I have been the more particular in this Account, because
I hear there is scarce a Village in England
that has not a Moll White in it. When an
old Woman begins to doat, and grow chargeable to a
Parish, she is generally turned into a Witch, and
fills the whole Country with extravagant Fancies,
imaginary Distempers and terrifying Dreams. In
the mean time, the poor Wretch that is the innocent
Occasion of so many Evils begins to be frighted at
her self, and sometimes confesses secret Commerce
and Familiarities that her Imagination forms in a delirious
old Age. This frequently cuts off Charity from
the greatest Objects of Compassion, and inspires People
with a Malevolence towards those poor decrepid Parts
of our Species, in whom Human Nature is defaced by
Infirmity and Dotage.
[Footnote 1: Ottway, which I could not
forbear repeating on this occasion.]
[Footnote 2: ‘Orphan’, Act II.
Chamont to Monimia.]
[Footnote 3: The knight told me, upon hearing
the Description,]
[Footnote 4: When this essay was written, charges
were being laid against one old woman, Jane Wenham,
of Walkerne, a little village north of Hertford, which
led to her trial for witchcraft at assizes held in
the following year, 1712, when she was found guilty;
and became memorable as the last person who, in this
country, was condemned to capital punishment for that
impossible offence. The judge got first a reprieve
and then a pardon. The lawyers had refused to
draw up any indictment against the poor old creature,
except, in mockery, for ‘conversing familiarly
with the devil in form of a cat.’ But of
that offence she was found guilty upon the testimony
of sixteen witnesses, three of whom were clergymen.
One witness, Anne Thorne, testified that every night
the pins went from her pincushion into her mouth.
Others gave evidence that they had seen pins come
jumping through the air into Anne Thorne’s mouth.
Two swore that they had heard the prisoner, in the
shape of a cat, converse with the devil, he being also
in form of a cat. Anne Thorne swore that she
was tormented exceedingly with cats, and that all
the cats had the face and voice of the witch.
The vicar of Ardeley had tested the poor ignorant
creature with the Lord’s Prayer, and finding
that she could not repeat it, had terrified her with
his moral tortures into some sort of confession.
Such things, then, were said and done, and such credulity
was abetted even by educated men at the time when
this essay was written. Upon charges like those
ridiculed in the text, a woman actually was, a few
months later, not only committed by justices with
a less judicious spiritual counsellor than Sir Roger’s
chaplain, but actually found guilty at the assizes,
and condemned to death.]
* * * *
*
No. 118. Monday, July 16, 1711.
Steele.
