Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands | Page 7

the Kinges majestie, perceiving his stubbourne
wilfulnesse, conceived and imagined that in the time of his absence hee
had entered into newe conference and league with the devill, his master,
and that hee had beene agayne newly marked, for the which he was
narrowly searched; but it coulde not in anie wice be founde; yet, for
more tryall of him to make him confesse, hee was commaunded to have
a most straunge torment, which was done in this manner following: His
nailes upon all his fingers were riven and pulled off with an instrument
called in Scottish a turkas, which in England wee call a payre of pincers,
and under everie nayle there was thrust in two needles over, even up to
the heads; at all which tormentes notwithstanding the Doctor never
shronke anie whit, neither woulde he then confesse it the sooner for all
the tortures inflicted upon him. Then was hee, with all convenient
speed, by commandement, convaied againe to the torment of the bootes,
wherein he continued a long time, and did abide so many blowes in
them, that the legges were crusht and beaten together as small as might
bee, and the bones and flesh so bruised that the blood and marrow
spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made
unserviceable for ever; and notwithstanding all those grievous paines
and cruell torments, hee would not confess anie thing; so deeply had
the devill entered into his heart, that hee utterly denied all that which he
had before avouched, and would saie nothing thereunto but this, that
what he had done and sayde before, was onely done and sayde for fear
of paynes which he had endured. After this horrible treatment the
wretched man was strangled and burnt.
The following list gives a few--and only a few--of the direful results to
which this widespread superstition led. The instances are chiefly taken
from Dr. Réville's History of the Devil, and Haydn's well-known
_Dictionary of Dates_:--
At Toulouse a noble lady, fifty-six years of age, named Angela de
Labarète, was the first who was burnt as a sorceress, in which special
quality she formed part of the great _auto-da-fé_ which took place in
that city in the year 1275; at Carcasonne, from 1320 to 1350, more than
four hundred executions for witchcraft are on record; in 1309 many
Templars were burnt at Paris for witchcraft; Joan of Arc was burnt as a

witch at Rouen, May 30th, 1431; in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII. issued a
bull against witchcraft, causing persecutions to break out in all parts of
Christendom; during three months of the year 1515, about five hundred
witches were burnt at Geneva; in 1524 many persons were burnt for the
same crime in the Diocese of Como; about the year 1520 a great
number suffered in France, and one sorcercer confessed to having
1,200 associates; from 1580 to 1595--a period of fifteen years--about
nine hundred witches were burnt in Lorraine; between 1627 and 1629,
no fewer than one hundred and fifty-seven persons, old and young, and
of all ranks, were burnt at Wurtzburg, in Bavaria; in 1634 a clerk
named Urbain Grandier, who was parish priest at Loudon, was burnt on
a charge of having bewitched a whole convent of Ursuline nuns; in
1654 twenty poor women were put to death as witches in Brittany; in
1648-9 serious disturbances on account of witchcraft took place in
Massachusetts; and in 1683 dreadful persecutions raged in
Pennsylvania from the same cause; in 1692, at Salem, in New England,
nineteen persons were hanged by the Puritans for witchcraft, and eight
more were condemned, while fifty others confessed themselves to be
witches, and were pardoned; in 1657 the witch-judge Nicholas Remy
boasted of having burnt nine hundred persons in fifteen years; in one
German principality alone, at least two hundred and forty-two persons
were burnt between 1646 and 1651, including many children from one
to six years of age; in 1749 Maria Renata was burnt at Wurtzburg for
witchcraft; on January 17th, 1775, nine old women were burnt at
Kalish, in Poland, on a charge of having bewitched and rendered
unfruitful the lands belonging to the palatinate; at Landshut, in Bavaria,
in 1756, a young girl of thirteen years was convicted of impure
intercourse with the Devil and put to death. There were also executions
for sorcery at Seville, in Spain, in 1781, and at Glarus, in Switzerland,
in 1783; while even as late as December 15th, 1802, five women were
condemned to death for sorcery at Patna, in the Bengal Presidency, by
the Brahmins, and were all executed.
IN ENGLAND the record of Witchcraft is also a melancholy chapter.
A statute was enacted declaring all witchcraft and sorcery to be felony
without benefit of clergy, 33 Henry VIII. 1541; and again