Witch, Warlock, and Magician / Historical Sketches of Magic and Witchcraft in England and Scotland

On September 21, 1597, the Provost, Baillies and Council of Aberdeen considered the faithfulness shown by William Dun, the Dean of Guild, in the discharge of his duty, ‘and, besides this, his extraordinarily taking pains in the burning of the great number of the witches burnt this year, and on the four pirates, and bigging of the port on the Brig of Dee, repairing of the Grey Friars kirk and steeple thereof, and thereby has been abstracted from his trade of merchandise, continually since he was elected in the said office. Therefore, in recompense of his extraordinary pains, and in satisfaction thereof (not to induce any preparative to Deans of Guild to crave a recompense hereafter), but to encourage others to travail as diligently in the discharge of their office, granted and assigned to him the sum of forty-seven pounds three shillings and fourpence, owing by him of the rest of his compt of the unlawis [fines] of the persons convict for slaying of black fish, and discharged him thereof by their presents for ever.’

At length a wholesome reaction took place; the public grew weary of the number of executions, and, encouraged by this change of sentiment, persons accused of witchcraft boldly rebutted the charge, and laid complaints against their accusers for defamation of character. In official circles, it is true, a belief in the alleged crime lingered long. As late as 1669, ‘the new and old Councils taking into their serious consideration that many malefices were committed and done by several persons in this town, who are mala fama, and suspected guilty of witchcraft upon many of the inhabitants of this town, several ways, and that it will be necessary for suppressing the like in time coming, and for punishing the said persons who shall be found guilty; therefore they do unanimously conclude and ordain that any such person, who is suspect of the like malefices, may be seized upon, and put in prisoun, and that a Commission be sent for, for putting of them to trial, that condign justice may be executed upon them, as the nature of the offence does merit.’ No more victims, however, were sacrificed; nor does it appear that any accusation of witchcraft was preferred.

According to Sir Walter Scott, a woman was burnt as a witch in Scotland as late as 1722, by Captain Ross, sheriff-depute of Sutherland; but this was, happily, an exceptional barbarity, and for some years previously the pastime of witch-burning had practically been extinct. It is a curious fact that educated Scotchmen, as I have already noted, retained their superstition long after the common people had abandoned it. In 1730, Professor Forbes, of Glasgow, published his ‘Institutes of the Law of Scotland,’ in which he spoke of witchcraft as ‘that black art whereby strange and wonderful things are wrought by power derived from the devil,’ and added: ‘Nothing seems plainer to me than that there may be and have been witches, and that perhaps such are now actually existing.’ Six years later, the Seceders from the Church of Scotland, who professed to be the true representatives of its teaching, strongly condemned the repeal of the laws against witchcraft, as ‘contrary,’ they said, ‘to the express letter of the law of God.’ But they were hopelessly behind the time; public opinion, as the result of increased intelligence, had numbered witchcraft among the superstitions of the past, and we may confidently predict that its revival is impossible.

FOOTNOTE

CHAPTER V.

THE LITERATURE OF WITCHCRAFT.

It should teach us humility when we find a belief in witchcraft and demonology entertained not only by the uneducated and unintelligent classes, but also by the men of light and leading, the scholar, the philosopher, the legislator, who might have been expected to have risen above so degrading a superstition. It would be manifestly unfair to direct our reproaches at the credulous prejudices of the multitude when Francis Bacon, the great apostle of the experimental philosophy, accepts the crude teaching of his royal master’s ‘Demonologie,’ and actually discusses the ingredients of the celebrated ‘witches’ ointment,’ opining that they should all be of a soporiferous character, such as henbane, hemlock, moonshade, mandrake, opium, tobacco, and saffron. The weakness of Sir Matthew Hale, to which reference has been made in a previous chapter, we cannot very strongly condemn, when we know that it was shared by Sir Thomas Browne, who had so keen an eye for the errors of the common people, and whose fine and liberal genius throws so genial a light over the pages of the ‘Religio Medici.’ In his ‘History of the World,’ that consummate statesman, poet, and scholar, Sir Walter Raleigh, gravely supports the vulgar opinions which nowadays every Board School alumnus would reject with disdain. Even the philosopher of Malmesbury, the sagacious author of ‘The Leviathan,’ Thomas Hobbes, was infected by the prevalent delusion. Dr. Cudworth, to whom we owe the acute reasoning of the treatises on ‘Moral Good and Evil,’ and ‘The True Intellectual System of the Universe,’ firmly holds that the guilt of a reputed witch might be determined by her inability or unwillingness to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Strangest of it all is it to find the pure and lofty spirit of Henry More, the founder of the school of English Platonists, yielding to the general superstition. With large additions of his own, he republished the Rev. Joseph Glanvill’s notorious work, ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus’—a pitiful example of the extent to which a fine intellect may be led astray, though Mr. Lecky thinks it the most powerful defence of witchcraft ever published. And the sober and fair-minded Robert Boyle, in the midst of his scientific researches, found time to listen, with breathless interest, to ‘stories of witches at Oxford, and devils at Muston.’

