Discovery of Witches Part 27

"Who sains the house the night, They that sains it ilka night.

Saint Bryde and her brate, Saint Colme and his hat, Saint Michael and his spear, Keep this house from the weir; From running thief, And burning thief; And from and ill Rea, That be the gate can gae; And from an ill weight, That be the gate can light Nine reeds about the house; Keep it all the night, What is that, what I see So red, so bright, beyond the sea?

'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands, Through the feet, through the throat, Through the tongue; Through the liver and the lung.

Well is them that well may Fast on Good-friday."

which lines are not unlike some of those in the present "charme,"

which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superst.i.tion. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in poetical spirit.

K _b_ 2. "_Ligh in leath wand._"] Leath is no doubt lithe, flexible.

What "ligh in" is intended for, unless it be lykinge, which the _Promptorium Parvulorum_ (_vide_ part i. p. 304) explains by l.u.s.ty, or craske, _Delicativus_, cra.s.sus, I am unable to conjecture. It is clear, that the wand in one hand is to steck, _i.e._ stake, or fasten, the latch of h.e.l.l door, while the key in his other hand is to open heaven's lock.

K _b_ 3. "_Let Crizum child goe to it Mother mild._"] The chrisom, according to the usual explanation, was a white cloth placed upon the head of an infant at baptism, when the chrism, or sacred oil of the Romish Church, was used in that sacrament. If the child died within a month of its birth, that cloth was used as a shroud; and children so dying were called chrisoms in the old bills of mortality.

K _b_ 4. "_A light so farrandly._"] Farrandly, or farrantly, a word still in use in Lancashire, and which is equivalent to fair, likely, or handsome. (See _Lancashire Dialect and Glossary_.) "Harne panne,"

_i.e._, cranium.--_Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 237.

K 2 _a_ 1. "_Vpon the ground of holy weepe._"] I know not how to explain this, unless it mean the ground of holy weeping, _i.e._, the Garden of Gethsemane.

K 2 _a_ 2. "_Shall neuer deere thee._"] The word to dere, or hurt, says Mr. Way, _Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 119, is commonly used by Chaucer and most other writers until the sixteenth century:

"Fyr he schal hym nevyr dere."

_Coeur de Lion_, 1638.

Fabyan observes, under the year 1194, "So fast besyed this good Kyng Richarde to vex and dere the infydelys of Sury." Palsgrave gives, "To dere or hurte a noye nuire, I wyll never dere you by my good wyll."

Ang. Sax., [Anglo-Saxon: derian] _nocere_, [Anglo-Saxon: derung]

_laesio_.

K 3 _a_. "_The Witches of Salmesbvry._"] Or, more properly, Samlesbury. This wicked attempt on the part of this priest, or Jesuit, Thompson, _alias_ Southworth, to murder the three persons whose trial is next reported, by suborning a child of the family to accuse them of what, in the excited state of the public mind at the time, was almost certain to consign them to a public execution, has few parallels in the annals of atrocity. The plot was defeated, and the lives of the persons accused, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, saved, by no sagacity of the judge or wisdom of the jury, but by the effect of one simple question, wrung from the intended victims on the verge of antic.i.p.ated condemnation, and which, natural as it might appear, was one the felicity of which Garrow or Erskine might have envied. It demolished, like Ithuriel's spear, the whole fabric of imposture, and laid it open even to the comprehension of Sir Edward Bromley and Master Thomas Potts. This was a case which well deserved Archbishop Harsnet for its historian. His vein of irony, which Swift or Echard never surpa.s.sed, and the scorching invective of which he was so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had, from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute 1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have accomplished at once what was slowly and with difficulty brought about by the arguments of Scot and Webster, the establishment of the Royal Society, and a century's growth of intelligence and knowledge.

K 3 _b_ 1. "_A Seminarie Priest._"] Of this Thompson, _alias_ Southworth, I find no account in Dodd's _Catholic Church History_. A John Southworth is noticed, vol. iii. p. 303, who is described as of an ancient family in Lancashire, and who was executed at Tyburn, June 28th, 1655. His dying speech is to be found in the same volume, p.

360. The interval of time, as well as the difference of surname, excludes the presumption of his being identical with the person referred to in the text, the hero of this extraordinary conspiracy, and who was probably of the family of Sir John Southworth, after mentioned.

K 3 _b_ 2. "_A Iesuite, whereof this Countie of Lancaster hath good store._"] Lancashire was, about this period, the great hot-bed of Popish recusants. From the very curious list of recusants given (Baines's _Lancashire_, vol. i. p. 541,) it would seem that Samlesbury was one of their strongholds:--

James Cowper a seminarie prieste receipted releived and mainteined att the lodge of Sir John Southworthe in Samlesburie Parke by Mr. Tho: Southworthe, one of the younger sonnes of the said Sir John. And att the howse of John Warde dwellinge in Samlesburie Park syde. And the said Prieste sayeth Ma.s.se att the said lodge and att the said Wards howse. Whether resorte, Mr. Sowthworthe, Mres. An Sowthworthe, John Walmesley servante to Sir John Southworthe, Tho. Southworthe dwellinge in the Parke, John Gerrerde, servante to Sir John Southworthe, John Singleton, John Wrighte, James Sherples iunior, John Warde of Samlesburie, John Warde of Medler thelder, Henrie Potter of Medler, John Gouldon of Winwicke, Thomas Gouldon of the same, Roberte Anderton of Samlesburie and John Sherples of Stanleyhurst in Samlesburie.--_Baines's Lancashire_, vol. i.

p. 543.

