In the annals of English witchcraft Matthew Hopkins occupies a place by himself. For more than two years he was the arch-instigator in prosecutions which, at least in the numbers of those executed, mark the high tide of the delusion. His name was one hardly known by his contemporaries, but he has since become a figure in the annals of English roguery. Very recently his life has found record among those of "Twelve Bad Men."[1] What we know of him up to the time of his first appearance in his successful rôle about March of 1644/5 is soon told. He was the son of James Hopkins, minister of Wenham[2] in Suffolk. He was "a lawyer of but little note" at Ipswich, thence removing to Manningtree. Whether he may have been the Matthew Hopkins of Southwark who complained in 1644 of inability to pay the taxes[3] is more than doubtful, but there is reason enough to believe that he found the law no very remunerative profession. He was ready for some new venture and an accidental circumstance in Manningtree turned him into a wholly new field of endeavor. He assumed the rôle of a witchfinder and is said to have taken the title of witchfinder-general.[4] He had made little or no preparation for the work that now came to his hand. King James's famous Dæmonologie he was familiar with, but he may have studied it after his first experiences at Manningtree. It seems somewhat probable, too, that he had read, and indeed been much influenced by, the account of the Lancashire witches of 1612, as well as by Richard Bernard's Advice to Grand Jurymen. But, if he read the latter book, he seems altogether to have misinterpreted it. As to his general information and education, we have no data save the hints to be gained from his own writings. His letter to John Gaule and the little brochure which he penned in self-defence reveal a man able to express himself with some clearness and with a great deal of vigor. There were force of character and nervous energy behind his defiant words. It is no exaggeration, as we shall see in following his career, to say that the witch crusader was a man of action, who might in another field have made his mark. To know something of his religious proclivities would be extremely interesting. On this point, however, he gives us no clue. But his fellow worker, John Stearne, was clearly a Puritan[5] and Hopkins was surely of the same faith. It can hardly be proved, however, that religious zeal prompted him in his campaign. For a time of spiritual earnestness his utterances seem rather lukewarm. It was in his own town that his attention was first directed towards the dangers of witchcraft. The witches, he tells us, were accustomed to hold their meetings near his house. During one of their assemblies he overheard a witch bid her imps to go to another witch. The other witch, whose name was thus revealed to him--Elizabeth Clarke, a poor one-legged creature--was promptly taken into custody on Hopkins's charge.[6] Other accusations poured in. John Rivet had consulted a cunning woman about the illness of his wife, and had learned that two neighbors were responsible. One of these, he was told, dwelt a little above his own home; "whereupon he beleeved his said wife was bewitched by ... Elizabeth Clarke, ... for that the said Elizabeth's mother and some other of her kinsfolke did suffer death for witchcraft." The justices of the peace[7] accordingly had her "searched by women who had for many yeares known the Devill's marks," and, when these were found on her, they bade her custodians "keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars."[8] Torture is unknown to English law; but, in our day of the "third degree," nobody needs to be told that what is put out at the door may steal in at the window. It may be that, in the seventeenth century, the pious English justices had no suspicion that enforced sleeplessness is a form of physical torture more nerve-racking and irresistible than the thumb-screw. Three days and nights of "watching" brought Elizabeth Clarke to "confess many things"; and when, on the fourth night, her townsmen Hopkins and Stearne dropped in to fill out from her own lips the warrants against those she had named as accomplices, she told them that, if they would stay and do her no hurt, she would call one of her imps. Hopkins told her that he would not allow it, but he stayed. Within a quarter of an hour the imps appeared, six of them, one after another. The first was a "white thing in the likeness of a Cat, but not altogether so big," the second a white dog with some sandy spots and very short legs, the third, Vinegar Tom, was a greyhound with long legs. We need not go further into the story. The court records give the testimony of Hopkins and Stearne. Both have related the affair in their pamphlets.[9] Six others, four of whom were women, made oath to the appearances of the imps. In this respect the trial is unique among all in English history. Eight people testified that they had seen the imps.[10] Two of them referred elsewhere to what they had seen, and their accounts agreed substantially.[11] It may be doubted if the supporting evidence offered at any trial in the seventeenth century in England went so far towards establishing the actual appearance of the so-called imps of the witches. How are we to account for these phenomena? What was the nature of the delusion seemingly shared by eight people? It is for the psychologist to answer. Two explanations occur to the layman. It is not inconceivable that there were rodents in the gaol--the terrible conditions in the gaols of the time are too well known to need description--and that the creatures running about in the dark were easily mistaken by excited people for something more than natural. It is possible, too, that all the appearances were the fabric of imagination or invention. The spectators were all in a state of high expectation of supernatural appearances. What the over-alert leaders declared they had seen the others would be sure to have seen. Whether those leaders were themselves deceived, or easily duped the others by calling out the description of what they claimed to see, would be hard to guess. To the writer the latter theory seems less plausible. The accounts of the two are so clearly independent and yet agree so well in fact that they seem to weaken the case for collusive imposture. With that a layman may be permitted to leave the matter. What hypnotic possibilities are inherent in the story he cannot profess to know. Certainly the accused woman was not a professed dealer in magic and it is not easy to suspect her of having hypnotized the watchers. Upon Elizabeth Clarke's confessions five other women--"the old beldam" Anne West, who had "been suspected as a witch many yeers since, and suffered imprisonment for the same,"[12] her daughter Rebecca,[13] Anne Leech, her daughter Helen Clarke, and Elizabeth Gooding--were arrested. As in the case of the first, there was soon abundance of evidence offered about them. One Richard Edwards bethought himself and remembered that while crossing a bridge he had heard a cry, "much like the shrieke of a Polcat," and had been nearly thrown from his horse. He had also lost some cattle by a mysterious disease. Moreover his child had been nursed by a goodwife who lived near to Elizabeth Clarke and Elizabeth Gooding. The child fell sick, "rowling the eyes," and died. He believed that Anne Leech and Elizabeth Gooding were the cause of its death. His belief, however, which was offered as an independent piece of testimony, seems to have rested on Anne Leech's confession, which had been made before this time and was soon given to the justices of the peace. Robert Taylor charged Elizabeth Gooding with the death of his horse, but he too had the suggestion from other witnesses. Prudence Hart declared that, being in her bed in the night, "something fell down on her right side." "Being dark she cannot tell in what shape it was, but she believeth Rebecca West and Anne West the cause of her pains." But the accusers could hardly outdo the accused. No sooner was a crime suggested than they took it upon themselves. It seemed as if the witches were running a race for position as high criminal. With the exception of Elizabeth Gooding, who stuck to it that she was not guilty, they cheerfully confessed that they had lamed their victims, caused them to "languish," and even killed them. The meetings at Elizabeth Clarke's house were recalled. Anne Leech remembered that there was a book read "wherein shee thinks there was no goodnesse."[14] So the web of charges and counter-charges was spun until twenty-three or more women were caught in its meshes. No less than twelve of them confessed to a share in the most revolting crimes. But there was one who, in court, retracted her confession.[15] At least five utterly denied their guilt. Among them was a poor woman who had aroused suspicion chiefly because a young hare had been seen in front of her house. She was ready to admit that she had seen the hare, but denied all the more serious charges.