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Witchcraft and Conflicting Visions of the Ideal Village Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Anne Reiber DeWindt
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Extract

In the fallen world, communities (patterns of interaction) are endlessly dying and being born. The historian's job is to specify what, at a given moment, is changing into or being annihilated by what.

In the fall of 1589, ten-year-old Jane Throckmorton pointed to the old woman who had settled into a seat in her family's cavernous stone hearth and cried out, “Looke where the old witch sitteth … did you ever see … one more like a witch then she is?” With those words the child set in motion a four-year-long drama that culminated in the hanging of three of her neighbors from their fenland village of Warboys in north Huntingdonshire. Within weeks after the executions, Jane's father and uncle, with the help of a trial judge and the local parson, published their version of this tragic story in a pamphlet that now resides in the British Library.

After Jane Throckmorton and her sisters had shared symptoms such as violent sneezing and grotesque seizures for several weeks, and two medical doctors at Cambridge had suggested the possibility of witchcraft, Gilbert Pickering—a relative from Northamptonshire—arrived at the Warboys manor house to conduct numerous experiments with Jane and her neighbor, Alice Samuel. His intention was to demonstrate that the old woman was the cause of the girl's symptoms. In February 1590 one of the sisters was taken to the Pickering home in Northamptonshire where the results of further experiments were recorded for eventual inclusion in the pamphlet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 427 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1995

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References

1 Hunt, William, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p. 131Google Scholar.

2 “The Most Strange and admirable discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys, arraigned, convicted, and executed at the last Assises at Huntington, for the bewitching of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton Esquire, and divers other persons with sundrie Divellish and grievous torments: And also for the bewitching to death of the Lady Crumwell, the like hath not been heard of in this age” (London: Printed by the Widdowe Orwin, for Thomas Man and John Winnington, 1593)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as “Witches of Warboys”). Copies survive in the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and the Norris Museum Library in St. Ives, Hunts, Page references in this study are from the British Library copy.

3 The speech by Mother Samuel: “Madame why doe you use me thus? I never did you any harme as yet.” The pamphlet authors then add, “These words were afterwards remembred, and were not at that present time taken hold of by any”; “Witches of Warboys,” sig. D4r.

4 The relevant entry in the Ramsey Parish registers located at the Huntingdon Record Office is difficult to decipher but refers to “My Ladye Susan[?] Cromwells funerall” in an entry from July 12, 159?. If the pamphlet is accurate, then this date must be 1591.

5 The 1563 statute establishing the death penalty is cited by Macfarlane, Alan, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1970), p. 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 The present writer plans a more complete study of this witchcraft case.

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13 For summaries of this discussion, see Fletcher, , “National and Local Awareness in the County Communities,” pp. 151–54Google Scholar; and Hughes.

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16 See Wrightson and Levine, p. 176; and Ingram, pp. 32–33.

17 Wrightson and Levine, pp. 175, 177. David Underdown also notes that “parish notables” had a sense of being a beleaguered minority “beset by chaos and disorder”; see Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), p. 33Google Scholar.

18 Along these lines, see Clive Holmes's discussion of “the closed corporate peasant community” as a concept discordant with his Lincolnshire evidence, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), pp. 9 ff.Google Scholar Calhoun suggests that we be wary of efforts to set up a dichotomy between “individual” and “community,” as “it suggests, misleadingly, the possibility of an asocial individual”; see Calhoun, p. 109.

19 Macfarlane (n. 5 above).

20 Raftis, J. A., Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an English Mediaeval Village (Toronto, 1974), chap. 7Google Scholar; DeWindt, E. B., Land and People in Holywell-Cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972), chap. 4Google Scholar; Britton, Edward, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England (Toronto, 1977), pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

21 Hunt (n. 1 above), p. 140.

22 Spufford, , Contrasting Communities (n. 10 above), pp. 344–50Google Scholar, and also “Puritanism and Social Control?” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 41–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Describing a parallel situation, Gervase Rosser found in Westminster that cooperation among individuals was periodic and arose in response to particular, and often temporary, needs; see Medieval Westminster, 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1989), p. 327Google Scholar.

24 For a similar situation in an eighteenth-century village, see Rollison, David, “Property, Ideology and Popular Culture,” Past and Present, no. 93 (1981), pp. 70–97Google Scholar.

