book is reported in A Prodigious & Tragicall History of the

Arraignment, Tryall, Confession, and Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone, in Kent, at the Assizes there held in July, Fryday 30, this present year, 1652 (London, 1652, reprinted 1837). [89] A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896, I, 362. [90] Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, III, 1114. [91] Dr. Hutchinson’s admirable work, An Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, which still remains one of the most valuable treatises on this subject that we have, was published in 1718. It appeared in a second edition in 1720, in which year he was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor. [92] I have used a copy of the French translation,--Le Monde Enchanté, Amsterdam, 1694. This was made by Bekker’s direction and revised by him. Each of the four volumes has a separate dedication, and each dedication (in the Harvard College copy) is authenticated by Bekker’s autograph signature. [93] This concludes Bekker’s First Book. [94] What precedes is, in substance, Bekker’s Book II. [95] This is the substance of Bekker’s Third Book. [96] “De Christelijke Synodus ... heeft, ... met eenparigheyd van stemmen, den selven Dr. Bekker verklaart intolerabel als Leeraar in de Gereformeerde Kerke; en vervolgens hem van sijn Predik-dienst geremoveert” (decree in W. P. C. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker de Bestrijder van het Bijgeloof, the Hague, 1906, p. 315). [97] Knuttel, p. 319. [98] Knuttel, p. 357. Strictly speaking, it was not for his denial of modern witchcraft that Bekker was punished, for it is in the last two books of his treatise that he deals particularly with this subject, and these did not appear until after he had been unfrocked. Still, his Second Book, which got him into trouble, contains all the essentials. It denies the power of the devil and wicked spirits to afflict men, and holds that the demoniacs of the New Testament were neither possessed nor obsessed, but merely sufferers from disease. For a full analysis of Bekker’s work and an account of the opposition which it roused, see Knuttel, chap. v, pp. 188 ff.; for the ecclesiastical proceedings against Bekker, see chap. vi, pp. 270 ff. The various editions and translations of De Betoverde Weereld are enumerated by van der Linde in his Balthasar Bekker, Bibliographie (the Hague, 1869), where may also be found a long list of the books and pamphlets which the work called forth. There is a good account of Bekker’s argument in Soldan’s Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, neu bearbeitet von Dr. Heinrich Heppe (Stuttgart, 1880), II, 233 ff. See also Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, II, 445 ff. [99] Theologians took infinite pains to distinguish between miracles (_miracula_), which could be wrought by divine power only, and the kind of wonders (_mira_) which Satan worked. See, for example, William Perkins, A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, 1608, pp. 12 ff., 18 ff.; Del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicæ, lib. ii, quæstio 7, ed. 1616, pp. 103 ff. Sir Robert Filmer, in An Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, Touching Witches (appended to The Free-holders Grand Inquest, 1679; cf. p. 34, note 88, above), makes merry with such fine-spun distinctions. “Both [Perkins and Del Rio],” he says, “seem to agree in this, that he had need be an admirable or profound Philosopher, that can distinguish between a Wonder and a Miracle; it would pose _Aristotle_ himself, to tell us every thing that can be done by the power of Nature, and what things cannot; for there be daily many things found out, and daily more may be, which our Fore-fathers never knew to be possible in Nature” (pp. 322-323). Cf. Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700, p. 35. [100] Cf. Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. Heppe, II, 243:--“Zu derjenigen freieren Kritik der biblischen Schriften selbst sich zu erheben, welche das Vorhandensein gewisser, aus den Begriffen der Zeit geschöpfter dämonologischen Vorstellungen in der Bibel anerkennt, ohne daraus eine bindende Norm für den Glauben herzuleiten,--diese war freilich erst einem späteren Zeitalter vorbehalten. Bekker kannte, um seine sich ihm aufdringende philosophische Ueberzeugung mit der Bibel zu versöhnen, keinen andern Weg, als den der Üblichen Exegese, und daher kommt es, dass diese nicht überall eine ungezwungene ist.” It is instructive to note the pains which Sir Walter Scott takes, in his Second Letter on Demonology and Witchcraft, to harmonise the Bible with his views on these subjects. [101] To avoid all possibility of misapprehension I shall venture to express my own feelings. The two men who appeal to me most in the whole affair of witchcraft are Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit, and Balthasar Bekker, the “intolerable” pastor of Amsterdam. But what I _feel_, and what all of us feel, is not to the purpose. There has been too much feeling in modern discussions of witchcraft already. [102] Sigmund Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, Stuttgart, 1896, p. 143. [103] Ibid. [104] Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, revised by Heppe, II, 37; cf. G. L. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade, 1891 (reprinted from the Papers of the American Historical Association, V). [105] Jean d’Espaignet and Pierre de Lancre, the special commissioners, are said to have condemned more than 600 in four months (Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 162; cf. Baissac, Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie, 1890, p. 401). I have no certain evidence of the accuracy of these figures, for I have seen only one of de Lancre’s two books, and I find in it no distinct statement of the number of witches convicted. He makes various remarks, however, which seem to show that 600 is no exaggeration. Thus he says that the Parliament of Bordeaux, under whose authority he acted, condemned “an infinity” of sorcerers to death in 1609 (Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons, Paris, 1613, p. 100). “On fait estat qu’il y a trente mille ames en ce pays de Labourt, contant ceux qui sont en voyage sur mer, & que parmy tout ce peuple, il y a bien peu de familles qui ne touchent au Sortilege par quelque bout” (p. 38). The commission lasted from July to November (pp. 66, 456, 470); besides those that the two commissioners tried during this period, they left behind them so many witches and wizards that the prisons of Bordeaux were crowded and it became necessary to lodge the defendants in the ruined château du Hâ (pp. 144, 560). Cf. pp. 35 ff., 64, 92, 114, 546. The panic fear that witchcraft excites is described by de Lancre in a striking passage:--“Qu’il n’y ayt qu’vne seule sorciere dans vn grand village, dans peu de temps vous voyez tant d’enfans perdus, tant de femmes enceintes perdãs leur fruit, tant de haut mal donné à des pauures creatures, tant d’animaux perdus, tant de fruicts gastes, que le foudre ni autre fleau du ciel ne sont rien en comparaison” (pp. 543-544). [106] An Account of what Happened in the Kingdom of Sweden, in the Years 1669, 1670 and Upwards, translated from the German by Anthony Horneck, and included in Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1682 (ed. 1726, pp. 474 ff.). Horneck’s version is from a tract entitled, Translation ... Der Königl. Herren Commissarien gehaltenes Protocol uber die entdeckte Zauberey in dem Dorff Mohra und umbliegenden Orten, the Hague, 1670. Cf. Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 244 ff.; Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 175 ff.; Vilhelm Bang, Hexevæsen og Hexeforfølgelser især i Danmark, Copenhagen, 1896, pp. 48 ff. This is what Mr. Upham calls Cotton Mather’s “favorite Swedish case” (Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather, Morrisania, 1869, p. 20). It was, in a manner, “Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero” toward the end of the seventeenth century, since it was one of the most recent instances of witchcraft on a large scale. The good angel in white who is one of the features of the Mohra case appears much earlier in England: see Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, 1613, Chetham Society reprint, sig. L (a reference which may serve as a note to Mr. Upham’s essay, just cited, p. 34). [107] Frans Volk, Hexen in der Landvogtei