Innocent witches

            March is Women's History Month. Aren't you glad you aren't the one making history? Making history doesn't seem to have gone well for some of our forebears!

Witchcraft accusations in the 17th century were often motivated by economics than religious beliefs or superstition. When a woman was left with a desirable farm or business after the passing of her husband, witchcraft charges from envious neighbors or business competitors sometimes followed. The punitive fines and room and board prison costs were a real moneymaker for the colonial governments, and other costs could be satisfied by selling off farm animals, household goods, or the property, or partially relieved by the accused prisoners working at forced labor.

1647 book by Matthew Hopkins, the
self-titled Witchfinder General.

Today, you’ll meet two women who were caught in the witchcraft hysteria that was never far from the thoughts of English subjects, from the publication of King James’s book Daemonologie in 1597, through the 300 or more women who were tried, tortured, and executed by the Witchfinder General of eastern England in the 1640s, to the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials of the 1690s.

Mary Lee

The superstition of witchcraft manifested itself in both England and America in the 1640s and 1650s.

In 1654, the ship Charity left England for Virginia. The First Anglo-Dutch War had concluded with a treaty early in the year, but piracy and privateering (piracy licensed by government) continued on the American coasts and the Caribbean. Part of the cargo on that voyage was a shipment of carbines (short-barrel muskets that didn’t shoot much further than 100 yards), according to the state papers of John Thurloe, the English secretary of state and the spymaster.

The Charity’s voyage that should have taken eight to ten weeks was stormy, and the ship was forced to fight high seas and adverse winds for longer than expected. Two or three weeks before the vessel entered Chesapeake Bay, the sailors whispered that a witch was on board, and it was she who was attracting the wrath of God. Their gaze rested upon a passenger, Mrs. Mary Lee, a petite, aged widow traveling without escort. (“Aged” could mean anyone older than 40.)

England, after civil wars, political upheaval, the Anglo-Dutch conflict, and the resulting economic depressions, was now in Mary Lee’s rear-view mirror, and she planned to start a new life in Virginia. If she had children, they may have died of epidemic disease or war. But in 1654, she was alone in the world.

Searching a woman for witch's marks.

 On this late winter or spring voyage, the sailors demanded that John Bosworth, the Charity’s master, should test Mrs. Lee for witchcraft. The captain at first refused to consent to an interrogation, saying he would put her off the ship at Bermuda, but crosswinds prevented that detour, the ship grew more leaky by the day, and the sailors continued to clamor.

After consulting with passengers Henry Corbin, a 25-year-old emigrant, and Robert Chipson, a merchant, Bosworth yielded to the crew’s demand. (Why did the master of the ship consult with passengers?) The sailors affirmed that Mrs. Lee’s deportment suggested she was a witch. Two seamen, without permission, stripped the elderly woman’s body of all the layers of clothing and modesty that the 17^th century afforded, and searched for moles, skin tags—anything that might be a nipple for nursing an imp—and declared they had found witch marks. 

During the cold, stormy night, she was left fastened to the capstan, probably naked, and in the morning light it was reported that the marks "for the most part were shrunk into the body." Henry Corbin, a young man from Warwickshire who was not a minister or magistrate, was pressed to interrogate her, and at last, the terrified woman confessed she was a witch. 

17th-century merchantman cross section.
The capstan is the post between the first and second masts.

The crew begged the captain to execute Mrs. Lee, but he retreated to his cabin in the roundhouse. They pressed him again, and he said to do what they would, and went back to his cabin. The crew then hanged her, and “when life was extinct,” said the record, they tossed her body in the sea. Was Mrs. Lee’s death from strangling? She was petite, and probably not heavy enough to fall in the noose and break her neck. She had no friends to pull on her feet to hasten her end.

One might wonder what became of Mary Lee’s possessions, building supplies, furniture, and a year’s worth of foodstuffs to get started in her Virginia plantation life. John Bosworth obviously had no control over his seamen, and feared mutiny. The Charity’s crew may have divided Mrs. Lee’s goods amongst themselves and sold them at the port, or pitched them overboard with her body.

Ann Hibbins

In 1656, Richard Bellingham, an MP in Lincolnshire before he emigrated to New England, a magistrate in Boston, as well as Massachusetts Bay Colony’s former governor and now deputy governor, was strangely silent regarding the witch trial of his sister, Mrs. Ann Hibbins.  

Ann’s husband, William Hibbins, was a merchant and magistrate, and the Bay Colony’s agent in England for two years. Boston’s First Church of Christ censured Ann in 1641 after a dispute with church members, but it seems that William Hibbins’ position and money were enough to protect her from other charges or punishment. He lost £500 (about £35,000-40,000 in today’s value) in a bad investment in 1654, and died thereafter. Apparently, Mrs. Hibbins, after losing her lifestyle of financial ease and social status, became sarcastic and bitter in her relationships.

But now, aged about 51, because of her “censorious, bitter spirit, always quarreling with her neighbors,” she was brought to the Court of Assistants on a charge of witchcraft. As it was done in England, Mrs. Hibbins’ body was searched for witches’ teats, but none were found. Nor were there any puppets or images in her belongings which might have served as “familiars” for evil spirits. The jury condemned her, but the magistrates set the conviction aside.

But the Bostonians wanted her death, and the General Court tried her for witchcraft. Even the Boston First Church ministers, John Wilson and John Norton, supported Mrs. Hibbins. Rev. Norton was heard to say that she “unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which cost her her life.” Vocalizing her hunch, which turned out to be true, seemed like paranormal knowledge she’d gained from an evil spirit.

After her conviction, Mrs. Hibbins wrote a will for her three adult sons by her first marriage, who were living in England. The appraisal of her estate was about £320 (£25,000+ in today’s value), so she was not destitute.

Edward Hutchinson, one of her will’s executors, wrote that her will and her speech were quite reasonable and there was no evidence against her. There were several other influential members of the Boston church and courts who supported Hibbins. It seemed that the ministers, the magistrates, and leading men of Boston society were on her side.

Nevertheless.

