Famous Imposters 21

Famous Imposters 21

At length he died--of poison, but by whom administered did not

transpire at the inquest. For the rest of her life Miss Bingham,

who was now old, lived under the suspicion of being a witch. Her

ostensible occupation was as a teller of fortunes and a healer of

odd diseases--occupations which singly or together make neither for

personal esteem or general confidence. Her public appearances were

usually attended by hounding and baiting by the rabble; and whenever

anything went wrong in her neighbourhood the blame was, with overt

violence of demeanour, attributed to her. She did not even receive any

of the respect usually shown to a freeholder--which she was, having

by her father’s death become owner of a house which he had built for

himself with his own hands on waste ground. Her only protector was that

usual favourite of witches, a black cat, whose devotion to her and

whose savage nature, accompanied by the public fear shown for an animal

which was deemed her “familiar,” caused the mob to flee before its

appearance.

 

The tragedy and mystery of her life were even exceeded by those of her

death. When, having been missed for some time, her house was entered

she, attended only by her cat and with her crutch by her side, was

found crouching beside the cold ashes of her extinct fire. In the

tea-pot beside her was some liquid, seemingly brewed from herbs.

Willing hands administered some of this to the black cat, whose hair,

within a very short time, fell off. The cat forthwith died. Then the

clamour began. Very many people suddenly remembered having seen,

after her last appearance in public, the Devil entering her house. No

one, however, had seen him come out again. What a pity it was that no

veracious scribe or draughtsman was present in the crowd which had

noticed the Devil’s entry to the house. In such case we might have got

a real likeness of His Satanic Majesty--a thing which has long been

wanted--and the opportunities of obtaining which are few.

 

One peculiar fact is recorded of Madame Damnable’s burial; her body was

so stiff from the _rigor mortis_--or from some other cause--that the

undertakers had to break her limbs before they could put her body in

the coffin.

 

 

 

 

F. MATTHEW HOPKINS

 

 

There is one thing more evil than oppression in the shape of

wrong-doing, and that is oppression in the guise of good. Tennyson,

in one of his poems, speaks of the dishonest pharmacist who “pestles

a poison’d poison.” This is a refinement of iniquity; a poisoned

poison is not even an enlargement of evil but a structural change

eliminating the intention of good and replacing it with evil intent.

Witches were quite bad enough; or rather they would have been, had that

which was alleged of them been true. But a man who got his living by

creating suspicion regarding them and following it out to the practical

consummation of a hideous death, was a thousand times worse. To-day

such a functionary as a witch-finder exists, it is true; but only

amongst the very lowest and most debased savages. And it is only by the

recorded types made known to us that it is possible even to guess at

the iniquity of their measures, the vileness of their actions. In the

full tally of the two centuries during which the witch mania existed

in England, it is impossible to parallel the baseness of the one man

who distinguished himself in this loathsome occupation. The facts of

his history speak for themselves. Matthew Hopkins was born in Suffolk

early in the seventeenth century. He was the son of a minister, James

Hopkins of Wenham. He was brought up for the law, and when enrolled

as an attorney, practised in Ipswich; but after a while he moved to

Manningtree where, after he had given up the law, he took to the

calling of witch-finder, being the first person in England to follow

that honourable trade.

 

If he had had no suitable opportunities of earning an honest livelihood

and been graced with no education, some excuse might have been offered

for his despicable calling. But when we remember that he passed his

youth in a household practising religion, and was a member of a learned

profession, it is difficult to find words sufficiently comprehensive

for the fit __EXPRESSION__ of our natural indignation against him. If

picturesque profanity were allowable, it might be well applied to

this despicable wretch and his nefarious labours. In no imaginable

circumstances could there possibly be anything to be said in mitigation

of his infamy. When we think that the whole ritual of oppression was

in his own hands--that he began with lying and perjury, and ended with

murder; that he showed, throughout, ruthless callousness for the mental

and physical torture of great numbers of the most helpless class of

the community, the poor, the weak, the suffering, the helpless and

hopeless; that when once his foul imagination had consecrated any poor

wretch to destruction, or his baleful glance had unhappily lighted

on some unsuspecting victim there was for such only the refuge of

death, and that by some means of prolonged torture, we cannot find

any hope or prospect even in evil dreams of the nether world, of any

adequate punishment for his dreadful sins. When we remember that this

one man--if man he can be called--was in himself responsible for what

amounted to the murder of some two hundred women whom he pursued to the

death, the magnitude of his guilt can be guessed but not realised.

