Witch, Warlock, and Magician

At the Lent Assize, in 1664, at Bury St. Edmunds, two aged women, named Rose Cullender and Amy Duny were brought before him on a charge of having bewitched seven persons. The nature of the evidence on which it was founded the reader will appreciate from the following examples:

Samuel Pacey, of Lowestoft, a man of good repute for sobriety and other homely virtues, having been sworn, said: That on Thursday, October 10 last, his younger daughter Deborah, about nine years old, fell suddenly so lame that she could not stand on her feet, and so continued till the 17th, when she asked to be carried to a bank which overlooked the sea, and while she was sitting there, Amy Duny came to the witness’s house to buy some herrings, but was denied. Twice more she called, but being always denied, went away grumbling and discontented. At this instant of time the child was seized with terrible fits; complained of a pain in her stomach, as if she were being pricked with pins, shrieking out ‘with a voice like a whelp,’ and thus continuing until the 30th. This witness added that Amy Duny, being known as a witch, and his child having, in the intervals of her fits, constantly exclaimed against her as the cause of her sufferings, saying that the said Amy did appear to her and frighten her, he began to suspect the said Amy, and accused her in plain terms of injuring his child, and got her ‘set in the stocks.’ Two days afterwards, his daughter Elizabeth was seized with similar fits; and both she and her sister complained that they were tormented by various persons in the town of bad character, but more particularly by Amy Duny, and by another reputed witch, Rose Cullender.

Another witness deposed that she had heard the two children cry out against these persons, who, they said, threatened to increase their torments tenfold if they told tales of them. ‘At some times the children would see Things run up and down the house in the appearance of mice; and one of them suddenly snapped one with the tongs, and threw it in the fire, and it screeched out like a bat. At another time, the younger child, being out of her fits, went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a little Thing like a bee flew upon her face, and would have gone into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible manner; whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her, but before she could reach her, the child fell into her swooning fit, and, at last, with much pain and straining, vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and after that the child had raised up the nail she came to her understanding, and being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth.’

Such evidence as this failing to satisfy Serjeant Keeling, and several magistrates who were present, of the guilt of the accused, it was resolved to resort to demonstration by experiment. The persons bewitched were brought into court to touch the two old women; and it was observed (says Hutchinson) that when the former were in the midst of their fits, and to all men’s apprehension wholly deprived of all sense and understanding, closing their fists in such a manner as that the strongest man could not force them open, yet, at the least touch of one of the supposed witches – Rose Cullender, by name – they would suddenly shriek out, opening their hands, which accident would not happen at any other person’s touch. ‘And lest they might privately see when they were touched by the said Rose Cullender, they were blinded with their own aprons, and the touching took the same effect as before. There was an ingenious person that objected there might be a great fallacy in this experiment, and there ought not to be any stress put upon this to convict the parties, for the children might counterfeit this their distemper, and, perceiving what was done to them, they might in such manner suddenly alter the erection and gesture of their bodies, on purpose to induce persons to believe that they were not natural, but wrought strangely by the touch of the prisoners. Wherefore, to avoid this scruple, it was privately desired by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, and Mr. Serjeant Keeling, and some other gentleman then in court, would attend one of the distempered persons in the farthest part of the hall whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did accordingly; and Amy Duny was brought from the bar, and conveyed to the maid. They then put an apron before her eyes; and then one other person touched her hand, which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the court. Whereupon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting that they did believe the whole transaction of the business was a mere imposture.’ As, in truth, it was.

It is remarkable that Sir Matthew Hale was still unconvinced. He invited the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a man of great learning and ability – the author of the ‘Religio Medici,’ and other justly famous works – who admitted that the fits were natural, but thought them ‘heightened by the devil co-operating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies.’ Sir Matthew then charged the jury. There were, he said, two questions to be considered: First, whether or not these children were bewitched? And, second, whether the prisoners at the bar had been guilty of bewitching them? That there were such creatures as witches, he did not doubt; and he appealed to the Scriptures, which had affirmed so much, and also to the wisdom of all nations, which had enacted laws against such persons. Such, too, he said, had been the judgment of this kingdom, as appeared by that Act of Parliament which had provided punishment proportionable to the quality of the offence. He desired them to pay strict attention to the evidence, and implored the great God of heaven to direct their hearts in so weighty a matter; for to condemn the innocent, and set free the guilty, was ‘an abomination to the Lord.’

After a charge of this description, the jury naturally brought in a verdict of ‘Guilty.’ Sentence of death was pronounced; and the two poor old women, protesting to the last their innocence, suffered on the gallows. Who will not regret the part played by Sir Matthew Hale in this judicial murder? It is no excuse to say that he did but share in the popular belief. One expects of such a man that he will rise superior to the errors of ordinary minds; that he will be guided by broader and more enlightened views – by more humane and generous sympathies. Instead of attempting an apology which no act can render satisfactory, it is better to admit, with Sir Michael Foster, that ‘this great and good man was betrayed, notwithstanding the rectitude of his intentions, into a great mistake, under the strong bias of early prejudices.’

