A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 Part 25

We have called John Webster's a great name in the literature of our subject, and we have given our reasons for so thinking. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that he created any such sensation in his time as did his arch-opponent, Glanvill. His work never went into a second edition. There are but few references to it in the writings of the time, and those are in works devoted to the defence of the belief. Benjamin Camfield, a Leicesters.h.i.+re rector, wrote an unimportant book on _Angels and their Ministries_,[48] and in an appendix a.s.sailed Webster. Joseph Glanvill turned fiercely upon him with new proofs of what he called facts, and bequeathed the work at his death to Henry More, who in the several following editions of the _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ attacked him with no little bitterness.

We may skip over three lesser writers on witchcraft. During the early eighties John Brinley, Henry Hallywell, and Richard Bovet launched their little boats into the sea of controversy. Brinley was a bold plagiarist of Bernard, Hallywell a logical but dull reasoner from the Bible, Bovet a weakened solution of Glanvill.[49]

We turn now from the special literature of witchcraft to a sketch of the incidental evidences of opinion. Of these we have a larger body than ever before, too large indeed to handle in detail. It would be idle to quote from the chap-books on witch episodes their _raisons d'etre_. It all comes to this: they were written to confute disbelievers. They refer slightingly and even bitterly to those who oppose belief, not however without admitting their numbers and influence. It will be more to our purpose to examine the opinions of men as they uttered them on the bench, in the pulpit, and in the other walks of practical life.

We have already had occasion to learn what the judges were thinking. We listened to Matthew Hale while he uttered the p.r.o.nouncement that was heard all over England and even in the North American colonies. The existence of witches, he affirmed solemnly, is proved by Scripture and by the universality of laws against them. Justice Rainsford in the following years and Justice Raymond about twenty years later seem to have taken Hale's view of the matter. On the other side were to be reckoned Sir John Reresby and Francis North. Neither of them was quite outspoken, fearing the rage of the people and the charge of atheism.

Both sought to save the victims of persecution, but rather by exposing the deceptions of the accusers than by denying witchcraft itself. From the vast number of acquittals in the seventies and the sudden dropping off in the number of witch trials in the eighties we know that there must have been many other judges who were acquitting witches or quietly ignoring the charges against them. Doubtless Kelyng, who, as a spectator at Bury, had shown his skepticism as to the accusations, had when he later became a chief justice been one of those who refused to condemn witches.

From scientific men there were few utterances. Although we shall in another connection show that a goodly number from the Royal Society cherished very definite beliefs--or disbeliefs--on the subject, we have the opinions of but two men who were professionally scientists, Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Robert Boyle. Browne we have already met at the Bury trial. It may reasonably be questioned whether he was really a man of science. Certainly he was a physician of eminence. The att.i.tude he took when an expert witness at Bury, it will be recalled, was quite consistent with the opinion given in his _Commonplace Book_. "We are noways doubtful," he wrote, "that there are witches, but have not always been satisfied in the application of their witchcrafts."[50] So spoke the famous physician of Norwich. But a man whose opinion was of much more consequence was Sir Robert Boyle. Boyle was a chemist and "natural philosopher." He was the discoverer of the air pump, was elected president of the Royal Society, and was altogether one of the greatest non-political figures in the reign of Charles II. While he never, so far as we know, discussed witchcraft in the abstract, he fathered a French story that was brought into England, the story of the Demon of Mascon.

He turned the story over to Glanvill to be used in his list of authentic narratives; and, when it was later reported that he had p.r.o.nounced the demon story an imposture, he took pains to deny the report in a letter to Glanvill.[51]

Of literary men we have, as of scientists, but two. Aubrey, the "delitescent" antiquarian and Will Wimble of his time, still credited witchcraft, as he credited all sorts of narratives of ghosts and apparitions. It was less a matter of reason than of sentiment. The dramatist Shadwell had the same feeling for literary values. In his preface to the play, _The Lancas.h.i.+re Witches_, he explained that he pictured the witches as real lest the people should want "diversion,"

and lest he should be called "atheistical by a prevailing party who take it ill that the power of the Devil should be lessen'd."[52] But Shadwell, although not seriously interested in any side of the subject save in its use as literary material, included himself among the group who had given up belief.

What philosophers thought we may guess from the all-pervading influence of Hobbes in this generation. We have already seen, however, that Henry More,[53] whose influence in his time was not to be despised, wrote earnestly and often in support of belief. One other philosopher may be mentioned. Ralph Cudworth, in his _True Intellectual System_, touched on confederacies with the Devil and remarked in pa.s.sing that "there hath been so full an attestation" of these things "that those our so confident Exploders of them, in this present Age, can hardly escape the suspicion of having some Hankring towards Atheism."[54] This was Glanvill over again. It remains to notice the opinions of clergymen. The history of witch literature has been in no small degree the record of clerical opinion. Glanvill, Casaubon, Muggleton, Camfield, and Hallywell were all clergymen. Fortunately we have the opinions of at least half a dozen other churchmen. It will be remembered that Oliver Heywood, the famous Non-Conformist preacher of Lancas.h.i.+re, believed, though not too implicitly, in witchcraft.[55] So did Samuel Clarke, Puritan divine and hagiographer.[56] On the same side must be reckoned Nathaniel Wanley, compiler of a curious work on _The Wonders of the Little World_.[57] A greater name was that of Isaac Barrow, master of Trinity, teacher of Isaac Newton, and one of the best preachers of his time. He declared that to suppose all witch stories fictions was to "charge the world with both extreme Vanity and Malignity."[58] We can cite only one divine on the other side. This was Samuel Parker, who in his time played many parts, but who is chiefly remembered as the Bishop of Oxford during the troubles of James II with the university. Parker was one of the most disliked ecclesiastics of his time, but he deserves praise at any rate for his stand as to witchcraft. We do not know the details of his opinions; indeed we have nothing more than the fact that in a correspondence with Glanvill he questioned the opinions of that distinguished protagonist of witchcraft.[59]

By this time it must be clear that there is possible no hard and fast discrimination by groups between those that believed in witchcraft and those that did not. We may say cautiously that through the seventies and eighties the judges, and probably too the justices of the peace,[60]

were coming to disbelieve. With even greater caution we may venture the a.s.sertion that the clergy, both Anglican and Non-Conformist, were still clinging to the superst.i.tion. Further generalization would be extremely hazardous. It looks, however, from the evidence already presented, as well as from some to be given in another connection--in discussing the Royal Society[61]--as if the scientists had not taken such a stand as was to be expected of them.

When we examine the att.i.tude of those who scoffed at the stories vouched for by Glanvill and More it becomes evident that they a.s.sumed that practically all thinking men were with them. In other words, they believed that their group comprised the intellectual men of the time.

Now, it would be easy to rush to the conclusion that all men who thought in conventional ways would favor witchcraft, and that those who took unconventional views would be arrayed on the other side, but this would be a mistake. Glanvill was an exceedingly original man, while Muggleton was uncommonly commonplace; and there were numbered among those who held to the old opinion men of high intelligence and brilliant talents.

We must search, then, for some other basis of cla.s.sification. Glanvill gives us an interesting suggestion. In withering tone he speaks of the "looser gentry and lesser pretenders to wit." Here is a possible line of cleavage. Might it be that the more worldly-minded among the county families, that those too who comprised what we may call, in the absence of a better term, the "smart set," and the literary sets of London, were especially the "deriders" of superst.i.tion? It is not hard to believe that Shadwell, the worldly Bishop Parker, and the polished Sir William Temple[62] would fairly reflect the opinions of that cla.s.s. So too the diarist Pepys, who found Glanvill "not very convincing." We can conceive how the ridicule of the supernatural might have become the fad of a certain social group. The Mompesson affair undoubtedly possessed elements of humor; the wild tales about Amy Duny and Rose Cullender would have been uncommonly diverting, had they not produced such tragic results. With the stories spun about Julian c.o.x the witch accusers could go no farther. They had reached the culmination of nonsense. Now, it is conceivable that the clergyman might not see the humor of it, nor the philosopher, nor the scholar; but the worldly-minded Londoner, who cared less about texts in Leviticus than did his father, who knew more about coffee-houses and plays, and who cultivated clever people with a.s.siduity, had a better developed sense of humor. It was not strange that he should smile quizzically when told these weird stories from the country. He may not have pondered very deeply on the abstract question nor read widely--perhaps he had seen Ady's book or glanced over Scot's--but, when he met keen men in his group who were laughing quietly at narratives of witchcraft, he laughed too. And so, quite un.o.btrusively, without blare of trumpets, skepticism would slip into society. It would be useless for Glanvill and More to call aloud, or for the people to rage. The cla.s.ses who mingled in the worldly life of the capital would scoff; and the country gentry who took their cue from them would follow suit.

Of course this is theory. It would require a larger body of evidence than we can hope to gather on this subject to prove that the change of opinion that was surely taking place spread at first through the higher social strata and was to reach the lower levels only by slow filtration.

Yet such an hypothesis fits in nicely with certain facts. It has already been seen that the trials for witchcraft dropped off very suddenly towards the end of the period we are considering. The drop was accounted for by the changed att.i.tude of judges and of justices of the peace. The judges avoided trying witches,[63] the justices were less diligent in discovering them. But the evidence that we had about men of other occupations was less encouraging. It looked as if those who dispensed justice were in advance of the clergy, of the scholars, physicians, and scientists of their time. Had the Master of Trinity, or the physician of Norwich, or the discoverer of the air pump been the justices of the peace for England, it is not incredible that superst.i.tion would have flourished for another generation. Was it because the men of the law possessed more of the matter-of-factness supposed to be a heritage of every Englishman? Was it because their special training gave them a saner outlook? No doubt both elements help to explain the difference. But is it not possible to believe that the social grouping of these men had an influence? The itinerant justices and the justices of the peace were recruited from the gentry, as none of the other cla.s.ses were. Men like Reresby and North inherited the traditions of their cla.s.s; they spent part of the year in London and knew the talk of the town. Can we doubt that their decisions were influenced by that fact? The country justice of the peace was removed often enough from metropolitan influences, but he was usually quick to catch the feelings of his own cla.s.s.

If our theory be true that the jurists were in advance of other professions and that they were sprung of a higher stock, it is of course some confirmation of the larger theory that witchcraft was first discredited among the gentry. Yet, as we have said before, this is at best a guess as to how the decline of belief took place and must be accepted only provisionally. We have seen that there are other a.s.sertions about the progress of thought in this period that may be ventured with much confidence. There had been great changes of opinion.

It would not be fair to say that the movement towards skepticism had been accelerated. Rather, the movement which had its inception back in the days of Reginald Scot and had found in the last days of James I a second impulse, which had been quietly gaining force in the thirties, forties, and fifties, was now under full headway. Common sense was coming into its own.

[1] Ferris Greenslet, _Joseph Glanvill_ (New York, 1900), 153. The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Greenslet's excellent book on Glanvill.

[2] The _Scepsis Scientifica_ was really _The Vanity of Dogmatising_ (1661) recast.

[3] See, for example, the introductory essay by John Owen in his edition (London, 1885), of the _Scepsis Scientifica_, xxvii, xxix. See also _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (citations are all from the edition of 1681), 7, 13.

[4] So at least says Leslie Stephen, _Dict. Nat. Biog._ Glanvill himself, in _Essays on Several Important Subjects_ (1676), says that the sixth essay, "Philosophical Considerations against Modern Sadducism,"

had been printed four times already, _i. e._, before 1676. The edition of 1668 had been revised.

[5] This edition was dedicated to Charles, Duke of Richmond and Lenox, since His Grace had been "pleased to commend the first and more imperfect Edition."

[6] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Preface, F 3 verso, F 4; see also p. 10.

In the second part see Preface, Aa 2--Aa 3. In several other places he has insisted upon this point.

[7] See _ibid._, 9 ff., 18 ff., 21 ff., 34 ff.

[8] _Ibid._, 32, 34.

[9] _Ibid._, 11-13.

[10] See, for example, _ibid._, 88-89.

[11] _Ibid._, 25-27.

[12] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 39.

[13] _Ibid._, 52-53.

[14] To the argument that witches are not mentioned in the New Testament he retorted that neither is North America (_ibid._, 82).

[15] _Ibid._, 78.

[16] Nevertheless he took up some of Scot's points.

[17] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Preface.

[18] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, pt. ii, 3.

[19] See _ibid._, pt. ii, Relation VIII.

[20] _Scepsis Scientifica_ (ed. of 1885), 179.

[21] London, 1668. It was reprinted in 1672 with the t.i.tle _A Treatise proving Spirits, Witches, and Supernatural Operations by pregnant instances and evidences_.

[22] See above, pp. 239-240.

[23] _Of Credulity and Incredulity_, 29, 30.

[24] He characterizes Reginald Scot as an illiterate wretch, but admits that he had never read him. It was Wierus whom he chiefly sought to confute.

[25] He was given also to "strong and high tasted liquors." Anthony a Wood, _Athenae Oxonienses_ (London, 1691-1692; 3d ed., with additions, London, 1813-1820), ed. of 1813-1820, III, 11-14.

[26] _The Question of Witchcraft Debated_ (London, 1669), 64.

[27] 1670 (see above, p. 293).

[28] _The Opinion of Witchcraft Vindicated. In an Answer to a Book Int.i.tuled The Question of Witchcraft Debated_ (London, 1670).

[29] _A True Interpretation of the Witch of Endor_ (London, 1669).

[30] "By a Pen neer the Convent of Eluthery."

[31] London, 1676.

[32] To Professor Burr I owe my knowledge of this ascription. The translator (the English Quaker, William Sewel, all his life a resident of Holland), calls him "N. Orchard, Predikant in Nieuw-Engeland."

[33] See _Doctrine of Devils_, chaps. VII, VIII, and _cf._ Scot, _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 512-514.