Witchcraft -- England; Witchcraft -- Great Britain; Witchcraft -- Scotland
It must have been somewhere about this time that the execution mentioned
by Dr. More in his 'Antidote to Atheism' took place, when a mother and
daughter were hanged at Cambridge for witchcraft and service to the
Devil. When the mother was called on to renounce and forsake her old
master, she refused to do so, saying that he had been faithful to her for
fourscore years, and she would not be faithless now to him. And in that
obstinacy she died, with a courage and constancy worthy a better cause.
The daughter was of a contrary mind. She avowed her misdeeds, and asked
for pardon and grace, was penitent, and faithful, and earnest in prayer.
All of which the Devil took, as may be imagined, very heinously; and
showed his displeasure by sending, in the midst of a dead calm, so sudden
and violent a blast of wind, that the mother's body was driven sharply
against the ladder, and was like to have overturned it, while the gallows
shook with such force that the men standing round were fain to hold the
posts, for fear of all being flung to the ground. It was somewhat before
this, that at Town Malling, in Kent, one of Queen Mary's Justices, "on the
complaint of many wise men, and a few foolish boyes, laid an archer by the
heels because he shot so near the white at buts. For he was informed and
perswaded that the poor man played with a fly, otherwise called a devill
or familiar. And because he was certified that the archer aforesaid shot
better than the common shooting, which he before had heard of or seen, he
conceived it could not be in God's name, but by inchantment, whereby the
archer (as he supposed, by abusing the Queen's liege people) gained some
one day two or three shillings, to the detriment of the commonwealth, and
to his owne inriching. And therefore the archer was severely punished, to
the great encouragement of archers, and to the wise example of justice,
but specially to the overthrow of witchcraft." Which quaint little
anecdote of Scot's is worth a whole handful of jewels more richly set.
We are coming now to one of the most curious of the older trials, that
of--
THE WITCHES OF S. OSEES,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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