THE TREATMENT OF POTENTIAL WITCHES IN NORTH-EAST ENGLAND, C. 1649–1680

Jo Bath

The Witchcraft Act of 1604 made some clear and apparently straight- forward statements about the characteristic features of a witch, and the actions for which a criminal conviction could be brought. To paraphrase, the invocation or entertaining of spirits, necromancy, and malefi c magic that killed or wasted a person, constituted felonies. There was also a second rank of criminal charge, involving the fi nding of objects, love magic, magical damage to property or to the human body, the punishment here being a complex one as it increased on the second offence.1 As with all laws, however, theory was not neces- sarily refl ected in practice. The vast majority of ‘witches’ visible to the historian are so precisely because they were at some point facing the force of the law. In spite of this we can still see a wide range of attitudes towards those considered to possess supernatural power. This article considers the range of behaviours exhibited in the north-east of England by ordinary men and women interacting with those they considered capable of witchcraft; and the relationship between these behaviours and the new law.2 There is no real way to establish how common self-professed charmers were in the north-east, but it seems that those people known to have used one did not have to travel far, and they could be called upon to help in a wide range of circumstances.3 The commonest procedure that charmers were called on to perform was the sieve and shears, which was in use

1 1604 Witchcraft Act 1 Jas I, c. 12. See Appendix II. 2 The main evidence for this comes from informations presented to the assizes courts of Northumberland and Newcastle, which are substantially complete from 1655 to 1690—Public Record Offi ce, PRO ASSI 45/5/6–17. Durham as a palatinate dealt with its accusations of felony separately—some informations survive from the era, but none relate to witchcraft. Supplementary evidence comes from a few contemporary publications and other documents. 3 Peter Rushton, Women, ‘Witchcraft and Slander in Early Modern England: Cases from the Church Courts at Durham, 1560–1675’, Northern History, 18 (1982), 116–32, uses the surviving records of the church court of Durham to detail many examples of the use of cunning folk, and the punishments meted out. 130 jo bath to fi nd lost or stolen goods from the fi fteenth to the nineteenth century.4 Cunning folk also helped in cases of suspected bewitchment—some believed that the best way of combating magic was through the help of another magic practitioner. When an unnamed woman bewitched a child, the mother and her friend resolved to ask for the help of Margaret Stotherd, “a reputed charmer for such distempers”. Stotherd “put her mouth to the child’s mouth and made such chirping and sucking that the mother of the said child thought that she had sucked the heart of it out and was sore affrighted” and then transplanted an illness to an animal which subsequently died. Despite this unusual method, and cost in terms of livestock, no action was taken at the time—although the incident was remembered in years to come.5 Another testimony involving Stotherd also demonstrates the ambiva- lent position of the charmer. She was asked—via a third party (osten- sibly for reasons of practicality rather than caution)—to lift a curse on milk. Stotherd then visited the affl icted farm to offer more help, apparently going out of her way to be useful, and refusing more than “a little of anything” in payment. The testimony is entirely positive towards Stotherd but for one thing—at the end, the witness allegedly told her that she would never have anything to do with charms again. Whether this was a true change of heart about magic (easily done, now the cheesemaking had resumed), or merely a statement made with an eye to the listening justice, who after all was gathering evidence for a malefi cium trial, we cannot say. Either way, the previously positive testimony seems to jar, demonstrating that no transaction was entirely straightforward or risk free.6 It made sense to treat a cunning man or woman with caution, and keep an eye on his or her behaviour—and this very caution could be self-reinforcing. Mark Humble walked past a woman “formerly suspected of witchcraft”, and this suspicion led him to look back at her over his shoulder, and see that she “(held) her hands towards his back”. This does not seem terribly frightening, but when he fell ill soon after he

4 For example, the 1567 confession of Alice Swan, Depositions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings, ed. by James Raine, Surtees Society, 21 (1845), p. 117. 5 Eneas MacKenzie, An Historical topographical and descriptive view of the county of Nor- thumberland and those parts of county Durham situated north of the river Tyne with Berwick upon Tweed (Newcastle, 1825), reprints the informations of the Margaret Stotherd case (which are otherwise lost), v. ii, pp. 34–36. For a similar transference, also not prosecuted at the time, see PRO ASSI 45/6/1/167. 6 Mackenzie, pp. 34–36.