The Strange and wonderful history of Mother Shipton

I am afraid I have been very unwell and ended up in hospital this week, so the post on flying witches hasn’t been finished. So in the interest of getting a post up on time (while also getting my prescribed rest) I am instead posting a small piece of analysis which was originally part of my doctoral thesis. Although interesting in and of itself, it did not in the end drive home my thesis’ main argument, and was therefore taken out of my thesis earlier this year. But I hope you may find this short exploration of The Strange and wonderful history of Mother Shipton, by Richard Head, moderately interesting. Apologies for the change of plans, but the flying witches will be here next year,  in February. 

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I have argued throughout this thesis that there is an interaction between elite debates and popular representations of witchcraft. Though the details of the Restoration debates on witchcraft are beyond the scope of this thesis, the sense of their scope and some of their key ideas can be found in popular texts and trials. One of the most frequently re-published was The Strange and wonderful history of Mother Shipton, by Richard Head, which was first published in 1677 – the same year as John Webster’s assault[1] on Glanvill’s defence of witchcraft beliefs and trials.[2]

Head’s narrative centres on a young Mother Shipton who had ‘made a Hellish Contract’ with the Devil.[3] The ‘Strange and wonderful history’ Head relates has many features which accord with the ‘unusual’ demonology of the East Anglia trials, and also illustrates the confusion and contention over what witches and the Devil could and could not do.

Head’s The Life and death of Mother Shipton claims that Mother Shipton’s ‘hellish contract’ was a form of marriage, and that following her agreement theirs was a wedding ceremony between the witch and the Devil. This work recalled Henry More’s Antidote against Atheism and its rationalisation of the Devil’s cold body.[4] This 1653 commentary on the feeling of the Devil when he physically interacted with witches was also discussed in Head’s The life and deth of Mother Shipton, where Shipton reports to her midwife that the Devil was ‘cold as ice’.[5]

Head’s account of Mother Shipton continues on from their wedding night to discuss how Shipton’s liaison with the Devil was uncovered when she became pregnant to him. She was ‘discovered by the great swelling of her Belly, to be with Child’.[6] Head reports that ‘The people could not tell what to think, or who should be the Father, concluding that none would be so vile and wicked, as to have Copulation with a Devil incarnate; neither could they believe a Spirit had either desire or power, to generate with any humane Creature’.[7]

Although Shipton, in the narrative, admits her child was begotten ‘by no mortal Wight’, she is not believed. As she cannot provide bail two ‘Gentlemen as they appeared by their habits’ arrive to free her, but as soon as their bail is accepted and Mother Shipton is set free, they vanish.[8]

It is easy to see in this narrative a reflection of the demonological debates of the era, especially in terms of the questions people had about whether the Devil did or did not have copulation with witches, and his ability to take physical form. Head’s discussion of the contestation of witch beliefs therefore reflected the debate playing out in demonological and theological works in the late seventeenth-century.[9]

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[1] John Webster, The displaying of supposed witchcraft wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of deceivers and impostors and divers persons under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy, but that there is a corporeal league made betwixt the Devil and the witch ... is utterly denied and disproved, (1677).

[2] See Joseph Glanvill, A philosophical endeavour towards the defence of the being of vvitches and apparitions. In a letter to the much honoured, Robert Hunt, esq; by a member of the Royal Society, (1666) [later re-pblished in several editions, including as Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions in two parts: the first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence (1681)].

[3] Note, Mother Shipton was widely discussed in this period. Not only were there several publications on her during the Civil War, but she was also a matter of discussion, according to the diary of Samue Pepys, in the Royal Family and was of particular import during and after the Great Fire of London. See Samuel Pepys, Samuel Pepys Diary “Entry for Saturday 20 October 1666”. See also ‘Mother Shipton’ [Anon], A true coppy of Mother Shiptons last prophesies as they were taken from one Joane Waller in the year of our Lord 1625 who died in March last, 1641 being ninety foure yeares of age of whom Mother Shipton had prophesided that she should live to heare of wars within this kingdome but not to see them, also predicting other wonderfull events that should befall in the clymate in these times, with two other strange prophesies threunto annexed, all which were never published before, (1642); [Anon], Fourteene strange prophesies: besides Mother Shiptons, and Mr. Salmarsh, predicting wonderfull events to betide these yeares of calamity, in this climate, whereof divers are already come to passe, worthy of observation, (1648); Head, The life and death of Mother Shipton.

