CHAPTER II.

WITCHCRAFT AND SORCERY.

_Witch_, is taken from the Hebrew word, rendered _venefica_, meaning a poisoner and divineress; one who dabbles in spells and fortune-telling.[1] In course of time, the term was used to indicate those who held communion with evil spirits and derived a super-human power from them, whereby they could not only foretell the coming of future events, but bring about evil results upon the life, bodies, or possessions of individuals. This unnatural power was supposed to be acquired by a compact with the devil himself, by which the wizard or witch bargained his or her soul to the devil as a consideration for the power of enchantment.[2]

From the earliest times, men and women have tried to hold communion with superior beings and to pierce the secrets of the future.

In the oldest code of laws in the known world, promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon, 2285 years before Christ, the first two sections of the code are levelled at the crime of witchcraft, and we find that it is there written, that:

“If a man weave a spell and put a ban upon a man, and has not justified himself, he that wove the spell upon him shall be put to death.”[3]

And the same code provided that the man against whom the spell was woven, should plunge into the “holy river” and if the river overcame him, his house should go to the weaver of the spell, but if the river made the man innocent, he should take the house of the sorcerer and he was to be put to death.[4]

According to the photogravure of the blocks of diorite, upon which these most antique laws were written, therefore, when King Hammurabi, received his law direct from the seated sun-god, Samas,—the judge of heaven and earth—the old delusion of witchcraft and sorcery obtained. So prevalent was the offense, according to the delusion then obtaining, that the very first sections of the code were directed at this crime, established to the satisfaction of the judges of that period, by the test of a plunge into the “holy river,” in the absence of more direct proof of the existence of the offense which existed only in the imaginations of the superstitious inhabitants of that misty age.

During the time of Moses, we find that many imposters insulted the intelligence of the Supreme Being, by claiming to have received delegated powers from on high and hence Moses provided in his law that “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The long persecution of persons convicted of witchcraft, by a misinterpretation of this text, was thus justified by this Biblical injunction and many conscientious men and women, in their inability to understand the science of common things, attributed appearances which they could not explain, to supernatural agencies and blindly believing in this Mosaic law, proceeded to violate the highest laws of God and man, in the fanaticism that a Divine injunction was being obeyed, in the punishment of those convicted of witchcraft and sorcery.[5]

The Twelve Tables of the early Romans contained penal provisions against one who should bewitch the fruits of the earth or conjure away his neighbors’ corn, into his own field,[6] and a century and a half after the adoption of the Twelve Tables, one hundred and seventy Roman women were tried and convicted of poisoning, under the pretense of charms and incantations, which led to new laws against such supposed practices.

As the Mosaic law against witchcraft was formerly interpreted, to mean the punishment by death of witches who did positive injury to another in his person or property, so the Roman laws were directed against those supposed to have done positive injury to a person, in his property or to have hurt him, physically.

In other words, the mere possession of magic art, in the old heathen world, was not, in itself a crime, for while it was dreaded, as being liable to be turned to malicious or wrongful purposes, it was also recognized as a most beneficial art, through which the religion of domestic life and the remedy of healing the sick, was supposed to come.

That this view of witchcraft continued to prevail for many centuries after the reception of Christianity, is evidenced by the laws of Constantine, in the fourth century, which ordained capital punishment for all those who practiced noxious charms against the life or health of others, by supernatural power, but exempted from the punishment of the law, all those who practiced magical arts for beneficial purposes, such as warding off hailstorms, and excessive rains or windstorms, or curing cattle or persons afflicted with disease.[7]

The savage laws by the Christian Emperors in the early centuries did considerable harm in after ages. The Anglo-Saxons patterned their laws against sorcery and witchcraft after the folk-laws of the continent and Cnut, even, legislated against the witchcraft which was heathenish.[8]

During the reign of Henry I., criminals who encompassed the maiming or sickening of a person by maltreating a waxen image of him—a belief that generally obtained from this time until the seventeenth century—were either hanged or burnt.[9] And during the reign of this monarch, in England, Archbishop Gerard, of York, was accused of necromancy and sorcery and when it was discovered that he had died suddenly, and a book on the subject of astrology was found under his pillow, his body was refused burial in the Cathedral.[10]

After the influence of the Catholic religion had safely extended its power over the western world, however, and the fear of a return to paganism was looked upon as most improbable, the church was not inclined to look with such aversion upon the class of criminals accused of dabbling in the black arts. Astrology and necromancy were looked upon with considerable admiration by the most powerful of the church and laity and even Bishops and Popes tempted the powers of evil, by little harmless excursions into the great realm of the supernatural.