Among the Continental authorities on witchcraft, the chief of those who may be called its advocates are, Martin Antonio Delrio (1551-1608), who published, in the closing years of the sixteenth century, his ‘Disquisitionarum Magicarum Libri Sex,’ a formidable folio, brimful of credulity and ingenuity, which was translated into French by Duchesne in 1611, and has been industriously pilfered from by numerous later writers. Delrio has no pretensions to critical judgment; he swallows the most monstrous inventions with astounding facility.

Reference must also be made to the writings of Remigius, included in Pez’ ‘Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus,’ and to the great work by H. Institor and J. Sprenger, ‘Malleus Maleficarum,’ as well as to Basin, Molitor (‘Dialogus de Lamiis’), and other authors, to be found in the 1582 edition of ‘Mallei quorundam Maleficarum,’ published at Frankfort.

On the same side we find the great philosophical lawyer and historian John Bodin (1530-1596), the author of the ‘Republicæ,’ and the ‘Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem.’ In his ‘Demonomanie des Sorcius’ he recommends the burning of witches and wizards with an earnestness which should have gone far to compensate for his heterodoxy on other points of belief and practice. He informs us that from his thirty-seventh year he had been attended by a familiar spirit or demon, which touched his ear whenever he was about to do anything of which his conscience disapproved; and he quotes passages from the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah, to prove that spirits indicate their presence to men by touching and even pulling their ears, and not only by vocal utterances.

Also, Thomas Erastus (1524-1583), physician and controversialist, who took so busy a part in the theological dissensions of his time. In 1577 he published a tract (‘De Lamiis’) on the lawfulness of putting witches to death. It is strange that he should have been mastered by the gross imposture of witchcraft, when he could expose with trenchant force the pretensions of alchemists, astrologers, and Rosicrucians.

Happily, the cause of humanity, truth and tolerance was not without its eager and capable defenders. The earliest I take to have been the Dutch physician, Wierus, who, in his treatise ‘De Præstigiis,’ published at Basel in 1564, vigorously attacked the cruel prejudice that had doomed so many unhappy creatures to the stake. He did not, however, deny the existence of witchcraft, but demanded mercy for those who practised it on the ground that they were the devil’s victims, not his servants. That he should have been wholly devoid of credulity would have been more than one could rightly have expected of a disciple of Cornelius Agrippa.

A stronger and much more successful assailant appeared in Reginald Scot (died 1599), a younger son of Sir John Scot, of Scot’s Hall, near Smeeth, who published his celebrated ‘Discoverie of Witchcraft’ in 1584—a book which, in any age, would have been remarkable for its sweet humanity, breadth of view, and moderation of tone, as well as for its literary excellencies. One wonders where this quiet Kentish gentleman, whose chief occupations appear to have been gardening and planting, accumulated his erudition, and how, in the face of the superstitions of his contemporaries, he arrived at such large and liberal conclusions. The scope of his great work is indicated in its lengthy title: ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft, wherein the lewd dealing of Witches and Witchmongers is notablie detected, the knaverie of conjurers, the impietie of enchanters, the follie of soothsaiers, the impudent falsehood of couseners, the infidelitie of atheists, the pestilent practices of Pythonists, the curiositie of figure-casters [horoscope-makers], the vanitie of dreamers, the beggarlie art of Alcumystrie, the abhomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the vertue and power of naturall magike, and all the conveyances of Legierdemain and juggling are deciphered: and many other things opened, which have long lain hidden, howbeit verie necessarie to be knowne. Heerevnto is added a treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Devils, etc.: all latelie written by Reginald Scot, Esquire. 1 John iv. 1: “Believe not everie spirit, but trie the spirits, whether they are of God; for many false prophets are gone out into the world.”’

