Anonymous

“ But by far the most repulsive case of imputed witchcraft of which we have any record in this locality came before the justices of assize in 1705, when the popular feeling was still so strong that the prisoners were not only condemned, but were first half killed by hanging, and then, while their flesh was still quivering with life, were burnt at the stake. The facts would appear incredible if they were not well attested. The prisoners were two women named Ellinor Shaw and Mary Philips, the first born at Cotterstock and the other at Oundle, a "short mile" away. ”

“ The person desirous of becoming a witch was to sit on the hob of the hearth, and, after cleaning and paring her nails, to give utterance to the words, 'I wish I was as far from God as my nails are free from dirt;' whereupon the experimenter immediately becomes possessed of powers which place at her mercy all those who have had the misfortune to incur her displeasure. ”

“ We have spoken of the discouragement given to prosecutions for witchcraft by the example of Chief Justice Holt. His successor, Parker, put a check on the trial by water by his declaration at the Essex Summer Assizes, in 1712, that if it occasioned the death of the suspected witch, all the parties concerned would be deemed guilty of wilful murder. In spite of the law, however, there were cases in which it was appealed to for the satisfaction of ignorant and spiteful villagers. ”

“ The real history of witch prosecution begins and ends with the seventeenth century. Many cases occur both before and after that period, but this was the time when hounding down a poor old hag to death was most conspicuously a virtue. Northamptonshire was favoured with a strong dose of prosecutions as soon as the fruits of the new Act could fairly appear. ”

“ King James, in his "Demonologie," which is quoted in this pamphlet, says witches float on the water by the special appointment of God, in the same way as a dead carcase gushes forth blood on the approach of the murderer. Application was usually made to a justice of the peace, and, on his order, the thumbs and great toes of the suspected person were tied together crosswise, a rope was fastened round the body, and the ends being held up by men standing on the opposite banks, the witch was thrown into the water. ”

“ How long she would have continued to float is doubtful, but her son William, who was from home at the time of her abduction, on hearing that his mother had been taken to be ducked for a witch, said, "Witch or devil, she's my mother, and I'll have her," and arrived at the Mill in time to save her. She lived some years after, but was always looked upon as a veritable witch. Mr. Becke, in his lecture, remarks that "there are persons living in this town now who can remember having seen a woman ducked in the river on the charge of having bewitched the butter in the market." ”

“ It is added in the narrative from which we quote that they began their mischievous work immediately on the conclusion of the bargain; in two days they had destroyed two horses and a child, and in nine months fifteen children, eight men, six women, forty hogs, a hundred sheep, eighteen horses, and thirty cows.
In this case we have a much greater development of the traditional machinery of witchcraft than in any other connected with Northamptonshire. A solemnly sworn compact with the Evil One is rarely met with in the prosaic sorcery of England at all, and especially at this late period. ”

“ The end of the century is memorable for the great discouragement given to witch prosecutions by Chief Justice Holt, who had a large number of prisoners brought before him on a circuit of assize in the east and south of England, but who so directed the juries that they wore all acquitted. ”

“ Cotta's work, however, was much too early to produce any appreciable effect upon the multitude, who still howled and yelled round a newly-found sorceress, and offered up their thanksgivings at the bloody shrine where she was sacrificed.
Under the Commonwealth the persecution took its most violent form, while it first began to decline under the Protectorate. Matthew Hopkins, the celebrated witch-finder, commenced his career in 1645 ”

“ An old woman named Osborne, living at Tring, was suspected of bewitching a neighbour, named Butterfield, because during the rebellion of 1745 he had refused a request of hers for buttermilk. To solve his doubts he sent for a white (or harmless) witch from Northampton, who confirmed him in his belief, and the cottage where Mrs. Osborne lived was watched by rustics, armed with pitchforks and staves, as a security against spirits. ”

“ It was repeated six years afterwards; but in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth, there was a new Act passed, limiting the punishment, for a first offence, to exposure in the pillory. This gave the necessary impetus to the zeal of the witch-finders; and accordingly we find, from this time forward, numerous records of executions in various parts of the country. Among them, no case created so much noise as that of the witches of Warboys. Warboys is a village standing in the lowlands of Huntingdonshire, on the road between the county town and Ramsay. ”

“ Moreover, the person bit or scratched by a witch immediately becomes one. The belief that witches could easily transform themselves into cats, foxes, and other animals, was very common here, as in other places. They were generally detected by being maimed. "A woodman out working in the forest has his dinner every day stolen by a cat. ”

“ Left alone in prison, and having the testimony of his mother's violent death against him, the son became still more agonised in mind, and, to clear himself, stoutly maintained his innocence against all comers. But this was taken as only greater proof of his obduracy. The writer of the tract states that he still feared his father's confession; but we have no explanation beyond the words given above of the part the old man took in support of the prosecution. ”

“ Danks, the minister, to pray by her several nights before the said imps would leave her; she also added that she heard the said prisoners say that they would be revenged on Mrs. Wise because she would not give them some buttermilk." This buttermilk business was very humiliating for his Satanic Majesty's agents to have to do with, but it appears that the longer they lived in the world the more did the dignity of their life descend. The popular belief was that the places sucked by the imps became insensible to feeling, and hence the test by pricking a suspected witch. ”

“ An old villager of Guilsborough, named Agnes Browne, was one of the first seized in this county. She was, of course, poor—"borne to no good," as the old black-letter pamphlet spitefully says,—"and, for want of grace, neuer in the way to receive any." She certainly had not the art of conciliating the good-will of her neighbours, though we shall no doubt be going a good deal too far if we take the statement on trust that she was "of an ill nature and wicked disposition, spightfull and malitious." The proverb says, "Give a dog a bad name and hang him;" ”

“ The Northampton Mercury of August 1, 1785, records the fact that on "Thursday last a poor woman, named Sarah Bradshaw, of Mear's Ashby, in this county, who was accused by some of her neighbours of being a witch, in order to prove her innocence, submitted to tho ignominy of being dipped, when she immediately sunk to the bottom of the pond, which was deemed an incontestible proof that she was no witch !" ”

“ Shortly after her departure, Lady Cromwell saw the unlucky individual who was supposed to be at the bottom of all the mischief. To use Hutchinson's words, [10] "She sent for the old woman and call'd her witch, and abused her, and pulled off her kerelier, and cut off some of her hair, and gave it to Mrs. Throgmorton for a charm. At night this lady, as was very likely she would after such an ill day's work, dreamt of Mother Samwell and a cat, and fell into fits; and about a year and a quarter after she died." This was another offence at the poor wretch's door. ”

“ Among the means employed to vent their malice was this of accusing the Queen's mother of having, through the agency of witchcraft, fixed the King's love upon her daughter. The charge appears to have been brought by a certain "Thomas Wake, squier," (of Blisworth) who seized the opportunity of the King's being at Warwick to present before him and his attendant lords "a image of lede made lyke a man of armes, conteynyng the lengthe of a mannes fynger, and broken in the myddes, and made fast with a wyre, sayying it was made by the Duchess' to use with wichcraft and sorsory." ”

“ R iding through the air on a broomstick, and playing mischievous pranks with her neighbours' pigs and poultry make up the current idea of a witch's business in these degenerate days; but there was a time when her vocation was more glorious, her arts more insidious, and her power more terrible. ”

“ In the Northamptonshire version, a young fellow lets himself to a farmer and his wife, who, from their nightly journeyings on calves, he quickly discovers to be witches. One night he is required to attend them on one of these unhallowed expeditions, the object of which is the stealing of a child, to be used, probably, in tho midnight orgies. ”

“ Exasperated at the continual repetition of the theft, he lies in wait for the aggressor, and succeeds in cutting off her paw, when lo, on his return home, he finds his wife minus a hand." On the Continent, these infernal agents were credited with still larger powers. The accompanying cut, copied by Mr. Wright from a carving in Lyons Cathedral, shows a witch seated on a human being, whom she has converted into a goat, and dangling a cat in his face so as to tear him with her claws. ”

“ Sternberg has some highly interesting pages on the superstitions of the Northampton- shire peasantry. The profession of exercising a species of supernatural power, it would appear, was not at all uncommon, since the method of acquiring it, according to popular belief, was very simple. ”

“ The special crime with which she was charged was that of bewitching a man to death, though she had the further reputation, as was usual in such cases, of having done mischief to the cattle of her neighbours. ”

“ The power of the annalist is consumed in venting strong epithets upon her. "Mary Barber, of Stanwicke," he says, "was one in whom the licentiousnesse of her passions grew to bee the master of her reason, and did so conquer in her strength and power of all vertue, that shee fell to the apostacy of goodnesse, and became diuerted, and abused vnto most vilde actions, cloathing her desperate soule in the most vgly habiliments that either malice, enuy, or cruelty could produce from the blindnesse of her degenerate and deuillish desires." ”

“ Mr. Sternberg, in his "Folk-lore," mentions another execution on July 22, 1712, but this seems to be a mistake. Gough, in his Collection on the Topography of Northamptonshire, refers to a tract of the date 1712, detailing the punishment of the offenders, similar to those we have so largely quoted from; but no such tract is to be found in the Bodleian Library, and it is incredible that witches were hanged both on the 22nd of July, 1612, and the 22nd of July a century later. [21]
Hitherto the more tragical aspect of witchcraft has chiefly claimed our attention ”

“ Widow Peak, another witness, for instance, swears that, while she with two other women were watching the prisoners at night after their apprehension "there appeared in the room a little white thing, about the bigness of a cat, which sat upon Mary Phillip's lap, at which time she heard her, the said Mary Phillips, say, then pointing to Elinor Shaw, that she was the witch that kill'd Mrs. ”

“ In compiling a report for the county magistrates relating to property purchased for a gaol and house of correction, which was presented in February last year, the Clerk of the Peace (H. P. Markham, Esq.) has been at great pains to ascertain the precise site of the common gaole" in the 17th century. At this early period, however, he does not find sufficient data for fixing it, though he finds house property acquired in 1634, which was subsequently converted into a gaol and house of correction, and which partly stood on the site of the present County Hall. [14]
To return to our narrative. ”

“ Wise dyed in a sad and languishing condition." This reminds us at once of Hopkins's system and the charge against the Duchess of Gloucester. The imps and other familiars figured very largely, the prisoners being accused not only of having red, dun, and black imps sent to them, who "nightly sucked a large teat," but of sending others to persons whom they wished to help in doing mischief. ”