Ortenau und Reichsstadt Offenburg, Lahr, 1882, pp. 24-25, 58 ff. [108] Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 543; F. Hutchinson, Historical Essay, 2d ed., p. 38; W. W., A True and Just Recorde, of the Information [etc.] of all the Witches, taken at S. Oses (London, 1582). For extracts from W. W.’s book I am indebted to Mr. Wallace Notestein, of Yale University. [109] F. Legge, The Scottish Review, XVIII, 261 ff. [110] Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (London, 1613), reprinted by the Chetham Society, 1845; Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, Chap. xxiii. [111] Whalley Lancashire, by Whitaker, pp. 213 ff.; Chetham Society reprint of Potts, as above, pp. lix ff.; Wright, as above. Chap. xxiii; Heywood and Brome’s play, The Late Lancashire Witches, 1634; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1634-1635, pp. 77-79, 98, 129-130, 141, 152; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 10th Report, Appendix, Part IV, p. 433; 12th Report, Appendix, Part II, p. 53, cf. p. 77; Notes and Queries, 3d Series, V, 259, 385. [112] Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, II, 471. [113] See pp. 7 and 58. [114] Whitelocke’s Memorials, Dec. 13, 1649, ed. 1732, p. 434; Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Hazlitt, III, 80; Ralph Gardner, England’s Grievance Discovered, in Relation to the Coal-Trade, 1655 (reprinted, North Shields, 1849, Chap. 53, pp. 168 ff.). [115] A Prodigious & Tragicall History of the Arraignment [etc.] of Six Witches at Maidstone.... Digested by H. F. Gent, 1652 (reprinted in an Account, etc., London, 1837). [116] A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against Three Witches, 1682. [117] Sir J. H. Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, II, 601 ff. [118] A Full and True Relation of the Tryal (etc.) of Ann Foster, London, 1674 (Northampton, reprinted by Taylor & Son, 1878). Cf. W. Ruland, Steirische Hexenprozesse, in Steinhausen’s Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, 2. Ergänzungsheft, Weimar, 1898, pp. 46 ff. [119] N. E. Hist. Gen. Register. XXIV, 382. [120] Letter of Oct. 8, 1692, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, V, 65. Compare, on the whole question, the remarks of Professor Wendell in his interesting paper, Were the Salem Witches Guiltless? (Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, XXIX, republished in his Stelligeri and Other Essays concerning America, New York, 1893) and in his Cotton Mather, pp. 93 ff. [121] A long and curious list of cases of defamation may be seen in a volume of Depositions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the County of Durham, extending from 1311 to the Reign of Elisabeth, edited by James Raine for the Surtees Society in 1845 (Publications, XXI). Thus, in 1566-67, Margaret Lambert accuses John Lawson of saying “that she was a chermer” (p. 84); about 1569 Margaret Reed is charged with calling Margaret Howhett “a horse goodmother water wych” (p. 91); in 1572, Thomas Fewler deposed that he “hard Elisabeth Anderson caull ... Anne Burden ‘crowket handyd wytch.’ He saith the words was spoken audiently there; ther might many have herd them, beinge spoken so neigh the cross and in the towne gait as they were” (p. 247). So in 1691 Alice Bovill complained of a man who had said to her, “Thou bewitched my stot” (North Riding Record Society, Publications, IX, 6). See also Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, I, 283; Lefroy, Bermudas or Somers Islands, II, 629 (no. 15). [122] See, for example, Mr. Noble’s edition of the Records of the Court of Assistants, II, 43, 72, 85, 94, 95, 104, 131, 136,--all between 1633 and 1644. [123] See Drake’s Annals of Witchcraft in New England; Noble’s Records, as above, 1, 11, 31, 33, 159, 188, 228, 229, 233. [124] “Quia vulgo creditum, multorum annorum continuatam sterilitatem à strigibus et maleficis diabolicâ invidiâ causari; tota patria in extictionem maleficarum insurrexit” (as quoted from the autograph MS. in the Trier Stadt-Bibliothek by G. L. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade, p. 51, Papers of the American Historical Association, V). [125] “Incredibile vulgi apud Germanos, & maxime (quod pudet dicere) Catholicos superstitio, invidia, calumniæ, detractationes, susurrationes & similia, quæ nec Magistratus punit, nee concionatores arguunt, suspicionem magiæ primum excitant. Omnes divinaæ punitiones, quas in sacris literis Deus minatus est, à Sagis sunt. Nihil jam amplius Deus facit aut natura, sed Sagæ omnia. 2. Unde impetu omnes clamant ut igitur inquirat Magistratus in Sagas, quas non nisi ipsi suis linguis tot fecerunt” (Cautio Criminalis, seu de Processibus contra Sagas Liber, 2d ed., 1695, pp. 387-388; cf. Dubium xv, pp. 67-68, Dubium xxxiv, pp. 231-232). Spee’s book came out anonymously in 1631, and, unlike most works on this side of the question, had immediate results. Spee had no doubt of the existence of witchcraft (Dubium i, pp. 1 ff., Dubium iii, pp. 7-8); his experience, however, had taught him that most of those condemned were innocent. [126] The case is reported in A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against Three Witches [etc.], 1682, which is reprinted in Howell’s State Trials, VIII, 1017 ff. [127] Autobiography, chap. x, ed. Jessopp, 1887, pp. 131-132. North gives a similar account of the same trial, with some general observations of great interest, in his Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, I, 267-269 (ed. 1826). It is not clear whether North was present at the trial or not. It is important to notice that North wrote his biographies late in life and that his death did not take place until 1736, the year in which the statute against witchcraft was repealed. [128] North remarks that Guilford (then Francis North, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) “had really a concern upon him at what happened; which was, that his brother Raymond’s passive behavior should let those poor women die” (Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, I, 267). Raymond was, to be sure, the judge who presided at the trial, but Francis North cannot be allowed to have all the credit which his brother Roger would give him, for he refused to reprieve the convicted witches (see his letter, quoted at p. 34, above). [129] The following pamphlets (all in the Harvard College Library) appeared in London in 1712: (1) A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, practis’d by Jane Wenham of Walkerne in Hertfordshire; (2) The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft consider’d. Being an Examination of a Book, entitl’d, A Full and Impartial Account [etc.]; (3) The Impossibility of Witchcraft ... In which the Depositions against Jane Wenham ... are Confuted and Expos’d; (4) The Belief of Witchcraft Vindicated ... in Answer to a late Pamphlet, Intituled, The Impossibility of Witchcraft. By G. R. A. M.; (5) A Defense of the Proceedings against Jane Wenham. By Francis Bragge; (6) Witchcraft Farther Display’d; (7) A Full Confutation of Witchcraft: more particularly of the Depositions against Jane Wenham ... In a Letter from a Physician in Hertfordshire, to his Friend in London. The first and fifth of these pamphlets are by Bragge, a Cambridge graduate who gave evidence for the prosecution. See also Memoirs of Literature, London, 1722, IV, 357; Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Witchcraft, II, 319 ff. Jane Wenham lived nearly twenty years after her trial; she died in 1730 (Clutterbuck, History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford, II, 461; W. B. Gerish, A Hertfordshire Witch, p. 10). [130] I refer to such remarks as the following:--“As the devil lost his empire among us in the last age, he exercised it with greater violence among the Indian Pawwaws, and our New England colonists” (Richard Gough, British Topography, 1780, II, 254, note ᵖ); “The colonists of [Massachusetts] appear to have carried with them, in an exaggerated form, the superstitious feelings with regard to witchcraft which then [at the time of the settlement] prevailed in the mother country” (Introduction to the reprint of Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, in the Library of Old Authors, 1862); “In the dark and dangerous forests of America the animistic instinct, the original source of the superstition, operated so powerfully in Puritan minds that Cotton Mather’s _Wonders of the Invisible World_ and the Salem persecution surpassed