[16] Another of those who would not plead guilty sought to ward off charges against herself by adding to the charges accumulated against her mother. Hers was a damning accusation. Her mother had threatened her and the next night she "felt something come into the bed about her legges, ... but could not finde anything." This was as serious evidence as that of one of the justices of the peace, who testified from the bench that a very honest friend of his had seen three or four imps come out of Anne West's house in the moonlight. Hopkins was not to be outshone by the other accusers. He had visited Colchester castle to interview Rebecca West and had gained her confession that she had gone through a wedding ceremony with the Devil. But why go into details? The evidence was all of a kind. The female juries figured, as in the trials at Lancaster in 1633, and gave the results of their harrowing examinations. What with their verdicts and the mass of accusations and confessions, the justices of the peace were busy during March, April, and May of 1645. It was not until the twenty-ninth of July that the trial took place. It was held at Chelmsford before the justices of the peace and Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick. Warwick was not an itinerant justice, nor was he, so far as we know, in any way connected with the judicial system. One of the most prominent Presbyterians in England, he had in April of this year, as a result of the "self-denying ordinance," laid down his commission as head of the navy. He disappears from view until August, when he was again given work to do. In the mean time occurred the Chelmsford trial. We can only guess that the earl, who was appointed head of the Eastern Association less than a month later[17] (August 27), acted in this instance in a military capacity. The assizes had been suspended. No doubt some of the justices of the peace pressed upon him the urgency of the cases to be tried. We may guess that he sat with them in the quarter sessions, but he seems to have played the rôle of an itinerant justice. No narrative account of the trial proper is extant. Some one who signs himself "H. F." copied out and printed the evidence taken by the justices of the peace and inserted in the margins the verdicts. In this way we know that at least sixteen were condemned, probably two more, and possibly eleven or twelve more.[18] Of the original sixteen, one was reprieved, one died before execution, four were hanged at Manningtree and ten at Chelmsford. The cases excited some comment, and it is comment that must not be passed over, for it will prove of some use later in analyzing the causes of the outbreak. Arthur Wilson, whom we have mentioned as an historian of the time, has left his verdict on the trial. "There is nothing," he wrote, "so crosse to my temper as putting so many witches to death." He saw nothing, in the women condemned at Chelmsford, "other than poore mellenchollie ... ill-dieted atrabilious constitutions, whose fancies working by grosse fumes and vapors might make the imagination readie to take any impression." Wilson wrestled long with his God over the matter of witches and came at length to the conclusion that "it did not consist with the infinite goodnes of the Almightie God to let Satan loose in so ravenous a way." The opinion of a parliamentary journal in London on the twenty-fourth of July, three days before the Essex executions, shows that the Royalists were inclined to remark the number of witches in the counties friendly to Parliament: "It is the ordinary mirth of the Malignants in this City to discourse of the Association of Witches in the Associated Counties, but by this they shall understand the truth of the old Proverbe, which is that where God hath his Church, the Devill hath his Chappell." The writer goes on, "I am sory to informe you that one of the cheifest of them was a Parsons Wife (this will be good news with the Papists).... Her name was Weight.... This Woman (as I heare) was the first apprehended."[19] It seems, however, that Mrs. "Weight" escaped. Social and religious influences were not without value. A later pamphleteer tells us that the case of Mrs. Wayt, a minister's wife, was a "palpable mistake, for it is well knowne that she is a gentle-woman of a very godly and religious life."[20] Meantime Hopkins had extended his operations into Suffolk. Elizabeth Clarke and Anne Leech had implicated certain women in that county. Their charges were carried before the justices of the peace and were the beginning of a panic which spread like wildfire over the county. The methods which the witchfinder-general used are illuminating. Four searchers were appointed for the county, two men and two women.[21] "In what Town soever ... there be any person or persons suspected to be witch or Witches, thither they send for two or all of the said searchers, who take the partie or parties so suspected into a Roome and strip him, her, or them, starke naked."[22] The clergyman Gaule has given us further particulars:[23] "Having taken the suspected Witch, shee is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool, or Table, crosse-legg'd, or in some other uneasie posture, to which if she submits not, she is then bound with cords; there is she watcht and kept without meat or sleep for the space of 24 hours.... A little hole is likewise made in the door for the Impe to come in at; and lest it might come in some lesse discernible shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or flyes, to kill them. And if they cannot kill them, then they may be sure they are her Impes."[24] Hutchinson tells a story of one woman, who, after having been kept long fasting and without sleep, confessed to keeping an imp called Nan. But a "very learned ingenious gentleman having indignation at the thing" drove the people from the house, gave the woman some food, and sent her to bed. Next morning she knew of no Nan but a pullet she had. The most sensational discovery in Suffolk was that John Lowes, pastor of Brandeston, was a witch. The case was an extraordinary one and throws a light on the witch alarms of the time. Lowes was eighty years old, and had been pastor in the same place for fifty years. He got into trouble, undoubtedly as a result of his inability to get along with those around him. As a young man he had been summoned to appear before the synod at Ipswich for not conforming to the rites of the Established Church.[25] In the first year of Charles's reign he had been indicted for refusing to exhibit his musket,[26] and he had twice later been indicted for witchcraft and once as a common imbarritor.[27] The very fact that he had been charged with witchcraft before would give color to the charge when made in 1645. We have indeed a clue to the motives for this accusation. A parishioner and a neighboring divine afterwards gave it as their opinion that "Mr. Lowes, being a litigious man, made his parishioners (too tenacious of their customs) very uneasy, so that they were glad to take the opportunity of those wicked times to get him hanged, rather than not get rid of him." Hopkins had afforded them the opportunity. The witchfinder had taken the parson in hand. He had caused him to be kept awake several nights together, and had run him backwards and forwards about the room until he was out of breath. "Then they rested him a little and then ran him again, and this they did for several days and nights together, till he was weary of his life and scarce sensible of what he said or did."[28] He had, when first accused, denied all charges and challenged proof, but after he had been subjected to these rigorous methods he made a full confession. He had, he said, sunk a sailing vessel of Ipswich, making fourteen widows in a quarter of an hour. The witchfinder had asked him if it did not grieve him to see so many men cast away in a short time, and he answered: "No, he was joyfull to see what power his Impes had."[29] He had, he boasted, a charm to keep him out of gaol and from the gallows. It is too bad that the crazed man's confidence in his charm was misplaced. His whole wild confession is an illustration of the effectiveness of the torture. His fate is indicative of the hysteria of the times and of the advantages taken of it by malicious people. It was his hostility to the ecclesiastical and political sympathies of his community that caused his fall. The dementia induced by the torture in Lowes's case showed itself in the case of others, who made confessions of long careers of murder. "These and all the rest confessed that cruell malice ... was their chiefe delight." The accused were being forced by cruel torture to lend their help to a panic which exceeded any before or after in England. From one hundred and thirty to two hundred people[30] were soon under accusation and shut up in Bury gaol. News of this reached a Parliament in London that was very much engrossed with other matters. We cannot do better than to quote the Puritan biographer Clarke.[31] "A report was carried to the Parliament ... as if some busie men had made use of some ill Arts to extort such confession; ... thereupon a special Commission of Oyer and Terminer was granted for the trial of these Witches." Care was to be used, in gathering evidence, that confessions should be voluntary and should be backed by "many collateral circumstances." There were to be no convictions except upon proof of express compact with the Devil, or upon evidence of the use of imps, which implied the same thing. Samuel Fairclough and Edmund Calamy (the elder), both of them Non-Conformist clergymen of Suffolk,[32] together with Serjeant John Godbolt and the justices of the peace, were to compose this special court. The court met about the end of August, a month after the sessions under Warwick at Chelmsford, and was opened by two sermons preached by Mr. Fairclough in Bury church. One of the first things done by the special court, quite possibly at the instigation of the two clergymen, was to put an end to the swimming test,[33] which had been used on several of the accused, doubtless by the authority of the justices of the peace. This was of course in some sense a blow at Hopkins. Nevertheless a great deal of the evidence which he had gathered must have been taken into account. Eighteen persons, including two men,[34] were condemned to be hanged.