Books: Lives of the Necromancers
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William Godwin >> Lives of the Necromancers
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Whitlocke in his Memorials of English Affairs, under the date of 1649,
speaks of many witches being apprehended about Newcastle, upon the
information of a person whom he calls the Witch-finder, who, as his
experiments were nearly the same, though he is not named, we may
reasonably suppose to be Hopkins; and in the following year about
Boston in Lincolnshire. In 1652 and 1653 the same author speaks of
women in Scotland, who were put to incredible torture to extort from
them a confession of what their adversaries imputed to them.
The fate of Hopkins was such us might be expected in similar cases.
The multitude are at first impressed with horror at the monstrous
charges that are advanced. They are seized, as by contagion, with
terror at the mischiefs which seem to impend over them, and from
which no innocence and no precaution appear to afford them sufficient
protection. They hasten, as with an unanimous effort, to avenge
themselves upon these malignant enemies, whom God and man alike
combine to expel from society. But, after a time, they begin to
reflect, and to apprehend that they have acted with too much
precipitation, that they have been led on with uncertain appearances.
They see one victim led to the gallows after another, without stint
or limitation. They see one dying with the most solemn asseverations
of innocence, and another confessing apparently she knows not what,
what is put into her mouth by her relentless persecutors. They see
these victims, old, crazy and impotent, harassed beyond endurance
by the ingenious cruelties that are practised against them. They were
first urged on by implacable hostility and fury, to be satisfied with
nothing but blood. But humanity and remorse also have their turn.
Dissatisfied with themselves, they are glad to point their resentment
against another. The man that at first they hailed as a public
benefactor, they presently come to regard with jealous eyes, and begin
to consider as a cunning impostor, dealing in cool blood with the
lives of his fellow-creatures for a paltry gain, and, still more
horrible, for the lure of a perishable and short-lived fame. The
multitude, we are told, after a few seasons, rose upon Hopkins, and
resolved to subject him to one of his own criterions. They dragged
him to a pond, and threw him into the water for a witch. It seems
he floated on the surface, as a witch ought to do. They then pursued
him with hootings and revilings, and drove him for ever into that
obscurity and ignominy which he had amply merited.
CROMWEL.
There is a story of Cromwel recorded by Echard, the historian, which
well deserves to be mentioned, as strikingly illustrative of the
credulity which prevailed about this period. It takes its date from
the morning of the third of September, 1651, when Cromwel gained the
battle of Worcester against Charles the Second, which he was
accustomed to call by a name sufficiently significant, his "crowning
victory." It is told on the authority of a colonel Lindsey, who is
said to have been an intimate friend of the usurper, and to have been
commonly known by that name, as being in reality the senior captain
in Cromwel's own regiment. "On this memorable morning the general,"
it seems, "took this officer with him to a woodside not far from the
army, and bade him alight, and follow him into that wood, and to take
particular notice of what he saw and heard. After having alighted,
and secured their horses, and walked some little way into the wood,
Lindsey began to turn pale, and to be seized with horror from some
unknown cause. Upon which Cromwel asked him how he did, or how he
felt himself. He answered, that he was in such a trembling and
consternation, that he had never felt the like in all the conflicts
and battles he had ever been engaged in: but whether it proceeded
from the gloominess of the place, or the temperature of his body,
he knew not. 'How now?' said Cromwel, 'What, troubled with the
vapours? Come forward, man.' They had not gone above twenty yards
further, before Lindsey on a sudden stood still, and cried out, 'By
all that is good I am seized with such unaccountable terror and
astonishment, that it is impossible for me to stir one step further.'