Att the lodge in Samlesburie Parke there be ma.s.ses daylie and Seminaries dyuerse Resorte thither as James Cowpe, Harrisson Bell and such like, The like vnlawfull meetings are made daylie att the howse of John Warde by the Parke syde of Samlesburie all wiche matters, ma.s.ses, resorte to Ma.s.ses, receipting of Seminaries wilbe Justifyed by Mr. Adam Sowtheworthe Thomas Sherples and John Osbaldston.--_Ibid._, p. 544.

K 4 _b_. "_Picked her off._"] Threw her off.

L _a_. "_Hugh Walshmans._"] The wife of Hugh Walshman, of Samlesbury, is mentioned in the list of recusants; Baines, vol. i. p. 544.

L 2 _a_ 1. "_Brought a little child._"] The evidence against the Pendle witches exhibits meagreness and poverty of imagination compared with the acc.u.mulated horrors with which the Jesuit, fresh, it may be, from Bodin and Delrio, made his "fire burn and cauldron bubble." With respect to this old story of the magical use made of the corpses of infants, Ben Jonson, in a note on

"I had a dagger: what did I with that?

Killed an infant to have his fat;"

tells us with great gravity:

Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a l.u.s.t to do murder. _Sprenger in Mal. Malefic._ reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with p.r.i.c.king them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of the three witches in _Rem. Daemonola lib. cap._ 3, about the end of the chapter. And M. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich _Quaest._ 8. And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia, _Epod. Horat. lib. ode_ 5, and Lucan, _lib._ 6, whose admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:--

Nec cessant a caede ma.n.u.s, si sanguine vivo Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto.

Nec refugit caedes, vivum si sacra cruorem Extaque funereae posc.u.n.t trepidantia mensae.

Vulnere si ventris, non qua natura vocabat, Extrahitur partus calidus ponendus in aris; Et quoties saevis opus est, et fortibus umbris Ipsa facit maneis. Hominum mors omnis in usu est.

_Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford_, vol. vii. p. 130.

L 2 _a_ 2. "_They said they would annoint themselues._"] Ben Jonson informs us:

When they are to be transported from place to place, they use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride on. Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, _Remig.

Daemonolatriae lib._ 1. _cap._ 14. _Delrio, Disquis. Mag. l._ 2. _quaest._ 16. _Bodin Daemonoman. lib._ 2 _c._ 14. _Barthol.

de Spina. quaest. de Strigib. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich.

quaest._ 10. _Paracelsus in magn. et occul. Philosophia_, teacheth the confection. _Unguentum ex carne recens natorum infantium, in pulmenti, forma coctum, et c.u.m herbis somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta_, &c. And _Giov. Bapti. Porta, lib._ 2. _Mag. Natur. cap._ 16.--_Ben Jonson's Works by Gifford_, vol. vii. p. 119.

L 3 _a_. "_Did carrie her into the loft._"] There is something in this strange tissue of incoherencies, for knavery has little variety, which forcibly reminds us of the inventions of Elizabeth Canning, who ought to have lived in the days when witchcraft was part of the popular creed. What an admirable witch poor old Mary Squires would have made, and how brilliantly would her persecutor have shone in the days of the Baxters and Glanvilles, who acquitted herself so creditably in those of the Fieldings and the Hills.

L 4 _b_ 1. "_Robert Hovlden, Esquire._"] This individual would be of the ancient family of Holden, of Holden, the last male heir of which died without issue, 1792. (See Whitaker's _Whalley_, 418.)

L 4 _b_ 2. "_Sir John Southworth._"] In this family the manor of Samlesbury remained for three hundred and fifty years. This was, probably, the John (for the pedigree contained in Whitaker's _Whalley_, p. 430, does not give the clearest light on the subject) who married Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Sherburne, of Stonyhurst, and who took a great lead amongst the Catholics of Lancashire. What was the degree of relationship between Sir John and the husband of the accused, Jane Southworth, there is nothing in the descent to show.

Family bickering might have a share, as well as superst.i.tion, in the opinion he entertained, "that she was an evil woman." Of the old hall at Samlesbury, the residence of the Southworths, a most interesting account will be found in Whitaker's _Whalley_, p. 431. He considers the centre of very high antiquity, probably not later than Edward III; and observes, "There is about the house a profusion and bulk of oak that must almost have laid prostrate a forest to erect it."