This temporizing by the church continued until about the beginning of the thirteenth century, when heresy had become so common that the interests of the church were threatened and when the church began, in various parts of the world, a most stringent prosecution of witches and sorcerers and the crowned-heads of Europe, in humble submission to the demands of the Pope, used the power of the kingdom in an attempt to rid the church of this threatened evil.[11]

From an early day, in France, people were punished for supposed crimes resulting from witchcraft and sorcery. Charlemagne frequently ordered all necromancers, sorcerers and witches to be driven from the realm and with the gradual increase of the crimes attributed to them, he published different edicts, preserved at length in the “Capitulaire de Baluse.”[12]

By these edicts, death was decreed against all those who practiced feats of sorcery and witchcraft, and those who conspired with the devil to afflict either man or woman, with barrenness; who excited tempests, or windstorms; destroyed the fruits of the earth, hurt cows, or other animals, and afflicted human beings with sores or disease, were to be immediately executed, upon their conviction.[13]

From the time of Charlemagne until the eighteenth century, in France, England, Scotland and other European countries, the trials for witchcraft and sorcery continuously multiplied and it became the common means to enable a wolfish monarch to rid himself of a disliked rival or subject, upon some trumped-up charge, based upon some trivial circumstance connected with an unexplained phenomenon.

The destruction of the Stedinger, in 1234; the persecutions of the Templars, from 1307 to the year 1313; the trial and execution of poor Joan of Arc, in 1429, the tragedy of Arras, in 1459, and many other horrible casualties, during the middle ages illustrate the prevalency with which this delusion was used to bring about the death and destruction of a large portion of the human race, who were guilty only of living in an age of ignorance and cruelty.[14]

At the instance of Pope Gregory IX., the Emperor of Germany, Frederic II., pronounced his banns against the valiant Stedinger, in 1233 and a crusade was inaugurated against them in all Germany. Eight thousand of them were slain upon the field of battle and the whole race extinguished and their houses and woods were burned, because they would not embrace the Catholic religion, but continued to adhere to their own ideals and ideas in religion and government. The Pope charged that they “insulted the holy sacrament, consulted witches to raise evil spirits, shed blood like water, took the lives of priests and concocted an infernal scheme to propagate the worship of the devil.”[15]

The Templars had also offended the Church and in 1307 the charge was brought against them that they were in communion with evil spirits and had sold their souls to the devil. This charge effected its object and they were extirpated, even as the poor Stedinger had been, in the previous century.

Philip IV., of France, acting under authority of the Pope, ordered the arrest and trial of the Templars and the confiscation of their goods and property. Hundreds were put to the rack and when tortured by pain, confessed the most unreasonable charges which were lodged against them and this only heightened the popular clamor and the persecution against them, as a body. Fifty-nine Templars were burned alive, by a slow fire, in a field adjoining the city of Paris, after they had been convicted of witchcraft and sorcery, and other instances of their persecutions, upon this charge, occurred in the different provinces, until the year 1313, when the Grand Master of the Order Jacques de Molay was burned to death, a fitting climax to this reign of terror, inaugurated by the Pope and Monarch, to rid themselves of an odious order—a lasting stigma to the memory of the Pope and Monarch responsible for such conditions and an ever increasing source of pity to the millions possessing the divine gift of a tender fellow-feeling for their own kind.

In 1429 the poor Joan of Arc fell a victim to the charge of witchcraft and sorcery and like dual criminals, proceeding hand in hand to accomplish the crime, religion and law, not only failed to raise a hand to prevent the conflagration that consumed and tortured the sainted body of this patriotic victim, but actually consummated the crime, in the name of holy order and legal procedure, which will remain eternally as one of the saddest and most pitiable spectacles of the weakness and criminal blunderings of the Church and State.

In 1459 a devoted congregation of the Waldenses, at Arras, fell victims to a charge of witchcraft and sorcery. Many of them, when placed upon the rack, admitted their guilt, to escape the torture; prominent rulers and people of wealth were involved and many were burned, while others were thrown in prison, or paid large fines to escape a worse fate, at the hands of the ignorant and intolerant courts, that reflected the hatred and persecution of the enraged populace.[16]

In 1487 two old women were arrested for witchcraft, in Switzerland, for having caused a tempest. They were placed upon the rack, where people, enforc’d do speak anything, and after severe torture they admitted that they were in collusion with the devil and were condemned to die, and if the criminal register at Constance is to be believed, they were burned at the stake, for after the name of each, appears the significant epitaph: “_convicta et combusta_.”[17]

Speaking of the great prevalency of this accusation, about this period, Florimond, in his work concerning the Anti-Christ, observes:

“The seats destined for criminals in our courts of justice are blackened with persons accused of this guilt. There are not judges enough to try them. Our dungeons are gorged with them. No day passes that we do not render our tribunals bloody by the dooms which we pronounce, or in which we do not return to our homes, discountenanced and terrified at the horrible confessions we have heard.”

But the _Witch Mania_ in Europe, may be said to properly date from about the year 1488, when Pope Innocent VIII., in a determined effort to rid the Church of Rome of the stigma and opposition of those supposed to be prompted by the devil, appointed inquisitors in every country, armed with the apostolic power to accuse and punish this class of criminals.[18]

Following the appointment of this commission and those of successive Popes, a wholesale slaughter of innocent men and women, followed this crusade of bigotry and ignorance.

