Folklore of Northamptonshire

by Peter Hill

  A manuscript containing an unusual woodcut and entitled ‘A brief extract of the Arraignment of nine Witches at Northampton: July 21, 1612’ can be found in the British Museum. Apart from describing the largest witch trial ever held in the county, the manuscript is unique in many ways for it describes behind the scenes pre-trial brutality and forced confessions using the swimming test, scratching, beating and bodily examination (looking for the witch’s teat). It also gives an insight into the religious teaching of the time as put into the minds of ordinary folk. For example, one of the accused, Agnes Wilson, was asked how many gods she acknowledged, to which she replied two – God and the Devil – an innocent statement by an uneducated churchgoer, who was only stating what everyone was told, but damning evidence in court.

  A staple font in the church of St Mary, Duddington. These fonts were intended to prevent witches from stealing holy water.

  The first of the nine trials concerned Joan Vaughan, who was described as ‘a chicken of her dam’s hatching’, a reference to her mother, Agnes Brown, who had an evil reputation. Vaughan was gossiping with a group of neighbours when Mistress Belcher, a local member of the gentry, passed by. Vaughan made a pointed comment or gesture that caused the lady to take offence and strike her, to which Vaughan retorted, ‘You’ll be sorry you did that!’ Mistress Belcher replied that she neither feared her nor her mother and dared her to do her worst.

  Shortly after she arrived home, Belcher was seized with a agonising pain and was confined to her bed, her face contorted, crying out ‘Away with Joan Vaughan!’ News reached her brother, Master Avery, who went to her aid but was unable to alleviate her pain. He suspected witchcraft and saw Vaughan as the perpetrator. The court clerk then tells how the brother ran towards the house of Vaughan and her mother, to take them to his sister for her to draw their blood – a way of breaking a witch’s spell – but:

  ...as he came nearer the house, he was suddenly stopped and could not enter, whether it was an astonishment through his fear or that the spirits had power to stay him I cannot judge, but he reported at his coming back, that he was forcibly stayed and could not for his life go any further forward – and they report in the community that he is a gentlemen of stout courage.

  Making his way back to his home, he was confronted by two ‘hellhounds’ which tormented him, causing the same symptoms as his sister. Avery could take no more and managed to get Vaughan and her mother apprehended and consequently put in jail by Sir William Saunders of Cottesbrook, where they were held down and scratched by the brother and sister, whereupon their symptoms vanished. More sinister was what happened next:

  Not long after Master Avery and his sister having been both in Northampton and having drawn blood of the witches – riding both homewards in one coach, there appeared to their view a man and a woman riding both upon a black horse. Master Avery having spied them afar off, and noting many strange gestures from them, suddenly spake to them that were by and (as it were prophetically) cried out in these words ‘that either they or their horses should presently miscarry.’ And immediately the horses fell down dead.

  At the trial it was stated that a fortnight before they were arraigned, Brown and two other ‘birds of a feather’ were seen riding a pig to see ‘Mother Rhodes’, an old witch who lived in Ravensthorpe. However, before reaching their destination, the old witch died, but in her last breath told bystanders that three friends were on their way to see her, but she would meet them within a month of her death. After being found guilty,Vaughan and Brown still declared their innocence, and cursed and blasphemed up until the point they were hanged at Abington Gallows.

  Another of the arraigned witches was Helen Jenkenson of Thrapston, who had long been regarded as an evil person and was much suspected of crime before her eventual apprehension for ‘bewitching of cattle and other mischiefs which before time she had done around Thrapston’. She had also supposedly bewitched a child to death. Her chief accuser, Mistress Moulsho, was a woman of influence and standing, a member of a family mainly associated with nearby Twywell:

  Mistress Moulsho had a buck [tub] of clothes to be washed out. The next morning the maid, when she came to hang them forth to dry, spied the clothes, but especially Mistress Moulsho’s smock, to be all bespotted with the pictures of toads, snakes and other ugly creatures. Which making her aghast, she went presently and told her mistress who, looking on them smiled, saying nothing else but this, ‘Here are fine hobgoblins indeed!’

