A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 Part 6

The exorcist now turned his skill upon a young apprenticed musician of Nottingham. According to Darrel's story of the affair,[17] William Somers had nine years before met an old woman who had threatened him.

Again, more than a year before Darrel came to Nottingham, Somers had had two encounters with a strange woman "at a deep cole-pit, hard by the way-side." Soon afterwards he "did use such strang and idle kinde of gestures in laughing, dancing and such like lighte behaviour, that he was suspected to be madd." He began to suffer from bodily distortions and to evince other signs of possession which created no little excitement in Nottingham.

Darrel had been sent for by this time. He came at once and with his usual precipitancy p.r.o.nounced the case one of possession. Somers, he said, was suffering for the sins of Nottingham.[18] It was time that something should be done. Prayer and fasting were inst.i.tuted. For three days the youth was preached to and prayed over, while the people of Nottingham, or some of them at least, joined in the fast. On the third day came what was deemed a most remarkable exhibition. The preacher named slowly, one after another, fourteen signs of possession. As he named them Somers ill.u.s.trated in turn each form of possession.[19] Here was confirmatory evidence of a high order. The exorcist had outdone himself. He now held out promises of deliverance for the subject. For a quarter of an hour the boy lay as if dead, and then rose up quite well.

Darrel now took up again the witchfinder's role he had once before a.s.sumed. Somers was encouraged to name the contrivers of his bewitchment. Through him, Darrel is said to have boasted, they would expose all the witches in England.[20] They made a most excellent start at it. Thirteen women were accused by the boy,[21] who would fall into fits at the sight of a witch, and a general invitation was extended to prefer charges. But the community was becoming a bit incredulous and failed to respond. All but two of the accused women were released.

The witch-discoverer, who in the meantime had been chosen preacher at St. Mary's in Nottingham, made two serious mistakes. He allowed accusations to be preferred against Alice Freeman, sister of an alderman,[22] and he let Somers be taken out of his hands. By the contrivance of some citizens who doubted the possession, Somers was placed in the house of correction, on a trumped-up charge that he had bewitched a Mr. Sterland to death.[23] Removed from the clergyman's influence, he made confession that his possessions were pretended.[24]

Darrel, he declared, had taught him how to pretend. The matter had now gained wide notoriety and was taken up by the Anglican church. The archdeacon of Derby reported the affair to his superiors, and the Archbishop of York appointed a commission to examine into the case.[25]

Whether from alarm or because he had anew come under Darrel's influence, Somers refused to confess before the commission and again acted out his fits with such success that the commission seems to have been convinced of the reality of his possession.[26] This was a notable victory for the exorcist.

But Chief-Justice Anderson of the court of common pleas was now commencing the a.s.sizes at Nottingham and was sitting in judgment on the case of Alice Freeman. Anderson was a man of intense convictions. He believed in the reality of witchcraft and had earlier sent at least one witch to the gallows[27] and one to prison.[28] But he was a man who hated Puritanism with all his heart, and would at once have suspected Puritan exorcism. Whether because the arch-instigator against Alice Freeman was a Puritan, or because the evidence adduced against her was flimsy, or because Somers, again summoned to court, acknowledged his fraud,[29] or for all these reasons, Anderson not only dismissed the case,[30] but he wrote a letter about it to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Whitgift called Darrel and More before the court of high commission, where the Bishop of London, two of the Lord Chief-Justices, the master of requests, and other eminent officials heard the case. It seems fairly certain that Bancroft, the Bishop of London, really took control of this examination and that he acted quite as much the part of a prosecutor as that of a judge. One of Darrel's friends complained bitterly that the exorcist was not allowed to make "his particular defences" but "was still from time to time cut off by the Lord Bishop of London."[31] No doubt the bishop may have been somewhat arbitrary. It was his privilege under the procedure of the high commission court, and he was dealing with one whom he deemed a very evident impostor. In fine, a verdict was rendered against the two clergymen. They were deposed from the ministry and put in close prison.[32] So great was the stir they had caused that in 1599 Samuel Harsnett, chaplain to the Bishop of London, published _A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practises of John Darrel_, a careful resume of the entire case, with a complete exposure of Darrel's trickery. In this account the testimony of Somers was given as to the origin of his possession. He testified before the ecclesiastical court that he had known Darrel several years before they had met at Nottingham. At their first meeting he promised, declared Somers, "to tell me some thinges, wherein if I would be ruled by him, I should not be driven to goe so barely as I did." Darrel related to Somers the story of Katherine Wright and her possession, and remarked, "If thou wilt sweare unto me to keepe my counsell, I will teache thee to doe all those trickes which Katherine Wright did, and many others that are more straunge." He then ill.u.s.trated some of the tricks for the benefit of his pupil and gave him a written paper of directions. From that time on there were meetings between the two at various places. The pupil, however, was not altogether successful with his fits and was once turned out of service as a pretender. He was then apprenticed to the musician already mentioned, and again met Darrel, who urged him to go and see Thomas Darling of Burton, "because,"

