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je. y could not avoid expressing some doubts; when, taking him aside, she declared unto him the very words which had passed between him and his Queen the first night of their marriage, with their answer each to other; whereat the ng wondered greatly, and swore by the living God, that he believed all the Devils in Hell could not have discovered the same.

That the particulars elicited from the confessions of these unfortunate beings, which, it is said, "made the King in a wonderful admiration," formed the basis of the Dæmonologie, may be, therefore, readily admitted. It is also to be deplored hat, weak and absurd as this production now appears to us, its effects on the age of its birth, and for a century afterwards, were extensive, and melancholy in the extreme. It contributed, indeed, more than any other work on the subject, to rivet the fetters of credulity; and scarcely had a twelvemonth elapsed from its publication; before its result was visible in the destruction, in Scotland, of not less than six hundred human beings at once, for this imaginary crime! †

The succession of James to the throne of Elizabeth served but to propagate the contagion; for no sooner had he reached this country, than his Dæmonologie reappeared from an English press, being printed at London, in 1603, in quarto, and with a Preface to the Reader, which commences by informing him of "the fearefull abounding at this time in this Countrey, of these detestable slaves of the Divel, the Witches, or enchanters;" a declaration which, during the course of the same year, was accompanied by a new statute against Witches, one clause of which enacts, that

"Any one that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, covenant with, entertaine or employ, feede or reward, any evill or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charme, or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charme, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed, in his or her body, or any part thereof, such offenders, duly and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer death." S

We cannot wonder if measures such as these, which stamped the already existing superstitions with the renewed authority of the law, and with the influence of regal argument and authority, should render a belief in the existence of witchcraft almost universal; fashion and interest on the one hand, and ignorance and fear on the other, mutually contributing, by concealing or banishing doubt, to disseminate error, and preclude detection.

Who those were who, at this period, had the misfortune to be branded with theonellation of Witches; what deeds were imputed to them, and what was the natur of their supposed compact with the Devil, are questions which will be most. satisfactorily answered in the words of Reginald Scot, whose book is not only extremely scarce, but highly curious and entertaining; and two or three chapters from this copious treasury of superstition, with a very few comments from other sources, will exhaust this part of the subject.

"The sort of such as are said to be witches," writes Scot, "are women which be commonly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles; poore, sulien, superstitious, and papists; or such as knowe no religion; in whose drousie minds the divell hath gotten a fine seat; so as, what mischeese, mischance, calamitie, or slaughter is brought to passe, they are easilie persuaded the same is doone by themselves; imprinting in their minds an earnest and constant imagination thereof. They are leane and deformed, shewing melancholie in their faces, to the horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, divelish, and not much differing from them that are thought to be possessed with spirits; so firme and stedfast in their opinions, as whosoever These extracts are taken from a pamphlet entitled, "Newes from Scotland," reprinted in the Gent. Magazine, vol. xlix. p. 419. See also Gent. Magazine, vol. vii. p. 556.

See Nashe's Lenten Stuff, 1599, as quoted by Mr. Reed, in his Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 5. note.
King James's Works, as published by James, Bishop of Winton, folio, 1616, p. 91.

§ This act against witches was not repealed until the year 1736, being the ninth of George the Second!

shall onelie have respect to the constancie of their words uttered, would easilie beleeve they were true indeed.

"These miserable wretches are so odious unto all their neighbors, and so feared, as few dare offend them, or denie them anie thing they aske: whereby they take upon them; yea, and sometimes thinke, that they can doo such things as are beyond the abilitie of human nature. These go from house to house, and from doore to doore for a pot full of milke, yest, drinke, pottage, or some such releefe; without the which they could hardlie live: neither obtainng for their service and paines, nor by their art, nor yet at the divels hands (with whome they are said to make a perfect and visible bargaine) either beautie, monie, promotion, welth, worship, pleasure, honor, knowledge, learning, or any other benefit whatsoever.

"It falleth out many times, that neither their necessities nor their expectation is answered or served, in those places where they beg or borrowe; but rather their lewdness is by their neighbors reproved. And further, in tract of time the witch wareth odious and tedious to her neighbors; and they againe are despised and despited of hir; so as sometimes she cursseth one, and sometimes another; and that from the maister of the house, his wife, children, cattell, etc. to the little pig that lieth in the stie. Thus in processe of time they have all displeased hir, and she hath wished evil luck unto them all; perhaps with cursses and imprecations made in forme. Doubtless (at length) some of hir neighbors die, or falle sicke; or some of their children are visited with diseases that ver them strangelie as apoplexies, epilepsies, convulsions, hot fevers, wormes, etc. Which by ignorant parents are supposed to be the vengeance of witches. Yea and their opinions and conceits are confirmed and maintained by unskilfull physicians: according to the common saieng; "Inscitiæ pallium maleficium et incantatio," Witchcraft and inchantment is the cloke of ignorance: whereas indeed evill humours, and not strange words, witches, or spirits are the causes of such diseases. Also some of their cattell perish, either by disease or mischance. Then they, uppon whom such adversities fall, weighing the fame that goeth upon this woman (hir words, displeasure, and cursses meeting so justly with their misfortune) doo not onlie conceive, but also are resolved, that all their mishaps are brought to passe by hir onelie means.