Ann Hibbins was hanged not on
a tree, but on a gallows outside
the fortified gate to Boston.

The General Court records for May 14, 1656 show that:

“The magistrates not receiving the verdict of the jury in Mrs. Hibbins her case, having been on trial for witchcraft, it fell… to the General Court [a superior court, in today’s terms]. Mrs. Ann Hibbins was called forth, appeared at the bar; the indictment against her was read, to which she answered not guilty, and was willing to be tried by God and this Court. The evidences against her were read, the parties witnessing being present, her answers considered on; and the whole Court being met together, by their vote determined that Mrs. Ann Hibbins is guilty of witchcraft, according to the bill of indictment found against her by the jury of life and death.” 

Governor John Endecott delivered her sentence, that Ann Hibbins be hanged. She was executed on June 17. There aren’t any records of Deputy Governor Bellingham’s participation or whereabouts in the prosecution and execution of his sister. But he was certainly available to brutally accost the first Quaker missionaries who came to New England a year later.

What did Mary Lee and Ann Hibbins have in common?

1. They were both widows without the protection of a husband, though Hibbins should have had the assistance of her powerful brother.

2. They were accused of being witches by superstitious people. They were both interrogated, and strip-searched for witch marks. Mrs. Lee was subjected to physical agony and sleep deprivation to make her confess. Mrs. Hibbins may have escaped the worst of the physical ordeals—but we don’t know for sure.

3. The leaders of their time (Captain Bosworth of the Charity; ministers and magistrates of Boston) seemed more worried about what people thought of them, than their own integrity and stance for justice, against the false accusations and executions of innocent women.

4. They were both caught up in a culture of Puritan zeal. Mrs. Lee was leaving the wreckage of an England nearly destroyed by civil war and its aftermath. Mrs. Hibbins lived in a fanatical theocracy that was financially and politically unstable. The General Court under Governor Endecott’s rule had a regular habit of accusing and brutally punishing before they invented and passed a law for the “crime.”

For a case of an innocent witch executed for "surfing" on an English river, click HERE. 

Sources: Virginia Carolorum: the Colony Under the Rule of Charles the First, by Edward Duffield Neill (pub 1886, out of copyright), Massachusetts Archives; History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay  by Thomas Hutchinson

           

Christy K Robinson is the author of two (five-star-reviewed) historical novels and one nonfiction book centered on the mid-17^th-century Great Migration from England to New England, the books spotlighting the Quaker martyr Mary Barrett Dyer. Christy’s books may be found at her Dyer blog, http://marybarrettdyer.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Witch Trials of New Mexico and South Carolina

This time I'm going to blog about little known colonial witch trials. The witch trials of New Mexico were associated with the Spanish Inquisition. Beatriz de los Angeles was a Native woman. She and her mixed heritage daughter, Juana de la Cruz, were gifted in the use of herbs and tutored friends in the making of love potions. In Santa Fe, allegations were brought against them for sorcery. A friar had been warned of Juana's powers in 1626.

In 1628, the accusations increased, but still no investigation was made. In 1631, numerous witnesses came forward. Beatriz was accused of experimenting on two Indian servants, who later became ill and died. She then allegedly turned her attention to her lover. Although the records aren't specific, she served him a drink, and he later died in the same fashion as her servants.

Juana was suspected of being a witch even before her mother. She was presumed to have been unfaithful to her husband. As a result, he beat her. In an act of revenge, she gave him a potion where he later died. Stories circulated that she also had an evil eye, and children that she held became ill, which included one child eventually dying.

Supposedly both women traveled by magic. Fortunately, the friar in charge was skeptical about all of the stories, and the women were never tried.

Also in New Mexico, the Spaniards attempted to suppress the customs of the Indians. The numbers against the Native people were overwhelming, and in 1675, the governor attempted to stamp out their traditions for good. He arrested forty-seven medicine men on sorcery and witchcraft. Three were hanged in order to send a message to the others.

The South Carolina witch trials seemed to have bypassed the 17th century. In 1792 Winnsboro, Mary Ingelman, who had a knowledge of "pharmacy... and simple cures," and three others were found guilty after cattle got sick and people began acting possessed. Rosy Henley accused Mary of casting a spell on her that made her levitate. Another neighbor said that Mary caused his cow to fly, then fell down and broke its neck. Jacob Free said that she turned him into a horse and rode him. In an illegal trial, the sheriff was judge and jury. Four people, including Mary, were flogged and tortured by burning their feet "until the soles popped off." After they were let go, Mary was assaulted by another man, who threw a log over her neck. She wasn't rescued until the next day.

Mary filed suit against the sheriff. He was fined five pounds, which was never paid, and he left town.

And finally for South Carolina, in 1813, a girl testified against an older woman by the name of Barbara Powers in Chesterfield. She claimed that Barbara choked her with "great violence," then turned her into a horse and rode her. Barbara was acquitted.


Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.net

Witch Trials of New Hampshire and Pennsylvania

In the spirit of Halloween, I though I'd continue my blogs about little known witch trials. New Hampshire had a few trials in Hampton when the colony was considered part of Massachussetts. Jane Walford's troubles seem to have begun in 1648. She spent many years fighting accusations of being a witch. Supposedly she appeared to a couple of neighbors in the form of a cat, and other neighbors said they could not speak when she appeared to them. She was allowed to go on good behavior. On more than one occasion, Jane successfully sued her neighbors for slander.

In 1680, Jane's daughter was accused of being a witch, but she was not convicted.

Eunice Cole was accused during the same time frame as Jane. For over twenty years neighbors of Hampton gossiped that Eunice was of a terrible character, and she was feared for being in "Alliance with the Devil." Two young men drowned in the Hampton River, and Eunice was believed to have been the cause. A couple of neighbors said Eunice had caused the death of a couple of calves. She was also believed to have made unearthly scratching noises on neighbors' windows. Eunice was whipped and spent fifteen years in and out of jail.

Shortly after her release, she was again arrested for being a witch. She was found not guilty of witchcraft, but there was enough suspicion to believe that she had familiarity with the devil. She died soon after in poverty. In 1938, she was acquitted, and her full citizenship of the town was restored.

