A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 Part 28

[30] Jane Wenham (broadside); see also _A Full and Impartial Account_, 14.

[31] _Ibid._, 14.

[32] It was suggested by some who did not believe Jane guilty, that she confessed from unhappiness and a desire to be out of the world, _Witchcraft Farther Display'd. Containing (I) An Account of the Witchcraft practis'd by Jane Wenham, ... An Answer to ... Objections against the Being and Power of Witches ..._ (London, 1712), 37.

[33] _A Full and Impartial Account_, 24.

[34] _An Account of the Tryal, Examination and Condemnation of Jane Wenham._

[35] _A Full and Impartial Account_, 27.

[36] _A Full and Impartial Account_, 26.

[37] _Ibid._, 25.

[38] For this story I have found no contemporary testimony. The earliest source that I can find is Alexander Chalmers's _Biographical Dictionary_ (London, 1812-1827), XXV, 248 (_s. v._ Powell).

[39] After her release she was taken under the protection of Colonel Plummer of Gilston, who had followed the trial. Hutchinson, _Historical Essay on Witchcraft_, 130. On his death she was supported by the Earl and Countess of Cowper, and lived until 1730. Robert Clutterbuck, _History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford_ (London, 1815-1827), II, 461, note.

[40] _Witchcraft Farther Displayed_, introduction.

[41] See the dedication to Justice Powell in _The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd_ (London, 1712).

[42] _A Full Confutation of Witchcraft: More particularly of the Depositions against Jane Wenham.... In a Letter from a Physician in Hertfordshire, to his Friend in London_ (London, 1712).

[43] _The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd._ For more as to these discussions see below, ch. XIV.

[44] It seems, however, that the efforts of Lady Frances ---- to bring about Jane's execution in spite of the judge were feared by Jane's friends. See _The Impossibility of Witchcraft, ... In which the Depositions against Jane Wenham ... are Confuted ..._ (London, 1712), 2d ed. (in the Bodleian), 36.

[45] See Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,838, f. 404.

[46] They could "get no blood of them by Scratching so they used great pins and such Instruments for that purpose."

[47] See _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various_, I, 160; see also C. J.

Bilson, _County Folk Lore, Leicestershire and Rutland_ (Folk Lore Soc., 1895), 51-52.

[48] _The Case of Witchcraft at Coggeshall, Ess.e.x, in the year 1699.

Being the narrative of the Rev. J. Boys ..._ (London, 1901).

[49] By some Parker is given the credit. I cannot find the original authority.

[50] Inderwick, _Sidelights on the Stuarts_, 174, 175.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CLOSE OF THE LITERARY CONTROVERSY.

In the last chapter we mentioned the controversy over Jane Wenham. In attempting in this chapter to show the currents and cross-currents of opinion during the last period of witch history in England, we cannot omit some account of the pamphlet war over the Hertfordshire witch. It will not be worth while, however, to take up in detail the arguments of the upholders of the superst.i.tion. The Rev. Mr. Bragge was clearly on the defensive. There were, he admitted sadly, "several gentlemen who would not believe that there are any witches since the time of our Saviour Jesus Christ." He struck the same note when he spoke of those who disbelieved "on the prejudices of education only." With great satisfaction the clergyman quoted the decision of Sir Matthew Hale in 1664.[1]

The opinions of the opposition are more entertaining, if their works did not have so wide a sale. The physician who wrote to his friend in London poked fun at the witchmongers. It was dangerous to do so, he admitted, "especially in the Country, where to make the least Doubt is a Badge of Infidelity."[2] As for him, he envied the privileges of the town. He proceeded to take up the case of Anne Thorne. Her seven-minute mile run with a broken knee was certainly puzzling. "If it was only a violent Extention of the Rotula, something might be allow'd: but it is hard to tell what this was, your Country Bone-Setters seldom plaguing their heads with Distinctions."[3] The "Viciousness of Anne Thorn's opticks,"[4] the silly character of the clergyman's evidence, and the spiritual juggles at exorcism,[5] all these things roused his merriment.

As for Jane's confession, it was the result of ensnaring questions.[6]

He seemed to hold the clergy particularly responsible for witch cases and advised them to be more conversant with the history of diseases and to inquire more narrowly into the physical causes of things.

