The Witch of Walkerne159
Jane Wenham was the witch of Walkerne, a little village in the north of Hertford. She had long lived under ill fame, and her neighbours were resolved to get rid of her at the earliest opportunity. That opportunity presented itself in the person of John Chapman’s man, one Matthew Gilson, whom Jane sent into a daft state by asking him for a pennyworth of straw, which he refused to give her. The old woman went away, muttering and complaining, whereupon Matthew, impelled by he knew not what impulse, ran out of the barn for a distance of three miles, asking as he went for pennyworths of straw. Not getting any, he went on to some dirt heaps, and gathered up straw from them, which he put in his shirt and brought home. A witness testified that he had seen Gilson come back with his shirt stuffed full of straw, that he moved along quickly, and walked straight through the water, instead of passing over the bridge like any other decent man. For this odd behaviour of his servant, John Chapman, who had all along suspected Jane of more cunning than was good for him or her—called her a witch the next time he saw her; and Jane took him before the magistrate, Sir Herbert Chauncey, to answer to the charge of defamation. But the magistrate recommended them to go to Mr. Gardiner the minister, and a great believer in witchcraft, and get their matter settled without more trouble or vexation. Mr. Gardiner was too zealous to be just. He scolded poor old Jane roundly, and advised her to live more peaceably with her neighbours—which was just what she wanted to do—and gave as his award that Chapman do pay the fine of one shilling. While this bit of one-sided justice was going on, Anne Thorne, Mr. Gardiner’s servant, was sitting by the fire with a dislocated knee. Jane, not able to compass her wicked will on Chapman, and angry that Mr. Gardiner had spoken so harshly to her, turned her malice on the girl, and bewitched her, so that as soon as they all left the kitchen Anne felt a strange “Roaming in her Head, and she thought she must of Necessity run somewhere.” In spite then of her dislocated knee, she started off and ran up the close, and away over a five-barred gate “as nimbly as a greyhound,” along the highway and up a hill. And there she met two of John Chapman’s men, who wanted her to go home with them; and one took her hand; but she was forced away from them, speechless, and not of her own volition, and so was driven on, on, towards Cromer, where the great sea would have either stopped or received her. But when she came to Hockney Lane, she met there a “little Old Woman muffled up in a Riding-Hood,” who asked her whither she was going. “To Cromer,” says Anne, “for sticks to make me a fire.” “There be no sticks at Cromer,” says the little old woman in the riding hood: “here be sticks enow; go to that oak tree and pluck them there.” Which Anne did, laying them on the ground as they were gathered. Then the old woman bade her pull off her gown and apron, and wrap the sticks in them; asking her if she had ne’er a pin about her; but finding that she had not, she gave her a large crooked pin, with which she bade her pin her bundle, then vanished away. So Anne Thorne ran home half naked, with her bundle of leaves and sticks in her hand, and sat down in the kitchen, crying out “I am ruined and undone!”
When Mrs. Gardiner had opened the bundle, and seen all the twigs and leaves, she said they would burn the witch, and not wait long about it; so they flung the twigs and leaves into the fire; and while they were burning in came Jane Wenham, asking for Anne’s mother, for she had, she said, a message to her, how that she was to go and wash next day at Ardley Bury, Sir Herbert Chauncey’s place: which on inquiry turned out to be a falsehood: consequently Jane Wenham was set down doubly as a witch, the charm of burning her in the sticks having proved so effectual. John Chapman and his men then told their tale. Mr. Gardiner was not slow in fanning the flame into a fire, and poor old Jane was examined, searched for marks but none found, and committed to gaol, there to wait her trial at the next assizes. She earnestly entreated not to go to prison; protested her innocence, and appealed to Mrs. Gardiner to help her, woman-like, and not to swear against her; offering to submit to be swum—anything they would—so that she might be kept free of jail. But Sir Herbert Chauncey was just manly and rational enough not to allow of this test, though the Vicar of Ardeley tried her with the Lord’s Prayer, which she could not repeat: and terrified and tortured her into a kind of confession, wherein she implicated three other women, who were immediately put under arrest, though they came to no harm in the end. When she was brought to trial, sixteen witnesses, including three clergymen, were standing there ready to testify against her, how that she had bewitched this one’s cattle, and that one’s sheep; and taken all the power from this one’s body, and all the good from that one’s gear; and slaughtered this child, and that man, by her evil eye and her curses; and in fact how that she had done all the mischief that had happened in the neighbourhood for years past. And there was Matthew Gilson, who had been sent mad, and forced to wander about the country with his shirt stuffed full of straw like a scarecrow; and Anne Thorne, who had had fits ever since her marvellous journey with the dislocated knee; and another Anne, very nearly as hardly holden as the first; and others beside, whom her malice had rendered sick and lame, and unfit for decent life: moreover, two veracious witnesses deposed positively to her taking the form of a cat when she would, and to hearing her converse with the devil when under the form of a cat, he also as a cat; together with Anne Thorne’s distinct accusation that she was beset with cats—tormented exceedingly—and that all the cats had the face and the voice of Jane Wenham.
The lawyers, who believed little in the devil and less in witchcraft, refused to draw up the indictment on any other charge save that of “conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of a cat.” But in spite of Mr. Bragge’s earnest appeals against such profanation, and the ridicule which it threw over the whole matter, the jury found the poor old creature guilty, and the judge passed sentence of death against her. The evidence was too strong. Even one of the Mr. Chaunceys deposed that a cat came knocking at his door, and that he killed it—when it vanished away, for it was no other than one of Jane Wenham’s imps; and all Mr. Gardiner’s house went mad, some in one way and some in another: and credible witnesses deposed that they had seen pins come jumping through the air into Anne Thorne’s mouth, and when George Chapman clapped his hand before her mouth to prevent them skipping in, he felt one stick against his hand, as sharp as might be; and every night Anne’s pincushion was left full, and every morning found empty, and who but Jane could have conveyed them all from the pincushion into her mouth, where they were to be found all crooked and bent? But though the jury could not resist the tremendous weight of all this evidence, and the judge could not resist the jury, he managed to get a reprieve which left the people time to cool and reflect, and then he got a pardon for her—quietly and kindly done. And Colonel Plummer, of Gilston, took her under his protection, and gave her a small cottage near his house, where she lived, poor soul, in peace and safety for the end of her days, doing harm to no one and feared by none. As for Anne Thorne, the doctor, who had ordered her, as part of his remedy, to wash her hands and face twice a day in fair water, and who, as another part, had her watched and sat with by a “lusty young fellow” who asked nothing better, managed matters so well, that in a short time Anne and her brisk bachelor were married; and from that time we hear no more of her vomiting crooked pins, or being tormented with visions of cats wearing Jane Wenham’s face, and speaking with Jane Wenham’s voice. But though all the rest got well off with their frights and follies, no public compensation was given to poor old Jane for the brutal attacks of the mob upon her, for the hauling and maiming and scratching and tearing, by which they proved to their own satisfaction that she was a witch, and deserved only the treatment accorded to witches.