Discovery of Witches Part 1

Discovery of Witches.

by Thomas Potts.

INTRODUCTION.

Were not every chapter of the history of the human mind too precious an inheritance to be willingly relinquished,--for appalling as its contents may be, the value of the materials it may furnish may be inestimable,--we might otherwise be tempted to wish that the miserable record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled.

Most a.s.suredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of the author of _Hydriotaphia_ as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials for humiliation and abas.e.m.e.nt, he will find in the history of witchcraft in this country, from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, large and abundant materials, whether it affects the species or the individual. In truth, human nature is never seen in worse colours than in that dark and dismal review. Childhood, without any of its engaging properties, appears prematurely artful, wicked and cruel[1]; woman, the victim of a wretched and debasing bigotry, has yet so little of the feminine adjuncts, that the fountains of our sympathies are almost closed; and man, tyrannizing over the s.e.x he was bound to protect, in its helpless dest.i.tution and enfeebled decline, seems lost in prejudice and superst.i.tion and only strong in oppression. If we turn from the common herd to the luminaries of the age, to those whose works are the landmarks of literature and science, the reference is equally disappointing;--

"The sun itself is dark And silent as the moon Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."

[Footnote 1: Take, as an instance, the children of Mr. Throgmorton, of Warbois, for bewitching whom, Mother Samuels, her husband, and daughter, suffered in 1593. No veteran professors "in the art of ingeniously tormenting" could have administered the question with more consummate skill than these little incarnate fiends, till the poor old woman was actually induced, from their confident a.s.severations and plausible counterfeiting, to believe at last that she had been a witch all her life without knowing it. She made a confession, following the story which they had prompted, on their a.s.surances that it was the only means to restore them, and then was hanged upon that confession, to which she adhered on the scaffold. Few tracts present a more vivid picture of manners than that in which the account of this case of witchcraft is contained. It is perhaps the rarest of the English tracts relating to witchcraft, and is ent.i.tled "The most strange and admirable Discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys, arraigned, convicted, and executed at the last a.s.sizes at Huntingdon, for the bewitching of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton, Esquire, and divers other persons with sundrie Devilish and grievous torments. And also for the bewitching to Death of the Lady Crumwell, the like hath not been heard of in this age. London, Printed by the Widdowe Orwin for Thomas Man and John Winnington, and are to be sold in Paternoster Rowe at the Signe of the Talbot." 1593, 4to. My copy was Brand's, and formed Lot 8224 in his Sale Catalogue.]

We find the ill.u.s.trious author of the Novum Organon sacrificing to courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the ingredients for a witches' ointment;[2]--Raleigh, adopting miserable fallacies at second hand, without subjecting them to the crucible of his acute and vigorous understanding;[3]--Selden, maintaining that crimes of the imagination may be punished with death;[4]--The detector of Vulgar Errors, and the most humane of physicians,[5] giving the casting weight to the vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;[6]--Hobbes, ever sceptical, penetrating and sagacious, yet here paralyzed, and shrinking from the subject as if afraid to touch it;[7]--The adventurous explorer, who sounded the depths and channels of the "Intellectual System" along all the "wide watered" sh.o.r.es of antiquity, running after witches to hear them recite the Common Prayer and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or innocence;[8]--The gentle spirit of Dr. Henry More, girding on the armour of persecution, and rousing itself from a Platonic reverie on the Divine Life, to a.s.sume the hood and cloak of a familiar of the Inquisition;[9]--and the patient and enquiring Boyle, putting aside for a while his searches for the grand Magisterium, and listening, as if spell-bound, with gratified attention to stories of witches at Oxford, and devils at Mascon.[10] Nor is it from a retrospect of our own intellectual progress only that we find how capricious, how intermitting, and how little privileged to great names or high intellects, or even to those minds which seemed to possess the very qualifications which would operate as conductors, are those illuminating gleams of common sense which shoot athwart the gloom, and aid a nation on its tardy progress to wisdom, humanity, and justice. If on the Continent there were, in the sixteenth century, two men from whom an exposure of the absurdities of the system of witchcraft might have been naturally and rationally expected, and who seem to stand out prominently from the crowd as predestined to that honourable and salutary office, those two men were John Bodin[11] and Thomas Erastus.[12] The former a lawyer--much exercised in the affairs of men--whose learning was not merely umbratic--whose knowledge of history was most philosophic and exact--of piercing penetration and sagacity--tolerant--liberal minded--disposed to take no proposition upon trust, but to canva.s.s and examine every thing for himself, and who had large views of human nature and society--in fact, the Montesquieu of the seventeenth century. The other, a physician and professor, sage, judicious, incredulous,