"The witch on the other side expecting hir neighbors mischances, and seeing things sometimes come to passe according to hir wishes, cursses, and incantations (for Bodin himself confesseth, that not above two in a hundred of their witchings or wishings take effect), being called before a Justice, by due examination of the circumstances is driven to see hir imprecations and desires, and hir neighbors harmes and losses to concurre, and as it were to take effect and so confesseth that she (as a goddes) hath brought such things to passe. Wherein, not onelie she, but the accuser, and also the Justice are fowlie deceived and abused; as being thorough hir confession and other circumstances persuaded (to the injurie of Gods glorie) that she hath doone, or can doo that which is proper onelie to God himselfe.

"Another sort of witches there are, which be absolutelie cooseners: These take upon them, either for glorie, fame, or gaine, to doo any thing, which God or the divell can doo : either for fortelling things to come, bewraieng of secrets, curing of maladies, or working of miracles." *

To this chapter from Scot, which we have given entire, may be added the admirable description of the abode of a witch from the pen of Spenser, who, as Warton hath observed, copied from living objects, and had probably been struck with seeing such a cottage, in which a witch was supposed to live:

"There in a gloomy hollow glen she found
A little cottage built of stickes and reedes
In homely wise, and wald with sods around;
In which a Witch did dwell, in loathly weedes
And wilful want, all carelesse of her needes;
So choosing solitarie to abide

Far from all neighbours, that her divelish deeds
And hellish arts from people she might hide,

And hurt far off unknowne whomever she envide."

This very striking picture for ever fixed the character of the habitation allotted to a witch; thus in a singularly curious tract, entitled "Round about our CoalFire," published about the close of the seventeenth century, and which details, in a pleasing manner, the traditions of the olden time, as a source of Christmas amusement, it is said that "a Witch must be a hagged old woman, living in a little

* Discoverie of Witchcraft, book i. chap. 3. p. 7-9.

+ Todd's Spenser, vol. iv. p. 480, 481. Faerie Queene, book iii. canto 7, stanza 6 and note.

rotten cottage, under a hill, by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning at the door she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, an imp or two, and two or three diabolical teats to suckle her imps."

Of the wonderful feats which the various kinds of witches were supposed capable of performing, Scot has favoured us with the following succinct enumeration: there are three sorts of witches, he tells us,

"One sort can hurt and not helpe, the second can helpe and not hurt, the third can both helpe and hurt. Among the hurtfull witches there is one sort more beastlie than any kind of beasts, saving wolves: for these usually devour and eate yong children and infants of their owne kind. These be they that raise haile, tempests, and hurtfull weather; as lightening, thunder, etc. These be they that procure barrennesse in man, woman, and beast. These can throwe children in waters, as they walke with their mothers, and not be seene. These can make horsses kicke, till they cast their riders. These can passe from place to place in the aire invisible. These can so alter the mind of judges, that they can have no power to hurt them. These can procure to themselves and to others, taciturnitie and insensibilitie in their torments. These can bring trembling to the hands, and strike terror into the minds of them that apprehend them. These can manifest unto others, things hidden and lost, and foreshew things to come; and see them as though they were present. These can alter men's minds to inordinate love or hate. These can kill whom they list with lightening and thunder. These can take away man's courage. -These can make a woman miscarrie in childbirth, and destroie the child in the mother's wombe, without any sensible means either inwardlie or outwardlie applied. These can with their looks kill either man or beast.—

Others doo write, that they can pull downe the moone and the starres. Some write that with wishing they can send needles into the livers of their enemies. Some that they can transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. Some, that they can cure diseases supernaturallie, flie in the aire, and danse with divels. Some write, that they can plaie the part of Sucubus, and contract themselves to Incubus.-Some saie they can transubstantiate themselves and others, and take the forms and shapes of asses, woolves, ferrets, cowes, asses, horsses, hogs, etc. Some say they can keepe divels and spirits in the likenesse of todes and cats. "They can raise spirits (as others affirme), drie up springs, tnrne the course of running waters, inhibit the sune, and staie both day and night, changing the one into the other.