[4] M2639 Henry More, An antidote against atheisme, or, An appeal to the natural faculties of the minde of man, whether there be not a God, (London: Prnted by Roger Daniel, 1653): p.138

[5] Head, The Life and death of Mother Shipton,  p. 3.

[6] Head, The Life and death of Mother Shipton,  p. 9.

[7] Head, The Life and death of Mother Shipton,  p. 9.

[8] Head, The Life and death of Mother Shipton,  p. 9.

[9] See Jonathan Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640-1789 (2011); and  Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformations, c.1650-1750, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Wiccans and Margaret Murray’s ‘Witch-Cult’ in Popular Culture

 

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The representation of witches and witchcraft I will discuss today are amongst those I personally find the least interesting. Primarily this is because there were no ‘wiccans’ in early modern Europe, yet I am with some regularity asked about what Margaret Murray called the “Witch-cult” in early modern Europe.[1] The idea that the modern iterations of magic, occultism, Satanism, and wicca have ancient antecedents, or have existed as an enduring culture in just plain wrong. As with so many things we think of as being 'old' or 'traditional', they are recent inventions which use ancient ‘trappings’ to legitimise them.

In this post I will argue that most pop culture representations of a female-dominated mystical religion/magical practise which is primarily benign in nature, owe their underlying precepts to Margaret Murray, and to feminist interpretations of witchcraft – some of whom still continue to trot out thismyth to attack ‘the patriarchy’ and the forces of social conformity. And that the use f these ideas in popular culture continues to influence some of the representation of witchcraft we read in books, and see on our television screens or at the movies, even now.

The most notable popular culture outcome of these ideas was the TV series Charmed (1998-2006). Its premise was that the Halliwell sisters were part of an ancient magical family, and were supposed to use their powers for good, to defend and protect the human race.

The series placed the three sisters inter-relationship to one another at the heart of a female-driven series, which fed nicely into 1990s girl-power movement, and embraced (or at least used) some aspects of Third-Wave Feminism. It also gelled well with the other significant contemporary pop-culture supernatural series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).

Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were joined by Sabrina the Teenage Witch, creating a triumvirate of supernatural shows (each in a different genre, and aiming at a slightly different audience) but all containing characters called witches, who were seen as benign forces on the side of the good guys(for the most part, although going ‘evil’ is used fairly often in these style of shows, for example see ‘Dark Willow’) .

Witches as persecuted outcasts also made an appearance in both the novel and film of Practical Magic (1995 and 1998, respectively), when two sisters find that only together can they overcome an ancient curse, and find happiness within a community that has rejected and despised them. The themes of sisterhood, and the way in which they must work together are echoed by Charmed’s premise, though the genre differences are quite stark.

Both Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been the focus of feminist discussion and have been studied by academics. I don’t intend today to examine those shows further,  not only because a lot already been said about them, but because I want to look at the use of wiccans as the descendant of Murray's fertility cult outside of thse two Tv shows.  Today I want to look in depth at an example of wiccans as 'witches' in a piece of popular culture which isn’t consciously attempting to be either ‘girl-power’ or feminist minded.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series has come in for quite a lot of serious criticism of incidences of casualmisogyny, usually as an outcome of the main character’s POV. It is an urban fantasy series, centring on a wizard who is aware that others within his world view some of his behaviour as somewhat misogynist (as obviously, do may of his readers). Notably the wiccans in the Dresden Files appear as a victimised group in only one book, White Night (Dresden Files, Book Nine).

 

 

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In White Night, the hero of the series Harry Dresden, is brought in to examine an apparent suicide. He soon discovers that the killer has used some of the murdered woman’s ‘sacred water’ from her holy chalice on her shrine (no Da Vinci Code jokes intended… I think) to inscribe Exodus 22:18:

Murphy furrowed her brow and stared at it. ‘A Bible verse?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know that one,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

I nodded. ‘It’s one that stuck in my head: “Suffer not a witch to live.”’[2]

Dresden then explain to police officer who uses him as a Private Detective-Wizard-Consultant, that while not all ‘wiccans’ are witches (that is practise actual magic), their beliefs still form the basis of a religion.

What follows is one of the more interesting interpretations of religion and witchcraft in urban fantasy, after Murphy points out that the biblical reference seems pretty straight forwards in its meaning:

‘I dunno. “Suffer not a witch to live.” Seems fairly clear.’

‘Out of context, but clear,’ I said. ‘Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner’s negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.’

Murphy snorted.