Upon which Cromwel called him, 'Fainthearted fool!' and bade him,
'stand there, and observe, or be witness.' And then the general,
advancing to some distance from him, met a grave, elderly man with
a roll of parchment in his hand, who delivered it to Cromwel, and
he eagerly perused it, Lindsey, a little recovered from his fear,
heard several loud words between them: particularly Cromwel said,
'This is but for seven years; I was to have had it for one-and-twenty;
and it must, and shall be so.' The other told him positively, it could
not be for more than seven. Upon which Cromwel cried with great
fierceness, 'It shall however be for fourteen years.' But the other
peremptorily declared, 'It could not possibly be for any longer time;
and, if he would not take it so, there were others that would.' Upon
which Cromwel at last took the parchment: and, returning to Lindsey
with great joy in his countenance, he cried, 'Now, Lindsey, the battle
is our own! I long to be engaged.' Returning out of the wood, they
rode to the army, Cromwel with a resolution to engage as soon as
possible, and the other with a design to leave the army as soon. After
the first charge, Lindsey deserted his post, and rode away with all
possible speed day and night, till he came into the county of Norfolk,
to the house of an intimate friend, one Mr. Thoroughgood, minister
of the parish of Grimstone. Cromwel, as soon as he missed him, sent
all ways after him, with a promise of a great reward to any that
should bring him alive or dead. When Mr. Thoroughgood saw his friend
Lindsey come into his yard, his horse and himself much tired, in a
sort of a maze, he said, 'How now, colonel? We hear there is likely
to be a battle shortly: what, fled from your colours?' 'A battle,'
said the other; 'yes there has been a battle, and I am sure the king
is beaten. But, if ever I strike a stroke for Cromwel again, may I
perish eternally! For I am sure he has made a league with the devil,
and the devil will have him in due time.' Then, desiring his
protection from Cromwel's inquisitors, he went in, and related to
him the story in all its circumstances." It is scarcely necessary
to remind the reader, that Cromwel died on that day seven years,
September the third, 1658.
Echard adds, to prove his impartiality as an historian, "How far
Lindsey is to be believed, and how far the story is to be accounted
incredible, is left to the reader's faith and judgment, and not to
any determination of our own."
DOROTHY MATELEY.
I find a story dated about this period, which, though it does not
strictly belong to the subject of necromancy or dealings with the
devil, seems well to deserve to be inserted in this work. The topic
of which I treat is properly of human credulity; and this infirmity
of our nature can scarcely be more forcibly illustrated than in the
following example. It is recorded by the well-known John Bunyan, in
a fugitive tract of his, entitled the Life and Death of Mr. Badman,
but which has since been inserted in the works of the author in two
volumes folio. In minuteness of particularity and detail it may vie
with almost any story which human industry has collected, and human
simplicity has ever placed upon record.
"There was," says my author, "a poor woman, by name Dorothy Mateley,
who lived at a small village, called Ashover, in the county of Derby.
The way in which she earned her subsistence, was by washing the
rubbish that came from the lead-mines in that neighbourhood through
a sieve, which labour she performed till the earth had passed the
sieve, and what remained was particles and small portions of genuine
ore. This woman was of exceedingly low and coarse habits, and was
noted to be a profane swearer, curser, liar and thief; and her usual
way of asserting things was with an imprecation, as, 'I would I might
sink into the earth, if it be not so,' or, 'I would that God would
make the earth open and swallow me up, if I tell an untruth.'
"Now it happened on the 23rd of March, 1660, [according to our
computation 1661], that she was washing ore on the top of a steep
hill about a quarter of a mile from Ashover, when a lad who was
working on the spot missed two-pence out of his pocket, and
immediately bethought himself of charging Dorothy with the theft.
He had thrown off his breeches, and was working in his drawers.
Dorothy with much seeming indignation denied the charge, and added,
as was usual with her, that she wished the ground might open and
swallow her up, if she had the boy's money.
"One George Hopkinson, a man of good report in Ashover, happened to
pass at no great distance at the time. He stood a while to talk to
the woman. There stood also near the tub a little child, who was
called to by her elder sister to come away. Hopkinson therefore took
the little girl by the hand to lead her to her that called her. But
he had not gone ten yards from Dorothy, when he heard her crying out
for help, and turning back, to his great astonishment he saw the
woman, with her tub and her sieve, twirling round and round, and
sinking at the same time in the earth. She sunk about three yards,
and then stopped, at the same time calling lustily for assistance.
But at that very moment a great stone fell upon her head, and broke
her skull, and the earth fell in and covered her. She was afterwards
digged up, and found about four yards under ground, and the boy's
two pennies were discovered on her person, but the tub and the sieve
had altogether disappeared."
WITCHES HANGED BY SIR MATTHEW HALE.