25 Notice Calhoun (n. 11 above), pp. 107 ff.

26 Rose, Gillian, “Imagining Poplar in the 1920s: Contested Concepts of Community,” Journal of Historical Geography 16, no. 4 (1990): 425–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Quotations above are from pp. 425 and 426. I owe this reference to Bruce Campbell, Queens University, Belfast.

27 Recent research has demonstrated the usefulness of recognizing a broad variety of causal factors, from economic stress to class or gender conflicts to psychological trauma. For a few examples, see Demos, John, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Karlsen, Carol, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; MacDonald, Michael, Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London: Edward Jorden and the Mary Glover Case (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a study of witchcraft accusations with a background of disputes between neighbors and town factions, see Gregory, Annabel, “Witchcraft, Politics and ‘Good Neighbourhood’ in Early Seventeenth-Century Rye,” Past and Present, no. 133 (1991), pp. 31–66Google Scholar. J. A. Sharpe summarized the standard approach to English witchcraft by citing “the fundamental importance of stresses in interpersonal relations between villagers in generating witchcraft accusations”: Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire: Accusations and Counter Measures, Borthwick Paper no. 81 (York: University of York, 1992), p. 1Google Scholar.

28 The Warboys case will also, of course, continue to provide contributions to those discussions and controversies about the witchcraft phenomenon. Indeed, this one case does suggest causal factors not yet fully explored. For summaries of current theories, see Scarre, Geoffrey, Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Atlantic Highlands, N.Y., 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Levack, Brian P., The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Klaits, Joseph, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, Ind., 1985)Google Scholar. Notice also Sharpe's appreciation of single cases which can provide qualitative evidence on witchcraft questions. See his Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire: Accusations and Counter Measures, p. 23.

29 Hirst (n. 15 above), p. 15.

30 Bedells, John, “The Gentry of Huntingdonshire,” Local Population Studies 44 (1990): 30–40Google Scholar.

31 Mingay, G. E., The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (London, 1976), pp. 58–59Google Scholar.

32 Underdown (n. 17 above), p. 21.

33 For a summary of the work done on the fate of crown lands during the sixteenth century, see Hoskins, W. G., The Age of Plunder, King Henry's England, 1500–47 (London, 1976), pp. 121–38Google Scholar.

34 Bedells, table 1, p. 39. Huntingdonshire had a particularly large number of monastic estates.

35 Page, William, Proby, Granville, and Ladds, S. Inskip, eds., The Victoria History of the County of Huntingdon (London, 1932), 2:243Google Scholar.

36 A 1540 Indenture, British Library Additional (Brit. Lib. Add.) MS 34397.

37 The Inquest Post Mortem indicates that Gabriel was dead by January 6, 1553, Public Record Office (PRO) C142/98/27.

38 “Witches of Warboys,” sig. A3r.

39 Ibid., sig. A4r. “This thing did something move the Parents, and strike into their minds a suspicion of witchcraft, yet devising with themselves for what cause it should be wrought upon them or their children, they could not imagine, for they were but newly come to the towne to inhabite, which was but at Michaelmas before, neither had they given any occasion (to their knowledge) either to her or any other, to practise any such malice against them.”

40 PRO Ward 8/8 fols. 359v.–360r.

41 Parish registers of Titchmarsh, Northants., and Warboys, Hunts.: Titchmarsh: 1573. Warboys: 1574, 1575, 1577, 1579, 1583.

42 Brit. Lib. Add. roll 34842. Marjorie McIntosh noted the presence of members of the gentry on Havering juries by the 1560s and 1570s; McIntosh (n. 14 above), p. 323.

43 Robert was the grandson of Richard Throckmorton, steward of the duke of Lancaster and great-grandson of Sir Robert Throckmorton, J.P., descended from the Throckmortons of Coughton, Warwickshire; see Ellis, Henry, ed., The Visitation of the County of Huntingdon, Camden Society (London, 1849), pp. 123–24Google Scholar; also Rowse, A. L., Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Brit. Lib. Harl. MS 618 temp. Elizabeth.

45 Douglas, Mary, Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (London, 1970), p. xxxGoogle Scholar; Demos (n. 27 above), pp. 275, 311–12.