From a book so well known—a new edition has recently appeared—it is needless to make extracts; but I transcribe a brief passage in illustration of the vivacity and manliness of the writer:

‘I, therefore (at this time), do only desire you to consider of my report concerning the evidence that is commonly brought before you against them. See first whether the evidence be not frivolous, and whether the proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting of guesses, presumptions, and impossibilities contrary to reason, Scripture, and nature. See also what persons complain upon them, whether they be not of the basest, the unwisest, and the most faithless kind of people. Also, may it please you, to weigh what accusations and crimes they lay to their charge, namely: She was at my house of late, she would have had a pot of milk, she departed in a chafe because she had it not, she railed, she cursed, she mumbled and whispered; and, finally, she said she would be even with me: and soon after my child, my cow, my sow, or my pullet died, or was strangely taken. Nay (if it please your Worship), I have further proof: I was with a wise woman, and she told me I had an ill neighbour, and that she would come to my house ere it was long, and so did she; and that she had a mark about her waist, and so had she: God forgive me, my stomach hath gone against her a great while. Her mother before her was counted a witch; she hath been beaten and scratched by the face till blood was drawn upon her, because she hath been suspected, and afterwards some of those persons were said to amend. These are the certainties that I hear in their evidences.

‘Note, also, how easily they may be brought to confess that which they never did, nor lieth in the power of man to do; and then see whether I have cause to write as I do. Further, if you shall see that infidelity, popery, and many other manifest heresies be backed and shouldered, and their professors animated and heartened, by yielding to creatures such infinite power as is wrested out of God’s hand, and attributed to witches: finally, if you shall perceive that I have faithfully and truly delivered and set down the condition and state of the witch, and also of the witchmonger, and have confuted by reason and law, and by the Word of God itself, all mine adversary’s objections and arguments; then let me have your countenance against them that maliciously oppose themselves against me.

‘My greatest adversaries are young ignorance and old custom. For what folly soever tract of time hath fostered, it is so superstitiously pursued of some, as though no error could be acquainted with custom. But if the law of nations would join with such custom, to the maintenance of ignorance and to the suppressing of knowledge, the civilest country in the world would soon become barbarous. For as knowledge and time discovereth errors, so doth superstition and ignorance in time breed them.’

In another fine passage Scot says:

‘God that knoweth my heart is witness, and you that read my book shall see, that my drift and purpose in this enterprise tendeth only to these respects. First, that the glory and power of God be not so abridged and abused, as to be thrust into the hand or lip of a lewd old woman, whereby the work of the Creator should be attributed to the power of a creature. Secondly, that the religion of the Gospel may be seen to stand without such peevish trumpery. Thirdly, that lawful favour and Christian compassion be rather used towards these poor souls than rigour and extremity. Because they which are commonly accused of witchcraft are the least sufficient of all other persons to speak for themselves, as having the most base and simple education of all others; the extremity of their age giving them leave to dote, their poverty to beg, their wrongs to chide and threaten (as being void of any other way of revenge), their humour melancholical to be full of imaginations, from whence chiefly proceedeth the vanity of their confessions, as that they can transform themselves and others into apes, owls, asses, dogs, cats, etc.; that they can fly in the air, kill children with charms, hinder the coming of butter, etc.

‘And for so much as the mighty help themselves together, and the poor widow’s cry, though it reach to heaven, is scarce heard here upon earth, I thought good (according to my poor ability) to make intercession, that some part of common rigour and some points of hasty judgment may be advised upon. For the world is now at that stay (as Brentius, in a most godly sermon, in these words affirmeth), that even, as when the heathen persecuted the Christians, if any were accused to believe in Christ, the common people cried Ad leonem; so now, of any woman, be she never so honest, be she accused of witchcraft, they cry Ad ignem.’

Scot’s attack upon the credulity of his contemporaries, strenuous and capable as it was, did not bear much fruit at the time; while it exposed him to charges of Atheism and Sadduceeism from several small critics, who were supported by the authority of James I., and, at a later date, of Dr. Meric Casaubon. He found a fellow-labourer, however, in his work of humanity, in the Rev. George Gifford, of Maldon, Essex, who in 1593 published ‘A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft,’ in which ‘is layed open how craftily the Divell deceiveth not only the Witches but Many other, and so leadeth them awaie into Manie Great Errours.’ It will be seen from the title that the writer does not adopt the uncompromising line of Reginald Scot, but inclines rather to the standpoint of Wierus. There is, however, a good deal of ability in his treatment of the question; and some account of the ‘Dialogue’ reprinted by the Percy Society in 1842, should be interesting, I think, to the reader.

The interlocutors are named Samuel, Daniel, Samuel’s wife, M. B., a schoolmaster, and the goodwife R.

