Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

18. [Defoe], System of Magick, pp. 316, 318, 320.

  19. Ibid., pp. 321–35.

  20. Ibid., pp. 397–403, quotation on p. 397.

  21. Ibid., p. 378.

  22. William Bond, The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell (2nd ed., London, 1720), pp. 281–2; [Duncan Campbel], Secret Memoirs of the Late Mr. Duncan Campbel, the Famous Deaf and Dumb Gentleman (London, 1732), pp. 39–40. The judge who took Coates's affidavit was Robert Raymond, later lord chief justice. See also Eliza Haywood, a Spy on the Conjuror: or, A Collection of Surprising and Diverting Stories … By Way of Memoirs of the Famous Mr. Duncan Campbell (London, 1724); Baine, Defoe and the Supernatural, ch. 7, and Owen Davies, “Decriminalizing the Witch: The Origin of and Response to the 1736 Witchcraft Act,” in John Newton and Jo Bath, eds, Witchcraft and the Act of 1604 (Leiden, 2008), pp. 214–18. Haywood was a well-known playwright and a friend of Richard Steele.

  23. [Campbel], Secret Memoirs, p. 7.

  24. [Duncan Campbel], The Friendly Dæmon, or The Generous Apparition (London, 1725), pp. 9, 14. This account was also included in his Secret Memoirs, pp. 166–95.

  25. [Campbel], Secret Memoirs, sigs [A1-A1v], pp. 12, 196 ff. The Scots lords were the duke of Argyle, the earl of Marchmont and viscount Stair, while the Tories included Sir Nathaniel Curzon and Sir Richard Grosvenor. Davies, “Decriminalizing the Witch,” also mentions William Wyndham, the future earl of Egremont, as a customer.

  26. W. Harbutt Dawson, “An Old Yorkshire Astrologer and Magician, 1694–1760,” The Reliquary, 23 (1882–3), pp. 197–202.

  27. John Money, ed., The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master (2 vols, Oxford, 2010), vol. 1, p. 21.

  28. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 42–4. John Read also taught Cannon how to predict the weather from the phases of the moon: ibid., vol. 2, p. 400.

  29. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 116, 149–50, 171, 277–8, 319, 346–7, 351, 390–1, 399–400, 450, 461, 548, for examples.

  30. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 353, 458. “Sky battles” and other celestial phenomena caused widespread consternation in the early years of George I: see Vladimir Jankovic, “The Politics of Sky Battles in Early Hanoverian Britain,” Journal of British Studies, 41, 4 (2002), pp. 403–28; Elisha Smith, The Superstition of Omens and Prodigies; with the Proper Reception, and Profitable Improvement. A Divinity Lecture upon the Surprising Phænomenon of Light, March 6, 1715. On the Sunday After (London, 1716).

  31. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 2, p. 458; Geoffrey of Monmouth, The British History, trans. Aaron Thompson (London, 1718), pp. v, 203 ff.; Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, pp. 142–7.

  32. Nixon's Cheshire Prophecy at Large (5th ed., London, 1718), p. 18. The edition of Mother Shipton's prophecies used by Cannon may have been J. Tyrrel, Past, Present, and to Come, or Mother Shipton's Yorkshire Prophecy (London, 1740), although he could also have read the chapbook The History of Mother Shipton (London, 1750[?]). Apparently, the predictions of Shipton and Nixon were published together for the first time only in 1797.

  33. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 2, pp. 450, 559–60; John Partridge, Merlinus Liberatus … 1743 (London, 1742), sigs C7–C10. I have not been able to trace a copy of Vox Stellarum for 1740.

  34. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 2, p. 303; Gentleman's Magazine, 7 (March 1737), p. 157. Smith's fascination with eclipses was further evidenced in a short pamphlet, George Smith, A Dissertation on the General Properties of Eclipses; and Particularly the Ensuing Eclipse of 1748, Considered thro’ All its Periods (London, 1748), as well as in the projection he made to show the path of the 1737 eclipse around the globe: B.L., Maps *23.(10), accessed at http://www.mapforum.com/07/bleclip.htm#8.

