The Penguin Book of Witches (2 page)

Archives

Cornell University Witchcraft Collection, Division of Rare Books, Kroch Library, Ithaca, NY

Essex County Court Archives Collection

Essex Institute Archive

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Massachusetts Archives Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA

Massachusetts Judicial Archives Collection

Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, MA

New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

University of Virginia Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project

Books and Articles

Adler, Margot.
Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America.
New York: Penguin Books, 1979.

Anglo, Sydney, ed.
The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft
. London and Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1977.

Baker, Emerson W.
The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Behringer, Wolfgang.
Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History.
Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004.

Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen Nissenbaum.
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Breslaw, Elaine G.
Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies.
New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Clark, Stuart.
Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe.
Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Cross, Tom Peete.
Witchcraft in North Carolina.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1919.

Davies, Owen.
Popular Magic: Cunning-Folk in English History
. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.

Demos, John Putnam.
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Gibson, Marion.
Witchcraft Myths in American Culture
. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Godbeer, Richard.
The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Goss, K. David.
Daily Life During the Salem Witch Trials
. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012.

Hall, David D.
Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England.
New York: Knopf, 1989.

Hansen, Chadwick.
Witchcraft at Salem.
New York: G. Braziller, 1969.

Hutton, Ronald.
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft.
Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Karlsen, Carol F.
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England.
New York: Norton, 1987.

Levack, Brian P.
The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe
. 3rd ed. Harlow, England, New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.

Macfarlane, Alan.
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study.
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1991.

Matossian, Mary K. “Ergot and the Salem Witchcraft Affair.”
American Scientist
70 (1970): 355–57.

Mixon Jr., Franklin G. “Weather and the Salem Witch Trials.”
The Journal of Economic Perspectives
19, no. 1 (2005): 241–42.

Norton, Mary Beth.
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Parke, Francis Neal.
Witchcraft in Maryland
. Baltimore: 1937.

Purkiss, Diane.
The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations.
New York: Routledge, 1996.

Ray, Benjamin. “The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations in 1692 Salem Village.”
The William and Mary Quarterly
65, no. 3 (2008): 449–78.

Roach, Marilynne K.
The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege.
New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.

Rosenthal, Bernard.
Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Rosenthal, Bernard, Gretchen A. Adams, et al., eds.
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Thomas, Keith.
Religion and the Decline of Magic.
New York: Scribner, 1971.

Trask, Richard B.
The Devil Hath Been Raised: A Documentary History of the Salem Village Witchcraft Outbreak of March 1692: Together with a Collection of Newly Located and Gathered Witchcraft Documents.
Danvers, MA: Yeoman Press, 1997.

Weisman, Richard.
Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.

Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been modernized for ease of comprehension. In some instances, line breaks and italics have been added for clarity of the speakers and events described in a trial transcript.

Redactions in running text are indicated by an ellipsis.

Confusing vocabulary or usage is clarified in the endnotes.

Occasional problems in transcription of the original document, such as losses or illegible words, are indicated in brackets.

My deepest thanks to my patient and excellent editor, John Siciliano at Penguin Classics, for his thoroughgoing vision and support, to his editorial assistant Douglas Clark, and to my agent, Suzanne Gluck at William Morris Endeavor, for her unflagging friendship and brilliance. Thank you also to the friends and colleagues who have believed in my work on this project, with particular gratitude to David Hall, Patricia Hills, Bruce Holsinger, Virginia Myhaver, Mary Beth Norton, Brian Pellinen, Benjamin Ray, and Bruce Schulman. Rebecca Goetz did yeoman’s labor reading drafts and providing commentary, and I am so grateful to her for her guidance and support. My particular gratitude also to Katerina Stanton for making order out of chaos, and to the librarians and archivists at Houghton Library, Cornell Special Collections, the Huntington Library, and the Massachusetts State Archives for their work preserving the heritage of witchcraft in North America for generations of scholars to come. The online Salem archive maintained by the University of Virginia is a boon to scholars of Salem that is hard to overstate, and I am grateful to UVA for maintaining that initiative.