Gradually, however, a disbelief in witchcraft grew up in the public mind, as intellectual inquiry widened its scope, and the relations of man to the Unseen World came to be better understood. Among the educated classes the old superstition expired much more rapidly than among the poorer; and so we find that though convictions became rarer, committals and trials continued tolerably frequent until the closing years of the eighteenth century. To the ghastly roll of victims, however, additions continued to be made. Thus in August, 1682, three women, named Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards, and Mary Trembles, were tried at Exeter before Lord Chief Justice North and Mr. Justice Raymond, convicted of various acts of witchcraft, and sentenced to death. Before their trial they had confessed to frequent interviews with the devil, who appeared in the shape of a black man as long (or as short) as a man’s arm; and one of them acknowledged to have caused the death of four persons by witchcraft. Some portion of these monstrous fictions they recanted under the gallows; but even on the brink of the grave they persisted in claiming the character of witches, and in asserting that they had had personal intercourse with the devil.

In March, 1684, Alicia Welland was tried before Chief Baron Montague at Exeter, convicted, and executed.

To estimate the extent to which the belief in witchcraft, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, operated against the lives of the accused, Mr. Inderwick has searched the records of the Western Circuit, from 1670 to 1712 inclusive, and ascertained that out of fifty-two persons tried in that period on various charges of witchcraft, only seven were convicted, and one of these seven was reprieved. ‘What occurred on the Western,’ he remarks, ‘probably went on at each of the several circuits into which the country was then divided; and one cannot doubt that in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Huntingdon, and Lancashire, where the witches mostly abounded, the charges and convictions were far more numerous than in the West. The judges appear, however, not to have taken the line of Sir Matthew Hale, but, as far as possible, to have prevented convictions. Indeed, Lord Jeffreys – who, when not engaged on political business, was at least as good a judge as any of his contemporaries – and Chief Justice Herbert, tried and obtained acquittals of witches in 1685 and 1686 at the very time that they were engaged on the Bloody Assize in slaughtering the participators in Monmouth’s rebellion. It is also a remarkable fact that, from 1686 to 1712, when charges of witchcraft gradually ceased, charges and convictions of malicious injury to property in burning haystacks, barns, and houses, and malicious injuries to persons and to cattle, increased enormously, these being the sort of accusations freely made against the witches before this date.’

I think there can be little doubt that many evil-disposed persons availed themselves of the prevalent belief in witchcraft as a cover for their depredations on the property of their neighbours, diverting suspicion from themselves to the poor wretches who, through accidental circumstances, had acquired notoriety as the devil’s accomplices. It would also seem probable that not a few of the reputed witches similarly turned to account their bad reputation. It is not impossible, indeed, that there may be a certain degree of truth in the tales told of the witches’ meetings, and that in some rural neighbourhoods the individuals suspected of being witches occasionally assembled at an appointed rendezvous to consult upon their position and their line of operations. The practices at these gatherings may not always have been kept within the limits of decency and decorum; and in this way the loathsome details with which every account of the witches’ meetings are embellished may have had a real foundation.

That the judges at length began persistently to discourage convictions for witchcraft is seen in the action of Lord Chief Justice Holt at the Bury St. Edmunds Assize in 1694. An old woman, known as Mother Munnings, of Harks, in Suffolk, was brought before him, and the witnesses against her retailed the village talk – how that her landlord, Thomas Purnel, who, to get her out of the house she had rented from him, had removed the street-door, was told that ‘his nose should lie upward in the churchyard’ before the following Saturday; and how that he was taken ill on the Monday, died on the Tuesday, and was buried on the Thursday. How that she had a familiar in the shape of a polecat, and how that a neighbour, peeping in at her window one night, saw her take out of her basket a couple of imps – the one black, the other white. And how that a woman, named Sarah Wager, having quarrelled with her, was stricken dumb and lame. All this tittle-tattle was brushed aside in his charge by the strong common-sense of the judge; and the jury, under his direction, returned a verdict of ‘Not guilty.’ Dr. Hutchinson remarks: ‘Upon particular inquiry of several in or near the town, I find most are satisfied that it is a very right judgment. She lived about two years after, without doing any known harm to anybody, and died declaring her innocence. Her landlord was a consumptive-spent man, and the words not exactly as they swore them, and the whole thing seventeen years before… The white imp is believed to have been a lock of wool, taken out of her basket to spin; and its shadow, it is supposed, was the black one.’

In the same year (1694) a woman, named Margaret Elmore, was tried at Ipswich; in 1695 one Mary Gay at Launceston; and in 1696 one Elizabeth Hume at Exeter; but in each case, under the direction of Chief Justice Holt, a verdict of acquittal was declared. Thus the seventeenth century went its way in an unaccustomed atmosphere of justice and humanity.