Also, from Hampton was Rachel Fuller. She was accused of using witchcraft on a neighbor's child. Ironically, the neighbor in question, John Godfrey had been tried as a witch in Massachusetts three times himself long before the Salem trials. Rachel used herbs, rubbed them in her hands, and threw them around the hearth. Afterward, she announced the child would be well. When the child died, she went through a formal hearing

Isabelle Towle was also jailed for being a witch, but nothing further can be found on her.

In 1683, the only witch trial in Pennsylvania was that of Margaret Mattson and Yeshro Henrickson. Margaret was supposedly a healer in Finnish tradition. Several neighbors claimed that she had bewitched their cows and geese. She also appeared to witnesses in the form of an old woman with a knife in green light. Another old woman Yeshro Hendrickson was also accused, but her name seems to vanish from the record. Margaret couldn't speak English and an interpreter was needed for the trial. She was found guilty for having a reputation of being a witch, but not bewitching the cattle.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.net

Witches of New York

New York is another state that few people associate with witch trials. As far as anyone can tell, the trials in New York were spared executions. Elizabeth Garlick and her husband settled on Easthampton, Long Island in 1657. The area was considered part of New York, but within a few months became part of Connecticut. From the start, stories surrounded Elizabeth about her practice of witchcraft. During Goodwife Howell's illness, she called out, "A witch! A witch! Now are you come to torture me..." When her father asked her what she had seen, she replied a "black thing" at the end of her bed, and Elizabeth was "double-tongued," used pins, and stood "ready to tear her to pieces." A few days later, Goody Howell was dead.

At Goody Davis's house, she had dressed her children in clean linen. Elizabeth came in and said how pretty one of the children looked. As soon as she had uttered the words, she said, "The child is not well..." Within five days, the child died.

Another woman's breast milk dried up, and her child sickened soon after. A couple of people also had livestock die.

Elizabeth was sent to Connecticut for trial. The court felt that she deserved to die, but in the end, she was acquitted.

In 1660, Mary Wright of Oyster Bay was suspected of witchcraft. She was sent to Massachusetts for trial. She wasn't convicted of witchcraft, but was found guilty for being a Quaker and banished.

In 1665, Ralph Hall and his wife were accused at Brookhaven. They were indicted after George Woods and an infant child got sick and died. No witnesses appeared in court to give testimony. They were acquitted and released.

In 1670, Katharine Harrison, already mentioned in witches of Connecticut, had been banished from that colony, and she settled in Westchester. Complaints immediately came in from surrounding neighbors that she was a witch. The constable gave her an order to leave, but Katharine refused. Because of her otherwise good behavior, she was allowed to stay.

Compared to many other colonies of the 17^th century, New York seems to have been tame regarding general accusations of people being witches and subsequent trials.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.net

Witch Trials of Connecticut

Part Four

Read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three

 In my final installment of the witch trials of Connecticut, I begin with Katharine Harrison. In 1669, she was indicted for not having the fear of God as well as a familiarity with Satan. Neighbors testified about her herding cattle "with greate violence," bees swarming, a sick child that later died, "an ugly shaped thing like a dog" that had the head of Katharine, and telling fortunes. The jury found Katharine guilty, but the magistrates had doubts. They called upon ministers for counsel.

 The court refused to sentence her to death or imprison her. Instead, she was banished from Connecticut and moved to New York. Because she had been accused of witchcraft, she wasn't welcomed in her new community, but due to good behavior, she was allowed to remain.

Witch trials reached their peak in 1692, the same year as the infamous Salem trials. Fortunately, for the inhabitants of Fairfield, the craze of executions had passed in Connecticut. Mercy Disborough was accused of bewitching a canoe and numerous livestock. Allegedly, she made a child sick. She was searched for witch marks by a group of women.

A young girl, subject to epilepsy and hysterics, was carried into the meeting house. Upon seeing Mercy, she "fel[l] down into a fit again." Elizabeth Clawson was on trial at the same time. Both women were bound hand and foot and put into the water (witch ducking). Both swam, rather than sinking. Mercy was found guilty but later reprieved.

Elizabeth Clawson had been indicted for "not having the fear of God" in her eyes and a "familiarity" with Satan. A maid had seizures, and a black cat came to her in a hen house. She claimed the devil had come to her in the shape of three women, Mercy, Elizabeth, and Goody Miller. Many neighbors testified on the bewitching events. Goody Miller was merely accused, and Elizabeth was found not guilty.

In 1693, Hugh Crotia was indicted for the familiar charge of not having the fear of God in his eyes. Apparently, he afflicted a girl on the road near Fairfield and was "rendered" under suspicion of Satan. He admitted to having a contract with the devil. Hugh was ordered to pay the "Master of the Gaol" some fees.

In 1697, a mother and daughter by the same names of Winifred Benham were indicted. Both were acquitted but excommunicated. A couple of cases were tried in the 18^th century with one being as late as 1768, but for the most part the witch trials had concluded by the end of the 17^th century in Connecticut.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.net

Witch Trials of Connecticut

Part Three

Read Part One and Part Two

Continuing with the witch trials of Connecticut, I'll begin part three with Nicholas and Margaret Jennings. In 1661, charges of witchcraft were brought against them by George Wood. The exact details are unknown, but they allegedly "had done works above the course of nature" resulting in the loss of lives and other "sorceries." Some reports say the jury was "hung," rather than those accused of being witches. In this particular case, they were a "hung jury," divided as to whether the Jennings were guilty or "strongly suspect." As a result, the Jennings were found not guilty.

Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith started the chain of Hartford witch trials. Suspicion fell upon the two when Nathaniel married Rebecca, and a pastor said that she was a "a lewd, ignorant and considerably aged woman." Due to nocturnal gatherings of dancing and merry-making, gossip and rumor turned into formal complaints.