Thank you to all the book clubs and individual readers I have encountered over the years whose hunger for history inspires me every day, and to my students at Boston University and Cornell for keeping me passionate about the life of the mind.

Finally, my most ardent thanks to Louis Hyman, whose love, support, guidance, counsel, research assistance, and psychoanalysis made the completion of this project a reality.

When thinking about witches today, a certain standard image comes to mind: she is an old crone with a warty nose, a black pointed hat, raggedy clothes, and a black cat by her side. Though our contemporary picture of the witch has evolved away from the Puritan conception, the American colonists too had a set of assumptions about who a witch was likely to be, and how she—for it was almost always a “she”—was able to conduct her devilish doings. But where did these assumptions come from? How did the colonists define what a witch was?

We might assume that the early modern conception of a witch derived from a description in the King James Bible. This version of the Bible, which was begun in 1604 in response to Puritan criticisms of earlier English translations, became the most widely read translation of the Bible in English during the early modern period. Printing was expensive, but then, as now, the most commonly available printed object was a Bible.

And yet the Bible is strangely quiet about witchcraft. It confirms that witches exist, but most of the telltale details—the identifying characteristics that set a witch apart from a run-of-the-mill person, and the powers that a witch is supposed to have—do not appear.

In fact, witches, as a category of their own, rather than as wizards or sorcerers, are mentioned fewer than a dozen times in the King James Bible. The first appearance comes early, in Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” This command forms the justification for capital punishment of witches, but it appears without any illumination or commentary, wedged between a guideline about dowry payment and a prohibition against bestiality. Witches are declared not allowed, and yet all of Exodus 22 remains silent on the definition of what or who a witch is, or on what activities might constitute witchcraft. Even a witch’s gender is, at least according to this translation, undefined.

A bit more detail emerges with the next mention, in Deuteronomy 18:10–12:

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

This passage appears as part of the advice to the tribe of Levi, so that their priests will not pick up any of the unsanctioned religious practices that they will encounter in the lands to which God will send them. Deuteronomy places witches in a context with other deviant forms of religion: “necromancers” who attempt to practice magic, astrologers, and diviners who claim to see the future.

The principal dangers of witchcraft in this context are twofold: first, witchcraft as a practice stands outside of sanctioned religious structure. Witchcraft is that which we, the chosen tribe of God, ought not to do. Defining witchcraft as a negative quality (that which we do not do) rather than by a set of affirmative qualities (divining, say, which is a concrete activity), Deuteronomy opens the possibility of a language to describe witchcraft that can be molded to suit any number of witch-hunters working within different contexts, and toward different goals. In this passage the signal quality of witchcraft is
difference
, specifically difference from those who hold religious power.

Deuteronomy does supply a few details about witchlike behavior that would be important in early modern accusations against suspected witches, in particular the mention of “familiar spirits.” This obscure signifier will eventually morph into the Hollywood witch’s black cat, but the idea of familiar spirits will come to play a substantial role in the thinking about, and prosecution of, early modern witchcraft in Europe and North America.

The proscription against witchcraft in Deuteronomy reappears in the story of Manasseh, in 2 Chronicles 33:6:

And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.
1

Manasseh makes himself worse than the heathens, for in theory he ought to know better than to question the practices that God has set forth for him. Fortunately Manasseh, in the course of his affliction, humbled himself before God and saw the error of his ways. Witchcraft in this context appears as more a question of adherence or rejection of orthodoxy, rather than as a specific set of deviant practices. The degree of God’s disapproval becomes clarified, including what is truly at risk for a person practicing witchcraft, and yet we still have only the vaguest sense of what a “witch” really is.

If the Bible could not provide clarity on how to identify a witch, and how to deal with her once identified, academic theologians appointed themselves equal to the task. By the early modern period in England, the religious and intellectual landscape that would predominate in initial waves of North American settlement, there was no shortage of theologians willing to do just that.