[35] On the night before their execution, they were confined in a barn, where they made an agreement not to confess a word at the gallows the following day, and sang a psalm in confirmation. Next day they "dyed ... very desperately."[36] But there were still one hundred and twenty others in gaol[37] awaiting trial. No doubt many forthwith would have met the same end, had it not been for a lucky chance of the wars. The king's forces were approaching and the court hastened to adjourn its sessions.[38] But this danger was soon over, and within three weeks' time the court seems to have resumed its duties.[39] Of this second session we know nothing at all, save that probably forty or fifty more witches were condemned, and doubtless executed.[40] What became of the others we can only guess. Perhaps some were released, some left in gaol indefinitely. These things were not done in a corner. Yet so great was the distraction in England that, if we can trust negative evidence, they excited not a great deal of notice. Such comments as there were, however, were indicative of a division of opinion. During the interval between the two sessions, the Moderate Intelligencer, a parliamentary organ that had sprung up in the time of the Civil War, came out in an editorial on the affair. "But whence is it that Devils should choose to be conversant with silly Women that know not their right hands from their left, is the great wonder.... They will meddle with none but poore old Women: as appears by what we received this day from Bury.... Divers are condemned and some executed and more like to be. Life is precious and there is need of great inquisition before it is taken away."[41] This was the sole newspaper reference of which we know, as well as the only absolutely contemporary mention of these trials. What other expressions of opinion there were came later. James Howell, a popular essayist of his time, mentioned the trials in his correspondence as new proof of the reality of witchcraft.[42] The pious Bishop Hall saw in them the "prevalency of Satan in these times."[43] Thomas Ady, who in 1656 issued his Candle in the Dark, mentioned the "Berry Assizes"[44] and remarked that some credulous people had published a book about it. He thought criticism deserved for taking the evidence of the gaoler, whose profit lay in having the greatest possible number executed.[45] We have already described Hopkins as a man of action. Nothing is better evidence of it than the way in which he hurried back and forth over the eastern counties. During the last part of May he had probably been occupied with collecting the evidence against the accused at Bury. Long before they were tried he was busy elsewhere. We can trace his movements in outline only, but we know enough of them to appreciate his tremendous energy. Some time about the beginning of June he must have gone to Norfolk. Before the twenty-sixth of July twenty witches had been executed in that county.[46] None of the details of these trials have been left us. From the rapidity with which they were carried to completion we may feel fairly certain that the justices of the peace, seeing no probability of assize sessions in the near future, went ahead to try cases on their own initiative.[47] On the fifteenth of August the corporation of Great Yarmouth, at the southern extremity of the Norfolk coast line, voted to send for Mr. Hopkins, and that he should have his fee and allowance for his pains,[48] "as he hath in other places." He came at two different times, once in September and once in December. Probably the burden of the work was turned over to the four female assistants, who were granted a shilling a day apiece.[49] Six women were condemned, one of whom was respited.[50] Later three other women and one man were indicted, but by this time the furor against them seems to have abated, and they probably went free.[51] Hopkins's further course can be traced with some degree of certainty. From Yarmouth he probably went to Ipswich, where Mother Lakeland was burned on September 9 at the instance of the justices of the peace.[52] Mother Lakeland's death by burning is the second instance we have, during the Hopkins panic,[53] of this form of sentence. It is explained by the fact that it was the law in England to burn women who murdered their husbands. The chief charge against Mother Lakeland, who, by the way, was a woman quite above the class from which witches were ordinarily recruited,[54] was that she had bewitched her husband to death.[55] The crime was "petty treason." It is not a wild guess that Hopkins paused long enough in his active career to write an account of the affair, so well were his principles of detection presented in a pamphlet soon issued from a London press.[56] But, at any rate, before Mother Lakeland had been burned he was on his way to Aldeburgh, where he was already at work on the eighth of September collecting evidence.[57] Here also he had an assistant, Goody Phillips, who no doubt continued the work after he left. He was back again in Aldeburgh on the twentieth of December and the seventh of January, and the grand result of his work was summarized in the brief account: "Paid ... eleven shillings for hanging seven witches."[58] From Aldeburgh, Hopkins may have journeyed to Stowmarket. We do not know how many servants of the evil one he discovered here; but, as he was paid twenty-three pounds[59] for his services, and had received but six pounds in Aldeburgh, the presumption is that his work here was very fruitful in results. We now lose track of the witchfinder's movements for a while. Probably he was doubling on his track and attending court sessions. In December we know that he made his second visit to Yarmouth. From there he may have gone to King's Lynn, where two witches were hanged this year, and from there perhaps returned early in January to Aldeburgh and other places in Suffolk. It is not to be supposed for a moment that his activities were confined to the towns named. At least fifteen other places in Suffolk are mentioned by Stearne in his stories of the witches' confessions.[60] While Hopkins's subordinates probably represented him in some of the villages, we cannot doubt that the witchfinder himself visited many towns. From East Anglia Hopkins went westward into Cambridgeshire. His arrival there must have been during either January or February. His reputation, indeed, had gone ahead of him, and the witches were reported to have taken steps in advance to prevent detection.[61] But their efforts were vain. The witchfinder found not less than four or five of the detested creatures,[62] probably more. We know, however, of only one execution, that of a woman who fell under suspicion because she kept a tame frog.[63] From Cambridgeshire, Hopkins's course took him, perhaps in March of 1645/6, into Northamptonshire. There he found at least two villages infested, and he turned up some remarkable evidence. So far in his crusade, the keeping of imps had been the test infallible upon which the witchfinder insisted. But at Northampton spectral evidence seems to have played a considerable part.[64] Hopkins never expresses his opinion on this variety of evidence, but his co-worker declares that it should be used with great caution, because "apparitions may proceed from the phantasie of such as the party use to fear or at least suspect." But it was a case in Northamptonshire of a different type that seems to have made the most lasting impression on Stearne. Cherrie of Thrapston, "a very aged man," had in a quarrel uttered the wish that his neighbor's tongue might rot out. The neighbor thereupon suffered from something which we should probably call cancer of the tongue. Perhaps as yet the possibilities of suggestion have not been so far sounded that we can absolutely discredit the physical effects of a malicious wish. It is much easier, however, to believe the reported utterance imagined after its supposed effect. At all events, Cherrie was forced to confess that he had been guilty and he further admitted that he had injured Sir John Washington, who had been his benefactor at various times.[65] He was indicted by the grand jury, but died in gaol, very probably by suicide, on the day when he was to have been tried.[66] From Northamptonshire Hopkins's course led him into Huntingdonshire,[67] a county that seems to have been untroubled by witch alarms since the Warboys affair of 1593. The justices of the peace took up the quest eagerly. The evidence that they gathered had but little that was unusual.[68] Mary Chandler had despatched her imp, Beelzebub, to injure a neighbor who had failed to invite her to a party. An accused witch who was questioned about other possible witches offered in evidence a peculiar piece of testimony. He had a conversation with "Clarke's sonne of Keiston," who had said to him (the witness): "I doe not beleeve you die a Witch, for I never saw you at our meetings." This would seem to have been a clever fiction to ward off charges against himself. But, strangely enough, the witness declared that he answered "that perhaps their meetings were at severall places." Hopkins did not find it all smooth sailing in the county of Huntingdon. A clergyman of Great Staughton became outraged at his work and preached against it. The witchfinder had been invited to visit the town and hesitated. Meantime he wrote this blustering letter to one of John Gaule's parishioners. "My service to your Worship presented, I have this day received a Letter, &c.