46 Stone, Lawrence and Stone, Jeanne C. Fawtier, An Open Elite? England, 1540–1880 (Oxford, 1984), p. 329Google Scholar.

47 Christina Larner discusses the phenomenon here in a European context, Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), p. 139Google Scholar.

48 For local studies within Huntingdonshire itself, see, e.g., E. DeWindt (n. 20 above), esp. discussions of the village court on pp. 206–11; Raftis (n. 20 above); and Britton (n. 20 above). For other regions, see, e.g., McIntosh (n. 10 above); and Spufford (n. 10 above).

49 Metcalfe, Walter C., ed., The Visitations of Northamptonshire made in 1564 and 1618–19 (London, 1887), p. 126Google Scholar.

50 Sheils, W. J., The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610 (Northampton, 1979), p. 12Google Scholar. See also Belgion, Helen, Titchmarsh Past and Present (Northants.: Privately published by the author, 1979), pp. 38, 46Google Scholar.

51 Hunt (n. 1 above), p. 140. See also Wrightson and Levine (n. 15 above), p. 175; Haigh, Christopher, “The Church of England, the Catholics and the People,” in The Reign of Elizabeth I, ed. Haigh, C. (London, 1984), pp. 195–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Sheils, p. 40.

53 “From 1583 Titchmarsh remained a puritan centre” (ibid., p. 40).

54 The will, dated 1600, requested that Bartholomew Chamberlain preach at her burial. “I committ my sowle into the handes of the almightie and most mercifull father my creator and to Jhesus Christe his onlie sonne my redemer and saviour. And to God the holie Ghost my comforter and of all the elect of God” (PRO B. 11/97 30 Woodhall). For a discussion of the use of will preambles as indicators of religious preference, along with a useful bibliography on the subject, see Collinson, Patrick, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982), p. 197Google Scholar, and notes on pp. 196–97; also Sheils.

55 “Witches of Warboys,” sig. O2V. Upwood court rolls between 1560 and 1599: Brit. Lib. Add. Rolls 34841–34850, 34924–34928.

56 PRO E179/122/161; seven were taxed out of a community of forty-seven households (Brit. Lib. Harl. Ms. 618).

57 Macfarlane (n. 5 above). For another case involving daughters of a gentry family from Fewstone, West Riding, Yorkshire, in the year 1621, see Milnes, R. M., ed., A Discourse of Witchcraft, Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Soc., vol. 5 (London, 1858–1859)Google Scholar. Also see Sharpe (n. 27 above).

58 See “Witches of Warboys,” sig. F2v, for reference to the pamphlet's patron. There are several references in the text to plural authors: sigs. B4r, H2v, H3r, C2v. The pronouns “I” and “we” are both used on sig. A2r and A2v. Barbara Rosen, who has published a modernized and condensed version of the British Museum edition of the pamphlet, points out that the pamphlet must have been produced by several authors, Witchcraft in England, 1558–1618 (Amherst, Mass., 1991), p. 240, n. 2Google Scholar.

59 Notice the defensive tone established in this passage from “Witches of War-boys,” sig. Hlr: “These circumstances about her [Alice Samuel's] confession are therefore the more expresly set downe although they be not so pertinent to the matter, neither indeed should have bin declared at all, had it not bin reported by some in the countrey, and those that thought themselves wise, that this mother Samuel now in question, was an olde simple woman, and that one might make her by fayre words confesse what they would.”

60 Ibid., sig. G4r.

61 Ibid., sig. G3r.

62 On that occasion, Alice may have donned a white sheet and carried a wand as she made her public confession before her neighbors in the Warboys church. See Major, Kathleen, “The Lincoln Diocesan Records,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th sen, 22 (1940): 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 “Witches of Warboys,” sig. G3v.

64 Ibid., sig. G3v–G4r.

65 Ibid., sig. G4r.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 For a helpful discussion of the significance of the emotions of shame and guilt, see Taylor, Gabriele, Emotions of Self Assessment (Oxford, 1985), esp. pp. 56–82Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Beatrice Beech. For references to studies of honor and shame in the Renaissance context, see Sharpe, J. A., Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York, Borthwick Papers, no. 58 (York: University of York, 1980)Google Scholar.

