The Weaker Vessel: Women's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England

by Antonia Fraser

  An old woman, then, as well as being an unwelcome spectacle for social reasons, was also a comparatively common one. Still further to her detriment was her actual physical appearance. Beauty, while it might be condemned by the preachers as an unstable basis for marriage, continued naturally to exercise its eternal lure; dislike of the aged physique, on the other hand, also widely inculcated, was a genuine passion of the time. It could even be justified. This was after all an age in which there was a subtle conspiracy to agree that beauty of outward form expressed an inward virtue; a view promulgated for example by Milton in Comus praising the appearance of The Lady – ‘so dear to Heaven is saintly chastity’ – or by Ford in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore:

  So, where the body’s furniture is beauty,

  The mind’s must needs be virtue …

  Hic Mulier in 1620 suggested that ‘good women, modest women’ were ‘ever young because ever virtuous’.6 There was an obvious corollary to be drawn: physical ugliness (that common woe of the old) signified a base moral nature, if not something worse.

  ‘The bodies of aged persons are impure’, wrote William Fulbeck in his account of witchcraft in 1618; in general the breath and sight of such persons was regarded as ‘being apt for contagion’.7 The seven-year cycle after the age of sixty-two was sometimes known without much compassion as the Crooked Age. In the important seventeenth-century concept of the humours which went to make up the body, dryness and melancholy were held to be characteristic of the constitution of the aged.

  The prejudices aroused by the sight of such dilapidated creatures were unquestionably worse in the case of old women than of old men. This was where many dark forces of the subconscious came into play. The ancient susceptibility of woman – the weaker vessel – to ‘the devil’s illusions’ was the form in which these turgid fears were generally expressed in public. Woman’s sexual voracity was another subject on which there was a conspiracy to agree in the seventeenth century, a period when, as has been mentioned, the potentially repetitious and thus demanding nature of the female orgasm was fully understood. As Robert Burton wrote in 1621: ‘Of women’s unnatural, insatiable lust, what country, what village does not complain?’ We have noted that the lusty widow was a favourite concept of the times; sometimes economic necessity might become mixed up with lust. The village whore might be a widow, one such as Isott Wall of Tolland in Somerset who, according to evidence presented against her in court, boasted that ‘she would open her door at any time of the night either to a married man or a young man’. Another convenient arrangement of a slightly different ilk might take place when a widow, needing a milker for her cow, paid for the work in kind.8

  These women, evidently still in their sexual prime, were, if lusty, also ingenious in fulfilling their own needs. But what of the case of an old widowed woman, of hideous physical appearance, prone by her very sex already to the temptations of the devil? Secretly voracious, might she not be slaking her lust at some diabolical source, deprived of any other? In the writhings of the popular imagination concerning the old, all these webs – woman’s weakness, her voracity, ugliness and Satan – became darkly and menacingly entangled.

  The bodies of old women, twisted and gnarled by time like tree trunks, marred perhaps by protuberances and growths of different sorts including harmless warts and lumps and dangerous tumours – might the dissolving eye of fantasy not see in these ugly excrescences and bumps strange teats which the devil could suck? Was a particular wart or discoloration a mark of old age – or the witch’s mark, which when pricked did not hurt?9

  The notorious loquacity of the female – also taken for granted throughout literature, correspondence and popular report – was another characteristic where the devil’s influence might be detected. Sir Thomas Overbury wrote wistfully in 1614 of A Good Woman: ‘Her language is not copious but opposite … She sings, but not perpetually, for she knows, silence in a woman is the most persuading oratory.’ However, a great many women at the time evidently did not choose to employ silence’s persuading oratory, since cases concerning the common scold, worse still a scold and brawler, and worst of all, a scold, brawler and curser, abound. A wife like that of Adam Eyre of Yorkshire: ‘This morn [in June 1647] my wife began, after her old manner to brawl and revile me for criticizing her clothing and stepping on her foot and she kept on till noon’, was the sort of wife every man dreaded. The words of Solomon were quoted with approval: ‘It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman.’10