  35. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 2, p. 400; John Middleton, Practical Astrology (London, 1679); Richard Saunders, The Astrological Judgment and Practice of Physick (London, 1677). Woodward was the compiler of an almanac, Vox Uraniae, that ran through the 1680s, and of an ephemeris that appeared in the early 1690s.

  36. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 2, p. 516; William Whiston, The Cause of the Deluge Demonstrated (London, 1717); Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 391–7.

  37. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 2, p. 400.

  38. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 529.

  39. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 314, 488.

  40. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 285.

  41. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 457–8.

  42. The Statutes at Large (7 vols, London, 1742), vol. 7, p. 52, 9 G. II, c. 5. The best accounts of the Witchcraft Act are in Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, ch. 8, and Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester, 1999), ch. 1. Much of Bostridge's chapter also appears in his article “Witchcraft Repealed,” in Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hesther and Gareth Roberts, eds, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 309–34.

  43. London Journal, no. 974, 8 April 1738, cited in The London Magazine, and Monthly Chronologer (London, 1738), pp. 178–9. For coffee-houses, see Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the Coffehouse (New Haven and London, 2005).

  44. T.J.F. Kendrick, “Sir Robert Walpole, the Old Whigs and the Bishops, 1733–36: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Parliamentary Politics,” Historical Journal, 11, 3 (1968), pp. 421–45; Stephen Taylor, “Sir Robert Walpole, the Church of England, and the Quaker Tithes Bill of 1736,” Historical Journal, 28, 1 (1985), pp. 51–77; Peter Clark, “The Mother Gin Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 38 (1988), pp. 63–84; Jonathan White, “The ‘Slow But Sure Poison:’ The Representation of Gin and its Drinkers, 1736–1751,” Journal of British Studies, 42, 1 (2003), pp. 35–64.

  45. Alexander Carlyle, Autobiography of the Reverend Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk, Containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1861), pp. 9, 61; Romney Sedgwick, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–54 (2 vols, London, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 569–70, 595, vol. 2, pp. 14–17, 121–2. As a judge of the Court of Session, Erskine was given the title “Lord Grange” when in Scotland.

  46. Carlyle, Autobiography, p. 10. The leader of the Secessionists, Ebenezer Erskine, gave a sermon on “The sovereignty of Zion's King,” in which he condemned “laws countenancing witchcraft.” D. Fraser, ed., The Whole Works of the Reverend Ebenezer Erskine (3 vols, Philadelphia, 1836), vol. 2, p 194.

  47. The best treatments of Scottish witch beliefs in this period are Edward J. Cowan and Lizanne Henderson, “The Last of the Witches? The Survival of Scottish Witch Belief,” in Julian Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2003), pp. 198–217; Peter Maxwell-Stuart, “Witchcraft and Magic in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” in Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt, eds, Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightened Europe (Manchester, 2004), pp. 81–99; Lizanne Henderson, “The Survival of Witch Prosecutions and Witch Beliefs in South-West Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review, 85, 1 (2006), pp. 52–74.

  48. Alan Ramsay, The Gentle Shepherd: A Scots Pastoral Comedy (7th ed., Glasgow, 1743), act II, scene 2, p. 19. Scotland is not included in Davies, Cunning-Folk.

  49. Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London (2 vols, London, 1754), vol. 1, pp. 278–9, 280–1, 285–6.

  50. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 341.

  51. Witches were sometimes targeted in Highland feuds, as in an incident along the coast of Ross and Cromarty in 1750, when several members of the Munro clan, armed with swords, broke into the houses of their enemies and terrorized their wives and daughters, “calling them Witches and Divils.” Maxwell-Stuart, “Witchcraft and Magic,” p. 89.

