Taylor & Son's Northamptonshire Handbook.
and raving; and as they liv'd the devils true factors, so they resolutely dyed in his service to the terror of all people who were eye witnesses of their dreadful and amazing exits. So that being lang'd till they were almost dead, the fire was put to the straw, faggots, and other combustable matter till they were burnt to ashes." This mode of execution, utterly revolting as it was, seems to have been not uncommon at the period. A shoemaker named John Kurde, of Syresham, was burnt in the stone pits beyond the North Gate for denying transubstantiation; but this was in 1557, and cannot, therefore, be adduced as a parallel case. In 1631, however, Mrs. Lucas, of Moulton, was burnt for poisoning her husband; in 1645 a woman suffered the same punishment near Queen's Cross for the same offence; again in 1655, for the very same crime a woman was burnt at Boughton Green; in 1715 Elizabeth Treslar was hung and then burnt on Northampton Heath; and as late as 1735 husband poisoning led to the similar treatment of a woman named Elizabeth Lawson. Of this last execution we have a detailed account in a broadside printed at the Mercury office. The prisoner was drawn in a sledge to the Heath, a place near the town on the Kettering road; "and after she was lifted out of the sledge she privately requested an attending officer that she might be quite dead before the fire was lighted; and being fixed to the stake, and the rope about her neck for some small time, she desired again to be dispatch'd, and accordingly the stool was drawn from under her, and the fire being lighted as directed, in about two or three hours she was entirely consumed."[1] We refrain from dwelling further upon these repulsive particulars, but the system of punishment cannot but be regarded as strange for the period at which it prevailed.
We have spoken of the discouragement given to prosecutions for witchcraft by the example of Chief Justice Holt. His successor, Parker, put a check on the trial by water by his declaration at the Essex Summer Assizes, in 1712, that if it occasioned the death of the suspected witch, all the parties concerned would be deemed guilty of wilful murder. In spite of the law, however, there were cases in which it was appealed to for the satisfaction of ignorant and spiteful villagers. On the 30th of June, 1735, a poor shoemaker, of Naseby, named John Kinsman, was "conducted to a great pond in Kelmarsh lordship, and underwent the discipline of the ducking stool for being suspected as a wizard, and conspiring with the devil, his master, to prevent the lazy dairy woman's making good butter and cheese, &c."[2] Upwards of a thousand spectators were present. To prove the criminality of the accused, one Barwick, a spectator, also got into the water, alleging that he would be certain to sink before the wizard. The pity is that he didn't. The annalist says it was stated that "another dipping would have brought many of the undertakers of this political way of trying wizzards and witches to have made but an indifferent figure at the ensuing assizes."
What is here hinted at actually occurred only a few years later. An old woman named Osborne, living at Tring, was suspected of bewitching a neighbour, named Butterfield, because during the rebellion of 1745 he had refused a request of hers for buttermilk. To solve his doubts he sent for a white (or harmless) witch from Northampton, who confirmed him in his belief, and the cottage where Mrs. Osborne lived was watched by rustics, armed with pitchforks and staves, as a security against spirits. No action would have been taken, however, but that some speculators wanted to attract a crowd together for the sake of gain, and accordingly gave notice at the several market towns that there would be a ducking of witches at Longmarston, on the 22nd of April, 1751. A large number of persons collected on that day, and after a vain attempt by the parish officers to keep Mrs. Osborne and her husband out of their hands they were stripped, tied up in orthodox fashion, and put into the water. The old woman died from the effects of the cruelty, and a chimney sweep named Colley, who especially distinguished himself by his brutality towards her, was afterwards executed and hung in chains. This outrage led to the final repeal of James' celebrated Act against witchcraft.
But neither the risk of hanging nor the progress of enlightenment prevented occasional recourse to this favourite test at even later periods. The Northampton Mercury of August 1, 1785, records the fact that on "Thursday last a poor woman, named Sarah Bradshaw, of
- ↑ To show that a burning actually took place in 1705, it may be important to mention that there is an item of expense entered in the overseers' accounts for St. Giles's parish of the date, for faggots bought for the purpose. There would hardly be a necessity to mention the fact if the occurrence of burnings after 1700 had not been called in question.
- ↑ Northampton Mercury of the date.
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