Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands | Page 5

noted
prickers being a wretched imposter named Matthew Hopkins who was
sent for to all parts of the country to exercise his vile art. Ralph Gardner,
in his _England's Grievance Discovered_ (1655), speaks also of two
prickers, Thomas Shovel and Cuthbert Nicholson, who, in 1649 and
1650, were sent by the magistrates of Newcastle-on-Tyne, into

Scotland, there to confer with another very able man in that line and
bring him back to Newcastle. They were to have twenty shillings, but
the Scotchman three pounds, per head of all they could convict, and a
free passage there and back. When these wretches got to any town--for
they tried all the chief market-towns in the district--the crier used to go
round with his bell, desiring "all people that would bring in any
complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and
tried by the person appointed." As many as thirty women were brought
at once into the Newcastle town-hall, stripped and pricked, and
twenty-seven set aside as guilty. Gardner continues:--
The said witch-finder acquainted Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson that he
knew women whether they were witches or no by their looks; and when
the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman,
the said colonel replied and said, 'Surely this woman is none, and need
not be tried;' but the Scotchman said she was, for the town said she was,
and therefore he would try her; and presently, in sight of all the people,
laid her body naked to the waist, with her clothes over her head, by
which fright and shame all her blood contracted into one part of her
body, and then he ran a pin into her thigh, and then suddenly let her
coats fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her
body, but did not bleed? But she, being amazed, replied little. Then he
put his hands up her coats and pulled out the pin, and set her aside as a
guilty person and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he
made guilty. Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of
the aforesaid woman by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that
woman to be brought again, and her clothes pulled up to her thigh, and
required the Scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed
out of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child
of the devil.
If this precious wretch had not been stopped he would have declared
half the women in the north country to be witches. But the magistrates
and the people got tired of him at last, and his imposture being
discovered, he was hanged in Scotland. At the gallows he confessed
that he had been the death of 220 men and women in England and
Scotland, simply for the sake of the twenty shillings which he generally

received as blood-money.
* * * * *
The belief in Sorcerots, or witches' spells of a peculiar kind, mentioned
in the Depositions (pages 22, 23, &c.) receives curious modern
confirmation by a kindred superstition still current among the
emancipated negroes of the United States. It was described in a letter
on "Voudouism in Virginia" which appeared in the New York Tribune,
dated Richmond, September 17, 1875. Mr. Moncure D. Conway, in
quoting this and commenting on it in his _Demonology and
Devil-Lore_ (Vol. I. pages 68-69), says that it belongs to a class of
superstitions generally kept close from the whites, as he believes,
because of their purely African origin. Mr. Conway is, however,
probably mistaken about the origin, seeing that the same belief
prevailed in Guernsey three centuries ago. The extract from the letter is
as follows:--
If an ignorant negro is smitten with a disease which he cannot
comprehend, he often imagines himself the victim of witchcraft, and
having no faith in "white folks' physic" for such ailments, must apply to
one of these quacks. A physician residing near the city [Richmond] was
invited by such a one to witness his mode of procedure with a dropsical
patient for whom the physician in question had occasionally charitably
prescribed. Curiosity led him to attend the seance, having previously
informed the quack that since the case was in such hands he
relinquished all connection with it. On the coverlet of the bed on which
the sick man lay, was spread a quantity of bones, feathers, and other
trash. The charlatan went through with a series of so-called
conjurations, burned feathers, hair, and tiny fragments of wood in a
charcoal furnace, and mumbled gibberish past the physician's
comprehension. He then proceeded to rip open the pillows and bolsters,
and took from them some queer conglomerations of feathers. These he
said had caused all