The first witchcraft act in England was passed in 1542, and the last antiwitchcraft statute was not officially repealed until 1736. During that two-hundred-year span, witch trials in England occurred sporadically and tended to be clustered in Essex County, England, much as their North American counterparts would be clustered in Essex County, Massachusetts, a century later. English witch-hunting reached its peak in the 1580s, when witch cases made up 13 percent of all criminal hearings, an impressive number, even considering the high rates of acquittal.
1

One of the most notable early modern English witch trials occurred in February and March of 1582, when Justice of the Peace Brian Darcy of St. Osyth, Essex, charged one Ursula Kemp with witchcraft. Darcy pursued Kemp under the antiwitchcraft statute of 1563, holding hearings to determine if there was sufficient evidence to present the case to the Chelmsford assizes. The trial of Ursula Kemp demonstrates a remarkable consistency with later North American witch cases, both in terms of the character of the suspected witch, and the context of her trial.
2

The author of the ensuing text, given as “W.W.,” has not been conclusively identified. It could be a pseudonym for Darcy himself. Much of the evidence appears recorded in the first person, including statements that had been delivered with no one but Darcy present to hear them. The tract depicts Darcy as a committed witch-hunter, but also shows a small community under pressure, with long-standing grudges and quarrels unearthed for fresh consideration, a pattern that will be echoed in North America.
3

St. Osyth, like many early modern English villages, was a poor society whose members depended on barter and trade, a sometimes fraught social relationship that often resulted in squabbling. The amount of begging represented in the Kemp trial indicates how widespread poverty was at the time, and how begging could instill resentment in neighbors.

Another contributing factor to suspicions of witchcraft in the early modern period was the inexplicable sudden onset of ailments in both persons and cattle.
4
Sickness from unhygienic conditions made for a high infant mortality rate, but those deaths were easier to bear if they could be blamed on someone else. Harder to understand than the desire to assign blame is Ursula’s confession, however—was she insane? Did she enjoy the attention, however negative? Or did she really think she had witchly powers?
5

Ursula Kemp’s witch trial establishes a pattern for witch trials to come. Her marginal status within the community, her alleged crimes, the use of children as witnesses, her familiar spirit, the promise of lenience in exchange for confession, and the search of her body for a so-called witch’s teat all reappear in North American witch trials a century later.

At the St. Osyth trial, one woman, Joan Pechey, was acquitted, but Ursula Kemp was executed after trial at the Chelmsford Lent Assizes.
6
The injustice of this particular case likely inspired Reginald Scot’s
The Discoverie of Witchcraft
of 1584, which is the most explicit skeptical account of witchcraft in England and which in many cases attacks Darcy by name.
7

THE TRIAL OF URSULA KEMP
8

[The Information of Grace Thurlowe]

The 19th Day of February the 24th year of the reign of our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth. The information of Grace Thurlowe, the wife of John Thurlowe, taken before me, Brian Darcy, the day and year above said, against Ursula Kemp, alias Grey, as followeth.

[ . . . ]

The said Grace saith also that about three quarters of a year ago she was delivered of a woman child, and saith that shortly after the birth thereof, the said Ursula fell out with her, for that she would not suffer her to have the nursing of that child; at such times as she the said Grace continued in work at the Lord Darcy’s place. And saith that she, the said Grace nursing the said child, within some short time after that falling out, the child lying in the cradle, and not above a quarter old, fell out of the said cradle, and broke her neck, and died. The which the said Ursula hearing to have happened, made answer it maketh no matter. For she might have suffered me to have the keeping and nursing of it.
9

And the said Grace saith that when she lay in,
10
the said Ursula came unto her, and seemed to be very angry for that she had not the keeping in of the said Grace, and for that she answered unto her that she was provided. And thereupon they entered further into talk, the said Grace saying that if she should continue lame as she had done before, she would find the means to know how it came, and that she would creep upon her knees to complain of them to have justice done upon them. And to that she the said Ursula said, “It were a good turn.” Take heed (said Grace) Ursula, thou hast a naughty name. And to that Ursula made answer, though she could unwitch she could not witch,
11
and so promised the said Grace that if she did send for her privately,
12
and send her keeper away, that then she would show the said Grace how she should unwitch herself or any other at any time.