  She then went purposefully to the house of Helen Jenkenson, and ‘with an angry countenance’ told her of this matter, threatening her that if her linen were not cleared from those foul spots immediately, she would scratch out both her eyes. Not staying for an answer, she went home and found her linen as white as it was at first. She later tricked Jenkenson into coming to a convenient place where she could be searched, to see if anyone could find any insensible mark on her body (it was believed that the Devil kissed his chosen ones on part of the body, which subsequently could feel no pain). Mistress Moulsho was one of the searchers and supposedly ‘found at the last that which they sought for, to their great amazement’.

  The people of Raunds all considered Arthur Bill and his parents to be witches but it was Arthur, ‘a wretched poor man both in state and mind’, who was arraigned at Northampton for bewitching Martha Aspine to death and malevolently affecting several cattle in the area. While he was awaiting trial, he began to imagine that his father was going to testify against him and so sent a message to his mother to bring him along to the cell. As soon as they arrived, mother and son:

  both joined together and bewitched a round ball into the throat of the father where it continued a great while, his father not being able to speak a word. Howbeit, the ball was afterwards had out, and his father proved the principal witness against him.

  Obviously family ties were not strong enough here! And matters worsened when the mother cut her throat after several days of conscience-searching and making loud imprecations, cursing and wailing, which was heard all round the neighbourhood.

  Several years later, in 1674, Anne Foster, who was active in the area around Eastcote, Astcote and Pattishall, was also arraigned at Northampton, for taking revenge on a wealthy farmer who had refused to sell her some meat. She was alleged to have caused his house and barns to catch fire, bewitched his cattle and left thirty sheep ‘with Leggs broken in picces and their Bones all shatter’d in their Skins’. Like the witches at the 1612 trials, she was found guilty and hanged.

  During the eighteenth century, a series of pamphlets were circulated round the county giving an account of an astonishing event which was said to have occurred during March 1706, in which two women were accused of being active as witches around the villages of Cotterstock, Glapthorn, Benefield and Southwick. Elinor Shaw (originally from Oundle) and Mary Philips, both of Cotterstock, were said to have done much evil in the area. Twenty-three witnesses were said to have given testimony against them, accusing them of crimes ranging from bewitching a woman and two children to death and harming eight men and thirteen other children, to ‘destroying forty pigs, a hundred sheep, eighteen horses, and thirty cows’.

  According to the first and most widely circulated of the pamphlets, the two women had an argument at Southwick with a Mistress Wise, whereupon Elinor later made an effigy of her and stuck pins into the image before roasting it:

  That same night the woman became violently ill and died. One witness said he was driving his sheep to pasture, when he heard a clamour coming from the dwelling of Mistress Wise. Going to the source of the noise, he saw Shaw threaten Mistress Wise with harm, and grievous mischief. There was mention of a bowl that Wise had not given back to Shaw. On hearing this, Philips laughed mockingly and with her clenched hand made a menacing sign at the woman of the house, saying as they left, ‘Leave her be, I will bounce her well enough!’

  At Glapthorn, it was alleged that the two women were walking by a dwelling outside which a group of children were playing. The wom
en spoke to the children and, as they left, touched one of them on the head. The child later sickened, was unable to eat and, during the night, died. Both women were later found guilty, sentenced to death and placed in prison at Northampton St Giles. Ten days later, on 17 March, they were partly hanged on the gallows and then when nearly dead, were promptly burned until they were no more.

  All this is somewhat surprising because belief in witchcraft had declined by the end of the seventeenth century due to more advanced rational and scientific thought, changing attitudes and a relatively peaceful period in history after the turmoils of the Reformation and Civil War. The trial of the Cotterstock witches is astonishing because it ended in execution, years after the last officially recorded execution for witchcraft took place in Exeter in 1685. But did it ever happen? The pamphlets were circulated a long time after the supposed trial and contained varying and contradictory details. These have been accepted as fact but they are a gross deception – for the trial never happened! Let us look at the real facts.

