A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718Notestein, Wallace
History
A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718
Notestein, Wallace
Witchcraft -- England -- History
We can not go into the details of a trial which abounded in curious bits
of evidence. The main plot indeed was an old one. The accused woman,
after she had been discharged from employment and reproved, had been
heard to mutter threats, close upon which the children of those she
cursed, who were now the witnesses against her, had fallen ill. Two of
the children had suffered severely and were still afflicted. They had
thrown up pins and even a two-penny nail. The nail, which was duly
offered as an exhibit in court, had been brought to one of the children
by a bee and had been forced into the child's mouth, upon which she
expelled it. This narrative was on a level with the other, that flies
brought crooked pins to the child. Both flies and bee, it will be
understood, were the witches in other form. A similar sort of evidence
was that a toad, which had been found as the result of the witch
doctor's directions, had been thrown into the fire, upon which a sharp
crackling noise ensued. When this incident was testified to in the court
the judge interrupted to ask if after the explosion the substance of the
toad was not to be seen in the fire. He was answered in the negative. On
the next day Amy Duny was found to have her face and body all scorched.
She said to the witness that "she might thank her for it." There can be
no doubt in the world that this testimony of the coincident burning of
the woman and the toad was regarded as damning proof, nor is there any
reason to believe that the court deemed it necessary to go behind the
mere say-so of a single witness for the fact. Along with this sort of
unsubstantial testimony there was presented a monotonous mass of
spectral evidence. Apparitions of the witches were the constant
occasions for the paroxysms of the children. In another connection it
will be observed that this form of proof was becoming increasingly
common in the last part of the seventeenth century. It can hardly be
doubted that in one way or another the use of such evidence at Bury
influenced other trials and more particularly the Salem cases in the New
World, where great importance was attached to evidence of this sort.
The usual nauseating evidence as to the Devil's marks was introduced by
the testimony of the mother of one of the children bewitched. She had
been, a month before, a member of a jury of matrons appointed by a
justice of the peace to examine the body of the accused. Most damning
proof against the woman had been found. It is very hard for us to
understand why Hale allowed to testify, as one of the jury of examining
matrons, a woman who was at the same time mother of one of the bewitched
children upon whom the prosecution largely depended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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