"The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,"

who had routed irrecoverably empiricism in almost every shape--Paracelsians--Astrologers--Alchemists--Rosicrucians--and who weighed and scrutinized and a.n.a.lyzed every conclusion, from excommunication and the power of the keys to the revolutions of comets and their supposed effects on empires, and all with perfect fearlessness and intuitive insight into the weak points of an argument. Yet, alas! for human infirmity. Bodin threw all the weight of his reasoning and learning and vivacity into the scale of the witch supporters, and made the "h.e.l.l-broth boil and bubble" anew, and increased the witch _furor_ to downright fanaticism, by the publication of his _Demo-manie_,[13] a work in which

"Learning, blinded first and then beguiled, Looks dark as ignorance, as frenzy wild;"

but which it is impossible to read without being carried along by the force of mind and power of combination which the author manifests, and without feeling how much ingenious sophistry can perform to mitigate and soften the most startling absurdity. His contemporary, Erastus, after all his victories on the field of imposition, was foiled by the subject of witchcraft at last. This was his pet delusion--almost the only one he cared not to discard--like the dying miser's last reserve:--

---- "My manor, sir? he cried; Not that, I cannot part with that,--and died."

[Footnote 2: Lord Bacon thinks (see his _Sylva Sylvarum_) that soporiferous medicines "are likeliest" for this purpose, such as henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade, tobacco, opium, saffron, poplar leaves, &c.]

[Footnote 3: See his _History of the World_.]

[Footnote 4: See his _Table Talk_, section "_Witches_."]

[Footnote 5: Sir Thomas Browne's evidence at the trial of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender at Bury St. Edmunds in 1664, is too well known to need an extract from the frequently reprinted report of the case. To adopt the words of an able writer, (_Retros. Review_, vol. v. p. 118,) "this trial is the only place in which we ever meet with the name of Sir Thomas Browne without pleasurable a.s.sociations."]

[Footnote 6: Those who wish to have presented to them a faithful likeness of Sir Matthew Hale must not consult Burnet or Baxter, for that great judge, like Sir Epicure Mammon, sought "for his meet flatterers the gravest of divines," but will not fail to find it in the pages of Roger North, who has depicted his character with a strength and accuracy of outline which no Vandyck or Lely of biography ever surpa.s.sed. Would that we could exchange some of those "faultless monsters" with which that fascinating department of literature too much abounds, for a few more such instantly recognised specimens of true but erring and unequal humanity, which are as rare as they are precious. In the unabridged life of Lord Guildford by Roger North, which, with his own most interesting and yet unpublished autobiography, are in my possession in his autograph, are found some additional touches which confirm the general accuracy of the portrait he has sketched of Hale in the work which has been printed. (Vide North's _Life of Lord Guildford_, by Roscoe, vol. i. p. 119.)]

[Footnote 7: See his _Dialogue on the Common Laws of England_.]

[Footnote 8: Dr. Cudworth was the friend whom More refers to without naming, _Collections of Relations_, p. 336, edit. 1726, 8vo.]

[Footnote 9: There is no name in this catalogue that excites more poignant regret than that of Dr. Henry More. So exalted was his character, so serene and admirable his temper, so full of harmony his whole intellectual const.i.tution, that, irradiated at once by all the lights of religion and philosophy, and with clearer glimpses of the land of vision and the glories behind the veil than perhaps uninspired mortality ever partook of before, he seems to have reached as near to the full standard of perfection as it is possible for frail and feeble humanity to attain. Dr. Outram said that he looked upon Dr. More as the holiest person upon the face of the earth; and the sceptical Hobbes, who never dealt in compliment, observed, "That if his own philosophy were not true, he knew of none that he should sooner like than More's of Cambridge." His biographer, Ward, concludes his life in the following glowing terms:--"Thus lived and died the eminent Dr.