70 Genovese, Eugene D., Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

71 Whether or not this is an accurate reporting of the villagers' comments, the speech is useful as a reflection of Throckmorton's motives for arranging a public confession; “Witches of Warboys,” sig. G4v.

72 Ibid., sig. Hlr.

73 Ibid., sig. G3v.

74 Hunt (n. 1 above), p. 91.

75 “Witches of Warboys,” sig. Hlr.

76 Ibid. It looks as if the bishop of Lincoln was serving as Justice of the Peace in this context, rather than as an ecclesiastical official. In 1591, 1592, and 1600, the bishop sat with committees of justices, varying in size from five to seven at courts of Quarter Sessions (Brit. Lib. Add. rolls 39449, fol. 16; 39446, fols. 5, 10).

77 See Fletcher, , “National and Local Awareness in the County Communities” (n. 11 above), p. 152Google Scholar; also Hughes (n. 10 above).

78 However, the question of whether the Samuels' views were representative of those of their Warboys neighbors is a complex one that cannot be pursued here. It is not possible to decide how much sympathy the Samuels received from their other neighbors. The trial was held in Huntingdon, not in Warboys, and the trial witnesses, aside from members of the Throckmorton family and their in-laws, were from outside the village (“Witches of Warboys,” sigs. N4v–O1r).

79 Ginzburg, Carlo, Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Tedeschi, John and Tedeschi, Anne (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, and Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. Tedeschi, John and Tedeschi, Anne (Baltimore, 1989)Google Scholar.

80 The earliest Huntingdonshire indictments in the PRO are from March 1694. See also Ewen, C. L'Estrange, Witchcraft in the Norfolk Circuit (Paignton: Printed for the author, 1939)Google Scholar. No evidence for the Norfolk circuit survives prior to 1690. Alan Macfarlane has commented on the accuracy of the Essex witch pamphlet narratives; Macfarlane (n. 5 above), chap. 5, esp. p. 85.

81 “Witches of Warboys,” sigs. J4v, B4v, C1r, D1r.

82 Ibid., sig. J4v.

83 Ibid., sig. B4v.

84 Ibid., sigs. B4v–C1r.

85 Ibid., sig. C2v.

86 Ibid., sig. D1r.

87 Larner, Christina, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunl in Scotland (London, 1983), p. 97Google Scholar. Underdown (n. 17 above), p. 40; Quaife, G. R., Godly Zeal and Furious Rage: The Witch in Early Modern Europe (London, 1987), pp. 171–74Google Scholar.

88 “Witches of Warboys,” sigs. D4v.–E1r.

89 Ibid., sig. E1v.

90 Ibid., sig. F4r.

91 I owe this observation to Dr. Jutta Goheen from Carlton University, Ottawa.

92 Calling to mind the “Bakhtinian sense of an unresolved clash of conflicting voices” cited by Ginzburg, , Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (n. 79 above), p. 164Google Scholar.

93 “Witches of Warboys,” sig. G1v.

94 Ibid., sig. A3r.

95 The Warboys parish registers reveal that a Mr. John Pickering married Elizabeth Cervington on November 15, 1591. In September 1592, Gilbert, son of John Pickering, was baptized in Warboys.

96 Interest in babies and children was feared as well as expected. The darker side of a neighbor's friendly concern was envy and jealous spite—dangerous emotions. See Roper (n. 8 above) for an important discussion of witchcraft accusations growing out of the psychic dramas of childbed. See Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (New York, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for analysis of the concept of pollution as it relates to witchcraft beliefs; notice particularly pp. 94–113.

97 Sharpe, “Witchcraft and Women in Seventeenth-Century England: Some Northern Evidence” (n. 8 above).

98 “Witches of Warboys,” sig. G2v.

99 Ibid., sig. O2v.

100 Ibid., sig. H3v.

101 Ibid., sig. F4r.

102 Ibid., sig. K2r–v.

103 Just prior to her execution Agnes was unable to say the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and earlier in the narrative, Master Throckmorton unsuccessfully tried to teach Agnes a grace (ibid., sigs. O3v, K2r). Perhaps the pamphlet authors mean to imply that Agnes is exercising willful ignorance here or that the devil has imposed hindrances to her ability to learn. I owe this suggestion to Annabel Gregory.

