Witch Stories Part 16

THE GROCER'S YOUNG MAN.[158]

A few years after (1704) Sarah Griffiths lay suspected for a witch, and a bad one, for all the children in her neighbourhood were afflicted with strange distempers, and had visions of cats and the like, so that no one coveted poor Sarah's company, and many removed because of her. Her guilt was discovered at last by a jolly young grocer's lad, who was one day weighing her out some soap, but the scales would not hang right, whereat he laughed and cried out they were bewitched. Sarah Griffiths did not understand joking. She got very angry, and ran out of the shop threatening revenge; and the next night all the goods in the shop were turned topsy-turvy, and the day after the jolly young fellow was troubled with a strange disease--but by prayer released. Meeting her by chance some time after, as he and some friends were walking up to New River Head, they resolved to swim her. They tossed her in, and she swam like a cork. They kept her there for some time, but at last she got out, and struck the young man on the arm, telling him he should pay dearly for what he had done. He looked at his arm and found it black as a coal, with the exact mark of her hand and fingers on it. He went home much tormented, vomiting old nails, pins, and the like, afflicted with fits and strange contortions, and for ever calling out against Mother Griffiths as he lay sickening and disabled. And then his arm gangrened and rotted off: whereby he died. Mother Griffith was taken by the constable, who, on her attempting to escape, knocked her down. She was secured more firmly, taken before the judge, and committed to Bridewell, whence--though I find no sequel to this strange little page--there is very little doubt that she was haled forth at the a.s.sizes only to be convicted and hanged.

We are coming now (1712) to the last authentic trial for witchcraft where the accused was condemned to death for an impossible crime by a jury of sane, decent, respectable Englishmen. Jane Wenham was this latest offshoot of the old tree of judicial bigotry; not the latest fruit, but the last instance of the law and judgment. There is a report current in most witch books of a case at a later period--but I can find no _authentic_ account of it--that, in 1716, of a Mrs. Hicks and her little daughter of nine, hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, bewitching their neighbours to death and their crops to ruin, and, as a climax to all, taking off their stockings to raise a storm. It may well be so, but I have not met with it in any reliable shape, so meanwhile we must accept Jane Wenham as the last officially condemned.

THE WITCH OF WALKERNE.[159]

Jane Wenham was the witch of Walkerne, a little village in the north of Hertford. She had long lived under ill fame, and her neighbours were resolved to get rid of her at the earliest opportunity. That opportunity presented itself in the person of John Chapman's man, one Matthew Gilson, whom Jane sent into a daft state by asking him for a pennyworth of straw, which he refused to give her. The old woman went away, muttering and complaining, whereupon Matthew, impelled by he knew not what impulse, ran out of the barn for a distance of three miles, asking as he went for pennyworths of straw. Not getting any, he went on to some dirt heaps, and gathered up straw from them, which he put in his shirt and brought home. A witness testified that he had seen Gilson come back with his shirt stuffed full of straw, that he moved along quickly, and walked straight through the water, instead of pa.s.sing over the bridge like any other decent man.

For this odd behaviour of his servant, John Chapman, who had all along suspected Jane of more cunning than was good for him or her--called her a witch the next time he saw her; and Jane took him before the magistrate, Sir Herbert Chauncey, to answer to the charge of defamation. But the magistrate recommended them to go to Mr. Gardiner the minister, and a great believer in witchcraft, and get their matter settled without more trouble or vexation. Mr. Gardiner was too zealous to be just. He scolded poor old Jane roundly, and advised her to live more peaceably with her neighbours--which was just what she wanted to do--and gave as his award that Chapman do pay the fine of one shilling. While this bit of one-sided justice was going on, Anne Thorne, Mr. Gardiner's servant, was sitting by the fire with a dislocated knee. Jane, not able to compa.s.s her wicked will on Chapman, and angry that Mr. Gardiner had spoken so harshly to her, turned her malice on the girl, and bewitched her, so that as soon as they all left the kitchen Anne felt a strange "Roaming in her Head, and she thought she must of Necessity run somewhere." In spite then of her dislocated knee, she started off and ran up the close, and away over a five-barred gate "as nimbly as a greyhound," along the highway and up a hill. And there she met two of John Chapman's men, who wanted her to go home with them; and one took her hand; but she was forced away from them, speechless, and not of her own volition, and so was driven on, on, towards Cromer, where the great sea would have either stopped or received her. But when she came to Hockney Lane, she met there a "little Old Woman m.u.f.fled up in a Riding-Hood," who asked her whither she was going. "To Cromer,"

says Anne, "for sticks to make me a fire." "There be no sticks at Cromer,"

says the little old woman in the riding hood: "here be sticks enow; go to that oak tree and pluck them there." Which Anne did, laying them on the ground as they were gathered. Then the old woman bade her pull off her gown and ap.r.o.n, and wrap the sticks in them; asking her if she had ne'er a pin about her; but finding that she had not, she gave her a large crooked pin, with which she bade her pin her bundle, then vanished away. So Anne Thorne ran home half naked, with her bundle of leaves and sticks in her hand, and sat down in the kitchen, crying out "I am ruined and undone!"