The dialogue opens with Samuel and Daniel, the former of whom is a fanatical believer in witches. ‘These evil-favoured old witches,’ he says, ‘do trouble me.’ He repeats the common rumour that there is scarcely a town or village in the shire but has one or two witches in it. ‘In good sooth,’ he adds, ‘I may tell it to you as to my friend, when I go but into my closes, I am afraid, for I see now and then a hare, which my conscience giveth me is a witch, or some witch’s spirit, she stareth so upon me. And sometime I see an ugly weasel run through my yard; and there is a foul, great cat sometimes in my barn, which I have no liking unto.’ Having introduced his friend, who is less credulous than himself, to his wife and his home, he promotes an argument between him and another friend, M. B., a schoolmaster, on this quæstio vexata.

M. B. starts with a good deal of fervour:

But after some discussion he agrees, at Daniel’s instance, to consider the subject in a spirit of sober argument; and the first question they take up is: ‘Are there witches that work by the Devil?’ The conversation then proceeds as follows:

Daniel then strikes into the conversation, enlarging on the Scriptural description of devils as ‘mighty and terrible spirits, full of rage and power and cruelty’—principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world—and forcibly insisting that if spirits so awful and potential as these assumed the shapes of such paltry vermin as cats, mice, toads, and weasels, it must be out of subtilty to cover and hide the mighty tyranny and power which they exercise over the hearts of the wicked. And he argues that such spirits would never deign to be a witch’s servant or to do her bidding. M. B. contends, however, that, although he be lord, yet is he content to serve her turn; and the witches confess, he says, that they call forth their demons, and send them on what errands they please, and hire them to hurt in their bodies and their cattle those against whom they cherish angry and revengeful feelings. ‘I am sorry,’ says Daniel mildly, ‘you are so far awry; it is a pity any man should be in such error, especially a man that hath learning, and should teach others knowledge.’

After some further disputation, M. B. is brought to admit that God giveth the devils power to plague and seduce because of man’s wickedness; but he asks whether a godly, faithful man or woman may not be bewitched. We see, he says, that the devil had power given him of old, as over Job. But Daniel will not admit that this is a case in point, because it is not said that the devil dealt with Job through the agency of witches. Thereupon Samuel, perceiving the drift of his argument to be that the devil has no need to act by instruments so mean and even degraded, and would assuredly never be at their command; that, consequently, there can be no witchcraft, because there is no necessity for it, suddenly interposes:

In this way the dialogue proceeds, with a good deal of ingenuity and some degree of dramatic spirit; and though the reasoning is not without its fallacies, yet it is sufficiently clear and forcible, on the whole, as a protest on the side of liberality and tolerance.

The next branch of the subject taken up for consideration is ‘the help and remedy’ that is sought for against witches ‘at the hands of cunning men;’ Daniel contending that, if the cunning men can render any assistance, it must be through the devil’s instrumentality, and, therefore, Christian men are not justified in availing themselves of it. The alleged cures performed by witches, Daniel refers to the influence of the imagination; and in this category he tells an amusing story. ‘There was a person in London,’ he say, ‘acquainted with the magician Fento. Now, this Fento had a black dog, whom he called Bomelius. This party afterwards had a conceit that Bomelius was a devil, and that he felt him within him. He was in heaviness, and made his moan to one of his acquaintances, who had a merry head, and told him he had a friend could remove Bomelius. He bade him prepare a breakfast, and he would bring him. Then this was the cure: he (the friend) made him be stripped naked and stand by a good fire, and though he were fat enough of himself, basted him all over with butter against the fire, and made him wear a sleek-stone next his skin under his belly, and the man had immediate relief, and gave him afterwards great thanks.’

‘The conceit, or imagination, does much,’ continues Daniel, ‘even when there is no apparent disease. A man feareth he is bewitched; it troubleth all the powers of his mind, and that distempereth his body, making great alterations in it, and bringeth sundry griefs. Now, when his mind is freed from such imaginations, his bodily griefs, which flew from the same, are eased. And a multitude of Satan’s is of the same character.’

The conversation next turns upon the danger of shedding innocent blood, which is inseparable from the execution of alleged witches; while juries, says Daniel, must become guilty of shedding innocent blood by condemning as guilty, and that upon their solemn oath, such as be suspected upon vain surmises, and imaginations, and illusions, rising from blindness and infidelity, and fear of Satan which is in the ignorant sort.

