THE WITCHES OF RENFREWSIIIRE.*
THIS is a very curious and interesting book, not merely for the professed antiquarian, but for the student of law, of logic, or of psychology. It is a new edition, with an introduction and ex- tracts from the records of the Presbytery of Paisley, of a work published nearly seventy years ago, which was itself the reprint of a pamphlet published in the year 1698, entitled, "The True Narrative of the Sufferings and Relief of a Young Girl, who was strangely molested by Evil Spirits and their Instruments, in the West." This original narrative was prepared, "after narrow scrutiny made into the matters of fact," from the attested deposi- tions of actual witnesses, and was supplemented and illustrated even in the edition of 1809 by extracts from authentic docu- ments, contemporary letters, and other relevant materials. In the volume now published we have a complete representation of an inquest of witchcraft in Scotland in the seventeenth century, and the interest of the whole, to us, is in the evidence it offers of the incompetence of even a comparatively strict judicial investiga- gation to elicit truth, in the face of prevailing panic and supersti- tion. A few words, however, first of all, on the narrative itself, the first draught of which, we are assured, " had the witnesses in- serted at the end of every particular paragraph," and was attested by their subscription before the Royal Commissioners at Renfrew.
In the year 1696 the heroine of the story, Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, was a "smart, lively girl," of ten years of age. On the 17th August, in that year, she had in- curred the enmity of one of the maids of the house, Katherine Campbell by name, by reporting to her mother that she had stolen and drunk some milk. The maid three times solemnly cursed the child, but nothing came of it immediately. On Friday, the 22nd August, however, an old widow woman of the neighbourhood, Agnes Naesmith, came into the courtyard, and after asking after other members of the family, inquired particularly of Christian as to her age and health, and received from her the ordinary replies. The next evening the child went to bed in good health, but was no sooner asleep than she uttered loud cries for help, "and then suddenly got up and did fly over the top of a resting-bed where she was lying, her father, mother, and others being in the room, and to their great astonishment and admiration." The force of her fall having been broken by a woman who was standing by, she was laid in another bed, but remained stiff and insensible, as if she bad been dead, for the space of half an hour ; "and for forty-eight Lours thereafter she could not sleep, crying out of violent pains through her whole body ; she no sooner began to sleep and turn drowsy, but she seemed greatly affrighted, crying still, Help, help."
This first fit was succeeded by a variety of intermittent attacks. At one time, her body was so bent and rigid that she stood like a bow on her feet and neck at once ; at another, she would seem to fight with something that was invisible to spectators, and this with such force that four strong men were scarcely able to hold her. Presently she began to speak during the seizures, now cry- ing that Katherine Campbell, Agnes Naesmith, and others, whom as time went on she introduced into the matter, were cutting her side, pricking her with pins, and otherwise tormenting her ; now gravely remonstrating with her persecutors, in a style beyond her years, and convincing them from her Bible of the impotence of their master the Devil, and the certainty of their own damnation. At times, again, she would put out of her mouth strange and offensive matter, hair, straw, " coal-oinders about the bigness of chestnuts, some whereof were so hot that they could scarcely be handled," bones of various sorts and sizes, pins, small sticks of candle-fir, feathers, and other yet more nauseous stuff. She had besides frequent visions of the Devil in prodigious and horrid
• 4 History of the Witches of Revivers/4re. A New Edition, with an Introduction, embodying Extracts hitherto Unpublished, from the 'Words of the Presbytery of FPligeS. Paisley; Alex, Gardner. 1877.
shapes, threatening to devour her ; fits of dumbness, either unpro- voked or occasioned by the effort to express the terrors she had witnessed; fits of extravagant dancing and singing, widely at variance with her ordinarily modest deportment ; sudden flights up stairs and down stairs, "her feet not touching the ground, so far as any of the beholders could discern ;" and re- peated bites, pinches, and nips, "so that the clear marks of the nails of fingers, and steads of teeth, both upper and lower, with the spittle and slivar of a mouth thereupon were evidently seen by spectators." With regard to these fits, it is important to observe that the medical witness examined on the inquest deposed that were it not for the hay, straw, which he had himself seen her put out of her mouth without being wet, he should not himself have despaired to reduce the other symptoms to their proper classes in the catalogue of human diseases.
Testimony, however, of a more miraculous character was not wanting. On one occasion, the girl having previously declared that she was being tormented by a man in a red jacket, suddenly stretched out her hand as if to seize him. The sound of a rent was heard, and the girl produced in her hand two fragments of red cloth, there being no cloth of that kind or colour in the room before. More than once she advertised her friends where certain charms were to be found, and articles admitting of being regarded as charms were found in the places indicated. Her recoveries and attacks were now and again coincident in time with the arrest or liberation respectively of one or other of the suspected persons. Finally, she had at times the power of foretelling the occasion and number of her fits.
