That,
before the end of the century, the liberty of the press should begin
and the modern newspaper follow, was but a logical corollary to
this.
before the end of the century, the liberty of the press should begin
and the modern newspaper follow, was but a logical corollary to
this.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v07
, in the abbeys.
In order to stir up opposition to the new rulers, Walker, thereupon,
6
1 The Moderate Intelligencer, 27 September-4 October.
2 Mercurius Elencticus, 8-15 October,
3 The Weekly Post, 31 May–7 June 1659, A brief View, etc. , by Younger, W. ,
2 August 1660.
23–2
## p. 356 (#372) ############################################
356 The Beginnings of English Journalism
published a description of Cromwell's sayings upon his deathbed",
in which he not only vilified the quakers once more but, also,
attacked the Rump. Though he obtained no support, he seems to
have been imprisoned for writing this tract? , which was carefully
shunned by all writers of the seventeenth century, but accepted
by Carlyle in the nineteenth. It contains a typically untruthful
version of a prayer by Cromwell.
The crown and coping stone of this man's baseness was his last
book, published in August 1660, a religious eulogy of Charles II,
entitled Serious Observations lately made touching his Majesty
and literally bristling with texts; the hypocrisy of its writer is
evident if it be compared with his earlier broadsides concerning
Charles II—The Mad Designe (6 November 1651) and The true
manner of the crowning of Charles the Second King of Scotland
together with a description of his life and a clear view of his
court and Counsel (1 January 1651). What became of Walker
after this no one knows.
The royalist press of 1647—50, carried on in spite of every
effort to suppress it, calls for a few words. Cleiveland seems
to have been the moving spirit of the numerous ephemeral
Mercuries which appeared in 1648 and 1649; Samuel Sheppard
undoubtedly undertook the largest part of the work, and was the
originator of Mercurius Pragmaticus. Both roundhead (presby-
terian) and royalist joined in the racy and scurrilous denunciation
of the independents and regicides. Pride the swineherd (who
could neither read nor write), Joyce the tailor, Rolfe and Hewson
the shoemakers, Scot the minotaur, Marten and his mistresses,
Cromwell with his red nose and the rest of the revolutionaries,
all afforded a rich field for ribaldry and, above all, there was
Walker, with whom the Mercuries teem. Mercurius Melan-
cholicus, written by Martin Parker the ballad writer, is full of
Walker ; and so is the counterfeit of this periodical which was
written by major-general Massey's chaplain John Hackluyt.
To Sheppard may be attributed a share in the writing of
1 A collection of passages . . . by one who was groom of his chamber. The
pamphlet was entered in the Stationers' register by Ibbitson on 7 June 1659.
Carlyle attributed this tract to Charles Harvey, Lingard to Underwood. See the
derisive description of Walker and the pamphlet at the end of Mercurius Democritus,
for 7-14 June 1659.
2 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1659–60, p. 47.
3 The true version, as heard by major Butler, is in Neal's History of the Puritans.
If this be compared with Walker’s version, and the attack on the Rump on p. 21 of his
pamphlet, the object of his alterations is manifest.
3
## p. 357 (#373) ############################################
Harris, Mabbott and Crouch
357
6
Mercurius Elencticus, when its real author, Sir George Wharton,
was in prison. Mercurius Elencticus is full of biographies of the
rebels, none of which have ever been disproved and large numbers
of which can be corroborated from other sources.
Other periodicals by Sheppard were Mercurius Dogmaticus
(1648) and The Royall Diurnall (1648). In 1651, he issued
Mercurius Pragmaticus Reviv'd, continuing it as Elencticus and
(both titles being disallowed) wound it up as Mercurius Scom-
maticus. In 1652, he wrote another Pragmaticus, a Phreneticus
and a Mercurius Mastix—the last an amusing and valuable skit
on the journalism of his day. His pamphlet, The Weepers, also
contains most indispensable information about the writers of
newsbooks.
John Hall, poet and pamphleteer, was hired by Lilly the
astrologer to attack Wharton in 1648 and wrote the Mercurius
Brittanicus and Mercurius Censorius of that year in defence of
the parliament.
A certain John Harris, better known as 'Sirrahniho' and
'Oxford Jack' (he is throughout easily identified by the latter
nickname), who had been a printer to the army and terminated
his career as major John Harris, hanged for forgery at the
restoration, was the author of the Mercurius Militaris and Anti
Mercurius of 1648. Though he was Cromwell's spy, yet the
antipathy he ever displayed towards Cromwell (both in his original
petition in the State Papers and in his newsbooks) is very
curious.
Gilbert Mabbott, son of a Nottingham cobbler and Rushworth's
clerk, was a leveller, and was removed from his post as licenser
for this in 1649. He was the writer of The Moderate and of a
scurrilous Mercurius Britannicus in 1649. He pretended to hold
views in favour of the freedom of the press in 1649, when he
found that he was to be removed, but he was restored to his
post in 1653.
John Crouch the printer first appears on the scene in 1647 as
the writer of occasional counterfeits of Mercurius Melancholicus
and Pragmaticus. In 1649 and 1650, he wrote the vulgar,
scurrilous and occasionally amusing Man in the Moon, spending
some time in the Gatehouse prison in consequence. Between the
years 1652 and 1655, he wrote the licensed periodicals known
as Mercurius Democritus, Fumigosus and so forth, which were
indecent and obscene throughout. Some numbers, duly licensed and
authorised by Cromwell's licenser, Mabbott, during the years 1653
## p. 358 (#374) ############################################
358 The Beginnings of English Journalism
and 1654, contain songs comparable to the most indecent verse of
Rochester himself.
When Cromwell turned out the Rump in 1653, a printer called
John Streater, a captain and quartermaster-general of the Irish
army, circulated a paper of 'queries' among his brother officers;
for this, Cromwell dismissed him from the army as 'unfit,' and
Streater underwent a lengthy and illegal imprisonment, at the
expiration of which he issued two remarkable periodicals, entitled,
respectively, Observations, Historical Political and Philosophical,
upon Aristotle's first book of Political Government, together
with a narrative of State affairs (no. 1, 4 April 1654) and A
Politick Commentary on the life of Caius July Caesar with
Perfect and Impartial Intelligence (no. 1, 23 May 1654). These,
in some sort, were an anticipation of Killing no Murder, and it is
odd that they should have been unnoticed in modern times.
Streater's account of his troubles is to be found in his Secret
Reasons of State (23 May 1659). The Rump gave him a regiment
in 1659, and, though he was arrested in 1661, the licensing act of
1662 honoured his stand for freedom of parliament by expressly
exempting him by name from all its provisions. He was a pro-
sperous printer (chiefly of law books) for the rest of his life, and
died in 1687.
Cromwell's last journalist was Marchamont Nedham, who, unlike
Walker, was an educated man, a graduate of All Souls, Oxford. But
he possessed neither honour, religion, morals nor definite political
convictions. He wrote anything for anybody and lived simply
for money. He shall never be mentioned 'but to his everlasting
shame and infamy,' wrote Cleiveland ; yet, at the time when this
was said, Nedham had not touched his lowest depths. In 1648
(probably not before this time, nor after February 1649), he wrote
the royalist Mercurius Pragmaticus, taking it out of the hands of
Samuel Sheppard, and adopting the same tiresome railing tone
which he had used in his roundhead journal Britanicus. After
his imprisonment, in 1649, he was willing to write pamphlets
for the regicides, was rewarded by a pension of £100 a year
and, on 13 June 1650, started the first permanent official journal
Mercurius Politicus. Cromwell left for Scotland at the end
of the month, after a sermon by Henry Walker, and Nedham
then inserted so scandalous a series of articles on the Scots in
Politicus that, at last, Cleiveland came forward (on 14 August
1650) with a Character of Mercurius Politicus, a furious and
merciless exposure, in which he described Nedham’s wit as having
## p. 359 (#375) ############################################
Mercurius Politicus
359
scandalized both sexes, disobliged three parties, reproached our whole nation,
and not only ours but all others having declared himself as the disgrace so to
be the public enemy of mankind . . . our lay spalatto, a three piled apostate,
a renegade more notorious than any in Sally or Algier;
adding, in conclusion :
Yet it is not fit that we should be at the mercy of a Tavern, and the
drunkenness of an arbitrary Pen. Must we be subjected to his two sheets of
'High Court of Justice ? ' We are content to serve, but it mads us to be re-
proached, and by such a one as him; for there is no such torment to a
Christian as to be tyrannized over by a Renegade. . . . So insatiable is his
appetite of speaking ill that there is no person so intimate to him, or so
deserving; nothing so secret or religious which he abuseth not to that
purpose; so that he is neither to be tolerated in Society nor policy, neither in
Conversation nor a State; but, rather, as a public parricide, to be thrown
into the sea in a sack, with a cock, and ape, and a serpent, the right emblems
of his politic triplicity.
å
On this, Nedham's articles were stopped, and it is probable
that he was removed from his authorship, and John Hall, the other
paid writer, installed, for a time, in his stead? .
Beginning with 26 September 1650, and ending with 12 August
1652, Politicus contained a series of leading articles advocating
republican institutions, with studied moderation. Their style is good,
and they occasionally quote Thomas May's Lucan. There were
one or two reprints of parts of them in pamphlet form, and, on
29 June 1656, Thomas Brewster (Vane and Marten's publisher)
reprinted the articles which were published between 16 October
1651 and 12 August 1652, condensed into a book under the title The
a
Excellencie of a Free State, by way of an attack upon Cromwell,
as, at the time, trying to stamp all semblance of a free state
into the dust. The book was also prefaced by an attack upon
Howell, who had urged Cromwell to take all power into his hands.
It has quite absurdly been attributed to Nedham, at that time
Cromwell's paid spy as well as journalist and the very last man
likely to attack him. According to Sheppard's The Weepers, pub-
lished on 13 September 1652, Politicus, at that time, was written
by some one in authority (the reference is clearly to these articles)
and some member of the council of state, possibly Marten, must
have been the writer of them. Milton licensed Politicus for a
portion of the time, from January 1651 to January 1652 (the
fact is not to the credit of the author of Areopagitica); but the
i Wood intimates that Nedham left off writing Politicus soon after the start.
The Hue and Cry after those rambling protonotaries of the times, Mercurius Elencticus,
Britanicus, Melancholicus and Aulicus (7 Feb. 1651) contains a personal description of
the writer of Politicus which can only apply to Hall.
## p. 360 (#376) ############################################
360 The Beginnings of English Journalism
supposition that he may have had a hand in the composition of
the articles may, on internal evidence, at once be dismissed.
When Cromwell finally suppressed the licensed press in
September 1655, Nedham began a second official periodical, The
Publick Intelligencer, published on Mondays. Other periodicals
written by him before this were Mercurius Pragmaticus, 1652,
(probably not more than one number), in opposition to Sheppard's
Pragmaticus, Mercurius Britannicus, 1652 (the first five numbers
only), Mercurius Poeticus, 1654, and The Observator, 1654.
With the exception of his own advertising periodical The
Publick Adviser of 1657, Nedham had no competitor until the
Rump was restored in 1659. He then lost his pension, and his
two periodicals were handed over to John Canne, the anabaptist
printer and preacher, on 13 May 1659. Nothing dismayed, Nedham
changed sides once more, wrote a book for the Rump entitled
Interest will not lie, levelled against the restoration of Charles II,
and recovered his periodicals on 16 August 1659. General
Monck's council of state 'prohibited him’altogether in April 1660,
and he then fled to Holland, but, having obtained his pardon
under the great seal, returned in September 1660? He after-
wards practised medicine and died in 1678, but succeeded in
writing pamphlets for Charles II before his death.