  The trial was never publicly reported in any form at any time, neither does any legal record exist. No mention was made of it by the three eminent contemporary judges, Chief Justices Parker, King and Burn, who helped a writer, F. Hutchinson, compile A Historical Essay on Witchcraft (published 1718), which listed all the witch trials that ever taken place in England. At the time it is supposed to have taken place, the trial was never reported in a broadsheet (there being no newspaper in the county until May 1720) and no references appear in overseer and churchwarden reports at Northampton St Giles for 1706 (or the year before or after) either to the execution or the preparations for the event. There are two other giveaways that this was a forgery: the women were burned, which never happened in England, in whole or part, and the event took place in 1706, twenty-one years after the last ever official witch execution took place. Even the names of the women cannot be traced: a look through the parish registers for the places concerned draws a blank. The fact is that they were based on an earlier and spurious pamphlet from 1700, which was itself loosely based on the famous witchcraft trial at Chelmsford in 1566.

  In 1648, an incredible spectacle is said to have occurred over a period of three days at Welton, when a ten-year-old girl who was believed to have been bewitched coughed up three gallons of water, ‘to the great admiration’ of those who witnessed the scene. Later, her older sister ran around the village exclaiming that her sister was now vomiting stone and coals. The news spread like wildfire and folk testified to having seen as many as 500 pieces coughed up, some weighing as much as a quarter of a pound (about 125g) and so large that they had difficulty finding their way out of her mouth.

  Wilby and the surrounding area seems to have been a favourite haunt of witches, who had the power to transform themselves animals, usually a cat, fox or hare. In one tale, a woodcutter lived on the edge of the village. His wife was a wise woman providing cures and remedies but, as so easily could happen to such women, her skills rebounded on her when something went wrong. Such was the case when the hens in the village were suddenly unable to lay eggs, the cows could not calf, milk went sour for no apparent reason and nobody could bake any bread successfully. Rumours began to spread and intensified after a child playing in the woods felt her face being scratched and, running home terrified, fell faint on the floor. The next morning, as the child’s condition deteriorated, the wise woman’s cat was seen in a tree outside the bedroom, watching the open window with great interest. Shortly afterwards, the woodman’s lunch began to disappear while he was working close to where the food basket lay. After the same thing occurred the next day, he decided to resolve the matter and keep a close watch. It was the cat. The next day, as it was opening the basket, he took his axe and chopped off its paw. With a loud wail, it ran off limping in the direction of the cottage. When he got back home, he found his wife lying in a pool of blood, her hand missing.

  A similar incident occurred at Syresham: a man and his son were walking through the woods when the boy begged his father for a branch to play with. He obliged and began to break one off a gnarled old oak tree but immediately dropped it in astonishment as blood gushed out of the trunk. Shortly afterwards, a woman long suspected of being a witch was seen around the village with her arm bandaged up. She was consequently ‘swum’ and found guilty of being a witch.

  Cogenhoe had a renowned wise woman, Old Betty. On one occasion a soldier committed suicide by drowning in the Nene. An extensive search was made for the body but was fruitless, until Old Betty recommended putting a piece of quicksilver in the centre of a loaf, saying the bread would float on the water and remain on the spot where the body lay. This was attempted and sure enough they found the corpse entangled in weeds. Locals said that Old Betty was always doing strange things and children feared her, saying she was a witch.

  The children of Guilsborough were told that Pell’s Pool on the road to Cold Ashby was the home of a nasty witch and that if they misbehaved she would come out of the water to catch them. Also in the same area there was a family, known as ‘the witch family’, who kept to themselves, spurning the company of other villagers. People were very wary when passing by their home.