  52. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, pp. 94–7; W.B. Carnochan, “Witch-Hunting and Belief in 1751: The Case of Thomas Colley and Ruth Osborne,” Journal of Social History, 4 (1970–1), pp. 389–403. Davies mentions three m
ore cases that occurred before 1800: in 1773 at Seend, Wiltshire; in 1774 at Rochford, Essex; and in 1776 at Aston, Leicestershire. For the Rochford incident, see Eric Maples, The Dark World of the Witches (New York, 1964), p. 123. To these may be added cases in 1776 at Farnham, Suffolk; in 1785 in Northamptonshire; and in 1792 at Stanningfield, Suffolk. The list is certainly not complete.

  53. Joseph Juxon, A Sermon upon Witchcraft, Occasion'd by a Late Illegal Attempt to Discover Witches by Swimming. Preached at Twyford, in the County of Leicester, July 11, 1736 (London, 1736), p. 19.

  54. [Titus Oates], The Witch of Endor: or, A Plea for the Divine Administration by the Agency of Good and Evil Spirits (London, 1736), p. xl.

  55. [John Webster], A Discourse on Witchcraft. Occasioned by a Bill Now Depending in Parliament (London, 1736), p. iv.

  56. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, pp. 16–17.

  57. Nehemiah Curnock, ed., The Journals of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. (8 vols, London, 1909–16), vol. 5, p. 265.

  58. Jean-Robert Armogathe, Le Quiétisme (Paris, 1973); George Balsama, “Madame Guyon, Heterodox …,” Church History, 42, 3 (1973), pp. 350–65; Joyce Irwin, “Anna Maria von Schurman and Antoinette Bourignon: Contrasting Examples of Seventeenth-Century Pietism,” Church History, 60, 3 (1991), pp. 302–15; B. Robert Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, 1978); W.R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, 1992); Hans Schneider, “‘Philadelphische Brüder mit einem lutherischen Maul und mährischen Rock’: Zum Zinzendorfs Kirchenverständnis,” in Martin Brecht and Paul Paucker, eds, Neue Aspekte der Zinzendorf-Forschung (Göttingen, 2006), pp. 11–36.

  59. These aspects of the prophetic movement were emphasized by the Nonjuring minister Nathaniel Spinckes in his blistering attack on them, The New Pretenders to Prophecy Re-Examined: And their Pretences Shewn Again to Be Groundless and False (London, 1710).

  60. Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets: The History of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth-Century England (Berkeley and Los Angeles), p. 108; John Lacy, The Prophetical Warnings of John Lacy, Esq; Pronounced under the Operation of the Spirit (London, 1707); John Lacy, Warnings of the Eternal Spirit, by the Mouth of his Servant John, Sirnam'd Lacy. The Second Part (London, [1707]); Predictions Concerning the Raising the Dead Body of Mr. Thomas Emes, Commonly Call'd Doctor Emes ([London?], [1708?]).

  61. Chetham's Library, Ms. A.4.33 (this collection of blessings originally belonged to John Lacy); Schwartz, French Prophets, pp. 148–9, 165–6.

  62. Schwartz, French Prophets, pp. 233–51.

  63. Thomas Emes, The Atheist Turned Deist, and the Deist Turn'd Christian (London, 1698); T[homas]. E[mes]., A Dialogue between Alkali and Acid (London, 1698); Thomas Emes, A Letter to a Gentleman Concerning Alkali and Acid (London, 1700); T[homas]. E[mes]., Vindiciæ Mentis: An Essay of the Being and Nature of Mind (London, 1702).

  64. Timothy Byfield, A Short Description and Vindication of the True Sal Volatile Oleosum of the Ancients: Wherein ‘tis Proved the Great Medicine of the Spirits; and Consequently, An Universal Remedy (London, 1699), p. 8; see also Timothy Byfield, Directions Tending to Health and Long-Life, &c. (London, 1717); Timothy Byfield, Some Long-Vacation Hours Redeem'd. The Christian Examiner, Part 1 (2nd ed., London, 1720); Timothy Byfield, A Closet Piece. The Experimental Knowledge of the Ever-Blessed God (London, 1721).