 

He occupied three whole years in his fell work; and in those years,

1644, 1645 and 1646, he caused a regular reign of terror throughout

the counties of Huntingdon, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. He had a gang

of his own to help him in his gruesome work of “discovering” witches;

amongst whom was a wretch called John Stern and--to her shame--a woman,

whose name is unrecorded. These three had a sort of mock assize of

their own. They made regular tours of discovery, at a charge of twenty

shillings for expenses at each place they visited. There appears to

have been a fee paid or exacted for each witch “bagged”; and such was

his greed that after a while he actually lowered the price. In 1645,

which was perhaps his “best” year, the price declined to a shilling

a head. Hopkins and his gang took comfort, however, from the fact

that the industry was a growing one. The trade had only been initiated

in 1644, and already in a year’s time he had in one day procured

the execution of eighteen alleged witches; and at the end of that

assize, after the gaol delivery had been effected, one hundred and

twenty suspects still awaited trial. In the skilful hands of Matthew

Hopkins, trial was only a step on the road to certain execution by one

of the forms in use. Here came in, not only the witchfinder’s legal

knowledge, but also his gift of invention--the latter being used in the

formulation of so-called “tests” which were bound to be effective. Of

these the simplest was the water test. The subject’s thumbs were tied

together and she was then thrown into water of sufficient depth. If she

did not drown, it was taken as a proof of guilt; and she was hanged

by form of law. In some cases, as an alternative, she was burned. If

she did not stand the test her friends had the pleasure of knowing

that she was pronounced to have died innocent. In any case there was

no further trouble with her. Such was the accuracy as well as the

simplicity of similar “tests” that, in the twenty years previous to the

Restoration, between three and four thousand alleged witches perished

in England from one cause or another. Hopkins professed to be both

just and merciful. He seemed generally willing to afford a “test” to

the accused; though, truth to tell, the result was always the same.

In such cases the test was eminently calculated to evoke confession,

and such confession, no matter how ridiculous or extravagant it

might be, was simply a curved road to the rope or the torch instead

of a straight one. One of these pleasing “tests” was to place the

old woman--they were all women and all old--sitting cross-legged on

a stool or table where she could be well watched. She was generally

kept in that position under inspection, without food or water, for

twenty-four hours. At the end of that time such resolution as had

remained disappeared, and in the vain blind hope of some change for the

better, some alleviation however slight of the grinding misery, of the

agony of body and mind and soul, they confessed. And such confessions!

The very consideration of such of them as now remain in the cold

third-person method of a mere recorder, almost makes one weep; there

is hardly a word that is not almost a certificate of character. With

every desire to confess--for such was the last hope of pleasing their

torturers--their utter ignorance of confessional matter is almost a

proof of innocence.

 

Just imagine the scene--a village or hamlet, or the poorer quarter

of a small country town with squalid surroundings, marking a poverty

which in this age has no equal; a poor, old, lonely woman whose long

life of sordid misery, of hunger and the diseases that huddle closely

around want, hopeless, despairing, recognising her fate through the

prolonged physical torture with which age and infirmity rendered her

unable even to attempt to cope. Round her gathered, in a sickly ring,

a crowd of creatures debased by the exercise of greed and cruelty to a

lower level than the beasts. Their object is not to inquire, to test,

to judge; but only to condemn, to wreck, to break, to shatter. Some

of them, she realises even in her agony, are spurred on by the same

zeal which animated the cruelty of followers of Ignatius in the grim

torture-chambers of the Inquisition.

 

The poor dazed, suffering old creature, racked with pains prolonged

beyond endurance, tries to rally such glimmerings of invention as

are possible to her untaught, unfed mind; but finds herself at every

failure fluttering helplessly against a wall of spiritual granite which

gives back not even an echo to her despairing cry. At last she comes

to that stage where even fright and fear have no standing room, and

where the blank misery of suffering ceases to be effective. Then the

last flicker of desire for truth or rectitude of purpose dies away, and

she receives in feeble acquiescence such suggestions as are shouted

or whispered to her, in the hope that by accepting them she may win a

moment’s ease of body or mind, even if it be her last on earth. Driven

beyond mortal limits her untutored mind gives way; and with the last

remnants of her strength she yields her very soul to her persecutors.

The end does not matter to her now. Life has no more to offer her--even

of pain, which is the last conscious tie to existence. And through

it all, ghoul-like, watching and waiting for the collapse, whilst

outwardly he goes through the mechanical ritual of prayer, we see in

the background the sinister figure of the attorney, preparing in his

mind such evidence as he may procure or invent for his work of the next

day.

 

It needs the imagination of a Dante to consider what should be the

place of such an one in history, and any eternity of punishment that

that imagination could suggest must be inadequate. Even pity itself

which rests on sympathy and is kin to the eternal spirit of justice,

would have imagined with satisfaction the wretched soul going through a

baleful eternity clinging in perpetual agony of fear to the very King

of Terrors.