Accusations by a sick child in a delirium, who later died, set off the tragic events. Several people were examined by the magistrates. Goodwife Ayers had been directly accused of bewitching the sick child. Nathaniel Greensmith sued Ayers for the slander of his wife, and as a result he and Rebecca were indicted themselves. Ayers and her husband were found guilty of witchcraft by the water test. The idea behind ducking was that if a person sank, she was innocent, but if she floated, she was guilty. Both escaped prison and fled the colony. Several other residents under suspicion also took flight.

Another resident had strange "fits" and was examined by several ministers. Andrew Sandford was indicted and acquitted. His wife Mary wasn't so lucky. Found guilty, she either disappeared or was hanged. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Greensmith would have likely been acquitted, but Rebecca testified that she spoke "out of love to my husbands soule." She also named others who had met with her in the woods. The Greensmiths were executed in January 1663.

As a result of Rebecca's testimony, Elizabeth Seager and Mary Barnes were indicted. Mary was likely hanged in June, also making her the last to have been executed for witchcraft in Connecticut. Elizabeth was twice acquitted the same year, but was convicted in 1665. The governor reversed the verdict.

So ends the Hartford trials, and I'll conclude the Connecticut witch trials in my next blog.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.net

Witches of Connecticut

PART TWO

Read Part One

Continuing on with the witch trials of Connecticut, I'll start part two with Goody Mary Bassett. Little remains in the records other than she had confessed and was executed in 1651. Some say she named another witch.

In 1653, Goodwife Elizabeth Knapp was thought to have been a woman of good character. The village of Fairfield was suspicious about her being a witch and this led to gossip. Soon, she was indicted and thrown into prison. She was tried and sentenced to hang.

The same day of sentencing, neighbors descended upon Elizabeth in order for her to confess to her crimes and name any other witches in their midst. Elizabeth remained strong and refused to "render evil for evil." She resisted falsely naming others of the crime and appealed to her persecutors "neuer, neuer poore creature was tempted as I am tempted, pray, pray for me."

On the gallows, Elizabeth broke. She climbed down from the ladder and asked to speak to the Deputy Governor of Massachusetts and Connecticut in private. She named "Mary Staplies" as a witch, and in view of the villagers, she was hanged. When her body was still, she was "cut downe." Her body was stripped and searched for witch's marks.

Among the women searching her body was Mary Staples. They found some "teates" on Elizabeth's body and Mary claimed, "...if they were the markes of a witch, then she was one..." Of course, that brought further suspicion on Mary. She was luckier than Elizabeth. She didn't hang for her remarks and her husband filed a suit for slander. Another suit accusation was brought against Mary in 1692. This time her daughter and granddaughter were included in the charges. Again, she was acquitted.

Nicholas Bayley and his wife were under suspicion of being witches in 1655. Among their deeds were lying. She was said to have told a "filthy speech." They were acquitted and banished from the colony. William Meaker was accused of bewitching a neighbors pigs. There were a couple of other minor cases, including another husband and wife accusation, before the infamous Hartford trials. I'll continue with the Connecticut witch trials in my next blog.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net

Witches of Connecticut

As I move my discussion away from the Virginia and Maryland colonies and closer to the location of the most famous North American witch trials of Salem, more pre-Salem trials can be uncovered. In Connecticut, Alse Young (sometimes written as Alice Young or Achsah Young) was the first to hang for being a witch in New England. Little else is known about the case, other than she was executed on May 26, 1647. She is believed to have been the wife of a land owner, and their daughter was accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts thirty years after her mother's death.

More is known about Mary Johnson. There are two Mary Johnson's listed in the Connecticut records. One was tried in 1647, and the other in 1648. It's not clear whether they were the same women, but the Mary Johnson of 1648, a servant, left a definite record. Her troubles began in 1646 when she was accused of being a thief. For that crime, she was whipped.

In 1648, she was brought up on charges of witchcraft which she confessed to under duress. Apparently, the devil helped her with household chores and scaring the hogs. She admitted to uncleanness "both with men and Devils."

Mary gave birth to a child in prison, who became an indentured servant to Mary's jailer until he was twenty-one. In June 1650, Mary was hanged.

Little documentation seems to remain about John and Joan Carrington, who were executed for being witches.

In 1651, Thomas Allyn killed Henry Styles when his musket bumped a tree and accidentally fired. Thomas was found guilty of the murder "by misadventure" and fined. Unfortunately for Lydia Gilbert, Styles had roomed at her house, and she owed him some money.

Two years after Styles's death, Lydia was charged with the accident by giving "entertainment to Sathan." With the devil's help, she had "killed... Henry Styles, besides other witchcrafts." No record remains, but it's presumed that she hanged.

Elizabeth Godman's troubles began in 1653. She lived in the home of Stephen Goodyear, the Deputy Governor of New Haven colony. Goodyear had inherited the estate because there were no male heirs in Elizabeth's family. Several neighbors accused her of witchly deeds, such as sickly children, a woman falling into "verey strang fitts," a "dreadful noise" that put another woman "in great feare and trembling," a chicken dying, and other instances of people having fits. Several people said that Elizabeth had lain with the devil and "Hobbamocke" (an Algonquian spirit for the disembodied souls of the dead) was her husband. For these acts, she was arrested but later released.

In August 1655, Elizabeth was again accused of witchcraft. Goodyear told her to find another place to live, so of course the plantation had many disturbances of apparitions, strange lights, and noises. On this occasion, she was released from prison with a warning, but brought before the court again in October. Even though suspicions of her being a witch remained strong, she went to live with the family of Thomas Johnson until her natural death in 1660.

I'll blog more about the Connecticut witches next time.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net

Witches of Maryland

In North America, most people think of Salem when witch trials are mentioned. I've already blogged about Virginia witches where the first such trial was held on the continent in 1626. But the neighboring colony of Maryland was known to have witch trials as well.

At least twelve people were prosecuted for being a witch in that colony. The earliest known trials were aboard ships bound for Maryland. In 1654, on the Charity from London, a storm struck at sea. Passengers aboard the ship claimed the relentless storm was caused by "the malevolence of witches." An old woman by the name of Mary Lee was found to have a "witch's mark." The crew hanged her. Her corpse and all of her belongings were thrown into the sea.