M 1 _b_. "_The particular points of the Evidence._"] What a waste of ingenuity Master Potts displays in this recapitulation, where he is merely slaying the slain, and where his wisdom was not needed. Had he applied it to the service of the Pendle witches, he would have found still grosser contrarieties, and as great absurdity. But in that case, there was no horror of Popery to sharpen his faculties, or Jesuit in the background to call his humanity into play.

M 2 _a_. "_The wrinkles of an old wiues face is good euidence to the Iurie against a Witch._"] _Si sic omnia!_ For once the worthy clerk in court has a lucid interval, and speaks the language of common sense.

M 2 _b_. "_But old Chattox had Fancie._"] A great truth, though Master Potts might not be aware of the extent of it.

M 4 _a_. "_M. Leigh, a very religious Preacher._"] Parson of Standish, a man memorable in his day. He published several pieces, amongst others the two following: 1. "The Drumme of Devotion," by W. Leigh, of Standish, 1613.--2. "News of a Prodigious Monster in Aldington, in the Parish of Standish, in Lancashire," 1613, 4to, which show him to have been an adept in the science of t.i.tle-making. He was one of the tutors of Prince Henry, and was great-grandfather of Dr. Leigh, author of the _History of Lancashire_.

N 3 _b_. "_The Arraignment and Triall of Anne Redferne._"] This poor woman seems to have been regularly hunted to death by her prosecutors, who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds.

Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years before, by witchcraft; the only evidence, true or false, being, that she had been seen, about the same period, making figures of clay or marl. Her real offence, it may well be conjectured, was her having rejected the improper advances of the ill-conditioned young man whose death she was first indicted for procuring, and to which circ.u.mstance the rancour of his relations, the prosecutors, may evidently be traced. It is gratifying to know that she had firmness of mind to persist in the declaration of her innocence to the last.

O 3 _a_. "_Alice Nutter._"] We now come to a person of a different description from any of those who have preceded as parties accused, and on whose fate some extraordinary mystery seems to hang. Alice Nutter was not, like the others, a miserable mendicant, but was a lady of large possessions, of a respectable family, and with children whose position appears to have been such as, it might have been expected, would have afforded her the means of escaping the fate which overtook her humbler companions.

"I knew her a good woman and well bred, Of an unquestion'd carriage, well reputed Amongst her neighbours, reckoned with the best."

_Heywood's Lancashire Witches._

She is described as the wife of Richard Nutter of the Rough Lee, and mother of Miles Nutter, who were in all likelihood nearly related to the other Nutters whose descent has been given. The tradition is, that she was closely connected by relationship or marriage with Eleanor Nutter, the daughter of Ellis Nutter of Pendle Forest, the grandmother of Archbishop Tillotson. That she was the victim of a foul and atrocious conspiracy, in which the movers were some of her own family, there seems no reason to doubt. The anxiety of her children to induce her to confess may possibly have originated in no impure or sinister motive, but it is difficult altogether to dismiss from the mind the suspicion that her wealth was her great misfortune; and that to secure it within their grasp her own household were pa.s.sive, if not active, agents in her destruction. Any thing more childish or absurd than the evidence against her--as, for instance, that she joyned in killing Henry Mitton because he refused a penny to Old Demdike--it would not be easy, even from the records of witch trials, to produce. As regards Alice Nutter, Potts is singularly meagre, and it is to be lamented that the deficiency of information cannot at present be supplied.

Almost the only fact he furnishes us with is, that she died maintaining her innocence. It would have been most interesting to have had the means of ascertaining how she conducted herself at her trial and after her condemnation; and how she met the iniquitous injustice of her fate, sharpened, as it must have been, by the additional bitterness of the insults and execrations of the blind and infuriated populace at her execution. It is far from improbable that some of the correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county hitherto unpublished may ultimately furnish these particulars.

Alice Nutter was doubtless the original of the story of which Heywood availed himself in _The Late Lancashire Witches_, 1634, 4to, which is frequently noticed by the writers of the 17th century--that the wife of a Lancashire country gentleman had been detected in practising witchcraft and unlawful arts, and condemned and executed. In that play there can be little hesitation in ascribing to Heywood the scenes in which Mr. Generous and his wife are the interlocutors, and to Broome, Heywood's coadjutor, the subordinate and farcical portions. It is a very unequal performance, but not dest.i.tute of those fine touches, which Heywood is never without, in the characters of English country gentlemen and the pathos of domestic tragedy. The following scene, which I am tempted to extract, though very inferior to the n.o.ble ones in his _Woman Killed by Kindness_, between Mr. and Mrs. Frankford, which it somewhat resembles in character, is not unworthy of this great and truly national dramatic writer:--

MR. GENEROUS. WIFE. ROBIN, _a groom._

_Gen._ My blood is turn'd to ice, and all my vitals Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested That vigorous agitation, which till now Exprest a life within me. I, methinks, Am a meer marble statue, and no man.

Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread; Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent; That, being made an infant once again, I may begin to know. What, or where am I, To be thus lost in wonder?

_Wife._ Sir.