A periodical in French was issued throughout the wars. This
was Le Mercure Anglois, apparently written by John Cotgrave,
under Dillingham's influence, from 17 June 1644 to 14 December
1648. A second periodical, entitled Nouvelles Ordinaires de
Londres, was started in 1650, and lasted to the restoration, being
e revived again in 1663 by Henry Muddiman and Thomas Henshaw
of Kensington. Unfortunately, it has almost entirely vanished.
One phenomenon to be noticed in all the pamphlets of the
great rebellion is the fact that, though the writers, in many cases,
were drawn from the most uneducated classes, their style continually
improves. Correct English and spelling are as conspicuously
present in Pecke's and Walker's latest periodicals as they are
markedly absent in the earlier years. For this, the correctors of
the press were responsible. Many a poor clergyman ejected from
his living must have earned his bread in this way. In the case
of Pecke's periodicals, the career of the corrector of the press of
Mrs Griffin, publisher of Pecke's last Perfect Diurnall, is well
known, owing to his having been thrown into prison for treason
1 The Man in the Moon, 1 October 1660.
## p. 361 (#377) ############################################
The Rump's Yournalists
361
.
in 1660. He was Cromwell's son-in-law,' Thomas Philpott of
Snow hill, and his examination after his arrest shows that he had
been very well educated? . He began life as a scholar of Christ
Church near St Bartholomew's hospital, and, after this, became
a king's scholar at Westminster school. Then he went to Trinity
college, Cambridge, for about eight years, proceeding M. A. From
1641, he was schoolmaster at Sutton Vallamore, Kent, for four
years. After this, he became corrector of the printing presses
of John Haviland and Mrs Griffin, of Richard Bishop and widow
Raworth, and, at the restoration, was employed by Robert White
and Edward Mottershead. Philpot, therefore, was responsible
for the neat appearance and correct language of Pecke's later
pamphlets.
At the end of April 1659, the Rump parliament had permitted
licensed newsbooks to be revived; but when, thanks to general
Monck, it resumed its sittings for the second time in 1659, in
December, its council of state-of which Thomas Scot was the
head-decided to suppress all outside 'newsbooks' Two jour-
nalists only were allowed to publish news twice a week. One
was Nedham, with his Publick Intelligencer and Mercurius
Politicus, and the other was one Oliver Williams, Scot's protégé,
with his Occurrences from Foreign parts and An Exact Ac-
compt, published on Tuesdays and Fridays. From a postscript to
the Occurrences for 8—15 November 1659, it appears that John
Canne was then writing his periodicals for Williams, though he
did not do so before this date.
Oliver Williams was the holder of the unexpired term of a
patent for an advertising or registration office granted to captain
Robert Innes many years previously by Charles I. On the
strength of this, he had tried to probibit Nedham's Publick Adviser
in 1657, and, after the restoration, asserted that it conferred
upon him the sole right to publish newsbooks. This was a
falsehood. When Nedham fled the kingdom, he at once seized
the opportunity and issued a new Politicus and Publick Intelli-
gencer, as well as other periodicals, marking them ‘published by
authority. ' It is very probable that his advertising offices and
newsbooks masked some conspiracy, but the end came when he
1 He signs himself your son-in-law' to his printed petition to Cromwell presented
9 October 1654. He is identified in Mercurius Aulicus, no. 1, 13-20 March 1654.
Nos. 54 ff. , 143 and 147 Tanner MSS at Oxford are by Thomas Philpot.
Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Chas. II, vol. xxiv, no. 105 (Calendar of
1660-1, p. 427).
3 See Thomason's notes on his tracts, E 1013 (2) and (23).
## p. 362 (#378) ############################################
362 The Beginnings of English Journalism
attacked the duly authorised journalist, Henry Muddiman, and
drew attention to his own claims; for his periodicals were then
(in July 1660) suppressed. But, when the Rump authorised
Nedham and Williams to print news, Clarges, general Monck's
brother-in-law and agent in London, also obtained permission to
have a third bi-weekly published under his direction, selecting as
his writer a young schoolmaster educated at St John's college,
Cambridge, called Henry Muddiman, who had never written for
the press before. As the son of a Strand tradesman, he must have
been well known, both to Clarges (a Strand apothecary) and to
his sister Mrs Monck (widow of a Strand tradesman). The general,
if the Rump had only known it, was about to have someone to see
that his manifestoes were truthfully put before the nation. One
has only to compare Nedham's and Williams's periodicals with
those of Monck's journalist to see that this was necessary!
On Monday, 26 December 1659, the new journalist issued his
first newsbook, The Parliamentary Intelligencer (afterwards the
Kingdom's Intelligencer), with the ominous motto on the title-
page, Nunquam sera est ad bonos mores via; and, on the
following Thursday week, the first number of his other weekly
'book,' Mercurius Publicus, appeared. Thus, he was in opposition
to Nedham from the start.
A few days later, Pepys made Muddiman's acquaintance and
went with him to the Rota club, where he paid eighteenpence to
become a member. The club met at a coffee-house called the Turk's
head, which was kept by one Miles, in Palace yard, 'where you
take water,' as Aubrey remarks, and which was frequented by a
number of 'ingeniose gents,' who discussed Harrington's idea of
yearly ballotting out a third of the house of Commons in so skilful a
manner that the arguments in the Parliament house'were but flatt'
to it. Pepys found that his new acquaintance had a very poor
opinion of the Rump, though he wrote news-books for them,' and
>
6
6
1 The confidence placed by Monck in him is shown by the following title-pages:
(11 April 1660) The Remonstrance and Address of the Armies of England, Scotland
and Ireland to the Lord General Monck. Presented to his Excellency the 9th of April
1660. St James's April 9, 1660. Ordered by his Excellency the L. Gen. Monck. That
the Remonstrance and Address of the officers of the Army presented this day to his
Excellency be forthwith printed and published by Mr Henry Muddiman. William Clarke
Secretary. London Printed by John Macock.
(28 May 1660) His Majesty's letter to His Excellency the Lord General Monck. To
be communicated to the officers of the Army. Brought to his Excellency from his
Majesties Court at the Hague by Sir Thomas Clarges. Rochester, 24 May 1660. I do
appoint Mr Henry Muddiman to cause this letter to be forthwith printed and published.
George Monck. Printed by John Macock.
## p. 363 (#379) ############################################
Henry Muddiman and The Gazette 363
-
6
6
recorded his impression that he was a 'good scholar, and an arch
rogue' for speaking basely' of the Rump. Needless to add, he
was soon to be undeceived as to the nature of the parliament for
which the new journalist was writing.
Thus began the career of the most famous of all the seven-
teenth century journalists; one whose principal ‘paper'—The
London Gazette-is with us still. That he has been forgotten
is due to the fact that he made few private, and no public,
enemies; for he was not a controversialist, and, throughout his
life, devoted himself to what, after all, is the principal part of a
journalist's duty-the collection of news. He had an assistant,
a Scot named Giles Dury, who, if his wife's name, 'Turgis,' in his
marriage licence in 1649, is a misreading for Clarges, must have
been a relation of Sir Thomas Clarges. Anthony à Wood tells us
that Dury soon 'gave over'; thus, in a few months' time, when
Nedham and Williams had successively been repressed, Muddiman
was sole journalist of the three kingdoms.
This was not his only reward, for the important privilege of
free postage was also given to him. Thus, anyone was at liberty
to write to him, post free, to tell him what was going on in any
part of the kingdoms, he also having the right to send letters
in return without charge. He, therefore, opened his first editorial
office at the Seven Stars in the Strand, near the New Exchange
(the site of Coutts's old bank), and attached himself to the office of
secretary of state Nicholas, afterwards of lord Arlington, whither,
after a time, the bulk of his letters were addressed, either to
himself or, by his own direction, to Sir Joseph Williamson, then
under-secretary and, after a time, his censor. A correspondence of
this kind, of course, was of very great importance to a government
anxious to know what was going on in different parts of the
realm, and it largely accounts for the great bulk of the restoration
state papers. The fact that parliament, in June 1660, prohibited
printed reports of its proceedings and never removed the embargo
until the end of the century, made his letters of news much in
request, and, in this way, that which might have been thought
the least important and the least lucrative part of his work
really assumed the greatest consequence. So, when Sir Roger
L'Estrange's open request for the sole privilege of writing the
'newsbooks' succeeded, at the end of 1663, Muddiman was but
little injured and does not at all seem to have resented his
supersession.
A more dangerous enemy than L'Estrange was Sir Joseph
Williamson, for whom Muddiman started the Gazette at the end
## p. 364 (#380) ############################################
364 The Beginnings of English Journalism
a
of 1665 and crushed out L'Estrange; finally, when Williamson
tried to deprive him of his newsletter correspondence, Muddiman
started another periodical—the official The Current Intelligence
(of 1666)—under protection of Monck's cousin, another secretary of
state, Sir William Morice. Thus, Williamson was brought to terms.
He had to carry on a newsletter correspondence himself after this,
in order to feed the Gazette; but his duties prevented his giving
his personal attention either to the Gazette or to his newsletters;
and, while the former lapsed into a moribund condition, the latter
did not pay. The newsletters of the man whom he had attempted
to oust became a household word throughout the kingdom.
These newsletters, closely written by clerks (from dictation)
on a single sheet, the size and shape of modern foolscap, headed
'Whitehall,' to show their privilege, beginning 'Sir,' and without any
signature, misspelt, the writing cramped and crabbed to a degree,
but literally crammed with parliamentary and court news, are
easily distinguishable from the rarer productions of less successful
writers. They were sent post free twice a week, or oftener, for £5 a
year and, from the lists of correspondents at the Record office, as
well as from numerous references to Muddiman in the various
reports of the Historical Manuscripts commission, it is evident
that no personage of consequence could afford to dispense with
them. A vast number of them still exist; one collection contains
a complete series for twenty-two years. They have never yet been
systematically calendared and published.
Anthony à Wood continually visited Short's coffee-house in
Cat street, Oxford, in order to read 'Muddiman's letter' and was
in the habit of paying two shillings 'quarteridge' for them when
they were done with. Sir Roger North, in the life of his brother,
shows that they were held in much the same esteem at Cambridge.