--to come to a Towne called Great Staughton to search for evil disposed persons called Witches (though I heare your Minister is farre against us through ignorance) I intend to come (God willing) the sooner to heare his singular Judgment on the behalfe of such parties; I have known a Minister in Suffolke preach as much against their discovery in a Pulpit, and forc'd to recant it (by the Committee) in the same place. I much marvaile such evill Members[69] should have any (much more any of the Clergy) who should daily preach Terrour to convince such Offenders, stand up to take their parts against such as are Complainants for the King, and sufferers themselves with their Families and Estates. I intend to give your Towne a Visite suddenly, I am to come to Kimbolton this weeke, and it shall bee tenne to one but I will come to your Town first, but I would certainely know afore whether your Town affords many Sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to give and afford us good welcome and entertainment, as other where I have beene, else I shall wave your Shire (not as yet beginning in any part of it my selfe) And betake me to such places where I doe and may persist without controle, but with thankes and recompence."[70] This stirred the fighting spirit of the vicar of Great Staughton, and he answered the witchfinder in a little book which he published shortly after, and which he dedicated to Colonel Walton of the House of Commons. We shall have occasion in another chapter to note its point of view. In spite of opposition, Hopkins's work in Huntingdonshire prospered. The justices of the peace were occupied with examinations during March and April. Perhaps as many as twenty were accused.[71] At least half that number were examined. Several were executed--we do not know the exact number--almost certainly at the instance of the justices of the peace.[72] It is pleasant to know that one was acquitted, even if it was after she had been twice searched and once put through the swimming ordeal.[73] From Huntingdonshire it is likely that Hopkins and Stearne made their next excursion into Bedfordshire. We know very little about their success here. In two villages it would seem that they were able to track their prey.[74] But they left to others the search which they had begun.[75] The witchfinder had been active for a little over a year. But during the last months of that time his discoveries had not been so notable. Was there a falling off in interest? Or was he meeting with increased opposition among the people? Or did the assize courts, which resumed their proceedings in the summer of 1646, frown upon him? It is hard to answer the question without more evidence. But at any rate it is clear that during the summer and autumn of 1646 he was not actively engaged in his profession. It is quite possible, indeed, that he was already suffering from the consumption which was to carry him off in the following year. And, with the retirement of its moving spirit, the witch crusade soon came to a close. Almost a twelvemonth later there was a single[76] discovery of witches. It was in the island of Ely; and the church courts,[77] the justices of the peace,[78] and the assize courts,[79] which had now been revived, were able, between them, to hang a few witches.[80] We do not know whether Hopkins participated in the Ely affair or not. It seems certain that his co-worker, Stearne, had some share in it. But, if so, it was his last discovery. The work of the two men was ended. They had been pursuing the pack of witches in the eastern counties since March of 1644/5. Even the execrations of those who opposed them could not mar the pleasure they felt in what they had done. Nay, when they were called upon to defend themselves, they could hardly refrain from exulting in their achievements. They had indeed every right to exult. When we come to make up the roll of their victims, we shall see that their record as witch discoverers surpassed the combined records of all others. It is a mistake to suppose that they had acted in any haphazard way. The conduct of both men had been based upon perfectly logical deductions from certain premises. King James's _Dæmonologie_ had been their catechism, the statute against the feeding of imps their book of rules. Both men started with one fundamental notion, that witchcraft is the keeping of imps. But this was a thing that could be detected by marks on the bodies.[81] Both were willing to admit that mistakes could be made and were often made in assuming that natural bodily marks were the Devil's marks. There were, however, special indications by which the difference between the two could be recognized.[82] And the two witchfinders, of course, possessed that "insight"[83] which was necessary to make the distinction. The theories upon which they worked we need not enter into. Suffice it to say that when once they had proved, as they thought, the keeping of imps, the next step was to watch those accused of it.[84] "For the watching," says Stearne,[85] "it is not to use violence or extremity to force them to confesse, but onely the keeping is, first to see whether any of their spirits, or familiars come to or neere them." It is clear that both Hopkins and Stearne recognized the fact that confessions wrung from women by torture are worthless and were by this explanation defending themselves against the charge of having used actual torture. There seems to be no adequate reason for doubting the sincerity of their explanation. Stearne tells us that the keeping the witches separate is "also to the end that Godly Divines might discourse with them." "For if any of their society come to them to discourse with them, they will never confesse."[86] Here, indeed, is a clue to many confessions. Several men arrayed against one solitary and weak woman could break her resolution and get from her very much what they pleased. As for starving the witches and keeping them from sleep, Stearne maintained that these things were done by them only at first. Hopkins bore the same testimony. "After they had beat their heads together in the Gaole, and after this use was not allowed of by the Judges and other Magistrates, it was never since used, which is a yeare and a halfe since."[87] In other words, the two men had given up the practice because the parliamentary commission had compelled them to do so. The confessions must be received with great caution, Hopkins himself declared.[88] It is so easy to put words into the witch's mouth. "You have foure Imps, have you not? She answers affirmatively. 'Yes'.... 'Are not their names so and so'? 'Yes,' saith she. 'Did you not send such an Impe to kill my child'? 'Yes,' saith she." This sort of thing has been too often done, asserted the virtuous witchfinder. He earnestly did desire that "all Magistrates and Jurors would, a little more than ever they did, examine witnesses about the interrogated confessions." What a cautious, circumspect man was this famous witchfinder! The confessions, he wrote, in which confidence may be placed are when the woman, without any "hard usages or questions put to her, doth of her owne accord declare what was the occasion of the Devil's appearing to her."[89] The swimming test had been employed by both men in the earlier stages of their work. "That hath been used," wrote Stearne, "and I durst not goe about to cleere my selfe of it, because formerly I used it, but it was at such time of the yeare as when none tooke any harme by it, neither did I ever doe it but upon their owne request."[90] A thoughtful man was this Stearne! Latterly he had given up the test--since "Judge Corbolt" stopped it[91]--and he had come to believe that it was a way of "distrusting of God's providence." It can be seen that the men who had conducted the witch crusade were able to present a consistent philosophy of their conduct. It was, of course, a philosophy constructed to meet an attack the force of which they had to recognize. Hopkins's pamphlet and Stearne's _Confirmation_ were avowedly written to put their authors right in the eyes of a public which had turned against them.[92] It seems that this opposition had first shown itself at their home in Essex. A woman who was undergoing inquisition had found supporters, and, though she was condemned in spite of their efforts, was at length reprieved.[93] Her friends turned the tables by indicting Stearne and some forty others of conspiracy, and apparently succeeded in driving them from the county.[94] In Bury the forces of the opposition had appealed to Parliament, and the Commission of Oyer and Terminer, which, it will be noticed, is never mentioned by the witchfinders, was sent out to limit their activities. In Huntingdonshire, we have seen how Hopkins roused a protesting clergyman, John Gaule. If we may judge from the letter he wrote to one of Gaule's parishioners, Hopkins had by this time met with enough opposition to know when it was best to keep out of the way. His boldness was assumed to cover his fear. But it was in Norfolk that the opposition to the witchfinders reached culmination. There most pungent "queries" were put to Hopkins through the judges of assize. He was charged with all those cruelties, which, as we have seen, he attempts to defend. He was further accused of fleecing the country for his own profit.[95] Hopkins's answer was that he took the great sum of twenty shillings a town "to maintaine his companie with 3 horses."