Cumanus burned forty-one women in one province alone, in Italy; Sprenger burned more than five hundred in a year, in Germany; five hundred were burned in Geneva, in 1515 and 1516; in the district of Como, in the year 1524 about a thousand people suffered death for witchcraft and for several years thereafter the general average in this district was a hundred a year and one inquisitor alone, Remigius, took whatever credit he was entitled to, for having during a period of fifteen years convicted and burned nine hundred poor souls for this imaginary offense.[19]

In 1520 witches were burned in fires that were ever kept burning to receive their tortured bodies, in France. In 1561 five poor women of Verneuil were convicted of turning themselves into cats and prowling around and performing satanic feats, as a result of which they were all burned alive.[20]

In 1571 the celebrated sorcerer, Trais Echelles, after his confession, was burned at the Place de Greve, in Paris.

In 1573 Giles Garnier, of Lyons, was indicted for being a loup-garou, or man wolf,[21] and prowling around at night and destroying children. Fifty witnesses testified against him and after being placed upon the rack, he confessed the crime he was charged with and was condemned by Dr. Camus to be:

“tied to a stake and burned alive and that his ashes be then scattered to the winds.”[22]

The conditions in England, during the sixteenth century, were about the same as in France, Germany and Italy, so far as the persecutions for witchcraft were concerned. While rooting out many errors of ignorance and superstition, the Reformation made no head-way at all against witchcraft and sorcery, the greatest evil of the period and strange to narrate, while their followers were persecuted for this crime, Luther and Calvin were as firm believers in witchcraft as were the Popes whom they opposed and their followers were even as zealous persecutors of the innocents accused of this crime as were the churchmen of the old religion.[23]

A few of the English cases will not be found uninstructive as illustrative of the prejudice and persecution levelled at those accused of witchcraft in that country, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The celebrated case of the Witches of Warbois, in 1594, is especially worthy of mention. The good old Mother Samuel lived in the neighborhood of Sir Samuel Cromwell and a Mr. Throgmorton and the latter had several daughters and among them a Miss Joan, who was a melancholy girl, whose head was filled with stories of ghosts and witches and she conceived the idea that poor old Mother Samuel had bewitched her, as she felt sudden pains in her limbs and strange sensations, when she went near her. Her parents believed her and after a few family casualties the poor old woman was arrested upon a charge of witchcraft filed against her by the family of Sir Samuel Cromwell, after the death of his wife, as she had confessed, upon different persecutions that she had afflicted them with pains and fits and turned their milk sour in the pans, prevented their ewes and cows from bearing and that she had caused Lady Cromwell’s death. She also confessed that her husband and daughter were leagued with her in witchcraft and all three were found guilty and hanged on April 7’, 1593.

In Scotland, during the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, witchcraft was made a crime punishable by death, and after this statute, the superstition and fear of the people brought frequent accusations against different people, many of whom were prominent in Government and social circles.

The case against Dr. Fian and his accomplices will illustrate the feeling obtaining in Scotland about this period. Gellie Duncan implicated Agnes Sampson and when she was put to the torture, she also implicated Dr. Fian, Marion Lincup and Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall. They were charged with having attempted the king’s life, through witchcraft and sorcery. It was charged that they had raised a fearful storm at sea, to attempt to wreck a ship on which the king, James VI., and his bride had sailed. Several of the accused were subjected to the torture and finally confessed to the crime and implicated the rest, and on June 25’, 1591, Barbara Napier, Gellie Duncan, Agnes Sampson, Dr. Fian and twenty-five others were hanged for witchcraft and Euphemia Macalzean was “bound to a stake, and burned in ashes, _quick_ to the death.”[24]

After this conviction in Scotland, the renown of King James as an enemy to witchcraft and sorcery, preceded him to England and when he ascended the English throne in 1603, he was ready for a new crusade against this obnoxious class of criminals.

The first statute upon witchcraft, in England, was that of 1541, which defined the offense and affixed the punishment.

Two statutes were passed in 1551, one relating to false prophesies, due no doubt to the machinations of Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid of Kent,” and the other was levelled at conjurgations, witchcraft and sorcery.

The statute of Elizabeth, in 1562, recognized witchcraft as a crime of first magnitude, punishable by death, regardless of whether it was exerted against the lives, limbs, or property of the subjects.[25]

On his accession to the throne in 1604 King James passed the statute whereby it was enacted that:

“If any person shall use, practice, or exercise, any conjurgation of any wicked or evil spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, or feed any such spirit, the first offense to be imprisoned for a year and stand in the pillory once a quarter; the second offense to be death.”

The milder punishment was not inflicted, but all convicted under this statute were hanged and burned, or burned, without previous strangling, “alive and quick.”

This statute continued on the statute books until the year 1736, when it was repealed and suffered no longer to disgrace the intelligence of the country, after which date witches, conjurers and fortune-tellers were only subjected to the jail sentences common to other misdemeanors, confinement for short intervals, or the pillory.