The second sea hanging involved the great grandfather of George Washington, Colonel John Washington, in 1659. He accused the owner of the ship Edward Prescott for hanging Elizabeth Richardson. Little is known as to why she was regarded to be a witch. Washington was unavailable for Prescott's trial. Prescott claimed John Greene had been in command of the ship at the time and was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

In 1665, a grand jury refused to indict Elizabeth Bennett for being a witch. Not much is known about the case, except that she was the wife of a wealthy landowner, which makes her quick acquittal understandable.

Rebecca Fowler wasn't so lucky. In 1685, she had "not the fear of God before her eyes, but being led by the instigation of the Devill certain evill & dyabolicall Artes called withcrafts charmes & sorceryes... did use practice & exercise... against one Francis Sandsbury... and Several other persons... and their bodyes were very much the worse, consumed, pined & lamed..."

Rebecca Fowler was hanged on the 9^th day of October, 1685.

Similar charges had been brought against John Cowman in 1674. He was convicted "...for Witchcraft Conjuration Sorcery or Enchantment used upon the Body of Elizabeth Goodale." The governor gave him a last minute reprieve, providing the sheriff take him to the gallows and place a rope around his neck. After that he was to remain an indentured servant to the governor and Council that had spared his life.

The most famous Maryland witch is Moll Dyer. Because she was an herbal healer (a cunning woman?), she was said to have been accused of being a witch and driven out of her home during a winter night by the local townspeople and her home burned to the ground. Her body was found by a child a few days later frozen to a large stone. Unfortunately, historians have never uncovered any evidence that Moll ever existed. Even though the legend has been disregarded as a folktale, the rock where she supposedly died and left a hand print sits outside the historical society in Leonardtown.

Several other cases surfaced throughout the 17^th and into the early 18^th century. Katharine Pout was fined one hundred pounds of tobacco, and the last trial was held in 1712 when Virtue Violl was acquitted. Like most other areas, the majority of those accused were women, and in Maryland, those cases were 90 percent.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net

The Pendle Witches and Their Magic: Part 1

In 1612, in one of the most meticulously documented witch trials in English history, seven women and two men from Pendle Forest in Lancashire, Northern England were executed. In court clerk Thomas Potts’s account of the proceedings, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, published in 1613, he pays particular attention to the one alleged witch who escaped justice by dying in prison before she could come to trial. She was Elizabeth Southerns, more commonly known by her nickname, Old Demdike. According to Potts, she was the ringleader, the one who initiated all the others into witchcraft. This is how Potts describes her:

She was a very old woman, about the age of Foure-score yeares, and had been a Witch for fiftie yeares. Shee dwelt in the Forrest of Pendle, a vast place, fitte for her profession: What shee committed in her time, no man knows. . . . Shee was a generall agent for the Devill in all these partes: no man escaped her, or her Furies.

Quite impressive for an eighty-year-old lady! In England, unlike Scotland and Continental Europe, the law forbade the use of torture to extract witchcraft confessions. Thus the trial transcripts supposedly reveal Elizabeth Southerns’s voluntary confession, although her words might have been manipulated or altered by the magistrate and scribe. What’s interesting, if the trial transcripts can be believed, is that she freely confessed to being a healer and magical practitioner. Local farmers called on her to cure their children and their cattle. She described in rich detail how she first met her familiar spirit, Tibb, at the stone quarry near Newchurch in Pendle. He appeared to her at daylight gate—twilight in the local dialect—in the form of beautiful young man, his coat half black and half brown, and he promised to teach her all she needed to know about magic.

Tibb was not the “devil in disguise.” The devil, as such, appeared to be a minor figure in British witchcraft. It was the familiar spirit who took centre stage: this was the cunning person’s otherworldly spirit helper who could shapeshift between human and animal form, as Emma Wilby explains in her excellent scholarly study, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. Mother Demdike describes Tibb appearing to her at different times in human form or in animal form. He could take the shape of a hare, a black cat, or a brown dog. It appeared that in traditional English folk magic, no cunning man or cunning woman could work magic without the aid of their spirit familiar—they needed this otherworldly ally to make things happen.

Belief in magic and the spirit world was absolutely mainstream in the 16th and 17th centuries. Not only the poor and ignorant believed in spells and witchcraft—rich and educated people believed in magic just as strongly. Dr. John Dee, conjuror to Elizabeth I, was a brilliant mathematician and cartographer and also an alchemist and ceremonial magician. In Dee’s England, more people relied on cunning folk for healing than on physicians. As Owen Davies explains in his book, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History, cunning men and women used charms to heal, foretell the future, and find the location of stolen property. What they did was technically illegal—sorcery was a hanging offence—but few were arrested for it as the demand for their services was so great. Doctors were so expensive that only the very rich could afford them and the “physick” of this era involved bleeding patients with lancets and using dangerous medicines such as mercury—your local village healer with her herbs and charms was far less likely to kill you.

In this period there were magical practitioners in every community. Those who used their magic for good were called cunning folk or charmers or blessers or wisemen and wisewomen. Those who were perceived by others as using their magic to curse and harm were called witches. But here it gets complicated. A cunning woman who performs a spell to discover the location of stolen goods would say that she is working for good. However, the person who claims to have been falsely accused of harbouring those stolen goods can turn around and accuse her of sorcery and slander. This is what happened to 16th century Scottish cunning woman Bessie Dunlop of Edinburgh, cited by Emma Wilby in Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. Dunlop was burned as a witch in 1576 after her “white magic” offended the wrong person. Ultimately the difference between cunning folk and witches lay in the eye of the beholder. If your neighbours turned against you and decided you were a witch, you were doomed.

Although King James I, author of the witch-hunting handbook Daemonologie, believed that witches had made a pact with the devil, there’s no actual evidence to suggest that witches or cunning folk took part in any diabolical cult. Anthropologist Margaret Murray, in her book, The Witch Cult in Western Europe, published in 1921, tried to prove that alleged witches were part of a Pagan religion that somehow survived for centuries after the Christian conversion. Most modern academics have rejected Murray’s hypothesis as unlikely. Indeed, lingering belief in an organised Pagan religion is very difficult to substantiate. So what did cunning folk like Old Demdike believe in?