‘Also keep in mind that the original text was written thousands of years ago. In Hebrew. The actual word that they used in that verse describes someone who casts spells that do harm to others. There was a distinction, in that culture, between harmful and beneficial magic.

‘By the time we got to the Middle Ages, the general attitude within the faith was that anyone who practiced any kind of magic was automatically evil. There was no distinction between white and black magic. And when the verse came over to English, King James had a thing about witches, so “harmful caster of spells” just got translated to “witch.”’

‘Put that way, it sounds like maybe someone took it out of context,’ Murphy said. ‘But you’d get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word.’

‘I thought God gave everyone free will,’ I said. ‘Which presumably – and evidently – includes the freedom to be incorrect when translating one language into another.’

‘Stop making me think,’ Murphy said. ‘I’m believing over here.’[3]

Butcher was far from the first fantasy writer to note a relationship between his own work and the actual events of the early modern witch trials. For example, Harry Potter engaged with the history of witch trials through Harry’s study of the book A History of Magic. In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is writing an essay which cited the history of a woman known as Wendelin the Weird who enjoyed the effects of being burned alive (she used a charm so that it tickled instead of burning) so much, that she allowed herself to be caught repeatedly.

 

But very few books, TV series, or films go as far Butcher does, in trying to actually discuss the problems of belief, tolerance, and interaction between the magical and the mystical in the present day, and relating it to historical events, ideas and theology (the series also includes allusions to Dresden being a descendant of Merlin, and one of his allies in the series is dressed like a modern day Knight Templar).

 

Of course, the basis of the conversation I quoted above is problematic, as theology would suggest any use of magic magic (as opposed to God-granted miracles) is wrong. Nor was it solely because of King James that the term witch (with all its pejorative and gendered meanings) was used in the English vernacular. In fact each vernacular translation uses similar words, for example an early Spanish vernacular bible uses the term ‘hechicera’, the later French translation by Louis Segonde had ‘magicienne’, while an even later Italian translation in 1927, used the term ‘Strega’, and many German versions have used the term ‘Zauberinnen’ - all of which are terms for female users of magic.

To return to the way Butcher uses witches of the Margaret Murray-type, my point is that although Butcher’s narrative denies the ‘wiccans’ in his narrative their agency by making them victims of a sadistic vampire who feeds on despair, he uses the same rhetoric that led the character of Xander  in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to sing:

'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

Nor is Butcher alone in picking up on this concept and using it in a very different context. Similar ideas permeate several recent supernatural works, including Angelina Jolie’s titular character in Maleficent (2014), which is a paean to female virtue overcoming hatred and male greed, with rape metaphors thrown in for good measure. While Maleficent is not technically a witch, but rather a fairy, her appearance (and that of the cartoon character on whom she was based) owe a great deal to the iconography of witches (and the original cartoon character was spiteful, vengeful and jealous of young Aurora in a mode familiar to readers of last week’s entry).

There is so much more to say on this topic. For example Butcher’s wiccans only appeared in a later book, while one of his earlier works featured a vengeful trio of ex-wives (some of whom were pornographic film actresses. Yes, really) murdering potential lovers of their husband (or ex-husband) under the influence of a vampire (not the despair-feeding variety, but the kind that feeds off sexual energy. Yes, really).

Butcher’s Dresden Files  books therefore manage to use and abuse both extremes of the witch trope: promiscuous, greedy and vengeful in Blood Rites, and a sisterhood of essentially good people, who are also victims in White Night. Later these minor practitioners who are also wiccans become part of Dresden’s wider network of allies, though they have yet to play any important role.

But what does this use of two kinds of witches, one bad one good, have to do with witches in early modern Europe? You could possibly argue that ‘good witches’ in modern fiction play the role of Cunning Folk, as sources of magical lore who can also perform minor acts of magic (such characters have appeared in other series, for example Vorna in David Gemmell’s Rigante series).

But Butcher purposefully cites wiccan as separate from the magic practitioners who were persecuted in early modern times:

[“]Three hundred years ago, it made cream turn sour, disturbed animals, and tended to encourage minor skin infections in wizards. Gave them blemishes and moles and pockmarks.”[4]

In other words it was practitioners, and there is no mention of wiccan pre-existing modern iterations of the wiccan religion (in other words, this is a modern development).

So what are we to make of this late nineties moment, when witches were good, part of a sisterhood, and descended from those who were persecuted during the early modern period? Was this just a moment of cultural alignment, between a popular version of feminism in ‘girl-power’, and the interweaving notions of wiccans on the one-hand, and Margaret Murray on the other gelled? And what will its consequences be?