One of the most remarkable trials that occur in the history of
criminal jurisprudence, was that of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender at
Bury St. Edmund's in the year 1664. Not for the circumstances that
occasioned it; for they were of the coarsest and most vulgar
materials. The victims were two poor, solitary women of the town of
Lowestoft in Suffolk, who had by temper and demeanour rendered
themselves particularly obnoxious to their whole neighbourhood.
Whenever they were offended with any one, and this frequently
happened, they vented their wrath in curses and ill language,
muttered between their teeth, and the sense of which could scarcely
be collected; and ever and anon they proceeded to utter dark
predictions of evil, which should happen in revenge for the ill
treatment they received. The fishermen would not sell them fish; and
the boys in the street were taught to fly from them with horror, or
to pursue them with hootings and scurrilous abuse. The principal
charges against them were, that the children of two families were
many times seized with fits, in which they exclaimed that they saw
Amy Duny and Rose Cullender coming to torment them. They vomited,
and in their vomit were often found pins, and once or twice a
two-penny nail. One or two of the children died; for the accusations
spread over a period of eight years, from 1656 to the time of the
trial. To back these allegations, a waggoner appeared, whose waggon
had been twice overturned in one morning, in consequence of the curses
of one of the witches, the waggon having first run against her hovel,
and materially injured it. Another time the waggon stuck fast in a
gate-way, though the posts on neither side came in contact with the
wheels; and, one of the posts being cut down, the waggon passed easily
along.
This trial, as I have said, was no way memorable for the circumstances
that occasioned it, but for the importance of the persons who were
present, and had a share in the conduct of it. The judge who presided
was sir Matthew Hale, then chief baron of the exchequer, and who had
before rendered himself remarkable for his undaunted resistance to
one of the arbitrary mandates of Cromwel, then in the height of his
power, which was addressed to Hale in his capacity of judge. Hale
was also an eminent author, who had treated upon the abstrusest
subjects, and was equally distinguished for his piety and inflexible
integrity. Another person, who was present, and accidentally took
part in the proceedings, was sir Thomas Browne, the superlatively
eloquent and able author of the Religio Medici. (He likewise took
a part on the side of superstition in the trial of the Lancashire
witches in 1634.) A judge also who assisted at the trial was Keeling,
who afterwards occupied the seat of chief justice.
Sir Matthew Hale apparently paid deep attention to the trial, and
felt much perplexed by the evidence. Seeing sir Thomas Browne in
court, and knowing him for a man of extensive information and vast
powers of intellect, Hale appealed to him, somewhat extrajudicially,
for his thoughts on what had transpired. Sir Thomas gave it as his
opinion that the children were bewitched, and inforced his position
by something that had lately occured in Denmark. Keeling dissented
from this, and inclined to the belief that it might all be practice,
and that there was nothing supernatural in the affair.
The chief judge was cautious in his proceeding. He even refused to
sum up the evidence, lest he might unawares put a gloss of his own
upon any thing that had been sworn, but left it all to the jury. He
told them that the Scriptures left no doubt that there was such a
thing as witchcraft, and instructed them that all they had to do was,
first, to consider whether the children were really bewitched, and
secondly, whether the witchcraft was sufficiently brought home to
the prisoners at the bar. The jury returned a verdict of guilty; and
the two women were hanged on the seventeenth of March 1664, one week
after their trial. The women shewed very little activity during the
trial, and died protesting their innocence. [225]
This trial is particularly memorable for the circumstances that
attended it. It has none of the rust of ages: no obscurity arises
from a long vista of years interposed between. Sir Matthew Hale and
sir Thomas Browne are eminent authors; and there is something in such
men, that in a manner renders them the contemporaries of all times,
the living acquaintance of successive ages of the world. Names
generally stand on the page of history as mere abstract idealities;
but in the case of these men we are familiar with their tempers and
prejudices, their virtues and vices, their strength and their
weakness.
They proceed in the first place upon the assumption that there is
such a thing as witchcraft, and therefore have nothing to do but with
the cogency or weakness of evidence as applied to this particular
case. Now what are the premises on which they proceed in this
question? They believe in a God, omniscient, all wise, all powerful,
and whose "tender mercies are over all his works." They believe in
a devil, awful almost as God himself, for he has power nearly
unlimited, and a will to work all evil, with subtlety, deep reach
of thought, vigilant, "walking about, seeking whom he may devour."