[96] That this was untrue is sufficiently proved by the records of Stowmarket where he received twenty-three pounds and his traveling expenses. At such a rate for the discoveries, we can hardly doubt that the two men between them cleared from three hundred to a thousand pounds, not an untidy sum in that day, when a day's work brought six pence. What further action was taken in the matter of the queries "delivered to the Judges of assize" we do not know. Both Hopkins and Stearne, as we have seen, went into retirement and set to work to exonerate themselves. Within the year Hopkins died at his old home in Manningtree. Stearne says that he died "peaceably, after a long sicknesse of a Consumption." But tradition soon had it otherwise. Hutchinson says that the story, in his time, was that Hopkins was finally put to the swimming test himself, and drowned. According to another tale, which seems to have lingered in Suffolk, he offered to show the Devil's roll of all the witches in England and so was detected.[97] Butler, in his Hudibras, said of him: "Who after proved himself a witch, And made a rod for his own breech." Butler's lines appeared only fifteen years after Hopkin's death, and his statement is evidence enough that such a tradition was already current. The tradition is significant. It probably means, not that Hopkins really paid such a penalty for his career--Stearne's word is good enough proof to the contrary--but that within his own generation his name had become an object of detestation. John Stearne did not return to Manningtree--he may have been afraid to--but settled down near Bury, the scene of his greatest successes. If the epitaphs of these two men were to be written, their deeds could be compressed into homely statistics. And this leads us to inquire what was the sum of their achievement. It has been variously estimated. It is not an uncommon statement that thirty thousand witches were hanged in England during the rule of Parliament, and this wild guess has been copied by reputable authors. In other works the number has been estimated at three thousand, but this too is careless guesswork. Stearne himself boasted that he knew of two hundred executions, and Stearne ought to have known. It is indeed possible that his estimate was too high. He had a careless habit of confusing condemnations with executions that makes us suspect that in this estimate he may have been thinking rather of the number of convictions than of the hangings. Yet his figures are those of a man who was on the ground, and cannot be lightly discounted. Moreover, James Howell, writing in 1648, says that "within the compass of two years, near upon three hundred Witches were arraign'd and the major part executed in Essex and Suffolk only."[98] If these estimates be correct--or even if they approach correctness--a remarkable fact appears. Hopkins and Stearne, in fourteen months' time, sent to the gallows more witches than all the other witch-hunters of England can be proved--so far as our present records go--to have hung in the hundred and sixty years during which the persecution nourished in England. It must occur to the reader that this crusade was extraordinary. Certainly it calls for explanation. So far as the writer is aware, but one explanation has been offered. It has been repeated until it has become a commonplace in the history of witchcraft that the Hopkins crusade was one of the expressions of the intolerant zeal of the Presbyterian party during its control of Parliament. This notion is largely due to Francis Hutchinson, who wrote the first history of English witchcraft. Hutchinson was an Anglican clergyman, but we need not charge him with partisanship in accusing the Presbyterians. There was no inconsiderable body of evidence to support his point of view. The idea was developed by Sir Walter Scott in his _Letters on Demonology_, but it was left to Lecky, in his classic essay on witchcraft, to put the case against the Presbyterian Parliament in its most telling form.[99] His interpretation of the facts has found general acceptance since. It is not hard to understand how this explanation grew up. At a time when Hutchinson was making his study, Richard Baxter, the most eminent Puritan of his time, was still a great name among the defenders of witchcraft.[100] In his pages Hutchinson read how Puritan divines accompanied the witch-magistrates on their rounds and how a "reading parson" was one of their victims. Gaule, who opposed them, he seems to have counted an Anglican. He clearly put some faith in the lines of Hudibras. Probably, however, none of these points weighed so much with him as the general fact of coincidence in time between the great witch persecution and Presbyterian rule. It was hard to escape the conclusion that these two unusual situations must in some way have been connected. Neither Hutchinson nor those who followed have called attention to a point in support of their case which is quite as good proof of their contention as anything adduced. It was in the eastern counties, where the Eastern Association had flourished and where Parliament, as well as the army, found its strongest backing--the counties that stood consistently against the king--in those counties it was that Hopkins and Stearne carried on their work.[101] It may seem needless in the light of these facts to suggest any other explanation of the witch crusade. Yet the whole truth has not by any means been told. It has already been noticed that Hutchinson made some mistakes. Parson Lowes, who was hanged as a witch at the instance of his dissatisfied parishioners, was not hanged because he was an Anglican.[102] And the Presbyterian Parliament had not sent down into Suffolk a commission to hang witches, but to check the indiscriminate proceedings that were going on there against witches. Moreover, while it is true that East Anglia and the counties adjacent, the stronghold of the Puritans, were the scene of Hopkins's operations, it is quite as true that in those counties arose that powerful opposition which forced the witchfinders into retirement. We have noticed in another connection that the "malignants" were inclined to mock at the number of witches in the counties friendly to Parliament, but there is nothing to show that the mockers disbelieved the reality of the witchcrafts.[103] It is easy enough to turn some of Hutchinson's reasoning against him, as well as to weaken the force of other arguments that may be presented on his side. But, when we have done all this, we still have to face the unpleasant facts that the witch persecution coincided in time with Presbyterian rule and in place with Puritan communities. It is very hard to get around these facts. Nor does the writer believe that they can be altogether avoided, even if their edge can be somewhat blunted. It was a time of bitter struggle. The outcome could not yet be forecast. Party feeling was at a high pitch. The situation may not unfairly be compared with that in the summer of 1863 during the American civil war. Then the outbreaks in New York revealed the public tension. The case in 1645 in the eastern counties was similar. Every energy was directed towards the prosecution of the war. The strain might very well have shown itself in other forms than in hunting down the supposed agents of the Devil. As a matter of fact, the apparitions and devils, the knockings and strange noises, that filled up the pages of the popular literature were the indications of an overwrought public mind. Religious belief grew terribly literal under the tension of the war. The Anglicans were fighting for their king, the Puritans for their religion. That religious fervor which very easily deepens into dementia was highly accentuated.[104] Nevertheless, too much importance may have been given to the part played by Presbyterianism. There is no evidence which makes it certain that the morbidity of the public would have taken the form of witch-hanging, had it not been for the leadership of Hopkins and Stearne. The Manningtree affair started very much as a score of others in other times. It had just this difference, that two pushing men took the matter up and made of it an opportunity. The reader who has followed the career of these men has seen how they seem the backbone of the entire movement. It is true that the town of Yarmouth invited them of its own initiative to take up the work there, but not until they had already made themselves famous in all East Anglia. There is, indeed, too much evidence that their visits were in nearly every case the result of their own deliberate purpose to widen the field of their labors. In brief, two aggressive men had taken advantage of a time of popular excitement and alarm. They were fortunate in the state of the public mind, but they seem to have owed more to their own exertions. But perhaps to neither factor was their success due so much as to the want of government in England at this time. We have seen in an earlier chapter that Charles I and his privy council had put an end to a witch panic that bade fair to end very tragically. Not that they interfered with random executions here and there. It was when the numbers involved became too large that the government stepped in to revise verdicts. This was what the government of Parliament failed to do. And the reasons are not far to seek. Parliament was intensely occupied with the war. The writer believes that it can be proved that, except in so far as concerned the war, the government of Parliament and the Committee of Both Kingdoms paid little or no attention to the affairs of the realm. It is certainly true that they allowed judicial business to go by the board. The assizes seem to have been almost, if not entirely, suspended during the last half of the year 1645 and the first half of 1646.