They

can go in and out at awger holes, and saile in an egge shell, a cockle or muscle shell, through and under the tempestuous seas.-They can bring soules out of the graves. They can teare snakes in pieces.-They can also bring to pass, that chearne as long as you list, your butter will not come; especiallie, if either the maids have eaten up the creame, or the good-wife have sold the butter before in the market." *

The only material accession which the royal James has made to this curious catalogue of the deeds of witchcraft, consists in informing us, that these aged and decrepit slaves of Satan "make pictures of waxe or clay, that by the roasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continuall sicknesse;"† and his mode of explaining how the devil performs this marvel, is a notable instance both of his ingenuity and his eloquence. This deed, he says,

"Is verie possible to their master to performe: for although that instrument of waxe have no vertue in that turne doing, yet may he not very well, even by the same measure, that his conjured slaves melt that waxe at the fire, may hee not, I say, at these same times, subtily, as a spirit, so weaken and scatter the spirits of life of the patient, as may make him on the one part, for faintnesse, to sweat out the humour of his bodie, and on the other part, for the not concurrence of these spirits, which causes his digestion, so debilitate his stomache, that this humour radicall continually sweating out on the one part, and no newe good sucke being put in the place thereof, for lacke of digestion on the other, he at last shall vanish away, even as his picture will doe at the fire? And that knavish and cunning workeman, by troubling him, onely at sometimes, makes a proportion, so neere betwixt the working of the one and the other, that both shall end as it were at one time." P. 117.

It remains to notice the nature of the compact or bargain, which witches were believed to enter into with their seducer, and the species of homage which they

* Discoverie of Witchcraft, book i. chap. 1. p. 9.

James's Works, by Winton, p. 116.

were compelled to pay him, and here again we must have recourse to Scot, not only as the most compressed, but as the most authentic detailer of this strange credulity of his times.

"The order of their bargaine or profession," says he, "is double; the one solemne and publike; the other secret and private. That which is called solemne or publike, is where witches come together at certaine assemblies, at the times prefixed, and doo not onelie see the divell in visible forme, but confer and talke familiarlie with him. In which conference the divell exhorteth them to observe their fidelitie unto him, promising them long life and prosperitie. Then the witches assembled, commend a new disciple (whom they call a novice) unto him and if the divell find that young witch apt and forward in renunciation of christian faith, in despising anie of the seven sacraments, in treading upon crosses, in spetting at the time of the elevation, in breaking their fast on fasting daies, and fasting on sundaies: then the divell giveth foorth his hand, and the novice joining hand in hand with him, promiseth to observe and keepe all the divels commandements.

"This doone, the divell beginneth to be more bold with hir, telling hir plainlie, that all this will not serve his turne; and therefore requireth homage at hir hands: yea he also telleth hir, that she must grant him both hir bodie and soule to be tormented in everlasting fire; which she yeeldeth unto. Then he chargeth hir, to procure as manie men, women, and children also, as she can, to enter into this societie. Then he teacheth them to make ointments of the bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the aire, and accomplish all their desires. So as, if there be anie children unbaptized, or not garded with the signe of the crosse, or orisons; then the witches may and doo catch them from their mothers sides in the night, or out of their cradles, or otherwise kill them with their ceremonies; and after buriall steale them out of their graves, and seeth them in a caldron, until their flesh be made potable. Of the thickest whereof they make ointments, whereby they ride in the aire; but the thinner potion they put into flaggons, whereof whosoever drinketh, observing certaine ceremonies, immediatelie becommeth a maister or rather a mistresse in that practise and facultie.

Their homage with their oth and bargaine is received for a certeine terme of yeares ; sometimes for ever. Sometimes it consisteth in the deniall of the whole faith, sometimes in part.And this is doone either by oth, protestation of words, or by obligation in writing, sometimes sealed with wax, sometimes signed with blood, sometimes by kissing the divels bare buttocks. "You must also understand, that after they have delicatlie banketted with the divell and the ladie of the fairies; and have eaten up a fat oxe, and emptied a butt of malmesie, and a binne of bread at some noble man's house, in the dead of night, nothing is missed of all this in the morning! For the ladie Sibylla, Minerva, or Diana with a golden rod sriketh the vessel and the binne, and they are fully replenished againe." After mentioning that the bullock is restored in the same magical manner, he states it as an "infallible rule, that everie fortnight, or at the least every moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part." He also relates from Bodin, that at these magicall assemblies, the witches never faile to danse, and whiles they sing and danse, everie one hath a broome in hir hand, and holdeth it up aloft."

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To these circumstances attending the meetings of this unhallowed sisterhood, King James adds, that Satan, in order that "hee may the more vively counterfeit and scorne God, oft times makes his slaves to conveene in those very places, which are destinate and ordained for the conveening of the servants of God (I meane by churches) :-further, witches oft times confesse, not only his conveening in the church with them, but his occupying of the pulpit." For this piece of information James seems to have been indebted to the confessions of Agnis Tompson; but he also relates, that the devil, as soon as he has induced his vota-ries to renounce their God and baptism, "gives them his marke upon some secret place of their bodie, which remaines soare unhealed, whilst his next meeting with them, and thereafter ever insensible, however it be nipped or pricked by any ;” a seal of distinction which, he tells us at the close of his treatise, is of great use in detecting them on their trial, as "the finding of their marke, and the trying the insensiblenes thereof," was considered as a positive proof of their craft. His Majesty, however, proceeds to mention another mode of ascertaining their guilt,

Discoverie of Witchcraft, book iii. chap }, 2. 40-42.
Works apud Winton, p. 112, 113.

terminating the paragraph in a manner not very flattering to his female subjects, or very expressive of his own gallantry.

"The other is," he tells us, "their fleeting on the water for as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse bee at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appointed that secret supernaturall signe, for triall of that secret unnaturall crime, so it appeares that God hath appointed (for a supernaturall signe of the monstrous impietie of Witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome, that have shaken off them the sacred water of Baptisme, and wilfully refused the benefite thereof: No, not so much as their eyes are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as you please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime) albeit the women-kind especially be able otherwayes to shed teares at every light occasion when they will, yea, although it were dissemblingly like the Crocodiles." *

Such are the chief features of this gross superstition, as detailed by the writers of the period in which it most prevailed in this country. Scot has taken infinite pains in collecting, from every writer on the subject, the minutiae of Witchcraft, and his book is expanded to a thick quarto, in consequence of his commenting at large on the particulars which he had given in his initiatory chapters, for the purpose of their complete refutation and exposure; a work of great labour, and which shows, at every step, how deeply this credulity had been impressed on the subjects of Elizabeth. James, on the other hand, though a man of considerable erudition, and, in some respects, of shrewd good sense, wrote in defence of this folly, and, unfortunately for truth and humanity, the doctrine of the monarch was preferred to that of the sage.

When such was the creed of the country, from the throne to the cottage; when even the men of learning, with few exceptions, ranged themselves on the side of the monologie, it was highly judicious in Shakspeare, in his dramatic capacity, to adopt, as a powerful instrument of terror, the popular belief; popular both in his own time, and in that to which the reign of Macbeth is referred. And, in doing this, he has shown not less taste than genius; for in the principal authorities to which he has had recourse for particulars; in the Discoverie of Scot, in the Dæmonologie of James, and even in the Witch of Middleton, a play now allowed to have been anterior to his own drama, the ludicrous and the frivolous are blended, in a very large proportion, with that which is calculated to excite solemnity and awe. With exquisite skill has he separated the latter from the former, exalting it with so many touches of grandeur, and throwing round it such an air of dreadful mystery, that, although the actual superstition on which the machinery is founded, be no more, there remains attached to it, in consequence of passing through the mind of Shakspeare, such a portion of what is naturally inherent in the human mind, in relation to its apprehensions of the invisible world of spirits, such a sublime, though indistinct conception of powers unknown and mightier far than we, that nearly the same degree of grateful terror is experienced from the perusal or representation of Macbeth in modern days, as was felt in the age of its production.

In the very first appearance, indeed, of the Weird Sisters to Macbeth and Banquo on the blasted heath, we discern beings of a more awful and spiritualised cha

#

King James's Works apud Winton, p. 111, 135, 136.

Among these we find the mighty name of Bacon, this great man attributing, in the Tenth Century of his Natural History, the achievements and the confessions of witches and wizards to the effects of a morbid imagination.

To the traditions of Boethius and Holinshed, we may add a modern authority in the person of Sir John Sinclair, who tells us that "In Macbeth's time Witchraft was very prevalent in Scotland, and two of the most famous witches in the kingdom lived on each hand of Macbeth, one at Collace, the other not far from Dunsinnan House, at a place called the Cape. Macbeth applied to them for advice, and by their counsel built a lofty Castle upon the top of an adjoining hill, since called Dunsinnan. The moor where the Witches met, which is in the parish of St. Martin's, is yet pointed out by the country-people, and there is a stone still preserved which is called the Witches Stones."-Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xx. p. 242.

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