The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1825-12-02 00:00:00

1 am, Sir, your very obedient servant,
A STUDENT AT LAW.

Llcla's.lon, Nov. 29,1926.

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X4FIGITION OF THE MF:DITI?RI2,INEAN.

We have received Gibraltar Papers to the Bth ult. They
CO :Asia the Proclamation of (;eneral Don, the Governor,
r•:eire to the passes granted fur the navigation of the Me-
:rraacan, hailed in consequence of the orders trans-
' !lei by Lord Bathurst. Proclamation, which goes
4:3 Ingther.ed details, contains the following articles:—
t.That no Mediterranean pass or certificate of registry would be
lat. except the vessel wen owned by a British subject, or a per.
tmidertt 15 yew's at Gibraltar.
2 Thrt the vessel must be. commanded by a British subject. or
'".nn re.ideot 15 years at Gibraltar, and three-fourths of the
L^:t•h subjects.
• The newels to be British built, or prices regularly eon-
exerpt the crwiels of forty tons and under, whiff, al.
1", hare licenses.

a 1 folk's' long detsils as to penalties, according to
4141-!.,: of the vessels, from (001. to 1,0001., and a re-
:'ol Ora the pass or rezistcr must not he lent, sold, or
disposed of, &e. &c. &c.
vusul war belonging to the Emperor of Morocco
,rr:‘,ll at Gibraltar; she mounted six guns. His
oty had rondescmcled to trade with several of the
i.e3o Pe wers. for the purpos,l of avoiding the de-
.4o much otherwiso awaited them if he decreed war.

ox RAtt.vesy.—Already do the inhabitants
egin to foil rt,..it sensibly the advantages of

n f.

itictvien made by the orning of the new Dar-

••• ; for the price of coals, which was before
of the rail-road ins. a ton at Stockton, is now
'‘) I'll. Now what must be the advantage when
time bag elapsed to enable the proprietors of
%AIL% on the line of the rail-road to np^n the same?
e' le. It is ai:eled, the itail-road Company find
..",1 propelling powers inclntied, for one half-
mile.-I.irrrpra Adrertirer.

urniART 61. E ANINGN.

N. LXV I.

There arc very faint traces. if any. of witchcraft in this
country prior to the Recorination. Magic, sorcery, astro-
logy. and apparitions, 'sere not unrotn mon. Unhert Earl
or Kers wai 3:cuavil (A. D. 123 Y) of drawing royal
favour to himself by sorcery, and stealing from the Titles
jewel.heese a stene that would make a man invisible.
About tinny years after, Roger Bacon was twice summoned
to Ken.. to give an account of his conjurations.. The story
of King Duffus o:' Scotland, and his sweating sickness,
caused by the roeating of a waxen ima:4e., in the tenth
century, is probably apocryphal, and if nor, might yet be
merely magic. The millions of the Duchess of Gloucester,
in the reign of Henry VI. seem to have only pretended to
astrological prediction: as was also the case with Friar
Hopkins, who is said to have died of grief at having brought
his patron, the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham, to the
scaffold, and with those whose tricks bade ?"1f7,-.:=4.fro!a
result to Lord Hissesertrl. "'Sorcery was imputed to Jane
St.. 77: Ity Richard lii. and afterwards to several Lan-
casterians, including the Countess of Richmond, and Dr.
Morton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Inspiration
and prophetic visions were claimed by Elizabeth Barton, the
Maid of Kent. Still, the compact with the Devil was un-
known here, though it hail become very ftequent on the Con-
tinent. In 1541, an act was passed, the first in our laws,
against conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery, and pulling down
crosses. It is supposed to have been designed. against the
Reinnnets, and was repealed in the first of Edward VI.
though there was a direction in Cranniz•r's Articles of
Visitation, two years after, to inquire after " any that
used charms, sorcny, enchantments, witchcraft, soothsay-
ing, or any like craft, invented by the deail ;" which was
renewed in Elisabeth's reign, with the addition," especially
in the time of women's travail." There were several trials
for conjuration and astro:ogy in the early part of this reign,
and the Countess of Lennox, with four others, was con-
demned for treason, for inquiring how long the Queen
would live? But in 1362 a new statute against witchcraft
was enacted, more lenient titan that of James which fol-
lowed, as it only visited the first conviction with pillory ;
and from this time the offence was on the increase, till that
sapient ruler, who taught divinity like a king, and made
laws like a priest, signalised the Ant year of his reign by
making it felony to suckle imps, &c. and then the mischief
rapidly mounted to its height, which it attained by the aid
of that " vigour beyond the law," which the triumphant
fanatics afterwards put forth, In the abundance of their
zeal and wisdom.

