Elizabethan Demonology Part 6

[Footnote 1: A True Relation of the Grievious Handling of William Sommers, etc. London: T. Harper, 1641 (? 1601). The Tryall of Maister Darrell, 1599.]

65. But more interesting, and more important for the present purpose, are the cases of possession that were dealt with by Father Parsons and his colleagues in 1585-6, and of which Dr. Harsnet gave such a highly spiced and entertaining account in his "Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures," first published in the year 1603. It is from this work that Shakspere took the names of the devils mentioned by Edgar, and other references made by him in "King Lear;" and an outline of the relation of the play to the book will furnish incidentally much matter ill.u.s.trative of the subject of possession. But before entering upon this outline, a brief glance at the condition of affairs political and domestic, which partially caused and nourished these extraordinary eccentricities, is almost essential to a proper understanding of them.

66. The year 1586 was probably one of the most critical years that England has pa.s.sed through since she was first a nation. Standing alone amongst the European States, with even the Netherlanders growing cold towards her on account of her ambiguous treatment of them, she had to fight out the battle of her independence against odds to all appearances irresistible. With Sixtus plotting her overthrow at Rome, Philip at Madrid, Mendoza and the English traitors at Paris, and Mary of Scotland at Chartley, while a third of her people were malcontent, and James the Sixth was friend or enemy as it best suited his convenience, the outlook was anything but rea.s.suring for the brave men who held the helm in those stormy times. But although England owed her deliverance chiefly to the forethought and hardihood of her sons, it cannot be doubted that the sheer imbecility of her foes contributed not a little to that result. To both these conditions she owed the fact that the great Armada, the embodiment of the foreign hatred and hostility, threatening to break upon her sh.o.r.es like a huge wave, vanished like its spray. Medina Sidonia, with his querulous complaints and general ineffectuality,[1]

was hardly a match for Drake and his st.u.r.dy companions; nor were the leaders of the Babington conspiracy, the representatives and would-be leaders of the corresponding internal convulsion, the infatuated wors.h.i.+ppers of the fair devil of Scotland, the men to cope for a moment with the intellects of Walsingham and Burleigh.

[Footnote 1: Froude, xii. p. 405.]

67. The events which Harsnet investigated and wrote upon with politico-theological animus formed an eddy in the main current of the Babington conspiracy. For some years before that plot had taken definite shape, seminary priests had been swarming into England from the continent, and were sedulously engaged in preaching rebellion in the rural districts, sheltered and protected by the more powerful of the disaffected n.o.bles and gentry--modern apostles, preparing the way before the future regenerator of England, Cardinal Allen, the would-be Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. Among these was one Weston, who, in his enthusiastic admiration for the martyr-traitor, Edmund Campion, had adopted the alias of Edmonds. This Jesuit was gifted with the power of casting out devils, and he exercised it in order to prove the divine origin of the Holy Catholic faith, and, by implication, the duty of all persons religiously inclined, to rebel against a sovereign who was ruthlessly treading it into the dust. The performances which Harsnet examined into took place chiefly in the house of Lord Vaux at Hackney, and of one Peckham at Denham, in the end of the year 1585 and the beginning of 1586. The possessed persons were Anthony Tyrell, another Jesuit who rounded upon his friends in the time of their tribulation;[1]

Marwood, Antony Babington's private servant, who subsequently found it convenient to leave the country, and was never examined upon the subject; Trayford and Mainy, two young gentlemen, and Sara and Friswood Williams, and Anne Smith, maid-servants. Richard Mainy, the most edifying subject of them all, was seventeen only when the possession seized him; he had only just returned to England from Rheims, and, when pa.s.sing through Paris, had come under the influence of Charles Paget and Morgan; so his antecedents appeared somewhat open to suspicion.[2]

[Footnote 1: The Fall of Anthony Tyrell, by Persoun. See The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, by John Morris, p. 103.]

[Footnote 2: He was examined by the Government as to his connection with the Paris conspirators.--See State Papers, vol. clx.x.x. 16, 17.]