Meanwhile, the powers of Church and State were invoked for her deliverance. Days of public fasting and humiliation were appointed ; private abstinence, prayer-meetings, and sermons were directed by the Presbytery, and special ministers were deputed to assist in the spiritual exercises of the family of Bargarran. As might, perhaps, be expected, the attempt to bring the sufferer directly under the religious influence only occasioned the more violent recurrence of her disorder, and had to be discontinued. Foiled in their spiritual warfare with the powers of evil, the good ministers had recourse to the Civil arm. A memorial from the Presbytery, supported by considerable local influence, obtained from the Privy Council the issuing of a Com- mission. On its report, a second warrant was issued for a judicial inquest, and after twenty hours spent in the examination of witnesses, after counsel had been heard upon both sides, and after six more hours of deliberation• by the jury, seven miserable victims of their own and their neighbours' credulity were found guilty and condemned to the flames. On the 9th of June, 1697, the Presbytery of Paisley appointed the whole members to spend some time that night with the condemned per- sons who were to die on the morrow, and allotted to each one or two of the brethren one of the sentenced persons, to be dealt with by them and waited upon to the fire. Meanwhile, the powers of evil, disconcerted by measures so vigorous, bad long ago discontinued the struggle. On March 28, shortly after the report of the first Commission, the damsel, through God's great mercy towards her, was perfectly recovered ; but her alleged persecutors were executed, nevertheless.
The address of the counsel for the prosecution to the jury contains the key to this wretched tragedy. After reminding them of their duties in the ordinary way, he devotes himself to the questions,—(1) whether or not there had been witchcraft in the mainlines libelled ; and,—(2) whether or not those accused were the witches. On that which settles the matter for us, viz., whether or not there is such a thing as witchcraft at all, he says not a word. It was not necessary for him to do so. The Scriptures, the statutes of the realm, doctors of law, ministers of religion, the voice of authority, and the voice of the people had answered the question in the affirmative. In the seventeenth century there was probably not a single person in Scotland, and very few, if any, in England, but were penetrated with a belief in witch- craft. These islands contracted the plague at a later date than Continental nations, but it raged here, nevertheless, to the shame of civilisation and of Protestantism, with scarcely less fury than it had done in Catholic countries and in less enlightened times. Under the Long Parliament, it is com- puted that three thousand persons fell victims to it in England alone ; and it can never be forgotten that the just and good Sir Matthew Hale condemned two persons to death for witchcraft, while the opinion of Sir Thomas Brown, the exposer of vulgar. errors, went far in obtaining the verdict.
When judge and jury, witnesses and spectators, and not less the accused themselves, were thus persuaded of the existence of witch-
craft, it is astonishing how much of the difficulty of procuring a conviction was overcome. Credulity with regard to the central fact was attended by an almost equal credulity as to the symptoms of its presence. An ill-favoured person, a misshapen limb, a fixed or distorted eye, an irritable temper, fondness for solitude or for animal companionship, anything, in fact, uncanny or un- usual, raised a presumption, which the reputation of the neigh- bourhood soon converted into a certainty, that the possessor of it had entered into a compact with Satan. Many poor creatures, no doubt, neglected, if not actively persecuted by their fellow- men, sought, half through their own superstition, and half in revenge, to reap profit from a belief which had already visited them with its direst evils, and practised rites which gave further support to the suspicion they had incurred. If in addition, the iudicia of Satanic possession, the so-called "insensible marks," inability to shed tears, an imperfect memory of the Lord's Prayer, and the like, were found in them, the great point of the prosecution was already gained. There was the mischief done, and the person capable of doing the mischief ; all that remained was to bring them into con- nection. But in one who already had the whole neighbourhood in arms against him, it was not difficult to establish the utterance of an angry word against the sufferer, or what was almost as satis- factory, a reason why an angry word should have been uttered. So again, when one was convinced that he was bewitched, whom should he more readily accuse than the wretch already infamous for witchcraft? Once accused, there were but two possible alterna- tives open to the suspected person. He might confess, and that either at once, or after being "dealt with" by the exhortations and throats of the minister and the thumbscrews of the civil power ; or he might meet the charge, with the almost absolute certainty of being ultimately condemned. There was, indeed, the yet more terrible alternative that he might be acquitted, but the terrors of his judges or his own timely admissions usually saved him from a life-long persecution more awful than any religious dealings or judicial torture, it was the apprehension of this per- secution that induced so many confessions, to the glory of God and the advantage of witchfinders, while the pressure put upon the confeesants to seal their repentance by informing against their alleged confederates contributed to diminish the amount of ex- traneous evidence required. Hence the often-repeated spectacle, such 4f3 we have in the story of Christian Shaw, of a condemna- tion, with the assent of the Court, the witnesses, and the public, and the acquiescence of the condemned themselves, where, unless spite and malevolence are to be counted as crimes, there had been absolutely no crime at all.
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