  65. The mystical tendency among Scots Episcopalians can be traced to the publication of [Henry Scougall], The Life of God in the Soul of Man (London, 1677).

  66. [George Garden], An Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon (London, 1699); Charles Leslie, The Snake in the Grass: or, Satan Transform'd into an Angel of Light (2nd ed., London, 1698), pp. ii–xxx. Leslie, an English Nonjuror, directed this pamphlet against Quakers, but added a preface to the second edition denouncing Bourignon.

  67. G.D. Henderson, ed., Mystics of the North-East, Including I. Letters of James Keith, M.D., and Others to Lord Deskford; II. Correspondence between Dr. George Garden and James Cunningham (Aberdeen, 1934), pp. 11–74.

  68. [Garden], Apology for M. Bourignon, pp. 283–95, quotation on pp. 284, 292; Leslie, Snake in the Grass, p. xxviii, accused Bourignon's own teachings of being “Witch-craft.”

  69. B.L., Lansdowne 841, ff. 90–4v.

  70. Henderson, ed., Mystics of the North-East, pp. 205–6, 236, 220, 254; B.J. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Development in England (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 181–4.

  71. Chetham Library, Ms. A.2.82, p. 397; Warnings of the Eternal Spirit, to the City of Edenburgh, Pronounc'd by the Mouths of Margaret Mackenzie, and James Cunninghame (London, 1710), p. 20; Schwartz, French Prophets, pp. 157–62, 165–7.

  72. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. D.832, f. 47. The letter is unsigned but inscribed “L.F.” For more on Freher, see Charles A. Muses, Illumination on Jacob Boehme: The Work of Dionysius Andreas Freher (New York, 1951).

  73. Dr Williams's Library (DWL), Ms. Walton I.1.11; for the German Philadelphians, see D.P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (London, 1964), ch. 14; and for Freher's circle, Arthur Versluis, Wisdom's Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (Albany, N.Y., 1999), pp. 79–83, as well as Serge Hutin, Les Disciples Anglais de Jacob Boehme aux XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (Paris, 1960), ch. 5. Allen Leppington's father, Lemuel, was a member of the Salters’ Company, but he and his brother became hop merchants in Bread Street, Cheapside: The Poll of the Livery-Men of the City of London (London, 1710), p. 137; A Compleat Guide to All Persons Who Have any Trade or Concern with the City of London and Parts Adjacent (London, 1740), p. 135; Kent's Directory for the Year 1759 (London, 1759), p. 71; London Metropolitan Archives, Watney Combe Reid and Co. Brewers, ACC/1399/027, a–b, “lease taken by Allen Leppington of Bread St., hop merchant, on two mills in Isleworth for grinding Brazil wood into red dye, Oct. 1746.”

  74. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.39, f. 11v; also, Ms. Walton I.1.31, 32, 70, 79, Walton Bundle XXXVII; B.L., Add. Ms. 5786–8 (Three Tables), 5789 (Paradoxa Emblemata), 5790 (Hieroglyphica Sacra, or Divine Emblems).

  75. [Francis Lee], “An Historical Account of Montanism,” in George Hickes, The Spirit of Enthusiasm Exorcised (4th ed., London, 1709), pp. 73–352; Nathaniel Spinckes, “The New Pretenders to Prophecy, Examined,” in ibid., pp. 353–530.

  76. See Alastair Hamilton, The Apocryphal Apocalypse: The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1999), pp. 261–6; B.L., Add. Ms. 15,911, nos 3, 5, 10; B.L. Add. Ms. 23,204, ff. 14, 26. Apocryphal books of the Old Testament do not appear in the Jewish Bible and do not have canonical authority as sources of doctrinal evidence.

