John Linwood Pitts

“ While at the Sabbath the Devil marked her at the upper part of the thigh: which mark having been examined by the midwives, they reported that they had stuck a small pin deeply into it, and that she had not felt it, and that no blood had issued: she did not know in what part the Devil had marked the others: those who came first to the place of the Sabbath, waited for the others; and all the Wizards and Witches appeared in their proper forms: but blackened and disfigured so that they could not be recognised.
The Devil appeared sometimes in the form of a goat at the Sabbath ”

“ There will also be classes in various subjects, including the French, German and Italian languages, drawing, music, &c., &c., all of which will be open to girls as well as boys, women as well as men. In an island like Guernsey, where from the smallness of the community many of the young people necessarily have to go and seek their fortunes abroad, the advantages for self-culture offered by an Institution like this can scarcely be over-rated. ”

“ The chief wants of to-day may not necessarily be the most pressing requisites of a century hence. Therefore, one of the greatest essentials—and at the same time one of the greatest difficulties—in a foundation like this, is to provide for and combine within it such a fixity of principle and such an adaptability of administration as shall enable it to keep pace with the progress of the ages, and suit itself to the several requirements of succeeding generations as they pass. ”

“ Out of these unfortunate victims, three women and one man appear to have been burnt alive; twenty-four women and four men were hanged first and burnt afterwards; one woman was hanged for returning to the island after being banished; three women and one man were whipped and had each an ear cut off; twenty-two women and five men were banished from the island; while five women and three men had the good fortune to be acquitted. Most of these accused persons were natives of Guernsey, but mention is made of one woman from Jersey, of three men and a woman from Sark, and of a man from Alderney. ”

“ This principle has without doubt made many persons credulous. How often have purely accidental associations been taken as convincing proofs? How many innocent people have perished in the flames on the asserted testimony of supernatural circumstances? I will not say that there are no witches; but ever since the difficulty of convicting them has been recognized in the island, they all seem to have disappeared, as though the evidence of the times gone by had been but an illusion. ”

“ Court by the said Officers; from which it is clear and evident that for many years past the aforesaid women have practiced the diabolical art of Witchcraft, by having not only cast their spells upon inanimate objects, but also by having retained in languor through strange diseases, many persons and beasts; and also cruelly hurt a great number of men, women, and children, and caused the death of many animals, as recorded in the informations thereupon laid, it follows that they are clearly convicted and proved to be Witches. ”

“ Hicks, and her daughter, a little girl of nine years old, are said to have been hanged as witches at Huntingdon, but of this there seems to be some doubt. The last really authentic trial in England for witchcraft took place in 1712, when the jury convicted an old woman named Jane Wenham, of Walkerne, a little village in the north of Hertfordshire, and she was sentenced to be hanged. The judge, however, quietly procured a reprieve for her, and a kind-hearted gentleman in the neighbourhood gave her a cottage to live in, where she ended her days in peace. ”

“ Now, it would be very easy for these orgies to become associated—particularly in the then superstitious condition of the popular mind—with the actual bodily presence of the Devil as one of the participants; while it is also not improbable that, in some cases at least, heartless and evil-minded persons worked upon the prevailing credulity to further their own nefarious purposes. ”

“ The pricking of witches was at one time a lucrative profession both in England and Scotland, one of the most noted prickers being a wretched imposter named Matthew Hopkins who was sent for to all parts of the country to exercise his vile art. ”

“ In expiation of which crime it has been ordered by the Court that the said women shall be presently conducted, with halters about their necks, to the usual place of punishment, and shall there be fastened by the Executioner to a gallows, and be hanged, strangled, killed, and burnt, until their flesh and bones are reduced to ashes, and the ashes shall be scattered ”

“ The local facilities afforded for the acquisition of French are particularly marked, while it cannot for a moment be doubted that a young man or woman who can use both French and English with fluency, is much better equipped for the battle of life than is a person knowing only one of these languages. Whatever intellectual needs may become apparent in the people, these the Guille-Allès Library will set itself to supply. ”

“ His Treatise on the History, Laws and Customs of the Island of Guernsey, bears the date of 1682, and at page 126 he says:—
By the law approved (Terrien, Lib. xii. cap. 37) , torture is to be used, though not upon slight presumption, yet where the presumptive proof is strong, and much more when the proof is positive, and there wants only the confession of the party accused. Yet this practice of torturing does not appear to have been used in the island for some ages, except in the case of witches, when it was too frequently applied, near a century since. ”

“ In Scotland, thousands of persons were burnt for witchcraft within a period of about a hundred years, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among the victims were persons of the highest rank, while all orders of the state concurred. James I. even caused a whole assize to be prosecuted because of an acquittal; the king published his work on Dæmonologie, in Edinburgh, in 1597; the last sufferer for witchcraft in Scotland was at Dornoch, in 1722.
[Pg 9]
CONFESSIONS OF WITCHES UNDER TORTURE. LE 4 JUILLET 1617. ”

“ Our esteemed Bailiff has offered a suggestion or two of considerable value on this point with regard to certain Guernsey phases of the superstition. He thinks it highly probable that some of these deluded women were actually the dupes of unprincipled and designing men, who arrayed themselves in various disguises and then met their unfortunate victims by appointment. This idea is, indeed, borne out to a great extent by some of the particulars stated in the following confessions. For instance, some of the women assert that when they met the Devil he was in the form of a dog, but rather larger ”

“ When these wretches got to any town—for they tried all the chief market-towns in the district—the crier used to go round with his bell, desiring "all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tried by the person appointed." As many as thirty women were brought at [Pg 6] once into the Newcastle town-hall, stripped and pricked, and twenty-seven set aside as guilty. Gardner continues:—
The said witch-finder acquainted Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson that he knew women whether they were witches or no by their looks ”

