Salem Witchcraft Part 13

So p.r.o.ne were some to indulge in the contemplation of the agency of the Devil and his myrmidons, that they strained, violated, and perverted the language of Scripture to make it speak of them. Thus they insisted that the word "Philistines" meant confederates and subjects of the Devil, and accordingly interpreted the expression, "I will deliver you into the hands of the Philistines," thus, "I will deliver you into the hands of demons."

I cannot describe the extent to which the superst.i.tion we are reviewing was carried about the close of the sixteenth century in stronger language than the following, from a candid and learned French Roman-Catholic historian: "So great folly," says he, "did then oppress the miserable world, that Christians believed greater absurdities than could ever be imposed upon the heathens."

We have now arrived at the commencement of the seventeenth century, within which the prosecutions for witchcraft took place in Salem. To show the opinions of the clergy of the English Church at this time, I will quote the following curious canon, made by the convocation in 1603:--

"That no minister or ministers, without license and direction of the bishop, under his hand and seal obtained, attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any devil or devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage, and deposition from the ministry." In the same year, licenses were actually granted, as required above, by the Bishop of Chester; and several ministers were duly authorized by him to cast out devils!

During this whole century, there were trials and executions for witchcraft in all civilized countries. More than two hundred were hanged in England, thousands were burned in Scotland, and still larger numbers in various parts of Europe.

Edward Fairfax, the poet, was one of the most accomplished men in England. He is celebrated as the translator of Ta.s.so's "Jerusalem Delivered," in allusion to which work Collins thus speaks of him:--

"How have I sate, while piped the pensive wind, To hear thy harp, by British Fairfax strung, Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders that he sung."

This same Fairfax prosecuted six of his neighbors for bewitching his children. The trials took place about the time the first pilgrims came to America.

In 1634, Urbain Grandier, a very learned and eminent French minister, rendered himself odious to the bigoted nuns of Loudun, by his moderation towards heretics. Secretly instigated, as has been supposed, by Cardinal Richelieu, against whom he had written a satire, they pretended to be bewitched by him, and procured his prosecution: he was tortured upon the rack until he swooned, and then was burned at the stake. In 1640, Dr. Lamb, of London, was murdered in the streets of that city by the mob, on suspicion of witchcraft. Several were hanged in England, only a few years before the proceedings commenced in Salem. Some were tried by water ordeal, and drowned in the process, in Suffolk, Ess.e.x, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire, at the very time the executions were going on here; and a considerable number of capital punishments took place in various parts of Great Britain, some years after the prosecution had ceased in America.

The trials and executions in England and Scotland were attended by circ.u.mstances as painful, as barbarous, and in all respects as disgraceful, as those occurring in Salem. Every species of torture seems to have been resorted to: the principles of reason, justice, and humanity were set at defiance, and the whole body of the people kept in a state of the most fierce excitement against the sufferers.

Indeed, there is nothing more distressing in the contemplation of these sanguinary proceedings than the spirit of deliberate and unmitigated cruelty with which they were conducted. No symptoms of pity, compa.s.sion, or sympathy, appear to have been manifested by the judges or the community. The following account of the expenses attending the execution of two persons convicted of witchcraft in Scotland, shows in what a cool, business-like style the affair was managed:--

"For ten loads of coal, to burn them 3 6 8 For a tar barrel 0 14 0 For towes 0 6 0 For hurden to be jumps for them 3 10 0 For making of them 0 8 0 For one to go to Finmouth for the Laird to sit upon their a.s.size as judge 0 6 0 For the executioner for his pains 8 14 0 For his expenses here 0 16 4"

The brutalizing effects of capital punishments are clearly seen in these, as in all other instances. They gradually impart a feeling of indifference to the value of human life, or to the idea of cutting it off by the hand of violence, to all who become accustomed to the spectacle. In various ways they exercise influences upon the tone and temper of society, which cannot but be regarded with regret by the citizen, the legislator, the moralist, the philanthropist, and the Christian.

Sinclair, in his work called "Satan's Invisible World Discovered,"

gives the following affecting declaration made by one of the confessing witches, as she was on her way to the stake:--

"Now all you that see me this day know that I am now to die as a witch by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood; I take it wholly upon myself, my blood be upon my own head: and, as I must make answer to the G.o.d of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison, or ever coming in credit again, through the temptation of the Devil, I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than live."