  The scold was by definition female. A woman presented to the courts for the offence and condemned faced a series of punishments: she could be fined; more picturesque and more humiliating was the practice of confining a scold in a brank or padlocked bridle; more spectacular still and on occasion more dangerous was the employment of the cucking-stool (the word was a corruption of the French coquine for a hussy). The occupant of the cucking-stool, otherwise known as the ducking-stool, was frequently cooled off in the village pond – whatever the season. Apparatus for the immersion of a scold was part of the social organization of the time: at Gravesend in 1636 for example, porters were paid 2s for ducking Goodwife Campion and 8d for laying up the cucking-stool afterwards. The popular almanacs of the time, containing advice by physicians as well as astrologers, all seriously defended the use of the cucking-stool; less seriously, one hopes, the cutting-out of the tongues of persistent offenders was also advocated upon occasion.11

  Such women were Alice, wife of Thomas Crathorne, a victualler of Seasalter, Kent, who was charged in 1616 with being ‘a common swearer and a brawling scould, and withal will be drunk exceedingly’. Or Isabel Richardson and Alice Worthington, ‘Common Scoulds and disturbers of their neighbours’ whom the jury of the manor court in Manchester directed should be confined in the ‘Cucking Stool’ and ducked several times in the horse pond in mid-October. Or Jane Withers of Weldon in Northamptonshire, who was sent to gaol in 1630 till she could find sureties for her next appearance at the general sessions; on her return to Weldon, the constable was ordered to ‘cause her to be brought with the cuckingstool to some convenient place within the town and … there be doused and ducked in the manner of scoulds’.12

  It was when scolding slid into the far more serious social crime of cursing (against which Parliament even legislated in 1624) that the devil’s influence was once more detected. Scolding, like other manifestations of bad temper, was frequently an end in itself, whereas curses implied a wish to injure the person concerned. It was when the devil overheard the Witch of Edmonton cursing her enemy Banks that he exclaimed joyfully: ‘Now thou art Mine Own’, and he prophesied concerning the churlish Banks:

  The witch of Edmonton shall see his fall,

  If she at least put credit in my power,

  And in mine only, make orisons to me,

  And none but me.13

  It was dangerous, if you were an old woman, a beggar perhaps, of disagreeable appearance, to curse your uncharitable or unkind neighbour, or even to allow your lips and what Hannah Woolley called ‘that slippery glib member the tongue’ to move in some possible version of a curse. For then if your neighbour suffered a loss, grief or other form of injury, you might be suspected of having caused it … with the aid of the devil. It would be suggested either that he had brought about the injury himself or that he had endowed you, as his partner, with the powers to do so. Thus by cursing, even muttering gibberish in a way characteristic of many harmless senile persons,14 a friendless old woman imperilled her own safety. Her danger was even more acute if her maledictions had some justification because she had suffered some real damage or slight at the hands of the person against whom she railed. A wealthy widow without encumbrances was a potential independent; a crone without protection was a potential witch.

  Attention has been drawn to the fact that in many cases of witchcraft tried in the seventeenth century the alleged witch had a genuine grievance against the persons who declared themselves bewitched. This in turn draws atte
ntion to the fact that a poor old woman might well have no form of retaliation against the society which persecuted her, other than the hopeful practice of enchantment. One need not go as far as John Stearne, who in 1648 explained witchcraft as a female phenomenon on the grounds that women were more ‘easily displeased and revengeful’ than men, due to Satan ‘prevailing with Eve’. More simply one can see that the social circumstances of many old women might well point them in that direction, out of desperation.15

  Some form of blackmail, for example, might be exercised in order to secure an old woman a living, something otherwise difficult for her to do, as emerges from the evidence at the great Lancashire witch trials of 1612–13. It was said that none could escape the fury of Elizabeth Southernes (known locally as ‘Old Demdike’) if her family were ‘given any occasion of offence’ or denied ‘anything they stood need of’. John Device was supposed to have been so afraid of Anne Chattox – ‘a very old, withered, spent and decrepit creature, her sight almost gone’ – that he covenanted to pay her a yearly dole of meal on condition she hurt neither him nor his goods; on his deathbed he considered that he had been bewitched by her because he had left one instalment unpaid.16

  It was a point made by Reginald Scot in his classic exposure of 1584, Discoverie of Witchcraft: in the case of certain old women ‘their wrongs’ gave them leave ‘to chide and threaten’ (as being void of any other way of revenge).17 The case of the Belvoir witches indicates that not all those arraigned on charges of causing injury were innocent of the intent to harm – if a more rational society remains doubtful of their ability to do so.

