The Penguin Book of Witches (13 page)

Since that time she hath continued for the most part speechless, her fits coming upon her sometimes often, sometimes with greater intermission and with great varieties in the manner of them, sometimes by violence, sometimes by making her sick, but (through God’s goodness) so abated in violence that now one person can as well rule her, as formerly 4 or 5. She is observed always to fall into her fits when any strangers go to visit her, and the more go, the more violent are her fits. As to the frame of her spirits, he hath bin more averse lately to good counsel than heretofore, that sometimes she signifies a desire of the company of ministers.

On Thursday last in the evening, she came a season to her speech, and (as I received from them with her) again disowned a covenant with the Devil, disowned that relation about the knife fore mentioned, declared the occasion of her fits to be discontent, owned the temptations to murder, declared that though the Devil had power of her body, she hoped he should not of her soul, that she had rather continue so speechless than have her speech, and make no better use of it than formerly she had, expressed that she was sometimes disposed to do mischief, and was as if some had laid hold of her to enforce her to it and had double strength to her own, that she knew not whither the Devil were in her or no. If he were, she knew not when or how he entered, that when she was taken speechless, she fared as if a string was tied about the roots of her tongue and reached down into her vitals and pulled her tongue down, and then most when she strove to speak.

On Friday in the evening she was taken with a passion of weeping and sighing, which held her till late in the night. At length she sent for me, but then unreasonableness of the weather and my own bodily indisposedness prevented. I went the next morning, when she strove to speak something but could not, but was taken with her fits, which held her as long as I tarried, which was more than an hour, and I left her in them. And thus she continues speechless to this instant, January 15, and followed with fits, concerning which state of hers I shall suspend my own judgment and willingly leave it to the censure of those that are more learned, aged, and judicious. Only I shall leave my thoughts in respect of 2 or 3 questions which have risen about her, namely,

1. Whether her distemper be real or counterfeit: I shall say no more to that but this, the great strength appearing in them and great weakness after them will disclaim the contrary opinion. For though a person may counterfeit much, that such a strength is beyond the force of dissimulation.
15

2. Whither her distemper be natural or diabolical, I suppose the premises will strongly enough conclude the latter, that I will add these 2 further arguments:
16

1. The actings of convulsion, which these come nearest to, are (as persons acquainted with them observe) in many, that the most essential parts of them quite contrary to these actings.

2. She hath no ways wasted in body or strength by all these fits, though so dreadful, but gathered flesh exceedingly,
17
and hath her natural strength when her fits are off, for the most part.

3. Whether the Devil did really speak in her: to that point which some have much doubted of, this much I will say to countermand this apprehension.

1. The manner of expression I diligently observed and could not perceive any organ, any instrument of speech (which the philosopher makes mention of) to have any motion at all, that her mouth was sometimes shut without opening, sometimes open without shutting or moving, and then both I and others saw her tongue (as it used to be when she was in some fits, when speechless) turned up circularly to the roof of her mouth.

2. The labial letters, diverse of which were used by her, namely, B. M. P., which cannot be naturally expressed without motion of the lips, which must needs come within our ken, if observed, were uttered without any such motion, she had used only linguals, gutturals, et cetera, the matter might have been more suspicious.

3. The reviling terms then used were such as she never used before nor since, in all this time of her being thus taken. She hath bin always observed to speak respectively concerning me.

4. They were expressions which the Devil (by her confession) aspersed me and others withal, in the hour of temptation. Particularly she had freely acknowledged that the Devil was wont to appear to her in the house of God and divert her mind and charge her she should not give ear to what the black coated rogue spake.

5. We observed when the voice spake, her throat was swelled formidably as big at least as one’s fist. These arguments I shall leave to the censure of the judicious.

4. Whether she have covenanted with the Devil or no: I think this is a case unanswerable. Her declarations have been so contradictory one to another that we know not what to make of them and her condition is such as administers many doubts. Charity would hope the best. Love would also fear the worst, but this much is clear, she is an object of pity, and I desire that all that hear of her would compassionate her forlorn state. She is (I question not) a subject of hope, and therefore all means ought to be used for her recovery. She is a monument of divine severity and the Lord grant that all that see or hear may fear and tremble. Amen.
18

s. w.

One of the rare Chesapeake witches, Fowler was accused of being led by the Devil to injure a man named Francis Sandsbury using witchcraft and sorcery. She was hanged. Usually Chesapeake witchcraft cases were milder than their New England equivalents, often limited to bad-mouthing and rumor. Accused witches in the South were fewer in number and were usually acquitted. Fowler is thought to be the only witch executed in the Maryland colony, though a man named John Cowman was accused of witchcraft, condemned, and then begged a stay of execution.
1

Court Records of Rebecca Fowler
2

At a meeting of the provincial court on the 29th day of September, 1685, Rebecca Fowler was indicted by a grand jury.