Sir George Mackenzie says that he went to examine some women who had confessed, and that one of them, who was a silly creature, told him, "under secresie," "that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her, and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the world." Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and, upon her knees, called G.o.d to witness to what she said.

A wretch, named Matthew Hopkins, rendered himself infamously conspicuous in the prosecutions for witchcraft that took place in the counties of Ess.e.x, Suss.e.x, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, in England, in the years 1645 and 1646. The t.i.tle he a.s.sumed indicates the part he acted: it was "Witch-finder-general." He travelled from place to place; his expenses were paid; and he required, in addition, regular fees for the discovery of a witch. Besides p.r.i.c.king the body to find the witch-mark, he compelled the wretched and decrepit victims of his cruel practices to sit in a painful posture, on an elevated stool, with their limbs crossed; and, if they persevered in refusing to confess, he would prolong their torture, in some cases, to more than twenty-four hours. He would prevent their going to sleep, and drag them about barefoot over the rough ground, thus overcoming them with extreme weariness and pain: but his favorite method was to tie the thumb of the right hand close to the great toe of the left foot, and draw them through a river or pond; if they floated, as they would be likely to do, while their heavier limbs were thus sustained and upborne by the rope, it was considered as conclusive proof of their guilt. This monster was encouraged and sanctioned by the government; and he procured the death, in one year and in one county, of more than three times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion.

He and his exploits are referred to in the following lines, from that storehouse of good sense and keen wit, Butler's "Hudibras:"--

"Hath not this present Parliament A leiger to the Devil sent, Fully empowered to treat about Finding revolted witches out?

And has he not within a year Hanged threescore of them in one shire?"

The infatuated people looked upon this Hopkins with admiration and astonishment, and could only account for his success by the supposition, which, we are told, was generally entertained, that he had stolen the memorandum-book in which Satan had recorded the names of all the persons in England who were in league with him!

The most melancholy circ.u.mstance connected with the history of this creature is, that Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy--names dear and venerable in the estimation of all virtuous and pious men--were deceived and deluded by him: they countenanced his conduct, followed him in his movements, and aided him in his proceedings.

At length, however, some gentlemen, shocked at the cruelty and suspicious of the integrity of Hopkins, seized him, tied his thumbs and toes together, threw him into a pond, and dragged him about to their hearts' content. They were fully satisfied with the result of the experiment. It was found that he did not sink. He stood condemned on his own principles; and thus the country was rescued from the power of the malicious impostor.

Among the persons whose death Hopkins procured, was a venerable, gray-headed clergyman, named Lewis. He was of the Church of England, had been the minister of a congregation for more than half a century, and was over eighty years of age. His infirm frame was subjected to the customary tests, even to the trial by water ordeal: he was compelled to walk almost incessantly for several days and nights, until, in the exhaustion of his nature, he yielded a.s.sent to a confession that was adduced against him in Court; which, however, he disowned and denied there and at all times, from the moment of release from the torments, by which it had been extorted, to his last breath.

As he was about to die the death of a felon, he knew that the rites of sepulture, according to the forms of his denomination, would be denied to his remains. The aged sufferer, it is related, read his own funeral service while on the scaffold. Solemn, sublime, and affecting as are pa.s.sages of this portion of the ritual of the Church, surely it was never performed under circ.u.mstances so well suited to impress with awe and tenderness as when uttered by the calumniated, oppressed, and dying old man. Baxter had been tried for sedition, on the ground that one of his publications contained a reflection upon Episcopacy, and was imprisoned for two years. It is a striking and melancholy ill.u.s.tration of the moral infirmity of human nature, that the author of the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," and the "Call to the Unconverted,"

permitted such a vengeful feeling against the Establishment to enter his breast, that he took pleasure, and almost exulted, in relating the fate of this innocent and aged clergyman, whom he denominates, in derision, a "Reading Parson."

Baxter's writings are pervaded by his belief in all sorts of supernatural things. In the "Saints' Everlasting Rest," he declares his conviction of the reality and authenticity of stories of ghosts, apparitions, haunted houses, &c. He placed full faith in a tale, current among the people of his day, of the "dispossession of the Devil out of many persons together in a room in Lancashire, at the prayer of some G.o.dly ministers." In his "Dying Thoughts," he says, "I have had many convincing proofs of witches, the contracts they have made with devils, and the power which they have received from them;"

and he seems to have credited the most absurd fables ever invented on the subject by ignorance, folly, or fraud.

The case to which he refers, as one of the "dispossession of devils,"

may be found in a tract published in London in 1697, ent.i.tled, "The Surey Demoniac; or, an Account of Satan's strange and dreadful actings, in and about the body of Richard Dugdale, of Surey, near Whalley, in Lancashire. And how he was dispossessed by G.o.d's blessing on the Fastings and Prayers of divers Ministers and People. The matter of fact attested by the oaths of several creditable persons, before some of his Majestie's Justices of the Peace in the said county." The "London Monthly Repository" (vol. v., 1810) describes the affair as follows: "These dreadful actings of Satan continued above a year; during which there was a desperate struggle between him and nine ministers of the gospel, who had undertaken to cast him out, and, for that purpose, successively relieved each other in their daily combats with him: while Satan tried all his arts to baffle their attempts, insulting them with scoffs and raillery, puzzling them sometimes with Greek and Latin, and threatening them with the effects of his vengeance, till he was finally vanquished and put to flight by the persevering prayers and fastings of the said ministers."

No name in English history is regarded with more respect and admiration, by wise and virtuous men, than that of Sir Matthew Hale.

His character was almost venerated by our ancestors; and it has been thought that it was the influence of his authority, more than any thing else, that prevailed upon them to pursue the course they adopted in the prosecutions at Salem. This great and good man presided, as Lord Chief Baron, at the trial of two females,--Amy Dunny and Rose Cullender,--at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, in the year 1664. They were convicted and executed.

Baxter relates the following circ.u.mstance as having occurred at this trial: "A G.o.dly minister, yet living, sitting by to see one of the girls (who appeared as a witness against the prisoners) in her fits, suddenly felt a force pull one of the hooks from his breeches; and, while he looked with wonder at what was become of it, the tormented girl vomited it up out of her mouth."

To give an idea of the nature of the testimony upon which the princ.i.p.al stress was laid by the government, I will extract the following pa.s.sages from the report of the trial: "Robert Sherringham testified that the axle-tree of his cart, happening, in pa.s.sing, to break some part of Rose Cullender's house, in her anger at it, she vehemently threatened him his horses should suffer for it; and, within a short time, all his four horses died; after which he sustained many other losses, in the sudden dying of his cattle. He was also taken with a lameness in his limbs, and so far vexed with lice of an extraordinary number and bigness, that no art could hinder the swarming of them, till he burned up two suits of apparel."--"Margaret Arnold testified that Amy Dunny afflicted her children: they (the children), she said, would see mice running round the house, and, when they caught them and threw them into the fire, they would screech out like rats."--"A thing like a bee flew at the face of the younger child; the child fell into a fit, and at last vomited up a two-penny nail, with a broad head, affirming that the bee brought this nail, and forced it into her mouth."--"She one day caught an invisible mouse, and, throwing it into the fire, it flashed like to gunpowder. None besides the child saw the mouse, but every one saw the flash!"

In this instance we perceive the influence of prejudice in perverting evidence. The circ.u.mstance that the mouse was invisible to all eyes but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive proof of diabolical agency.

Many persons who were present expressed the opinion, that the issue of the trial would have been favorable to the prisoners, had it not been for the following circ.u.mstance: Sir Thomas Browne, a physician, philosopher, and scholar of unrivalled celebrity at that time, happened to be upon the spot; and it was the universal wish that he should be called to the stand, and his opinion be obtained on the general subject of witchcraft. An enthusiastic contemporary admirer of Sir Thomas Browne thus describes him: "The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much; and of the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial globe and its products, minerals, plants, and animals." His memory is stated to have been inferior only to that of Seneca or Scaliger; and he was reputed master of seven languages. Dr. Johnson, who has written his biography, sums up his character in the following terms: "But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity, of which he will not easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men: for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success."

Sir Thomas Browne was considered by those of his own generation to have made great advances beyond the wisdom of his age. He claimed the character of a reformer, and gave to his princ.i.p.al publication the t.i.tle of an "Enquiry into Vulgar Errors." So bold and free were his speculations, that he was looked upon invidiously by many as a daring innovator, and did not escape the denunciatory imputation of heresy.

Nothing could be more unjust, however, than this latter charge. He was a most ardent and zealous believer in the doctrines of the Established Church. He declares "that he a.s.sumes the honorable style of a Christian," not because "it is the religion of his country," but because, "having in his riper years and confirmed judgment seen and examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles of grace and the law of his own reason, to embrace no other name but this." He exults and "blesses himself, that he lived not in the days of miracles, when faith had been thrust upon him, but enjoys that greater blessing p.r.o.nounced to all that believed, and saw not:" nay, he goes so far as to say, that they only had the advantage "of a bold and n.o.ble faith, who lived before the coming of the Saviour, and, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief." The fact that such a man was accused of infidelity is an affecting proof of the injustice that is sometimes done by the judgment of contemporaries.

This prodigy of learning and philosophy went into Court, took the stand, and declared his opinion in favor of the reality of witchcraft, entered into a particular discussion of the subject before the jury, threw the whole weight of his great name into the wavering scales of justice, and the poor women were convicted. The authority of Sir Thomas Browne, added to the other evidence, perplexed Sir Matthew Hale. A reporter of the trial says, "that it made this great and good man doubtful; but he was in such fears, and proceeded with such caution, that he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the jury with prayers, 'that the great G.o.d of heaven would direct their hearts in that weighty matter.'"

The result of this important trial established decisively the interpretation of English law; and the printed report of it was used as an authoritative text-book in the Court at Salem.

The celebrated Robert Boyle flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century. He is allowed by all to have done much towards the introduction of an improved philosophy, and the promotion of experimental science. But he could not entirely shake off the superst.i.tion of his age.

A small city in Burgundy, called Mascon, was famous in the annals of witchcraft. In a work called "The Theatre of G.o.d's Judgments,"

published, in London, by Thomas Beard in 1612, there is the following pa.s.sage: "It was a very lamentable spectacle that chanced to the Governor of Mascon, a magician, whom the Devil s.n.a.t.c.hed up in dinner-while, and hoisted aloft, carrying him three times about the town of Mascon, in the presence of many beholders, to whom he cried in this manner, 'Help, help, my friends!' so that the whole town stood amazed thereat; yea, and the remembrance of this strange accident sticketh at this day fast in the minds of all the inhabitants of this country." A malicious and bigoted monk, who discharged the office of chief legend-maker to the Benedictine Abbey, in the vicinity of Mascon, fabricated this ridiculous story for the purpose of bringing the Governor into disrepute. An account of another diabolical visitation, suggested, it is probable, by the one just described, was issued from the press, under the t.i.tle of "The Devil of Mascon,"

during the lifetime of Boyle, who gave his sanction to the work, promoted its version into English, and, as late as 1678, publicly declared his belief of the supernatural transaction it related.

The subject of demonology, in all its forms and phases, embracing witchcraft, held a more commanding place throughout Europe, in the literature of the centuries immediately preceding the eighteenth, than any other. Works of the highest pretension, elaborate, learned, voluminous, and exhausting, were published, by the authority of governments and universities, to expound it. It was regarded as occupying the most eminent department of jurisprudence, as well as of science and theology.

Raphael De La Torre and Adam Tanner published treatises establishing the right and duty of ecclesiastical tribunals to punish all who practised or dealt with the arts of demonology. In 1484, Sprenger came out with his famous book, "Malleus Maleficarum;" or, the "Hammer of Witches." Paul Layman, in 1629, issued an elaborate work on "Judicial Processes against Sorcerers and Witches." The following is the t.i.tle of a bulky volume of some seven hundred pages: "Demonology, or Natural Magic or demoniacal, lawful and unlawful, also open or secret, by the intervention and invocation of a Demon," published in 1612. It consists of four books, treating of the crime of witchcraft, and its punishment in the ordinary tribunals and the Inquisitorial office. Its author was Don Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, of Cordova, Advocate Royal in the courts of Grenada. It was republished in 1623, by command of Philip III. of Spain, on the recommendation of the Fiscal General, and with the sanction of the Royal Council and the Holy Inquisition.

This work may be considered as establishing and defining the doctrines, in reference to witchcraft, prevailing in all Catholic countries. It was indorsed by royal, judicial, academical, and ecclesiastical approval; is replete with extraordinary erudition, arranged in the most scientific form, embracing in a methodical cla.s.sification all the minutest details of the subject, and codifying it into a complete system of law. There was no particular in all the proceedings and all the doctrines brought out at the trials in Salem, which did not find ample justification and support in this work of Catholic, imperial, and European authority.

But perhaps the writer of the greatest influence on this subject in England and America, during the whole of the seventeenth century, was William Perkins, "the learned, pious, and painful preacher of G.o.d's Word, at St. Andrew's, in Cambridge," where he died, in 1602, aged forty-four years. He was quite a voluminous author; and many of his works were translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish.

Fuller, in "The Holy State," selects him as the impersonation of the qualities requisite to "the Faithful Minister." In his glowing eulogium upon his learning and talents, he says:--

"He would p.r.o.nounce the word _d.a.m.ne_ with such an emphasis as left a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good while after. And, when catechist of Christ's College, in expounding the Commandments, applied them so home,--able almost to make his hearers' hearts fall down, and hairs to stand upright. But, in his older age, he altered his voice, and remitted much of his former rigidness, often professing that to preach mercy was that proper office of the ministers of the gospel."--"Our Perkins brought the schools into the pulpit, and, unsh.e.l.ling their controversies out of their hard school-terms, made thereof plain and wholesome meat for his people; for he had a capacious head, with angles winding, and roomy enough to lodge all controversial intricacies."--"He had a rare felicity in speedy reading of books; so that, as it were, riding post through an author, he took strict notice of all pa.s.sages. Perusing books so speedily, one would think he read nothing; so accurately, one would think he read all."

An octavo volume, written by this great scholar and divine, was published at Cambridge in England, under the t.i.tle, "Discourse of the d.a.m.ned Art of Witchcraft." It went through several editions, and had a wide and permanent circulation.

This work, the character of which is sufficiently indicated in its emphatic t.i.tle, was the great authority on the subject with our fathers; and Mr. Parris had a copy of it in his possession when the proceedings in reference to witchcraft began at Salem Village.

John Gaule published an octavo volume in London, in 1646, ent.i.tled, "Select Cases of Conscience concerning Witches and Witchcraft." He is one of the most exact writers on the subject, and arranges witches in the following cla.s.ses: "1. The diviner, gypsy, or fortune-telling witch; 2. The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; 3. The chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs and numbers; 4. The venefical, or poisoning witch; 5. The exorcist, or conjuring witch; 6. The gastronomic witch; 7. The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; 8. The necromancer."

Besides innumerable writers of this cla.s.s, who spread out the scholastic learning on the subject, and presented it in a logical and theological form, there were others who treated it in a more popular style, and invested it with the charms of elegant literature. Henry Hallywell published an octavo in London, in 1681, in which, while the main doctrines of witchcraft as then almost universally received are enforced, an attempt was made to divest it of some of its most repulsive and terrible features. He gives the following account of the means by which a person may place himself beyond the reach of the power of witchcraft:--

"It is possible for the soul to arise to such a height, and become so divine, that no witchcraft or evil demons can have any power upon the body. When the bodily life is too far invigorated and awakened, and draws the intellect, the flower and summity of the soul, into a conspiration with it, then are we subject and obnoxious to magical a.s.saults. For magic or sorcery, being founded only in this lower or mundane spirit, he that makes it his business to be freed and released from all its blandishments and flattering devocations, and endeavors wholly to withdraw himself from the love of corporeity and too near a sympathy with the frail flesh, he, by it, enkindles such a divine principle as lifts him above the fate of this inferior world, and adorns his mind with such an awful majesty that beats back all enchantments, and makes the infernal fiends tremble at his presence, hating those vigorous beams of light which are so contrary and repugnant to their dark natures."