A defender of Justice Powell, probably Henry Stebbing, later an eminent divine but now a young Cambridge master of arts, entered the controversy. He was not altogether a skeptic about witchcraft in general, but his purpose was to show that the evidence against Jane Wenham was weak. The two chief witnesses, Matthew Gilston and Anne Thorne, were "much disturbed in their Imaginations." There were many absurdities in their stories. He cited the story of Anne Thorne's mile run in seven minutes. Who knew that it was seven minutes? There was no one timing her when she started. How was it known that she went half a mile? And, supposing these narratives were true, would they prove anything? The writer took up piece after piece of the evidence in this way and showed its absurdity. Some of his criticisms are amusing--he attacked silly testimony in such a solemn way--yet he had, too, his sense of fun. It had been alleged, he wrote, that the witch's flesh, when p.r.i.c.ked, emitted no blood, but a thin watery matter. "Mr. Chauncy, it is like, expected that Jane Wenham's Blood shou'd have been as rich and as florid as that of Anne Thorne's, or of any other Virgin of about 16. He makes no difference, I see, between the Beef and Mutton Regimen, and that of Turnips and Water-gruel."[7] Moreover, he urges, it is well known that fright congeals the blood.[8]

We need not go further into this discussion. Mr. Bragge and his friends re-entered the fray at once, and then another writer proved with elaborate argument that there had never been such a thing as witchcraft.

The controversy was growing dull, but it had not been without value. It had been, on the whole, an unconventional discussion of the subject and had shown very clearly the street-corner point of view. But we must turn to the more formal treatises. Only three of them need be noticed, those of Richard Baxter, John Beaumont, and Richard Boulton. All of these writers had been affected by the accounts of the Salem witchcraft in New England. The opinions of Glanvill and Matthew Hale had been carried to America and now were brought back to fortify belief in England. Richard Baxter was most clearly influenced by the accounts of what had happened in the New World. The Mathers were his friends and fellow Puritans, and their testimony was not to be doubted for a minute. But Baxter needed no convincing. He had long preached and written about the danger of witches. In a sermon on the Holy Ghost in the fifties he had shown a wide acquaintance with foreign works on demonology.[9] In a _Defence of the Christian Religion_,[10] written several years later, he recognized that the malice of the accusers and the melancholy of the accused were responsible for some cases, but such cases were exceptions. If any one doubted that there were _bona fide_ cases, let him talk to the judges and ministers yet living in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Ess.e.x. They could tell him of many of the confessions made in the Hopkins period. Baxter had not only talked on witchcraft with Puritan ministers, but had corresponded as well with Glanvill, with whom, although Glanvill was an Anglican, he seems to have been on very friendly terms.[11] Nor is it likely that in the many conversations he held with his neighbor, Sir Matthew Hale,[12] the evidence from witchcraft for a spiritual world had been neglected. The subject must have come up in his conversations with another friend, Robert Boyle.[13] Boyle's interest in such matters was of course a scientific one. Baxter, like Glanvill, looked at them from a religious point of view. In the cla.s.sic _Saint's Everlasting Rest_ he drew his fourth argument for the future happiness and misery of man from the Devil's compact with witches.[14] To this point he reverted in his _Dying Thoughts_. His _Certainty of the World of Spirits_, in which he took up the subject of witchcraft in more detail, was written but a few months before his death. "When G.o.d first awakened me, to think with preparing seriousness of my Condition after Death, I had not any observed Doubts of the Reality of Spirits.... But, when G.o.d had given me peace of Conscience, Satan a.s.saulted me with those worse Temptations....

I found that my Faith of Supernatural Revelation must be more than a Believing Man and that if it had not a firm foundation, ... even sure Evidence of Verity, ... it was not like ... to make my Death to be safe and comfortable.... I tell the Reader, that he may see why I have taken this Subject as so necessary, why I am ending my Life with the publication of these Historical Letters and Collections, which I dare say have such Evidence as will leave every Sadduce that readeth them, either convinced, or utterly without excuse."[15]

By the "Collection" he meant, of course, the narratives brought out in his _Certainty of the World of Spirits_--published in 1691. It is unnecessary to review its arguments here. They were an elaboration of those already used in earlier works. Too much has been made of this book. Baxter had the fever for publication. It was a lean year when he dashed off less than two works. His wife told him once that he would write better if he wrote less. Probably she was thinking of his style, and she was doubtless right. But it was true, too, of his thinking; and none of his productions show this more than his hurried book on, spirits and witches.[16]

Beaumont and Boulton may be pa.s.sed over quickly. Beaumont[17] had read widely in the witch literature of England and other countries;[18] he had read indeed with some care, as is evidenced by the fact that he had compared Hopkins's and Stearne's accounts of the same events and found them not altogether consistent. Nevertheless Beaumont never thought of questioning the reality of witchcraft phenomena, and his chief aim in writing was to answer _The World Bewitched_, the great work of a Dutch theologian, Balthazar Bekker, "who laughs at all these things of this Nature as done by Humane contrivance."[19] Bekker's bold book was indeed gaining wide notice; but this reply to it was entirely commonplace. Richard Boulton, sometime of Brasenose College, published ten years later, in 1715, _A Compleat History of Magic_. It was a book thrown together in a haphazard way from earlier authors, and was written rather to sell than to convince. Seven years later a second edition was brought out, in which the writer inserted an answer to Hutchinson.