in credulity and malignity anything the mother country could show” (Ferris Greenslet, Joseph Glanvill, New York, 1900, pp. 150-151); “The new world, from the time of its settlement, has been a kind of health resort for the worn-out delusions of the old.... For years prior to the Salem excitement, European witchcraft had been prostrate on its dying bed, under the watchful and apprehensive eyes of religion and of law; carried over the ocean it arose to its feet, and threatened to depopulate New England” (George M. Beard, The Psychology of the Salem Witchcraft Excitement, New York, 1882, p. 1). [131] Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 284. [132] Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, New Series, V, 267. [133] F. Legge, Witchcraft in Scotland, in The Scottish Review, October, 1891, XVIII, 263. [134] On modern savages as devil worshippers, see, for example, Henry More, Divine Dialogues, 1668, I, 404 ff. (Dialogue iii, sections 15-16). [135] Magnalia, book i, chap. i, §2, ed. 1853, I. 42; book vi, chap. vi, §3, III, 436; Jesuit Relations, ed. Thwaites, I, 286; II, 76; VIII, 124, 126. See also Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, 1637, chap. ix, ed. Adams, (Prince Society), p. 150, with the references in Mr. Adams’s note. Cf. Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, chap. vi, ed. 1795, I, 419 ff.; Diary of Ezra Stiles, June 13, 1773, ed. Dexter, I, 385-386. [136] Mayhew’s letter of Oct. 22, 1652, in Eliot and Mayhew’s Tears of Repentance, 1653 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 3d Series, IV, 203-206); Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, I, 154). See the references in Mr. Adams’s note to Morton’s New English Canaan, Prince Society edition, p. 152, and compare the following places in the Eliot Tracts (as reprinted in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 3d Series, IV),--pp. 17, 19-20, 39, 50-51, 55-57, 77, 82, 113-116, 133-134, 156, 186-187. See, for the impression that Indian ceremonies made on a devout man in 1745, David Brainerd’s Journal, Mirabilia Dei inter Indicos, Philadelphia, [1746,] pp. 49-57:--“I sat,” writes Brainerd, “at a small Distance, not more than Thirty Feet from them, (tho’ undiscover’d) with my Bible in my Hand, resolving if possible to spoil their Sport, and prevent their receiving any Answers from the _infernal_ world” (p. 50). [137] Gookin, Historical Collections (Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, I, 154); Mass. Records, ed. Shurtleff, II, 177; III, 98. [138] The Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 1593, sig. B2 rᵒ. P vᵒ. [139] Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, 1613 (Chetham Society reprint, sig. S); The Arraignment and Triall of Iennet Preston, of Gisborne in Craven, in the Countie of York, London, 1612 (in same reprint, sig. Y 2). [140] Mary Smith’s case, Alexander Roberts, A Treatise of Witchcraft, 1616, pp. 52, 56, 57; the Husband’s Bosworth case, Letter of Alderman Robert Heyrick, of Leicester, July 18, 1616, printed in Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, II, 471*. [141] Edward Fairfax, Dæmonologia, 1621 (first edited by W. Grainge, Harrogate, 1882). [142] Chetham Society Publications, V, lxiv. [143] A True and Exact Relation of the Severall Informations, [etc.] of the late Witches, London, 1645, p. 20; T. B. Howell. State Trials, IV. 846. [144] Depositions from the Castle of York, [edited by James Raine,] Surtees Society, 1861 (Publications, XL), pp. 28-30. [145] The same, p. 58. [146] The same, pp. 64-65, 67. [147] Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1682, Relations, pp. 96, 98, 100 (ed. 1726, pp. 286, 288, 289). [148] York Depositions, p. 82. [149] The same, pp. 88-89. 92. [150] The same, pp. 112-114; Glanvill, ed. 1682, pp. 160-161 (ed. 1726, pp. 328-329). [151] A Tryal of Witches ... at Bury St. Edmonds ... 1664, London, 1682, pp. 18, 20, 23, 26, 29, 34, 38 (Sir Matthew Hale’s case); York Depositions, pp. 124-125. [152] Glanvill, ed. 1682, pp. 103-104, 109 (ed. 1726, p. 291). [153] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1667-1668, p. 4; York Depositions, p. 154. [154] York Depositions, p. 176. [155] Ann Tilling’s case, Gentleman’s Magazine for 1832,