CHAPTER III

THE DECLINE OF WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND

The honour of discouraging prosecutions for witchcraft belongs in the first place to France, which abolished them as early as 1672, and for some years previously had refrained from sending any victims to the scaffold or the stake. In England, the same effect was partly due, perhaps, to the cynical humour of the Court of Charles II., where many, who before ventured only to doubt, no longer hesitated to treat the subject with ridicule. ‘Although,’ says Mr. Wright, ‘works like those of Baxter and Glanvil had still their weight with many people, yet in the controversy which was now carried on through the instrumentality of the press, those who wrote against the popular creed had certainly the best of the argument. Still, it happened from their form and character that the books written to expose the absurdity of the belief in sorcery were restricted in their circulation to the more educated classes, while popular tracts in defence of witchcraft and collections of cases were printed in a cheaper form, and widely distributed among that class in society where the belief was most firmly rooted. The effect of these popular publications has continued in some districts down to the present day. Thus the press, the natural tendency of which was to enlighten mankind, was made to increase ignorance by pandering to the credulity of the multitude.’

I have spoken of the seventeenth century as going out in an atmosphere of justice and humanity. But an ancient superstition dies hard, and the eighteenth century, when it dawned upon the earth, found the belief in witchcraft still widely extended in England. Even men of education could not wholly surrender their adhesion to it. We read with surprise Addison’s opinion in The Spectator, ‘that the arguments press equally on both sides,’ and see him balancing himself between the two aspects of the subject in a curious state of mental indecision. ‘When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the world,’ he says, ‘I cannot forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil spirits, as that which we express by the name of witchcraft. But when I consider,’ he adds, ‘that the ignorant and credulous parts of the world abound most in these relations, and that the persons among us who are supposed to engage in such an infernal commerce are people of a weak understanding and crazed imagination, and at the same time reflect upon the many impostures and delusions of this nature that have been detected in all ages, I endeavour to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts than any which have yet come to my knowledge.’ And then he comes to a halting and unsatisfactory conclusion, which will seem almost grotesque to the reader of the preceding pages, with their details of succubi and incubi, imps and familiars, black cats, pole-cats, goats, and the like: ‘In short, when I consider the question, whether there are such persons in the world as we call witches, my mind is divided between two opposite opinions, or, rather (to speak my thoughts freely), I believe in general that there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft, but, at the same time, can give no credit to any particular instance of it.’

Addison goes on to draw the picture of a witch of the period, ‘Moll White,’ who lived in the neighbourhood of Sir Roger de Coverley, ‘a wrinkled hag, with age grown double.’ This old woman had the reputation of a witch all over the country; her lips were observed to be always in motion, and there was not a switch about her house which her neighbours did not believe had carried her several hundreds of miles. ‘If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake at church, and cried Amen in a wrong place, they never failed to conclude that she was saying her prayers backwards. There was not a maid in the parish that would take a pin of her, though she should offer a bag of money with it… If the dairy-maid does not make her butter to come so soon as she would have it, Moll White is at the bottom of the churn. If a horse sweats in the stable, Moll White has been upon his back. If a hare makes an unexpected escape from the hounds, the huntsman curses Moll White…

‘I have been the more particular in this account,’ says Addison, ‘because I know there is scarce a village in England that has not a Moll White in it. When an old woman begins to dote, and grow chargeable to a parish, she is generally turned into a witch, and fills the whole country with extravagant fancies, imaginary distempers, and terrifying dreams. In the meantime, the poor wretch that is the innocent occasion of so many evils begins to be frighted at herself, and sometimes confesses secret commerces and familiarities that her imagination forms in a delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest objects of compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards those poor decrepit parts of our species in whom human nature is defaced by infirmity and dotage.’

On March 2, 1703, one Richard Hathaway, apprentice to Thomas Wiling, a blacksmith in Southwark, was tried before Chief Justice Holt at the Surrey Assizes, as a cheat and an impostor, having pretended that he had been bewitched by Sarah Morduck, wife of a Thames waterman, so that he had been unable to eat or drink for the space of ten weeks together; had suffered various pains; had constantly vomited nails and crooked pins; had at times been deprived of speech and sight, and all through the wicked cunning of Sarah Morduck; further, that he was from time to time relieved of his ailments by scratching the said Sarah, and drawing blood from her. On these charges Sarah had been committed by the magistrates, and was tried as a witch at the Guildford Assizes in February, 1701. It was then proved in her defence that Dr. Martin, minister, of the parish of Southwark, hearing of Hathaway’s troubles and method of obtaining relief, had resolved to put the matter to a fair test; and repairing to Hathaway’s room, in one of his semi-conscious and wholly blind intervals, had, in the presence of many witnesses, pretended to give to the supposed sufferer the arm of Sarah Morduck, when it was really that of a woman whom he had called in from the street. Hathaway, in ignorance of the trick played upon him, scratched the wrong arm, and immediately professed to recover his sight and senses. On finding his deception discovered, Hathaway looked greatly ashamed, and attempted no defence or excuse, when Dr. Martin severely reproached him for his conduct.

