Discovery of Witches | Page 9

and had a charme to keep him out of Goale, and hanging, as he paraphrased it himselfe, but therein the Devill deceived him; for he was hanged, that Michaelmas time 1645. at Burie Saint Edmunds, but he made a very farre larger confession, which I have heard hath been printed: but if it were so, it was neither of Mr. Hopkins doing nor mine owne; for we never printed anything untill now."
Hutchinson gives the explanation of this confession. What can be more atrocious than the whole story, which is yet but the common story of witch confessions?
"Adv. Then did not he confess this before the Commissioners, at the Time of his Tryal?
"Clerg. No, but maintained his Innocence stoutly, and challenged them to make Proof of such Things as they laid to his Charge. I had this from a Person of Credit, who was then in Court, and heard his Tryal. I may add, that tho' his Case is remembered better than others that suffered, yet I never heard any one speak of him, but with great Compassion, because of his Age and Character, and their Belief of his Innocence: And when he came to his Execution, because he would have Christian Burial, he read the Office himself, and that way committed his own Body to the Ground, in sure and certain Hope of the Resurrection to eternal Life.
"In the Notes upon those Verses that I quoted out of Hudibras, it is said, that he had been a painful Preacher for many Years, I may add for Fifty, for so long he had been Vicar of Brandeston in the County of Suffolk, as appears by the Time of his Institution. That I might know the present Sense of the Chief Inhabitants of that Place, I wrote to Mr. Wilson, the Incumbent of that Town, and by his Means received the following Letter from Mr. Rivett, a worthy Gentleman who lived lately in the same Place, and whose Father lived there before him.
"'SIR,
"'In Answer to your Request concerning Mr. Lowes, my Father was always of the opinion, that Mr. Lowes suffered wrongfully, and hath often said, that he did believe, he was no more a Wizzard than he was. I have heard it from them that watched with him, that _they kept him awake several Nights together, and run him backwards and forwards about the Room, until he was out of Breath: Then they rested him a little, and then ran him again: And thus they did for several Days and Nights together, till he was weary of his Life, and was scarce sensible of what he said or did_. They swam him at Framlingham, but that was no true Rule to try him by; for they put in honest People at the same Time, and they swam as well as he."]
After the lapse of another half century, and at the very period when the persecution against witches waxed hotter, and the public prejudice had become only more inveterate, from the ingredient of fanaticism having been largely thrown in as a stimulant, another ally to the cause of compassion and common sense started up, in the person of one whose name has rounded many a period and given point to many an invective. To find the proscribed author of the Patriarcha purging with "euphrasy and rue" the eyes of the dispensers of justice, and shouldering the crowd to obtain for reason a fair and impartial hearing, is indeed like meeting with Saul among the prophets. If there be one name which has been doomed to run the gauntlet, and against which every pert and insolent political declaimer has had his fling, it is that of this unfortunate writer; yet in his short but masterly and unanswerable "Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a difference between an English and Hebrew Witch," first published in 1653, 4to., he has addressed himself so cogently and decisively to the main fallacy of the arguments in favour of witchcraft which rested their force on Scripture misunderstood, and has so pertinently and popularly urged the points to be considered, that his tract must have had the greatest weight on the class to whom his reasoning was principally addressed, and on whose fiat the fates of his unhappy clients may be said to have hung. For this good service, reason and common sense owe Sir Robert Filmer a debt which does not yet appear to have been paid. The verdict of proscription against him was pronounced by the most incompetent and superficial ?ra of our literature, and no friendly appellant has yet moved the court of posterity for its reversal. Yet without entering upon the theory of the patriarchal scheme, which after all, perhaps, was not so irrational as may be supposed, or discussing on