Witches of all kinds are present on TV, in movies, and books. Since the successes of Harry Potter and Twilight a lot of authors have written series for children, young adults and adults, that revolve around the supernatural, and are set in the current era. On the big screen Nicholas Cage has appeared in two horror/adventure movies, The Last Witch-Hunter (2015), Season of the Witch (2011) which revolve around witchcraft, and on TV there are American Horror Story: Coven, and The Witches of East End on TV.  Nor are they alone with series like Game of Thrones, taking high fantasy from ‘nerd’ to ‘cool’, and subverting witch tropes in the process.

While The Witches of East End features a female-centric cast, which features two pairs of witches who are sisters, most representations of witches in recent media have tended to be at least questionable characters, if not outright villains. Some would undoubtedly argue that this is a backwards step for feminism, but I am left unsure if building a positive female character on a basically flawed historical theory (that witches were part of a female-dominated fertility cult of pagan origin) was ever a good idea.

 

* I apologise for this post being a day late, but my internet provider has had some sort of ongoing issue, so my internet connection is on the fritz. As a result I have spent unmentionable hours going through "push one, push two, push three" on the phone, and I have found that when you actually reach a human being they are inevitably from the wrong department, so they transfer you to someone else who always want to ask if you have tried turning the device off and on...

 

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[1] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921); see also Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The Divine King of England, (1954).

[2] Jim Butcher, White Night (Dresden Case Files): p. 8. Note, I personally still very much enjoy these books in spite of needing to roll my eyes at the main character’s sexism. Which is, in my opinion, is significantly less sexist than most stand-up comedy, and quite a few prime time TV shows of the past decade – hell the past few years. Nor is it as un-self-aware as the sexism of Patrick Rothfuss.

[3] Butcher, White Night, pp. 10-11

[4] Jim Butcher, Cold Days: A Dresden Files Novel (The Dresden Files) (p. 184).

The Long Shadows of Montague Summers and Margaret Murray

Over the next few weeks I want to discuss some modern representations of witchcraft or uses of the term witch. I want to compare and contrast them with early modern examples. In order to do this, I want to briefly air some of my thoughts on the figure of ‘the witch’ in modern culture. I have been working on a piece on witches in a television series for publication elsewhere, and the process has caused some related thoughts to coalesce.

It could be witches
Some evil witches -
Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

~ Xander Harris, “I’ve Got a Theory”, from  “Once More with Feeling”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 7

In the early twentieth century two authors wrote a series of works which argued that the idea of a secret cult within Christian Europe - often found in early modern witchcraft tracts and trials - had a basis in fact. The eccentric author and clergyman, Montague Summers believed that ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and witches were real.[i] While the folklorist Margaret Murray argued that early modern witches were part of a pre-Christian fertility cult.[ii]

Though this idea has been roundly dismissed by modern witchcraft historians,[iii] the idea still has great popular currency, not least because it suits a number of different agendas.

From genre fiction, to popular television shows, to modern wiccans, some feminist authors, and some atheists, the idea that witchcraft trials were the persecution of a religious minority by an oppressive Christian church is a rather appealing idea. Modern Wiccans and Satanists often believe their traditions extend from antiquity, not that they were inventions of the last two centuries (like so many other ‘traditions’), so calling those who died during ‘theBurning Times’ their sisters and brothers has some appeal.

In America associations between witchcraft and Satanism remain fairly strong compared to other countries, and modern day panics about satanic cults and secret religious societies are still a recurring theme of both public life and popular culture. Although I have noted another correlation with another popular conspiracy: alien abduction. For some people it seems that the Devil has been replaced by little green (or grey) men who may or may not be here to extract you organs, and may or may not be in league with Uncle Sam (their very own modern day Antichrist).

For some feminists the ‘gendercide’ of witchcraft remains a rallying cry against the patriarchy. While I am myself a feminist, I do wish people would at least attempt to get their facts right before explaining to me (again) that a million women burned, or that no men died in the witch trials. Or, worst of all, that witches were members of Margaret Murray’s female fertility cult.

And some atheists have pointed to the European witch trials as part of Christianity's oppression of those who think differently, or are different. Quite often you can find these ideas connected to one another, with the oppressive church targeting women, who were the last remnant of an oppressed religion with its own healing practices.

For Joss Whedon’s TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) witches got one of their many outings in genre television in the 1990s. The first appearance of a witch on the show was an evil, deceitful, and vain mother. But regular characters who had ‘wicca’ powers were, for the most part, portrayed more favourably.

Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

Is part of a verse from song “I’ve Got a Theory” in the musical episode “Once More with Feeling”, which captures the ‘wicca-fertility-cult/real-witches-that-were/are-empowered-women’ concept that underlay some representations of witches in the 1990s. This idea has ongoing resonance for some people, and continues to affect the way in which some people conceive of men and women killed for witchcraft in the early modern period.

 Around this time of year I am regularly reminded of David Mitchell's amusing discussion of the way in which distance removes the sting of actual historical events. Mitchell pointed out that the term "Rape and Pillage" has become an amusing term even though we would not find either rape or pillage amusing today. I don't wish to sound like a stick in the mud, nor do I find most genre depictions of witchcraft in anyway offensive. But occasionally I find the way people casually make some correlation between their own situation with that of early modern people who actually died for a crime that most likely they didn't commit (diabolism), or which from my point of view, they couldn't have committed (maleficium), somewhat problematic.  

I cannot count the number of times this concept has been raised by people when I tell them about the topic of my dissertation. In the past I have occasionally directed people to a few places where they might find facts to replace common misconceptions.

This post is not meant as a replacement for that, but as background for future posts on modern representations of witchcraft, particularly in genre fiction and television between now and Halloween.

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[i] Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, (1956).

[ii] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921); Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The Divine King of England, (1954).

[iii] See James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, (1995): pp. 7-8; Brian P. Levack,  The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (2006): pp. 19, 294-295.

Daemoni, etiam vera dicenti, non est credendum

Even when the Devil tells the truth, he must not be believed.

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One of the interesting Latin phrases my father taught me was Daemoni, etiam vera dicenti, non est credendum. The idea that the Devil is so deceitful that even his use of the truth is tainted by association has always interested me. This was an idea the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins seems to have agreed with, arguing that the Devil used facts over which he had no power (the truth) to deceive witches into believing they had actually harmed their victims with his help.

In 2014 I attended the Early Modern Women, Religion, and the Body conference at Loughborough University. At that conference I presented a paper which focused on how on Matthew Hopkins used ideas found in earlier demonological works to underpin his arguments on the Devil’s deceit of witches in The discovery of vvitches (1647).

I argued that a key passage in Hopkins text described how when witches, the Devil’s ‘deare and nearest children’,[i] believed that the Devil was granting their desire to harm their enemies, he was actually tricking them into worshipping him in return for the deaths of people who were already ill and going to die in the near future:

‘[The Devil] is of a long standing, above 6000. yeers, then he must needs be the best Scholar in all knowledges of arts and tongues, & so have the best skill in Physicke, judgment in Physiognomie, and knowledge of what disease is reigning or predominant in this or that mans body, (and so for cattell too) by reason of his long experience. This subtile tempter knowing such a man lyable to some sudden disease, (as by experience I have found) as Plurisie, Imposthume, &c. he resorts to divers Witches; if they know the man, and seek to make a difference between the Witches and the party[.]’[ii]

This recourse to the idea that the Devil understands human beings and their natures, and has studied then for his work also appears in the earlier text of George Gifford. However for Gifford, his learning is not just about the Witch’s victim, but about the witch herself:

‘WHen Satan at the first enterprised the ruine and destruction of man, he did not vnaduisedly set vp on the worke, but in great subtilty chose him a fit instrument for the purpose, euen the serpent who was more subtill then any beast of the field. He is now an old serpent, & long practised, and hath increased his subtilty by much approoued experience. He doth not nowe attempt his wicked worke, but [...] all y^[...] fittest waies & meanes that hée can: hée doth obserue time & place, with all other circumstances: and looke of what sort soeuer his worke shalbe, he séeketh co~uenient persons as matter to work vpon; he chuseth out fit instruments to worke withall·when he raiseth vp some heresie to destroy y^[...] true faith, which is with subtill shew to be defended: he suggesteth not the same into the minde of a blunt vnlearned foole which is able to say litle: but if it be possible, he espieth out a subtil minde, which is also proud, vaine glorious, & stiffe to maintain any purpose[.]’[iii]

The idea that the Devil tailors his temptation to the victim was a common theme, and my own favourite discussion on who the Devil chooses, and how he them fits his temptation to them, comes from King James VI & I’s Daemonologie. For King James there were witches who did not need to be deceived, as they were of the “grosser sorte, [who]runnes directlie to the Deuill for ambition or desire of gaine”.[iv] In my thesis I argue that:

King James did not see this plain and knowing contract as the only way in which people came into the Devil’s service, also citing two other forms. In some cases ignorant people could be deceived by the Devil into magical practices, without understanding that doing so was apostasy and diabolism.^[v] And some learned men were tempted by knowledge into attempting sorcery, believing that they could control the Devil. In both cases King James emphasised the Devil’s use of deceit, and his desire to entice both the learned and the ignorant into the same grave error as the wilful, sinful witch: making a contract with the Devil that damned their soul.^[vi] So for King James, witches could be divided into the sinfully greedy, the woefully ignorant, and the learned who, through pride, were deceived by the Devil.