Some of her family’s charms and spells were recorded in the trial transcripts and they reveal absolutely no evidence of devil worship, but instead use the ecclesiastical language of the Catholic Church, the old religion driven underground by the English Reformation. Her charm to cure a bewitched person, cited by the prosecution as evidence of diabolical sorcery, is, in fact, a moving and poetic depiction of the passion of Christ, as witnessed by the Virgin Mary. The text, in places, is very similar to the White Pater Noster, an Elizabethan prayer charm which Eamon Duffy discusses in his landmark book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580.

It appears that Mother Demdike was a practitioner of the kind of quasi-Catholic folk magic that would have been commonplace before the Reformation. The pre-Reformation Church embraced many practises that seemed magical and mystical. People used holy water and communion bread for healing. They went on pilgrimages, left offerings at holy wells, and prayed to the saints for intercession. Some practises, such as the blessing of the wells and fields, may indeed have Pagan origins. Indeed, looking at pre-Reformation folk magic, it is very hard to untangle the strands of Catholicism from the remnants of Pagan belief, which had become so tightly interwoven.

Unfortunately Mother Demdike had the misfortune to live in a place and time when Catholicism was conflated with witchcraft. Even Reginald Scot, one of the most enlightened men of his age, believed the act of transubstantiation, the point in the Catholic mass where it is believed that the host becomes the body and blood of Christ, was an act of sorcery. In a 1645 pamphlet by Edward Fleetwood entitled A Declaration of a Strange and Wonderfull Monster, describing how a royalist woman in Lancashire supposedly gave birth to a headless baby, Lancashire is described thusly: "No part of England hath so many witches, none fuller of Papists." Keith Thomas’s social history Religion and the Decline of Magic is an excellent study on how the Reformation literally took the magic out of Christianity.

However, it would be an oversimplification to state that Mother Demdike was merely a misunderstood practitioner of Catholic folk magic. Her description of her decades-long partnership with her spirit Tibb seems to draw on something outside the boundaries of Christianity.

Although it is difficult to prove that witches and cunning folk in early modern Britain worshipped Pagan deities, the so-called fairy faith, the enduring belief in fairies and elves, is well documented. In his 1677 book The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, Lancashire author John Webster mentions a local cunning man who claimed that his familiar spirit was none other than the Queen of Elfhame herself. The Scottish cunning woman Bessie Dunlop mentioned earlier, while being tried for witchcraft and sorcery at the Edinburgh Assizes, stated that her familiar spirit was a fairy man sent to her by the Queen of Elfhame.

Witch Persecutions, Women, and Social Change: Germany 1560-1660

Burning witches, 1555.

PART THREE

(Read Part One and Part Two.)

Major witch hunting panics arose in the 1560s throughout Europe and were especially severe in the German Southwest. Who were the victims of this mass hysteria? Even though witches were believed to come from all social classes, the trials focused on poor, middle-aged or older women (Merchant 138). Throughout Europe, midwives and healers were particularly suspect. These "wise women" who healed with herbs were held especially suspect, as they were often older women who had astonishing empirical knowlege, which their accusers traced back to the devil (Rauer 121). Many other women were targeted, as well. Outsiders and women on the fringe of society were especially vulnerable. Fifty-five of the seventy-one accused witches executed in Rottenweil, Germany, after 1600 came from outside the community, and their execution reflected both xenophobia and "a hatred of the unusual and rootless" (Midelfort 95-96). The blatant persecution of the poor prompted one accused witch in Wiesenstieg to ask her inquisitor why rich women were never arrested (Ibid. 169). Thus, though the witch panics took different forms at different times and places, they never lost their essential character--that of a campaign of terror against lower class women in search of substinence.

The question we must ask when presented with this information is why poor women and why this period in history? To invoke such massive hunts, trials, and executions, these women must have been perceived as a major threat. Whose interests did their annihalation serve? Here, I must agree with Carolyn Merchant that the control and maintenance of the social order and women's place within it was one major underlying motivation for the witch trials (Merchant 138).

The women most likely to be accused and executed were those most visibly discontent with their socio-economic condition. They were the strident women who complained about their situations and would not conform to the increasingly restrictive sphere of femininity of 16th and 17th century Europe. Sharp-tongued mothers-in-law were accused of witchcraft by their own families. Feisty spinsters or widows who refused to remarry were frequent targets of witchcraft allegations. Midelfort cites an example of a widow accused of witchcraft being released on the condition that she live with her son-in-law and remain under his control (Midelfort 184). Another common trait found among accused witches in Southwest Germany was a melancholic dissatisfaction with marriage and conventional religion (Ibid. 92) Begging and complaining about poverty were behaviors that led very frequently to accusations (Rauer 121). In 1505, Heinrich Deichsler reports in his famous Nuernberger Chronik that Barbara, a woman from Schwabach near Nuremburg, was burned as a witch after she had borrowed money from several neighbors and failed to pay them back (Schneider 18-19). The primary personality traits of witches outlined by Kramer and Sprenger in their witch-hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum were infidelity, ambition, and lust--traits that may not have been so noteworthy a few centuries before (Malleus 47). All in all, witch persecutions appeared to focus specifically on headstrong and insubordinate women.

Once a woman was labeled a witch, almost anyone could do anything to her without fear or punishment. Legally she was damned and without rights. Even before she was arrested and taken to trial, her neighbors were allowed to take justice in their own hands. Indeed, neighbors took the lead in making witchcraft accusations--it was quite common to simply call someone one disliked a witch (Midelfort 115).

