Page:A brief history of witchcraft - with especial reference to the witches of Northamptonshire (IA b3056721x).pdf/8

 Geneva, and a thousand in the district of Como a very few years afterwards. The accompanying cut, taken from some stall carvings at Corbeil, near Paris, gives the popular idea of a witch of the period. She has so far gained the mastery over the demon as to be sawing off his head.



In England the offence was little heard of at this period; and it was unfortunate for the priests, if they had been disposed to make a handle of it, that one of the first conspicuous cases—that of the Maid of Kent—terminated in the supposed bewitched person confessing herself a counterfeit, and being hanged with seven of her accomplices. An Act of Parliament, however,—the necessary encouragement to a series of prosecutions,—was passed in 1541, making the practice of witchcraft a felony, without benefit of elergy. It was repeated six years afterwards; but in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth, there was a new Act passed, limiting the punishment, for a first offence, to exposure in the pillory. This gave the necessary impetus to the zeal of the witch-finders; and accordingly we find, from this time forward, numerous records of executions in various parts of the country. Among them, no case created so much noise as that of the witches of Warboys. Warboys is a village standing in the lowlands of Huntingdonshire, on the road between the county town and Ramsay. One of its principal inhabitants, in 1589, was Robert Throgmorton, Esq., a man of substance, and an acquaintance of one of the ancestors of Oliver Cromwell. He had a family of five daughters, who at this time were mere children, the eldest being but fifteen. One day, towards the end of that year, one of these children was seized with fits, and in her convulsions she called out that a certain Mother Samwell, a labourer's wife who happened to be near her, looked a great deal like a witch. Shortly afterwards another and then another child were similarly affected, and before 1590 set in all five wore subject to these paroxysms, While their limbs were distorted and their minds on the stretch, the name of this Mother Samwell frequently escaped from their lips, they crying out that she had bewitched them. On St. Valentine's eve Mr. Throgmorton was visited by his brother-in-law, Gilbert Pickering, Esq., of Titchmarsh Grove, Northamptonshire, who had heard of the children's condition. Mother Samwell, it seems, had just then been sent for; but she did not come, as she feared that the practice of scratching, which was often used as a remedy for bewitchment, would be employed upon her. "But," says the old record, "both her parents and Mr. Pickering had taken advice of good divines of the unlawfulness of it. Wherefore Mr. Piekering went to Mother Samwell's house, both to see and to persuade her that, if she was any cause of her children's trouble, to amend it." He was unsuccessful in bis mission until he had threatened her, and then her daughter Agnes accompanied her to the house. At that moment three of the children were standing by the fire perfectly well; but no sooner had the two women entered than they fell down "strangely tormented, so that, if they had been let alone, they would have leaped and sprung about like a fish newly taken out of the water." Mr. Pickering took one of the children home with him, but there she