Replying to observations made by the schoolmaster, Daniel continues:

Samuel at first is reluctant to accept this statement. It has always been his belief that the devil is much angered when witches confess and betray matters; and in confirmation of this belief, or at least as some excuse for it, he relates an anecdote. Of course, one woman had suspected another to be a witch. She prevailed upon a gentleman to send for the suspected person, and having accused her in his presence, left him to admonish her with due severity, and to persuade her to renounce the devil and all his works. While he was thus engaged, and she was stoutly denying the accusation brought against her, a weasel or lobster suddenly made its appearance. ‘Look,’ said the gentleman, ‘yonder is thy spirit.’ ‘Ah, master!’ she replied, ‘that is a vermin; there be many of them everywhere.’ Well, as they went towards it, it vanished out of sight; by-and-by it re-appeared, and looked upon them. ‘Surely,’ said the gentleman, ‘it is thy spirit;’ but she still denied, and with that her mouth was drawn awry. Then he pressed her further, and she confessed all. She confessed she had hurt and killed by sending her spirit. The gentleman, not being a magistrate, allowed her to go home, and then disclosed the affair to a justice. When she reached home another witch accosted her, and said: ‘Ah, thou beast, what hast thou done? Thou hast betrayed us all. What remedy now?’ said she. ‘What remedy?’ said the other; ‘send thy spirit and touch him.’ She sent her spirit, and of a sudden the gentleman had, as it were, a flash of fire about him: he lifted up his heart to God, and felt no hurt. The spirit returned, and said he could not hurt him, because he had faith. ‘What then,’ said the other witch, ‘hath he nothing that thou mayest touch?’ ‘He hath a child,’ said the other. ‘Send thy spirit,’ said she, ‘and touch the child.’ She sent her spirit; the child was in great pain, and died. The witches were hanged, and confessed.

Daniel, by an ingenious analysis, soon dismisses this absurd story, which, like all such stories, he takes to be further evidence of Satan’s craft, and no disproof at all of the argument he has laid down. ‘Then,’ says Samuel, ‘I will tell you of another thing which was done of late.

‘A woman suspected of being a witch, and of having done harm among the cattle, was examined and brought to confess that she had a spirit, which resided in a hollow tree, and spoke to her out of a hole in the trunk. And whenever she was offended with any persons she went to that tree and sent her spirit to kill their cattle. She was persuaded to confess her faults openly, and to promise that she would utterly forsake such ungodly ways: after she had made this open confession, the spirit came unto her, being alone. “Ah!” said he, “thou hast confessed and betrayed all. I could turn it to rend thee in pieces:” with that she was afraid, and went away, and got her into company. Within some few weeks after she fell out greatly into anger against one man. Towards the tree she goeth, and before she came at it—“Oh!” said the spirit, “wherefore comest thou? Who hath angered thee?” “Such a man,” said the witch. “And what wouldest thou have me do?” said the spirit. “He hath,” saith she, “two horses going yonder; touch them, or one of them.” Well, I think even that night one of the horses died, and the other was little better. Indeed, they recovered again that one which was not dead, but in very evil case. Now methinketh it is plain: he was angry that she had betrayed all. And yet when she came to the tree he let go all displeasure and went readily.’

There is much common-sense, as we should nowadays call it, in Daniel’s comments on this extraordinarily wild story. ‘Do you think,’ he is represented as saying, ‘that Satan lodgeth in a hollow tree? Is he become so lazy and idle? Hath he left off to be as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour? Hath he put off the bloody and cruel nature of the fiery dragon, so that he mindeth no harm but when an angry woman entreats him to go kill a cow or a horse? Is he become so doting with age that man shall espy his craft—yea, be found craftier than he is?’

And now for the winding-up of Parson Gifford’s ‘Dialogue.’ ’Tis to be wished that all the parsons of his time had been equally sensible and courageous.

About the same time that Gifford was endeavouring to teach his countrymen a more excellent way of dealing with the vexed questions of demonology and witchcraft, a Dutch minister, named Bekker, scandalized the orthodox by a frank denial of all power whatsoever to the devil, and, consequently, to the witches and warlocks who were supposed to be at one and the same time his servants and yet his employers. His ‘Monde Enchanté’ (originally written in Dutch) consists of four ponderous volumes, remarkable for prolixity and repetition, as well as for a certain originality of argument. There was no just ground, however, as Hallam remarks, for throwing imputations on the author’s religious sincerity. He shared, however, the opprobrium that attaches to all who deviate in theology from the orthodox path; and it must be admitted that his Scriptural explanations in the case of the demoniacs and the like are more ingenious than satisfactory.