The populace, however, remained unconvinced, and when Dr. Martin and his friends had departed, accompanied Hathaway to the house of Sarah Morduck, whom they savagely ill-treated. They then declared that the woman who had lent herself as a subject for experiment was also a witch, and loaded her with contumely, while her husband gave her a beating. It further appeared that, on one occasion, when Hathaway alleged he had been vomiting crooked pins and nails, he had been searched, and hundreds of packets of pins and nails found in his pockets, and on his hands being tied behind him, the vomiting immediately ceased. Eventually the jury acquitted Sarah Morduck, and branded Hathaway as a cheat and an impostor. The lower classes, however, received the verdict with contempt, mobbed Dr. Martin, and raised a collection for Hathaway as for a man of many virtues whom fortune had ill-treated. A magistrate, Sir Thomas Lane, who sided with the mob, summoned Sarah Morduck before him, and after she had been scratched by Hathaway in his presence, ordered her to be examined for devil-marks by two women and a doctor. Though none could be detected, his prejudice was so extreme that he committed her as a witch to the Wood Street Compter, refusing bail to the extent of £500. Dr. Martin, with other gentlemen, again came to her assistance, and ultimately she was released on reasonable surety.

The Government now thought it time to support the cause of justice, and, carrying out the verdict of the Guildford jury, indicted Hathaway as a cheat, and himself and his friends for assaulting Sarah Morduck. In addition to the evidence previously adduced, it was shown that, being in bad health, he had been placed in the custody of a Dr. Kenny, a surgeon, who, desiring to test the truth of his fasting, made holes in the partition wall of his compartment, and watched his proceedings for about a fortnight, during which period, while pretending to fast, he was observed to feed heartily on the food conveyed to him, and once, having received an extra allowance of whisky, he got tipsy, played a tune on the tongs, and danced before the fire. At the trial a Dr. Hamilton was called for the defence; but, Balaam-like, he banned rather than blessed, for having affirmed that the man’s fasting was the chief evidence of witchcraft, ‘Doctor,’ said the Chief Justice, ‘do you think it possible for a man to fast a fortnight?’ ‘I think not,’ he replied. ‘Can all the devils in hell help a man to fast so long?’ ‘No, my lord,’ said the doctor; ‘I think not.’ These answers were conclusive; and without leaving the box, the jury found Hathaway guilty, and he was sentenced by Chief Justice Holt to pay a fine of one hundred marks, to stand in the pillory on the following Sunday for two hours at Southwark, the same on the Tuesday at the Royal Exchange, the same on the Wednesday at Temple Bar, the next day to be whipped at the House of Correction, and afterwards to be imprisoned with hard labour for six months.

Two reputed witches, Eleanor Shaw and Mary Phillips, were executed at Northampton on March 17, 1705; and on July 22, 1712, five Northamptonshire witches, Agnes Brown, Helen Jenkinson, A… Bill, Joan Vaughan, and Mary Barber, suffered at the same place.

It is generally believed that the last time an English jury brought in a verdict of guilty in a case of witchcraft was in 1712, when a poor Hertfordshire peasant woman, named Jane Wenham, was tried before Mr. Justice Powell, sixteen witnesses, including three clergymen, supporting the accusation. The evidence was absurd and frivolous; but, in spite of its frivolousness and absurdity, and the poor woman’s fervent protestations of innocence, and the judge’s strong summing-up in her favour, a Hertfordshire jury convicted her. The judge was compelled by the law to pronounce sentence of death, but he lost no time in obtaining from the Queen a pardon for the unfortunate woman. But, on emerging from her prison, she was treated by the mob with savage ferocity; and, to save her from being lynched, Colonel Plumer, of Gilson, took her into his service, in which she continued for many years, earning and preserving the esteem of all who knew her.

But there is a record of an execution for witchcraft, that of Mary Hicks and her daughter, taking place in 1716 (July 28); and though it is not indubitably established, I do not think its authenticity can well be doubted.

In January, 1736, an old woman of Frome, reputed to be a witch, was dragged from her sick-bed, put astride on a saddle, and kept in a mill-pond for nearly an hour, in the presence of upwards of 200 people. The story goes that she swam like a cork, but on being taken out of the water expired immediately. A coroner’s inquest was held on the body, and three persons were committed for trial for manslaughter; but it is probable that they escaped punishment, as nobody seems to have been willing to appear in the witness-box against them.

