Читать книгу The Discovery of Witchcraft. Facts, Fiction & Conspiracy Theories Behind the Medieval Witch Hunt онлайн

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The plantings of the Queen in the commissions of her Justices thus instigated and encouraged, produced an abundant crop. According to the Dedications of Scot, Sir Roger Manwood, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, had had “in these causes such experience”, ssss1., while Sir Thomas Scot, as Justice of the Peace, had also had “manie poore old women convented before him for ... witchcraft”, ssss1. Various booklets also, presently to be spoken of more at large, excited still more the imaginations of a credulous people, and it had been supposed, before Scot wrote, as will be seen on p. 473, and in my note on that page, that the Queen’s person had been aimed at in that way.

It thus appears that though Scot may have been brought up in a traditional but little-regarded belief in witchcraft, he, when he was at least thirty-four, was not only unprepared, but startled, to witness and take part in this new departure from justice and mercy. Witchcraft, chiefly looked on as useful in discovering things lost, or in bringing a wished-for sweetheart to return the love of the seeker, or in curing ailments simple or grievous, became feared, reviled, and sought out: sought out by Commission of the Queen, sought out by the people as a great and fearful evil rapidly overspreading the land, and able and willing, like the Plague and Black Death, to count its victims by thousands, and from the cottage to the throne itself. He, a man both intelligent and compassionate, sees poor, old, decrepit creatures eking out a miserable livelihood by begging an occasional dole from their better off neighbours; ill-tempered by age and condition, and therefore abusive when refused such dole, or on slighter causes, sometimes perhaps through old knowledge or superstition, but probably more often for the sake of gain, pretending to be wise above what is known; he sees these accused of selling their souls for the sake of such a position in the world, he hears them accused sometimes of foul, more frequently of unlikely, crimes and acts, nay, such as an unprejudiced common sense must laugh at, while the evidence is nearly always so faulty that, were the accusation a different one, it would be at once turned inside out and thrown aside. Unfortunately, too, some of these old women being more or less mad, and others driven through fear on the one hand, or through promised favour on the other, confess themselves capable of doing these things, though any man of sense and observation could detect their state or motives. Luckily, too, he had had close to him, and in his wife’s family, the known and talked-of imposture of the Holy Maid of Kent; and in his own time and close to his own door, the case of the Pythonist of Westwell, at first carried out triumphantly, and then, on her own confession and her re-acted acts, branded as an impostor, like the Holy Maid. The Dutchman, too, at Maidstone, after being set forth as a worker of miracles and an exorcist, was found to be a rogue; and “manie other such miracles had beene latelie printed, whereof diverse had beene bewraied.” He had taken part also—apparently as one engaged for the defence—in that piece of folly called the trial of Margaret Simons, and knew the history of Ade Davie, and of her restoration to sanity without exorcism, hanging, or burning.