witches, he saith there is one sort more beastlie than any kind of beasts, saving woolues: for these usuallie deuoure and eate yong children and infants of their owne kind. These be they (saith he) that raise haile, tempests, and hurtfull weather; as lightening, thunder, &c. These be they that procure barrennesse in man, woman and beast. These can throwe children into waters, as they walke with their mothers, and not be seene. These can make horses kicke, till they cast their riders. These can so alter the mind of iudges, that they can haue no power to hurt them. These can procure to themselves and to others, taciturnitie and insensibilitie in their torments. These can bring trembling to the hands, and strike terror into the minds of them that apprehend them. These can manifest unto others, things hidden and lost, and foreshow things to come; and see them as though they were present. These can alter men’s minds to inordinate love or hate. These can kill whom they list, with lightening and thunder. These can take awaie man’s courage, and the power of generation. These can make a woman miscarrie in childbirth, and destroie the child in the mother’s wombe, without any sensible meanes either inwardlie or outwardlie applied. These can, with their looks, kill either man or beast.’
Chapter XII.
Familiar Spirits—Matthew Hopkins, the ‘Witch-finder’—Prince Rupert’s dog Boy—Unguents used for transporting Witches from Place to Place—Their Festivities at the Sabbat.
In order to enable the witch to carry out her benevolent intentions, the Devil supplied her with one or more familiar spirits, of which we shall hear much in the accounts of cases of witchcraft, and in this old English illustration we see the Devil presenting one to a young witch. They were of all kinds of shapes—perhaps the commonest was a cat or dog; but sometimes they took strange forms.
These familiars could talk and hold conversations with their mistresses, as witness the following story told by Giffard. A witch had confessed she had killed a man. ‘And upon the ladder she seemed very penitent, desiring all the world to forgive her. She sayd she had a spirit in the likeness of a yellow dun Cat. This Cat came unto her, as she sayd, as she sat by her fire, when she was fallen out with a neighbour of hers, and wished that the vengeance of God might light upon him and his. The Cat bad her not be afraid, she would do her no harme, she had served a dame five yeares in Kent, that was now dead, and if she would, she would be her servant. And whereas, sayd the Cat, such a man hath misused thee, if thou wilt I will plague him in his cattell. She sent the Cat, she killed three hogs and one Cow. The man, suspecting, burnt a pig alive, and, as she sayd, her Cat would never go thither any more. Afterward, she fell out with that Man; she sent her Cat, who told her, that she had given him that, which he should never recover; and, indeed, the man died.’32
In ‘The Lawes against Witches and Coniuration,’ etc., the attention of justices of the peace is thus directed to these familiar spirits:
‘1. These Witches have ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, which appeareth to them; sometimes in one shape, sometimes in another, as in the shape of a Man, Woman, Boy, Dogge, Cat, Foale, Fowle, Hare, Rat, Toad, etc. And to these their spirits they give names, and they meet together to christen them.
‘2. Their said Familiar hath some big or little teat upon their body, where he sucketh them; and besides their sucking, the Devil leaveth other marks upon their bodies, sometimes like a Blew-spot, or Red-spot, like a flea-biting, sometimes the flesh sunk in and hollow, all which, for a time, may be covered, yea, taken away, but will come againe to their old forme; and these the Devil’s markes be insensible, and being pricked will not bleed; and be often in their secret parts, and therefore require diligent and carefull search....
‘So likewise, if the suspected be proved to have been heard to call upon their Spirit, or to talk to them, or of them, or have offered them to others.
‘So, if they have been seen with their Spirits, or seen to feed something secretly, these are proofes that they have a familiar, &c.’
Matthew Hopkins (of whom more anon) was a past master in the matter of familiars, and thus relates his experience of some of them.33 He is supposed to be asked where he had gained his experience.
‘The Discoverer never travelled far for it, but in March 1644, he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of Witches living in the Towne where he lived, a Towne in Essex called Maningtree, with divers other adjacent Witches of other towns, who every six weeks, in the night (being alwayes on the Friday night) had their meeting close by his house, and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the Devill, one of which this discoverer heard speaking to her Imps one night, and bid them goe to another Witch, who was thereupon apprehended, and searched by women, who for many yeares had knowne the Devill’s marks, and found to have three teats about her, which honest women have not; so upon command from the Justice, they were to keep her from sleep, two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars, which the fourth night she called in by their severall names, and told them what shapes, a quarter of an houre before they came in, there being ten of us in the roome; the first she called was:
‘1. Holt, who came like a white kitling.
‘2. Jarmara, who came in like a fat Spaniel, without any legs at all; she said she kept him fat, for she clapt her hand on her belly, and said he suckt good blood from her body.
‘3. Vinegar Tom, who was like a long-legg’d Greyhound, with an head like an Oxe, with a long taile and broad eyes, who, when the discoverer spoke to, and bade him goe to the place provided for him and his Angels, immediately transformed himselfe into the shape of a child of foure yeeres old, without a head, and gave halfe a dozen turnes about the house, and vanished at the doore.
‘4. Sack and Sugar, like a black Rabbet.
‘5. Newes, like a Polcat. All these vanished away in a little time. Immediately after, this Witch confessed several other Witches, from whom she had her Imps, and named to divers women where their markes were, the number of their Marks, and Imps, and Imps’ names, as Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, Grizzel Greedigut, &c., which no mortall could invent.’
Witches, however, were not the sole proprietors of familiar spirits, for the Roundheads declared that Prince Rupert had one, in the shape of a large white poodle dog, a present from Lord Arundel, whose name was Boy. Boy accompanied his master in many an engagement, but seemed to bear a charmed life, even having the credit given him of catching bullets and bringing them to his master. This evidently must be a dog of no common breed, and it was not thought so, as we read in one of the Commonwealth tracts, which was a reputed dialogue between Tobie’s and Prince Rupert’s dogs:
‘Tobie’s Dog. ... I heare you are Prince Rupert’s White Boy.
P. Rup. Dog. I am none of his White Boy, my name is Puddle.
Tob. Dog. A dirty name, indeed, you are not pure enough for my company; besides, I hear on both sides of my eares that you are a Laplander, or Fin Land Dog, or, truly, no better than a Witch in the shape of a white Dogge.
********
P. Rup. Dog. No, Sirrah, I am of high Germain breed.
Tob. Dog. Thou art a Reprobate and a lying Curre; you were either whelpt in Lapland, or in Finland; where there is none but divells and Sorcerers live.’
Poor