Once a witch was brought to trial, she was doomed. In Germany, torture was part of the established trial procedure and could legally last for days on end. German prison guards sometimes admitted to committing rape, extortion, and blackmail on prisoners, as well (Midelfort 107). Suspects were tortured until they confessed their participation in evil magic and sex with the devil, and named the other women they had seen at the supposed witches' sabbat. Many trial officials had lists of questions to elicit responses which would conform to established beliefs about witchcraft. Dr. Carl Ellwangen began his inquisitions by asking the accused to recite the Lord's Prayer. Then he immediately asked them who seduced them into witchcraft, how the seduction occured, why they gave in, what it was like to have sex with the devil, and so on (Ibid. 105). Torture could extract almost any confession from anyone. "When suspects proved stubborn, they were often tortured to death" (Ibid. 149). Another common trial procedure reveals the inquisitors' obsession with sexuality. Women were stripped, shaved, and pricked with bodkins all over their bodies in search of supposed witch marks, or searched for signs of intercourse with the devil. In Germany, it was not uncommon for an accused witch's property to be confiscated, with Church and secular authorities receiving their share (Ibid. 178). Because accused witches were tortured until they gave the names of others they had allegedly seen at the sabbat, the more intensely witchcraft was persecuted, and the more numerous the alleged witches became. Thus, the trials and accusations escalated (Trevor-Roper 97).

On a social level, witch persecutions could not only be used to weed out the most troublesome of the undeserving poor, but they also produced a general atmosphere of paranoia and disunity among the population. Even those who consulted accused witches for healing or other services risked becomong suspect (Larner 9). The accused witch served as an example to other women as to how they would be treated if they did as she did. This, of course, helped enforce new moral and religious codes (Ibid 102). For this reason, witch hunting can be viewed as one of the most public and effective forms of social control to evolve in Early Modern Europe (Ibid 64). Witches made convenient community scapegoats for communal misfortunes such as plagues and famines (Midelfort 121). The peasant population focused their anger and resentment at members of their own peer group rather than the ruling classes who exploited them. Thus, the witch persecutions undermined solidarity and cooperation among peasants and were instrumental in curbing rebellion. In Southwest Germany, the great witch trials began not long after the Peasant Wars.

Why were such extreme measures of social control necessary? What was taking place in society at large that caused poor and elderly women to be viewed as such an enormous threat?

The period of 1560 to 1660 was one of drastic economic, religious, and social change. This period witnessed the dissolution of the last remnants of a feudal agrarian and domestic economy in favor of a capitalist market economy (Hobsbawn 5). But for this new order to succeed, the old feudal tradition, in which peasants controlled production and were guaranteed subsistence, had to die. This transition was particularly hard on women. Formerly, in the domestic economy, the workplace was the home and women were active in cottage industries. However, the transition to working in outside the home made participation in this economy more and more difficult for women. Over this period, women were forced out of the guilds and the professions in which they could maintain economic independence. Increasingly they were forced into a narrowly domestic role. By the 16th century, the only opportunities for women to earn a living were in menial servant and labor occupations (Hoher 17). Often this sort of work was so low paid that women wandered penniless and homeless in search of better conditions (Ibid. 18).

Furthermore, by this time, even such traditionally feminine occupations such as healing and midwifery were being taken over by men. In the Renaissance, the trend among the wealthy was to have a university-educated physician at their disposal. After the advent of Paracelsus, the famous medical doctor, only men were officially allowed to practice medicine. Paracelsus himself explained that God granted the educated physician all the arts and faculties most beneficial to serve others and that the doctor must be a true man and not some ignorant old woman (Rauer 109, paraphrasing "So spricht Paracelsus"). Male medical practitioners went so far as to push women out of midwifery. Eucharius Rosslin, author of the foremost "midwife" book, Der Schwangererfrawen und Hebammen rossgarten complained that midwives' supposed incompetence, laziness, and lack of education resulted in high infant mortality. He even denounces them as murderers:

Ich meyn die Hebammen alle sampt
Die also gar kein Wissen handt.
Dazu durch yr Hynlessigkeit
Kind verderben weit und breit.
Und handt so schlechten Fleiss gethon
Dass sie mit Ampt eyn Mort begon. (Ibid 123)

Women in the Renaissance not only faced an economic crisis. Their sexual and social freedom was being severely restricted, as well. Unlike the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Period offered practically no alternative to the wife-mother role. By the 16th century, the beguinages were gone. Women hermits and vagabonds risked being accused of witchcraft. Due to the Reformation and Counter Reformation, even convents had grown smaller in number and the nuns who lived there experienced increasing restrictions on their mobility and contact to the outside world. At the same time, both Catholic and Protestant Churches were tightening moral strictures to produce a puritanism unheard of in the agrarian society of the medieval period. Church officials on both sides of the faultline of the Reformation wanted to have iron control over the moral behavior of the populace. Traditional seasonal festivals, hedonism, and sexual licentiousness all smacked of ungodliness and were no longer to be tolerated. Control over female sexuality was especially emphasized. Religious offences were now punished in secular courts and in public shaming rituals. For this was a period of great religious insecurity. The cut-throat competition between Catholics and Protestants resulted in sectarian and ideological warfare, with each side trying to terrorize the local population into submitting to their orthodoxies (Reuther 104). The witch trials' obsession with female sexuality reflects this puritanical attempt to control women's lives. Tightening religious strictures and the new economic system complemented each other--they both attempted to bring the rebellious, hedonistic peasant population under control of Church and secular authorities. The witch persecutions were symptomatic of a new totalitarianism (Rauer 123).



The ideal housewife, circa 1525, by Anton Woensam.


Sources:

Hobsbawn, E.J., "The Crisis in the Seventeenth Century," Crisis in Europe 1560-1660, Trevor Aston, ed., Routledge, London, 1983.

Hoher, Frederike, "Hexe, Maria, und Hausmutter--zur Geschichte der Weiblichkeit im Spaetmittelalter," Frauen in der Geschichte, Vol. III, Kuhn/Rusen, eds, Paedagogischer Verlag Schwann-Bagel, Duesseldorf, 1983.

Institorus, Henricus, Malleus Maleficarum, Benjamin Blom, Inc., New York, 1970.

Larner, Christine, Enemies of God, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1981.

Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, Haeprer & Row, San Francisco, 1979.

Midelfort, Erik, H.C., Witch Hunting in Southwest Germany 1562-1684: The Social Foundations, Stanford, 1972.

Rauer, Brigitte, "Hexenwahn--Frauenverfolgung zu Beginn der Neuzeit," Frauen in der Geschichte, Vol. II, Kuhn/Rusen, eds., Paedagogischer Verlag Schwann-Bagel, 1982.

Schneider, Joachim, Heinrich Deichsler und die Nuernberger Chronik des 15. Jahrhunderts, Wissenliteratur im Mittelalter, Vol. 5, Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1991.

Trevor-Roper, H.R., The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Harper & Row, New York, 1969.

The Dreaming

Several years ago I read a story about witch trials in Virginia. Surprisingly, most of the trials predated Salem. Except for some people who live in the coastal region of the state, few realize that Virginia was the first to hold witch trials on the North American continent.

Those stories became a journey for me. One that I had no idea where it might lead, but I think that's true with most writers. Not only were the Virginia trials overshadowed by Salem, but few records have survived to modern times. Thanks to the American Civil War, many of the 17^th-century records were burned during the 19^th century (another area of history that I know very well!).

Unlike Salem, only one woman was recorded to have been executed. But how many records were lost? No one will ever know. The journey of writing my story led me to read more about England where the colonists originated from. Fellow Hoyden, Mary Sharratt shared some of her research and introduced me to Emma Wilby and her wonderful book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic.

With an anthropology degree, I have always been intrigued by shamans. Wilby's book hit an instant chord with me, but historians disagree whether the cunning folk ever reached the American shores. I dug deeper. Two of the Virginia trials sounded very much like the accused were cunning women. Between that possibility and the fact that cunning folk were very common in the 17^th century, I had a basis for my story. Yet, something was missing.

When the colonists first arrived on the Virginia shores, the land was already inhabited. Besides the John Smith/Pocahontas myth, I knew nothing about the Powhatan people. In my pursuit to learn more, not only did I read books, but I visited the historic sites. Jamestown is the original site where the colonists made the first permanent English settlement in North America, and Jamestown Settlement is a living history park where the 17^th century comes alive. The Citie of Henricus is also a living history park portraying the second English settlement. Like Jamestown Settlement, it includes how the Indians of the time lived, but unlike Jamestown, Henricus did not survive Opechancanough's organized attacks in 1622. Also on my stops, I included visits to the Pamunkey and Mattaponi museums. The paramount chief Powhatan was a member of the Pamunkey tribe, and his daughter, Pocahontas was Mattaponi (the Algonquian speaking tribes of Virginia traced their lineage through the women). These two tribes were part of the Powhatan chiefdom and still live on reservations in Virginia to this day.

After four years of researching and writing, I was drawn into a world that I could have never imagined. In my story, The Dreaming: Walks Through Mist I have blended modern times with fantasy and the 17^th century. As many of the tribal people teach, my path has taken me along a circle, leading me home. Now my journey is complete.

I look forward to seeing where my next journey leads.

Kim Murphy

www.KimMurphy.Net

Witch Trials and Rape

"It is true that rape is a most detestable crime, and therefore ought severely and impartially to be punished with death; but it must be remembered, that it is an accusation easily to be made, hard to be proved, but harder to be defended by the party accused, tho innocent."

No words have severely affected modern women more than Sir Matthew Hale's seventeenth-century quote. Even though the crime of rape has been shown to have no more false accusations than any other crime, Hale's statement, warning jurors that women are liars, has been repeated throughout courtrooms for centuries. In the U.S., the words weren't stricken from the courts until the 1970s.

In the seventeenth century, a woman who brought the charge of rape against a man was automatically regarded with suspicion. A girl's sexuality was controlled by her father, and once she was married that power shifted to her husband. If a woman had been raped, her "protector" would bring the charges to the authorities. Women with no male protector were often looked upon as being unchaste and thought to readily consent their virtues to any man.

But what does the crime of rape have to do with witch trials? In 1664, Hale presided as a judge in a witch trial of two elderly women, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender. Dorothy Durent accused that Duny had caused her children to have "fits." In one instance, Duny had prophesied that Durent would see some of her children dead and end up on crutches herself. When Durent's daughter became sick, Duny foretold that she hadn't long to live. The girl died two days later. Shortly after her daughter's death, Durent went lame only to be cured upon Duny's conviction.

Duny was also accused of bewitching the Pacey children. In 1663, Deborah Pacey went lame. Soon after, she had "fits" and great stomach pain. She told the doctor that Amy Duny had appeared to her and frightened her. Duny was put in stocks for the crime. Two days later, the other Pacey child began to have fits that included lameness, deafness, loss of speech, fainting, and coughing up pins. Both children claimed that Amy Duny and Rose Cullender had come to them. The children were also thought to be possessed by the devil.

Two more children of different families had similar fits. In body searches of the accused women, Rose Cullender was found to have "something like a teat about an inch long" in the abdominal region.

During court, three of the children fell into violent screaming fits. In a test, the girls were blindfolded and touched by strangers. Tricked into thinking the touches had come from the accused women, the girls had a "bewitched" reaction. The father of one of the girls stated that sorcery was the cause for their mistake.

Sir Matthew Hale refused to allow the evidence to come before the jury and failed to give a similar speech that he normally delivered to rape jurors about how difficult the crime was to prove. In fact, he offered the exact opposite explanation and lectured the jury about the evils of witchcraft. After half an hour, the jury delivered a guilty verdict for thirteen counts of witchcraft and sorcery. With the conviction, the children were restored to good health and walked out of the courtroom completely healed.

Duny and Cullender denied any wrongdoing and were hanged on March 17, 1664.

Like rape trials, the female victims in witch trials were mocked and believed to be corrupt. Sir Matthew Hale and those who thought like him had ways of keeping women in their places through intimidation and fear. His infamous words may have been stricken from the courtrooms, but his legacy lives on when the modern justice system fails to take rape complaints seriously.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net