And the said Grace further saith that about half a year past she began to have a lameness in her bones, and specially in her legs, at which time the said Ursula came unto her unsent for and without request and said she would help her of her lameness if she the said Grace would give her twelve pence, [then] which the said Grace speaking her fair, promised her so to do, and thereupon for the space of five weeks after, she was well and in good case as she was before. And then the said Ursula came unto the said Grace, and asked her the money she promised to her. Whereupon the said Grace made answer that she was a poor and a needy woman, and had no money. And then the said Ursula requested of her cheese for it but she said she had none. And she the said Ursula, seeing nothing to be had of the said Grace, fell out with her and said that she would be even with her and thereupon she was taken lame, and from that day to this day hath so continued.

And she saith that when she is anything well or beginneth to amend, then her child is tormented, and so continueth for a time in a very strange case, and when he beginneth to amend then she the said Grace becommeth so lame, as without help she is not able to arise or to turn her in her bed.

[The Information of Annis Letherdall]

The information of Annis Letherdall, wife of Richard Letherdall, taken by me, Brian Darcy, Esquire, against Ursula Kemp, alias Grey, the 19th day of February.

The said Annis saith that before Michaelmas
13
last, she the said Ursula sent her son to the said Letherdall’s house to have scouring sand and sent word by the said boy that his mother would give her the dyeing of a pair of women’s hose for the sand.
14
But the said Annis knowing her to be a naughty
15
beast sent her none. And after she the said Ursula, seeing her girl
16
to carry some to one of her neighbors’ houses, murmured as the said child said, and presently after her child was taken as it lay very big with a great swelling in the bottom of the belly and other private parts. And the said Annis saith that about the tenth day of February last she went unto the said Ursula, and told her that she had been forth with a cunning body, which said, that she the said Ursula had bewitched her child.
17
To that the said Ursula answered that she knew she had not so been, and so talking further she said that she would lay her life that she the said Annis had not been with any, whereupon she requested a woman being in the house a-spinning with the said Ursula to bear witness what she had said. And the next day the child was in most piteous case to behold, whereby she thought it good to carry the same unto mother Ratcliffe, for that she had some experience of her skill. The which when the said mother Ratcliffe did see, she said to the said Annis that she doubted she should do it any good, yet she ministered unto it, et cetera.

[The Information of Thomas Rabbet]

The information of Thomas Rabbet, of the age of 8 years or thereabouts, base son to the said Ursula Kemp, alias Grey, taken before me, Brian Darcy, Esquire, one of Her Majesty’s justices, the 25th day of February, against his said mother.

The said Thomas Rabbet saith that his said mother Ursula Kemp, alias Grey, hath four several spirits, the one called Tyffin, the other Tittey, the third Pigeon, and the fourth Jack and being asked of what colors they were, saith that Tittey is like a little gray cat, Tyffin is like a white lamb, Pigeon is black like a toad, and Jack is black like a cat. And he saith he hath seen his mother at times to give them beer to drink, and of a white loaf of cake to eat, and saith that in the nighttime the said spirits will come to his mother, and suck blood of her upon her arms and other places of her body.
18

This examinant being asked whether he had seen Newman’s wife to come unto his mother, saith that one morning he being in a chamber with his mother, his Godmother Newman came unto her, and saith that then he heard her and his mother to chide, and to fall out. But saith before they parted they were friends and that then his mother delivered an earthen pot unto her, in the which he thinketh her spirits were, the which she carried away with her under her apron.

And this examinant saith that within a few days after the said Newman’s wife came unto his mother, and that he heard her to tell his mother that she had sent a spirit to plague Johnson to the death and another to plague his wife.