  The story begins like a fairy tale with a castle and a happy, prosperous and noble couple. (It ends like one too, with the deaths of some wicked witches.) Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire, set augustly on a natural prominence dominating the surrounding countryside, was the seat of the powerful and ancient family of Manners, headed by the Earls of Rutland. In 1612 Francis, sixth Earl of Rutland, succeeded to the title on the death of his childless brother. Not only did the new Earl and Countess lack for nothing either of wealth or prestige, enjoying close connections with the court of King James I, but the succession was now secure, since they had two young sons, Henry Lord Roos, the heir, and Francis Manners; in addition the Earl had a daughter, Catherine Manners, by his first wife. When he succeeded to the earldom, Lord Rutland was described as one who took such honourable measures in the course of his life that he neither displaced tenants, nor discharged servants, but made strangers welcome; his wife was similarly benevolent, ‘so that Beaver-Castle was a continual place of Entertainment’.18

  Among the early objects of the benevolence of the Earl and Countess was an old woman known as Mother (Joan) Flower, and one of her daughters, Margaret. Mother Flower’s poverty was relieved and she was employed as ‘Char-woman’ (the word, then as now, was applied to a domestic help who came in by the day) at the castle. Margaret Flower was put in charge of the ‘poultry abroad and the wash-house indoors’. It cannot be said that the Flowers, mother and daughter, sound very satisfactory employees. Margaret Flower purloined provisions, and while some servants’ perks were obviously tolerated, these provisions were taken out of the castle in excessive quantities. Margaret Flower also crept out of the castle, ‘returning at such unreasonable hours’ that mischief was suspected. This mischief was no doubt connected with the fact that Mother Flower’s house was supposed to be a local bawdy-house; at any rate it was always full of ‘idle and debauched company’. Here Mother Flower’s other daughter, Philippa, held sway, and among other activities was ‘lewdly transported with the love of one Thomas Simpson’.

  As for Mother Flower, she would be described a few years later as ‘a monstrous malicious woman, full of oaths, curses, and imprecations, irreligious, and for anything they [her neighbours] saw by her, a plain atheist’. The general impression left by Mother Flower was certainly gruesome: ‘her very countenance was estranged, her eyes were fierce and hollow, her speech fell and envious, her demeanour strange and exotic, and her conversation sequestered’. In short, both in her appearance and in her speech, Mother Flower corresponded closely to Reginald Scot’s stereotype of the breed of witch: ‘commonly old, lame, bleare-eyed, pale, foul and full of wrinkles … lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces … doting, scolds, mad, divelish’.19

  Furthermore Mother Flower had a pet cat called Rutterkin, and in that respect too she conformed to the stereotype of the witch. ‘I come, Graymalkin … Paddock calls …’, cry the witches to their familiars in the opening scene of Macbeth before they vanish. It is her dog Tomalin – ‘My Tommy, My sweet Tom-boy!’ – actually the devil in disguise, who lures the Witch of Edmonton to her destruction. The ‘brindled cat’ which mewed thrice, the toad of Macbeth, the devilish dog of Edmonton, find a hundred parallels in the witch trials of the seventeenth century, which also featured a multitude of rats, and even the occasional wasp or butterfly. During the famous case of the North Moreton witches, for example, tried at Abingdon in 1605, Agnes Pepperwell was accused of having a ‘Whitish mouse with a man’s face called Sweat’ who was a Spirit, Elizabeth Gregory had a black rat with a swine’s face and a boar’s tusk called Catche, and Mary Pepperwell had ‘a whitish toad’ called Vizett.20