[105] The justices of the peace, who had always shown themselves ready to hunt down witches, were suffered to go their own gait.[106] To be sure, there were exceptions. The Earl of Warwick held a court at Chelmsford, but he was probably acting in a military capacity, and, inexperienced in court procedure, doubtless depended largely upon the justices of the peace, who, gathered in quarter sessions, were assisting him. It is true too that Parliament had sent down a Commission of Oyer and Terminer to Bury, a commission made up of a serjeant and two clergymen. But these two cases are, so far as we can discover, the sole instances during these two years when the justices of the peace were not left to their own devices. This is significant. Except in Middlesex and in the chartered towns of England, we have, excepting during this time of war, no records that witches were ever sentenced to death, save by the judges of assize. To put it in a nutshell, England was in a state of judicial anarchy.[107] Local authorities were in control. But local authorities had too often been against witches. The coming of Hopkins and Stearne gave them their chance, and there was no one to say stop. This explanation fits in well with the fact, to which we shall advert in another chapter, that no small proportion of English witch trials took place in towns possessing separate rights of jurisdiction. This was especially true in the seventeenth century. The cases in Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick, and Canterbury, are all instances in point. Indeed, the solitary prosecution in Hopkins's own time in which he had no hand was in one of those towns, Faversham in Kent. There the mayor and "local jurators" sent not less than three to the gallows.[108] One other aspect of the Hopkins crusade deserves further attention. It has been shown in the course of the chapter that the practice of torture was in evidence again and again during this period. The methods were peculiarly harrowing. At the same time they were methods which the rationale of the witch belief justified. The theory need hardly be repeated. It was believed that the witches, bound by a pact with the Devil, made use of spirits that took animal forms. These imps, as they were called, were accustomed to visit their mistress once in twenty-four hours. If the witch, said her persecutors, could be put naked upon a chair in the middle of the room and kept awake, the imps could not approach her. Herein lay the supposed reasonableness of the methods in vogue. And the authorities who were offering this excuse for their use of torture were not loth to go further. It was, they said, necessary to walk the creatures in order to keep them awake. It was soon discovered that the enforced sleeplessness and the walking would after two or three days and nights produce confessions. Stearne himself describes the matter graphically: "For the watching," he writes, "it is not to use violence or extremity to force them to confesse, but onely the keeping is, first, to see whether any of their spirits or familiars come to or neere them; for I have found that if the time be come, the spirit or Impe so called should come, it will be either visible or invisible, if visible, then it may be discerned by those in the Roome, if invisible, then by the party. Secondly, it is for this end also, that if the parties which watch them, be so carefull that none come visible nor invisible but that may be discerned, if they follow their directions then the party presently after the time their Familiars should have come, if they faile, will presently confesse, for then they thinke they will either come no more or have forsaken them. Thirdly it is also to the end, that Godly Divines and others might discourse with them, for if any of their society come to them to discourse with them, they will never confesse.... But if honest godly people discourse with them, laying the hainousnesse of their sins to them, and in what condition they are in without Repentance, and telling them the subtilties of the Devil, and the mercies of God, these ways will bring them to Confession without extremity, it will make them break into confession hoping for mercy."[109] Hopkins tells us more about the walking of the witches. In answer to the objection that the accused were "extraordinarily walked till their feet were blistered, and so forced through that cruelty to confesse," "he answered that the purpose was only to keepe them waking: and the reason was this, when they did lye or sit in a chaire, if they did offer to couch downe, then the watchers were only to desire them to sit up and walke about." Now, the inference might be drawn from these descriptions that the use of torture was a new feature of the witchcraft persecutions characteristic of the Civil War period. There is little evidence that before that time such methods were in use. A schoolmaster who was supposed to have used magic against James I had been put to the rack. There were other cases in which it is conjectured that the method may have been tried. There is, however, little if any proof of such trial. Such an inference would, however, be altogether unjustified. The absence of evidence of the use of torture by no means establishes the absence of the practice. It may rather be said that the evidence of the practice we possess in the Hopkins cases is of such a sort as to lead us to suspect that it was frequently resorted to. If for these cases we had only such evidence as in most previous cases has made up our entire sum of information, we should know nothing of the terrible sufferings undergone by the poor creatures of Chelmsford and Bury. The confessions are given in full, as in the accounts of other trials, but no word is said of the causes that led to them. The difference between these cases of 1645 and other cases is this, that Hopkins and Stearne accused so large a body of witches that they stirred up opposition. It is through those who opposed them and their own replies that we learn about the tortures inflicted upon the supposed agents of the Devil. The significance of this cannot be insisted upon too strongly. A chance has preserved for us the fact of the tortures of this time. It is altogether possible--it is almost probable--that, if we had all the facts, we should find that similar or equally severe methods had been practised in many other witch cases. We have been very minute in our descriptions of the Hopkins crusade, and by no means brief in our attempt to account for it. But it is safe to say that it is easily the most important episode in that series of episodes which makes up the history of English witchcraft. None of them belong, of course, in the larger progress of historical events. It may seem to some that we have magnified the point at which they touched the wider interests of the time. Let it not be forgotten that Hopkins was a factor in his day and that, however little he may have affected the larger issues of the times, he was affected by them. It was only the unusual conditions produced by the Civil Wars that made the great witchfinder possible. [1] See J. O. Jones, "Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder," in Thomas Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men (London, 1894). [2] See Notes and Queries, 1854, II, 285, where a quotation from a parish register of Mistley-cum-Manningtree is given: "Matthew Hopkins, son of Mr. James Hopkins, Minister of Wenham, was buried at Mistley August 12, 1647." See also John Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, 61 (cited hereafter as "Stearne"). [3] Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Advance of Money, 1642-1656, I, 457. Cf. Notes and Queries, 1850, II, 413. [4] The oft-repeated statement that he had been given a commission by Parliament to detect witches seems to rest only on the mocking words of Butler's Hudibras: "Hath not this present Parliament A Ledger to the Devil sent, Fully empower'd to treat about Finding revolted Witches out?" (Hudibras, pt. ii, canto 3.) To these lines an early editor added the note: "The Witch-finder in Suffolk, who in the Presbyterian Times had a Commission to discover Witches." But he names no authority, and none can be found. It is probably a confusion with the Commission appointed for the trial of the witches in Suffolk (see below, p. 178). Even his use of the title "witch-finder-general" is very doubtful. "Witch-finder" he calls himself in his book; only the frontispiece has "Witch Finder Generall." Nor is this title given him by Stearne, Gaule, or any contemporary record. It is perhaps only a misunderstanding of the phrase of Hopkins's title-page, "for the benefit of the whole kingdome"--a phrase which, as the punctuation shows, describes, not the witch-finder, but his book. Yet in County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc., 1893), 178, there is an extract about John Lowes from a Brandeston MS.: "His chief accuser was one Hopkins, who called himself Witchfinder-General." But this is of uncertain date, and may rest on Hutchinson. [5] This is evident enough from his incessant use of Scripture and from the Calvinistic stamp of his theology; but he leaves us no doubt when (p. 54) he describes the Puritan Fairclough as "an able Orthodox Divine." [6] Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches (London, 1647), 2--cited hereafter