We are reliably informed that during the Long Parliament, in England, three thousand witches were executed[26] and during the first eighty years of the seventeenth century, it has been estimated that five hundred people were annually executed for witchcraft, in England, making a total of forty thousand who thus met their deaths, during the whole period referred to.[27]

One of the rankest weeds in the garden of wild delusions that flourished in England, in the seventeenth century was Matthew Hopkins, who prided himself upon the title of “Witch-finder General.” About 1644 he made the discovery of some moles or other marks on the accused persons, which he advertised as “devil’s marks” and he immediately became in great demand in helping to hunt down and convict persons accused of this crime.

He had several tests to subject them to, and one of the cruelest was to tie the hands and feet of the prisoner together cross-wise, the right thumb to the toe of the left foot and _vice versa_. Being thus tied, so they could not swim, they were wrapped in a cloth or blanket and placed in a pool of water or a river, on their backs. If they sank, they were innocent, but drowned for their innocence, and if they floated, they were adjudged guilty of witchcraft and hanged or burned.[28]

Another kind of punishment, to extort a confession, was what was called “Waking” the witch. An iron bridle or hoop was placed cross-wise of her face with four prongs, penetrating the mouth. The hoop was fastened to the wall at the back of the head, so that the prisoner could not lie down. She was kept in this position sometimes for several days, attendants constantly prodding her, to keep her awake.[29]

In 1664 the venerable Sir Mathew Hale, condemned Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, to be burned at the stake in St. Edmondsbury, upon the most flimsy kind of proof, offered to establish this imaginary crime.[30]

When these two old women went to a shop to purchase herring, their ugliness caused them to be insulted, and they resented it. The daughter of the owner of the store was afflicted with epilepsy and the women were charged with having bewitched her. She was blind-folded and when they touched her, her imagination and nervousness was such that she was thrown into a fit and this was received as proof positive of her bewitchment and the fact that she also was thrown into a fit, when similarly blind-folded, when others than the accused persons touched her, was held incompetent as evidence in their favor.

Upon the evidence of Samuel Pacey, the girl’s father, Margaret Arnold, her aunt, and Thomas Brown, as an expert witness upon Witchcraft, the learned Sir Mathew Hale charged the jury to ascertain from the evidence, first, whether or not the persons charged were actually bewitched and if so, whether or not the prisoners had actually bewitched her. He personally told the jury that he had no doubt of the fact that witches existed, first because the Scriptures affirmed it and, secondly, because the laws of the country recognized it. The jury promptly returned a verdict of guilty and the girl and her father called the next morning to see Sir Mathew Hale and advised him that the complete recovery of the girl followed within a half hour after the verdict of conviction against the prisoners.[31]

Eleven cases of witchcraft were tried before Chief-Justice Holt, between 1694 and 1701, but sentiment was changing toward this offense, by this time and this rugged and astute lawyer made such an appeal to the jury, in each case, that all the defendants were acquitted.[32]

Jane Wenham, known as the “Witch of Walkerne,” was tried and convicted before Lord Chief-Justice Powell, in 1711, upon the most fanciful and ridiculous kind of evidence, but she was pardoned, before her execution.[33]

In 1716, however, a woman and her daughter only nine years old, were tried and convicted of sorcery, at Huntingdon, because they had washed their stockings and made a lather of soap and raised a storm and for this terrible offense they were both hanged.[34]

But this was the last judicial execution for witchcraft in England, although many prisoners were charged with the crime, between this date and the year 1736, when the statute of James I. was repealed.[35]

While the delirium of witchcraft was raging in Europe,—until its victims numbered tens of thousands and its votaries millions,—the fever spread across the ocean and the New England colonists also fell a prey to the superstition. The fear of witchcraft and sorcery seized the multitudes in the United States, in the middle of the seventeenth century and supposed criminals were arrested in such numbers that the prisons were not large enough to hold them.

The persecutions at Salem, Massachusetts, lasted from February until September, 1692, during which time, nineteen supposed witches were hung, fourteen of them being women.[36]

Under the early statutes of New York and Pennsylvania, witchcraft was a capital offense.[37]

The good William Penn, who fled from similar persecution in England, presided in the “City of Brotherly Love,” at the trial of two Swedish women, who were arraigned for witchcraft. The funeral pile had been prepared and the flint and tinder were all ready to burn them, but fortunately they were acquitted of the charge.[38]

In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the penalty for witchcraft was death and the laws of these states were based not only upon the Mosaic code, but upon the Common Law of England, as well.

A few trials occurred in Virginia and Maryland and six persons were hung, in Connecticut, for witchcraft, during the last half of the seventeenth century.

Margaret Jones was executed for witchcraft, in Boston, in June, 1648; Mary Parsons, of Springfield, Massachusetts, was tried and convicted, in 1651; Mrs. Ann Hibbins was executed in Boston, in 1656, and Goody Glover was executed at the same place, in 1688.[39]

The history of the persecutions at Salem, Massachusetts, has furnished the basis for several books, presenting the harrowing details of the trial of the several victims of the crusade against the delusion of witchcraft, at that place.[40]

The Salem persecutions began with the delusions of a party of young girls, who imagined they were bewitched. Elizabeth Parris, aged nine, the daughter of Rev. Samuel Parris, her cousin, Abigail Williams, aged eleven, Ann Putnam, aged twelve, the daughter of the parish clerk, Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard and several other girls furnished the evidence upon which these persecutions were begun.