In this Statute (which was repealed Mnrch 24, 1738)
the description of the oifmce or offences which were made
felonious runs thus:—
" One that use, practise, or exercise any Meowion or conjura-
tion of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, covenant with, enter-
tain or ClTlploy, feed or reward, any evil or wicked spirit, to or for
any intent or purpose ; or take up any dead man, woman, or child,
out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place, where the dead
body testeth ; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead per-
son, to be employed or need in any manner of witchcraft, sor-
cery, charm, or enchantment; or shall use, pract:ce„ or exercise
any witchcraft, ice, whereby any persnn shall be killed, destroyed,
wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any
part thereof : such offende
.rs, duly and lawfully cunvictcd and at-
tainted, shall sulfur dew h..

In the course of the fifty years following the passing of
this act, besides a great number of single indictments and
executions. we meet with much of suck wholesale dealing
as the following. In 1612, fifteen indicted at Lancaster,
and twelve condemned ; 1622, six tried at York ; 1634,
seventeen condemned in Lancashire; 1844, sixteen exe-
cuted at Yarmouth; 1845, fiteen condemned at Chelms-
ford and hanged ; in the same and following year, about
forty at Bury in Suffolk, twenty more in the county, and
many at Iluntinp,alon ; and, according to the estimate, of 'I
Ady, some thousands were burnt in Scotland.
A variety of circumstances deserve notice, from either
serving as symp:otas, or having operated as causes, of the
peculiar abundance of the.,e notions in England, during
the seventee .th century. Alchymy, astrology, &c. have
always bad their believers and votaries; but, besides that
they never excited the horror, nor occasioned the misery
which fkr.ved from the supposed prevalence of witheract,
they have not been &Meted by causes similar to those
which made the latter for a time so formidable, and which
were also of such a nature as to render it formidable only
for a time. They have all their foundation in human na-
ture; they appeal to the love of power, of pleasure, of
knowledge, of wealth, of vengeance; they all give way, if
not to the moral philosophy which teaches to regulate these
passions, at least to the progress of natural philosophy,
which shows them to be ineffective means for the proposed
end. Their appearances are, therefore, more uniform, their
course more steady, their grasp of the human mind more
firm, their reception and advance, and their exposure and
abandonment, more gradual than in the case before us.
The statute of the first James has been already indicated
as one cause of the offences which it denounced. At first,
this tendency was increased by the manner in which it
was administered. The different clauses were taken dia-
-1 junctively, and it was held sufficient if any one of the
offences specified were made out to the satisfaction of the
jury. Afterwards, the judges adopted a much more hu-
mane interpretation, and usually decided that they should
he taken collectively, and consequently that there could
be no conviction for witchcraft, but in cases of alleged
murder.

Many causes were sent out, or kept out of court, by the
mercy of this legal discovery, which was probably owing to
the extent :o which they had multiplied, and the facility
with which jurymen convicted. One of the latest convic-
tions was that of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender before
Sir Matthew Hale, at Bury, in 1664. They were exe-
cuted, and died maintaining their innocence. Their
execution is a foul blot upon his name, and fully justifies
the remark, that "his piety and theological reading seemed
only to have the effect of rendering him credulous and un-
relenting." There can be little doubt of their having ken
the victims of imposture. Such was the opinion, publicly
declared in court during the trial, of Sergeant Keeling,
Lord Cornwallis, and Sir Edmund Bacon, who made some
experiments, at the judge's request, on the children who
pretended to be bewitched, and found that when their eyes
were covered they played of their tits, &e. at the touch of
snie other person, whom they mistook for one of the ac-
cused. He charged the jury without summing the evi-
dence, dwelling only upon the certainty of the fact, that
there were witches, for which he appealed to the Scriptures,
and, as he said, to " the wisdom of all nations," and the
jury having convicted, be next morning left them for
execution.

Perhaps this trial is the only place to which we ever met
with the name of Sir Thomas Brown without pleasurable
asso:iations ; yet we cannot leave it without extracting his
evidence :

" There was also Dr. Brown, of Norwich. a person of great
knowledge: who, after this evidence given, and upon view of the
three persons in Court, was dedred to give his opinion, what he
did conceive of them ; and he was daily of opinion, that the per•
sons were bewitched ; and said, that in Denmark there had been
la.ely a great discovery of witches, who used the very same way of
persons, by conveying pins into them, and crooked, as
these pins were, with reedits and nails. And his opinion was,
that the devil, in such cues, did work upon the bodies of men and
women, upon a natural foundation, (that is) to stir up and endue
such humours superabounding in their bodies to a groat excess,
whereby he did, In an extraordinary manner, afflict them with such
distempers as unit bodies were most subject to, as particularly
appeared in thew children ; for he conceived, that these swooning
We were natural, and nothing else but that they call the mother.
but only heightened to a great excess by the subtllity of the devil
co-operating with the malice of these which we term witches, at
whose instance he dot!) these villanics."