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  SUPERSTITION AND BELIEF

  Today we live in an age where superstition plays a relatively minor role in people’s lives, although a few vestiges of the past remain, such as horoscopes. However, superstition would have dominated the lives of our ancestors in thought and action: there were certain taboos and observations that had to be made at various times for peace of mind. When darkness fell, there was no street lighting and if there were any lights within the home, they would be primitive tallow candles with reeds. Few people would venture into the darkness outside, except to the nearby alehouse, for the only inhabitants of the night would be spirits, witches or the lawless. Early to bed and early to rise would have been the norm.

  Cutting trees, sowing corn and other agricultural tasks were carried out in harmony with certain phases of the moon or at specific times of the day, or even using a charm, if a successful outcome was to be achieved. The process of converting milk and cream into butter, ‘making it come’ (coagulate and solidify), usually followed a time-honoured county tradition, involving a ritual chant as if coaxing, soothing and talking to the contents. There were two general forms:

  Churn butter churn!

  In a cow’s horn

  I never see’d such butter

  Sin’ I was born

  A nineteenth-century engraving of a forest, a place to grip the imagination.

  Peter’s standing at the gate

  Waiting for a buttr’d cake

  Churn, butter, churn!

  Come butter come!

  A little good butter

  Is better than none!

  Similarly, other domestic tasks and weddings never took place at certain times or days of the year which were considered unlucky. Certain plants and objects were considered to be favourable and protective; others were claimed to be evil and were to be avoided and never brought into the home. What seems incredible to the modern mind is that people still carried on believing and carrying out set rituals, whether they came true or not.

  Certain days of the year were believed to give powerful indications of what the weather would be like for the coming period. Whatever the weather was like on a Friday, Sunday would be the same, and the sun would always shine at some point on a Saturday, regardless of what kind of weather prevailed. If it rained on Easter Sunday, there would be ‘plenty of grass but little good hay’. The weather on Valentine’s Day would determine whether March would be a good windy month for the laundry: ‘In Valentine, March lays her line’. At Martlemas (Martinmas), which occurred on 11 November, it was customary for farmers to check the direction from which the wind was blowing, as this was said to determine the weather conditions for the next two or three months. Other weather conditions that day would have a similar bearing on the future and there would be an appropiate saying, for e
xample:

  If there is ice that will bear a duck for Martlemas, there will be none that will bear a goose all winter.

  Another day for predicting the duration of a season was Candlemas on 1 February:

  If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter takes another flight

  If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.

  Some years ago, a resident of Brigstock, Mrs E. Britton, collected spoken and written sayings from people in the area. These included many words of wisdom regarding the weather:

  Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in;

  Onion skins thick and tough, winter weather cold and rough.

  In February if thou hearest thunder, thou shalt see a summer wonder.

  As many fogs in March, as many frosts in May.

  A dripping June keeps all in tune.

  It was also thought that the behaviour or movements of certain animals, birds and plants was an indication of what kind of weather was on the way. If cats were seen eating grass, it was a sign that rain was coming. Sheep bleating in the evening or grazing in the middle of a field meant that a storm would be imminent. Rooks building their nests higher than usual in the trees was a sign of good weather; if lower, it was otherwise: ‘Rooks high, it will be dry; rooks low, winter will show.’

  The pimpernel was seen as nature’s barometer, as it has a habit of closing its petals if rain is threatening. It was affectionately known in the county under two names, either ‘John-that-goes-to-bed-at-noon’ or ‘the shepherd’s weather glass’. The knotweed (knapweed) was similarly valued for its predictive qualities, its seed vessels showing the state of weather by expanding when dry and closing when wet. The lesser celandine has similar habits, its petals shutting when rain is in the offing. To our ancestors, the petals also gave some indication of the time, as they closed by five o’ clock in the afternoon and did not open again until around nine o’ clock the next morning, even if the weather was fine, warm and dry.