Once or twice, Muddiman got into trouble. In 1676, the king
was much annoyed at a statement made in a newsletter found in a
coffee-house, to the effect that a fleet was to sail against Algiers
under Sir John Narborough and that the duke of Monmouth was
to be one of his captains. The letter was at once suspected to be
Muddiman's. Pepys got a copy of it for Williamson, and Muddiman
was examined before the council, the king stating that he would not
suffer either Muddiman or any other person to divulge anything
agitated in council 'till he thought fit to declare it. ' When the
matter was enquired into, the writer was proved to have been
Williamson's own head clerk, and he had to dismiss him. The
following year, Muddiman was arrested for writing confidently
that the Spaniards intended war against England,' but nothing
a
## p. 365 (#381) ############################################
Muddiman's Newsletters
365
6
seems to have come of it. Wood also records in his diary that,
in 1686, in the days of James II, Street, judge of assize at
Oxford, spoke in his charge to the grand jury against newsletters,
particularly Muddiman's, and, after noting that they 'came not to
Oxon afterwards,' adds, other trite and lying letters came”. But,
as he was on the popular side and opposed to James II, his
letters were soon back again. His Gazette may be said to
have been the first printed newspaper, for it at once gained
the title of a 'paper' as being a departure from the ancient
pamphlet form and no longer a 'book. It was only ‘half a sheet
in folio' and clearly designed to be sent with his letters. The
word 'newes-paper' was not long in being coined as a result, and,
from analogy with this, was at last obtained the word 'newsletter. '
The career of Sir Roger L'Estrange, who supplanted Henry
Muddiman for about two years, would (like that of Henry Walker)
require a volume to do it justice, if his surveyorship of the press
were taken into account. Nevertheless, his role as journalist
was brief, uneventful and unimportant. His two periodicals The
Intelligencer and The News (31 August 1663 to 29 January 1666)
were only half the size of his predecessor's publications and, in
1664, were paged and numbered together as one periodical. This was
a device to make them pay. L'Estrange was a better pamphleteer
than journalist; his Observator, issued in later years, consisted of
nothing but comment without news. When Muddiman put an end
to L'Estrange's journals with the Gazette in 1665, L'Estrange, by
the king's orders, was pensioned off with £100 a year charged on the
Gazette, his future services as surveyor of the press being paid for,
in like manner, by £200 a year out of the secret service money.
Of the immense journalistic output which Cromwell had sup-
pressed, the net results at the end of the reign of Charles II were:
first, the official recognition of the necessity to gratify the public
desire for news, shown in the continuance of the Gazette as a per-
manent institution; and, secondly, the striking manner in which
newsletters were permitted, unfettered and uncensored, for the
benefit of the upper classes, to supply the defects of the official
print. No longer ridiculed, newsletters at last obtained a place in
public esteem which had never been obtained by newsbooks.
That,
before the end of the century, the liberty of the press should begin
and the modern newspaper follow, was but a logical corollary to
this.
6
1 Jeffreys took the extreme step of suppressing coffee-houses that dealt in news-
letters. ' Ellis correspondence, by A. Ellis, II, p. 243.
## p. 366 (#382) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
THE TADVENT OF MODERN THOUGHT IN POPULAR
LITERATURE
THE WITCH CONTROVERSY. PAMPHLETEERS
1
THE enlightenment of the renascence had never penetrated the
deeper recesses of the popular mind. The social, religious and
economic revolutions of Tudor times; the fermentation of city
life under Elizabeth and James ; the growth of national conscious-
ness; the discoveries of travellers and men of science; above all,
the popularisation of biblical and classical literature, had added
enormously to the interests and imagination of the ordinary man,
without transforming his sentiments, convictions and ideals. His
mental vision was crowded with new and engrossing objects, but
his outlook remained medieval. It was the task of the Jacobean
and Caroline generations to effect a mental reformation. Had
the age been a time of political peace and social calm, the first
half of the seventeenth century would have proved to be one of
the most interesting epochs in English literature. In an atmo-
sphere of learning and discussion, humanists of the period would
have adjusted their heritage of old-time beliefs and aspirations to
the maturer, more tolerant wisdom of Erasmus, More, Wier,
Bullein, Montaigne, Scot, Ralegh, Shakespeare, Earle and Bacon.
All that was best in the Middle Ages would have expanded into
modern thought, and a second, more spiritual renascence would
have inspired a series of masterpieces, such as the work of Vergil
and Molière, in which the past and present join hands. As it
was, though knowledge continued to increase, the thoughts and
emotions of the people were diverted by class hatred, religious
controversy and the political crisis. The consciousness of fellow-
ship, essential to intellectual progress, had died out. Thus,
humanists, instead of broadening and redirecting the tendencies of
popular thought, either relapsed into scepticism, as in the instances
of Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne, or let loose their
## p. 367 (#383) ############################################
Demonology in the Middle Ages 367
augmented volume of learning and sentiment into the old, narrow
channels. Whenever an age fails to find new interests, intellectual
intemperance results. And, just as, at an earlier date, social
writers lost touch with ideas and squandered their originality on
experiments in style? , so, now, the more learned divines and
physicians devoted their scholarship and research to the barren
mysteries of demonology.
In order to understand the witch controversy of the seventeenth
century, it is necessary to remember that primitive people had
always cherished a veneration for the 'wise woman”, probably a
relic of the mother-worship of the premigratory period, and that
her broom, ladle and goat may, possibly, be regarded as symbols
of her domestic power. She was supplanted by the new polytheism
of warrior spirits ; and, when they gave way, in their turn, to
Christianity, some of the dispossessed deities became saints, while
others went to join this earlier deity in the traditions and folk-lore
of the people. As western Christendom became familiar with the
teaching of the Greek church and with eastern religions—at first
by the researches of theologians and then through the Saracenic
wars in Spain and the crusades—these rites and superstitions were
gradually coloured with rabbinical conceptions of the devil's
hierarchy and with the Neoplatonic doctrine of demons and inter-
mediary powers. Despite the rationalism of Jean de Meung and
Roger Bacon", patristic conceptions of demonology were codified
and systematised in the Middle Ages. Such superstitions as the
incubus and succubus, the transmutation of men into beasts, the
power to fly by night were then, definitely, incorporated in
medieval theological conceptions. From the twelfth or thirteenth
century onwards, new feelings of horror and loathing began to be
associated with this entanglement of traditions. Not only was
the underworld of disinherited deities regarded as a rival by the
Church, and, therefore, credited with the infamies which are
usually attributed to heretics", but as men struggled towards a
higher level of civilisation, they instinctively accused these pariahs
of all that they were endeavouring to eliminate from their own
daily lives. The calamities and controversies of the fifteenth and
6
1 See ante, vol. iv, chap. XVI.
2 Karl Pearson: see essays on Woman as Witch,' 'Ashiepattle,' “Kindred Group-
marriage' in vol. 11 of Chances of Death, 1897.
3 Roman de la Rose, pt. II, c. 1280. Epistola fratris Rogerii Baconis de secretis
operibus artis et natura et de nullitate magiae, c. 1250 (ptd Theatrum Chimicum,
Nürnberg, 1732).
• See, especially, the bull of Gregory IX, 13 June 1233.
## p. 368 (#384) ############################################
368 The Advent of Modern Thought
sixteenth centuries only added to men's sense of danger and
misery and inspired a yet more pessimistic school of demonologists,
led by Jacquier, Institoris and Sprenger. By the time we
reach the seventeenth century, the imaginary realm of spirits,
ghosts, gnomes, fairies, demons, prophets and conjurors—now stig-
matised as the implacable enemies of mankind—became allegories
or symbols of all that was degraded, perverted, revolting or terrible.
The devil, from being a denizen of lonely or impassable places,
had now grown to be the monarch of innumerable hosts. As the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been disgraced in the eyes
of the priesthood by blasphemous parodies, so, now, the diabolical
empire was believed to be a monstrous imitation of the kingdom
of heaven, with disgusting travesties of church ritual. The
fiend's one object was to seduce mortals from the worship of
God, and as, from early Christian times, both monkish doctrin-
aires and secular humorists had depicted women
women as loose,
malevolent or ridiculous, so, now, it was with this sex rather than
with men that he found his easiest victims and most willing allies.
This predilection stimulated the dreams of diseased imagination.
The witch or 'wise woman’ was looked upon as the devil's chosen
handmaiden. The most elaborate pornography grew up around
this supposed union, and the witches' sabbath or Walpurgis
night-a relic of mother-worship, at which licence abounded-was
conceived to be a kind of devil's mass, at which debauchery ran
riot Other obsessions came to be connected with the witch
horror. From prehistoric times certain animals had been re-
garded as spirits of evil. Recollections of these legends blended
with the fear of noisome and poisonous animals, and led men to
believe that such creatures were auxiliaries of Black Magic.
Human deformity abounded in medieval slums, and people still
believed in monsters half man and half beast. And, as witches
were hideous hags, men attributed to these old women the birth of
abortions such as Hedelin? , Stengesius and Paré+ described and
the people themselves read of in broadsides.
From prehistoric times, men had been, and were still, accus-
tomed to regard the trivial enterprises and interests of bucolic
life as under the influence of witches. Such things as the growth
1 See Jules Baissac, Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie, 1890, chap. vi. See, also,
chap. vii in Illustrierte Sittengeschichte, by Fuchs, E. , 1909.
2 Des Satyres, Brutes, Monstres et Demons. De leur Nature et Adoration, par Francois
Hedelin, 1627. (Hedelin is better known as the Abbé d'Aubignac. )
: De Monstris et Monstrosis, 1647 (? ).
* Deux livres de chirurgie, 1573. Eng. trans. by Johnson, T. , 1649.
## p. 369 (#385) ############################################
Belief in Witchcraft
369
of crops, the fall of rain, the churning of milk, the disappearance
of household utensils and the birth of children, came within their
province, but, now that all the mystery of evil and suffering had
gathered round these beings, strange and appalling diseases were
believed to come from their power. Epilepsy, somnambulism,
St Vitus's dance, hysteria and hypnotism were attributed to vene-
fical agency. They could slowly murder human beings by sym-
pathetic magic or change them into animals. Nay, more, with
the help of the devil, they could call back the dead, or some
semblance of the dead, to aid them to win ascendency over human
beings.
It will hence be readily understood that, at the opening of our
period, the belief in witchcraft had grown to be more than an
antiquated superstition. It represented the Gothic obscenity,
grotesqueness, profanity, madness, cruelty and paganism, which
progress had branded as accursed but could not eradicate from the
imaginations of men. Had an age of moral reflectiveness suc-
ceeded to the creative energy of Elizabeth's reign, the Jacobean
and Caroline generations would have turned the light of the new
learning on their own minds and formed a higher conception of
divine power and human dignity. But the heat of controversy
rendered introspection impossible, and humanists were too busy
refuting each other's political and religious errors to cultivate
high seriousness of thought. Thus, those who felt that all was not
well with the world, and who were not inspired by any movement
towards a more cultured and spiritual interpretation of life,
returned to examine the old allegory of human imperfection and
defencelessness, finding in the books of the past and the dis-
order of the present only too much to justify a belief in witchcraft.
To begin with, as progress bad not been universal, those who
could not move with the times tended to cling to old beliefs from
instinctive distrust of what was new; while others, dismayed at
the collapse of faith and tradition, were ready to believe anything
which represented humanity as corrupt and afflicted. The
Faust legend was still a parable of the age. Many who viewed
with horror the careers of John Dee, Walter Kelly, Simon Forman,
Dr Lambe, William Lilly and Elias Ashmole, were not prepared to
deny that witches and magicians bartered their souls in the insane
desire to pass the limits divinely placed to knowledge and power.
Again, the renascence had accustomed men to intenser and more
versatile habits of thought; inventions were more ingenious,
thinkers were more subtle. Consequently, those who were
24
K. L. VII.
CH, XVI.
## p. 370 (#386) ############################################
370 The Advent of Modern Thought
still convinced of original sin, would attribute to the devil the
heightened intelligence and duplicity of man, rather than deny
his existence.