as "Hopkins." [7] One of them was Sir Harbottle Grimston, a baronet of Puritan ancestry, who had been active in the Long Parliament, but who as a "moderate man" fell now somewhat into the background. The other was Sir Thomas Bowes. Both figure a little later as Presbyterian elders. [8] Hopkins, 3. [9] Hopkins, 2; Stearne, 14-16. [10] It must, however, be noted that the oaths of the four women are put together, and that one of the men deposed merely that he confirmed Stearne's particulars. [11] Although Hopkins omitted in his testimony the first animal seen by Stearne. He mentioned it later, calling it Holt. Stearne called it Lought. See Hopkins, 2; Stearne, 15. But Stearne calls it Hoult in his testimony as reproduced in the True and exact Relation of the severall Informations, Examinations and Confessions of the Late Witches ... at Chelmesford ... (London, 1645), 3-4. [12] Despite this record Anne West is described by Stearne (p. 39) as one of the very religious people who make an outward show "as if they had been Saints on earth." [13] The confession of Rebecca West is indeed dated "21" March 1645, the very day of Elizabeth Clarke's arrest; but all the context suggests that this is an error. In spite of her confessions, which were of the most damaging, Rebecca West was eventually acquitted. [14] It must not for a moment, however, be forgotten that these confessions had been wrung from tortured creatures. [15] Richard Carter and Henry Cornwall had testified that Margaret Moone confessed to them. Probably she did, as she was doubtless at that time under torture. [16] The evidence offered against her well suggests on what slender grounds a witch might be accused. "This Informant saith that the house where this Informante and the said Mary did dwell together, was haunted with a Leveret, which did usually sit before the dore: And this Informant knowing that one Anthony Shalock had an excellent Greyhound that had killed many Hares; and having heard that a childe of the said Anthony was much haunted and troubled, and that the mother of the childe suspected the said Mary to be the cause of it: This Informant went to the said Anthony Shalock and acquainted him that a Leveret did usually come and sit before the dore, where this Informant and the said Mary Greenleife lived, and desired the said Anthony to bring downe his Greyhound to see if he could kill the said Leveret; and the next day the said Anthony did accordingly bring his Greyhound, and coursed it, but whether the dog killed it this Informant knows not: But being a little before coursed by Good-man Merrils dog, the dog ran at it, but the Leveret never stirred, and just when the dog came at it, he skipped over it, and turned about and stood still, and looked on it, and shortly after that dog languished and dyed." [17] See Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs ... (London, 1682; Oxford, 1853), ed. of 1853, I, 501. [18] "H. F."'s publication is the _True and exact Relation_ cited above (note 11). He seems to have written it in the last of May, but inserted verdicts later in the margin. Arthur Wilson, who was present, says that 18 were executed; Francis Peck, Desiderata Curiosa (London, 1732-1735; 1779), ed. of 1779, II, 476. But Hopkins writes that 29 were condemned at once and Stearne says about 28; quite possibly there were two trials at Chelmsford. There is only one other supposition, i. e., that Hopkins and Stearne confused the number originally accused with the number hanged. For further discussion of the somewhat conflicting evidence as to the number of these Essex witches and the dates of their trial see appendix C, under 1645. [19] A Diary or an Exact Journall, July 24-31, 1645, pp. 5-6. [20] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches at St. Edmundsbury ... (London, 1645), 9. [21] Ibid., 6. [22] Ibid. [23] John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts (London, 1646), 78, 79. [24] Queries 8 and 9 answered by Hopkins to the Norfolk assizes confirm Gaule's description. See Hopkins, 5. "Query 8. When these ... are fully discovered, yet that will not serve sufficiently to convict them, but they must be tortured and kept from sleep two or three nights, to distract them, and make them say anything; which is a way to tame a wilde Colt, or Hawke." "Query 9. Beside that unreasonable watching, they were extraordinarily walked, till their feet were blistered, and so forced through that cruelty to confess." Hopkins himself admitted the keeping of Elizabeth Clarke from sleep, but is careful to insert "upon command from the Justice." Hopkins, 2-3. On p. 5 he again refers to this point. Stearne, 61, uses the phrase "with consent of the justices." [25] Suffolk Institute of Archæology, Proceedings, X, 378. Baxter seems to have started the notion that Lowes was a "reading parson," or Anglican. [26] Ibid. [27] See A Magazine of Scandall, or a heape of wickednesse of two infamous Ministers (London, 1642), where there is a deposition, dated August 4, 1641, that Lowes had been twice indicted and once arraigned for witchcraft, and convicted by law as "a common Barrettor" at the assizes in Suffolk. Stearne, 23, says he was charged as a "common imbarritor" over thirty years before. [28] This account of the torture is given, in a letter to Hutchinson, by a Mr. Rivet, who had "heard it from them that watched with him." It is in some measure confirmed by the MS. history of Brandeston quoted in County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc.), 178, which adds the above-quoted testimony as to his litigiousness. [29] Stearne, 24. [30] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches, 5; Moderate Intelligencer, September 4-11, 1645. [31] See Samuel Clarke, Lives of sundry Eminent Persons ... (London, 1683), 172. In writing the life of Samuel Fairclough, Clarke used Fairclough's papers; see ibid., 163. [32] Fairclough was a Non-Conformist, but not actively sympathetic with Presbyterianism. Calamy was counted a Presbyterian. [33] Hopkins, 5-6; Stearne, 18. [34] One of these was Lowes. [35] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches. [36] Stearne, 14. [37] A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches, 5. [38] Ibid.; Stearne, 25. [39] Hutchinson speaks of repeated sessions. Stearne, 25, says: "by reason of an Allarum at Cambridge, the gaol delivery at Burie St. Edmunds was adjourned for about three weeks." As a matter of fact, the king's forces seem not to have got farther east than Bedford and Cambridge. See Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 501. [40] Stearne, 11, speaks of 68 condemnations. On p. 14 he tells of 18 who were executed at Bury, but this may have referred to the first group only. A MS. history of Brandeston quoted in County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc.), 178, says that Lowes was executed with 59 more. It is not altogether certain, however, that this testimony is independent. Nevertheless, it contains pieces of information not in the other accounts, and so cannot be ignored. [41] Moderate Intelligencer, September 4-11, 1645. [42] Howell, Familiar Letters (I use the ed. of Joseph Jacobs, London 1890-1892) II, 506, 515, 551. The letters quoted are dated as of Feb., 1646 (1647), and Feb., 1647 (1648 of our calendar); but, as is well known, Howell's dates cannot be trusted. The first was printed in the volume of his letters published in 1647, the others in that published in 1650. [43] Joseph Hall, Soliloquies (London, 1651), 52-53. [44] Thomas Ady, Candle in the Dark (London, 1656), 101-105. [45] The Rev. John Worthington attended the trial. In mentioning it in his diary, he made no comment. Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington, I (Chetham Soc., no. 13, 1847), 22. [46] So, at least, says Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 487. [47] J. G. Nall, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft (London, 1867), 92, note, quotes from the Yarmouth assembly book. Nall makes very careless statements, but his quotations from the assembly book may be depended upon. [48] Ibid. [49] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, IX, pt. i, 320. [50] The Collection of Modern Relations says that sixteen were hanged, but this compilation was published forty-seven years after the events: the number 6 had been changed to 16. One witch seems to have suffered later, see Stearne, 53. The statement about the 16 witches hanged at Yarmouth may be found in practically all accounts of English witchcraft, e. g., see the recent essay on Hopkins by J. O. Jones, in Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men, 60. They can all be traced back through various lines to this source. [51] H. Manship, History of Great Yarmouth, continued by C. J. Palmer (Great Yarmouth, 1854-1856), where the Yarmouth records about Hopkins are given in full. See also H. Harrod, in Norfolk Archæology (Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Soc., 1847-1864), IV, 249. [52] The Lawes against Witches and Conjuration ... (London, 1645), 4. J. O. Jones, in his account of Hopkins, loc. cit., says that "many were hanged or burned in Ipswich." I believe that no authority can be cited for this statement. [53] The first is in, A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches, 5. We of course do not know that the sentence was carried out. [54] The master of a ship had been "sutor" for her grandchild; The Lawes against Witches, 8. She was a "professour of Religion, a constant hearer of the Word for these many years." [55] Ibid. [56] I. e., The Lawes against Witches (London, 1645). See below, appendix A, § 4. [57] N. F. Hele, Notes or Jottings about Aldeburgh (Ipswich, 1890), 43-44. [58] This was doubtless the fee to the executioner. Mr. Richard Browne and Mr. Newgate, who were either the justices of the peace or the local magistrates, received £4 apiece for their services in trying the witches. [59] A. G. Hollingsworth, History of Stowmarket (Ipswich, 1844), 170. [60] For a list of these towns, see below, appendix C, under 1645, Suffolk. [61] Stearne, 45, two instances. [62] Ibid., 37, 39, 45. [63] Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 135. [64] Stearne, 39. [65] His whole confession reads like the utterance of a tortured man. [66] He had previously been found with a rope around his neck. This was of course attributed to witchcraft. Stearne, 35. [67] Ibid., 11. [68] John Wynnick and Joane Wallis made effective confessions. The first, when in the heat of passion at the loss of a purse, had signed his soul away (Stearne, 20-21; see also the pamphlet, the dedication of which is signed by John Davenport, entitled, The Witches of Huntingdon, their Examinations and Confessions ... London, 1646, 3). The latter maintained a troop of imps, among whom Blackeman, Grissell, and Greedigut figured most prominently. The half-witted creature could not recall the names on the repetition of her confessions, but this failing does not seem to have awakened any doubt of her guilt. Stearne could not avoid noticing that some of those who suffered were very religious. One woman, who had kept an imp for twenty-one years, "did resort to church and had a desire to be rid of her unhappy burden." [69] I. e., witches. [70] This letter is printed by Gaule at the opening of his Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts. [71] Stearne, 11; cf. below, appendix C, 1646 (pp. 405-406). [72] That it was done by the justices of the peace is a probable conclusion from Stearne's language. See his account of Joane Wallis, p. 13, also his account of John Wynnick, pp. 20-21. That the examinations were in March and April (see John Davenport's account, The Witches of Huntingdon) and the executions in May is a fact confirmatory of this; see Stearne, 11. But it is more to the point that John Davenport dedicates his pamphlet to the justices of the peace for the county of Huntingdon, and says: "You were present, and Judges at the Tryall and Conviction of them." [73] The swimming ordeal was perhaps unofficial; see Stearne, 19. Another case was that of Elizabeth Chandler, who was "duckt"; Witches of Huntingdon, 8. [74] Tilbrooke-bushes, Stearne, 11; Risden, ibid., 31. [75] This may be inferred from Stearne's words: "but afterward I heard that she made a very large confession,"ibid., 31. [76] Thomas Wright, John Ashton, J. O. Jones, and the other writers who have dealt with Hopkins, speak of the Worcester trials, in 1647, in which four women are said to have been hanged. Their statements are all based upon a pamphlet, The Full Tryals, Examination, and Condemnation of Four Notorious Witches at the Assizes held at Worcester on Tuseday the 4th of March.... Printed for I. W. What seems to have been the first edition of this brochure bears no date. In 1700 another edition was printed for "J. M." in Fleet Street. Some writer on witchcraft gained the notion that this pamphlet belonged in the year 1647 and dealt with events in that year. Wright, John Ashton, and W. H. Davenport Adams (Witch, Warlock, and Magician, London, 1889), all accept this date. An examination of the pamphlet shows that it was cleverly put together from the True and Exact Relation of 1645. The four accused bear the names of four of those accused at Chelmsford, and make, with a few differences, the same confessions. See below, appendix A, § 4, for a further discussion of this pamphlet. It is strange that so careful a student as Thomas Wright should have been deceived by this pamphlet, especially since he noticed that the confessions were "imitations" of those in Essex. [77] A. Gibbons, ed., Ely Episcopal Records (Lincoln, 1891), 112-113. [78] Stearne, 37. [79] That there were assizes is proved by the statement that "Moore's wife" confessed before the "Judge, Bench, and Country," _ibid._, 21-22, as well as by the reference in the Ely Episcopal Records, 113, to the "assizes." [80] Stearne, 17, 21-22. [81] For a clear statement of this point of view, see ibid., 40-50. [82] Stearne, 46-47. [83] Ibid., 50. [84] Ibid., 17. [85] Ibid., 13. [86] Ibid., 14. [87] Hopkins, 5. But Hopkins was not telling the exact truth here. When he was at Aldeburgh in September (8th) the accused were watched day and night. See chamberlain's accounts, in N. F. Hele, Notes or Jottings about Aldeburgh, 43. [88] Hopkins, 7. [89] Hopkins, 9. [90] Stearne, 18. Hopkins did not attempt to deny the use of the ordeal. He supported himself by quoting James; see Hopkins, 6. [91] Stearne, 18. He means, of course, Serjeant Godbolt. [92] See Stearne, in his preface to the reader, also p. 61; and see also the complete title of Hopkins's book as given in appendix A (p. 362). [93] A similar case was that of Anne Binkes, to whom Stearne refers on p. 54. He says she confessed to him her guilt. "Was this woman fitting to live?... I am sure she was living not long since, and acquitted upon her trial." [94] Not until after Stearne was already busy elsewhere. Stearne, 58. [95] It would seem, too, that Stearne was sued for recovery of sums paid him. "Many rather fall upon me for what hath been received; but I hope such suits will be disannulled." Stearne, 60. [96] Hopkins, 11. [97] County Folk Lore, Suffolk (Folk Lore Soc.) 176, quoting from J. T. Varden in the East Anglian Handbook for 1885, p. 89. [98] James Howell, Familiar Letters, II, 551. Howell, of course, may easily have counted convictions as executions. Moreover, it was a time when rumors were flying about, and Howell would not have taken the pains to sift them. Yet his agreement with Stearne in numbers is remarkable. Somewhat earlier, (the letter is dated February 3, 1646/7) Howell had written that "in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hundred indicted within these two years and above the one half executed" (_ibid._, 506). But, as noted above, his dates are not to be trusted. [99] See his History of Rationalism. [100] A name no greater, however, than that of Glanvill, who was a prominent Anglican. [101] It does not belong in this connection, but it should be stated, that one of the strongest reasons for supposing the Presbyterian party largely responsible for the persecution of witches lies in the large number of witches in Scotland throughout the whole period of that party's ascendancy. This is an argument that can hardly be successfully answered. Yet it is a legitimate question whether the witch-hunting proclivities of the north were not as much the outcome of Scottish laws and manners as of Scottish religion. [102] The Magazine of Scandall, speaking of Lowes and another man, says: "Their Religion is either none, or else as the wind blows: If the ceremonies be tending to Popery, none so forward as they, and if there be orders cleane contrary they shall exceed any Round-head in the Ile of great Brittain." See also above, pp. 175-177. [103] Yet it must not be overlooked that Stearne himself, who must have known well the religious sympathies of his opponents, asks, p. 58, "And who are they that have been against the prosecution ... but onely such as (without offence I may speak it) be enemies to the Church of God?" He dares not mention names, "not onely for fear of offence, but also for suits of Law." [104] Scott has pictured this very well in Woodstock. For a good example of it see The [D]Ivell in Kent, or His strange Delusions at Sandwitch (London, 1647). [105] See below, note 107. [106] The witches of Aldeburgh were tried at the "sessions," N. F. Hele, op. cit., 43-44. Mother Lakeland was probably condemned by the justices of the peace; see The Lawes against Witches. The witches of Huntingdon were tried by the justices of the peace; see above, note 73. As for the trials in Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, it is fairly safe to reason that they were conducted by the justices of the peace from other evidence which we have that there were no assizes during the last half of 1645 and the first five months of 1646; see Whitelocke, Memorials, II, 31, 44, 64. [107] For a few of the evidences of this situation during these years see James Thompson, Leicester_(Leicester, 1849), 401; Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 109-110, 322; XIII, 4, p. 216 (note gaps in the records); Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 436; II, 31, 44, 64, 196; III, 152. Innumerable other references could be added to prove this point. F. A. Inderwick in his Interregnum (London, 1891), 153, goes so far as to say that "from the autumn of 1642 to the autumn of 1646 no judges went the circuits." This seems rather a sweeping statement. [108] See The Examination, Confession, etc. (London, 1645). Joan Williford, Joan Cariden, and Jane Hott were tried. The first two quickly confessed to the keeping of imps. Not so Jane Hott, who urged the others to confess and "stoode to it very perversely that she was cleare." When put to the swimming test she floated, and is said to have then declared that the Devil "had sat upon a Cross beame and laughed at her." Elizabeth Harris was examined, and gave some damaging evidence against herself. She named several goodwives who had very loose tongues. [109] Stearne, 13, 14.![tumblr_nb9iy1M1to1qbtrumo1_1280]()