For that she, the said Rebecca Fowler, the last day of August in the year of our Lord, 1685, and at diverse other days and times, as well before and after, having not the fear of God before her eyes, but being led by the instigation of the Devil certain evil and diabolical arts, called witchcrafts, enchantments, charms, and sorceries, then wickedly, devilishly, and feloniously, at Mount Calvert Hundred
3
and several other places in Calvert County of her malice forethought feloniously did use, practice, and exercise, in, upon, and against one Francis Sandsbury, late of Calvert County aforesaid, laborer, and several other persons of the said county, whereby the said Francis Sandsbury and several others, as aforesaid, the last day of August, in the year aforesaid and several other days and times as well before as after, at Mount Calvert hundred and several other places in the said county, in his and their bodies were very much the worse, consumed, pined, and lamed again the peace, et cetera, and against the form of the statute in this case made and provided.

To this indictment Rebecca pleaded not guilty. She was tried before a jury who rendered the following verdict:

We find that Rebecca Fowler is guilty of the matters of fact charged in the indictment against her and if the court finds the matters contained in the indictment make her guilty of witchcraft, charms, and sorceries, et cetera, then they find her guilty. And if the court finds those matters contained in the indictment do not make her guilty of witchcraft, charms, sorceries, et cetera, then they find her not guilty.

In view of this finding of the jury, judgment was “respited” until the court had time to further consider the case. After the court reconvened a few days later, Rebecca was again brought to the bar and the judges having “advised themselves of and upon the premises, it is considered by the court that the said Rebecca Fowler be hanged by the neck until she be dead, which was performed the ninth day of October aforesaid.”

Cotton Mather, theologian son of Increase Mather, presided over the possession of John Goodwin’s children, ultimately resulting in the execution of an Irish laundress named Glover for having bewitched them. The experience led Cotton Mather to write
Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions
(1689), which in some respects formed a follow-up to his father’s previous work, while also making him disposed to view the behavior of the afflicted girls in the Salem panic definitely the result of witchcraft. The Goodwin case resembles the Knapp possession, though in this case a responsible witch was identified and convicted. Goodwife Glover raises the intriguing question of witches and ethnicity, for at her trial she was reported to speak only in Gaelic.
1
While for the most part accused witches in North America were of English background and Puritan religion, Glover’s case, taken together with witches from other backgrounds and regions, suggests that witchcraft, as a cultural belief, was not limited to the Puritan realm.

The Case of the Goodwin Children
2

Section 1. There dwells at this time, in the south part of Boston, a sober and pious man, whose name is John Goodwin, whose trade is that of a mason and whose wife (to which a good report gives a share with him in all the characters of virtue) has made him the father of six (now living) children. Of these children, all but the eldest, who works with his father at his calling, and the youngest, who lives yet upon the breast of its mother, have labored under the direful effects of a (no less palpable than) stupendous witchcraft. Indeed, that exempted son had also, as was thought, some lighter touches of it in unaccountable stabs and pains now and then upon him, as indeed every person in the family at some time or other had, except the godly father and the sucking infant, who never felt any impressions of it. But these four children mentioned were handled in so sad and strange a manner, as has given matter of discourse and wonder to all the country, and of history not unworthy to be considered by more than all the serious or the curious readers in this New English world.

Section 2. The four children (whereof the eldest was about thirteen and the youngest was perhaps about a third part so many years of age) had enjoyed a religious education and answered it with a very cowardly ingenuity. They had an observable affection unto divine and sacred things and those of them that were capable of it seemed to have such a resentment of their eternal concernments as is not altogether usual. Their parents also kept them to a continual employment, which did more than deliver them from the temptations of idleness, and as young as they were, they took a delight in it, maybe as much as they should have done. In a word, such was the whole temper and carriage of the children that there cannot easily be anything more unreasonable than to imagine that a design to dissemble could cause them to fall into any of their odd fits, though there should not have happened, as there did, a thousand things, wherein it was perfectly impossible for any dissimulation of theirs to produce what scores of spectators were amazed at.

