E lynn linton, p.18
E. Lynn Linton, page 18
THE AFFLICTIONS OF ALEXANDER NYNDGE,
a precious babe of grace snatched from destruction. They are to be found in ‘A Booke declaring the fearfull vexation of one Alexander Nyndge, Beynge moste Horriblye tormented wyth an euyll spirit, the xx. daie of Januarie. In the yere of our Lorde 1573, at Lyeringswell in Suffolke;’ and this book sets forth the details of the various fits which Alexander Nyndge indulged in, for the purpose, as it seems, of enabling his brother Edward to prove his power of exorcism. His first fit began one evening at seven—his father, mother, brothers, and the residue of the household being present; his chest and body swelled, his eyes stared wildly as if starting from their sockets, his back bent inward: the household was disturbed and sore affrighted, but brother Edward had courage enough to say that it was an evil spirit, and undertook to exorcise it. So he charged the foul fiend to come out of him, and the countenance of his brother became more sad and fearful than it was before. Edward was not dismayed but returned to the conflict full of confidence, not giving in even when Alexander and the devil had a wrestle together; or rather when the devil within him seemed as if he would have torn him to pieces, so great was his rage and malice. After some time of this kind of work, Edward got the devil to confess to one or two little matters. In the first place his name was Aubon, and he came last from Ireland; he had come for Alexander’s soul, which his brother was not disposed to give up; and by a strange slip of the tongue he called Christ his Redeemer: but Edward rebuked him, as became a learned M.A., reminding him that He was Alexander’s Redeemer in truth, but not his, the foul fiend’s. Even this palpable blunder did not enlighten the Nyndge household as to whose was really the “hollow ghostly” voice proceeding out of Alexander’s chest. At last, when Edward had tired him very much, and powerfully shaken him, he said, gruffly, “Bawe wawe, bawe wawe!” and Alexander was transformed, “much like a picture in a play,” while a terrible roaring voice sounded “Hellsownd.” Then they opened the windows to allow the foul spirit to escape; and in two minutes Alexander leaped up joyfully, crying, “He is gone! he is gone!” After this he had a second, and then a third, attack; but his brother, praying in his right ear, comforted him and finally cured him, for he was never after tormented. Luckily he had not fixed upon any unhappy old woman as the cause of his disorder, so it passed for a case of simple “possession,” which prayer and supplication had overcome.
ADE DAVIE’S MOURNING.[97]
Ade Davie, wife of Simon Davie husbandman, had a wiser man for her husband, simple and unlearned as he was, than had many a wretched creature for her judge. Ade suddenly became sad and pensive as she never had been in times past. Her husband did his best to cheer her, but Ade still continued sorrowful; when, at last her burden grew heavier than she could bear, falling down at Simon’s feet she besought him to forgive her, for that she had grievously offended both God and him. “Her poor husband being abashed at this her behaviour, comforted her as he could; asking her the cause of her trouble and greefe; who told him that she had, contrary to God’s law, and to the offence of all good Christians, to the injury of him, and specially to the losse of her own soul, bargained and given her soul to the devill, to be delivered unto him within short space. Whereunto her husband answered, saying, ‘Wife, be of good cheer, this thy bargain is void and of none effect; for thou hast sold that which is none of thine to sell: sith it belongeth to Christ, who hath bought it, and dearly paid for it, even with his blood, which he shed upon the crosse; so as the devil hath no interest in thee.’ After this, with like submission, teares, and penitence, she said unto him, ‘Oh, husband, I have yet committed another fault, and done you more injury; for I have bewitched you and four children.’ ‘Be content,’ quoth he, ‘by the grace of God, Jesus Christ can unwitch us; for none evill can happen to them that fear God.’”
This fresh and pure idyl comes to us with a sweet and wholesome savour, in the midst of the foul quagmires of superstition where it stands; and that poor husbandman’s simple faith in God’s goodness and his wife’s virtue is more touching than many a grand heroic deed which has the suffrages of all history to float it through the life of the world. Simon Davie was an unlettered man, but he was strong-hearted and believing, and, thinking that earnest prayer might comfort his wife, when the time approached for the Devil to come and close his bargain, knelt down by her and prayed, she joining with him fervently. Then they heard a low rumbling noise below which made the windows shake, and which convinced the poor wife that it was the Devil trying to take possession of her soul, but barred out from the chamber by the fervent prayers aforesaid. In the morning it was found that the noise came from a dog which had devoured a sheep that was newly flayed and hung against the wall; and in due time, Ade Davie recovering her reason—for she was crazed, and took every fire to be the fire lighted to burn her for witchcraft—came to the knowledge that she had never sold her soul to the Devil at all, and had never bewitched husband or children, but had always been a faithful wife and fond mother—afflicted with a light brain and nervous imagination.