Now that the thoughts of men were turned in this direction,
they continued, like their predecessors from St Augustine down-
wards, to discover authority for superstitions in their most revered
sources of knowledge. Neoplatonism was used to corroborate
the doctrine of spirits and angels, and, besides, to deny that the
world was full of demons was to be a Sadducee. Moreover,
positive proofs of devilry and magic could be deduced from holy
writ. The serpent in the garden of Eden, Pharaoh's conjurors,
the afflictions of Job, Balaam and his ass, the witch of Endor,
the 'voice of the charmer,' the transmutation of Nebuchadnezzar,
the Gadarene swine, 'the lunatic boy,' and Simon Magus were
understood in the light of seventeenth-century demonology,
Classical lore, which carried hardly less weight than Scripture,
could be as easily interpreted. The incubus and succubus were
discerned in the union of gods and goddesses with mortals. The
belief in witch-begotten monsters was confirmed by tales of the
Minotaur, lamiae, empusae, lemures and satyrsIf Circe could
, .
turn men into swine, Neptune and Aeolus raise storms, Juno
travel through the air, Apollo strike down with disease, Venus
become invisible, why should not more modern magicians? They
learnt from Apuleius that men could be changed into animals;
from Horace and Lucan that witches practised abominable rites
in secret, and from Tacitus, Suetonius and Ovid that spells, in-
cantations and sympathetic magic could be used to destroy the
life of a fellow creature.
For many, and, in some cases, subconscious, motives,
,
men wished to believe in witchcraft; and, since the intellect
generally follows the emotions, the age found more reasons for
believing the propositions formulated by Molitoris? , and for
iterally discharging the mistranslated mandate, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch (Mekasshepha) to live,' than for believing the
arguments of Agrippa, Erasmus, Wier, Reuchlin, the authors of
Litterae Obscurorum Virorum, and Scots Puritanism, with its
1 Cf. Walter Mapes, De nugis curialium, c. 1180, in which Satan admits that Ceres,
Priapus, naiads, fauns, dryads, satyrs, Bacchus and Pan have been changed into
devils.
? See Dialogus de Pythonicis Mulieribus, 1489.
3 For the recrudescence of the witch panic in Tudor times, see ante, vol. 11, chap. v,
pp. 112 ff. ; for the part played by Erasmus see, especially, Colloquia Familiaria ; for
Reuchlin, De verbo mirifico, 1494 ; for Wier, De Praestigiis demonum, 1564.
## p. 371 (#387) ############################################
Gifford's Dialogues of Witches
371
gloom, its intolerance and its sense of spiritual conflict, has been
held largely responsible for the persecution that now arose.
But the causes lay deeper than any sectarian movement and
actuated men of different creeds, who might otherwise have ad-
vanced the culture of their age. Holland, in a tedious dialogue',
a
proved the existence of witches from the Bible, and established
the likelihood of their lust for blood by quoting the sacrifice of
Iphigenia and the cruelties of Nero and Maxentius. He claimed
that they should be put to death, even if unconvicted of magic, as
being renegades and perverters. With soulless resignation, he
recognised in them God's chosen sign of the world's sins, especially
papistry, and His scourge wherewith to plague apostates. Passing
over Nashe's brilliant and erratic protest? against superstition,
which squandered flashes of cultured ridicule on the unessential
question of dreams and probably never reached serious contro-
versialists, we find George Gifford returning to the discussion in
1593. His new production, Dialogues of Witches and Witchcraft,
is an important sign of the times. It treats of rustic superstitions,
and, in a spirit of simple, broad-minded Christianity, he maintains,
as Wier had already asserted, that witches and sorcerers have no
diabolical power; that blight, the sickness of cattle and human ail-
ments are the work of heaven alone and should be atoned for only
by prayer and fasting. The treatise has many touches of character
drawing, and this interest in human nature, combined with a sense
of God's omnipotence, might well have led the author in the steps
of Reginald Scot. But the growing pessimism of the age had
turned Gifford's gaze from what is good in life. He still finds
truth in the scholastic doctrine that the devil is a watchful diplo-
matist who takes possession of some malevolent old hag at a time
when men are disturbed by calamity, causing her to claim the
authorship of what has really been sent from heaven. He argues
that the fiend, thanks to his superhuman knowledge, forecasts the
future and then inspires 'wise men' to make a show of causing
what the devil has merely foreseen. In either case, these impostors
consent to intercourse with the devil, are decoys to lure men from
the worship of God and, therefore, should be put to death“.
1 A Treatise against Witchcraft, 1590.
? The Terrors of the Night, or a Discourse of Apparitions, 1594; see ante, vol. iv,
chap. xvi, p. 325.
* He had already produced Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devilles, 1587.
Hobbes held nearly the same view; arguing that witches should be punished
although they have no real power, because they think they have, and purpose to do
mischief. See Leviathan, p. 7, ed. 1651.
24-2
## p. 372 (#388) ############################################
372
The Advent of Modern Thought
In 1603, king James, who had taken a prominent part in the
trial of Geilis Duncan and her associates, caused his Daemonologie
to be printed and published in England. This dialogue, despite
the jejuneness and insipidity which characterise all the literary
efforts of that royal pedant, is a remarkable work. Like other witch
treatises at the opening of the century, it still retains a critical and
scholarly attitude towards the subject. James realises, as Burkard
had done, that were wolves are the creation of a disordered fantasy,
and that nightmares (popularly explained as a sensation of diabolical
contact) are some reaction of the 'humours' of the imagination.
He agrees with St Augustine that the apparent miracles of the
devil are merely deceptions practised on the senses, and, though
he naturally believes in demons and spirits, yet he follows the
same authority and Roger Bacon in asserting that the infernal
world is thoroughly under the dominion of God. But James was
a true child of his age. In an epoch of heightened competition
and bitter feuds, he prefers to believe that people invoke infernal
aid from lust for riches or revenge, rather than to attribute all
witchcraft to the influence of melancholy? When convinced of
the probability of a league between devil and man, all the king's
theological erudition is manipulated into proofs of this theory.
The book is a manual, not discussing the question from an indi-
vidual point of view, but recapitulating and enforcing the theories
of previous demonologists, with a wealth of authoritative quotations
dear to this learned age. Thus, despite unnecessary digressions
into the realm of philology and scholasticism, the doctrine is pre-
sented with a realism and fulness of details which always carry
conviction, and every reader found his own superstition recorded
and stamped with the seal of royal approval. This powerful mani-
festo ended with the ill-fated recommendation that death should
be inflicted on the evidence of children or even of fellow criminals
(as in trials for treason) or after the water test and discovery of
the devil's mark 4.
The next few treatises on witchcraft add but little to the
theories of Gifford and king James. William Perkins, in his
Discoverie of the damned Art of Witch craft (1608), is, perhaps,
the most typical. Perkins is oppressed with the spectacle of
1 De Civitate Dei, 1. 18, c. 18, and De Secretis Operibus Artis, C. I, II.
? Bk. II, especially chap. 11.
3 Bk. II, chaps. II, IV, V, VI.
For explanation of water test, see p. 374. The devil's mark was any part of the
body which, after contact with the devil, lost sensation. Such local anaesthesia is a
recognised symptom of hysteria.
## p. 373 (#389) ############################################
William Perkins
373
human error: he sees that men have the instinct to worship some
god and that, in hours of great danger or superhuman effort, they
turn for help to some higher power. But the true God has placed
a limit to the knowledge and power of men, and many ambitious
mortals are blind to these restrictions and endeavour to pass the
goal of ordinance. When an author had taken this condemnatory
view of men's struggle for knowledge and power, he could hardly
refuse to believe that the devil was ready to help them. So he
follows the authority and example of king James, describing
Satan's well-organised kingdom and the illusory signs and wonders
he works for those in his service. But, though he follows his
predecessors by demanding the sentence of death against those
convicted, he is one of the first to discountenancel the old-
fashioned tests by hot iron, water or scratching, and to urge the
necessity of carefully sifting circumstantial evidence.
Perkins's protest marks the beginning of a new phase in this
discussion. So far back as 1576, seventeen or eighteen persons
had been condemned for witchcraft at St Osyth, and three more
at Malden in 15792. After parliament had followed their monarch's
Daemonologie with a law condemning all witches to death, a series
of official inquisitions, held especially in Lancashire, Essex and
Yorkshire, brought to light innumerable cases of women, and
sometimes of men, who confessed to a secret union with the devil.
The seducer had access to them in all conceivable shapes, from a
loathsome animal to a handsome man, leaving some point of
contact on their bodies insensible to pain, and assigning to each
a posse of attendant imps, who sucked their blood through teat-
like orifices in the skin. Thanks to this intercourse, witches
gained power to plague the persons and properties of their
enemies. Modern psychology has recognised in these hallucina-
tions the symptoms of different kinds of insanity and perversion",
and, of course, many confessions were wrung by torture from
0
1 Chap. vi, • The Application of the Doctrine of Witchcraft to our Times. '
* See the pamphlet of that year with a title eminently illustrative of this movement,
Detection of Damnable Drifts, practized by 3 Witches, arraigned at Chelmsforde in
Essez. . . . Set Forth to discover the Ambushementes of Sathan, Whereby He Would Sur.
prise us, lulled in securitie and heardened with contempt of God's vengeance threatened
for our offences.
• See Freimark, Occultismus und Sexualität, 1909; Laurent-Nagour, Occultismus
und Liebe, 1903; Lehmann, Aberglaube, 2nd ed. 1908 ; Delasseux, Les Incubes et les
Succubes, 1897; Brevannes, L'Orgie Satanique, 1904 ; Paul Moreau, Des Aberrations du
Sens Génèsique, 4th ed. 1887; K. H. Ulrichs, Incubus, Urningsliebe und Blutgier, 1869.
See, also, papers by Freud, Jung, Ferenczi and Ernest Jones in The American Journal
of Psychology, April 1910.
## p. 374 (#390) ############################################
374
The Advent of Modern Thought
accused women in the hope of pardon or at least of respite
from their anguish. But, in the seventeenth century, with its
.
ignorance of nervous diseases, tracts? disseminating these accounts
appealed to the people's half suppressed sense of horror and
love of impurity and created a profound impression. Writers now
began to discuss the judicial aspects of witchcraft; but, however
critical might be their attitude to methods of conviction, they
never questioned the reality of the crime. Thus, John Cotta, a
physician, who had insight enough to expose the frauds of quack
doctors, displays all the enlightenment of his age in The Triall
of Witchcraft, showing the true and righte method of discovery
(1616), but cannot dissuade himself from believing in magic
and sorcery. He begins by declaring the subject to be beyond
human knowledge and approachable only through conjecture and
inference. By this devious method, he deduces that evil spirits
exist, quoting the usual testimony from sacred and classical
history; but his common sense prompts him to warn his readers
that those suspected of witchcraft are often mere impostors or
unconsenting agents in working the devil's miracles. He even
employs his erudition to expose the fallacy of the water test *.
But the many current reports of witchery lead him to agree with
Reginald Scot that magic must have been at work when diseases
produce unaccountable symptoms or defy accredited remedies":
And he maintains that the testimony of reliable witnesses or the
detection of occult practices are enough to bring a witch to the
bar. Edward Fairfax, translator of Tasso, and author of Godfrey
of Bulloigne, succumbed to the prevailing panic. In an admirable
piece of narrative prose", he ascribes the mental disorders of his
children to witchcraft, though the hallucinations and seizures
are mainly due, in the case of younger children, to infantile
hysteria and, of the elder girl, to suppressed eroticism.
