above pp. 121, 158-160, 244-245.

[53] See above, pp. 238-239.

[54] _The True Intellectual System of the Universe_ (London, 1678), 702.

[55] See above, p. 256 and note.

[56] See his _Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons_ (London, 1683), 172; also his _Mirrour or Looking Gla.s.s, Both for Saints and Sinners_ (London, 1657-1671), I, 35-38; II, 159-183.

[57] London, 1678; see pp. 515-518.

[58] _Works_ (ed. of Edinburgh, 1841), II, 162.

[59] Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 80.

[60] By the eighties it is very clear that the justices were ceasing to press charges against witches.

[61] In an article to be published separately.

[62] See his essay "Of Poetry" in his _Works_ (London, 1814), III, 430-431.

[63] Justice Jeffreys and Justice Herbert both acquitted witches according to F. A. Inderwick, _Sidelights on the Stuarts_ (2d ed., London, 1891), 174.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FINAL DECLINE.

In the history of witchcraft the years from 1688 to 1718 may be grouped together as comprising a period. This is not to say that the year of the Revolution marked any transition in the course of the superst.i.tion. It did not. But we have ventured to employ it as a convenient date with which to bound the influences of the Restoration. The year 1718 derives its importance for us from the publication, in that year, of Francis Hutchinson's _Historical Essay on Witchcraft_, a book which, it is not too much to say, gave the final blow to the belief in England.[1]

We speak of fixing a date by which to bound the influences of the Restoration. Now, as a matter of fact, there is something arbitrary about any date. The influences at work during the previous period went steadily on. The heathen raged, and the people imagined a vain thing.

The great proletariat hated witches as much as ever. But the justices of the peace and the itinerant judges were getting over their fear of popular opinion and were refusing to listen to the accusations that were brought before them. The situation was in some respects the same as it had been in the later seventies and throughout the eighties. Yet there were certain features that distinguished the period. One of them was the increased use of exorcism. The expelling of evil spirits had been a subject of great controversy almost a century before. The practice had by no means been forgotten in the mean time, but it had gained little public notice. Now the dispossessors of the Devil came to the front again long enough to whet the animosity between Puritans and Anglicans in Lancashire. But this never became more than a pamphlet controversy.

The other feature of the period was far more significant. The last executions for witchcraft in England were probably those at Exeter in 1682.[2] For a whole generation the courts had been frowning on witch prosecution. Now there arose in England judges who definitely nullified the law on the statute-book. By the decisions of Powell and Parker, and most of all by those of Holt, the statute of the first year of James I was practically made obsolete twenty-five or fifty years before its actual repeal in 1736. We shall see that the gradual breaking down of the law by the judges did not take place without a struggle. At the famous trial in Hertford in 1712 the whole subject of the Devil and his relation to witches came up again in its most definite form, and was fought out in the court room and at the bar of public opinion. It was, however, but the last rallying and counter-charging on a battle-field where Webster and Glanvill had led the hosts at mid-day. The issue, indeed, was now very specific. Over the abstract question of witchcraft there was nothing new to be said. Here, however, was a specific instance. What was to be done with it? Over that there was waged a merry war. Of course the conclusion was foregone. It had indeed been antic.i.p.ated by the action of the bench.

We shall see that with the nullification of the law the common people began to take the law into their own hands. We shall note that, as a consequence, there was an increase in the number of swimming ordeals and other illegal procedures.

The story of the Lancashire demonomania is not unlike the story of William Somers in Nottingham a century before. In this case there was no John Darrel, and the exorcists were probably honest but deluded men. The affair started at the village of Surey, near to the superst.i.tion-brewing Pendle Forest. The possessed boy, Richard Dugdale, was a gardener and servant about nineteen years of age.[3] In April, 1689, he was seized with fits in which he was a.s.serted to speak Latin and Greek and to preach against the sins of the place. Whatever his pretensions were, he seemed a good subject for exorcism. Some of the Catholics are said to have tampered with him, and then several Puritan clergymen of the community took him in hand. For eight months they held weekly fasts for his recovery; but their efforts were not so successful as they had hoped. They began to suspect witchcraft[4] and were about to take steps towards the prosecution of the party suspected.[5] This came to nothing, but Dugdale at length grew better. He was relieved of his fits; and the clergymen, who had never entirely given up their efforts to cure him, hastened to claim the credit. More than a dozen of the dissenting preachers, among them Richard Frankland, Oliver Heywood,[6] and other well known Puritan leaders in northern England, had lent their support to Thomas Jollie, who had taken the leading part in the praying and fasting. From London, Richard Baxter, perhaps the best known Puritan of his time, had sent a request for some account of the wonder, in order to insert it in his forthcoming book on the spirit world. This led to a plan for printing a complete narrative of what had happened; but the plan was allowed to lapse with the death of Baxter.[7] Meantime, however, the publication in London of the Mathers' accounts of the New England trials of 1692[8] caused a new call for the story of Richard Dugdale. It was prepared and sent to London; and there in some mysterious way the ma.n.u.script was lost.[9] It was, however, rewritten and appeared in 1697 as _The Surey Demoniack, or an Account of Strange and Dreadful Actings in and about the Body of Richard Dugdale_. The preface was signed by six ministers, including those already named; but the book was probably written by Thomas Jollie and John Carrington.[10]