THE POSSESSION OF MILDRED NORRINGTON.[98]
Mildred, the “base daughter” of Alice Norrington, being seventeen years of age, was likewise possessed of the Devil, in much the same way as Alexander Nyndge had been. She lived as servant with William Spooner of Westwell, in the county of Kent, and her case attracted great attention. All the divines of the neighbourhood assembled at Spooner’s house on the 13th of October, 1574, to endeavour to cast out the Devil by such means of prayer and exorcism as they had at their command. Powerfully did they pray; mightily roared the Devil; “And tho’ we did command him many times, in the Name of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in his mighty Power to speak, yet he would not, until he had gone through all his Delays, as roaring, crying, striving, and gnashing of teeth, and otherwise, with mowing and other terrible Countenances, and was so strong in the Maid that four men could scarce hold her down.” This continued for about two hours, and then he spoke out, but very strangely, crying, “He comes, he comes,” and “He goes, he goes.” When charged to tell the exorcists who had sent him, he said, “I lay in her way like a Log, and I made her run like Fire; but I could not hurt her.” “And why so?” said we. “Because God kept her,” said he. When asked when he came to her, he said, “At night, in her bed.” And when charged to tell them his name, he said, “The Devil, the Devil.” But being still more powerfully exhorted, he roared and cried as before, and spake terrible words: “I will kill her; I will kill her; I will tear her in pieces; I will kill you all!” Asked again, and conjured so that he could not escape, he was forced to confess that his name was Satan, and Little Devil, and Partner, and that old Alice had sent him—old Alice in Westwell Street, with whom he had lived these twenty years shut up in two bottles. “Where be they?” said we. “In the back side of her house,” said he. “In what place?” said we. “Under the wall,” said he. The other was at Kennington, in the ground. Then we asked him what old Alice had given him. He said, “Her will, her will.” “What did she bid thee do?” said we. “Kill her maid,” he said, because she did not love her. He then said that he had been to the vicarage loft in the likeness of two birds, and that old Alice had sent him and his servant (another devil) to kill those whom she loved not. “How many hast thou killed for her?” said we. “Three,” said he. “Who are they?” said we. “A man and his child,” said he. “What were their names?” said we. “The child’s name was Edward,” said he. “What more than Edward?” said we. “Edward Ager,” said he. “What more?” said we. “Richard Ager,” said he. “Where dwelt the man and the child?” said we. “At Dig, at Dig,” said he. This Richard Ager was a gentleman of forty pounds’ land by the year; a very honest man, but would often say he was bewitched, and languished long ere he died. The Devil—or Mildred for him—said that he had also killed Wotton’s wife, and that he used to fetch old Alice meat and drink and corn, and that he had been at many houses (named) doing her wicked will. Then he was adjured so that he could not resist, when he cried out that he would go, he would go, and so he departed. Then said the maid, “He is gone. Lord have mercy on me! for he would have killed me!” So those ministers and neighbours present all kneeled down and thanked God for Mildred’s deliverance; and she kept her countenance, and did not betray herself. But a short time after, the “bruit of her divinity and miraculous trances” spreading far and wide, Mr. Thomas Wotton, “a man of great Worship and Wisdom, and for deciding and ordering of Matters, of rare and singular Dexterity,” got to the true understanding of the case, when “the Fraud was found, and the cozenage confessed, and she received condign Punishment.” After her trial, and when she knew the worst, she “showed her Feats, Illusions, and Trances, with the Residue of all her miraculous Works in the Presence of divers Gentlemen of great Worship and Credit at Boston-Malherb, in the House of the said Mr. Wotton.” “Now compare this wench with the witch of Endor, and you shall see that both the cozenages may be done by one art,” says Reginald Scot.
MISCELLANEOUS.