says Somers, "that seeing him in his fittes, I might the better learn to do them myselfe." Somers met Darrel again and went through with a series of tricks of possession. It was after all these meetings and practice that Somers began his career as a possessed person in Nottingham and was prayed over by Mr. Darrel. Such at least was his story as told to the ecclesiastical commission. It would be hazardous to say that the narrative was all true. Certainly it was accepted by Harsnett, who may be called the official reporter of the proceedings at Darrel's trial, as substantially true.[33]

The publication of the _Discovery_ by Harsnett proved indeed to be only the beginning of a pamphlet controversy which Darrel and his supporters were but too willing to take up.[34] Harsnett himself after his first onslaught did not re-enter the contest. The semi-official character of his writing rendered it unnecessary to refute the statements of a convicted man. At any rate, he was soon occupied with another production of similar aim. In 1602 Bishop Bancroft was busily collecting the materials, in the form of sworn statements, for the exposure of Catholic pretenders. He turned the material over to his chaplain. Whether the several examinations of Roman exorcists and their subjects were the result of a new interest in exposing exorcism on the part of the powers which had sent Darrel to prison, or whether they were merely a phase of increased vigilance against the activity of the Roman priests, we cannot be sure. The first conclusion does not seem improbable. Be that as it may, the court of high commission got hold of evidence enough to justify the privy council in authorizing a full publication of the testimony.[35] Harsnett was deputed to write the account of the Catholic exorcists which was brought out in 1603 under the t.i.tle of _A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_. We have not the historical materials with which to verify the claims made in the book. On the face of it the case against the Roman priests looks bad. A ma.s.s of examinations was printed which seem to show that the Jesuit Weston and his confreres in England had been guilty of a great deal of jugglery and pretence. The Jesuits, however, were wiser in their generation than the Puritans and had not made charges of witchcraft. For that reason their performances may be pa.s.sed over.

Neither the pretences of the Catholics nor the refutation of them are very important for our purposes. The exposure of John Darrel was of significance, because it involved the guilt or innocence of the women he accused as witches, as well as because the ecclesiastical authorities took action against him and thereby levelled a blow directly at exorcism and possession[36] and indirectly at loose charges of witchcraft.

Harsnett's books were the outcome of this affair and the ensuing exposures of the Catholics, and they were more significant than anything that had gone before. The Church of England had not committed itself very definitely on witchcraft, but its spokesman in the attack upon the Catholic pretenders took no uncertain ground. He was skeptical not only about exorcism but about witchcraft as well. It is refreshing and inspiriting to read his hard-flung and pungent words. "Out of these," he wrote, "is shaped us the true _Idea_ of a Witch, an old weather-beaten Croane, having her chinne and her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow-eyed, untoothed, furrowed on her face, having her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgotten her _pater noster_, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee have learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: _Pax, max, fax_, for a spel: or can say _Sir John of Grantams_ curse, for the Millers Eeles, that were stolne: ... Why then ho, beware, looke about you my neighbours; if any of you have a sheepe sicke of the giddies, or an hogge of the mumps, or an horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the schoole, or an idle girle of the wheele, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porredge, nor her father and mother b.u.t.ter enough for their bread; and she have a little helpe of the _Mother_, _Epilepsie_, or _Cramp_, ... and then with-all old mother _n.o.bs_ hath called her by chaunce 'idle young huswife,' or bid the devil scratch her, then no doubt but mother _n.o.bs_ is the witch.... _Horace_ the Heathen spied long agoe, that a Witch, a Wizard, and a Conjurer were but bul-beggers to scare fooles.... And _Geoffry Chaucer_, who had his two eyes, wit, and learning in his head, spying that all these brainlesse imaginations of witchings, possessings, house-hanting, and the rest, were the forgeries, cosenages, Imposturs, and legerdemaine of craftie priests, ... writes in good plaine terms."[37]

It meant a good deal that Harsnett took such a stand. Scot had been a voice crying in the wilderness. Harsnett was supported by the powers in church and state. He was, as has been seen, the chaplain of Bishop Bancroft,[38] now--from 1604--to become Archbishop of Canterbury. He was himself to become eminent in English history as master of Pembroke Hall (Cambridge), vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, Bishop of Chichester, Bishop of Norwich, and Archbishop of York.[39] Whatever support he had at the time--and it is very clear that he had the backing of the English church on the question of exorcism--his later position and influence must have given great weight not only to his views on exorcism but to his skepticism about witchcraft.[40]