The importance of the Devil’s understanding of human desires and the human body are central to Hopkins’ work. Therefore I have always argued that Hopkins’ The discovery of vvitches presents a complex demonological argument about the corporeality of the Devil, and his interaction with witches and the bewitched. And though he only cites James VI & I, it is easy to trace many of his ideas in George Gifford, William Perkins and Richard Bernard’s seminal demonological texts. Hopkins brief (comparatively it was extremely short for a treatise on demonology or the account of a witchfinder) work presents its reader with a mixture of popular beliefs around familiars, and elite demonology.[vii] There are several signs in both Hopkins’ and Stearne’s pamphlets that they consulted with demonological texts, magistrates and others in formulating their method of finding witches, for example at one point Hopkins claims his methods in one case were ‘upon command from the Justice’. ^[viii]

These links to others place Hopkins and Stearne firmly within English demonology – not without as claimed by Wallace Notestein.[ix]

At Loughborough I pointed out that Hopkins himself opened his pamphlet with the injunction from Exodus 22:18 cited by both Gifford and Richard Bernard: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, and likewise follows the paths laid down by earlier demonologists in ascribing to the Devil only a limited role in God’s work:

‘God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt, and the devill doth play many times the deluder and impostor with these Witches, in perswading them that they are the cause of such and such a murder wrought by him with their consents, when and indeed neither he nor they had any hand in it[.]’

Unlike John Gaule’s assessment that the witchfinders and those who employed them had no respect for God’s providence, Hopkins was demonstrating an understanding of how the world was supposed to work, with the Devil’s ‘power’, such as it was, primarily lying in deception and illusion. When Hopkins argues that “God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt”, he does not mean physical hurt, in terms of acts of maleficium or harmful magic, rather he means that the Devil is allowed to do much hurt to the witch.

This idea came to mind when I recently read Verena Thiele’s “Demonising Macbeth” in Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage (2014), which argues that the demonic, tangible, transferable evil of the witches is contrasted with the temporary, localised evil of the human Macbeth who is a ‘bad man’ made worse by the influence of the witches. As I was reading her work I was struck by the way in which the three witches seem to do more than represent evil, they seem to embody the Devil (an inversion of the Holy Trinity?). While Macbeth himself stands in the place of the early modern witch. Macbeth is a bad man whose faults are manipulated. But the witches use truths (and half-truths) to deceive Macbeth, and to engender his ‘fall’.

This is an idea I am just wandering around the edges of – and I wager there may well be someone in the vast wealth of Shakespearian literature who has thought of it before me! Yet it seems to be playing on my mind, and I keep returning to Macbeth’s terrible declaration in Act V, that nothing can harm him because he has been told it cannot.

‘Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:

'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman

Shall e'er have power upon thee.'[x]  

But Birnam did come to Dunsinane, and Malcolm was not ‘born of woman’. The witches (as the Devil) knew how to manipulate Macbeth, knew how he would interpret their prophecies, and so they used they used truth to deceive him.

For Hopkins, the Devil used ‘the truth’ of a person’s illness to deceive a witch into believing she was able to cause physical harm to another human being through him. Hopkins representation of the Devil’s knowledge and ability to deceive, and its interaction with the witch’s malice, vanity, and pride, has become one of the key points I keep in mind when I think about witchcraft in early modern England.

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[i] Matthew Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, (1645): p. 9.

[ii] Matthew Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, p. 9.

[iii] George Gifford, A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by vvitches and sorcerers (1587): p. 32.

[iv] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three books, p. 12.

^[v] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three books, pp. 7-8

^[vi] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three bookes, pp. 9, 12,

[vii] See Richard Bernard, A guide to grand-iury men, (1627); George Gifford, A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by vvitches and sorcerers; William Perkins, A Discourse of the damned art of witchcraft, (1610).

[viii] Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, p. 2.

[ix] Wallace Notestein. A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, 127-129

[x] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene III