Part 24

Mary Smith of Lynn, wife of Henry Smith, glover, was envious of her neighbours for their greater skill in making cheese: in the midst of her discontents, and while her mind, by its passion and evil thoughts, was in a fit condition for the devil to enter therein, Satan came to her as a black man, provoking her in a "lowe murmuring and hissing Voyce," to forsake God and follow him; to which she "condescended" in express terms. The devil then constantly appeared to her--sometimes as a mist; sometimes as a ball of fire, with dispersed spangles of black; but chiefly as a black man; and sometimes as a horned man, in which shape he came to her when in prison. Mary was a good hand at banning. She cursed John Orkton, and wished his fingers might rot off, and they did so; she cursed Elizabeth Hancock, whom she accused of stealing her hen, wishing that the bones might stick in her throat, calling her a "prowde linny, prowde flurts, and shaking the hand bade her go in, for she should repent it;" and incontinently Elizabeth Hancock was taken with a pinching at the heart, and sudden weakness of all her body, and fainting fits, and racking pains, and madness, and raving, so that she tore the hair off her head as she tossed about distracted. Her father went to a wise man, who showed him Mary Smith's face in a glass, and bade him make a cake according to certain directions, which then he was to lay, half on Bessie's head and half on her back, and which would infallibly cure her, as she was not ill but bewitched. The father did so, and the daughter mended. Soon after this she married one James Scot, who, having a mortal hatred against Mary Smith, killed her cat, and threatened that if his wife had any such fits as she had before they married, he would hang Mary Smith without mercy. At this Mary clapped her hands, and cried "They had killed her cat!" and the next day Elizabeth had the old nipping round her heart. So James went to Mary and said he would most certainly take her before the magistrates, if she did not amend her ways and heal his wife at once. Fortunately for Mary the woman got better, and the evil day was staved off for a time. To Cecily Balye, the maid-servant next door, she sent her cat to sit upon her breast when she slept, in revenge at the maid's sweeping a little dust awry; and Cicely gave awful evidence how, through the thin partition which divided them, she used to see Mary Smith adoring her imp in a submissive manner--down on her knees, using strange gestures and uttering many murmuring and broken speeches; and if she had listened, and looked more attentively, she might have seen and heard more: "but she was with the present spectacle so affrighted, that she hurried away in much feare and distemper."

"The fourth endammaged by this Hagge," says Roberts, was one Edmund Newton. He was a cheesemonger, like herself, and she thought he got the best of the trade; so she, or her imp in her likeness, came to him as he was lying in bed, and "whisked about his face a wet cloath of very loathsome savour; after which he did see one clothed in russet, with a little bush beard, who told him he was sent to looke vpon his sore legge, and would heale it." When Newton rose to take a fairer look, he saw that the russet man with a little bush beard had cloven feet, so refused his offer of chirurgery. After this Mary was constantly sending her imps to him--a toad and crabs--which crawled about the house, "which was a shoppe planchered with boords, where his seruants (hee being a shoo maker) did worke;" and one of them took the toad and flung it into the fire, during which time the witch was grievously tormented. So nothing would serve Edmund Newton's turn but he must "scratch her;" yet when he strove to do so his nails turned like feathers, and he had no power over her, not even to raise the skin so much as a nine weeks' old babe might have done. At another time a great water-dog ran over his bed--the chamber door being shut--and he fell lame in his hand, and did not recover the use of it again. And then the law interfered, and Mary Smith was brought before the magistrates to answer to the charge of witchcraft--by them committed to the assizes--found guilty by judge and jury--and hanged by the neck till she was dead, as a warning to the time and her own kind. This murder was done 1616.

RUTTERKIN.[124]

The Earl and Countess of Rutland had shown much kindness to the widow Joan Flower, and her two daughters Philip and Margaret. Joan and Philip were employed at the castle pretty constantly as charwomen, and Margaret was taken into the castle itself, "looking both to the poultrey abroad and the washhouse within doores," and evidently a great favourite with my Lady, who trusted her much. Their good fortune raised them up a host of enemies, as is always the case; and backbiters went with tales to the Lord and Lady, saying, "First, that Ioane Flower the Mother was a monstrous malicious woman, full of oathes, curses, and imprecations, irreligious, and, for any thing they saw by her, a plaine Atheist; besides of late days her very countenance was estranged, her eyes were fiery and hollow, her speech fell and enuious, her demeanour strange and exoticke, and her conuersation sequestered; so that the whole course of her life gaue great suspition that she was a notorious witch, yea some of her neighbours dared to affirme that she dealt with familiar Spirits, and terrified them all with curses and threatening of reuenge, if there were neuer so little cause of displeasure and vnkindnesse. Concerning Margaret, that she often resorted from the Castle to her Mother, bringing such Provision as they thought was vnbefitting for a seruant to purloyne, and coming at such unseasonable houres, that they could not but coniecture some mischeife between them, and that their extraordinary ryot and expences tended both to rob the Lady, and to maintaine certaine deboist and base company which frequented this Ioane Flower's house the mother, and especially her youngest Daughter. Concerning Philip that she was lewdly transported with the loue of one Th. Simpson, who presumed to say, that she had bewitched him: for he had no power to leaue, and was as he supposed maruellously altered both in minde and body, since her acquainted company: these complaints began many yeares before either their conuiction or publique apprehension: Notwithstanding such was the honour of this Earle and his Lady; such was the cunning of this monstrous woman in her obseruation towards them; such was the subtilty of the Diuell to bring his purposes to passe; such was the pleasure of God to make tryall of his seruants; and such was the effect of a damnable womans wit and malitious enuy, that all things were carried away in the smooth Channell of liking and good entertainment on euery side, untill the Earle by degrees conceiued some mislike against; and so peraduenture estranged himself from that familiarity and accustomed conferences he was wont to haue with her; untill one Peate offered her some wrong; against whom she complained, but found that my Lord did affect her clamours and malicious information, vntill one Mr. Vauasor abandoned her company, as either suspicious of her lewd life, or distasted with his oun misliking of such base and poore Creatures, whom nobody loued but the Earle's household; vntill the Countesse misconceiuing of her daughter Margaret and discovering some vndecencies both in her life and neglect of her businesse, discharged her from lying any more in the Castle, yet gave her 40_s._, a bolster, and a mattresse of wooll; commanding her to go home vntill the slacknesse of her repayring to the Castle, as she was wont, did turne her loue and liking toward this honourable Earle and his family into hate and rancor; wherevpon despighted to bee so neglected, and exprobated by her neighbours for her Daughters casting out of doores, and other conceiued displeasures, she grew past all shame and womanhood, and many times cursed them all that were the cause of this discontentment, and made her so loathsome to her former familiar friends and beneficial acquaintance."