His opinions on the subject, so far as can be judged by his few direct statements and by implications, were quite as radical as those of his predecessor.[41] As a matter of fact he was a man who read widely[42]

and had pondered deeply on the superst.i.tion, but his thought had been colored by Scot.[43] His a.s.sault, however, was less direct and studied than that of his master. Scot was a man of uncommonly serious temperament, a plain, blunt-spoken, church-going Englishman who covered the whole ground of superst.i.tion without turning one phrase less serious than another. His pupil, if so Harsnett may be called, wrote earnestly, even aggressively, but with a sarcastic and bitter humor that entertained the reader and was much less likely to convince. The curl never left his lips. If at times a smile appeared, it was but an accented sneer. A writer with a feeling indeed for the delicate effects of word combination, if his humor had been less chilled by hate, if his wit had been of a lighter and more playful vein, he might have laughed superst.i.tion out of England. When he described the dreadful power of holy water and frankincense and the book of exorcisms "to scald, broyle and sizzle the devil," or "the dreadful power of the crosse and sacrament of the altar to torment the devill and to make him roare," or "the astonishable power of nicknames, reliques and a.s.ses ears,"[44] he revealed a faculty of fun-making just short of effective humor.

It would not be fair to leave Harsnett without a word on his place as a writer. In point of literary distinction his prose style maintains a high level. In the use of forceful epithet and vivid phrase he is excelled by no Elizabethan prose writer. Because his writings deal so largely with dry-as-dust reports of examinations, they have never attained to that position in English literature which parts of them merit.[45]

Harsnett's book was the last chapter in the story of Elizabethan witchcraft and exorcism. It is hardly too much to say that it was the first chapter in the literary exploitation of witchcraft. Out of the _Declaration_ Shakespeare and Ben Jonson mined those ores which when fused and refined by imagination and fancy were shaped into the shining forms of art. Shakespearean scholars have pointed out the connection between the dramatist and the exposer of exorcism. It has indeed been suggested by one student of Shakespeare that the great playwright was lending his aid by certain allusions in _Twelfth Night_ to Harsnett's attempts to pour ridicule on Puritan exorcism.[46] It would be hard to say how much there is in this suggestion. About Ben Jonson we can speak more certainly. It is clearly evident that he sneered at Darrel's pretended possessions. In the third scene of the fifth act of _The Devil is an a.s.s_ he makes Mere-craft say:

It is the easiest thing, Sir, to be done.

As plaine as fizzling: roule but wi' your eyes, And foame at th' mouth. A little castle-soape Will do 't, to rub your lips: And then a nutsh.e.l.l, With toe and touchwood in it to spit fire, Did you ner'e read, Sir, little _Darrel's_ tricks, With the boy o' _Burton_, and the 7 in _Lancashire_, Sommers at _Nottingham_? All these do teach it.

And wee'l give out, Sir, that your wife ha's bewitch'd you.

This is proof enough, not only that Jonson was in sympathy with the Anglican a.s.sailants of Puritan exorcism, but that he expected to find others of like opinion among those who listened to his play. And it was not unreasonable that he should expect this. It is clear enough that the powers of the Anglican church were behind Harsnett and that their influence gave his views weight. We have already observed that there were some evidences in the last part of Elizabeth's reign of a reaction against witch superst.i.tion. Harsnett's book, while directed primarily against exorcism, is nevertheless another proof of that reaction.

[1] Sir George Peckham of Denham near Uxbridge and Lord Vaux of Hackney were two of the most prominent Catholics who opened their homes for these performances. See Samuel Harsnett, _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_ (London, 1603), 7, 8.

[2] For a discussion of the Catholic exorcists see T. G. Law, "Devil Hunting in Elizabethan England," in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March, 1894. Peckham's other activities in behalf of his church are discussed by Dr. R. B. Merriman in "Some Notes on the Treatment of English Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth," in the _Am. Hist. Rev._, April, 1908. Dr. Merriman errs, however, in supposing that John Darrel cooperated with Weston and the Catholic exorcists; _ibid._, note 51.

Darrel was a Puritan and had nothing to do with the Catholic performances.

[3] It is quite possible to suppose, however, that its course would have been run in much the same way at a later time.

