The Penguin Book of Witches (24 page)

This letter in a Boston newspaper describes a witch trial in Austria, and is remarkable because of the assumptions that the letter writer made about its readership. In this context, the witch trial was presented as something exotic and foreign, a proceeding with customs that must be explained to rational Bostonian readers. However, the witch ducking described very closely mirrors the practice undertaken in Grace Sherwood’s trial in Virginia a scant twenty years earlier; it is not so very foreign after all. Further, the description of accused witches as including at least two prominent members of society, with allusion to their membership in a secret coven, would have inevitably stirred comparisons with Salem. To New Englanders hovering on the cusp of the Great Awakening,
1
beginning to engage with God on a more personal level, this account would have been both intriguing and reassuring, marking as it does the difference between their own religious outlook and those of their immediate predecessors.
2

From a Written Letter, Vienna, August 25

Letters from Segedin in Hungary, of the 26th of July, import that several persons of both sexes convicted of witchcraft have been condemned to be burned alive, but before they were executed, they put them upon the following trials (according to the custom of the country). The first was to tie their hands and feet and throw them into the water, who as sorcerers used to do, swam like a piece of wood, after which they were put into scales when it appeared that a large woman weighed but an ounce, and her husband but 5 drams, and the other still lighter,
3
whereupon they were burned alive the 23rd past. There was among them a midwife who had baptized 2,000 children in the name of the Devil, and a man of 82 years old who was formerly a judge of that town.

Attitudes about witchcraft had been changing in Britain as well, culminating in the passage of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, referenced in the following New York newspaper article. While witchcraft laws varied in North America from state to state, in Britain the 1735 law repealed the “Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked spirits” passed under King James I in 1604, which had established witchcraft as a felony under common law. For the first time, witchcraft was no longer to be held to be against the law as such, as it was now popularly thought to be a nonexistent crime. Instead, the new act would prosecute anyone who
pretended
to be practicing witchcraft, including dowsing for water, conjuring to find lost objects, or summoning spirits.

Such witch pretenders would be prosecuted as con artists and charlatans, rather than being charged with a felony punishable by death. What is remarkable about the passage of this law, however, is that the content of the supposed offenses stays essentially the same. Witchcraft, if we understand it to be a set of practices or beliefs, continues to exist under the 1735 law. In effect, the belief in witchcraft—its content, its reality, the existence of its practitioners—stays consistent, but the areas of perceived risk have changed.
1

From the
White-Hall Evening-Post.

London, July 21, 1737

S
IR,

I send you enclosed a very remarkable letter concerning the late cruel usage of a poor old woman in Bedfordshire, who was suspected of being a witch. You will see by it that the late law for abolishing the act against witches has not abolished credulity of the country people; but I hope it has made proper provision for punishing their barbarity on such occasions. I am,
sir
, yours, et cetera, A. B.

Extract of a Letter about the Trial of a Witch.

O
AKLEY
,
T
HREE
M
ILES
FROM
B
EDFORD

S
IR
,

The people here are so prejudiced in the belief of witches, that you would think yourself in Lapland, were you to hear their ridiculous stories. There is not a village in the neighborhood but has two or three. About a week ago I was present at the ceremony of ducking a witch, a particular account of which may not perhaps be disagreeable to you.

An old woman of about 60 years of age had long lain under an imputation of witchcraft, who, being willing (for her own sake and her children’s) to clear herself, consented to be ducked; and the parish officers promised her a guinea if she should sink. The place appointed for the operation was in the River Oust by a mill. There were, I believe, 500 spectators. About eleven o’clock in the forenoon, the woman came, and was tied up in a wet sheet, all but her face and hands. Her toes were tied close together, as were also her thumbs, and her hands tied to the small of her legs. They fastened a rope about her middle, and pulled off her cap to search for pins, for their notion is, if they have but one pin about them, they won’t sink.

