Page:A brief history of witchcraft - with especial reference to the witches of Northamptonshire (IA b3056721x).pdf/13

 (after she was so strongly suspected) getting her by a wyle into a place conuenient, would needs have her searched, to see if they could find that insencible marke which commonly all witches haue in some priuy place or other of their bodies. And this Mistris Moulsho was one of the chiefe that did search her, and found at the last that which they sought for to their great amazement: at that time this Mistris Moulsho had a bucke of clothes to be washt out. The next morning the mayd, when shee came to hang them forth to dry, spyed the cloathes, but especially Mistris Moulshoes smocke, to be all bespotted with the pictures of toades, snakes, and other ougly creatures, which making her agast, she went presently and told her Mistris, who, looking on them, smild, saying nothing else but this; Heere are fine hobgoblins indeed: And beeing a gentlewoman of a stout courage, went immediately to the house of the sayd Helen Ienkinson, and with an angry countenance told her of this matter, threatning her that if her linnen were not shortly cleered from those foule spots, she would scratch out both her eyes: and so, not staying for any answere, went home, and found her linnen as white as it was at first." Confession of a crime which had not been committed it was found impossible to elicit, so Helen Jenkinson stood in the eyes of the multitude, like her fellow-prisoners, as an obdurate, impenitent sinner, persevering to the last in the statement that she was guiltless, and having no sorrow on the scaffold but that which accompanied the feare of death.

There is but one more to complete this dark catalogue, and of her deeds we have only the most meagre outline. The power of the annalist is consumed in venting strong epithets upon her. "Mary Barber, of Stanwicke," he says, "was one in whom the licentiousnesse of her passions grew to bee the master of her reason, and did so conquer in her strength and power of all vertue, that shee fell to the apostacy of goodnesse, and became diuerted, and abused vnto most vilde actions, cloathing her desperate soule in the most vgly habiliments that either malice, enuy, or cruelty could produce from the blindnesse of her degenerate and deuillish desires." And so he goes on at some length. The special crime with which she was charged was that of bewitching a man to death, though she had the further reputation, as was usual in such cases, of having done mischief to the cattle of her neighbours. She was evidently a wretched old outcast, "monstrous and hideous both in her life and actions." Her commitment is dated the 6th of this same month of May, the magistrate being Sir Thomas Tresham. It seems she showed no more penitence in prison than her fellows. "So," says the last sentence of our chronicle, "without any confession or contrition, like birds of a feather, they all held and hanged together for company, at Abington gallowes, hard by Northampton, the two and twentith day of July last past." Where this gallows stood we have not been able to discover. A century later the executions took place on the north side of the town, where they were continued until within the memory of persons now living. A few lines before this it is incidentally mentioned that the prisoner was conveyed "from the common gaole of Northampton to Northampton Castle, where the Assizes are vsually held." In compiling a report for the county magistrates relating to property purchased for a gaol and house of correction, which was presented in February last year, the Clerk of the Peace (H. P. Markham, Esq.) has been at great pains to ascertain the precise site of the common gaole" in the 17th century. At this early period, however, he does not find sufficient data for fixing it, though he finds house property acquired in 1634, which was subsequently converted into a gaol and house of correction, and which partly stood on the site of the present County Hall.

To return to our narrative. From the expression to which we have referred, and other indications, it is pretty certain that these five wretched persons were far from being the only ones who suffered here under the rigorous persecutions of the time. Whether his indignation was aroused by the sights he had witnessed in his own town, or his reason was offended by the trumpery stories accepted as sufficient ground for a sentence of hanging,