[4] For Harsnett's account of Katherine Wright see his _Discovery of the Fraudulent Practises of John Darrel_ (London, 1599), 297-315. For Darrel's story see _The Triall of Maist. Dorrel, or A Collection of Defences against Allegations ..._ (1599), 15-21.

[5] See Harsnett, _Discovery_, 310.

[6] Katherine Wright's evil spirit returned later.

[7] "I have seene her begging at our doore," he declared, "as for her name I know it not."

[8] Harsnett, _Discovery_, 41, 265, deals briefly with the Darling case and Alse Gooderidge. See also John Darrel, _A Detection of that sinnful, shamful, lying, and ridiculous discours of Samuel Harshnet_ (1600), 38-40. But the fullest account is a pamphlet at the Lambeth Palace library. It is ent.i.tled _The most wonderfull and true Storie of a certaine Witch named Alse Gooderidge of Stapenhill.... As also a true Report of the strange Torments of Thomas Darling...._ (London, 1597).

For a discussion of this pamphlet see appendix A, -- 1.

[9] The boy was visited by a stranger who tried to persuade him that there were no witches. But this Derbyshire disciple of Scot had come to the wrong place and his efforts were altogether useless.

[10] Meantime her mother Elizabeth Wright was also being worried. She was found on her knees in prayer. No doubt the poor woman was taking this method of alleviating her distress; but her devotion was interpreted as worship of the Devil.

[11] So Darrel says. The pamphleteer Denison, who put together the story of Alse Gooderidge, wrote "she should have been executed but that her spirit killed her in prison."

[12] Darrel gives an extended account of this affair in _A True Narration of the strange and grevous Vexation by the Devil of seven persons in Lancashire_ (1600; reprinted in _Somers Tracts_, III), 170-179. See also George More, _A true Discourse concerning the certaine possession and dispossession of 7 persons in one familie in Lancashire ..._ (1600), 9 ff.

[13] Certain matters in connection with this case are interesting.

George More tells us that Mrs. Starchie was an "inheritrix." Some of her kindred, Papists, prayed for the perishing of her issue. Four of her children pined away. Mrs. Starchie, when told of their prayers, conveyed all her property to her husband. She had two children afterwards, the two that were stricken. It is possible that all this may present some key to the case, but it is hard to see just how. See More, _A true Discourse_, 11-12.

[14] George More, _A true Discourse_, 15; Harsnett, _Discovery_, 22.

While Dee took no part in the affair except that he "sharply reproved and straitly examined" Hartley, he lent Mr. Hopwood, the justice of the peace before whom Hartley was brought, his copy of the book of Wierus, then the collections of exorcisms known as the _Flagellum Daemonum_ and the _Fustis Daemonum_, and finally the famous _Malleus Maleficarum_. See Dee's _Private Diary_ (Camden Soc., London, 1843), entries for March 19, April 15, and August 6, 1597.

[15] George More, _A true Discourse_, 21; Darrel, _A True Narration_ (_Somers Tracts_, III), 175.

[16] Harsnett, _Discovery_, tells us that "certain Seminarie priests"

got hold of her and carried her up and down the country and thereby "wonne great credit."

[17] Darrel's account of this affair is in _A True Narration_ (_Somers Tracts_, III), 179-186. Harsnett takes it up in his _Discovery_, 78-264.

[18] See deposition of Cooper, in Harsnett, _Discovery_, 114.

[19] Depositions of Somers and Darrel, _ibid._, 124-125. It must be recalled that when this was first tried before a commission they were convinced that it was not imposture. A layman cannot refrain from suspecting that Darrel had hypnotic control over Somers.

[20] _Ibid._, 141-142.

[21] _Ibid._, 141. Harsnett quotes Darrel for this statement.

[22] _Ibid._, 5; John Darrel, _An Apologie, or defence of the possession of William Sommers ..._ (1599?), L verso.

[23] Darrel, _A True Narration_ (_Somers Tracts_, III), 184; see also his _A brief Apologie proving the possession of William Sommers ..._ (1599), 17.

[24] Harsnett, _Discovery_, 7.

[25] _Ibid._

[26] _Ibid._, 8; Darrel, _An Apologie, or defence_, 4; Darrel, _A True Narration_ (_Somers Tracts_, III), 185.

[27] _Triall of Maist. Dorrel_, narrative in back of pamphlet.

[28] Darrel, _A Detection of that sinnful ... discours of Samuel Harshnet_, 40. And see above, p. 56, note.

[29] Harsnett, _Discovery_, 8.

[30] _Ibid._, 320-322; Darrel, _An Apologie, or defence_, L III, says that the third jury acquitted her. Harsnett refers to the fact that he was found guilty by the grand inquest.