After reading of witchcraft and magic, these children, who had worked themselves into a state of nervous excitement, began to cut queer antics, such as hiding in holes; crawling under chairs; assuming odd postures and uttering loud and incoherent expressions, all of which they attributed to the supernatural power exerted over them by three women of the neighborhood, Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn and an Indian woman named Tituba. Acting under the license of witchcraft, these girls disturbed religious worship, at will and performed other little misdemeanors, which their doting parents laid to the door of the witches, instead of correcting them, as they should have done.

Finally the three women were arrested and arraigned for the crime of witchcraft. They were unpopular and uncomely women, as Mrs. Upham shows, Mrs. Good having been abandoned by her husband and Mrs. Osburn being a poor unhappy woman, bed-ridden and suffering from nervousness and melancholia.[41] Tituba, the Indian woman, believed in witchcraft herself and had told the children stories of evil spirits until they firmly believed in her unnatural power.

On March 1’, 1692, the trial was begun at the meeting house in Salem, before Esquires John Hathorn and Jonathan Corwin. Sarah Good was first examined and denied any communion with evil spirits and affirmed her service of God. No counsel was allowed the prisoners, as this was the custom according to the common law, in capital cases, unless the Court was in doubt, as the Judge was supposed to be the counsel for the prisoner.

After having been tormented for some time, and believing her escape to lie only in the conviction of someone else, Mrs. Good accused her co-prisoner, Mrs. Osburn, and she was remanded to jail and Mrs. Osburn was brought before the court. Frail in body and feeble in her intellect, this poor woman, when interrogated by the pompous oracles of the law, could only protest her innocence and deny any communion with evil spirits, or any knowledge of the offense charged against her by her alleged accomplice.

After this travesty of a trial, she was again committed to prison, where she was kept heavily chained, from March 7, until May 10’, when she died, her innocent soul being thus forever released from the unnatural and inhuman affliction heaped upon her body by her fellow-beings. The Indian woman, when she was examined, did not deny that the children had been bewitched, but she laid it all to the door of her co-defendants, Mrs. Good and Mrs. Osburn.

The girls, when brought before the supposed witches, fell down and shrieked, in their excitement; if the prisoners clasped their hands, they screamed that they were pinched; when they bit their lips, they in turn, asserted that they were being bitten; they produced pins, which they said the witches had pricked them with and worked upon the morbid imagination of the assembly so that the trials of the witches were little less than a burlesque.[42]

Martha Corey was arrested on the 19’ of March, 1692, and the evidence of her husband was used against her, to the effect that she had taken his saddle to keep him from attending church; that she sat up late at night and frequently kneeled on the hearth, as if in prayer, but uttered no word; that certain of his cattle had been afflicted and that one of their cats had had a fit. On such evidence as this, this good woman, was adjudged guilty and was one of the eight persons executed on the 22’ of September.[43]

On April 19’, 1692, when he was over four score years of age, poor old Giles Corey was arrested for witchcraft, at Salem, and his case furnishes the only instance in the United States, where to avoid the attainder of his blood and the forfeiture of his estate, a prisoner obstinately stood mute and was “pressed to death.”

His unfriendly course toward his wife and the attitude of two of his four sons-in-law in testifying against his wife, no doubt so worked upon his mind as to cause him to make a terrible expiation. He deeded all his property to his two favorite sons-in-law, William Cleeves and John Moulton, and decided to then stand mute and refuse to plead and let the law take its course.

Of course he knew that the gates of justice were closed to him and that he would be convicted, although he was innocent, but he determined to defy the multitude and to withhold his plea, in order to save his property for his sons-in-law and to show his courage, in the supreme test.

Longfellow, in his “New England Tragedies,” has described this feeble old man, withstanding the exhortations of his friends, in his determination to die the death of a martyr in an unjust cause, and one cannot read the graphic and realistic account of this tragedy, without feelings of the greatest compassion and admiration for this grand old stoic, of our own soil, who bravely suffered his body to be pressed until all life was extinct and whose soul took its flight from the open field, near the Howard street burial ground, in the village of Salem, on September 19’, 1692.[44]

In the case of the gentle Rebecca Nurse, even after her acquittal, by a jury, regularly empaneled and charged to try her for witchcraft, the frenzied populace “recalled the decision” and she was sentenced by the Court, to meet the demands of the mob; she was carted to the summit of Gallows hill, and hanged, on July 19’, and her case furnishes one of the most unjust instances of the “recall of a judicial decision” and one of the grossest travesties upon justice in the history of any country.[45]

Because John and Elizabeth Proctor had absented themselves from the meetings, during the trials for witchcraft, they were finally accused and thrown in prison. He made a manly appeal for a trial at Boston, in a letter dated July 23’, 1692, addressed to Mr. Mather, Mr. Allen, Mr. Moody, Mr. Willard and Mr. Bailey, but all to no avail. His friends petitioned the Court; one of the girls who testified against them made a statement that she “must have been out of her head,” when she gave her evidence, as it was not true, but nothing could stem the tide of the current of rapidly rising prejudice and resentment prevailing, so after a farcical trial, he was convicted and executed on August 19’, 1692.

