Taylor & Son's Northamptonshire Handbook.
his guilt or innocence, they put him, his father, and mother into the water. This was an old and favourite test. King James, in his "Demonologie," which is quoted in this pamphlet, says witches float on the water by the special appointment of God, in the same way as a dead carcase gushes forth blood on the approach of the murderer. Application was usually made to a justice of the peace, and, on his order, the thumbs and great toes of the suspected person were tied together crosswise, a rope was fastened round the body, and the ends being held up by men standing on the opposite banks, the witch was thrown into the water. In this case all three floated, and they were of course regarded from that moment as irreclaimably abandoned to the Evil One. The son, however, was thought to be "the principall actor in this tragedy," and application was then made to Sir Gilbert Pickering, of Titchmarsh, for his commitment to prison. It is highly probable, if not absolutely certain, that this was the same Gilbert Pickering who figured in the Warboys case; and if so, he must by this time have obtained some local reputation as a witch-hunter.[1]
After young Bill's commitment, he naturally sent for his mother to come and see him in prison. His accusers immediately said this arose from a wish to close his father's mouth through his mother's agency, as the two were stated to be afraid lest he should reveal their dark doings. Soon afterwards the old man had a swelling in his throat, which is thus interpreted by the annalist:— "They both ioyned together, and bewitched a round ball into the throat of his father, where it continued a great while, his father not beeing able to speake a word. Howbeit the ball was afterwards had out, and his father prooued the principall witnesse against him." The old woman, fearing for the fate of her son, and desperate at the suspicions formed against herself, committed suicide by cutting her throat, and this was of course equally at the instigation of the devil. It was said that she consulted her spirit as to her destiny before she perpetrated the deed; but, as he could give her no better consolation than that she should be hanged, she "fell a rauing, crying out that the irrevocable judgment of her death was giuen, and that shee was damned perpetually, cursing and banning the time wherein shee was borne." Left alone in prison, and having the testimony of his mother's violent death against him, the son became still more agonised in mind, and, to clear himself, stoutly maintained his innocence against all comers. But this was taken as only greater proof of his obduracy. The writer of the tract states that he still feared his father's confession; but we have no explanation beyond the words given above of the part the old man took in support of the prosecution. The report was that the prisoner had three spirits attendant upon him, Grissill, Ball, and Jack; but no evidence appears that the father had any knowledge of the doings of these imps. Their names were not quite so picturesque as some we hear of. One witch, for instance, had two familiars, Vinegar Tom and Sack and Sugar; another four, James, Prick-em, Robin, and Sparrow; a third had a single attendant called Elimanzer, which she fed with milk pottage. None of his sprites were seen attending the prisoner Bill, but his historian does not the less believe in their reality. After lying in prison from the 29th of May till the 22nd of July following, he was arraigned for Martha Aspine's murder, and. like the rest, pleaded not guilty. But he was convicted by the jury; "uppon the verdict whereof, his countenance changed, and he cried out that he had now found the law to haue a power aboue justice, for that it had condemned an innocent." At the gallows he persisted in the same declaration, and diod proclaiming the injustice of his judges.
There is a dismal likeness between all the cases tried in this terrible year. Agnes Browne was "of poor parentage and poorer education," and Helen Jenkinson, the next on the list, is described with unintentional pathos as having "liued many yeares poore, wretched, scorned, and forsaken of the world." This was the cause of her being suspected. of "bewitching of cattle and other mischiefes ;" and of her being brought before Sir Thomas Brooke, of "Okely," for bewitching a child to death, and by him being committed to prison. The only circumstance of interest connected with the repulsive story is thus narrated :-"A little before her apprehension, one Mistris Moulsho, of the same towne,
- ↑ Gilbert Pickering, of Titchmarsh Grove, was the son of John Pickering, who went to live in the manor house there about the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The father died in 1591, when the Warboys mystery was in process of development, and the son then became possessed of the estates. He was afterwards knighted, and in 1605 distinguished himself by his activity in searching for the Guy Fawkes conspirators. He died in 1613, a year after the present events. There was another Gilbert Pickering in the parish in 1590, but he did not live at the Grove.—See Bridge's Northamptonshire, ii. 383–5.
66