When all preliminaries were settled, she was thrown in; but unhappily for the poor creature, she floated, though her head was all the while under water. Upon this there was a confused cry. “A witch! A witch! Drown her! Hang her!” She was in the water about 1 minute and a half and was taken out, half drowned. When she had recovered breath, the experiment was repeated twice more, but with the same success, for she floated each time, which was a plain demonstration of guilt to the ignorant multitude. For notwithstanding the poor creature was laid down upon the grass speechless and almost dead, they were so far from showing her any pity or compassion, that they strove who should be the most forward in loading her with reproaches. Such is the dire effect of popular prejudice! As for my part, I stood against the torrent, and when I had cut the strings which tied her, had her carried back to the mill, and endeavored to convince the people of the uncertainty of the experiment, and offered to lay five to one, that any woman of her age, so tied up in a close sheet, would float, but all to no purpose, for I was near being mobbed. Sometime after, the woman came out, and one of the company happened to mention another experiment to try a witch, which was to weigh her against the church Bible, for a witch, it seems, could not outweigh it. I immediately seconded that motion (as thinking it might be of service to the poor woman) and made use of an argument which (though as weak as * King James for their not sinking) had some weight with the people. For I told them that if she was a witch, she certainly dealt with the Devil; and as the Bible was undoubtedly the word of God, it must weigh more than all the works of the Devil. This seemed reasonable to several. And those that did not think it so, could not answer it. At last, the question was carried, and she was weighed against the Bible; which weighed about twelve pound. She outweighed it. This convinced some and staggered others, but the P—n, who believed through thick and thin, went away fully assured that she was a witch, and endeavored to inculcate that belief into all others.

I
AM
,
SIR
,

YOUR
VERY
HUMBLE
S
ERVANT
.

The phrase “witch hunt” appears frequently in American political and cultural discourse, perhaps frequently enough to be leached of much of its impact. However, well before Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, the idea of the witch hunt, or the witch trial, had already begun to stalk North American political discourse. In New York City during the winter of 1741, several fires were set across Manhattan, which the white inhabitants of the city took as a sign of an imminent violent slave uprising. The rush to discover who was responsible led to over a hundred black New Yorkers being imprisoned, seventeen put to death on the gallows, and—most chillingly—thirteen burned at the stake.
1

The following newspaper editorial from a writer in New England draws an explicit parallel between the Salem trial—which the writer points out was the subject of much criticism from New York while it was under way—and the frenzy attendant on the slave revolt conspiracy trial in 1741. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the witch as a figure of fear, and the witch trial as an enterprise of unreason, had taken firm root in North American culture. Far from falling by the wayside under the purifying light of Enlightenment thought, the witch merely changed form, from a legal category to a cultural trope.
2

Province of the Massachusetts Bay, 1741.

S
IR
,

I am a stranger to you and to New York, and so must beg pardon for the mistakes I may be guilty of in the subsequent attempt, the design whereof is to put an end to the bloody tragedy that has been, and I suppose is still acting among you, in regard of the poor Negroes and the whites too.

I observe in one of the Boston newsletters, dated July 13, that 5 Negroes were executed in one day at the gallows, a favor indeed! For one the next day was burned at the stake, where he impeached several others, and among them some whites, which, with the former terrible executions among you upon this occasion, puts me in mind of our New England witchcraft in the year 1692, which, if I don’t mistake, New York justly reproached us for and mocked at our credulity about. But may it not now be justly retorted,
Mutato nomine, de te Fabula Narratur
?
3
What ground you proceed upon, I must acknowledge myself not sufficiently informed of. But finding that those five that were executed in July denied any guilt, it makes me suspect that your present case, and ours heretofore, are much the same, and that Negro and specter evidence will turn out alike. We had near 50 confessors who accused multitudes of others, alleging time and place and various other circumstances to render their confessions credible, that they had their meetings, formed confederacies, signed the Devil’s book, et cetera. And as long as confessions were received and encouraged, accusations multiplied and increased: But I am humbly of opinion that such confessions and the evidences founded thereon are not worth a straw, unless some certain overt act (that nobody else could perform) appear to confirm the fame. For many times they are obtained by foul means, by force or torture, by flattery or surprise, by over watch or distraction, by discontent with their circumstances, through envy or malice, or in hopes of a longer time to live, or to die an easier death, et cetera. For anybody would choose rather to be hanged than to be burned.

It is true I have heard something of your forts being burned, but that might be by lightning from heaven, by accident, by some malicious person or persons of our own color. What other facts have been performed to petrify your hearts against the poor blacks, and some of your neighbors, the whites, I can’t tell. Possibly there have been some murmurings among the Negroes, and a few mad fellows may have threatened and designed revenge for the cruelty and inhumanity they have met with, which is too rife in the English plantations, and not long since occasioned such another tremendous and unreasonable a massacre at Antigua. But two things seem to me almost as impossible as for witches to fly in the air, or change themselves into cats, namely, that the whites should join with blacks; or that the blacks (among whom there are no doubt some rational persons) should attempt the destruction of a city,
4
when it is impossible they should escape the just and direful vengeance of the countries round about, which would immediately pour in upon, and swallow them up quick. And therefore if nothing will put an end to this doleful tragedy till some of higher degree and better circumstances and characters are accused (which finished our Salem witchcraft), the sooner the better, lest all the poor people of your government perish in the merciless flames of an imaginary plot.

In the meantime don’t be offended if out of friendship to my poor countrymen, and compassion to the Negroes (who are partakers of the same nature with us and ought to be treated with humanity), I entreat you not to go on to destroy your own estates by making bonfires of your Negroes, and thereby perhaps loading yourselves with greater guilt than theirs. For we have too much reason to fear that the divine vengeance does and will pursue us for our ill treatment to the bodies and souls of our poor slaves, and the meaner sort of people. And therefore let justice be done whenever you sit in judicature about their affairs.

All which is humbly submitted by a well-wisher to all human beings, and one that ever desires to be of the merciful side, et cetera.

By the end of the eighteenth century, witchcraft had largely become a fading memory to which the present may in general be favorably compared, dwelling only in folklore and in the isolated superstitions of uneducated people. Or so it would seem. The following anecdote, preserved in an anti-Federalist pamphlet as a point of evidence in support of the importance of legally securing the liberty of conscience in the Bill of Rights during the Constitutional Convention, suggests that belief in witches at the end of the eighteenth century instead was very much alive and well, and living in the hands of the mob. Belief in witches had not disappeared at all. It was not an obscure footnote to history. It was still real and it was still present and it was still threatening enough to warrant stoning a woman in the street to her death.
1

Mr. Printer, In order that people may be sufficiently impressed with the necessity of establishing a bill of rights in the forming of a new constitution, it is very proper to take a short view of some of those liberties, which it is of the greatest importance for freemen to retain to themselves, when they surrender up a part of their natural rights for the good of society.

The first of these, which it is of the utmost importance for the people to retain to themselves, which indeed they have not even the right to surrender, and which at the same time it is of no kind of advantages to government to strip them of, is the liberty of conscience. I know that a ready answer is at hand to any objections upon this head. We shall be told that in this enlightened age, the rights of conscience are perfectly secure: There is no necessity of guarding them, for no man has the remotest thoughts of invading them. If this be the case, I beg leave to reply that now is the very time to secure them. Wise and prudent men always take care to guard against danger beforehand and to make themselves safe while it is yet in their power to do it without inconvenience or risk. Who shall answer for the ebbings and flowings of opinion or be able to say what will be the fashionable frenzy of the next generation? It would have been treated as a very ridiculous supposition, a year ago, that the charge of witchcraft would cost a person her life in the city of Philadelphia, yet the fate of the unhappy old woman called Corbmaker, who was beaten, repeatedly wounded with knives, mangled, and at last killed in our streets in obedience to the commandment which requires “that we shall not suffer a witch to live,”
2
without possibility of punishment or even of detecting the authors of this inhuman folly, should be an example to warn us how little we ought to trust to the unrestrained discretion of human nature.