“ Then he put his hands up her coats and pulled out the pin, and set her aside as a guilty person and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty. Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of the aforesaid woman by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that woman to be brought again, and her clothes pulled up to her thigh, and required the Scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil. ”

“ In one way or other there must have been some physical basis for beliefs so widely extended and so terribly real. Imagination, of course, possesses a marvellous power of modification and exaggeration, but still it requires some germs of fact around which to crystallise. ”

“ In Jersey on the contrary, Witchcraft was specially legislated against at least on one occasion, for we find that on December 23rd, 1591, the Royal Court of that island passed an Ordinance, of which the following is the purport:—
Forasmuch as many persons have hitherto committed and perpetrated great and grievous faults, as well against the honour and express commandment of God as to the great scandal of the Christian faith, and of those who are charged with the administration of justice, by seeking assistance from Witches and Diviners in their ills and afflictions ”

“ Confessed that the Devil had charged her to call, as she passed, for Isabel le Moygne: when she came to the Sabbath, which she had done several times. On leaving the Sabbath the Devil incited [Pg 14] her to commit various evil deeds: and to that effect he gave her certain black powders, which he ordered her to throw upon such persons and cattle as she wished; with this powder she perpetrated several wicked acts which she did not remember: among others she threw some upon Mr Dolbell, parish minister: and was the occasion of his death by these means. ”

“ So that altogether the community will be indebted to them for an educational foundation worth a magnificent figure in money value alone, while besides this, we must not forget the long years of thoughtful care and of self-denying energy involved in maturing these splendid projects, or the healthy mental and moral stimulus which the conduct of these patriotic gentlemen has supplied. ”

“ Another suggestion of the Bailiff's is also worth notice. It is that the black ointment so often mentioned as being rubbed on the bodies of the so-called witches, had a real existence, and may have been so compounded as to act as a narcotic or intoxicant, and produce a kind of extatic condition, just as the injection of certain drugs beneath the skin is known to do now. These suggestions are certainly worth consideration as offering reasonable solutions of at least two difficulties connected with those strange and lamentable superstitions. ”

“ They comprise a spacious and handsome Lecture Hall, capable of seating from 250 to 300 persons; a Book-room 63-ft. by 25-ft., exclusively for the lending department, and which will accommodate on its shelves from 45,000 to 50,000 additional volumes—with a large anteroom for the convenience of the subscribers. The present Reading-room will then be used for a Reference Library and Students' Consulting and Reading-room. There are also a General Reading-room, a Working Men's Reading-room, and numerous apartments suitable for Class-rooms and Committee-rooms. ”

“ CONFESSION DE MARIE BECQUET.
Marie, femme de Pierre Massy, appres sentence de mort prononcée a l'encontre d'elle, ayant esté mise a la question, a confessé qu'elle est Sorciere; et qu'à la persuation du Diable, quj s'aparut à elle en forme de chien: elle se donna à luy: que lors que se donna à luy ill la print de sa patte par la main: qu'elle s'est oint du mesme onguent que sa mere s'oignoit: et a esté au Sabath sur la banque pres du Chateau de Rocquaine, avec luy, où n'y avoit que le Diable et elle, se luy sembloit: en la susdite forme en laquelle elle la veu plusieurs fois. ”

“ Mr. Thomas de Lisle deposed that Thomas Brouart, who resided in his house, having called the son of Collas Becquet a wizard, it happened that there was one day found in the said Thomas's bed a great number of maggots, which the said Sieur de Lisle saw, and compared to an ant-hill, so lively and thick were they, and they could hardly clear the said child of them, although they put it in different places; afterwards the said child gathered lice in such a manner that although its shirts and clothes were [Pg 26] changed every day they could not free it ”

“ On the contrary they desire—while adhering, of course, to certain main lines of intellectual activity—to imbue it with such elasticity of adaptation as will enable it to successfully grapple with the changing necessities of changing times. ”

“ Mr Thomas de Ljsle depose que Thomas Brouart, qui demeure en sa maison, ayant appellé le fils de Collas Becquet, sorcier, il arriva qu'il fut un jour trouvé au lict du djt Thomas grand nombre de vers, et les ayant le djt Sieur de Ljsle veus, les jugea comme une formioniere, tant estoyent mouvans et espais, et à peine en peuvent vuider le dit enfant, l'ayant mis en plusieurs endroits; qu'appres fut le djt enfant accueillis de poulx de telle maniere que quoyque luy changeassent des chemises et habits tous les jours ne l'en pouvoyent franchir ”

“ With regard to the gatherings at the so-called Witches' Sabbaths, there can be no doubt that—quite apart from the question of any diabolic presence at such meetings—very questionable assemblies of people did take place at intervals among the inhabitants of many countries. ”

“ They represent, for instance, culprits hanging on the gallows—sometimes two or three in a row—with a fire kindled underneath; others attached to stakes in the midst of the flames; others, again, racing away under the lash of the executioner, &c., &c., and thus form a most realistic comment on the judicial severities recorded in the text. ”

“ The wife of the said Hugues deposed to exactly the same as her husband.
Jean de Garis, son of William, deposed that about two or three years ago, having lent some money on pledge to Collas Becquet, he asked him for the money, or else for a verification of his security; [Pg 25] when the said Becquet replied that he would let him know what his security was; the said de Garis having then returned home, found his daughter sick and afflicted; they found witches' spells and other conjurations several times in their child's pillow ”