It was in this same year that Agnes Brigs and Rachel Pindar had to do penance at St. Paul’s Cross, in London,[99] having been convicted of cheat and imposture in pretending to vomit pins and straws and old “clouts,” and other such impossibilities; and for counterfeiting possession by the Devil, which the philosophers of the time thought was no subject to trifle with, or affect in any manner whatsoever. And then, a few years later, a young Dutchman living at Maidstone was dispossessed of ten devils, and the mayor of the town got to subscribe his name to the account, which turned out afterwards to be nothing but fraud and lies. In 1579[100] four witches were hung up together, the chief accusation against one of them, Mother Still, being, “that she did kill one Saddocke with a touch on the shoulder, for not keeping promise with her for an old cloak, to make her a safeguard; and that she was hanged for her labour:” and another, Ellein Smith, was executed at Maldon,[101] on the testimony of her little son of eight, who accused her of having three spirits—Great Dick in a wicker bottle, Little Dick in a leathern bottle, and Willet kept in a woolpack. Upon which the house was commanded to be searched, and “the bottles and packe were found, but the spirites were banished awaie.”
At the Rochester assizes, held 1591, Margaret Simons,[102] the wife of John Simons, of Brenchley in Kent, was arraigned for witchcraft, on the charge of bewitching the son of John Ferrall the vicar. An ill-conditioned young cub was he, and prentice to Robert Scotchford, clothier; and the father himself seems to have been little better than his son—making a bad pair between them for the teacher and “pattern child” of Brenchley. There had long been ill blood between Mr. John Ferrall, vicar, and Margaret Simons; and one day it came somewhat to a head; for, when the boy was passing Margaret’s house on his way home, her little dog jumped out at him and barked. “Which thing the boy taking in evil part,” says Reginald Scot, in his quaint, blunt, incisive way, “drew his knife, and pursued him therewith even to her door; whom she rebuked with some such words as the boy disclaimed, and yet neverthelesse would not be perswaded to depart in a long time.” The consequence of the fray was, that the boy in five or six days’ time fell dangerously ill. Then the vicar, “who thought himself so privileged as he little mistrusted that God would visit his children with sicknesse,” declared that his son was bewitched by Margaret Simons, who also had done the like evil to himself; for whenever he wished to read the service with special emphasis and care his voice always failed him, so that his congregation could scarce hear him at all. Margaret made answer that his voice was always hoarse and low, and particularly when he strained himself to speak loudest then it ever failed him: but there was no witchcraft in the case, for all that Mr. Ferrall had procured the health of his son at the hands of another witch, who had taken off the charm and effected a perfect cure. Margaret had a very narrow escape for her life. The whole of the jury, save one man, were against her, but she had in her favour the fact that the vicar was very unpopular, and, justly or unjustly, lay under some odious charges; so, what with the sane juryman’s exertions in her favour, and Mr. Ferrall’s small hold on the interest and affections of his parishioners, she was brought in Not Guilty, and the hangman’s cord fell slack from his greedy grasp.
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,
held before Brian Darcey. It is contained in a rare and beautiful little black-letter book,[103] and is spoken of by Scot in his ‘Discovery’ without much sparing of ridicule. It opens thus: “If there hath bin at anytime (Right Honorable) any meanes used to appease the wrath of God, to obtaine his blessing, to terrifie secreete offenders by open transgressors punishments, to withdraw honest natures from the corruption of euill company, to diminish the great multitude of wicked people, to increase the small number of virtuous persons, and to reforme all the detestable abuses which the peruerse witte and will of man doth dayly devise, this doubtlesse is no lesse necessarye than the best, that Sorcerers, Wizzardes, or rather Dizzardes, Witches, Wise women (for so they will be named), are rygorously punished. Rygorously? sayd I; why it is too milde and gentle a tearme for such a mercilesse generation: I should rather have sayd most cruelly execueted; for that no punishment can be thought vpon, be it in neuer so high a degree of torment, which may be deemed sufficient for such a deuilishe and damnable practise.” These were the sentiments of W. W., as propounded to his patron “the right honourable and his singular good lorde, the Lord Darcey,” to whom he inscribes his little book. For Brian Darcy, evidently a relation, had lately put in practice the views and opinions of a worthy citizen and zealous Christian touching witches, at the great holocaust offered up at “S. Osees” (St. Osyth), in the 23rd year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign (1582): and witch hatred therefore ran in the blood.
The first complainant in this process was Grace Thurlowe, wife of John Thurlowe, who came to make her moan about the evil practices of her neighbour, Ursley Kempe, alias Grey. About twelve months since, said Grace, her son Davy was strangely taken and greatly tormented. Ursley came, like the rest of the neighbours, to see him; but, unlike the rest, she thrice took the child by the hand, saying each time, “A good childe, howe are thou loden:” going out of the house and returning between each phrase, which was evidently a charm, and no holy way of pitying a sick child. After this she said to Grace, “I warrant thee, I, thy childe shall doe well enough;” and sure it was so, for that night the child slept well, and after another such cantrip visit from Ursula, mended entirely. This was not much to complain to the magistrates about, but Grace had another and more grievous count. After this evident cure of her son she was delivered of a woman child, and, ungratefully enough, asked not Ursley to be her nurse; whereat sprang up a quarrel, and the child in consequence fell out of the cradle and brake its neck; not because it was clumsily laid, or carelessly rocked, but because Ursley was a witch and had a grievance against Grace. And to this mischance, when she heard of it, all that the old dame said, was, “It maketh no matter; for she might have suffered me to have the keeping and nursing of it.” Then a trouble and a “fratch” ensued, and Ursley threatened Grace with lameness, whereat Grace answered, “Take heed, Ursley, thou hast a naughtie name;” but in spite of her warning the old witch did her work, so that Grace was taken with such lameness that she had to go upon her hands and knees. And thus it continued; whenever she began to amend her child fell ill, and when her child was well she was cast down lame and helpless.
Then Annis Letherdall had her word. Annis and Ursley had a little matter of commerce between them, but Annis failed the suspected woman, “knowing her to be a naughtie beast.” So Ursley in revenge bewitched Annis’s child, and that so severely that Mother Ratcliffe, a skilful woman, doubted if she could do it any good; yet for all that she ministered unto it kindly. And, as a proof that it was Ursley, and only Ursley, who had so harmed the babe, and that its sad state came in no wise from bad food, bad nursing, and filthy habits, the little creature of only one year old, when it was carried past her house, cried “wo, wo,” and pointed with its finger windowwards. What evidence could be stronger? So then, to clinch the matter and strike fairly home, the magistrate examined Thomas Rabbet, Ursley’s “base son,” a child of barely eight years of age, and got his version of the mother’s life. The little fellow’s testimony went chiefly on the imps at home. His mother had four, he said—Tyffin, like a white lamb; Titty, a little grey cat; Pygine, a black toad; and Jacke, a black cat; and she fed them, at times with wholesome milk and bread, and at times they sucked blood from her body. He further said that his mother had bewitched Johnson and his wife to death, and that she had given her imps to Godmother Newman, who put them into an earthen pot which she hid under her apron, and so carried them away. One Laurence then said that she had bewitched his wife, so that when “she lay a drawing home, and continued so a day and a night, all the partes of her body were colde like a dead creatures, and yet at her mouth did appeare her breath to goe and come.” Thus she lingered, said her husband, until Ursley came in unbidden, turned down the bed-clothes, and took her by the arm, when immediately she gasped and died. Ursley at first would confess nothing beyond having had, ten or eleven years ago, a lameness in her bones, for the cure of which she went to Cook’s wife of Wesley, who told her that she was bewitched, and taught her a charm by which she might unwitch herself and cure her bones; which charm quite answered its purpose, and had never failed her with her neighbours; all else she denied. But upon Brian Darcy[104] “promising to the saide Ursley that if she would deale plainely and confesse the truth that she should have fauour, so by giving her faire speeche she confessed as followeth.” “Bursting out with weeping” and falling on her knees, she said, yes, she had the four imps her son had told of, and that two of them, Titty and Jack, were “hees,” whose office was to punish and kill unto death; and two, Tiffin and Piggin, were “shees,” who punished with lameness and bodily harm only, and destroyed goods and cattle. And she confessed that she had killed all the folk charged against her; her brother-in-law’s wife, and Grace Thurlowe’s cradled child, making it to fall out of its cradle and break its neck solely by her enchantments; and that she had bewitched that little babe of Annis Letherdall’s, and Laurence’s wife, and, in fact, that she had done all the mischief with which she was charged. Then, not liking to be alone, she said that Mother Bennet had two imps; the one a black dog, called Suckin, the other red like a lion, Lyerd: and that Hunt’s wife had a spirit too, for one evening she peeped in at her window when she was from home, and saw it look out from a potcharde from under a bundle of cloth, and that it had a brown nose like a ferret. And she told other lies of her neighbours, saying that her spirit Tiffin informed her of all these things; and Brian Darcy sat there, gloating over these maniacal revelations. But in spite of his soft words and fair promises, Ursley Kempe was condemned, and executed when her turn came.