Among the vulgar, indeed, the superstition was hard to kill. In the middle of the last century, a poor man and his wife, of the name of Osborne, each about seventy years of age, lived at Tring, in Hertfordshire. On one occasion, Mother Osborne, as she was commonly called, went to a dairyman, appropriately named Butterfield, and asked for some buttermilk; but was harshly repulsed, and informed that he had scarcely enough for his hogs. The woman replied with asperity that the Pretender (it was in the ’45 that this took place) would soon have him and his hogs. It was customary then to connect the Pretender and the devil in one’s thoughts and aspirations; and the ignorant rustics soon afterwards, when Butterfield’s calves sickened, declared that Mother Osborne had bewitched them, with the assistance of the devil. Later, when Butterfield, who had given up his farm and taken to an ale-house, suffered much from fits, Mother Osborne was again declared to be the cause (1751), and he was advised to send to Northamptonshire for an old woman, a white witch, to baffle her spells. The white witch came, confirmed, of course, the popular prejudice, and advised that six men, armed with staves and pitchforks, should watch Butterfield’s house by day and night. The affair would here, perhaps, have ended; but some persons thought they could turn it to their pecuniary advantage, and, accordingly, made public notification that a witch would be ducked on April 22. On the appointed day hundreds flocked to the scene of entertainment. The parish officers had removed the two Osbornes for safety to the church; and the mob, in revenge, seized the governor of the workhouse, and, collecting a heap of straw, threatened to drown him, and set fire to the town, unless they were given up. In a panic of fear the parish officers gave way, and the two poor creatures were immediately stripped naked, their thumbs tied to their toes, and, each being wrapped in a coarse sheet, were dragged a couple of miles, and then flung into a muddy stream. Colley, a chimney-sweep, observing that the woman did not sink, stepped into the pool, and turned her over several times with a stick, until the sheet fell off, and her nakedness was exposed. In this miserable state – exhausted with fatigue and terror, sick with shame, half choked with mud – she was flung upon the bank; and her persecutors – alas for the cruelty of ignorance! – kicked and beat her until she died. Her husband also sank under his barbarous maltreatment. It is satisfactory to know that Colley, as the worst offender, was brought to trial on a charge of wilful murder, found guilty, and most righteously hanged. The crowd, however, who witnessed his execution, lamented him as a martyr, unjustly punished for having delivered the world from one of Satan’s servants, and overwhelmed with execrations the sheriff whose duty it was to see that the behests of the law were carried out.

In February, 1759, Susannah Hannaker, of Wingrove, Wilts, was put to the ordeal of weighing, but fortunately for herself outweighed the church Bible, against which she was tested. In June, 1760, at Leicester; in June, 1785, at Northampton; and in April, 1829, at Monmouth, persons were tried for ducking supposed witches. Similar cases have occurred in our own time. On September 4, 1863, a paralytic Frenchman died of an illness induced by his having been ducked as a wizard in a pond at Castle Hedingham, in Essex. And an aged woman, named Anne Turner, reputed to be a witch, was killed by a man, partially insane, at the village of Long Compton, in Warwickshire, on September 17, 1875. But the reader needs no further illustrations of the longevity of human error, or the terrible vitality of prejudice, especially among the uneducated. The thaumaturgist or necromancer, with his wand, his magic circle, his alembics and crucibles, disappeared long ago, because, as I have already pointed out, his support depended upon a class of society whose intelligence was rapidly developed by the healthy influences of literature and science; but the sham astrologer and the pseudo-witch linger still in obscure corners, because they find their prey among the credulous and the ignorant. The more widely we extend the bounds of knowledge, the more certainly shall we prevent the recrudescence of such forms of imposture and aspects of delusion as in the preceding pages I have attempted to describe.

CHAPTER IV

THE WITCHES OF SCOTLAND

Among the people of Scotland, a more serious-minded and imaginative race than the English, the superstition of witchcraft was deeply rooted at an early period. Its development was encouraged not only by the idiosyncrasies of the national character, but also by the nature of the country and the climate in which they lived. The lofty mountains, with their misty summits and shadowy ravines – their deep obscure glens – were the fitting homes of the wildest fancies, the eëriest legends; and the storm crashing through the forests, and the surf beating on the rocky shore, suggested to the ear of the peasant or the fisherman the voices of unseen creatures – of the dread spirits of the waters and the air. To men who believed in kelpie and wraith and the second sight, a belief in witch and warlock was easy enough. And it was not until the Calvinist reformers imported into Scotland their austere and rigid creed, with its literal interpretation of Biblical imagery, that witchcraft came to be regarded as a crime. It was not until 1563 that the Parliament of Scotland passed a statute constituting ‘witchcraft and dealing with witches’ a capital offence. It is true that persons accused of witchcraft had already suffered death – as the Earl of Mar, brother of James III., who was suspected of intriguing with witches and sorcerers in order to compass his brother’s death, and Lady Glamis, in 1532, charged with a similar plot against James V. – but in both these cases it was the treason which was punished rather than the sorcery.

In the Scottish criminal records the first person who suffered death for the practice of witchcraft was a Janet Bowman, in 1572. No particulars of her offence are given; and against her name are written only the significant words, ‘convict and byrnt.’

A remarkable case, that of Bessie Dunlop, belongs to 1576.[44 - Pitcairn, ‘Criminal Trials,’ i. 49-58. This chapter is mainly founded on the reports in Pitcairn.] She was the wife of an Ayrshire peasant, Andrew Jack. According to her own statement, she was going one day from her house to the yard of Monkcastle, driving her cows to the pasture, and greeting over her troubles – for she had a milch-cow nigh sick to death, and her husband and child were lying ill, and she herself had but recently risen from childbed – when a strange man met her, and saluted her with the words, ‘Gude day, Bessie!’ She answered civilly, and, in reply to his questions, acquainted him with her anxieties; whereupon he informed her that her cow, her two sheep, and her child would die, but that her gude man would recover. She described this stranger in graphic language as ‘an honest, wele-elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane gray coat with Lumbart slevis of the auld fassoun; ane pair of gray brekis and quhyte schankis, gartaurt above the knee; ane black bonnet on his heid, cloise behind and plane before, with silkin laissis drawin throw the lippis thairof; and ane quhyte wand in his hand.’ He told Bessie that his name was Thomas Reid, and that he had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie. Extraordinary as was this information, it did not seem improbable to her when she noted the manner of his disappearance through the yard of Monkcastle: ‘I thocht he gait in at ane narroware hoill of the dyke [wall], nor ony erdlie man culd haif gaun throw; and swa I was sumthing fleit [terrified].’

