Witch trials

“ The African, be it granted, is tremendously under the dominion of law, and it is the law that such trials should take place before execution; but [Pg 162] there is also involved in it another curious fact, and that is that the spirit of the ordeal is held to be able to manage and suppress the bad spirits trained by the witch to destruction. Human beings alone can collar the witch and destroy him in an exemplary manner, but spiritual aid is required to collar the witch’s devil, or it would get adrift and carry on after its owner’s death. ”

“ The American Witch and
Views of the Educated In America there were witch trials—in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, [3] —some years before 1692. In Boston, 1648, Margaret Jones, of malignant touch, was hanged, and Mrs. Ann (Wm.) Hebbins, in 1655. In Springfield, 1651, Mrs. Mary (Hugh) Parsons was hanged. In Ipswich quarter court, 1652, a man was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty shillings, or to be whipped for “having familiarity with the Devil.” ”

“ It seems certain then that, in the constitution of the witch-societies, thirteen was the appointed number for a coven in Great Britain. The French evidence is not so clear, for the French trials are rarely published in extenso. There is, however, one cause celèbre, which in modern times is usually regarded as a trial for murder; but was considered by the contemporary recorders, and is in its essence, a witch trial. This was the trial in 1440 of Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France. [19] The evidence is given in full detail, and the number of persons implicated can therefore be ascertained. ”

“ The seventies witnessed a rapid dropping off in both figures. Even more so the eighties. By the close of the eighties the accounts of witchcraft were exceedingly rare. The decisions of the courts in the matter were in a state of fluctuation. Two things were happening. The justices of the peace were growing much more reluctant to send accused witches to the assize courts; and the itinerant judges as a body were, in spite of the decisions of Hale and Raymond, more careful in witch trials than ever before, and more likely to withstand public sentiment. ”

“ This is one of those cases which might plausibly be quoted in support of the ground on which the witch trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle, and the writers of the Encyclopédie,—namely, the necessity of punishing the pretensions to such powers, or the belief in their existence, with as great rigour as if their exercise had been real. “The law against witches,” says Selden, “does not prove there be any, but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men’s lives. ”

“ Yet she was nearly a hundred years behind Rome in her zeal, for it was not till June, 1563, that she made the subject matter for legislation at all, and then the Estates [50] enacted “that ‘nae person take upon hand to use any manner of witchcrafts, sorcery, or necromancy, nor give themselves furth to have ony sic craft or knowledge thereof therethrough abusing the people;’ also, that ‘nae person seek ony help, response, or consultation, at ony sic users or abusers of witchcrafts ... under pain of death.’ This is the statute under which all the subsequent witch trials took place.” ”

“ The woman had thoughtlessly laid herself open by her own words to the most serious suspicion. In spite of this, however, the jury brought her in not guilty, "to the great amazement of some, ... yet others who consider the great difficulty in proving a Witch, thought the jury could do no less than acquit her."
This was, during the period, the one trial in or near London of which we have details. There can be no [278] doubt that the courts in London and the vicinity were beginning to ignore cases of witchcraft. After 1670 there were no more trials of the sort in Middlesex. ”

“ In the Catholic canton of Glarus, it is said, a witch was burnt even so late as 1786; but in the Protestant cantons no trials seem to have taken place for two centuries past. The last execution in Geneva was that of Michel Chauderon, in 1652. Sebastian Michaelis indeed would have us to believe, that at one time the tribunal at Geneva put no criminals accused of witchcraft to death, unless on proof of their having done actual injury to men or animals, and that the other phenomena of confessions, etc., were regarded as mere mental delusions. ”

“ The mysterious crime of witchcraft was so difficult of proof that judicial ingenuity was taxed to its utmost to secure conviction, and the Devil was always ready to aid his followers and baffle the ends of justice. The Inquisitor Sprenger, writing in 1487, therefore recommends that, when a witch cannot be forced to confess her guilt by either prayers or torture, she shall be asked whether she will undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron ”

“ 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 cause of the phenomena is, of course, as obscure for us as for the worthy magistrate. We can only say that, when precisely similar evidence was brought before judges and juries in England and New England, at a period when medicine, law, and religion all recognised the existence of witchcraft, magic, and diabolical possession, they had scarcely any choice but to condemn the accused. Causa patet, they said: ‘The devil is at the bottom of it all, and the witch is his minister’. ”

“ For they have found that not one person who has been accused of being a witch, and has admitted the fact, has been convicted.
"And yet it would seem that a confession of witchcraft ought to be a better proof of it, than the mere assertion of possible enemies," responded Master Raymond.
"Of course—if there was any show of reason or fairness in the prosecutions, from first to last; but as it is all sheer malice and wickedness, on the part of the accusers, from the beginning to the end, it would be vain to expect any reasonableness or fairness from them." ”

“ Where one is indicted for being in league with the devil, and exercising acts of witchcraft, it sufficeth to prove that the indictee was in confederacy with that evil spirit, and did such things; but in the trial of one indicted for bewitching any person, two things are to be proved, viz. that such a person is bewitched, and that the indictee is the witch."
[Pg 487] Mr. Forbes says that symptoms of witchcraft are: "When learned and skilful physicians find the patient's trouble doth not proceed from any bodily distemper or natural causes ”

“ Now, as it is well known that such a commission could not be granted in a case of murder in the county where the crime was charged, there seems no good reason why the trial of witches, so liable to excite the passions, should not have been uniformly tried by a court whose rank and condition secured them from the suspicion of partiality. But our ancestors arranged it otherwise, and it was the consequence that such commissioners very seldom, by acquitting the persons brought before them, lost an opportunity of destroying a witch. ”

“ In the early times Witchcraft and sorcery were left to the Church. In 1541, 33 Hen. VIII. c. 8, made both felony without “benefit of clergy;” and by the 1 Jac. I. c. 12, all persons invoking any evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any Witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts, shall be guilty of felony without “benefit of clergy,” and suffer death. King James’s views on Witchcraft and his skill (whereon he greatly plumed himself) as witch-finder are famed. ”

“ It found an apparent confirmation in the text, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus xxii., 18) , and the great legal authorities of England, Bacon, Blackstone, Coke, Selden, and Matthew Hale, had given decisions implying the fact of witchcraft and indicating the various degrees of guilt. It was easier to accept this explanation since executions for this crime had already taken place at Charlestown, Dorchester, Cambridge, Hartford and Springfield. Governor Winthrop, Governor Bradstreet and Governor Endicott had each sentenced a witch to death. ”

“ The accuser and the prosecutor were aided in their work in a peculiar way. It was the theory and belief that every witch was marked—very privately marked—by the Devil, and the marks could only be discovered by a personal examination. And thus there came into the service of the courts a servant known as a "searcher," usually a woman, as most of the unfortunates who were accused were women. ”

“ The power of Satan—in the seventeenth century at any rate—was more than a match even for the trained legal intellect, and special precautions were necessary to provide for the safety of the judge and the conviction of the witch. So exhaustive were these precautions, indeed, that we can find no trace that any judge in England or elsewhere was ever injured by the assaults of the Devil, when in court, while but very few witches, once put on trial, succeeded in escaping conviction—the accusation being, to all intents and purposes, tantamount to a verdict of guilty. ”

“ In England, America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia—every country without exception—witches have lived, flourished, and been burned at the stake. Laws were enacted against witches, and they were condemned on the most trivial and even ridiculous evidence imaginable. If an old woman were seen to enter a house by the front door, and a black cat was seen to leave the house by the back door, it was deemed sufficient evidence that the old woman was a witch, without further evidence or investigation—and indeed much of the evidence was not nearly so good and circumstantial as this! ”

“ The prisoner must approach the judge backwards—just as she approaches Satan's throne at the Sabbath, by the way—and he must make the sign of the cross frequently the while. As we have seen, any evidence, even of those debarred from testifying in ordinary cases, might be given against a witch. This, of course, provided an excellent opportunity for the dis [Pg 208] honest servant, who, having stolen his mistress' property and with it levanted, need only accuse her of witchcraft to escape any unpleasant consequences to himself. ”

“ Men rarely die without the wife or children, the kindred or slaves, being accused of having compassed their destruction by “throwing the glamour over them;” and, as has been explained, the trial and the conviction are of the most arbitrary nature. Yet witchcraft is practised by thousands with the firmest convictions in their own powers; and though frightful tortures await the wizard and the witch who have been condemned for the destruction of chief or elder, the vindictiveness of the negro drives him readily to the malevolent practices of sorcery. ”

“ In the annals of black magic, the silent tribunals of the Inquisition in Southern Europe which has consigned so many thousands of heretics to the torture room and to the flames, do not reveal so many trials for the simple crime of witchcraft as the tribunals of the more northern peoples: there all dissent from Catholic and priestly dogma was believed to be inspired by the powers of hell, deserving a common punishment, whether in the form of denial of transubstantiation, infallibility, of skill in magic, or of the vulgar practice of sorcery. ”

“ Few, very few, persons at that day were above the weakness of a firm belief in witchcraft; even a judge of the Court of Session would not dare openly to question the justice and humanity of the Mosaical law: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." ”

“ At one period the execution of witches exceeded those in England, though the number put to death in the latter country was truly appalling. In 1646 two hundred persons were tried and executed for witchcraft at the Sussex and Essex assizes. The last persons put to death for witchcraft in England were, some say, in 1664, while others assert the last victims suffered in 1682. The latest instance of a witch being executed in Scotland was in 1722, when the supposed offender was burned at Loth, or Dornoch, Sutherlandshire, by order of the sheriff of that county. ”

“ Simple people will then believe that they have died from some natural cause,—from sickness or suffocation. Then when buried the witches steal them from the grave. It has happened that judges have opened, after similar confessions, the grave and found the child in it; but in such cases the judge must consider that the devil is a great taskmaster who may have cheated the eyes of the servants of justice, in order to protect his servants, and in such a case the confession of the witch (forced from her by torture) should prove more than the easily deluded vision of the judge. ”

“ A small hole was left in the door for the imps to enter, and persons were directed to be constantly sweeping the floor, and to keep a strict watch for spiders, flies, or other insects, and if they could not kill them, they certainly were the witch’s imps. Suspected witches were sometimes put to cruel torture to force confession, and were afterwards executed. From such kinds of proof, together with the most absurd and foolish evidence of old women and children, thousands of innocent persons were condemned for witchcraft, and burnt at the stake. ”