A violent trumpet-note on the side of intolerance was blown by King James I. in 1597 in his famous ‘Dæmonologia.’ It is written in the form of a dialogue, and numbers about eighty closely-printed pages. James, as the reader has seen, had had ample personal experience of witches and their ‘cantrips,’ and had ‘got up’ the subject with a commendable amount of thoroughness. He divides witches into eight classes, who severally work their evil designs against mankind; then he subdivides into white and black witches, of whom the former are the more dangerous; and again into ‘acted’ and ‘pacted’ witches, the former depending for their power on their supernatural gifts, and the latter having made a compact with Satan contrary to ‘all rules and orders of nature, art or grace.’ Further, the demons have a classification of their own; some of the higher ranks of the demonarchy looking down contemptuously enough on those of the inferior grades, who consist of ‘the damned souls of departed conjurers.’ These ‘damned souls’ discharge all kinds of mean and servile offices—bringing fire from heaven for the convenience of their employers; conveying bodies through the air; conjuring corn from one field into another; imparting a show of life to dead bodies; and raising the wind for witches to sell to their nautical customers—who received pieces of knotted rope, and, untying the first knot, secured a favourable breeze, for the second a moderate wind, and for the third a violent gale.

After describing the rites in vogue on the conclusion of a compact between witch and devil, King James enlarges on other points of ceremonial, such as the making of various magic circles—sometimes round, sometimes triangular, sometimes quadrangular; the use of holy water and crosses in ridicule of the papists; and the offer to the demons of some living animal. He adds that the great witches’ meetings frequently took place in churches: and he says that the witches mutter and hurriedly mumble through their conjurations ‘like a priest despatching a hunting masse’; and that if they step out of a circle in a sudden alarm at the horrible appearance assumed by the demon, he flies off with them body and soul.

The royal expert proceeds to indicate the means by which you may detect a witch. ‘There are two good helpes that may be used for their trials; the one is the finding of their marke and the trying the insensibility thereof. The other is their fleeting on the water: for as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appoynted that secret supernaturale signe for triale of that secret unnaturale crime, so it appears that God hath appoynted (for a supernaturale signe of the monstrous impietie of witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken off them the sacred water of Baptism and willingly refused the benefit thereof: no, not so much as their eies are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as you please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime), albeit the womenkind especially be able other waies to shed teares at every light occasion when they will, yea altho’ it were dissemblingly like the crocodiles.’

Incidentally, our witch-hunting King offers an explanation of a peculiarity which, no doubt, our readers have already noted—the great numerical superiority of witches over warlocks. ‘The reason is easie,’ he says; ‘for as that sex is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be intrapped in the grosse snares of the devil,—as was over well prooved to be true by the serpente deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine [ever since].’

As regards the external appearance of witches, he remarks that they are not generally melancholic; ‘but some are rich and worldly wise, some are fat and corpulent, and most part are given over unto the pleasures of the flesh; and further experience daily proves how loth they are to confess without torture, which witnesseth their guiltinesse.’ He concludes by asking, ‘Who is safe?’ and replies that the only safe person is the magistrate, when assiduously employed in bringing witches to justice. One Reginald Scot, Esq., however, hop-grower and brewer of Smeeth, in Kent, a persistent disbeliever in and ridiculer of witchcraft, who had the courage to break lances with the King and the bench of Bishops in contemporary pamphlets, and is called by the King an ‘Englishman of damnable opiniones,’ irreverently answered this question by saying that the only safe person was the King himself, as his sex prevented his being taken for a witch, and the whole kingdom was satisfied that he was no conjurer.

In 1616, John Cotta, a Northampton physician, published a forcibly written attack on the vulgar delusion, under the title of ‘The Trial of Witchcraft,’ which reached a second (and enlarged) edition in 1624. Cotta was also the author of a fierce blast against quacks—‘Discovery of the Dangers of ignorant Practisers of Physick in England,’ 1612; and of a not less vehement attack on the aurum potabile of the chemists, entitled, ‘Cotta contra Antonium, or An Ant. Anthony,’ 1623.

There is a lively work by John Gaul, preacher of the Word at Great Haughton, in the county of Huntingdon—‘Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,’ 1646, which is worth looking into. Gaul was a courageous and persevering opponent of the great witch-finder, Hopkins.