Thomas Reid’s sinister predictions were duly fulfilled. Soon afterwards, he again met Bessie, and boldly invited her to deny her religion, and the faith in which she was christened, in return for certain worldly advantages. But Bessie steadfastly refused.

This visitor of hers was under no fear of the ordinance which is supposed to limit the mundane excursions of ‘spiritual creatures’ to the hours between sunset and cockcrow; for he generally made his appearance at mid-day. It is not less singular that he made no objection to the presence of humanity. On one occasion he called at her house, where she sat conversing with her husband and three tailors, and, invisible to them, plucked her by the apron, and led her to the door, and thence up the hill-end, where he bade her stand, and be silent, whatever she might hear or see. And suddenly she beheld twelve persons, eight women and four men; the men clad in gentlemen’s clothing, and the women with plaids round about them, very seemly to look at. Thomas was among them. They bade her sit down, and said: ‘Welcome, Bessie; wilt thou go with us?’ But she made no answer, and after some conversation among themselves, they disappeared in a hideous whirlwind.

When Thomas returned, he informed her that the persons she had seen were the ‘good wights,’ who dwell in the Court of Faëry, and he brought her an invitation to accompany them thither – an invitation which he repeated with much earnestness. She answered, with true Scotch caution: ‘She saw no profit to gang that kind of gates, unless she knew wherefore.’

‘Seest thou not me,’ he rejoined, ‘worth meat and worth clothes, and good enough like in person?’

The prospect, however, could not beguile her; and she continued firm in her simple resolve to dwell with her husband and bairns, whom she had no wish to abandon. Off went Thomas in a storm of anger; but before long he recovered his temper, and resumed his visits, showing himself willing to ‘fetch and carry’ at her request, and always treating her with the deference due to a wife and mother. The only benefit she derived from this friendship was, she said, the means of curing diseases and recovering stolen property, so that her witchcraft was of the simplest, innocentest kind. There was no compact with the devil, and it injured nobody – except doctors and thieves. Yet for yielding to this hallucination – the product of a vivid imagination, stimulated, we suspect, by much solitary reverie – Bessie Dunlop was ‘convyct and byrnt.’ Mayhap, as she was led to the death-fire, she may have dreamed that she had done better to have gone with Thomas Reid to the Court of Faëry!

The combination of the fairy folklore with the gloomier inventions of witchcraft occurs again in the case of Alison Pierson (1588). There was a certain William Simpson, a great scholar and physician, and a native of Stirling. While but a child, he was taken away from his parents ‘by a man of Egypt, a giant,’ who led him away to Egypt with him, ‘where he remained by the space of twelve years before he came home again.’ On his return, he made the acquaintance of Alison, who was a near relative, and cured her of certain ailments; but soon afterwards, less fortunate in treating himself, he died. Some months had passed when, one day as Alison was lying on her bed, sick and alone, she was suddenly addressed by a man in green clothes, who told her that, if she would be faithful, he would do her good. In her first alarm, she cried for help, but no one hearing, she called upon the Divine Name, when her visitor immediately disappeared. Before long, he came to her again, attended by many men and women; and compelling her to accompany them, they set off in a gay procession to Lothian, where they found puncheons of wine, with drinking-cups, and enjoyed themselves right heartily. Thenceforward she was on the friendliest terms with the ‘good neighbours,’ even visiting the Fairy Queen at her court, where, according to her own account, she was made much of, was treated, indeed, as ‘one of themselves,’ and allowed to see them compounding wonderful healing-salves in miniature pans over tiny fires.

It would seem that this woman had acquired a considerable knowledge of ‘herbs and simples,’ and that the medicines she made up effected remarkable cures. No doubt it was for the purpose of enhancing the value of her concoctions that she professed to have obtained the secret of them from the fairies. So great was her repute for medicinal skill, that the Archbishop of St. Andrews sought her advice in a dangerous illness, and, by her directions, ate ‘a sodden food,’ and at two draughts absorbed a quart of good claret wine, which she had previously medicated, greatly benefiting thereby.

Alison had a fertile fancy and a fluent tongue, and told stories of the fairies and their doings which did credit to her invention. It does not appear that she injured anybody, except, perhaps, by her drugs, but, then, even the faculty sometimes do that! But, like Bessie Dunlop, she was convicted of witchcraft, and burned. The surprising thing about this and similar cases is, that the poor woman should have assisted in her own condemnation by devising such extraordinary fictions. What was the use of them? A prisoner on a charge which, if proved against her, meant a terrible death, what object did she expect to gain? Was it all done for the sake of the temporary surprise and astonishment her tale created? that she might be the heroine of an hour? – Men have, we know, their strange ambitions, but if this were Alison Pierson’s, it was one of the very strangest.