More: thus set this bright and ill.u.s.trious star, vanishing by degrees out of our sight after, to the surprise and admiration of many, (like that which was observed in Ca.s.siopeia's chair,) it had illuminated, as it were, both worlds so long at once." At the lapse of many years I have not forgotten the impa.s.sioned fondness with which the late and most lamented Robert Southey dwelt upon the memory of the Cambridge Plato, or the delight with which he greeted some works of his favourite author which I was fortunate enough to point out to him, with which he had not been previously acquainted. The sad reverse of the picture will he seen by those who consult the folio of More's philosophical works and Glanville's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, the greatest part of which is derived from More's _Collections_. His hallucinations on the subject of witchcraft, from which none of the English writers of the Platonic school were exempt, are the more extraordinary, as a sister error, judicial astrology, met in More with its most able oppugner. His tract, which has excited much less attention than its merit deserves, (I have not been able to trace a single quotation from it in any author during the last century,) is ent.i.tled "Tetractys Anti-astrologica, or a Confutation of Astrology."

Lond. 1681, 4to. I may mention while on the subject of More, that the second and most valuable part of the memoir of him by Ward, his devoted admirer and pupil, which was never printed, is in my possession, in ma.n.u.script.]

[Footnote 10: See Boyle's letter on the subject of the latter, in the 5th vol. of the folio edition of his works.]

[Footnote 11: I have always considered the conclusion of Bodin's book, _De Republica_, the acc.u.mulative grandeur of which is even heightened in Knolles's admirable English translation, as the finest peroration to be found in any work on government. Those who are fortunate enough to possess a copy of his interdicted _Examination of Religions_, the t.i.tle of which is, "Colloquium heptaplomeres de abditis sublimium rerum arcanis, libris 6 digestum," which was never printed, and of which very few MSS. copies are in existence, are well aware how little he felt himself shackled in the spirit of examination which he carried into the most sacred subjects by any respect for popular notions or received systems or great authorities. My MS. copy of this extraordinary work, which came from Heber's Collection, is contained in two rather thick folio volumes.]

[Footnote 12: Few authors are better deserving of an extended biography, a desideratum which, in an age characterised by its want of literary research, is not likely to be soon supplied, than Thomas Erastus, whose theological, philosophical, and medical celebrity ent.i.tle him to rank with the greatest men of his century. At present we have to collect all that is known of his life from various scattered and contradictory sources. John Webster, in his _Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft_, contrary to the usual candour and fairness of his judgments, speaks slightingly of Erastus. There was, however, a sufficient reason for this. Erastus had shown up the empiricism of Webster's idol Paracelsus, and was in great disfavour with the writers of the Anti-Galenic school.]

[Footnote 13: I cannot concur with Mr. Hallam in the extremely low estimate he forms of the literary merit of Bodin's _Demomanie_, which he does not seem to have examined with the care and impartiality which he seldom is deficient in. Like all Bodin's works, it has a spirit peculiarly his own, and is, in my opinion, one of the most entertaining books to be found in the circle of Demonology.]

In his treatise _De Lamiis_, published in 1577, 8vo., he defends nearly all the absurdities of the system with a blind zealotry which in such a man is very remarkable. His book has accordingly taken its place on the same shelf with Sprenger, Remigius, Delrio, and De Lancre, and deserves insertion only in a list which has yet to be made out, and which if accurately compiled would be a literary curiosity, of the singularly illogical books of singularly able reasoners.

What was left unaccomplished by the centurions of literature came ultimately from the strangest of all possible quarters; from the study of an humble pupil of the trans.m.u.ter of metals and prince of mountebanks and quacks--the expounder of Reuchlin _de verbo mirifico_, and lecturer in the unknown tongues--the follower of Trismegistus--cursed with bell, book and candle, by every decorous Church in Christendom--the redoubted Cornelius Agrippa; who, if he left not to his pupil Wierus the secret of the philosopher's stone or grand elixir, seems to have communicated a treasure perhaps equally rare and not less precious, the faculty of seeing a truth which should open the eyes of bigotry and dispel the mists of superst.i.tion, which should stop the persecution of the helpless and stay the call for blood. If, in working out this virgin ore from the mine, he has produced it mixed up with the _scoria_ of his master's _Occult Philosophy_; if he gives us catalogues of devils and spirits, with whose acquaintance we could have dispensed; if he pleads the great truth faintly, inconsistently, imperfectly, and is evidently unaware of the strength of the weapons he wields; these deductions do not the less ent.i.tle Wierus to take his place in the first rank of Humanity's honoured professors, the true philanthropists and n.o.ble benefactors of mankind.