The unhappy victims of popular prejudice found a strenuous champion also in Sir Robert Filmer, who, in 1653, published his ‘Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a Difference between an English and Hebrew Witch.’ Filmer is best known to students by his ‘Patriarcha,’ an apology for the paternal government of kings, which does violence to all constitutional principles, but has at least the negative merit of obvious sincerity on the part of its writer. It is somewhat surprising to find a mind like Filmer’s, fettered as it was by so many prejudices and a slavish adherence to prescription, openly urging the cause of tolerance and enlightenment, and vigorously demolishing the sham arguments by which the believers in witchcraft endeavoured to support their grotesque theories.

Three years later followed on the same side a certain Thomas Ady, M.A., who, with considerable vivacity, fulminated against the witch-mongers and witch-torturers in his tractate, ‘A Candle in the Dark; or, A Treatise concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges, Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, and Grand Jurymen, what to do before they pass sentence on such as are arraigned for their lives as Witches.’ The quaintly-worded dedication ran as follows:

‘To the Prince of the Kings of the Earth. It is the manner of men, O heavenly King, to dedicate their books to some great men, thereby to have their works protected and countenanced among them; but Thou only art able by Thy Holy Spirit of Truth, to defend Thy Truth, and to make it take impression in the heart and understanding of men. Unto Thee alone do I dedicate this work, entreating Thy Most High Majesty to grant that, whoever shall open this book, Thy Holy Spirit may so possess their understanding as that the Spirit of error may depart from them, and that they may read and try Thy Truth by the touchstone of Thy Truth, the Holy Scriptures; and finding that Truth, may embrace it and forsake their darksome inventions of Anti-Christ, that have deluded and defiled the nations now and in former ages. Enlighten the world, Thou art the Light of the World, and let darkness be no more in the world, now or in any future age; but make all people to walk as children of the light for ever; and destroy Anti-Christ that hath deceived the nations, and save us the residue by Thyself alone; and let not Satan any more delude us, for the Truth is thine for ever.’

In 1669 John Wagstaffe published ‘The Question of Witchcraft Debated.’ According to Wood, he was the son of John Wagstaffe, a London citizen; was born in Cheapside; entered as a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, towards the end of 1649; took the degrees in Arts, and applied himself to the study of politics and other learning. ‘At length being raised from an academical life to the inheritance of Hasland by the death of an uncle, who died without male issue, he spent his life afterwards in single estate.’ He died in 1677. Wood describes him as ‘a little crooked man, and of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the boys of this University because, as they said, he himself looked like a little wizard.’

His book is illuminated throughout by the generous sympathies of a large and liberal mind. His peroration has been described, and not unjustly, as ‘lofty’ and ‘memorable,’ and, when animated by a noble earnestness, the writer’s language rises into positive eloquence. ‘I cannot think,’ he says, ‘without trembling and horror on the vast numbers of people that in several ages and several countries have been sacrificed unto this cold opinion. Thousands, ten thousands, are upon record to have been slain, and many of them not with simple deaths, but horrid, exquisite tortures. And yet, how many are there more who have undergone the same fate, of whom we have no memorial extant? Since therefore the opinion of witchcraft is a mere stranger unto Scripture, and wholly alien from true religion; since it is ridiculous by asserting fables and impossibilities; since it appears, when duly considered, to be all bloody and full of dangerous consequence unto the lives and safety of men; I hope that with this my discourse, opposing an absurd and pernicious error, I cannot at all disoblige any sober, unbiased person, especially if he be of such ingenuity as to have freed himself from a slavish subjection unto those prejudicial opinions which custom and education do with too much tyranny impose.

‘If the doctrine of witchcraft should be carried up to a height, and the inquisition after it should be entrusted in the hands of ambitious, covetous, and malicious men, it would prove of far more fatal consequences unto the lives and safety of mankind than that ancient heathenish custom of sacrificing men unto idol gods, insomuch that we stand in need of another Heracles Liberator, who, as the former freed the world from human sacrifice, should, in like manner, travel from country to country, and by his all-commanding authority free it from this evil and base custom of torturing people to confess themselves witches, and burning them after extorted confessions. Surely the blood of men ought not to be so cheap, nor so easily to be shed by those who, under the name of God, do gratify exorbitant passions and selfish ends; for without question, under this side heaven, there is nothing so sacred as the life of man, for the preservation whereof all policies and forms of government, all laws and magistrates are most especially ordained. Wherefore I presume that this discourse of mine, attempting to prove the vanity and impossibility of witchcraft, is so far from any deserved censure and blame, that it rather deserves commendation and praise, if I can in the least measure contribute to the saving of the lives of men.’

