of Elizabeth, and of James I., the last of which was repealed only in 1736, and passed while Coke was Attorney-General, and Bacon a member of the Commons! Witness the exploits of Hopkins, the witch-finder-general, against the wretched creatures in Lincolnshire, of whom—
“Some only for not being drown’d,
And some for sitting above ground
Whole nights and days upon their breeches,
And feeling pain, were hanged for witches.”
Hudibras, part ii. canto iii.
What would the Doctor have said to the list of THREE THOUSAND victims executed during the dynasty of the Long Parliament alone, which Zachary Grey, the editor of Hudibras, says he himself perused? What absurdities can exceed those sworn to in the trials of the witches of Warboys, whose fate was, in Dr. Hutchinson’s days, and perhaps is still, annually “improved” in a commemoration sermon at Cambridge? or in the case of the luckless Lancashire witches, sacrificed, as afterwards appeared, to the villany of the impostor Robinson, whose story furnished materials to the dramatic muse of Heywood and Shadwell? How melancholy is the spectacle of a man like Hale, condemning Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, in 1664, on evidence which, though corroborated by the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a child would now be disposed to laugh at? A better order of things, it is true, commences with the Chief-justiceship of Holt. The evidence against Mother Munnings, in 1694, would, with a man of weaker intellect, have sealed the fate of the unfortunate old woman; but Holt charged the jury with such firmness and good sense, that a verdict of Not Guilty, almost the first then on record in a trial for witchcraft, was found. In about ten other trials before Holt, from 1694 to 1701, the result was the same. Wenham’s case, which followed in 1711, sufficiently evinced the change which had taken place in the feelings of judges. Throughout the whole trial, Chief Justice Powell seems to have sneered openly at the absurdities which the witnesses, and in particular the clergymen who were examined, were endeavouring to press upon the jury; but, with all his exertions, a verdict of guilty was found against the prisoner. With the view however of securing her pardon, by showing how far the prejudices of the jury had gone, he asked, when the verdict was given in, “whether they found her guilty upon the indictment for conversing with the devil in the shape of a cat?” The foreman answered, “We find her guilty of that!” It is almost needless to add that a pardon was procured for her. And yet after all this, in 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm, by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of soap!
With this crowning atrocity, the catalogue of murders in England closes; the penal statutes against witchcraft being repealed in 1736, and the pretended exercise of such arts being punished in future by imprisonment and pillory. Even yet however the case of Rex v. Weldon, in 1809, and the still later case of Barker v. Ray, in Chancery (August 2, 1827), proves that the popular belief in such practices has by no means ceased; and it is not very long ago that a poor woman narrowly escaped with her life from a revival of Hopkins’s trial by water35. Barrington, in his observations on the statute 20 Henry VI., does not hesitate to estimate the numbers of those put to death in England on this charge at 30,000!
We now turn to Scotland. Much light has been thrown on the rise and progress, decline and fall, of the delusion in that country by the valuable work of Mr. Pitcairn36, which contains abstracts of every trial in the supreme Criminal Court of Scotland: the author has given a faithful and minute view of the procedure in each case, accompanied with full extracts from the original documents, where they contained anything of interest.
In no country perhaps did this gloomy superstition assume a darker or bloodier character than in Scotland. Wild, mountainous, and pastoral countries, partly from the striking, varied, and sometimes terrible phenomena which they present,—partly from the habits and manner of life, the tendency to thought and meditation which they create and foster,—have always been the great haunts in which superstition finds its cradle and home. The temper of the Scots, combining reflection with enthusiasm—their mode of life in earlier days, which amidst the occasional bustle of wild and agitating exertion, left many intervals of mental vacuity in solitude—their night watches by the cave on the hill-side—their uncertain climate, of sunshine and vapour and storm—all contributed to exalt and keep alive that superstitions fear with which ignorance looks on every extraordinary movement of nature. From the earliest period of the Scottish annals, “All was bot gaistis, and eldrich phantasie;” the meteors and auroræ boreales which prevailed in this mountainous region were tortured into apparitions of horsemen combating in the air, or corpse-candles burning on the hill-tops37. Skeletons danced as familiar guests at the nuptials of our kings38: spectres warned them back from the battle-field of Flodden, and visionary heralds proclaimed from the market-cross the long catalogue of the slain.
“Figures that seemed to rise and die,
Gibber and sign, advance and fly,
While nought confirmed, could ear or eye
Discern of sound or mien;
Yet darkly did it seem as there
Heralds and pursuivants appear,
With trumpet sound and blazon fair,
A summons to proclaim.”
Marmion, canto v.
Incubi and succubi wandered about in all directions, with a degree of assurance and plausibility which would have deceived the very elect39; and wicked churchmen were cited by audible voices and an accompaniment of thunder before the tribunal of Heaven40. The annals of the thirteenth century are dignified with the exploits of three wizards, before whom Nostradamus and Merlin must stoop their crests, Thomas of Ercildoune, Sir Michael Scott, and Lord Soulis. The Tramontane fame of the second had even crossed the Alps, for Dante41 accommodates him with a place in Hell, between Bonatto, the astrologer of Guido di Monte Feltro, and Asdente of Parma.
But previous to the Reformation, these superstitious notions, though generally prevalent, had hardly assumed a form much calculated to disturb the peace of society. Though in some cases, where these powers had been supposed to have been exercised for treasonable purposes, the punishment of death had been inflicted on the witches42, men did not as yet think it necessary, merely for the supposed possession of such powers, or their benevolent exercise, to apply the purifying power of fire to eradicate the disorder. Sir Michael and the Rhymer lived and died peaceably; and the tragical fate of the tyrant Soulis on the Nine Stane Rigg was owing, not to the supposed sorceries which had polluted his Castle of Hermitage, but to those more palpable atrocities which had been dictated by the demon of his own evil conscience, and executed by those iron-handed and iron-hearted agents, who were so readily evoked by the simpler spell of feudal despotism.
From the commencement of the Records of the Scottish Justiciary Court, down to the reign of Mary, no trial properly for witchcraft appears on the record. For though in the case of the unfortunate Countess of Glammis, executed in 1536, during the reign of James V., on an accusation of treasonably conspiring the king’s death by poison, some hints of sorcery are thrown into the dittay, probably with the view of exciting a popular prejudice against one whose personal beauty and high spirit rendered her a favourite with the people, it is obvious that nothing was really rested on this