In our own country, it may be curious and edifying to observe to whom we mainly owe those enlightened views on this subject, which might have been expected to proceed in their natural channel, but for which we look in vain, from the "triumphant heirs of universal praise," the recognized guides of public opinion, whose fame sheds such a l.u.s.tre on our annals,--the Bacons, the Raleighs, the Seldens, the Cudworths, and the Boyles.

The strangely a.s.sorted and rather grotesque band to whom we are princ.i.p.ally indebted for a vindication of outraged common sense and insulted humanity in this instance, and whose vigorous exposition of the absurdities of the prevailing system, in combination with other lights and sources of intelligence, led at last to its being universally abandoned, consists of four individuals--on any of whom a literary Pharisee would look down with supercilious scorn:--a country gentleman, devoted to husbandry, and deep in platforms of hop gardens,[14]--a baronet, whose name for upwards of a century has been used as a synonyme for incurable political bigotry,[15]--a little, crooked, and now forgotten man, who died, as his biographer tells us, "distracted, occasioned by a deep conceit of his own parts, and by a continual bibbing of strong and high tasted liquors,"[16]--and last, but not least a.s.suredly, of one who was by turns a fanatical preacher and an obscure pract.i.tioner of physic, and who pa.s.sed his old age at c.l.i.theroe in Lancashire in attempting to trans.m.u.te metals and discover the philosopher's stone.[17] So strange a band of Apostles of reason may occasion a smile; it deserves, at all events, a little more particular consideration before we address ourselves to the short narration which may be deemed necessary as an introduction to the republication which follows.

Of the first of the number, Reginald or Reynold Scot, it is to be regretted that more particulars are not known. Nearly the whole are contained in the following information afforded by Anthony a Wood, _Athenae._, vol. i. p. 297; from which it appears that he took to "solid reading" at a crisis of life when it is generally thrown aside.

"Reynolde Scot, a younger son of Sir John Scot, of Scot's Hall, near to Smeeth, in Kent, by his wife, daughter of Reynolde Pimp, of Pimp's Court, Knight, was born in that county, and at about 17 years of age was sent to Oxon, particularly as it seems to Hart Hall, where several of his countrymen and name studied in the latter end of K. Henry VIII. and the reign of Edward VI., &c. Afterwards he retired to his native country, without the honour of a Degree, and settled at Smeeth, where he found great encouragement in his studies from his kinsman, Sir Thomas Scot. _About which time, taking to him a wife, he gave himself up solely to solid reading_, to the perusing of obscure authors that had, by the generality of scholars, been neglected, and at times of leisure to husbandry and gardening. He died in September or October in 1599, and was buried among his ancestors, in the church at Smeeth before mentioned." Retired as his life and obscure as his death might be, he is one whose name will be remembered as long as vigorous sense, flowing from the "wells of English undefiled," hearty and radiant humour, and sterling patriotism, are considered as deserving of commemoration. His _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, first published in 1584, is indeed a treat to him who wishes to study the idioms, manners, opinions, and superst.i.tions of the reign of Elizabeth. Its entire t.i.tle deserves to be given:--

"_The discouerie of witchcraft, wherein the lewde dealing of witches and witchmongers is notablie detected, the knauerie of coniurors, the impietie of inchantors, the follie of soothsaiers, the impudent falshood of cousenors, the infidelitie of atheists, the pestilent practises of Pythonists, the curiositie of figurecasters, the vanitie of dreamers, the beggerlie art of Alc.u.mystrie, the abhomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the vertue and power of naturall magike, and all the conueiances of Legierdemaine and iuggling are deciphered: and many other things opened, which haue long lien hidden, howbeit verie necessarie to be knowne. Heerevnto is added a treatise vpon the nature and substance of spirits and diuels, &c: all latelie written by Reginald Scot Esquire._ 1 John, 4, 1. _Beleeue not euerie spirit but trie the spirits, whether they are of G.o.d; for many false prophets are gone out into the world, &c._ 1584."