  77. Francis Lee, An Epistolary Discourse, Concerning the Books of Ezra, Genuine and Spurious (London, 1722), pp. 2, 5.

  78. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. D.1152, ff. 4, 295v.

  79. Chetham Library, Ms. A.4.33, “A Collection of Blessings By the Eternal Spirit … 1712,” pp. 336–8, 346; ODNB, Keimer, Samuel; Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. D.832, ff. 34–5; Schwartz, French Prophets, pp. 142–3; [Richard Kingston], Enthusiastick Impostors No Divinely Inspir'd Prophets (London, 1707), p. 73; Walker, Decline of Hell, ch. 15; Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, pp. 152–8.

  80. Bodl. Lib., Rawl. Ms. D.1154, f. 51v; D.1155, f. 1; D.1157, 8 June 1729.

  81. [Richard Roach], The Great Crisis: or, The Mystery of the Times and Seasons Unfolded (London, marked 1725, but actually 1727), pp. 5–14, 96–112, 165–71, quotations on pp. 49, 165.

  82. Richard Roach, The Imperial Standard of Messiah Triumphant (London, [1727]), pp. 56–71, quotation on pp. 69–70.

  83. Ibid., pp. 187–8.

  84. Ibid., pp. 300–1.

  85. Hannah Wharton, Divine Inspiration: or, A Collection of Manifestations (London, 1732), p. 48; for Fatio, see p. 84. The London inspirations are collected in Hannah Wharton, Some Manifestations and Communications of the Spirit, in a Forty Days Ministration in That P
lace London (London, 1730).

  86. Curnock, ed., Journal of Wesley, vol. 1, p. 436; vol. 2, pp. 136–7, 226.

  87. Henderson, ed., Mystics of the North-East, p. 203. For Cheyne and Boehme, see Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, pp. 184–7. Cheyne's medical theories are considered in Anita Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, Oklahoma, 2000), while G.S. Rousseau discusses the relationship between his mysticism and medicine in Enlightenment Borders: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses, Medical, Scientific (Manchester, 1991), pp. 78–117.

  88. Robert Wodrow, Analecta: or, Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1842–3), vol. 2, pp. 47–8, 255, 379; Thomas M'Crie, ed., The Correspondence of the Reverend Robert Wodrow (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1842–3), vol. 1, p. 437. For Cheyne's training, see Anita Guerini, “James Keill, George Cheyne and Newtonian Physiology, 1690–1740,” Journal of the History of Biology, 18, 2 (1985), pp. 247–66.

  89. George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Revealed (2 parts, London, 1715), part 1, pp. 135, 137–8, 341.

  90. Ibid., part 2, p. 4.

  91. Richard Parkinson, ed., The Private Journals and Literary Remains of John Byrom, Chetham Society, vols 23, 24, 40, 44 (2 vols in 4 parts, Manchester, 1854–7), vol. 2, part 1, pp. 308–10; vol. 2, part 2, pp. 330–2, quotation on p. 331; and for Marsay, Hans Schneider, German Radical Pietism, trans. Gerald T. Macdonald (Plymouth, 2007), pp. 95–7.

  92. For Hartley, see Richard C. Allen, David Hartley on Human Nature (Albany, N.Y., 1999).

  93. Parkinson, ed., Remains of Byrom, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 252 ff.

  94. Ibid., vol. 1, part 1, pp. 20–1; Andrew Starkie, “William Law and Cambridge Jacobitism, 1713–16,” Historical Research, 75, 190 (2002), pp. 448–67. The best accounts of Law are the short biography in ODNB by Isabel Rivers and the study by the pacifist Stephen Hobhouse, William Law and Eighteenth-Century Quakerism (London, 1927: reissued New York, 1971); see also Stephen Hobhouse, ed., Selected Mystical Writings of William Law (2nd ed., Rockcliff, Md., 1948), appendix 1, and B.W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theological Debate from Locke to Burke (Oxford, 1998), ch. 4.