This they believe, for they refer to "the Scriptures, as confirming
beyond doubt that there is such a thing as witchcraft." Now what
office do they assign to the devil, "the prince of the power of the
air," at whose mighty attributes, combined with his insatiable
malignity, the wisest of us might well stand aghast? It is the first
law of sound sense and just judgment,
--_servetur ad imum,
Qualis ab incoepto processerit, et sibi constet_;
that every character which we place on the scene of things should
demean himself as his beginning promises, and preserve a consistency
that, to a mind sufficiently sagacious, should almost serve us in
lieu of the gift of prophecy. And how is this devil employed according
to sir Matthew Hale and sir Thomas Browne? Why in proffering himself
as the willing tool of the malice of two doting old women. In
afflicting with fits, in causing them to vomit pins and nails, the
children of the parents who had treated the old women with barbarity
and cruelty. In judgment upon these women sit two men, in some
respects the most enlightened of an age that produced Paradise Lost,
and in confirmation of this blessed creed two women are executed in
cool blood, in a country which had just achieved its liberties under
the guidance and the virtues of Hampden.
What right we have in any case to take away the life of a human being
already in our power, and under the forms of justice, is a problem,
one of the hardest that can be proposed for the wit of man to solve.
But to see some of the wisest of men, sitting in judgment upon the
lives of two human creatures in consequence of the forgery and tricks
of a set of malicious children, as in this case undoubtedly it was,
is beyond conception deplorable. Let us think for a moment of the
inexpressible evils which a man encounters when dragged from his
peaceful home under a capital accusation, of his arraignment in open
court, of the orderly course of the evidence, and of the sentence
awarded against him, of the "damned minutes and days he counts over"
from that time to his execution, of his being finally brought forth
before a multitude exasperated by his supposed crimes, and his being
cast out from off the earth as unworthy so much as to exist among
men, and all this being wholly innocent. The consciousness of
innocence a hundred fold embitters the pang. And, if these poor women
were too obtuse of soul entirely to feel the pang, did that give their
superiors a right to overwhelm and to crush them?
WITCHCRAFT IN SWEDEN.
The story of witchcraft, as it is reported to have passed in Sweden
in the year 1670, and has many times been reprinted in this country,
is on several accounts one of the most interesting and deplorable
that has ever been recorded. The scene lies in Dalecarlia, a country
for ever memorable as having witnessed some of the earliest adventures
of Gustavus Vasa, his deepest humiliation, and the first commencement
of his prosperous fortune. The Dalecarlians are represented to us
as the simplest, the most faithful, and the bravest of the sons of
men, men undebauched and unsuspicious, but who devoted themselves
in the most disinterested manner for a cause that appeared to them
worthy of support, the cause of liberty and independence against the
cruelest of tyrants. At least such they were in 1520, one hundred
and fifty years before the date of the story we are going to
recount.--The site of these events was at Mohra and Elfdale in the
province that has just been mentioned.
The Dalecarlians, simple and ignorant, but of exemplary integrity
and honesty, who dwelt amidst impracticable mountains and spacious
mines of copper and iron, were distinguished for superstition among
the countries of the north, where all were superstitious. They were
probably subject at intervals to the periodical visitation of alarms
of witches, when whole races of men became wild with the infection
without any one's being well able to account for it.
In the year 1670, and one or two preceding years, there was a great
alarm of witches in the town of Mohra. There were always two or three
witches existing in some of the obscure quarters of this place. But
now they increased in number, and shewed their faces with the utmost
audacity. Their mode on the present occasion was to make a journey
through the air to Blockula, an imaginary scene of retirement, which
none but the witches and their dupes had ever seen. Here they met
with feasts and various entertainments, which it seems had particular
charms for the persons who partook of them. The witches used to go
into a field in the environs of Mohra, and cry aloud to the devil
in a peculiar sort of recitation, "Antecessor, come and carry us to
Blockula!" Then appeared a multitude of strange beasts, men, spits,
posts, and goats with spits run through their entrails and projecting
behind that all might have room. The witches mounted these beasts
of burthen or vehicles, and were conveyed through the air over high
walls and mountains, and through churches and chimneys, without
perceptible impediment, till they arrived at the place of their
destination. Here the devil feasted them with various compounds and
confections, and, having eaten to their hearts' content, they danced,
and then fought. The devil made them ride on spits, from which they
were thrown; and the devil beat them with the spits, and laughed at
them. He then caused them to build a house to protect them against
the day of judgment, and presently overturned the walls of the house,
and derided them again. All sorts of obscenities were reported to
follow upon these scenes. The devil begot on the witches sons and
daughters: this new generation intermarried again, and the issue of
this further conjunction appears to have been toads and serpents.
