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
It will be recalled that in the Chelmsford trials Mother Waterhouse had
been found to have upon her certain marks, yet little emphasis had been
laid upon them. In the trials of 1582 the proof drawn from these marks
was deemed of the first importance and the judge appointed juries of
women to make examination. No artist has yet dared to paint the picture
of the gloating female inquisitors grouped around their naked and
trembling victim, a scene that was to be enacted in many a witch trial.
And it is well, for the scene would be too repellent and brutal for
reproduction. In the use of these specially instituted juries there was
no care to get unbiassed decisions. One of the inquisitors appointed to
examine Cystley Celles had already served as witness against her.
It is hard to refrain from an indictment of the hopelessly prejudiced
justice who gathered the evidence.[18] To entrap the defendants seems to
have been his end. In the account which he wrote[19] he seems to have
feared lest the public should fail to understand how his cleverness
ministered to the conviction of the women.[20]
"There is a man," he wrote, "of great cunning and knowledge come over
lately unto our Queenes Maiestie, which hath advertised her what a
companie and number of witches be within Englande: whereupon I and other
of her Justices have received commission for the apprehending of as many
as are within these limites." No doubt he hoped to attract royal notice
and win favor by his zeal.
The Chelmsford affairs and that at St. Oses were the three remarkable
trials of their kind in the first part of Elizabeth's reign. They
furnish some evidence of the progress of superstition. The procedure in
1582 reveals considerable advance over that of 1566. The theory of
diabolic agency had been elaborated. The testimony offered was gaining
in complexity and in variety. New proofs of guilt were being introduced
as well as new methods of testing the matter. In the second part of
Elizabeth's reign we have but one trial of unusual interest, that at
Warboys in Huntingdonshire. This, we shall see, continued the
elaboration of the witch procedure. It was a case that attracted
probably more notice at the time than any other in the sixteenth
century. The accidental fancy of a child and the pronouncement of a
baffled physician were in this instance the originating causes of the
trouble. One of the children of Sir Robert Throckmorton, head of a
prominent family in Huntingdonshire, was taken ill. It so happened that
a neighbor, by name Alice Samuel, called at the house and the ailing and
nervous child took the notion that the woman was a witch and cried out
against her. "Did you ever see, sayd the child, one more like a witch
then she is; take off her blacke thrumbd cap, for I cannot abide to
looke on her." Her parents apparently thought nothing of this at the
time. When Dr. Barrow, an eminent physician of Cambridge, having treated
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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