July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

Historical Spiritualism,.
made the duty of bishops, by Archbishop Cranmerls articles of visitation r
to inquire of their clergy whether 'they knew of any thal use charms,
sorcery, enchantments, witchcraft, soothsaying, or any like craft invented
by the Devil.' In 1563 the King of Sweden carried four witches with
him, as a part of his armament, to aid him in his wars with the Danes.
In 1576, eighteen persons were condemned in Essex, in England. A
single judge or inquisitor, Remigius, condemned and burned nine
hundred within fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, in the district of
Lorraine; and as many more fled out of the country; whole villages
were depopulated, and fifteen persons destroyed themselves rather than
submit to the torture which, under the administration of this successor
of Draco and rival of Jeffries, was the first step taken in the trial of an
accused person. The application of the rack and other instruments of
torture, in the examination of prisoners, was recommended by him in a
work on witchcraft. He observes that' scarcely anyone was known to
be brought to repentance and confession but by t1zese means' I
"In 1634, Urbain Grandier, a very learned and eminent 'French
minister, rendered himself odious to the bigoted nuns of Loudun by
his moderation towards heretics. Secretly instigated by Cardinal
Richelieu, against whom he had written a satire, they pretended to be
bewitched by hi.m, and procured his prosecution: he was tortured upon
the rack until he swooned, and then was burned at the stake. In 1640,
Dr. Lamb, of London, was murdered i.n the streets of that city by the
mob, on suspicion of witchcraft. Hundreds were hanged or burned in
England, only a few years before the witchcraft proceedings commenced
in Salem. Some were tried by water ordeal, and drowned in the process,
in Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire; and a
considerable number of capital punishments took place in various parts
of Great Britain, some years after the prosecution had ceased in America.
" The tria1s and executions in England and Scotland were attended
by circumstances as painful, as barbarous, and in all respects as disgraceful,
as those occurring in Salem. Every species of torture seems
to have been resorted to; the principles of reason, justice, and humanity
were set at defiance, and the whole body of the people kept in a state of
the most fierce excitement against the sufferers. Indeed, there is nothing
more distressing in the contemplation of these sanguinary proceedings
than the spirit of deliberate and unmitigated cruelty with which they
were conducted. No symptoms of pity, compassion, or sympathy appear"
to have been manifested by the judges or the community."
Early in the seventeenth century Sir George Mackenzie
says that he went to examine some women who had confessed,and
that one of them, who was a "silly creature,"
told him, "under secresie,"" that she had not confessed because
she was guilty, but, being a poor creature, who
wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she
knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would