In order to stir up opposition to the new rulers, Walker, thereupon,
6
1 The Moderate Intelligencer, 27 September-4 October.
2 Mercurius Elencticus, 8-15 October,
3 The Weekly Post, 31 May–7 June 1659, A brief View, etc. , by Younger, W. ,
2 August 1660.
23–2
## p. 356 (#372) ############################################
356 The Beginnings of English Journalism
published a description of Cromwell's sayings upon his deathbed",
in which he not only vilified the quakers once more but, also,
attacked the Rump. Though he obtained no support, he seems to
have been imprisoned for writing this tract? , which was carefully
shunned by all writers of the seventeenth century, but accepted
by Carlyle in the nineteenth. It contains a typically untruthful
version of a prayer by Cromwell.
The crown and coping stone of this man's baseness was his last
book, published in August 1660, a religious eulogy of Charles II,
entitled Serious Observations lately made touching his Majesty
and literally bristling with texts; the hypocrisy of its writer is
evident if it be compared with his earlier broadsides concerning
Charles II—The Mad Designe (6 November 1651) and The true
manner of the crowning of Charles the Second King of Scotland
together with a description of his life and a clear view of his
court and Counsel (1 January 1651). What became of Walker
after this no one knows.
The royalist press of 1647—50, carried on in spite of every
effort to suppress it, calls for a few words. Cleiveland seems
to have been the moving spirit of the numerous ephemeral
Mercuries which appeared in 1648 and 1649; Samuel Sheppard
undoubtedly undertook the largest part of the work, and was the
originator of Mercurius Pragmaticus. Both roundhead (presby-
terian) and royalist joined in the racy and scurrilous denunciation
of the independents and regicides. Pride the swineherd (who
could neither read nor write), Joyce the tailor, Rolfe and Hewson
the shoemakers, Scot the minotaur, Marten and his mistresses,
Cromwell with his red nose and the rest of the revolutionaries,
all afforded a rich field for ribaldry and, above all, there was
Walker, with whom the Mercuries teem. Mercurius Melan-
cholicus, written by Martin Parker the ballad writer, is full of
Walker ; and so is the counterfeit of this periodical which was
written by major-general Massey's chaplain John Hackluyt.
To Sheppard may be attributed a share in the writing of
1 A collection of passages . . . by one who was groom of his chamber. The
pamphlet was entered in the Stationers' register by Ibbitson on 7 June 1659.
Carlyle attributed this tract to Charles Harvey, Lingard to Underwood. See the
derisive description of Walker and the pamphlet at the end of Mercurius Democritus,
for 7-14 June 1659.
2 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1659–60, p. 47.
3 The true version, as heard by major Butler, is in Neal's History of the Puritans.
If this be compared with Walker’s version, and the attack on the Rump on p. 21 of his
pamphlet, the object of his alterations is manifest.
3
## p. 357 (#373) ############################################
Harris, Mabbott and Crouch
357
6
Mercurius Elencticus, when its real author, Sir George Wharton,
was in prison. Mercurius Elencticus is full of biographies of the
rebels, none of which have ever been disproved and large numbers
of which can be corroborated from other sources.
Other periodicals by Sheppard were Mercurius Dogmaticus
(1648) and The Royall Diurnall (1648). In 1651, he issued
Mercurius Pragmaticus Reviv'd, continuing it as Elencticus and
(both titles being disallowed) wound it up as Mercurius Scom-
maticus. In 1652, he wrote another Pragmaticus, a Phreneticus
and a Mercurius Mastix—the last an amusing and valuable skit
on the journalism of his day. His pamphlet, The Weepers, also
contains most indispensable information about the writers of
newsbooks.
John Hall, poet and pamphleteer, was hired by Lilly the
astrologer to attack Wharton in 1648 and wrote the Mercurius
Brittanicus and Mercurius Censorius of that year in defence of
the parliament.
A certain John Harris, better known as 'Sirrahniho' and
'Oxford Jack' (he is throughout easily identified by the latter
nickname), who had been a printer to the army and terminated
his career as major John Harris, hanged for forgery at the
restoration, was the author of the Mercurius Militaris and Anti
Mercurius of 1648. Though he was Cromwell's spy, yet the
antipathy he ever displayed towards Cromwell (both in his original
petition in the State Papers and in his newsbooks) is very
curious.
Gilbert Mabbott, son of a Nottingham cobbler and Rushworth's
clerk, was a leveller, and was removed from his post as licenser
for this in 1649. He was the writer of The Moderate and of a
scurrilous Mercurius Britannicus in 1649. He pretended to hold
views in favour of the freedom of the press in 1649, when he
found that he was to be removed, but he was restored to his
post in 1653.
John Crouch the printer first appears on the scene in 1647 as
the writer of occasional counterfeits of Mercurius Melancholicus
and Pragmaticus. In 1649 and 1650, he wrote the vulgar,
scurrilous and occasionally amusing Man in the Moon, spending
some time in the Gatehouse prison in consequence. Between the
years 1652 and 1655, he wrote the licensed periodicals known
as Mercurius Democritus, Fumigosus and so forth, which were
indecent and obscene throughout. Some numbers, duly licensed and
authorised by Cromwell's licenser, Mabbott, during the years 1653
## p. 358 (#374) ############################################
358 The Beginnings of English Journalism
and 1654, contain songs comparable to the most indecent verse of
Rochester himself.
When Cromwell turned out the Rump in 1653, a printer called
John Streater, a captain and quartermaster-general of the Irish
army, circulated a paper of 'queries' among his brother officers;
for this, Cromwell dismissed him from the army as 'unfit,' and
Streater underwent a lengthy and illegal imprisonment, at the
expiration of which he issued two remarkable periodicals, entitled,
respectively, Observations, Historical Political and Philosophical,
upon Aristotle's first book of Political Government, together
with a narrative of State affairs (no. 1, 4 April 1654) and A
Politick Commentary on the life of Caius July Caesar with
Perfect and Impartial Intelligence (no. 1, 23 May 1654). These,
in some sort, were an anticipation of Killing no Murder, and it is
odd that they should have been unnoticed in modern times.
Streater's account of his troubles is to be found in his Secret
Reasons of State (23 May 1659). The Rump gave him a regiment
in 1659, and, though he was arrested in 1661, the licensing act of
1662 honoured his stand for freedom of parliament by expressly
exempting him by name from all its provisions. He was a pro-
sperous printer (chiefly of law books) for the rest of his life, and
died in 1687.
Cromwell's last journalist was Marchamont Nedham, who, unlike
Walker, was an educated man, a graduate of All Souls, Oxford. But
he possessed neither honour, religion, morals nor definite political
convictions. He wrote anything for anybody and lived simply
for money. He shall never be mentioned 'but to his everlasting
shame and infamy,' wrote Cleiveland ; yet, at the time when this
was said, Nedham had not touched his lowest depths. In 1648
(probably not before this time, nor after February 1649), he wrote
the royalist Mercurius Pragmaticus, taking it out of the hands of
Samuel Sheppard, and adopting the same tiresome railing tone
which he had used in his roundhead journal Britanicus. After
his imprisonment, in 1649, he was willing to write pamphlets
for the regicides, was rewarded by a pension of £100 a year
and, on 13 June 1650, started the first permanent official journal
Mercurius Politicus. Cromwell left for Scotland at the end
of the month, after a sermon by Henry Walker, and Nedham
then inserted so scandalous a series of articles on the Scots in
Politicus that, at last, Cleiveland came forward (on 14 August
1650) with a Character of Mercurius Politicus, a furious and
merciless exposure, in which he described Nedham’s wit as having
## p. 359 (#375) ############################################
Mercurius Politicus
359
scandalized both sexes, disobliged three parties, reproached our whole nation,
and not only ours but all others having declared himself as the disgrace so to
be the public enemy of mankind . . . our lay spalatto, a three piled apostate,
a renegade more notorious than any in Sally or Algier;
adding, in conclusion :
Yet it is not fit that we should be at the mercy of a Tavern, and the
drunkenness of an arbitrary Pen. Must we be subjected to his two sheets of
'High Court of Justice ? ' We are content to serve, but it mads us to be re-
proached, and by such a one as him; for there is no such torment to a
Christian as to be tyrannized over by a Renegade. . . . So insatiable is his
appetite of speaking ill that there is no person so intimate to him, or so
deserving; nothing so secret or religious which he abuseth not to that
purpose; so that he is neither to be tolerated in Society nor policy, neither in
Conversation nor a State; but, rather, as a public parricide, to be thrown
into the sea in a sack, with a cock, and ape, and a serpent, the right emblems
of his politic triplicity.
å
On this, Nedham's articles were stopped, and it is probable
that he was removed from his authorship, and John Hall, the other
paid writer, installed, for a time, in his stead? .
Beginning with 26 September 1650, and ending with 12 August
1652, Politicus contained a series of leading articles advocating
republican institutions, with studied moderation. Their style is good,
and they occasionally quote Thomas May's Lucan. There were
one or two reprints of parts of them in pamphlet form, and, on
29 June 1656, Thomas Brewster (Vane and Marten's publisher)
reprinted the articles which were published between 16 October
1651 and 12 August 1652, condensed into a book under the title The
a
Excellencie of a Free State, by way of an attack upon Cromwell,
as, at the time, trying to stamp all semblance of a free state
into the dust. The book was also prefaced by an attack upon
Howell, who had urged Cromwell to take all power into his hands.
It has quite absurdly been attributed to Nedham, at that time
Cromwell's paid spy as well as journalist and the very last man
likely to attack him. According to Sheppard's The Weepers, pub-
lished on 13 September 1652, Politicus, at that time, was written
by some one in authority (the reference is clearly to these articles)
and some member of the council of state, possibly Marten, must
have been the writer of them. Milton licensed Politicus for a
portion of the time, from January 1651 to January 1652 (the
fact is not to the credit of the author of Areopagitica); but the
i Wood intimates that Nedham left off writing Politicus soon after the start.
The Hue and Cry after those rambling protonotaries of the times, Mercurius Elencticus,
Britanicus, Melancholicus and Aulicus (7 Feb. 1651) contains a personal description of
the writer of Politicus which can only apply to Hall.
## p. 360 (#376) ############################################
360 The Beginnings of English Journalism
supposition that he may have had a hand in the composition of
the articles may, on internal evidence, at once be dismissed.
When Cromwell finally suppressed the licensed press in
September 1655, Nedham began a second official periodical, The
Publick Intelligencer, published on Mondays. Other periodicals
written by him before this were Mercurius Pragmaticus, 1652,
(probably not more than one number), in opposition to Sheppard's
Pragmaticus, Mercurius Britannicus, 1652 (the first five numbers
only), Mercurius Poeticus, 1654, and The Observator, 1654.
With the exception of his own advertising periodical The
Publick Adviser of 1657, Nedham had no competitor until the
Rump was restored in 1659. He then lost his pension, and his
two periodicals were handed over to John Canne, the anabaptist
printer and preacher, on 13 May 1659. Nothing dismayed, Nedham
changed sides once more, wrote a book for the Rump entitled
Interest will not lie, levelled against the restoration of Charles II,
and recovered his periodicals on 16 August 1659. General
Monck's council of state 'prohibited him’altogether in April 1660,
and he then fled to Holland, but, having obtained his pardon
under the great seal, returned in September 1660? He after-
wards practised medicine and died in 1678, but succeeded in
writing pamphlets for Charles II before his death.
A periodical in French was issued throughout the wars. This
was Le Mercure Anglois, apparently written by John Cotgrave,
under Dillingham's influence, from 17 June 1644 to 14 December
1648. A second periodical, entitled Nouvelles Ordinaires de
Londres, was started in 1650, and lasted to the restoration, being
e revived again in 1663 by Henry Muddiman and Thomas Henshaw
of Kensington. Unfortunately, it has almost entirely vanished.
One phenomenon to be noticed in all the pamphlets of the
great rebellion is the fact that, though the writers, in many cases,
were drawn from the most uneducated classes, their style continually
improves. Correct English and spelling are as conspicuously
present in Pecke's and Walker's latest periodicals as they are
markedly absent in the earlier years. For this, the correctors of
the press were responsible. Many a poor clergyman ejected from
his living must have earned his bread in this way. In the case
of Pecke's periodicals, the career of the corrector of the press of
Mrs Griffin, publisher of Pecke's last Perfect Diurnall, is well
known, owing to his having been thrown into prison for treason
1 The Man in the Moon, 1 October 1660.
## p. 361 (#377) ############################################
The Rump's Yournalists
361
.
in 1660. He was Cromwell's son-in-law,' Thomas Philpott of
Snow hill, and his examination after his arrest shows that he had
been very well educated? . He began life as a scholar of Christ
Church near St Bartholomew's hospital, and, after this, became
a king's scholar at Westminster school. Then he went to Trinity
college, Cambridge, for about eight years, proceeding M. A. From
1641, he was schoolmaster at Sutton Vallamore, Kent, for four
years. After this, he became corrector of the printing presses
of John Haviland and Mrs Griffin, of Richard Bishop and widow
Raworth, and, at the restoration, was employed by Robert White
and Edward Mottershead. Philpot, therefore, was responsible
for the neat appearance and correct language of Pecke's later
pamphlets.
At the end of April 1659, the Rump parliament had permitted
licensed newsbooks to be revived; but when, thanks to general
Monck, it resumed its sittings for the second time in 1659, in
December, its council of state-of which Thomas Scot was the
head-decided to suppress all outside 'newsbooks' Two jour-
nalists only were allowed to publish news twice a week. One
was Nedham, with his Publick Intelligencer and Mercurius
Politicus, and the other was one Oliver Williams, Scot's protégé,
with his Occurrences from Foreign parts and An Exact Ac-
compt, published on Tuesdays and Fridays. From a postscript to
the Occurrences for 8—15 November 1659, it appears that John
Canne was then writing his periodicals for Williams, though he
did not do so before this date.
Oliver Williams was the holder of the unexpired term of a
patent for an advertising or registration office granted to captain
Robert Innes many years previously by Charles I. On the
strength of this, he had tried to probibit Nedham's Publick Adviser
in 1657, and, after the restoration, asserted that it conferred
upon him the sole right to publish newsbooks. This was a
falsehood. When Nedham fled the kingdom, he at once seized
the opportunity and issued a new Politicus and Publick Intelli-
gencer, as well as other periodicals, marking them ‘published by
authority. ' It is very probable that his advertising offices and
newsbooks masked some conspiracy, but the end came when he
1 He signs himself your son-in-law' to his printed petition to Cromwell presented
9 October 1654. He is identified in Mercurius Aulicus, no. 1, 13-20 March 1654.
Nos. 54 ff. , 143 and 147 Tanner MSS at Oxford are by Thomas Philpot.
Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Chas. II, vol. xxiv, no. 105 (Calendar of
1660-1, p. 427).
3 See Thomason's notes on his tracts, E 1013 (2) and (23).
## p. 362 (#378) ############################################
362 The Beginnings of English Journalism
attacked the duly authorised journalist, Henry Muddiman, and
drew attention to his own claims; for his periodicals were then
(in July 1660) suppressed. But, when the Rump authorised
Nedham and Williams to print news, Clarges, general Monck's
brother-in-law and agent in London, also obtained permission to
have a third bi-weekly published under his direction, selecting as
his writer a young schoolmaster educated at St John's college,
Cambridge, called Henry Muddiman, who had never written for
the press before. As the son of a Strand tradesman, he must have
been well known, both to Clarges (a Strand apothecary) and to
his sister Mrs Monck (widow of a Strand tradesman). The general,
if the Rump had only known it, was about to have someone to see
that his manifestoes were truthfully put before the nation. One
has only to compare Nedham's and Williams's periodicals with
those of Monck's journalist to see that this was necessary!
On Monday, 26 December 1659, the new journalist issued his
first newsbook, The Parliamentary Intelligencer (afterwards the
Kingdom's Intelligencer), with the ominous motto on the title-
page, Nunquam sera est ad bonos mores via; and, on the
following Thursday week, the first number of his other weekly
'book,' Mercurius Publicus, appeared. Thus, he was in opposition
to Nedham from the start.
A few days later, Pepys made Muddiman's acquaintance and
went with him to the Rota club, where he paid eighteenpence to
become a member. The club met at a coffee-house called the Turk's
head, which was kept by one Miles, in Palace yard, 'where you
take water,' as Aubrey remarks, and which was frequented by a
number of 'ingeniose gents,' who discussed Harrington's idea of
yearly ballotting out a third of the house of Commons in so skilful a
manner that the arguments in the Parliament house'were but flatt'
to it. Pepys found that his new acquaintance had a very poor
opinion of the Rump, though he wrote news-books for them,' and
>
6
6
1 The confidence placed by Monck in him is shown by the following title-pages:
(11 April 1660) The Remonstrance and Address of the Armies of England, Scotland
and Ireland to the Lord General Monck. Presented to his Excellency the 9th of April
1660. St James's April 9, 1660. Ordered by his Excellency the L. Gen. Monck. That
the Remonstrance and Address of the officers of the Army presented this day to his
Excellency be forthwith printed and published by Mr Henry Muddiman. William Clarke
Secretary. London Printed by John Macock.
(28 May 1660) His Majesty's letter to His Excellency the Lord General Monck. To
be communicated to the officers of the Army. Brought to his Excellency from his
Majesties Court at the Hague by Sir Thomas Clarges. Rochester, 24 May 1660. I do
appoint Mr Henry Muddiman to cause this letter to be forthwith printed and published.
George Monck. Printed by John Macock.
## p. 363 (#379) ############################################
Henry Muddiman and The Gazette 363
-
6
6
recorded his impression that he was a 'good scholar, and an arch
rogue' for speaking basely' of the Rump. Needless to add, he
was soon to be undeceived as to the nature of the parliament for
which the new journalist was writing.
Thus began the career of the most famous of all the seven-
teenth century journalists; one whose principal ‘paper'—The
London Gazette-is with us still. That he has been forgotten
is due to the fact that he made few private, and no public,
enemies; for he was not a controversialist, and, throughout his
life, devoted himself to what, after all, is the principal part of a
journalist's duty-the collection of news. He had an assistant,
a Scot named Giles Dury, who, if his wife's name, 'Turgis,' in his
marriage licence in 1649, is a misreading for Clarges, must have
been a relation of Sir Thomas Clarges. Anthony à Wood tells us
that Dury soon 'gave over'; thus, in a few months' time, when
Nedham and Williams had successively been repressed, Muddiman
was sole journalist of the three kingdoms.
This was not his only reward, for the important privilege of
free postage was also given to him. Thus, anyone was at liberty
to write to him, post free, to tell him what was going on in any
part of the kingdoms, he also having the right to send letters
in return without charge. He, therefore, opened his first editorial
office at the Seven Stars in the Strand, near the New Exchange
(the site of Coutts's old bank), and attached himself to the office of
secretary of state Nicholas, afterwards of lord Arlington, whither,
after a time, the bulk of his letters were addressed, either to
himself or, by his own direction, to Sir Joseph Williamson, then
under-secretary and, after a time, his censor. A correspondence of
this kind, of course, was of very great importance to a government
anxious to know what was going on in different parts of the
realm, and it largely accounts for the great bulk of the restoration
state papers. The fact that parliament, in June 1660, prohibited
printed reports of its proceedings and never removed the embargo
until the end of the century, made his letters of news much in
request, and, in this way, that which might have been thought
the least important and the least lucrative part of his work
really assumed the greatest consequence. So, when Sir Roger
L'Estrange's open request for the sole privilege of writing the
'newsbooks' succeeded, at the end of 1663, Muddiman was but
little injured and does not at all seem to have resented his
supersession.
A more dangerous enemy than L'Estrange was Sir Joseph
Williamson, for whom Muddiman started the Gazette at the end
## p. 364 (#380) ############################################
364 The Beginnings of English Journalism
a
of 1665 and crushed out L'Estrange; finally, when Williamson
tried to deprive him of his newsletter correspondence, Muddiman
started another periodical—the official The Current Intelligence
(of 1666)—under protection of Monck's cousin, another secretary of
state, Sir William Morice. Thus, Williamson was brought to terms.
He had to carry on a newsletter correspondence himself after this,
in order to feed the Gazette; but his duties prevented his giving
his personal attention either to the Gazette or to his newsletters;
and, while the former lapsed into a moribund condition, the latter
did not pay. The newsletters of the man whom he had attempted
to oust became a household word throughout the kingdom.
These newsletters, closely written by clerks (from dictation)
on a single sheet, the size and shape of modern foolscap, headed
'Whitehall,' to show their privilege, beginning 'Sir,' and without any
signature, misspelt, the writing cramped and crabbed to a degree,
but literally crammed with parliamentary and court news, are
easily distinguishable from the rarer productions of less successful
writers. They were sent post free twice a week, or oftener, for £5 a
year and, from the lists of correspondents at the Record office, as
well as from numerous references to Muddiman in the various
reports of the Historical Manuscripts commission, it is evident
that no personage of consequence could afford to dispense with
them. A vast number of them still exist; one collection contains
a complete series for twenty-two years. They have never yet been
systematically calendared and published.
Anthony à Wood continually visited Short's coffee-house in
Cat street, Oxford, in order to read 'Muddiman's letter' and was
in the habit of paying two shillings 'quarteridge' for them when
they were done with. Sir Roger North, in the life of his brother,
shows that they were held in much the same esteem at Cambridge.
Once or twice, Muddiman got into trouble. In 1676, the king
was much annoyed at a statement made in a newsletter found in a
coffee-house, to the effect that a fleet was to sail against Algiers
under Sir John Narborough and that the duke of Monmouth was
to be one of his captains. The letter was at once suspected to be
Muddiman's. Pepys got a copy of it for Williamson, and Muddiman
was examined before the council, the king stating that he would not
suffer either Muddiman or any other person to divulge anything
agitated in council 'till he thought fit to declare it. ' When the
matter was enquired into, the writer was proved to have been
Williamson's own head clerk, and he had to dismiss him. The
following year, Muddiman was arrested for writing confidently
that the Spaniards intended war against England,' but nothing
a
## p. 365 (#381) ############################################
Muddiman's Newsletters
365
6
seems to have come of it. Wood also records in his diary that,
in 1686, in the days of James II, Street, judge of assize at
Oxford, spoke in his charge to the grand jury against newsletters,
particularly Muddiman's, and, after noting that they 'came not to
Oxon afterwards,' adds, other trite and lying letters came”. But,
as he was on the popular side and opposed to James II, his
letters were soon back again. His Gazette may be said to
have been the first printed newspaper, for it at once gained
the title of a 'paper' as being a departure from the ancient
pamphlet form and no longer a 'book. It was only ‘half a sheet
in folio' and clearly designed to be sent with his letters. The
word 'newes-paper' was not long in being coined as a result, and,
from analogy with this, was at last obtained the word 'newsletter. '
The career of Sir Roger L'Estrange, who supplanted Henry
Muddiman for about two years, would (like that of Henry Walker)
require a volume to do it justice, if his surveyorship of the press
were taken into account. Nevertheless, his role as journalist
was brief, uneventful and unimportant. His two periodicals The
Intelligencer and The News (31 August 1663 to 29 January 1666)
were only half the size of his predecessor's publications and, in
1664, were paged and numbered together as one periodical. This was
a device to make them pay. L'Estrange was a better pamphleteer
than journalist; his Observator, issued in later years, consisted of
nothing but comment without news. When Muddiman put an end
to L'Estrange's journals with the Gazette in 1665, L'Estrange, by
the king's orders, was pensioned off with £100 a year charged on the
Gazette, his future services as surveyor of the press being paid for,
in like manner, by £200 a year out of the secret service money.
Of the immense journalistic output which Cromwell had sup-
pressed, the net results at the end of the reign of Charles II were:
first, the official recognition of the necessity to gratify the public
desire for news, shown in the continuance of the Gazette as a per-
manent institution; and, secondly, the striking manner in which
newsletters were permitted, unfettered and uncensored, for the
benefit of the upper classes, to supply the defects of the official
print. No longer ridiculed, newsletters at last obtained a place in
public esteem which had never been obtained by newsbooks.
That,
before the end of the century, the liberty of the press should begin
and the modern newspaper follow, was but a logical corollary to
this.
6
1 Jeffreys took the extreme step of suppressing coffee-houses that dealt in news-
letters. ' Ellis correspondence, by A. Ellis, II, p. 243.
## p. 366 (#382) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
THE TADVENT OF MODERN THOUGHT IN POPULAR
LITERATURE
THE WITCH CONTROVERSY. PAMPHLETEERS
1
THE enlightenment of the renascence had never penetrated the
deeper recesses of the popular mind. The social, religious and
economic revolutions of Tudor times; the fermentation of city
life under Elizabeth and James ; the growth of national conscious-
ness; the discoveries of travellers and men of science; above all,
the popularisation of biblical and classical literature, had added
enormously to the interests and imagination of the ordinary man,
without transforming his sentiments, convictions and ideals. His
mental vision was crowded with new and engrossing objects, but
his outlook remained medieval. It was the task of the Jacobean
and Caroline generations to effect a mental reformation. Had
the age been a time of political peace and social calm, the first
half of the seventeenth century would have proved to be one of
the most interesting epochs in English literature. In an atmo-
sphere of learning and discussion, humanists of the period would
have adjusted their heritage of old-time beliefs and aspirations to
the maturer, more tolerant wisdom of Erasmus, More, Wier,
Bullein, Montaigne, Scot, Ralegh, Shakespeare, Earle and Bacon.
All that was best in the Middle Ages would have expanded into
modern thought, and a second, more spiritual renascence would
have inspired a series of masterpieces, such as the work of Vergil
and Molière, in which the past and present join hands. As it
was, though knowledge continued to increase, the thoughts and
emotions of the people were diverted by class hatred, religious
controversy and the political crisis. The consciousness of fellow-
ship, essential to intellectual progress, had died out. Thus,
humanists, instead of broadening and redirecting the tendencies of
popular thought, either relapsed into scepticism, as in the instances
of Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne, or let loose their
## p. 367 (#383) ############################################
Demonology in the Middle Ages 367
augmented volume of learning and sentiment into the old, narrow
channels. Whenever an age fails to find new interests, intellectual
intemperance results. And, just as, at an earlier date, social
writers lost touch with ideas and squandered their originality on
experiments in style? , so, now, the more learned divines and
physicians devoted their scholarship and research to the barren
mysteries of demonology.
In order to understand the witch controversy of the seventeenth
century, it is necessary to remember that primitive people had
always cherished a veneration for the 'wise woman”, probably a
relic of the mother-worship of the premigratory period, and that
her broom, ladle and goat may, possibly, be regarded as symbols
of her domestic power. She was supplanted by the new polytheism
of warrior spirits ; and, when they gave way, in their turn, to
Christianity, some of the dispossessed deities became saints, while
others went to join this earlier deity in the traditions and folk-lore
of the people. As western Christendom became familiar with the
teaching of the Greek church and with eastern religions—at first
by the researches of theologians and then through the Saracenic
wars in Spain and the crusades—these rites and superstitions were
gradually coloured with rabbinical conceptions of the devil's
hierarchy and with the Neoplatonic doctrine of demons and inter-
mediary powers. Despite the rationalism of Jean de Meung and
Roger Bacon", patristic conceptions of demonology were codified
and systematised in the Middle Ages. Such superstitions as the
incubus and succubus, the transmutation of men into beasts, the
power to fly by night were then, definitely, incorporated in
medieval theological conceptions. From the twelfth or thirteenth
century onwards, new feelings of horror and loathing began to be
associated with this entanglement of traditions. Not only was
the underworld of disinherited deities regarded as a rival by the
Church, and, therefore, credited with the infamies which are
usually attributed to heretics", but as men struggled towards a
higher level of civilisation, they instinctively accused these pariahs
of all that they were endeavouring to eliminate from their own
daily lives. The calamities and controversies of the fifteenth and
6
1 See ante, vol. iv, chap. XVI.
2 Karl Pearson: see essays on Woman as Witch,' 'Ashiepattle,' “Kindred Group-
marriage' in vol. 11 of Chances of Death, 1897.
3 Roman de la Rose, pt. II, c. 1280. Epistola fratris Rogerii Baconis de secretis
operibus artis et natura et de nullitate magiae, c. 1250 (ptd Theatrum Chimicum,
Nürnberg, 1732).
• See, especially, the bull of Gregory IX, 13 June 1233.
## p. 368 (#384) ############################################
368 The Advent of Modern Thought
sixteenth centuries only added to men's sense of danger and
misery and inspired a yet more pessimistic school of demonologists,
led by Jacquier, Institoris and Sprenger. By the time we
reach the seventeenth century, the imaginary realm of spirits,
ghosts, gnomes, fairies, demons, prophets and conjurors—now stig-
matised as the implacable enemies of mankind—became allegories
or symbols of all that was degraded, perverted, revolting or terrible.
The devil, from being a denizen of lonely or impassable places,
had now grown to be the monarch of innumerable hosts. As the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been disgraced in the eyes
of the priesthood by blasphemous parodies, so, now, the diabolical
empire was believed to be a monstrous imitation of the kingdom
of heaven, with disgusting travesties of church ritual. The
fiend's one object was to seduce mortals from the worship of
God, and as, from early Christian times, both monkish doctrin-
aires and secular humorists had depicted women
women as loose,
malevolent or ridiculous, so, now, it was with this sex rather than
with men that he found his easiest victims and most willing allies.
This predilection stimulated the dreams of diseased imagination.
The witch or 'wise woman’ was looked upon as the devil's chosen
handmaiden. The most elaborate pornography grew up around
this supposed union, and the witches' sabbath or Walpurgis
night-a relic of mother-worship, at which licence abounded-was
conceived to be a kind of devil's mass, at which debauchery ran
riot Other obsessions came to be connected with the witch
horror. From prehistoric times certain animals had been re-
garded as spirits of evil. Recollections of these legends blended
with the fear of noisome and poisonous animals, and led men to
believe that such creatures were auxiliaries of Black Magic.
Human deformity abounded in medieval slums, and people still
believed in monsters half man and half beast. And, as witches
were hideous hags, men attributed to these old women the birth of
abortions such as Hedelin? , Stengesius and Paré+ described and
the people themselves read of in broadsides.
From prehistoric times, men had been, and were still, accus-
tomed to regard the trivial enterprises and interests of bucolic
life as under the influence of witches. Such things as the growth
1 See Jules Baissac, Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie, 1890, chap. vi. See, also,
chap. vii in Illustrierte Sittengeschichte, by Fuchs, E. , 1909.
2 Des Satyres, Brutes, Monstres et Demons. De leur Nature et Adoration, par Francois
Hedelin, 1627. (Hedelin is better known as the Abbé d'Aubignac. )
: De Monstris et Monstrosis, 1647 (? ).
* Deux livres de chirurgie, 1573. Eng. trans. by Johnson, T. , 1649.
## p. 369 (#385) ############################################
Belief in Witchcraft
369
of crops, the fall of rain, the churning of milk, the disappearance
of household utensils and the birth of children, came within their
province, but, now that all the mystery of evil and suffering had
gathered round these beings, strange and appalling diseases were
believed to come from their power. Epilepsy, somnambulism,
St Vitus's dance, hysteria and hypnotism were attributed to vene-
fical agency. They could slowly murder human beings by sym-
pathetic magic or change them into animals. Nay, more, with
the help of the devil, they could call back the dead, or some
semblance of the dead, to aid them to win ascendency over human
beings.
It will hence be readily understood that, at the opening of our
period, the belief in witchcraft had grown to be more than an
antiquated superstition. It represented the Gothic obscenity,
grotesqueness, profanity, madness, cruelty and paganism, which
progress had branded as accursed but could not eradicate from the
imaginations of men. Had an age of moral reflectiveness suc-
ceeded to the creative energy of Elizabeth's reign, the Jacobean
and Caroline generations would have turned the light of the new
learning on their own minds and formed a higher conception of
divine power and human dignity. But the heat of controversy
rendered introspection impossible, and humanists were too busy
refuting each other's political and religious errors to cultivate
high seriousness of thought. Thus, those who felt that all was not
well with the world, and who were not inspired by any movement
towards a more cultured and spiritual interpretation of life,
returned to examine the old allegory of human imperfection and
defencelessness, finding in the books of the past and the dis-
order of the present only too much to justify a belief in witchcraft.
To begin with, as progress bad not been universal, those who
could not move with the times tended to cling to old beliefs from
instinctive distrust of what was new; while others, dismayed at
the collapse of faith and tradition, were ready to believe anything
which represented humanity as corrupt and afflicted. The
Faust legend was still a parable of the age. Many who viewed
with horror the careers of John Dee, Walter Kelly, Simon Forman,
Dr Lambe, William Lilly and Elias Ashmole, were not prepared to
deny that witches and magicians bartered their souls in the insane
desire to pass the limits divinely placed to knowledge and power.
Again, the renascence had accustomed men to intenser and more
versatile habits of thought; inventions were more ingenious,
thinkers were more subtle. Consequently, those who were
24
K. L. VII.
CH, XVI.
## p. 370 (#386) ############################################
370 The Advent of Modern Thought
still convinced of original sin, would attribute to the devil the
heightened intelligence and duplicity of man, rather than deny
his existence.
Now that the thoughts of men were turned in this direction,
they continued, like their predecessors from St Augustine down-
wards, to discover authority for superstitions in their most revered
sources of knowledge. Neoplatonism was used to corroborate
the doctrine of spirits and angels, and, besides, to deny that the
world was full of demons was to be a Sadducee. Moreover,
positive proofs of devilry and magic could be deduced from holy
writ. The serpent in the garden of Eden, Pharaoh's conjurors,
the afflictions of Job, Balaam and his ass, the witch of Endor,
the 'voice of the charmer,' the transmutation of Nebuchadnezzar,
the Gadarene swine, 'the lunatic boy,' and Simon Magus were
understood in the light of seventeenth-century demonology,
Classical lore, which carried hardly less weight than Scripture,
could be as easily interpreted. The incubus and succubus were
discerned in the union of gods and goddesses with mortals. The
belief in witch-begotten monsters was confirmed by tales of the
Minotaur, lamiae, empusae, lemures and satyrsIf Circe could
, .
turn men into swine, Neptune and Aeolus raise storms, Juno
travel through the air, Apollo strike down with disease, Venus
become invisible, why should not more modern magicians? They
learnt from Apuleius that men could be changed into animals;
from Horace and Lucan that witches practised abominable rites
in secret, and from Tacitus, Suetonius and Ovid that spells, in-
cantations and sympathetic magic could be used to destroy the
life of a fellow creature.
For many, and, in some cases, subconscious, motives,
,
men wished to believe in witchcraft; and, since the intellect
generally follows the emotions, the age found more reasons for
believing the propositions formulated by Molitoris? , and for
iterally discharging the mistranslated mandate, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch (Mekasshepha) to live,' than for believing the
arguments of Agrippa, Erasmus, Wier, Reuchlin, the authors of
Litterae Obscurorum Virorum, and Scots Puritanism, with its
1 Cf. Walter Mapes, De nugis curialium, c. 1180, in which Satan admits that Ceres,
Priapus, naiads, fauns, dryads, satyrs, Bacchus and Pan have been changed into
devils.
? See Dialogus de Pythonicis Mulieribus, 1489.
3 For the recrudescence of the witch panic in Tudor times, see ante, vol. 11, chap. v,
pp. 112 ff. ; for the part played by Erasmus see, especially, Colloquia Familiaria ; for
Reuchlin, De verbo mirifico, 1494 ; for Wier, De Praestigiis demonum, 1564.
## p. 371 (#387) ############################################
Gifford's Dialogues of Witches
371
gloom, its intolerance and its sense of spiritual conflict, has been
held largely responsible for the persecution that now arose.
But the causes lay deeper than any sectarian movement and
actuated men of different creeds, who might otherwise have ad-
vanced the culture of their age. Holland, in a tedious dialogue',
a
proved the existence of witches from the Bible, and established
the likelihood of their lust for blood by quoting the sacrifice of
Iphigenia and the cruelties of Nero and Maxentius. He claimed
that they should be put to death, even if unconvicted of magic, as
being renegades and perverters. With soulless resignation, he
recognised in them God's chosen sign of the world's sins, especially
papistry, and His scourge wherewith to plague apostates. Passing
over Nashe's brilliant and erratic protest? against superstition,
which squandered flashes of cultured ridicule on the unessential
question of dreams and probably never reached serious contro-
versialists, we find George Gifford returning to the discussion in
1593. His new production, Dialogues of Witches and Witchcraft,
is an important sign of the times. It treats of rustic superstitions,
and, in a spirit of simple, broad-minded Christianity, he maintains,
as Wier had already asserted, that witches and sorcerers have no
diabolical power; that blight, the sickness of cattle and human ail-
ments are the work of heaven alone and should be atoned for only
by prayer and fasting. The treatise has many touches of character
drawing, and this interest in human nature, combined with a sense
of God's omnipotence, might well have led the author in the steps
of Reginald Scot. But the growing pessimism of the age had
turned Gifford's gaze from what is good in life. He still finds
truth in the scholastic doctrine that the devil is a watchful diplo-
matist who takes possession of some malevolent old hag at a time
when men are disturbed by calamity, causing her to claim the
authorship of what has really been sent from heaven. He argues
that the fiend, thanks to his superhuman knowledge, forecasts the
future and then inspires 'wise men' to make a show of causing
what the devil has merely foreseen. In either case, these impostors
consent to intercourse with the devil, are decoys to lure men from
the worship of God and, therefore, should be put to death“.
1 A Treatise against Witchcraft, 1590.
? The Terrors of the Night, or a Discourse of Apparitions, 1594; see ante, vol. iv,
chap. xvi, p. 325.
* He had already produced Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devilles, 1587.
Hobbes held nearly the same view; arguing that witches should be punished
although they have no real power, because they think they have, and purpose to do
mischief. See Leviathan, p. 7, ed. 1651.
24-2
## p. 372 (#388) ############################################
372
The Advent of Modern Thought
In 1603, king James, who had taken a prominent part in the
trial of Geilis Duncan and her associates, caused his Daemonologie
to be printed and published in England. This dialogue, despite
the jejuneness and insipidity which characterise all the literary
efforts of that royal pedant, is a remarkable work. Like other witch
treatises at the opening of the century, it still retains a critical and
scholarly attitude towards the subject. James realises, as Burkard
had done, that were wolves are the creation of a disordered fantasy,
and that nightmares (popularly explained as a sensation of diabolical
contact) are some reaction of the 'humours' of the imagination.
He agrees with St Augustine that the apparent miracles of the
devil are merely deceptions practised on the senses, and, though
he naturally believes in demons and spirits, yet he follows the
same authority and Roger Bacon in asserting that the infernal
world is thoroughly under the dominion of God. But James was
a true child of his age. In an epoch of heightened competition
and bitter feuds, he prefers to believe that people invoke infernal
aid from lust for riches or revenge, rather than to attribute all
witchcraft to the influence of melancholy? When convinced of
the probability of a league between devil and man, all the king's
theological erudition is manipulated into proofs of this theory.
The book is a manual, not discussing the question from an indi-
vidual point of view, but recapitulating and enforcing the theories
of previous demonologists, with a wealth of authoritative quotations
dear to this learned age. Thus, despite unnecessary digressions
into the realm of philology and scholasticism, the doctrine is pre-
sented with a realism and fulness of details which always carry
conviction, and every reader found his own superstition recorded
and stamped with the seal of royal approval. This powerful mani-
festo ended with the ill-fated recommendation that death should
be inflicted on the evidence of children or even of fellow criminals
(as in trials for treason) or after the water test and discovery of
the devil's mark 4.
The next few treatises on witchcraft add but little to the
theories of Gifford and king James. William Perkins, in his
Discoverie of the damned Art of Witch craft (1608), is, perhaps,
the most typical. Perkins is oppressed with the spectacle of
1 De Civitate Dei, 1. 18, c. 18, and De Secretis Operibus Artis, C. I, II.
? Bk. II, especially chap. 11.
3 Bk. II, chaps. II, IV, V, VI.
For explanation of water test, see p. 374. The devil's mark was any part of the
body which, after contact with the devil, lost sensation. Such local anaesthesia is a
recognised symptom of hysteria.
## p. 373 (#389) ############################################
William Perkins
373
human error: he sees that men have the instinct to worship some
god and that, in hours of great danger or superhuman effort, they
turn for help to some higher power. But the true God has placed
a limit to the knowledge and power of men, and many ambitious
mortals are blind to these restrictions and endeavour to pass the
goal of ordinance. When an author had taken this condemnatory
view of men's struggle for knowledge and power, he could hardly
refuse to believe that the devil was ready to help them. So he
follows the authority and example of king James, describing
Satan's well-organised kingdom and the illusory signs and wonders
he works for those in his service. But, though he follows his
predecessors by demanding the sentence of death against those
convicted, he is one of the first to discountenancel the old-
fashioned tests by hot iron, water or scratching, and to urge the
necessity of carefully sifting circumstantial evidence.
Perkins's protest marks the beginning of a new phase in this
discussion. So far back as 1576, seventeen or eighteen persons
had been condemned for witchcraft at St Osyth, and three more
at Malden in 15792. After parliament had followed their monarch's
Daemonologie with a law condemning all witches to death, a series
of official inquisitions, held especially in Lancashire, Essex and
Yorkshire, brought to light innumerable cases of women, and
sometimes of men, who confessed to a secret union with the devil.
The seducer had access to them in all conceivable shapes, from a
loathsome animal to a handsome man, leaving some point of
contact on their bodies insensible to pain, and assigning to each
a posse of attendant imps, who sucked their blood through teat-
like orifices in the skin. Thanks to this intercourse, witches
gained power to plague the persons and properties of their
enemies. Modern psychology has recognised in these hallucina-
tions the symptoms of different kinds of insanity and perversion",
and, of course, many confessions were wrung by torture from
0
1 Chap. vi, • The Application of the Doctrine of Witchcraft to our Times. '
* See the pamphlet of that year with a title eminently illustrative of this movement,
Detection of Damnable Drifts, practized by 3 Witches, arraigned at Chelmsforde in
Essez. . . . Set Forth to discover the Ambushementes of Sathan, Whereby He Would Sur.
prise us, lulled in securitie and heardened with contempt of God's vengeance threatened
for our offences.
• See Freimark, Occultismus und Sexualität, 1909; Laurent-Nagour, Occultismus
und Liebe, 1903; Lehmann, Aberglaube, 2nd ed. 1908 ; Delasseux, Les Incubes et les
Succubes, 1897; Brevannes, L'Orgie Satanique, 1904 ; Paul Moreau, Des Aberrations du
Sens Génèsique, 4th ed. 1887; K. H. Ulrichs, Incubus, Urningsliebe und Blutgier, 1869.
See, also, papers by Freud, Jung, Ferenczi and Ernest Jones in The American Journal
of Psychology, April 1910.
## p. 374 (#390) ############################################
374
The Advent of Modern Thought
accused women in the hope of pardon or at least of respite
from their anguish. But, in the seventeenth century, with its
.
ignorance of nervous diseases, tracts? disseminating these accounts
appealed to the people's half suppressed sense of horror and
love of impurity and created a profound impression. Writers now
began to discuss the judicial aspects of witchcraft; but, however
critical might be their attitude to methods of conviction, they
never questioned the reality of the crime. Thus, John Cotta, a
physician, who had insight enough to expose the frauds of quack
doctors, displays all the enlightenment of his age in The Triall
of Witchcraft, showing the true and righte method of discovery
(1616), but cannot dissuade himself from believing in magic
and sorcery. He begins by declaring the subject to be beyond
human knowledge and approachable only through conjecture and
inference. By this devious method, he deduces that evil spirits
exist, quoting the usual testimony from sacred and classical
history; but his common sense prompts him to warn his readers
that those suspected of witchcraft are often mere impostors or
unconsenting agents in working the devil's miracles. He even
employs his erudition to expose the fallacy of the water test *.
But the many current reports of witchery lead him to agree with
Reginald Scot that magic must have been at work when diseases
produce unaccountable symptoms or defy accredited remedies":
And he maintains that the testimony of reliable witnesses or the
detection of occult practices are enough to bring a witch to the
bar. Edward Fairfax, translator of Tasso, and author of Godfrey
of Bulloigne, succumbed to the prevailing panic. In an admirable
piece of narrative prose", he ascribes the mental disorders of his
children to witchcraft, though the hallucinations and seizures
are mainly due, in the case of younger children, to infantile
hysteria and, of the elder girl, to suppressed eroticism.