In the next case I shall bring forward, that of Dame Fowlis, we come upon the trail of actual crime. Dame Fowlis, second wife of the chief of the clan Munro, was by birth a Roise or Ross, of Balnagown. To effect the aggrandisement of her own family, she plotted the death of Robert, her husband’s eldest son, in order to marry his wealthy widow to her brother, George Roise or Ross, laird of Balnagown; but as he, too, was married, it was necessary to get rid of his wife also. For this ‘double event,’ she employed, with little attempt at concealment, three ‘notorious witches’ – Agnes Roy, Christian Roy, and Marjory Nayre MacAllister, alias Loskie Loncart – besides one William MacGillivordam, and several other persons of dubious reputation. About Midsummer, 1576, Agnes Roy was despatched to bring Loskie Loncart into Dame Fowlis’ presence. The result of this interview was soon apparent. Clay images of the two doomed individuals were made, and exposed to the usual sorceries; while MacGillivordam obtained a supply of poison from Aberdeen, which the cook was bribed to put into a dish intended for the lady of Balnagown’s table. It did not prove mortal, as anticipated, but afflicted the unfortunate lady with a long and severe illness. Dame Fowlis, however, felt no remorse, but continued her plots, gradually widening their scope until she resolved to kill all her husband’s children by his first wife, in order to secure the inheritance for her own. In May, 1577, she instructed MacGillivordam to procure a large quantity of poison. He refused, unless his brother was made privy to the transaction. I suppose this was done, as the poison was obtained, and proved to be so deadly in its nature that two persons – a woman and a boy – were killed by accidentally tasting of it.

Foiled in her scheme, Dame Fowlis resorted to the practices of witchcraft, and bought, in June, for five shillings, ‘an elf arrow-head’ – that is, a rude flint implement – belonging to the neolithic age. On July 2, she and her accomplices met together in secret conclave; and having made an image of butter to resemble Robert Munro, they placed it against the wall; and then, with the elf arrow-head, Loskie Loncart shot at it for eight times, but each time without success, a proof that the familiars of the devil, like their master, could not always hit the mark. Meeting a second time for the same purpose, they made an image of clay, at which Loskie shot twelve times in succession, invariably missing, to the great disappointment of all concerned. The failure was ascribed to the elf arrow-head, and in August another was procured; two figures of clay were also made, for Robert Munro and for Lady Balnagown, respectively; at the latter Dame Fowlis shot twice, and at the former Loskie Loncart shot thrice; but the shooting was no better than before, and the two images being accidentally broken, the charm was destroyed. It was proposed to try poison again, but by this time the authorities had gained information of what was going on, and towards the end of November, Christian Roy, who had been present at the third meeting, was arrested. Being put to the torture, she confessed everything, and, together with some of her confederates, was convicted of witchcraft and burnt. Dame Fowlis, who assuredly was not the least guilty person, escaped to Caithness, but, after remaining in concealment for nine months, was allowed to return to her home. In 1588, her husband died, and was succeeded in his estates by Robert Munro, who revived the charge of witchcraft against his step-mother, and obtained a commission for her examination and that of her surviving accomplices. Dame Fowlis was put on her trial on July 22, 1590; but she had money and friends, and contrived to obtain a verdict of acquittal.

It is one of the most remarkable features of this remarkable case that, as soon as her acquittal was pronounced, a new trial was opened, in which the defendant was her other stepson, Hector Munro,[45 - Pitcairn, ut ante, i. 192, 202, 285.] who had been, only an hour before, the principal witness against her. The allegations against him were: first, that, during the sore sickness of his brother, in the summer of 1588, he had consulted with ‘three notorious and common witches’ respecting the best means of curing him, and had sheltered them for several days, until compelled by his father to send them about their business; and, second, that falling ill himself, in January, 1559, he had caused a certain Marion MacIngaruch, ‘one of the most notorious and rank witches in the whole realm,’ to be brought to him, and who, after administering three draughts of water out of three stones which she carried with her, declared that his sole chance of recovery lay in the sacrifice of ‘the principal man of his blood.’ After due consultation, they decided that this vicarious sufferer must be George Munro, his step-brother, the eldest son of Dame Fowlis. Messengers were accordingly sent in search of him. Apprehending no evil, he obeyed the call, and five days afterwards arrived at the house of Hector Munro. Following the directions of the witch, Hector received his brother in silence, giving him his left hand, and taking him by the right hand, and uttering no word of greeting until he had spoken. George, astounded by the chillness of his reception, which he could not but contrast with the warmth of the invitations, remained in his brother’s sick-room an hour without speaking. At last he asked Hector how he felt. ‘The better that you have come to visit me,’ replied Hector, and then was again silent, for so the witch had ordained. An hour after midnight appeared Marion MacIngaruch, with several assistants; and, arming themselves with spades, they repaired to a nook of ground at the sea-side, situated between the boundaries of the estates of the two lairds, and there, removing the turf, they dug a grave of the size of the invalid.