His fearless defense of his good wife saved her life and two weeks after his death, she bore a baby in prison and it was no doubt due to her pregnant condition that she too, escaped the fury of the mob.[46]

The trials of Bridget Bishop, Mary Easty, a sister of Rebecca Nurse, the Jacobs family, Martha Carrier and Philip and Mary English, Elizabeth How, Rev. George Burroughs, Sarah Wildes, Susanna Martin, John Williard, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeater, Margaret Scott, William Reed, Samuel Wardell and Mary Parker,[47] are all interesting and present the details of the most stirring tragedies the courts of justice in this country have ever enacted, but space in this chapter will not permit the detailed account of these various trials.

From the earliest times, a great deal has been written upon the subject of witchcraft and sorcery, in the different languages of Europe. The delusion has furnished a theme for long and arduous treatises by scientist, divine and philosopher and the poet and novelist, has found it a fruitful source of inspiration for song and story.

The works of Dr. Joseph Glanvil, chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles II., and R. Baxter, in his “Certainties of the Works of Spirits,” as vindications of the superstitions of witchcraft and sorcery, did much to spread the delusion, during the popularity of the superstition.

Balthazar Bekker, a reformed Dutch clergyman, was the first to strike at the very foundation of the delusion, near the end of the seventeenth century; Hutchinson, in his historical essay on Witchcraft, in 1718, also took a skeptical view of the subject, and these men, with Weier and Reginald Scot, along with the sturdy advocates who defended the prisoners charged with witchcraft, and such judges as Lord Holt, in England, did much to discourage and overcome the belief in the fallacy.

Burn’s lines to the “De’il” aptly express the popular notion of the time when the belief in spooks and evil spirits obtained:

“Ae dreary, windy, winter night, The stars shot down wi’ sklentin light, Wi’ you, mysel, I got a fright Ayont the lough; Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight Wi’ waving sough.

The cudgel in my nieve did shake, Each bristled hair stood like a stake, When wi’ an eldritch stour, ‘quaick, quaick’, Among the springs Away ye squatter’d, like a drake, On whistling wiggs.”

The notion of the devil then was that he was a large, ill-shaped, hairy sprite, with long tail, horns, cloven feet and wings, as we so often see him pictured in the old representations.

Before Milton’s time, he was believed to be a mere mischievous, ugly and petty spirit, who played fantastic tricks upon humanity, but Milton made of him the paragon of evil, not merely grotesque, but a fiend, whose power was all used for evil.[48]

“The other shape, If shape it might be call’d that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint or limb; Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d, For each seem’d either,—black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seem’d his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand.”[49]

From the history of Demonology and Witchcraft, as given in the works of Bodin, Bekker, Leloyer, De Lancre, Garinet, Mackay, Lecky, Nevins, Upham, Benson, Goodwin and Sir Walter Scott, demons of both sexes had existed in the world, ever since the fall of Adam. They increased and multiplied with wonderful rapidity; inhabited the air and had no fixed residence or abode, and when they congregated, windstorms, hurricanes and earthquakes resulted. They were supposed to delight in destroying the beauties of nature and the possessions of man and entered the bodies of individuals with their breath and caused pains and sickness and bad dreams. All these demons were at the command of any person who would barter his soul to them and his or her evil purpose was then accomplished, but no good action would be undertaken.

In France and England the witches were supposed to ride astride broom-sticks, while in Italy and Spain, the Devil, himself, in the shape of a goat, carried them on his own back.[50]

This belief prevailed for many centuries all over Europe and in certain sections of the world the belief in witchcraft and sorcery is not entirely eradicated today.[51]

In 1627, a ballad entitled the “Druten Zeitung,” or “Witches Gazette” was quite popular in Germany. The sufferings of the witches burned at Würzburg, Bamberg, Franconia and other cities and provinces of the German Empire, were minutely described, by the poet, who grew quite witty in his descriptions of the contortions produced by pain, when the flames brought forth shrieks from the poor wretches who were burned alive.[52]

The “Amber Witch,” by William Meinhold, being the most interesting trial for witchcraft, of Mary Schweidler, is one of the most exceptional and interesting of the books of fiction, based upon the delusion of witchcraft.

But let us draw the curtain upon this continuous human tragedy enacted for two and a half centuries, in Europe, in the name of the law, cataloguing the long list of judicial murders, upon the stage where superstition and delusion alone held sway.

It is sad, in the extreme, to contemplate the long list of human beings whose lives were forfeited, in the early days of “little knowledge,” by those who thus:

“Hoped to merit Heaven, by making earth a Hell.”

