Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/14

of the facts and his deductions may not unfairly be criticized. Although his incredulity must surely now and again be shaken by the cumulative force of reiterated and corroborative evidence, nevertheless he refuses to admit even the possibility that persons who at any rate affected supernatural powers held clandestine meetings after nightfall in obscure and lonely places for purposes and plots of their own. If human testimony is worth anything at all, unless we are to be more Pyrrhonian than the famous Dr. Marphurius himself who would never say, “Je suis venu; mais; Il me semble que je suis venu,” when in 1612 Roger Nowell had swooped down on the Lancashire coven and carried off Elizabeth Demdike with three other beldames to durance vile in Lancaster Castle, Elizabeth Device summoned the whole Pendle gang to her home at Malking Tower, in order that they might discuss the situation and contrive the delivery of the prisoners. As soon as they had forgathered, they all sat down to dinner, and had a good north country spread of beef, bacon, and roast mutton. Surely there is nothing very remarkable in this; and the evidence as given in Thomas Potts’ famous narrative, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the countie of Lancaster (London, 1618), bears the very hall-mark and impress of truth: “The persons aforesaid had to their dinners Beefe, Bacon, and roasted Mutton; which Mutton (as this Examinates said brother said) was of a Wether of Christopher Swyers of Barley: which Wether was brought in the night before into this Examinates mothers house by the said Iames Deuice, the Examinates said brother: and in this Examinates sight killed and eaten.” But Professor Notestein will none of it. He writes: “The concurring evidence in the Malking Tower story is of no more compelling character than that to be found in a multitude of Continental stories of witch gatherings which have been shown to be the outcome of physical or mental pressure and of leading questions. It seems unnecessary to accept even a substratum of fact” (p. 124). In the face of such sweeping and dogmatic assertion mere evidence is no use at all. For we know that the Continental stories of witch gatherings are with very few exceptions the chronicle of actual fact. It must be confessed that such feeble scepticism, which repeatedly mars his summary of the witch-trials, is a serious