When Mrs. Gardiner had opened the bundle, and seen all the twigs and leaves, she said they would burn the witch, and not wait long about it; so they flung the twigs and leaves into the fire; and while they were burning in came Jane Wenham, asking for Anne's mother, for she had, she said, a message to her, how that she was to go and wash next day at Ardley Bury, Sir Herbert Chauncey's place: which on inquiry turned out to be a falsehood: consequently Jane Wenham was set down doubly as a witch, the charm of burning her in the sticks having proved so effectual. John Chapman and his men then told their tale. Mr. Gardiner was not slow in fanning the flame into a fire, and poor old Jane was examined, searched for marks but none found, and committed to gaol, there to wait her trial at the next a.s.sizes. She earnestly entreated not to go to prison; protested her innocence, and appealed to Mrs. Gardiner to help her, woman-like, and not to swear against her; offering to submit to be swum--anything they would--so that she might be kept free of jail. But Sir Herbert Chauncey was just manly and rational enough not to allow of this test, though the Vicar of Ardeley tried her with the Lord's Prayer, which she could not repeat: and terrified and tortured her into a kind of confession, wherein she implicated three other women, who were immediately put under arrest, though they came to no harm in the end. When she was brought to trial, sixteen witnesses, including three clergymen, were standing there ready to testify against her, how that she had bewitched this one's cattle, and that one's sheep; and taken all the power from this one's body, and all the good from that one's gear; and slaughtered this child, and that man, by her evil eye and her curses; and in fact how that she had done all the mischief that had happened in the neighbourhood for years past. And there was Matthew Gilson, who had been sent mad, and forced to wander about the country with his shirt stuffed full of straw like a scarecrow; and Anne Thorne, who had had fits ever since her marvellous journey with the dislocated knee; and another Anne, very nearly as hardly holden as the first; and others beside, whom her malice had rendered sick and lame, and unfit for decent life: moreover, two veracious witnesses deposed positively to her taking the form of a cat when she would, and to hearing her converse with the devil when under the form of a cat, he also as a cat; together with Anne Thorne's distinct accusation that she was beset with cats--tormented exceedingly--and that all the cats had the face and the voice of Jane Wenham.

The lawyers, who believed little in the devil and less in witchcraft, refused to draw up the indictment on any other charge save that of "conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of a cat." But in spite of Mr. Bragge's earnest appeals against such profanation, and the ridicule which it threw over the whole matter, the jury found the poor old creature guilty, and the judge pa.s.sed sentence of death against her. The evidence was too strong. Even one of the Mr. Chaunceys deposed that a cat came knocking at his door, and that he killed it--when it vanished away, for it was no other than one of Jane Wenham's imps; and all Mr. Gardiner's house went mad, some in one way and some in another: and credible witnesses deposed that they had seen pins come jumping through the air into Anne Thorne's mouth, and when George Chapman clapped his hand before her mouth to prevent them skipping in, he felt one stick against his hand, as sharp as might be; and every night Anne's pincushion was left full, and every morning found empty, and who but Jane could have conveyed them all from the pincushion into her mouth, where they were to be found all crooked and bent? But though the jury could not resist the tremendous weight of all this evidence, and the judge could not resist the jury, he managed to get a reprieve which left the people time to cool and reflect, and then he got a pardon for her--quietly and kindly done. And Colonel Plummer, of Gilston, took her under his protection, and gave her a small cottage near his house, where she lived, poor soul, in peace and safety for the end of her days, doing harm to no one and feared by none. As for Anne Thorne, the doctor, who had ordered her, as part of his remedy, to wash her hands and face twice a day in fair water, and who, as another part, had her watched and sat with by a "l.u.s.ty young fellow" who asked nothing better, managed matters so well, that in a short time Anne and her brisk bachelor were married; and from that time we hear no more of her vomiting crooked pins, or being tormented with visions of cats wearing Jane Wenham's face, and speaking with Jane Wenham's voice. But though all the rest got well off with their frights and follies, no public compensation was given to poor old Jane for the brutal attacks of the mob upon her, for the hauling and maiming and scratching and tearing, by which they proved to their own satisfaction that she was a witch, and deserved only the treatment accorded to witches.

OUR LATEST.

But if the last officially condemned, Jane was not the last actually destroyed, for a curious MS. letter to be found in the British Museum "From Mr. Manning, Dissenting Teacher, at Halstead, in Ess.e.x, to John Morley, Esq., Halstead," gives us a strange garbled account of a reputed sacrifice; and the sadder and more brutal story of Ruth Osborne follows a few years after.

"Halstead, August 2, 1732.

"SIR--The narrative which I gave you in relation to witchcraft, and which you are pleased to lay your commands upon me to repeat, is as follows:--There was one Master Collett, a smith by trade, of Haveningham, in the county of Suffolk, who, as 'twas customary with him, a.s.sisting the maide to churne, and not being able (as the phrase is) to make the b.u.t.ter come, threw a hot iron into the churn, under the notion of witchcraft in the case, upon which a poore labourer, then employed in carrying of dung in the yard, cried out in a terrible manner, 'They have killed me, they have killed me;' still keeping his hand upon his back, intimating where the pain was, and died upon the spot.

"Mr. Collett, with the rest of the servants then present, took off the poor man's clothes, and found to their great surprise, the mark of the iron that was heated and thrown into the churn, deeply impressed upon his back. This account I had from Mr. Collett's own mouth, who being a man of unblemished character, I verily believe to be matter of fact.

"I am, Sir, your obliged humble Servant,

"SAM. MANNING."

The only falsehood, probably, in the history is the manner of the poor fellow's death, for either he was foully murdered on a wild suspicion of being concerned in the witching of a dirty milk vessel, or he died suddenly of some ordinary organic complaint, and the circ.u.mstances of the horse-shoe and the scarred back were purely imaginary. But again in 1751 was witch blood actually poured out on English soil, and the cry of the innocent murdered sent up to heaven in vain for mercy. At Tring, in Hertfordshire, lived an old man, one Osborne, and his wife; poor as witches always were; old--past seventy both of them--and obliged to beg from door to door for what, if the popular superst.i.tion was true, the devil had given them power to possess at any moment for themselves. But this was a point of view no one ever took. In the rebellion of '45, just six years ago, old Mother Osborne had gone to one b.u.t.terfield, a dairyman living at Gubblecot, to beg for b.u.t.termilk. b.u.t.terfield was a churlish fellow, and told her roughly that he had not enough for his hogs, still less for her. Says old Mother Osborne, grumbling, "The Pretender will soon have thee and thy hogs too." Now the Pretender and the devil were in league together, according to the belief of many, and old Mother Osborne might just as well have told the dairyman at once that he was going to the devil, or that she would send her imps to bewitch him; for soon b.u.t.terfield's calves became distempered, and soon his cows died, and his affairs went so far to the bad that he left his dairy and took a public house, in hopes that the imps which could bewitch the one might be powerless against the other. But he reckoned without his host, for in 1751 he himself was bewitched; he had fits--bad fits--and sent for a white witch all the way from Northamptonshire to tell him what ailed him. The white witch told him he was bewitched, and bade six men, with staves and pitchforks hanging round their necks as counter charms for their own safety, watch his house night and day. Doubtless they discovered all they were set there to seek.

Suddenly there appeared a notice that certain and various witches were to be ducked at Longmarston the 22nd day of April. A crowd a.s.sembled at Tring to watch the sport; and but one thought went through that crowd--the Osbornes were to be the ducked witches, and the sport they would have would be rare. The parish officers had taken the old couple into the workhouse for safety, but the mob broke through the gates, and crushed down the doors, and searched the whole place through, from end to end, even to the salt box, "lest the witch should have made herself little,"

and have hidden in the corners. But they could not find her, not even there; so, in a rage, they broke the windows, smashed the furniture, and then heaped up straw high against the house, threatening to burn it down, and every living soul within it, if the Osbornes were not given up them.

The master was frightened; he had never faced such a scene before, and his nerve forsook him--not unreasonably. He brought the old people from their hiding place, and gave them up to that wild, tossing, furious mob. In a moment they were stripped stark naked, then cross-bound in the prescribed manner, wrapped loosely in a sheet, and dragged two miles along the road to a small pond or river, where with many a curse and many a kick they were thrown in, to prove whether they were witches or not. A chimney sweeper, called Colley, was the most active of the crew. Seeing that Mother Osborne did not sink, he waded into the water and turned her over with his stick. She slipped out of the sheet, and thus lay exposed, naked, and half choked with mud, before the brutal crowd, who saw nothing pitiful, and nothing shameful, in her state. After a time they dragged her out, flung her on the bank, and kicked and beat her till she died. Her husband died also, but not on the spot. The man who had arranged this rare diversion then went round among the crowd collecting money in return for his amus.e.m.e.nt. But government took the matter up. A coroner's inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder returned against Colley, the chimney sweep, who, much to his own surprise and the indignation of the people--many ranking him as a martyr--was hanged by the neck till he was dead, for the murder of the witch of Tring, poor old Ruth Osborne. The act against witchcraft, under colour and favour of which all the judicial murders had been done, had been repealed a few years before, namely, in 1736, and Colley's comrades bewailed piteously the degenerate times that were at hand, when a witch was no longer held fit sport for the public, but was protected and defended like ordinary folk, and let to live on to work her wicked will unchecked.

But the snake is scotched, not killed. So far are we in advance of the men of the ruder past, inasmuch as our superst.i.tions, though quite as silly, are less cruel than theirs, and hurt no one but ourselves. Yet still we have our wizards and witches lurking round area gates and prowling through the lanes and yards of the remoter country districts; still we have our necromancers, who call up the dead from their graves to talk to us more trivial nonsense than ever they talked while living, and who reconcile us with earth and humanity by showing us how infinitely inferior are heaven and spirituality; still we have the unknown mapped out in clear lines sharp and firm; and still the impossible is a.s.serted as existing, and men are ready to give their lives in attestation of what contravenes every law of reason and of nature; still we are not content to watch and wait and collect and fathom before deciding, but for every new group of facts or appearances must at once draw up a code of laws and reasons, and prove, to a mathematical certainty, the properties of a chimera, and the divine life and beauty--of a lie. Even the mere vulgar belief in witchcraft remains among the lower cla.s.ses; as witness the old gentleman who died at Polstead not so long ago, and who, when a boy, had seen a witch swum in Polstead Ponds, "and she went over the water like a cork;" who had also watched another witch feeding her three imps like blackbirds; and who only wanted five pounds to have seen all the witches in the parish dance on a knoll together: as witness also the strange letter of the magistrate, in the 'Times' of April 7, 1857; and the stranger trial at Stafford, concerning the bewitched condition of the Charlesworths, small farmers living at Rugely, which trial is to be found in the 'Times' of March 28, 1857; the case reported by the clergyman of East Thorpe, Ess.e.x, who had actually to mount guard against the door of an old Trot accused of witchcraft; while the instances of silly servant maids, and fortune tellers whose hands are to be crossed with silver, and the stars propitiated with cast off dresses and broken meat, are as numerous as ever. And, indeed, so long as conviction without examination, and belief without proof, pa.s.s as the righteous operations of faith, so long will superst.i.tion and credulity reign supreme over the mind, and the functions of critical reason be abandoned and foresworn. And as it seems to me that credulity is even a less desirable frame of mind than scepticism, I have set forth this collection of witch stories as landmarks of the excesses to which a blind belief may hurry and impel humanity, and perhaps as some slight aids to that much misused common sense which the holders of impossible theories generally consider "enthusiastic," and of "a n.o.bler life" to tread under foot, and loftily ignore.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.

Footnotes:

[1] Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'

[2] Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'

[3] Pitcairn.

[4] Pitcairn.

[5] Pitcairn.

[6] Pitcairn.

[7] An iron instrument so constructed, that by means of a hoop which pa.s.sed over the head, a piece of iron having four p.r.o.ngs or points, was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing outwards to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring, by which to attach to a staple in the wall of her cell.--_Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'_

[8] Fountainhall says that she was convict and burnt; but is this not a mistake? Pitcairn gives the actual trial, and King James's angry letter against the contumacious a.s.sisa.

[9] Pitcairn.

[10] Dr. Jamieson conjectures the word to signify "warm hose." After encircling the leg with an iron framework, it was put into a moveable furnace or chauffer, and during the progress of heating the iron, the intended questions were successively put.--_Note in Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'_

[11] Pitcairn's 'Scottish Criminal Trials.'

[12] Chambers' 'Domestic Annals of Scotland.'

[13] 'Antiquarian Researches of Aberdeen, by Gavin Turriff: Spalding Club Miscellany. Chambers' 'Domestic Annals,' to the end of the Aberdeen trials.

[14] Apparently untranslateable.

[15] Patrick Anderson's MS. history of Scotland, quoted by Robert Chambers, in his 'Domestic Annals of Scotland.'

[16] Pitcairn.

[17] Pitcairn and Chambers.

[18] Pitcairn.

[19] Pitcairn.

[20] Dalyell's 'Darker Superst.i.tions of Scotland.'

[21] Scott's 'Demonology and Witchcraft.'

[22] Pitcairn.

[23] Pitcairn and Chambers.

[24] Star-gra.s.s, queries Pitcairn; but is it not rather fox-tree--fox-glove?