And it is doubly sad, to contemplate that the Temples of Justice were peopled by these fears of fantasy and the imagination—like some of the fetishes that modern critics of our present judicial system erect in some places—and that the high priests of the temples blindly followed the mad cry of the mob and laid aside the scales of justice to interpret the unjust ideals of an intoxicated public sentiment, following only the red flag of murder. These jurists of the past centuries who participated in this wholesale slaughter of individual right, may have feared their recall, if they withstood the frenzy of a wrought-up public clamor, and in this a lesson can be learned, of the danger of following the demands of public sentiment, in courts of justice, instead of the proper ideals of equality and justice.

It is fortunate that only the small percent of the densely ignorant now-a-days, account for the misunderstood facts and phenomena of nature by the fears and delusions of witchcraft and sorcery and that in the progress of the race, the delusion of witchcraft has been crowded into the dark, remote and rugged sections where alone the foot of civilization can find no resting-place.

There are few, if any, more deplorable episodes, in human history than that of the persecutions for witchcraft. They illustrate to what an extreme degree of relentless cruelty human nature will go, when fanned to a fever-heat of excitement by some fanatical delusion. On the other hand, the history of the persecutions for witchcraft show how little reliance can be placed upon the credibility of witnesses, influenced by some general excitement, or acting under a mistaken belief of duty, based upon the attainment of some popular object. Thousands of witnesses who appeared against the poor victims charged with this hated crime of witchcraft and sorcery, honestly believed in the fantastical delusions and tricks of fancy that they described as actual occurrences, which in fact had no better foundation than their own fervid imaginations.

Regarding man’s self, alone, it is difficult to reconcile the beneficent laws taught by the church, with the sad “scope and scheme” of things, as disclosed by the pathetic facts of history, in connection with this subject. And yet:

“You cry ‘the cruelty of things’ is mystery to your purblind eye, Which fixed upon a point in space, the general project passes by. ... The dreadest sound man’s ear can hear, the war and rush of stormy wind Depures the stuff of human life, breeds health and strength for humankind. And thus the race of Being runs, till haply, in the time to be, Earth shifts her pole, and Mushtari men another falling star shall see.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 169, 170.

[2] _Ante idem._

[3] Johns’ “Oldest Code of Laws,” 1; Scheil’s “Tome IV. Textes Elamites-Semitiques,” etc., Johns’ “Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters.”

[4] _Ante idem._

[5] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 169; Exod. XXII. 18. As Mackay shows, the sublime hope of immortality, in the early days of “little knowledge” became the source of a whole train of superstitions, from which fount a deluge of blood and horror poured over Europe, for two and a half centuries. “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 168.

[6] Niebuhr’s Lecture, Roman History (English Tr.), vol. I., pp. 295, 319; George Long’s article “Lex,” in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities; Mommsen’s History of Rome (English translation), vol. I., book I., ch. II. and book II., ch. 2.

[7] _Codex Justin. lib. ix, tit. 18._

The “Dialogue on Witches and Witchcraft,” published by the Percy Society from the literature of the middle ages, presents the reasons and basis for the belief in Witchcraft, “in which is layed open how craftily the divell deceiveth not onely the witches, but many other, and so leadeth them awrie into manie great errours, By George Giffard, Minister of God’s word, in Malden, published in 1603.”

In this Dialogue, Daniel quotes Christ’s words, as reported by Marke, that his name is “Legion, for we are many,” as evidence of the existence of “multitudes and armies of divels, as we see in the Gospel.” The command of the Mosaic law “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” is quoted as a sufficient reason for rooting them out; the words of Moses are quoted that the Lord would cast out those nations that hearkened unto soothsayers and diviners, pronouncing that every one that does those things are an abomination to the Lord; that the Lord not only declared that such as practiced witchcraft and sorcery were an abomination before the Lord, but that they should “also bee rooted out.” (Percy Society Pub. vol. VIII., 24, 40, 42, 52, 72.)

The belief that cats were bewitched to do the bidding of the devil, which formed such a large part of the delusion of witchcraft, as practiced in the middle ages, is also touched on, in the “Dialogue on Witches,” in the above interesting publication, from the literature of the middle ages which can be read with much amusement and entertainment, because it gives in realistic hue, a vivid pen picture of the old delusion, just as it existed in the early days of the seventeenth century.

[8] Cnut, II., 4; Lea. _op. cit._ iii. 420; Brunner D. R. G. ii. 678; II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, p. 553.

[9] Leg. Hen. 71; II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, 553.

[10] II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, p. 553.

[11] II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, p. 553.

[12] Garinet’s “Histoire de la Magie en France.”

[13] _Ante idem._

[14] Dr. Sprenger, in his “Life of Mohammed,” computes the entire number of persons who were burned as witches, during the _Christian epoch_, as about _nine million_.

Tasso attributed the belief in magic and witchcraft to the Crusaders, but M. Michaud, in his “History of the Crusades,” denies that the Crusaders believed in witches. However, the edicts of Charlemagne demonstrate quite conclusively that Tasso was right, for the Crusaders, in common with the millions of their contemporaries who were votaries of the delusion of witchcraft and sorcery, attributed the misunderstood facts in the natural world about them, to supernatural powers of magic.