For Sir Thomas Brown's speculations on the subject of
witchcraft and diabolical delualons, we must content our-
selves with referring our readers to Vadger Error:, Book i.
c. x. xi. ; B. v. c. xxii. sec. 19. and B. vii. c. xii.
Very difierent was the conduct of Chief Justice Holt,
nor are the obligations of humanity less than those of free-
dom to his firm, enlightened, and upright mind. What-
ever truth there may he in the well-known story of his
having, in a juvenile frolic, given a charm for the ague, in
plyment for a tavern bill which he bad not the regular
means of discharging, and which was afterwards produced
before him in evidence against his landlady, who had been
practising with it ; certain it is, that his elevation was the
signal for a more humane and rational procedure ; eleven
were tried More him, and all acquitted, notwithstanding
the customary depoeit;ons were made about vomiting
pins, neeilks, &e. devils' marks, and sucking imps. So
changed were the times, that even confession failed to

THE BRITSII PRESS.

produce conviction, and the ahstirtliti,,s of a (!!,on'ercd
imagination sunk to their real worth. Ili succ svr, Par-
ker, put a stop to the trial by water, by hie declaration, at
the Essex Summer Atomizes in 17151, that, if it occasioned the
death of the suspected witch on whom the experiment was
made, all the parties concerned were guilty of wilful murder.
It is laid down In Winn's Cousfry Justice that— .
" Spectral evidence. 1. e. the afflizted eeries thinking they sea
the persons that torment them, may itexiven in evideacc--that in.
sensible parts and teats are si.ttni of witchcraft—that the devil's
mark may he like a gea.kite_gitat imps may be kept in pots, or
other vessels; and that the rots and places where tbsy are kept
stink detestably ; and that therefore such stiakiag places is their
hoses are signs that they haws iin. a."
One of the most infamous perverelnns of evidence oc-
curred in the trial of the witches of Werbeis, before Mr.
Justice Fenner, at Huntington, in 1.593. An old man, his
wife, and daughter, were accuse' of bewitching the five
children of Mr. Throgmorton, sect ral servants, the lady of
Sir Samuel Cromwell, and other persons. A confession
was ebtained...iradietwalese—ektivomaii, -1116 was
about fourscore yesrs old, by persuading her to retest a
charm, in a form prescribed to her, on which the children,
who were the principal witnesses, came out of the fits,
which, as they pretended, were occasioned by her arts.
To obtain similar proof, rue.) as it was, against the old
man, the judge told him on his trial, " that if he would
not speak the words of the charm, the court would hold
him guilty of the crimes he was accused of." After some
browbeating, he did repeat it, when the child's fit cess,.d,
and the judge exclaimed, " You see all she is now well, but
not by the music of David's harp;" and the poor fellow
Was condemned, as was his daughter upon similar evidence.
Some bystanders urged the latter to plead pregnancy as a
means of saving her life, or, at least, of deferring her fate.
She indignantly replied " that she never would; for it
should never be said, that she was both a witch and a
whore." They were all executed, and their goods. which
were of the value of forty pounds, being escheated to Sir
S. Cromwell, as lord of the manor, he gave the amount
to the mayor and aldermen of Huntingdon, for a rent-
charge of forty shillings yerrly, to be paid out of their
town lands for an annual lecture upon the subject of
witchcraft, to be preeched at their town every Ludy-day
by a Doctor or batchelor of Divinity, of Queen's College,
Cambridge. _ _

•
These perversions of evidence wrought • their own cure,
and thus assisted to disabuse the public mind. As their
absurdity and injustice were displayed, it followed either
that, if (hey were retained, the decisions of courts of justice
would cease to be respected; or, if they were abandoned,
that conviction would no longer be obtained ; and, either
way, one most impressive testimony to the fact of witchery
was withdrawn. Even the statute of James was at length
made to afford some protection for the poor creatures who
were accused under it; for their accusers could seldom
detect them without some means, which were a kind of
charm, and for which they were themselves threatened with
the penalties of the act.—Retrnepretive Review.