Before taking up Hutchinson's work we shall turn aside to collect those stray fragments of opinion that indicate in which direction the wind was blowing. Among those who wrote on nearly related topics, one comparatively obscure name deserves mention. Dr. Richard Burthogge published in 1694 an _Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits_, a book which was dedicated to John Locke. He touched on witchcraft in pa.s.sing. "Most of the relations," he wrote, "do, upon impartial Examination, prove either Impostures of Malicious, or Mistakes of Ignorant and Superst.i.tious persons; yet some come so well Attested that it were to bid defiance to all Human Testimony to refuse them belief."[20]

This was the last stand of those who still believed. Shall we, they asked, discredit all human testimony? It was practically the belief of Bishop William Lloyd of Worcester, who, while he urged his clergy to give up their notions about witches, was inclined to believe that the Devil still operates in the Gentile world and among the Pagans.[21]

Joseph Addison was equally unwilling to take a radical view. "There are," he wrote in the _Spectator_ for July 14, 1711, "some opinions in which a man should stand neuter.... It is with this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft.... I endeavour to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts.... I believe in general that there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time can give no credit to any particular instance of it."[22] The force of credulity among the country people he fully recognized. His Sir Roger de Coverley, who was a justice of the peace, and his chaplain were, he said, too often compelled to put an end to the witch-swimming experiments of the people.

If this was belief, it was at least a harmless sort. It was almost exactly the position of James Johnstone, former secretary for Scotland, who, writing from London to the chancellor of Scotland, declared his belief in the existence of witches, but called attention to the fact that the parliaments of France and other judicatories had given up the trying of them because it was impossible to distinguish possession from "nature in disorder."[23]

But there were those who were ready to a.s.sert a downright negative. The Marquis of Halifax in the _Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections_ which he wrote (or, at least, completed) in 1694, noted "It is a fundamental ... that there were witches--much shaken of late."[24] Secretary of State Vernon and the Duke of Shrewsbury were both of them skeptical about the confessions of witches.[25] Sir Richard Steele lampooned the belief. "Three young ladies of our town,"

he makes his correspondent relate, "were indicted for witchcraft. One by spirits locked in a bottle and magic herbs drew hundreds of men to her; the second cut off by night the limbs of dead bodies and, muttering words, buried them; the third moulded pieces of dough into the shapes of men, women, and children and then heated them." They "had nothing to say in their own defence but downright denying the facts, which," the writer remarks, "is like to avail very little when they come upon their trials." "The parson," he continued, "will believe nothing of all this; so that the whole town cries out: 'Shame! that one of his cast should be such an atheist.'"[26]

The parson had at length a.s.similated the skepticism of the jurists and the gentry. It was, as has been said, an Anglican clergyman who administered the last great blow to the superst.i.tion. Francis Hutchinson's _Historical Essay on Witchcraft_, published in 1718 (and again, enlarged, in 1720), must rank with Reginald Scot's _Discoverie_ as one of the great cla.s.sics of English witch literature. Hutchinson had read all the accounts of trials in England--so far as he could find them--and had systematized them in chronological order, so as to give a conspectus of the whole subject. So nearly was his point of view that of our own day that it would be idle to rehea.r.s.e his arguments. A man with warm sympathies for the oppressed, he had been led probably by the case of Jane Wenham, with whom he had talked, to make a personal investigation of all cases that came at all within the ken of those living. Whoever shall write the final story of English witchcraft will find himself still dependent upon this eighteenth-century historian.

Hutchinson's work was the last chapter in the witch controversy. There was nothing more to say.

[1] _Witchcraft Farther Displayed._

[2] _A Full Confutation of Witchcraft_, 4.

[3] _Ibid._, 11.

[4] _Ibid._, 38.

[5] _Ibid._, 5.

[6] _Ibid._, 23-24.

[7] _The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd_, 72.

[8] If certain phrases may be trusted, this writer was interested in the case largely because it had become a cause of sectarian combat and he hoped to strike at the church.