How all this pedigree proceeded in the two or three years in which
Blockula had ever been heard of, I know not that the witches were
ever called on to explain.
But what was most of all to be deplored, the devil was not content
with seducing the witches to go and celebrate this infernal sabbath;
he further insisted that they should bring the children of Mohra along
with them. At first he was satisfied, if each witch brought one; but
now he demanded that each witch should bring six or seven for her
quota. How the witches managed with the minds of the children we are
at a loss to guess. These poor, harmless innocents, steeped to the
very lips in ignorance and superstition, were by some means kept in
continual alarm by the wicked, or, to speak more truly, the insane
old women, and said as their prompters said. It does not appear that
the children ever left their beds, at the time they reported they
had been to Blockula. Their parents watched them with fearful anxiety.
At a certain time of the night the children were seized with a strange
shuddering, their limbs were agitated, and their skins covered with
a profuse perspiration. When they came to themselves, they related
that they had been to Blockula, and the strange things they had seen,
similar to what had already been described by the women. Three hundred
children of various ages are said to have been seized with this
epidemic.
The whole town of Mohra became subject to the infection, and were
overcome with the deepest affliction. They consulted together, and
drew up a petition to the royal council at Stockholm, intreating that
they would discover some remedy, and that the government would
interpose its authority to put an end to a calamity to which otherwise
they could find no limit. The king of Sweden was at that time Charles
the Eleventh, father of Charles the Twelfth, and was only fourteen
years of age. His council in their wisdom deputed two commissioners
to Mohra, and furnished them with powers to examine witnesses, and
to take whatever proceedings they might judge necessary to put an
end to so unspeakable a calamity.
They entered on the business of their commission on the thirteenth
of August, the ceremony having been begun with two sermons in the
great church of Mohra, in which we may be sure the damnable sin of
witchcraft was fully dilated on, and concluding with prayers to
Almighty God that in his mercy he would speedily bring to an end the
tremendous misfortune, with which for their sins he had seen fit to
afflict the poor people of Mohra. The next day they opened their
commission. Seventy witches were brought before them. They were all
at first stedfast in their denial, alleging that the charges were
wantonly brought against them, solely from malice and ill will. But
the judges were earnest in pressing them, till at length first one,
and then another; burst into tears, and confessed all. Twenty-three
were prevailed on thus to disburthen their consciences; but nearly
the whole, as well those who owned the justice of their sentence,
as those who protested their innocence to the last, were executed.
Fifteen children confessed their guilt, and were also executed.
Thirty-six other children (who we may infer did not confess), between
the ages of nine and sixteen, were condemned to run the gauntlet,
and to be whipped on their hands at the church-door every Sunday for
a year together. Twenty others were whipped on their hands for three
Sundays. [226]
This is certainly a very deplorable scene, and is made the more so
by the previous character which history has impressed on us, of the
simplicity, integrity, and generous love of liberty of the
Dalecarlians. For the children and their parents we can feel nothing
but unmingled pity. The case of the witches is different. That three
hundred children should have been made the victims of this imaginary
witchcraft is doubtless a grievous calamity. And that a number of
women should have been found so depraved and so barbarous, as by their
incessant suggestions to have practised on the minds of these
children, so as to have robbed them of sober sense, to have frightened
them into fits and disease, and made them believe the most odious
impossibilities, argued a most degenerate character, and well merited
severe reprobation, but not death. Add to which, many of these women
may be believed innocent, otherwise a great majority of those who
were executed, would not have died protesting their entire freedom
from what was imputed to them. Some of the parents no doubt, from
folly and ill judgment, aided the alienation of mind in their children
which they afterwards so deeply deplored, and gratified their
senseless aversion to the old women, when they were themselves in
many cases more the real authors of the evil than those who suffered.
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