THE CHETHAM SOCIETY.
VOL. VI.
PRINTED FOR THE CHETHAM SOCIETY.
M.DCCC.XLV.
The Chetham Society
Council.
EDWARD HOLME, Esq., M.D., President .
REV. RICHARD PARKINSON, B.D., Canon of Manchester, Vice-President.
THE HON. & VERY REV. WILLIAM HERBERT, Dean of Manchester .
GEORGE ORMEROD, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A., F.G.S., Sedbury Park .
SAMUEL HIBBERT WARE, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.E., Edinburgh .
REV. THOMAS CORSER, M.A.
REV. GEORGE DUGARD, M.A.
REV. C.G. HULTON, M.A.
REV. J. PICCOPE, M.A.
REV. F.R. RAINES, M.A., F.S.A., Milnrow Parsonage, near Rochdale .
JAMES CROSSLEY, Esq .
JAMES HEYWOOD, Esq ., F.R.S.
WILLIAM LANGTON, Esq., Treasurer .
WILLIAM FLEMING, Esq., M.D., Hon. Secretary .
coat of arms
POTTS'S
DISCOVERY OF WITCHES
In the County of Lancaster,
REPRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF
1613.
WITH AN
INTRODUCTION.
Were not every chapter of the history of the human mind too precious an inheritance to be willingly relinquished,for appalling as its contents may be, the value of the materials it may furnish may be inestimable,we might otherwise be tempted to wish that the miserable record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled. Most assuredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of the author of Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials for humiliation and abasement, he will find in the history of witchcraft in this country, from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, large and abundant materials, whether it affects the species or the individual. In truth, human nature is never seen in worse colours than in that dark and dismal review. Childhood, without any of its engaging properties, appears prematurely artful, wicked and cruel; woman, the victim of a wretched and debasing bigotry, has yet so little of the feminine adjuncts, that the fountains of our sympathies are almost closed; and man, tyrannizing over the sex he was bound to protect, in its helpless destitution and enfeebled decline, seems lost in prejudice and superstition and only strong in oppression. If we turn from the common herd to the luminaries of the age, to those whose works are the landmarks of literature and science, the reference is equally disappointing;
"The sun itself is dark
And silent as the moon
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."
We find the illustrious author of the Novum Organon sacrificing to courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the ingredients for a witches' ointment; The former a lawyermuch exercised in the affairs of menwhose learning was not merely umbraticwhose knowledge of history was most philosophic and exactof piercing penetration and sagacitytolerantliberal mindeddisposed to take no proposition upon trust, but to canvass and examine every thing for himself, and who had large views of human nature and societyin fact, the Montesquieu of the seventeenth century. The other, a physician and professor, sage, judicious, incredulous,
"The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,"
who had routed irrecoverably empiricism in almost every shapeParacelsiansAstrologersAlchemistsRosicruciansand who weighed and scrutinized and analyzed every conclusion, from excommunication and the power of the keys to the revolutions of comets and their supposed effects on empires, and all with perfect fearlessness and intuitive insight into the weak points of an argument. Yet, alas! for human infirmity. Bodin threw all the weight of his reasoning and learning and vivacity into the scale of the witch supporters, and made the "hell-broth boil and bubble" anew, and increased the witch furor to downright fanaticism, by the publication of his Demo-manie, a work in which
"Learning, blinded first and then beguiled,
Looks dark as ignorance, as frenzy wild;"
but which it is impossible to read without being carried along by the force of mind and power of combination which the author manifests, and without feeling how much ingenious sophistry can perform to mitigate and soften the most startling absurdity. His contemporary, Erastus, after all his victories on the field of imposition, was foiled by the subject of witchcraft at last. This was his pet delusionalmost the only one he cared not to discardlike the dying miser's last reserve:
"My manor, sir? he cried;
Not that, I cannot part with that,and died."
In his treatise De Lamiis, published in 1577, 8vo., he defends nearly all the absurdities of the system with a blind zealotry which in such a man is very remarkable. His book has accordingly taken its place on the same shelf with Sprenger, Remigius, Delrio, and De Lancre, and deserves insertion only in a list which has yet to be made out, and which if accurately compiled would be a literary curiosity, of the singularly illogical books of singularly able reasoners. What was left unaccomplished by the centurions of literature came ultimately from the strangest of all possible quarters; from the study of an humble pupil of the transmuter of metals and prince of mountebanks and quacksthe expounder of Reuchlin de verbo mirifico, and lecturer in the unknown tonguesthe follower of Trismegistuscursed with bell, book and candle, by every decorous Church in Christendomthe redoubted Cornelius Agrippa; who, if he left not to his pupil Wierus the secret of the philosopher's stone or grand elixir, seems to have communicated a treasure perhaps equally rare and not less precious, the faculty of seeing a truth which should open the eyes of bigotry and dispel the mists of superstition, which should stop the persecution of the helpless and stay the call for blood. If, in working out this virgin ore from the mine, he has produced it mixed up with the scoria of his master's Occult Philosophy; if he gives us catalogues of devils and spirits, with whose acquaintance we could have dispensed; if he pleads the great truth faintly, inconsistently, imperfectly, and is evidently unaware of the strength of the weapons he wields; these deductions do not the less entitle Wierus to take his place in the first rank of Humanity's honoured professors, the true philanthropists and noble benefactors of mankind.
In our own country, it may be curious and edifying to observe to whom we mainly owe those enlightened views on this subject, which might have been expected to proceed in their natural channel, but for which we look in vain, from the "triumphant heirs of universal praise," the recognized guides of public opinion, whose fame sheds such a lustre on our annals,the Bacons, the Raleighs, the Seldens, the Cudworths, and the Boyles.