[Footnote 14: Reginald Scot.]

[Footnote 15: Sir R. Filmer.]

[Footnote 16: John Wagstaffe.]

[Footnote 17: John Webster.]

This t.i.tle is sufficient to show that he gives no quarter to the delusion he undertakes to expose, and though he does not deny that there may be witches in the abstract, (to have done so would have left him a preacher without an audience,) yet he guards so cautiously against any practical application of that principle, and battles so vigorously against the error which a.s.similated the witches of modern times to the witches of Scripture, and, denying the validity of the confessions of those convicted, throws such discredit and ridicule upon the whole system, that the popular belief cannot but have received a severe shock from the publication of his work.[18] By an extraordinary elevation of good sense, he managed, not only to see through the absurdities of witchcraft, but likewise of other errors which long maintained their hold upon the learned as well as the vulgar. Indeed, if not generally more enlightened, he was, in some respects, more emanc.i.p.ated from delusion than even his great successor, the learned and sagacious Webster, who, a century after, clung still to alchemy which Reginald Scot had ridiculed and exposed.

Yet with all its strong points and broad humour, it is undeniable that _The Discoverie of Witchcraft_ only scotched the snake instead of killing it; and that its effect was any thing but final and complete.

Inveterate error is seldom prostrated by a blow from one hand, and truth seems to be a tree which cannot be forced by planting it before its time. There was something, too, in the book itself which militated against its entire acceptance by the public. It is intended to form a little Encyclopaedia of the different arts of imposition practised in Scot's time; and in order to ill.u.s.trate the various tricks and modes of cozenage, he gives us so many charms and diagrams and conjurations, to say nothing of an inventory of seventy-nine devils and spirits, and their several seignories and degrees, that the _Occult Philosophy_ of Cornelius Agrippa himself looks scarcely less appalling, at first sight, than the _Discoverie_. This gave some colour to the declamation of the author's opponents, who held him up as Wierus had been represented before him, as if he were as deeply dipped in diabolical practises as any of those whom he defended. Atheist and Sadducee, if not very wizard himself, were the terms in which his name was generally mentioned, and as such, the royal author of the _Demonology_ anathematizes him with great unction and very edifying horror. Against the papists, the satire of Scot had been almost as much directed as against what he calls the "witch-mongers," so that that very powerful party were to a man opposed to him. Vigorous, therefore, as was his onslaught, its effect soon pa.s.sed by; and when on the accession of James, the statute which so long disgraced our penal code was enacted, as the adulatory tribute of all parties, against which no honest voice was raised, to the known opinions of the monarch, Scot became too unfashionable to be seen on the tables of the great or in the libraries of the learned. If he were noticed, it was only to be traduced as a sciolist, (imperitus dialecticae et aliarum bonarum artium, says Dr. Reynolds,) and to be exposed for imagined lapses in scholarship in an age when for a writer not to be a scholar, was like a traveller journeying without a pa.s.sport. Meric Casaubon, who carried all the prejudices of the time of James the first into the reign of Charles the second, but who, though overshadowed by the fame of his father, was no unworthy scion of that incomparable stock, at the same time that he denounces Scot as illiterate, will only acknowledge to having met with him "at friends houses" and "booksellers shops," as if his work were one which would bring contamination to a scholar's library. Scot was certainly not a scholar in the sense in which the term is applied to the Scaligers, Casaubons, and Vossius's, though he would have been considered a prodigy of reading in these days of superficial acquisition. But he had original gifts far transcending scholarship. He had a manly, straightforward, vigorous understanding, which, united with an honest integrity of purpose, kept him right when greater men went wrong. How invaluable a phalanx would the battalion of folios which the reign of James the first produced now afford us, if the admirable mother-wit and single-minded sincerity of Reginald Scot could only have vivified and informed them.[19]