Marion returned to the house, and gave directions to her confederates as to the parts they were to play in the startling scene which was yet to be enacted. It was represented to her that if George died suddenly suspicions would be aroused, with a result dangerous to all concerned; and she thereupon undertook that he should be spared until April 17 next thereafter. Hector was then wrapped up in a couple of blankets, and carried to the grave in silence. In silence he was deposited in it, and the turf lightly laid upon him, while Marion stationed herself by his side. His foster-mother, one Christiana Neill Dayzell, then took a young lad by the hand, and ran the breadth of nine ridges, afterwards inquiring of the witch ‘who might be her choice,’ and receiving for answer, ‘That Hector was her choice to live, and his brother George to die for him.’ This ceremony was thrice repeated, and the sick man was then taken from the grave, and carried home, the most absolute silence still being maintained.

Such an experience on a bitter January night might well have proved fatal to the subject of it; but, strange to say, Hector Munro recovered – probably from the effect on his imagination of rites so peculiar and impressive; whereas, in the month of April, George Munro was seized with a grievous illness, of which, in the following June, he died. Grateful for the cure she had effected, Hector received the witch Marion into high favour, installing her at his uncle’s house of Kildrummadyis, entertaining her ‘as if she had been his spouse, and giving her such pre-eminence in the county that none durst offend her.’ But it is the nature of such unhallowed confederacies to surrender, sooner or later, their dark, dread secrets. Whispers spread abroad, gradually shaping themselves into a connected story which invited judicial investigation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Marion MacIngaruch; but for some time Hector Munro contrived to conceal her, until Dame Fowlis discovered and made known that she was lying in the house at Fowlis. She was arrested; and, making a full confession of her actions, was sentenced to death, and burnt. Hector Munro, however, was more fortunate, and obtained his acquittal.

JAMES I. AND THE WITCHES

These, and other cases of witchcraft which, as the mania extended, occurred in various parts of the country, attracted the attention of King James, and made a profound impression upon him. Taking up the study of the subject with enthusiasm, he inquired into the demonology of France and Germany, where it had been matured into a science; and this so thoroughly that he became, as already stated, an expert, and was really entitled to pronounce authoritative decisions. His example, however, had a disastrous effect, confirming and deepening the popular credulity to such an extent that the common people, for a time, might have been divided into two great classes – witches and witch-finders. That in such circumstances many acts of cruelty should be perpetrated was inevitable. So complete was the demoralization, that the most trivial physical or mental peculiarity was held to be an indubitable witch-mark, and young and old were hurried to the stake like sheep to the slaughter.

In August, 1589, King James was married, by proxy, to Princess Anne of Denmark; and the impatient monarch was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his bride from Copenhagen, when the unwelcome intelligence reached him that the vessels conveying her and her suite had been overtaken by a storm, and, after a narrow escape from destruction, had put into the port of Upsal, in Norway, with the intention of remaining there until the following spring. The eager bridegroom, summoning up all his courage – he had no love for the sea – resolved to go in search of his queen, and, having found her, to conduct her to her new home. At Upsal the marriage was duly solemnized; and husband and wife then voyaged to Copenhagen, where they spent the winter. The homeward voyage was not undertaken until the following spring; and it was on May Day, 1590, that James and his Queen landed at Leith, after an experience of the sea which confirmed James’s distaste for it.

The political disorder of the country, and the hold which the new superstition had obtained upon the minds of the people, encouraged the circulation of dark mysterious rumours in connection with the King’s unfavourable passage; and a general belief soon came to be established that the tempestuous weather which had so seriously affected it was due to the intervention of supernatural powers, at the instigation of human treachery. Suspicion fixed at length upon the Earl of Bothwell, who was arrested and committed to prison; but in June, 1591, contrived to make his escape, and conceal himself in the remote recesses of the Highlands. Not long afterwards, some curious circumstances attending certain cures which a servant girl – Geillis, or Gillies, Duncan – had performed, led to her being suspected of witchcraft; and this suspicion opened up a series of investigations, which revealed the existence of an extraordinary conspiracy against the King’s life.

Geillis Duncan was in the employment of David Seton, deputy-bailiff of the small town of Tranent, in Haddingtonshire. Unlike the witch of English rural life, she was young, comely, and fair-complexioned; and the only ground on which the idea of witchcraft was associated with her was the wonderful quickness with which she had cured some sick and diseased persons, the fact being that she was well acquainted with the healing properties of herbs. When her master severely interrogated her, she at once denied all knowledge of the mysteries of the black art. He then, without leave or license, put her to the torture; she still continued to protest her innocence. It was a popular conviction that no witch would confess so long as the devil-mark on her body remained undiscovered. She was subjected to an indecent examination – the stigma was found (said the examiners) on her throat; she was again subjected to the torture. The outraged girl’s fortitude then gave way; she acknowledged whatever her persecutors wished to learn. Yes, she was a witch! She had made a compact with the devil; all her cures had been effected by his assistance – quite a new feature in the character of Satan, who has not generally been suspected of any compassionate feeling towards suffering humanity. That she had done good instead of harm availed the unfortunate Geillis nothing. She was committed to prison; and the torture being a third time applied, made a fuller confession, in which she named her accomplices or confederates, some forty in number, residing in different parts of Lothian. Their arrest and examination disclosed the particulars of one of the strangest intrigues ever concocted.