The reality of the possession was attested by depositions taken before two Lancashire justices of the peace. The aim of the work was, of course, to add one more contemporary link to the chain of evidence for the supernatural. It was clear to the divines who strove with the possessed boy that his case was of exactly the same sort as those in the New Testament. Moreover, his recovery was a proof of the power of prayer.

Now Non-Conformity was strong in Lancashire, and the Anglican church as well as the government had for many years been at no little pains to put it down. Here was a chance to strike the Puritans at one of their weakest spots, and the Church of England was not slow to use its opportunity. Zachary Taylor, rector of Wigan and chaplain to the Bishop of Chester, had already familiarized himself with the methods of the exorcists. In the previous year he had attacked the Catholics of Lancashire for an exorcism which they claimed to have accomplished within his parish.[11] Pleased with his new role, he found in Thomas Jollie a sheep ready for the shearing.[12] He hastened to publish _The Surey Impostor_,[13] in which, with a very good will, he made an a.s.sault upon the reality of Dugdale's fits, charged that he had been pre-instructed by the Catholics, and that the Non-Conformist clergymen were seeking a rich harvest from the miracles they should work.

Self-glorification was their aim. He made fun of the several divines engaged in the affair, and accused them of trickery and presumption in their conduct of the case.[14]

Of course Taylor was answered, and with a bitterness equal to his own.

Thomas Jollie replied in _A Vindication of the Surey Demoniack_. "I will not foul my Paper," wrote the mild Jollie, "and offend my reader with those scurrilous and ridiculous Pa.s.sages in this Page. O, the Eructations of an exulcerated Heart! How desperately wicked is the Heart of Man!"[15]

We shall not go into the details of the controversy, which really degenerated into a sectarian squabble.[16] The only discussion of the subject that approached fairness was by an anonymous writer,[17] who professed himself impartial and of a different religious persuasion from Jollie. To be sure, he was a man who believed in possession by spirits.

It may be questioned, too, whether his a.s.sumption of fair dealing towards the Church of England was altogether justified. But, at any rate, his work was free from invective and displayed moderation. He felt that the Dissenting clergymen were probably somewhat deluded. But they had acted, he believed, under good motives in attempting to help one who had appealed to them. Some of them were not only "serious good Men," but men well known in the nation. This, indeed, was true. The Dissenters had laid themselves open to attack, and doubtless some of them saw and regretted their mistake. At least, it seems not without significance that neither Oliver Heywood nor Richard Frankland nor any other of the Dissenters was sure enough of his ground to support Jollie in the controversy into which he had been led.[18]

We have gone into some detail about the Dugdale affair because of its importance in its time, and because it was so essentially characteristic of the last era of the struggle over the power of the Devil. There were cases of possession not only in Lancashire but in Somersetshire and in and around London. Not without a struggle was His Satanic Majesty surrendering his hold.

We turn from this controversy to follow the decisions of those eminent judges who were nullifying the statute against witches. We have already mentioned three names, those of Holt, Powell, and Parker. This is not because they were the only jurists who were giving verdicts of acquittal--we know that there must have been others--but because their names are linked with significant decisions. Without doubt Chief Justice Holt did more than any other man in English history to end the prosecution of witches. Justice Powell was not so brave a man, but he happened to preside over one of the most bitterly contested of all trials, and his verdict served to reaffirm the precedents set by Holt.

It was Justice Parker's fortune to try the last case of witchcraft in England.

Holt became chief justice of the king's bench on the accession of William and Mary. Not one of the great names in English judicial rolls, his decided stand against superst.i.tion makes him great in the history of witchcraft. Where and when he had acquired his skeptical att.i.tude we do not know. The time was past when such an att.i.tude was unusual. In any case, from the moment he a.s.sumed the chief justiceship he set himself directly against the punishment of witchcraft. As premier of the English judiciary his example meant quite as much as his own rulings. And their c.u.mulative effect was not slight. We know of no less than eleven trials where as presiding officer he was instrumental in securing a verdict of acquittal. In London, at Ipswich, at Bury, at Exeter, in Cornwall, and in other parts of the realm, these verdicts were rendered, and they could not fail to influence opinion and to affect the decisions of other judges. Three of the trials we shall go over briefly--those at Bury, Exeter, and Southwark.