Meric Casaubon, a man of abundant learning and not less abundant superstition, attempted a reply to Wagstaffe in his treatise ‘Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual’ (1670).

At Thornton, in the parish of Caswold, Yorkshire, was born, on the 3rd of February, 1610, one of the ablest and most successful of the adversaries of the witch-maniacs, John Webster. It is supposed that he was educated at Cambridge; but the first event in his career of which we have any certain knowledge is his admission to holy orders in the Church of England by Dr. Morton, Bishop of Durham. In 1634 we find him officiating as curate at Kildwick in Craven, and nine years later as Master of the Free Grammar School at Clitheroe. He seems afterwards to have held for a time a military chaplaincy, then to have withdrawn from the Church of England, and taken refuge in some form of Dissent. In 1653 his new religious views found expression in his ‘Saints’ Guide,’ and in 1654, in ‘The Judgment Set and the Books Opened,’ a series of sermons which he had originally preached at All Hallows’ Church in Lombard Street. It was in this church the incident occurred which Wood has recorded: ‘On the 12th of October, 1653, William Erbury, with John Webster, sometime a Cambridge scholar, endeavoured to knock down learning and the ministry both together in a disputation that they then had against two ministers in a church in Lombard Street, London. Erbury then declared that the wisest ministers and the purest churches were at that time befooled, confounded, and defiled by reason of learning. Another while he said that the ministry were monsters, beasts, asses, greedy dogs, false prophets, and that they are the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. The same person also spoke out and said that Babylon is the Church in her ministers, and that the Great Whore is the Church in her worship, etc., so that with him there was an end of ministers and churches and ordinations altogether. While these things were babbled to and fro, the multitude, being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to cry out, and immediately it came to a meeting or tumult (call it which you please), wherein the women bore away the bell, but lost some of them their kerchiefs; and the dispute being hot, there was more danger of pulling down the church than the ministry.’

In 1654, our iconoclastic enthusiast strongly—but not without good reason—assailed the educational system then in vogue at Oxford and Cambridge in his treatise, ‘Academiarum Examen,’ which created quite a sensation in ‘polite circles,’ fluttering the dove-cots of the rulers of the two Universities. Very curious, however, are its sympathetic references to the old Hermetic mysteries, Rosicrucianism, and astrology, to the fanciful abstractions and dreamy speculations of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Fludd, and Dr. Dee. One cannot but wonder that so acute and vigorous an intellect should have allowed itself to be entangled in the delusions of the occult sciences. But his study of the works of the old philosophers was, no doubt, the original motive of the laborious research which resulted in his ‘Metallographia; or, A History of Metals’ (1671). In this learned and comprehensive treatise are declared ‘the signs of Ores and Minerals, both before and after Digging, the causes and manner of their generations, their kinds, sorts, and differences; with the description of sundry new Metals, or Semi-Metals, and many other things pertaining to Mineral Knowledge. As also the handling and showing of their Vegetability, and the discussion of the most difficult Questions belonging to Mystical Chymistry, as of the Philosopher’s Gold, their Mercury, the Liquor Alkahest, Aurum potabile, and such like. Gathered forth of the most approved Authors that have written in Greek, Latin, or High Dutch, with some Observations and Discoveries of the Author Himself. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery. “Qui principia naturalia in seipso ignoraverit, hic jam multum remotus est ab arte nostra, quoniam non habet radiam veram super quam intentionem suam fundit.” Geber, Sum. Perfect., lib. i., p. 21.’

In 1677, Webster, who had abandoned the cure of souls for that of bodies, produced the work which entitles him to honourable mention in these pages. According to the fashion of the day, its title was almost as long as a table of contents. I transcribe it here in extenso:

‘The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors. And Divers persons under a passive Delusion of Melancholy and Fancy. But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, Or that he sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats or Dogs, raise Tempests or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled the Existence of Angels and Spirits, the Truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sidereal Spirits, the Force of Charms and Philters; with other Abstruse Matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic. “Falsæ etenim opiniones Hominum præoccupantes, non solum surdos sed ut cæcos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quæ aliis perspicua apparent.” Galen, lib. viii., de Comp. Med. London. Printed by I. M., and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London, 1677.’

Webster, who was evidently a man of restless and inquiring intellect, and independent judgment, died on June 18, 1682, and was buried in St. Margaret’s, Clitheroe, where his monument may still be seen. Its singular inscription must have been devised by some astrological sympathizer: