Discovery of Witches | Page 9

his Confession) asked him, if it did
not grieve him to see so many men cast away, in a short time, and that
he should be the cause of so many poore widdowes on a suddaine, but
he swore by his maker, no, he was joyfull to see what power his Impes
had, and so likewise confessed many other mischiefes, 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