in a gray suite, with blue stockings.
Good. But where are they?
Bad. She is at her house, and hee is at a taverne in Yeohall (Youghal) in Ireland.
Good. But what are their names?
Bad. Nay, that I will not tell.
Good. Then tell half of their names.
Bad. The one is Johan, and the other Edward.
Good. Nowe tell me the other half.
Bad. That I may not.
Good. Aske him agayne.
Dinham. Come, come, prithee, tell me the other half.
Bad. The one is Greedie, and the other Ball.
This information having been obtained, a messenger is sent to a certain house, where the unfortunate Joan is straightway arrested. The conversation, if this absurd rigmarole can be so called, was afterwards resumed, the man conveniently going into one of his ‘fits’ for the purpose:
Good. But are these witches?
Bad. Yes; that they are.
Good. Howe came they to bee soe?
Bad. By discent.
Good. But howe by discent?
Bad. From the grandmother to the mother, and from the mother to the children.
Good. But howe aree they soe?
Bad. They aree bound to us, and wee to them.
Good. Lett mee see the bond.
Bad. Thou shalt not.
Good. Lett mee see it, and if I like I will seale alsoe.
Bad. Thou shalt, if thou wilt not reveale the contentes thereof.
Good. I will not.
As usual, the Good Spirit gets its way, and the bond is produced, drawing from the Good Spirit an exclamation of anguish: ‘Alas! oh, pittifull, pittifull, pittifull! What? eight seales, bloody seales—four dead, and four alive? Ah, miserable!’
Dinham. Come, come, prithee, tell me, Why did they bewitch me?
Bad. Because thou didst call Johane Greedie witche.
Dinham. Why, is shee not a witche?
Bad. Yes; but thou shouldest not have said soe.
Good. But why did Ball bewitche him?
Bad. Because Greedie was not stronge enough.
A messenger is now sent after Ball; but on reaching his hiding-place, he finds that the poor man has just escaped, and he meets with people who had seen his flight. Dinham and his voices then join in a discourse, from which it appears that before they bewitched Dinham they had been guilty of various ‘evil practices,’ and had compassed the death of, at least, one of their victims. Six days afterwards Dinham has another ‘fit,’ and a second unsuccessful effort is made to track and arrest Ball. Disgusted with this failure, the Good Spirit strenuously opposes the Evil Spirit in his resolve to secure Dinham’s soul:
Bad. I will have him, or else I will torment him eight tymes more.
Good. Thou shalt not have thy will in all thinges; thou shalt torment him but four times more.
Bad. I will have thy soule.
Good. If thou wilt answer me three questions, I will seale and goe with thee.
Bad. I will.
Good. Who made the world?
Bad. God.
Good. Who created mankynde?
Bad. God.
Good. Wherefore was Christ Jesus His precious blood shed?
Bad. I’le no more of that.
Here the patient was seized with the most violent convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and struggling with clenched hands and contorted limbs.
Another fit came off a few days afterwards, and in this Dinham was exposed to a double temptation:
Bad. If thou wilt give me thy soule, I will give thee gold enough.
Good. Thy gold will scald my fingers.
Bad. If thou wilt give me thy soule, I will give thee dice, and thou shalt winne infinite somes of treasure by play.
Good. If thou canst make every letter in this booke (a Prayer-book which Dinham held in his hand) a die, I will.
Bad. That I cannott.
Good. Laudes, laudes, laudes!
Bad. Thou shalt have ladies enough—ladies, ladies, ladies!...
Good. If thou canst make every letter in this book a ladie, I will.
Here the Bad Spirit made an attempt to cast away the book, but, after a violent struggle, was defeated; and then the Good Spirit celebrated his victory in ‘the sweetest musicke that ever was heard.’ Eventually Ball was captured, and Dinham then declared that his ‘two voices’ ceased to trouble him. Greedie and Ball were both committed for trial, but no record exists of their execution, and we may hope that they were acquitted of charges supported by such absurd and fallacious evidence.
Edward Fairfax, a man of ability and culture—the refined and melodious translator of Tasso’s Christian epic—prosecuted six of his neighbours at York Assizes, in 1622, for practising witchcraft on his children. The grand jury found a true bill against them, and the accused were brought to trial. But the judge, who had been privately furnished with a certificate of their ‘sober behaviour,’ contrived so to influence the jury as to obtain a verdict of acquittal. The poet afterwards published an elaborate defence of his conduct. His folly may be excused, perhaps, since even such men as Raleigh and Bacon inclined towards a belief in witchcraft; and the judicious Evelyn makes it one of his principal complaints against solitude that it created witches. Hobbes, in his ‘Leviathan,’ takes, however, a more enlightened view: ‘As for witches,’ he says, ‘I think not that their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can.’
Even the stir and tumult of the Civil War did not suspend the persecuting activity of a degraded superstition. In 1644 eight witches of Manningtree, in Essex, were accused of holding witches’ meetings every Friday night; were searched for teats and devils’ marks, convicted, and, with twenty-nine of their fellows, hung. In the following year there were more hangings in Essex; and in Norfolk a score of witches suffered. In 1650 a woman was hung at the Old Bailey as a witch. ‘She was found to have under her armpits those marks by which witches are discovered to entertain their familiars.’ In April, 1652, Jean Peterson, the witch of Wapping, was hung at Tyburn; and in July of the same year six witches perished at Maidstone.
In 1653 Alice Bodenham, a domestic servant, was tried at Salisbury before Chief Justice Wilde, and convicted. It is not certain, however, that she was executed.
In 1658 Jane Brooks was executed for practising witchcraft on a boy of twelve, named Henry James, at Chard, in Somersetshire; in 1663 Julian Cox, at Taunton, for a similar offence.
THE WITCH-FINDER: MATTHEW HOPKINS.
The severe legislation against witchcraft had thus the effect—which invariably attends legislation when it becomes unduly repressive—of increasing the offence it had been designed to exterminate. It was attended, also, by another result, which is equally common—bringing to the front a number of informers who, at the cost of many innocent lives, turned it to their personal advantage. Of these witch-finders, the most notorious was Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, in Essex. When he first started his infamous trade, I cannot ascertain, but his success would seem to have been immediate. His earliest