104 Ibid., sig. O3r.

105 Ibid., sig. O2v.

106 Ibid., sig. L1v–L2r.

107 Ibid., sig. L2r.

108 1579, September, fined for having cattle in the common, 8d. 1579, September, John Bulmer drew blood from John Samuel. 1580, September, fined for hedges and ditches, 12d. and 20d. 1582, September, fined for failure to repair hedges, 12d. 1583, April, fined for throwing something into the road, 6d. 1584, March, fined for revealing the business of the jurors while he was a juror. This was the last time he served in that office. 1584–87, fined several times for breaking local ordinances regarding hedges, chickens, pigs. 1588/89, fined for reaping contrary to the ordinance, 3s. 4d. The court rolls consulted for this Samuel “biography” are as follows: Brit. Lib. Add. rolls 39783–94, 39781, 34922, 39573, and PRO SC2 179/86.

109 Brit. Lib. Harl. Ms. 618 temp. Elizabeth.

110 “In this 1290 court roll, personal names are given 138 times”; Raftis (n. 20 above), p. 8.

111 Brit. Lib. Add. roll 39791.

112 See Willis, R. G., “Instant Millennium—the Sociology of African Witch-Cleansing Cults,” in Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ed. Douglas, Mary (London, 1970), p. 131Google Scholar; also Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Witchcraft Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (reprint, Oxford, 1993), pp. 41–43Google Scholar; Quaife (n. 87 above), p. 191.

113 Christina Lamer notes similar reactions among Scottish women accused of witchcraft but also cites one woman who accepted the label and welcomed the power it brought; Enemies of God (n. 87 above), p. 99. “Witches of Warboys,” sig. G4v.

114 Kent, Joan R., The English Village Constable, 1580–1642 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 222 ff.Google Scholar; Houlbrooke, Ralph, Church Courts and the English People during the English Reformation, 1520–70 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 44–47Google Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., “‘Such Disagreement betwyx Neighbours’: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. Bossy, John (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 167–87Google Scholar.

115 See Wrightson, Keith, “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England,” in An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Brewer, John and Styles, John (London, 1980), pp. 24–25, 30Google Scholar.

116 Samuel's attitude echoes through the centuries in the voice of a modern Russian rural villager who was quoted in a National Public Radio news story from September 29, 1993, as saying, “What I need is a good neighbor—one who will let me be.”

117 Underdown (n. 17 above), pp. 40, 42.

118 Spufford found that only 33 percent of the yeomen in her study signed their wills, and many more women than men were illiterate; see Contrasting Communities (n. 10 above), p. 202.

119 Underdown, p. 42.

120 See Hunt (n. 1. above), pp. 137–38. Such visions certainly had medieval precedents in the ideologies expressed by some local “constitutions” such as that of fifteenth-century Wells, if not in the actual patterns of behavior revealed in local court rolls such as those of medieval Huntingdonshire; Shaw (n. 10 above), p. 179.

121 Note that in some areas, witchcraft accusations ended in slander prosecutions in the church courts. Mother Samuel apparently did not have enough local support to apply this strategy in her own defense against the Throckmortons. See Rushton, Peter, “Women, Witchcraft and Slander in Early Modern England: Cases from the Church Courts of Durham, 1560–1675,” Northern History 18 (1982): 116–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

122 The parish registers continue until 1662. Unfortunately, no Warboys court rolls survive after 1603.

123 PRO E179/142/279; PRO B 11/161/35 Audley fol. 270v. This man is quite clearly the same man as the Robert Throckmorton from Warboys and Ellington. Legacies are left to his daughter Grace, wife of Edward Holcott, and the Ellington parish registers reveal that Grace Throckmorton married Edward Holcott in that parish in 1605. Grace is identified in the pamphlet as one of Robert's daughters.

124 PRO E179/122/182; PRO E179/122/200, 203.

125 PRO C142/485/94. I owe this reference to Edwin DeWindt.

126 The Throckmorton daughters married into Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire gentry families, but none of them left any evidence of property holding in Warboys. Robert's son Gabriel began producing children who were baptized at Ellington from the year 1604.

127 Russell, J. B., The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), p. 179Google Scholar.

128 Wrightson, Keith, “Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England, c. 1580–1660,” Journal of Peasant Studies 5, no. 1 (1977): 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

129 Suggested from reading Russell, pp. 167–79.