[Footnote 18: In the epistle to his kinsman Sir Thomas Scot, prefixed to his _Discoverie_, he observes:--

"I see among other malefactors manie poore old women conuented before you for working of miracles, other wise called witchcraft, and therefore I thought you also a meet person to whom I might commend my booke."--And he then proceeds, in the following spirited and gallant strain, to run his course against the Dagon of popular superst.i.tion:--

"I therefore (at this time) doo onelie desire you to consider of my report, concerning the euidence that is commonlie brought before you against them. See first whether the euidence be not friuolous, & whether the proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting of ghesses, presumptions, & impossibilities contrarie to reason, scripture, and nature. See also what persons complaine vpon them, whether they be not of the basest, the vnwisest, & most faithles kind of people. Also may it please you to waie what accusations and crimes they laie to their charge, namelie: She was at my house of late, she would haue had a pot of milke, she departed in a chafe bicause she had it not, she railed, she curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and finallie she said she would be euen with me: and soone after my child, my cow, my sow, or my pullet died, or was strangelie taken. Naie (if it please your Worship) I haue further proofe: I was with a wise woman, and she told me I had an ill neighbour, & that she would come to my house yer it were long, and so did she; and that she had a marke aboue hir waste, & so had she: and G.o.d forgiue me, my stomach hath gone against hir a great while. Hir mother before hir was counted a witch, she hath beene beaten and scratched by the face till bloud was drawne vpon hir, bicause she hath beene suspected, & afterwards some of those persons were said to amend. These are the certeinties that I heare in their euidences.

"_Note also how easilie they may be brought to confesse that which they neuer did, nor lieth in the power of man to doo_: and then see whether I haue cause to write as I doo. Further, if you shall see that infidelitie, poperie, and manie other manifest heresies be backed and shouldered, and their professors animated and hartened, by yeelding to creatures such infinit power as is wrested out of G.o.ds hand, and attributed to witches: finallie, if you shall perceiue that I haue faithfullie and trulie deliuered and set downe the condition and state of the witch, and also of the witchmonger, and haue confuted by reason and lawe, and by the word of G.o.d it selfe, all mine aduersaries obiections and arguments: then let me haue your countenance against them that maliciouslie oppose themselues against me.

"_My greatest aduersaries are yoong ignorance and old custome._ For what follie soeuer tract of time hath fostered, it is so superst.i.tiouslie pursued of some, as though no error could be acquainted with custome. But if the lawe of nations would ioine with such custome, to the maintenance of ignorance, and to the suppressing of knowledge; the ciuilest countrie in the world would soone become barbarous, &c. For as knowledge and time discouereth errors, so dooth superst.i.tion and ignorance in time breed them."

The pa.s.sage which I next quote, is a further specimen of the impressive and even eloquent earnestness with which he pleads his cause:--

"In the meane time, I would wish them to know that if neither the estimation of G.o.ds omnipotencie, nor the tenor of his word, nor the doubtfulnes or rather the impossibilitie of the case, nor the small proofes brought against them, nor the rigor executed vpon them, nor the pitie that should be in a christian heart, nor yet their simplicitie, impotencie, or age may suffice to suppresse the rage or rigor wherewith they are oppressed; yet the consideration of their s.e.x or kind ought to mooue some mitigation of their punishment. For if nature (as Plinie reporteth) haue taught a lion not to deale so roughlie with a woman as with a man, bicause she is in bodie the weaker vessell, and in hart more inclined to pitie (which Ieremie in his lamentations seemeth to confirme) what should a man doo in this case, for whome a woman was created as an helpe and comfort vnto him?

In so much as, euen in the lawe of nature, it is a greater offense to slea a woman than a man: not bicause a man is not the more excellent creature, but bicause a woman is the weaker vessell. And therefore among all modest and honest persons it is thought a shame to offer violence or iniurie to a woman: in which respect Virgil saith, _Nullum memorabile nomen foeminea in poena est_.