68. With the truth or falsehood of the statements and deductions made by Harsnet, we have little or no concern. Western did not pretend to deny that he had the power of exorcism, or that he exercised it upon the persons in question, but he did not admit the truth of any of the more ridiculous stories which Harsnet so triumphantly brings forward to convict him of intentional deceit; and his features, if the portrait in Father Morris's book is an accurate representation of him, convey an impression of feeble, unpractical piety that one is loth to a.s.sociate with a malicious impostor. In addition to this, one of the witnesses against him, Tyrell, was a manifest knave and coward; another, Mainy, as conspicuous a fool; while the rest were servant-maids--all of them interested in exonerating themselves from the stigma of having been adherents of a lost cause, at the expense of a ringleader who seemed to have made himself too conspicuous to escape punishment. Furthermore, the evidence of these witnesses was not taken until 1598 and 1602, twelve and sixteen years after the events to which it related took place; and when taken, was taken by Harsnet, a violent Protestant and almost maniacal exorcist-hunter, as the miscellaneous collection of literature evoked by his exposure of Parson Darrell's dealings with Will Sommers and others will show.

69. Among the many devils' names mentioned by Harsnet in his "Declaration," and in the examinations of witnesses annexed to it, the following have undoubtedly been repeated in "King Lear":--Fliberdigibet, spelt in the play Flibbertigibbet; Hoberdidance called Hopdance and Hobbididance; and Frateretto, who are called morris-dancers; Haberdicut, who appears in "Lear" as Obidicut; Smolkin, one of Trayford's devils; Modu, who possessed Mainy; and Maho, who possessed Sara Williams. These two latter devils have in the play managed to exchange the final vowels of their names, and appear as Modo and Mahu.[1]

[Footnote 1: In addition to these, Killico has probably been corrupted into Pillic.o.c.k--a much more probable explanation of the word than either of those suggested by Dyce in his glossary; and I have little doubt that the ordinary reading of the line, "Pur! the cat is gray!" in Act III.

vi. 47, is incorrect; that Pur is not an interjection, but the repet.i.tion of the name of another devil, Purre, who is mentioned by Harsnet. The pa.s.sage in question occurs only in the quartos, and therefore the fact that there is no stop at all after the word "Pur"

cannot be relied upon as helping to prove the correctness of this supposition. On the other hand, there is nothing in the texts to justify the insertion of the note of exclamation.]

70. A comparison of the pa.s.sages in "King Lear" spoken by Edgar when feigning madness, with those in Harsnet's book which seem to have suggested them, will furnish as vivid a picture as it is possible to give of the state of contemporary belief upon the subject of possession. It is impossible not to notice that nearly all the allusions in the play refer to the performance of the youth Richard Mainy. Even Edgar's hypothetical account of his moral failings in the past seems to have been an accurate reproduction of Mainy's conduct in some particulars, as the quotation below will prove;[1] and there appears to be so little necessity for these remarks of Edgar's, that it seems almost possible that there may have been some point in these pa.s.sages that has since been lost. A careful search, however, has failed to disclose any reason why Mainy should be held up to obloquy; and the pa.s.sages in question were evidently not the result of a direct reference to the "Declaration." After his examination by Harsnet in 1602, Mainy seems to have sunk into the insignificant position which he was so calculated to adorn, and nothing more is heard of him; so the references to him must be accidental merely.

[Footnote 1: "He would needs have persuaded this examinate's sister to have gone thence with him in the apparel of a youth, and to have been his boy and waited upon him.... He urged this examinate divers times to have yielded to his carnal desires, using very unfit tricks with her.

There was also a very proper woman, one Mistress Plater, with whom this examinate perceived he had many allurements, showing great tokens of extraordinary affection towards her."--Evidence of Sara Williams, Harsnet, p. 190. Compare King Lear, Act iii. sc. iv. ll. 82-101; note especially l. 84.]

71. One curious little repet.i.tion in the play of a somewhat unimportant incident recorded by Harsnet is to be found in the fourth scene of the third act, where Edgar says--

"Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire; _that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew_; set ratsbane by his porridge," etc.[1]

[Footnote 1: l. 51, et seq.]

The events referred to took place at Denham. A halter and some knife-blades were found in a corridor of the house. "A great search was made in the house to know how the said halter and knife-blades came thither, but it could not in any wise be found out, as it was pretended, till Master Mainy in his next fit said, as it was reported, that the devil layd them in the gallery, that some of those that were possessed might either hang themselves with the halter, or kill themselves with the blades."[1]

[Footnote 1: Harsnet, p. 218.]