Section 3. About midsummer in the year 1688, the eldest of these children, who is a daughter, saw cause to examine their washerwoman upon their missing of some linen, which ’twas feared she had stolen from them, and of what use this linen might be to serve the witchcraft intended, the thief’s tempter knows! This laundress was the daughter of an ignorant and a scandalous old woman in the neighborhood, whose miserable husband before he died had sometimes complained of her that she was undoubtedly a witch,
3
and that whenever his head was laid, she would quickly arrive unto the punishments due to such a one. This woman in her daughter’s defense bestowed very bad language upon the girl that put her to the question, immediately upon which the poor child became variously indisposed in her health, and visited with strange fits beyond those that attend an epilepsy or a catalepsy
4
or those that they call the diseases of astonishment.
5

Section 4. It was not long before one of her sisters and two of her brothers were seized, in order one after another with effects like those that molested her. Within a few weeks, they were all four tortured everywhere in a manner very grievous, that it would have broken a heart of stone to have seen their agonies. Skillful physicians were consulted for their help, and particularly our worthy and prudent friend Dr. Thomas Oakes, who found himself so affronted by the distempers of the children that he concluded nothing but a hellish witchcraft could be the original of these maladies. And that which yet more confirmed such apprehension was that for one good while, the children were tormented just in the same part of their bodies all at the same time together, and though they saw and heard not one another’s complaints, though likewise their pains and sprains were swift like lightning, yet when (suppose) the neck or the hand or the back of one was racked, so it was at that instant with the other two.

Section 5. The variety of their tortures increased continually, and though about nine or ten at night they always had a release from their miseries and ate and slept all night for the most part indifferently well, yet in the daytime they were handled with so many sorts of ails that it would require of us almost as much time to relate them all as it did of them to endure them. Sometimes they would be deaf, sometimes dumb, and sometimes blind, and often all this at once. One while their tongues would be drawn down their throats; another while they would be pulled out upon their chins to a prodigious length. They would have their mouths opened unto such a wideness that their jaws went out of joint, and anon they would clap together again with a force like that of a strong spring lock. The same would happen to their shoulder blades and their elbows and hand wrists and several of their joints. They would at times lie in a benumbed condition and be drawn together as those that are tied neck and heels, and presently be stretched out, yea, drawn backward, to such a degree that it was feared the very skin of their bellies would have cracked. They would make most piteous outcries that they were cut with knives and struck with blows that they could not bear. Their necks would be broken, so that their neck bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it, and yet on the sudden, it would become again so stiff that there was no stirring of their heads. Yea, their heads would be twisted almost round, and if main force at any time obstructed a dangerous motion which they seemed to be upon, they would roar exceedingly. Thus they lay some weeks most pitiful spectacles, and this while as a further demonstration of witchcraft in these horrid effects, when I went to prayer by one of them that was very desirous to hear what I said, the child utterly lost her hearing till our prayer was over.

Section 6. It was a religious family that these afflictions happened unto, and none but a religious contrivance to obtain relief would have been welcome to them. Many superstitious proposals were made unto them by persons that were I know not who nor what, with arguments fetched from I know not how much necessity and experience. But the distressed parents rejected all such counsels with a gracious resolution to oppose devils with no other weapons but prayers and tears unto him that has the chaining of them, and to try first whether graces were not the best things to encounter witchcrafts with. Accordingly, they requested the four ministers of Boston, with the minister of Charlestown, to keep a day of prayer at their thus haunted house, which they did in the company of some devout people there. Immediately upon this day, the youngest of the four children was delivered and never felt any trouble as afore. But there was yet a greater effect of these our applications unto our God!

Section 7. The report of the calamities of the family for which we were thus concerned arrived now unto the ears of the magistrates, who presently and prudently applied themselves, with a just vigor, to enquire into the story. The father of the children complained of his neighbor, the suspected ill woman whose name was Glover, and she, being sent for by the justices, gave such a wretched account of herself, that they saw cause to commit her unto the jailer’s custody. Goodwin had no proof that could have done her any hurt, but the hag had not power to deny her interest in the enchantment of the children. And when she was asked whether she believed there was a God, her answer was too blasphemous and horrible for any pen of mine to mention. An experiment was made whether she could recite the Lord’s Prayer, and it was found that though clause after clause was most carefully repeated unto her, yet when she said it after them that prompted her,
6
she could not possibly avoid making nonsense of it, with some ridiculous depravations. This experiment I had the curiosity since to see made upon two more, and it had the same event. Upon commitment of this extraordinary woman, all the children had some present ease, until one (related unto her) accidentally meeting one or two of them, entertained them with her blessing, that is, railing, upon which three of them fell ill again, as they were before.