"G.o.d that knoweth my heart is witnes, and you that read my booke shall see, that my drift and purpose in this enterprise tendeth onelie to these respects. First, that the glorie and power of G.o.d be not so abridged and abased, as to be thrust into the hand or lip of a lewd old woman: whereby the worke of the Creator should be attributed to the power of a creature. Secondlie, that the religion of the gospell may be seene to stand without such peeuish trumperie. Thirdlie, that lawfull fauour and christian compa.s.sion be rather vsed towards these poore soules, than rigor and extremitie. Bicause they, which are commonlie accused of witchcraft, are the least sufficient of all other persons to speake for themselues; as hauing the most base and simple education of all others; the extremitie of their age giuing them leaue to dote, their pouertie to beg, their wrongs to chide and threaten (as being void of anie other waie of reuenge) their humor melancholicall to be full of imaginations, from whence cheefelie proceedeth the vanitie of their confessions; as that they can transforme themselues and others into apes, owles, a.s.ses, dogs, cats, &c: that they can flie in the aire, kill children with charmes, hinder the comming of b.u.t.ter, &c.

"And for so much as the mightie helpe themselues together, and the poore widowes crie, though it reach to heauen, is sca.r.s.e heard here vpon earth: I thought good (according to my poore abilitie) to make intercession, that some part of common rigor, and some points of hastie iudgement may be aduised vpon. For the world is now at that stay (as Brentius in a most G.o.dlie sermon in these words affirmeth) that euen as when the heathen persecuted the christians, if anie were accused to beleeue in Christ, the common people cried _Ad leonem_: so now, if anie woman, be she neuer so honest, be accused of witchcraft, they crie _Ad ignem_."]

[Footnote 19: In the intervening period between the publication of Soot's work and the advertis.e.m.e.nt of Filmer, several books came out on the subject of witchcraft. Amongst them it is right to notice "A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft, by George Giffard, Minister of G.o.d's Word in Maldon," 1593, 4to. This tract, which has been reprinted by the Percy Society, is not free from the leading fallacies which infected the reasonings of almost all the writers on witchcraft. It is, nevertheless, exceedingly entertaining, and well deserves a perusal, if only as transmitting to us, in their full freshness, the racy colloquialisms of the age of Elizabeth. It is to be hoped that the other works of Giffard, all of which are deserving of attention, independently of their theological interest, as specimens of pure and sterling English, may appear in a collected form. The next tract requiring notice is "The Trial of Witchcraft, by John Cotta," 1616, 4to, of which a second and enlarged edition was published in 1624. Cotta, who was a physician of great eminence and experience, residing at Northampton, has supplied in this very able, learned, and vigorous treatise, a groundwork which, if pursued to its just results, for he writes very cautiously and guardedly, and rather hints at his conclusions than follows them out, would have sufficed to have overthrown many of the positions of the supporters of the system of witchcraft. His work has a strong scholastic tinge, and is not without occasional obscurity; and on these accounts probably produced no very extensive impression at the time. He wrote two other tracts--1. "Discovery of the Dangers of ignorant practisers of Physick in England," 1612, 4to; 2. "Cotta contra Antonium, or An Ant-Anthony,"

Oxford, 1623, 4to; the latter of which, a keen satire against the chymists' aurum potabile, is exceedingly rare. Both are intrinsically valuable and interesting, and written with great vigour of style, and are full of curious ill.u.s.trations derived from his extensive medical practice. I cannot conclude this note without adverting to Gaule's amusing little work, ("Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft, by John Gaule, Preacher of the Word at Great Haughton, in the county of Huntingdon," 1646, 24mo.) which gives us all the casuistry applicable to witchcraft. We can almost forgive Gaule's fundamental errors on the general question, for the courage and spirit with which he battled with the villainous witchfinder, Hopkins, who wanted sorely to make an example of him, to the terror of all gainsayers of the sovereign power of this examiner-general of witches.

Gaule proved himself to be an overmatch for the itinerating inquisitor, and so effectually attacked, battled with, and exposed him, as to render him quite harmless in future. The minister of Great Haughton was made of different metal to the "old reading parson Lewis," or Lowes, to whose fate Baxter refers with such nonchalance.

As the only clergyman of the Church of England, that I am aware of, who was executed for witchcraft, Lewis's case is sufficiently interesting to merit some notice. Stearne's (vide his _Confirmation of Witchcraft_, p. 23,) account of it, which I have not seen quoted before, is as follows:--