  Who knew what devilish familiar might lurk inside the humble shape of a black dog seen by the roadside or a tame white mouse on an old woman’s shoulder? No domestic animal, glimpsed prowling in the shades of evening, slinking through the night, was to be totally trusted, never mind the fact that such a pet might be the natural companion – solace even – of a lonely old woman, never mind the nocturnal habits of so many such creatures, notably cats, for this was an area where common sense had taken flight before the onslaughts of fear and prejudice. So Mother Flower’s pet cat Rutterkin was destined to play his part in the accusations against her.

  What with Margaret Flower’s light-fingeredness and her ‘indecencies’, and the maledictions of her mother, it was hardly surprising that the Flower family in general made themselves extremely unpopular with the household at Belvoir Castle; very soon ‘nobody but the Earl’s family loved them’. And then that love too faded: the Earl of Rutland turned against Mother Flower ‘and used not that Freedom nor familiar conferences with her as usual’. When a certain Peake wronged Mother Flower, the Earl of Rutland, hitherto her patron, paid no attention to the injustice, which was thus not remedied.

  As for the Countess, she too became disillusioned with Margaret Flower for her neglect of her duties, so that to the pleased derision of the neighbours, Margaret Flower found herself ejected from her comfortable billet at the castle. The Countess of Rutland seems to have behaved with financial generosity over the dismissal, giving Margaret Flower 40s (as much if not more than a year’s pay), a bolster, and a mattress of wool. Nevertheless the feelings of Mother Flower and her family towards the Earl and Countess of Rutland now turned to ‘Hate and Malice’.21

  For all this, when in 1613 the heir to Belvoir, Henry Lord Roos, sickened and died of a disease for which the doctors could find neither cure nor explanation, witchcraft was not suspected. It was only when the second boy Francis, now succeeded to his brother’s courtesy title of Lord Roos, sickened, and the girl Catherine Manners also went into some form of decline, that doctors and desperate family alike, interested neighbours and dependants, looked round for some explanation outside the natural world as to why this tragedy should be threatening the house of Rutland.

  By an unfortunate coincidence – from the point of view of the Flower family – there was at this juncture a witch trial in progress at the nearby Leicestershire Assizes, at which three women who knew the Flowers, Anne Baker, Joan Willimot and Ellen Green, were being accused. Familiars played their part in this drama. Anne Baker revealed that Joan Willimot had given her two spirits in the likeness of a kitten, which went with deceptive innocence under the name of ‘Puss’, and a mole called ‘Hiffe’. Both animals had leapt on her shoulder and immediately su
cked at her ears (sucking was an acknowledged attribute of familiars). Anne Baker bestowed the kitten upon a baker who had struck her and the mole on one Anne Dawse who had termed her ‘witch, whore, jade’. Within a fortnight both the baker and Anne Dawse were dead.22

  Intensive examination of the three women also produced a number of weird accusations against Mother Flower concerning the vengeance she had vowed to take on the Earl of Rutland. Later the Flower daughters provided further details of the affair. Possibly in their case some form of physical torture was used,23 but generally speaking where suspected witches were concerned, relentless questioning by the authorities, combined with the other harsh deprivations associated with imprisonment, produced confessions readily enough. Mother Flower was by this time, as we shall see, beyond human aid or punishment, but the story of her vengeance, as pieced together from the various confessions, went as follows.24

  After Margaret Flower’s dismissal the devil had seen an excellent opportunity to use the family as ‘Instruments to enlarge his kingdom’. He therefore offered them whatever they might want, accommodatingly suggesting that he should attend them in the guise of a dog or cat or rat, in order to allay suspicion. ‘Abominable kisses’ and ‘an odious sacrifice of blood’ sealed this unpleasant compact. Although the Flowers did take the opportunity thereafter to produce the occasional ‘Tempest’ for the ruin of the crops, it was of course personal vengeance against the Earl of Rutland which chiefly preoccupied them.