Things being come to this pass, it was not difficult to persuade the Earl and his Countess that, when their eldest son Henry, Lord Ross, sickened very strangely, and after a while died,--when their second son Francis was also tortured by a strange sickness--and the Lady Katherine their daughter was in danger of her life "through extreame maladies and vnusuall fits"--it was all done by Joan Flower's witchcraft, and that the quickest way out of their troubles was to arrest the widow and her two daughters and see what could be done with them, both by their own confessions and the neighbours' relations. They were arrested accordingly, and carried before the magistrates where witnesses were not awanting. The first evidence given was that of Philip Flower, sister to Margaret, and daughter of poor old Joan. On the 4th of February she confessed that her mother and sister "maliced" the Earl of Rutland, his countess, and their children, because they were put out of the Castle; wherefore her sister Margaret, by desire of her mother, got Lord Henry's right-hand glove which she found on the rushes in the nursery, and delivered it to Joan, who presently rubbed it on the back of her spirit Rutterkin, bidding him "height and goe and doe some hurt to Henry Lord Rosse," then put it into boiling water, pricking it many times with a knife, and burying it in the yard with a wish that Lord Henry might never thrive. Whereupon he fell sick and shortly after died. She also said that she often saw the spirit Rutterkin leap on her sister Margaret's shoulder and suck her neck, and that her mother had often cursed the earl and his lady, and boiled feathers and blood together, "vsing many Deuillish speeches and strange gestures." On the 22nd of the same month Margaret was examined, and she also gave no trouble. She confessed that truly she had got Lord Henry's glove, and that her mother had done with it in all particulars of stroking Rutterkin's back, and putting it into boiling water, and pricking, and burying it, according to the words of Philip; also that some two or three years ago she had found a glove of the Lord Francis', which her mother rubbed on Rutterkin the cat and bade him go upward, and which, by her incantations and sorceries, caused a grievous illness to light on the little nobleman. And she got a piece of Lady Katherine's handkercher, which her mother put into hot water, "and then taking it out rubbed it on Rutterkin, bidding him 'flye and go;' whereupon Rutterkin whined and cryed 'Mew,'" and the mother said he had no power over Lady Katherine to hurt her. A few days later both sisters were examined again, when Philip confessed that she had a spirit which sucked her in the form of a white rat, and which she had entertained for the space of two or three years, on condition that it should cause Thomas Simpson to love her; and Margaret allowed that she had two spirits, one white, the other black-spotted, to whom she had given her soul, they covenanting to do all that she commanded them. Then she rambled off into a wild statement of how on the thirtieth of January last, she, being in Lincoln gaol, four devils appeared to her at eleven or twelve o'clock at night; the one stood at her bed's foot, and had a black head like an ape, and spake unto her; but what she could not well remember; at which she was very angry that he would not speak plainer and let her understand his meaning. She said that the other three were Rutterkin, Little Robin, and Spirit, "but shee never mistrusted them nor suspected herselfe till then." This closed the examinations of the two younger women: for poor old Joan had died on her way to gaol "with a horrible excruciation of soul and body," and so an end was come to of her. But if there was nothing more to be got out of the Flower family, their neighbours were not backward to help them with a bad word, when handy. Anne Baker, evidently mad, Joan Willimot, and Ellen Greene, were brought to say their say in the face of the country and before the county justices. Joan Willimott gave evidence that Joan Flower had oftentimes complained to her of the unfriendly conduct of my Lord of Rutland, in turning her daughter out of the house, adding that though she could not have her will of my Lord himself, she had spied his son and stricken him to the heart--stricken him with a white spirit, which yet could be cured if she so willed. Joan Willimott then "fyled" herself for a witch, saying that she had a spirit called Pretty, given to her by her master, William Berry of Langholme, in Rutlandshire, whom she had served three years. When he gave it to her, he bade her open her mouth and he would blow into her a Fairy which should do her good; and she did so; and he blew into her mouth, and presently after there came out of her mouth a spirit which stood upon the ground in the shape and form of a woman, and asked of her her soul--which Joan granted--being willed thereto by her master. She did not own to having ever hurt anyone, but said instead that she had helped divers who had been stricken and forespoken, and that the use she made of her spirit was to know how those did whom she had undertaken to mend. She said, too, that her spirit cam