[15] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 186.

[16] Monstrelet’s Chronicle.

[17] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 194.

[18] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 195.

[19] _Ante idem._, p. 197; Danaeus, “Dialogues of Witches.”

[20] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 199.

[21] The ignorant Canadian French still believe in the Loup-garou, just as the French did in the centuries gone by.

[22] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 201.

[23] Hutchinson, on Witchcraft.

In the year 1670 a number of women were condemned by the Parliament of Normandy, for riding broom-sticks to the Domdaniel. Louis XIV., commuted their sentences to banishment for life, when the Parliament of Rouen presented to him a memorial, insisting that he set aside the order for their commutation, but the wise King stood firm and refused to let them be judicially murdered in his kingdom. (For this memorial in full, see II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 289, 298.)

[24] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 226.

[25] Very severe statutes were passed during the reign of Elizabeth, against the imaginary crime of witchcraft and sorcery. The statute 33 Henry VIII. c. 8, was repealed by I. Edward VI., c. 12 and as this left no law in force to punish this class of offenders, it was enacted by 5 Elizabeth, c. 16, that if any person used or practiced witchcraft, enchantment, charm or sorcery, whereby any one shall happen to be killed or destroyed, it shall be felony, without clergy. And if anyone thereby be wasted, consumed, or lamed, in body or member, or any of his goods destroyed or impaired, such offender shall be imprisoned for a year, and stand in the pillory once a quarter, during that time for six hours. (V. Reeve’s History English Law, p. 349.)

[26] See “Butlers Hudibras,” edition by Dr. Zachary Gray (vol. II).

[27] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” vol. II., p. 237.

[28] Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe,” vol. I.

[29] Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe,” p. 146, vol. I.

[30] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 248.

[31] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 253, 254.

[32] _Ante idem._

[33] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 255.

[34] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 258.

While this hideous record of blood and murder, in the name of the law, was being recorded in England, during the seventeenth century, a similar record was being written, in the criminal courts of Spain, Italy, Scotland and Germany. Thousands of innocent people lost their lives under this charge in these countries, during this century.

As an illustration of this mad carnival of death, in Würzburg, alone in the two years following 1627, one hundred and fifty-seven people were burned, in twenty-nine burnings, averaging from five to six people at a burning. The wealthy and the paupers, old and young, the ungainly and the comely, all alike suffered in this unholy crusade.

Of the list there were three play-actors; four innkeepers; three councilmen; fourteen vicars; the burgomaster’s lady; an apothecary’s wife and daughter, the wife, sons and daughter of the councillor Stolzenberg and Gobel Babelin, “the prettiest girl in the town,” thirty-two vagrants and a large number of little innocent children, who were guilty of no offense or crime other than that of living in a period when their innocence was considered a crime. (Hauber’s “_Acta et Scripta Magica_.”)

[35] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 258.

[36] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft, in Outline”; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in Salem Village.”

[37] Upham’s “Witchcraft in Outline,” p. 6.

[38] Upham’s “Witchcraft in Outline,” 6.

[39] The trial of Mary Dyer, Quaker, is presented in “Two Letters of William Dyer,” 1659-1660.

[40] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft”; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in Salem”; Moore’s “History of Witchcraft in Massachusetts.”

[41] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” pp. 25, 26.

[42] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” pp. 44, 45; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in Salem,” 46, 69.

[43] Upham’s “Witchcraft in Outline,” 61.

[44] _Ante idem._, p. 69.

[45] Rose Terry Cooke, in her, “Death of Goody Nurse,” thus describes the death of this good woman:

“They hanged this weary woman there, Like any felon stout; Her white hairs on the cruel rope Were scattered all about.”

[46] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” p. 87.

[47] Upham’s “Salem Witchcraft,” pp. 142, 143; Nevin’s “Witchcraft in Salem,” pp. 70, 253.

[48] See article on “Demonology,” in Foreign Quarterly Review, London, 1840.

[49] Paradise Lost, book ii, Line 666.

[50] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 178.

[51] Many of the ignorant Canadian-French still believe in the delusions of the loup-garou, or man wolf, and in the southern portion of Nigeria, as recently shown by P. Amaury Talbot, superstition and witchcraft lurk in all the forests and lakes of the country. Describing these superstitions, in a recent article in the London Telegraph, Mr. Talbot says:

“The bush with its soft green twilight, dark shadows, and quivering lights, is peopled by many terrors, but among these ‘Ojje’, or witchcraft, reigns supreme. The bird which flies in at your open door in the sunlight, the bat which circles round you at night, the small bushbeasts which cross your path while hunting, all may be familiars of witch or wizard or even the latter themselves, disguised to do you hurt. Sometimes the terror of witchcraft will scatter a whole town.”

And for belief in witchcraft, among the southern darkies, see Journal of American Folk Lore, vol. III., p. 205; Bruce’s “Plantation Negro as a Freeman”; and Jones’ “Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast.”

[52] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” p. 277.