Section 8. It was not long before the witch thus in the trap was brought upon her trial, at which, through the efficacy of a charm, I suppose, used upon her by one or some of her cruel, the court could receive answers from her in one but the Irish, which was her native language, although she understood the English very well, and had accustomed her whole family to none but that language in her former conversation, and therefore the communication between the bench and the bar was now chiefly conveyed by two honest and faithful men that were interpreters. It was long before she could with any direct answers plead unto her indictment. And when she did plead, it was with confession rather than denial of her guilt. Order was given to search the old woman’s house, from whence there were brought into the court several small images or puppets or babies made of rags and stuffed with goat’s hair and other such ingredients. When these were produced, the vile woman acknowledged that her way to torment the objects of her malice was by wetting of her finger with her spittle and streaking of those little images. The abused children were then present, and the woman still kept stooping and shrinking as one that was almost pressed to death with a mighty weight upon her. But one of the images being brought unto her, immediately she started up after an odd manner and took it into her hand. But she had no sooner taken it than one of the children fell into sad fits, before the whole assembly. This the judges had their just apprehensions at and carefully causing the repetition of the experiment found again the same event of it. They asked her whether she had any to stand by her. She replied she had, and looking very pertly in the air, she added, “No, he’s gone.” And she then confessed that she had one who was her prince, with whom she maintained I know not what communion. For which cause, the night after, she was heard expostulating with a devil for his thus deserting her, telling him that because he had served her so basely and falsely, she had confessed all. However, to make all clear, the court appointed five or six physicians one evening to examine her very strictly, whether she were not crazed in her intellectuals and had not procured to herself by folly and madness the reputation of a witch.
7
Diverse hours did they spend with her, and in all that while no discourse came from her but what was pertinent and agreeable, particularly, when they asked her what she thought would become of her soul, she replied, “You ask me a very solemn question, and I cannot well tell what to say to it.” She owned herself a Roman Catholic and could recite her Pater Noster in Latin very readily,
8
but there was one clause or two always too hard for her, whereof she said she could not repeat it if she might have all the world. In the up-shot, the doctors returned her compos mentis, and sentence of death was passed upon her.

Section 9. Diverse days were passed between her being arraigned and condemned. In this time one of her neighbors had been giving in her testimony of what another of her neighbors had upon her death related concerning her. It seems one Howen about six years before, had been cruel bewitched to death, but before she died, she called one Hughes unto her, telling her that she laid her death to the charge of Glover, that she had seen Glover sometimes come down her chimney, that she should remember this, for within this six years she might have occasion to declare it. This Hughes now preparing her testimony, immediately one of her children, a fine boy, well grown toward youth, was taken ill, just in the same woeful and surprising manner that Goodwin’s children were. One night particularly, the boy said he saw a black thing with a blue cap in the room, tormenting of him, and he complained most bitterly of a hand put into the bed to pull out his bowels. The next day the mother of the boy went unto Glover in the prison and asked her why she tortured her poor lad at such a wicked rate. This witch replied that she did it because of wrong done to herself and her daughter. Hughes denied (as well she might) that she had done her any wrong. “Well then,” said Glover, “Let me see your child and he shall be well again.” Glover went on and told her of her own accord, “I was at your house last night.” Says Hughes, “In what shape?” Says Glover, “As a black thing with a blue cap.” Says Hughes, “What did you do there?” Says Glover, “With my hand in the bed I tried to pull out the boy’s bowels but I could not.” They parted, but the next day Hughes, appearing at court, had her boy with her, and Glover, passing by the boy, expressed her good wishes for him, though I suppose his parent had no design of any mighty respect unto the hag, by having him with her there. But the boy had no more indispositions after the condemnation of the woman.

Section 10. While the miserable old woman was under condemnation, I did myself twice give a visit unto her. She never denied the guilt of the witchcraft charged upon her but she confessed very little about the circumstances of her confederacies with the devils, only, she said, that she used to be at meetings, which her prince and four more were present at. As for those four, she told who they were, and for her prince, her account plainly was that he was the Devil. She entertained me with nothing but Irish, which language I had not learning enough to understand without an interpreter.
9
Only one time, when I was representing unto her that and how her prince had cheated her, as herself would quickly find, she replied, I think in English, and with passion too, “If it be so, I am sorry for that!” I offered many questions unto her, unto which, after long silence, she told me she would fain give me a full answer, but they would not give her leave. It was demanded, “They! Who is that they?” And she returned that they were her spirits, or her saints (for they say the same word in Irish signifies both). And at another time, she included her two mistresses, as she called them in that they, but when it was enquired who those two were, she fell into a rage, and would be no more urged. I set before her the necessity and equity of her breaking her covenant with hell and giving herself to the Lord Jesus Christ by an everlasting covenant. To which her answer was that I spoke a very reasonable thing, but she could not do it. I asked her whether she would consent or desire to be prayed for. To that she said if prayer would do her any good, she could pray for herself. And when it was again propounded, she said she could not unless her spirits (or angels) would give her leave.
10
However, against her will I prayed with her, which if it were a fault it was in excess of pity. When I had done, she thanked me with many good words; but I was no sooner out of her sight than she took a stone, a long and slender stone, and with her finger and spittle fell to tormenting it, though whom or what she meant, I had the mercy never to understand.