72. But the bulk of the references relating to the possession of Mainy occur further on in the same scene:--

"_Fool._ This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

"_Edgar._ Take heed o' the foul fiend: obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse;[1] set not thy sweet heart on proud array: Tom's a-cold.

"_Lear._ What hast thou been?

"_Edgar._ A serving-man, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, wore my gloves in my cap, served the l.u.s.t of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her;[2] swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that slept in the contriving of l.u.s.t, and waked to do it; wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in women out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of ear, b.l.o.o.d.y of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to woman; keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets,[3] thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend."[4]

[Footnote 1: Cf. -- 70, and note.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. -- 70, and note.]

[Footnote 3: Placket probably here means pockets; not, as usual, the slip in a petticoat. Tom was possessed by Mahu, the prince of stealing.]

[Footnote 4: l. 82, et seq.]

This must be read in conjunction with what Edgar says of himself subsequently:--

"Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of l.u.s.t, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women."[1]

[Footnote 1: Act IV. i. 61.]

The following are the chief parts of the account given by Harsnet of the exorcism of Mainy by Weston--a most extraordinary transaction,--said to be taken from Weston's own account of the matter. He was supposed to be possessed by the devils who represented the seven deadly sins, and "by instigation of the first of the seven, began to set his hands into his side, curled his hair, and used such gestures as Maister Edmunds present affirmed that that spirit was Pride.[1] Heerewith he began to curse and to banne, saying, 'What a poxe do I heare? I will stay no longer among a company of rascal priests, but goe to the court and brave it amongst my fellowes, the n.o.blemen there a.s.sembled.'[2] ... Then Maister Edmunds did proceede againe with his exorcismes, and suddenly the sences of Mainy were taken from him, his belly began to swell, and his eyes to stare, and suddainly he cried out, 'Ten pounds in the hundred!' he called for a scrivener to make a bond, swearing that he would not lend his money without a p.a.w.ne.... There could be no other talke had with this spirit but money and usury, so as all the company deemed this devil to be the author of Covetousnesse....[3]

[Footnote 1: "A serving-man, proud of heart and mind, that curled my hair," etc.--l. 87; cf. also l. 84. Curling the hair as a sign of Mainy's possession is mentioned again, Harsnet, p. 57.]

[Footnote 2: "That ... swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven."--l. 90.]

[Footnote 3: "Keep ... thy pen out of lenders' books."--l. 100.]

"Ere long Maister Edmunds beginneth againe his exorcismes, wherein he had not proceeded farre, but up cometh another spirit singing most filthy and baudy songs: every word almost that he spake was nothing but ribaldry. They that were present with one voyce affirmed that devill to be the author of Luxury.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in women out-paramoured the Turk."--l. 93.]

"Envy was described by disdainful looks and contemptuous speeches; Wrath, by furious gestures, and talke as though he would have fought;[1]

Gluttony, by vomiting;[2] and Sloth,[3] by gasping and snorting, as though he had been asleepe."[4]

[Footnote 1: "Dog in madness, lion in prey."--l. 96.]

[Footnote 2: "Wolf in greediness."--Ibid.]

[Footnote 3: "Hog in sloth."--l. 95.]

[Footnote 4: Harsnet, p. 278.]

A sort of prayer-meeting was then held for the relief of the distressed youth: "Whereupon the spirit of Pride departed in the forme of a Peac.o.c.ke; the spirit of Sloth in the likenesse of an a.s.se; the spirit of Envy in the similitude of a Dog; the spirit of Gluttony in the forme of a Wolfe."[1]

[Footnote 1: The words, "Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey," are clearly an imperfect reminiscence of this part of the transaction.]

There is in another part of "King Lear" a further reference to the incidents attendant upon these exorcisms Edgar says,[1] "The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale." This seems to refer to the following incident related by Friswood Williams:--

"There was also another strange thing happened at Denham about a bird.

Mistris Peckham had a nightingale, which she kept in a cage, wherein Maister Dibdale took great delight, and would often be playing with it.

This nightingale was one night conveyed out of the cage, and being next morning diligently sought for, could not be heard of, till Maister Mainie's devil, in one of his fits (as it was pretended), said that the wicked spirit which was in this examinate's sister[2] had taken the bird out of the cage, and killed it in despite of Maister Dibdale."[3]

[Footnote 1: Act III. sc. vi. l. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Sara Williams.]