[ . . . ]

[The Examination of and Confession of Ursula Kemp, alias Grey]

The examination and confession of Ursula Kemp, alias Grey, taken at St. Osyth, and brought before me, Brian Darcy, Esquire, one of Her Majesty’s justices of the peace, the 20th day of February, 1582.

Condemned.

The said Ursula Kemp saith that about ten or eleven years past, she this examinant was troubled with a lameness in her bones, and for ease thereof, went to one Cocke’s wife of Weley, now deceased, who telled this examinant that she was bewitched, and at her entreaty taught her to unwitch herself. And hath her take hogs’ dung and charcoal and put them together and hold them in her left hand, and to take in the other hand a knife, and to prick the medicine three times, and then to cast the same into the fire, and to take the said knife and to make three pricks under a table, and to let the knife stick there. And after that to take three leaves of sage, and as much of herb John (alias herb grace
19
) and put them into ale, and drink it last at night and first in the morning, and that she taking the same had ease of her lameness.

The said examinant saith that one Page’s wife and one Gray’s wife, being either of them lame and bewitched, she being requested and sent for to come unto them, went unto them. And saith that she knew them to be bewitched, and at their desires did minister unto them the foresaid medicine, whereupon they had speedy amendment.

The said Brian Darcy then promising to the said Ursula that if she would deal plainly and confess the truth, that she should have favor. And so by giving her fair speeches she confessed as followeth.

The said Ursula bursting out with weeping, fell upon her knees, and confessed that she had four spirits, whereof two of them were hes, and the other two were shes. The two he spirits were to punish and kill unto death, and the other two shes were to punish with lameness and other diseases of bodily harms, and also to destroy cattle.

And she this examinant, being asked by what name or names she called the said spirits, and what manner of things or color they were of, confesseth and saith that the one is called Tittey, being a he, and is like a gray cat; the second called Jack, also a he, and is like a black cat; the third is called Pigeon, being a she, and is like a black toad; the fourth is called Tyffin, being a she, and is like a white lamb.

This examinant being further asked which of the said spirits she sent to punish Thurlowe’s wife and Letherdall’s child, confessed and said that she sent Tittey to punish Thurlowe’s wife, and Pigeon Letherdall’s child.

And this examinant, without any asking of her own free will at that present, confessed and said that she was the death of her brother Kemp’s wife, and that she sent the spirit Jack to plague her, for that her sister had called her whore and witch.

And this examinant further confessed that upon the falling out between Thurlowe’s wife and her, she sent Tyffin the spirit unto her child, which lay in the cradle, and willed the same to rock the cradle over, so as the child might fall out thereof, and break the neck of it.

These foresaid 5 last recited matters, being confessed by the said Ursula privately to me the said Brian Darcy, were afterward (supper being ended, and she called again before me, the said Brian) recited and particularly named unto her all which she confessed, as before in the presence of us, whole names he hereunder subscribed.

Also after this examinant’s aforesaid confession, the said Thurlowe’s wife and Letherdall’s wife being then in my house, and she the said Letherdall’s wife having her child there also, were brought in my presence before this examinant, who, immediately after some speeches had passed between them, she this examinant burst out in tears and fell upon her knees, and asked forgiveness of the said Letherdall’s wife, and likewise of Thurlowe’s wife, and confessed that she caused Newman’s wife to send a spirit to plague the child, asking the said Letherdall’s wife, if she were not afraid that night that the spirit came unto the child, and telled her about the same hour, and said that she herself by reason thereof was in a great sweat. And this examinant confesseth that she caused the said Newman’s wife to send a spirit to Thurlowe’s wife to plague her where that thought good, et cetera.

The said Letherdall’s child (being a woman child) at the time of this examination appeared to be in most piteous sort consumed, and the private and hinder parts thereof to be in a most strange and wonderful
20
case, as it seemed to very honest women of good judgment, and not likely to live and continue any long time.