The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England

by Kathy Lynn Emerson

  The first person prosecuted under the statute of 1563 was Elizabeth Lowys, who appeared before the Colchester Assizes on July 21, 1564, having previously been in the ecclesiastical court of the archdeacon of Essex. The charges against her seem to have stemmed from a quarrel over her employment as a spinster, a quarrel with her husband, and Elizabeth’s reputation as a scold. Although the idea of a familiar imp in the shape of an animal first appeared in a case in 1530, when a toad was found in a suspect’s house, Elizabeth Lowys was not questioned about one. There was no search for a witch’s mark (common practice by 1579), no children gave evidence, and no attempt was made to persuade Elizabeth to name other witches. She was sentenced to death because the community found her a convenient scapegoat for unexplained illnesses and accidents.

  Knowledge of what witches did was spread by the sensational pamphlets published after witch trials. Chapbooks printed detailed accounts of many witch trials and were illustrated with wood cuts. They were some of the most popular reading matter of their day and helped standardize the elements associated with witchcraft. Familiars, for example, had become regular features in witchcraft trials by 1566, largely because of the public's awareness of them.

  There was never a witch cult in England. The covenant with the Devil as part of witchcraft was not included in the law until 1604, and the emphasis on stamping out devil worship did not begin until 1645, with witchfinder Matthew Hopkins. James I was instrumental in bringing about this change. He became convinced of the existence of witches in 1591, when the so-called North Berwick witches claimed responsibility for a storm that nearly sank the ship on which he was returning to Scotland from Denmark with his bride. James wrote his own book on the subject, Demonology, first published in 1597. In Scotland, witchcraft had been a criminal offense since 1563 and that act remained in effect until 1736. Between 1590 and 1700, over 1,000 people were executed in Scotland and three times that many were accused of witchcraft.

  Essex held more witch trials than elsewhere in England. About 250 cases were tried between 1560 and 1600, but not all of these witches were executed. Many were punished by public penance or jail time. In England, witches were customarily hanged rather than burned as they were (for heresy) in Catholic countries. Throughout England, the percentage of trials ending in conviction varied but the high was 42% during the period from 1645 to 1647. In France, it went as high as 95%.

  Ferdinando Stanley, fifth earl of Derby, took eleven painful days to die in 1594. When an image made of wax was found in his chamber, the conclusion was obvious. He’d been bewitched to death, although no one was ever charged with this crime. Mention of such “poppets” as instruments of murder is found as early as 1537. As the wax melted, the victim’s body wasted away. Sticking pins in an image of wax or clay could cause pain to the victim. If the heart was pierced, he died within nine days.

  In 1618, at Belvoir Castle in Lincolnshire, the earl of Rutland’s son and daughter were suffering from a wasting sickness. Another son had already died of mysterious causes. Two of the earl’s servantwomen, Margaret and Philippa Flower, had recently been dismissed from his service. Their mother, Joan Flower, was well known to be a “monstrous malicious woman” and a witch. This proved sufficient cause to charge Margaret and Philippa with bewitching the children. They were tried, convicted, and executed. The second son died some time later. The daughter survived. A pamphlet published after the executions maintained that Philippa had taken a glove belonging to young Lord Ross to her mother, who rubbed it on the back of her spirit, Rutterkin (a cat), put it into boiling water, pricked it, and then buried it in the yard with the wish that Lord Ross might never thrive. The same pamphlet contains confessions which include a white dog, a white mouse, an owl, and a kitten named Pusse as familiars.

  Of all those accused of witchcraft, most were over fifty years of age and about half were women. In Lancashire in 1612, Alice Nutter of Roughlee Hall in Blackburn Hundred, a gentlewoman, was accused of being the leader of a group of witches who met in the nearby Forest of Pendle. Descriptions of their gathering sound more like a picnic than a witch’s sabbat, but five men and fifteen women ended up being tried at the August assizes. Eight were acquitted. The rest were found guilty, except for Elizabeth Southerns (Old Demdike), who died in prison before the trial. She had already confessed, however, to having been a witch since 1590 and claimed to have a familiar named Tib. Of those convicted, one was sent to the pillory. The others, including Alice, were hanged on August 20.

  At the same assizes, a separate witchcraft trial had a very different outcome. Jane Shireburne Southworth of Samlesbury, a widow, and two other women were acquitted when the principal witness against them, a fourteen-year-old girl, admitted she had been instructed by “Master Thompson.” Master Thompson turned out to be Christopher Southworth, a priest, who had apparently been trying to punish his niece by marriage for converting to Protestantism.

  In 1634, seven inhabitants of that same Forest of Pendle made infamous in 1612, including the granddaughter of Old Demdike, were indicted along with a number of others on the charges made by a young boy. Seven were found guilty. Three of them died in prison at Lancaster, but the others were eventually reprieved by Charles I when the accusations proved to be fraudulent.

  MAGIC

  Magic comes in three forms. Natural magic involves the elemental world. Celestial magic is under the influence of the stars. Ceremonial magic involves an appeal to spiritual beings. Magical inquiry had some respectability in the Renaissance as a means of expanding knowledge. Seances, experiments with alchemy, and fortune-telling were common, even though they made their practitioners liable for punishment in ecclesiastical courts.

  Cunning men and cunning women were those who performed magical functions in healing and in divination. Frequently they located lost items. Sometimes they detected thefts. They were rarely accused of witchcraft. In fact, many who suspected they’d been bewitched went to the local cunning woman for protection against the witch’s spell. Belief in talismans and protective amulets was widespread among all classes of society. For example, Dr. Elkes, an Elizabethan conjurer, earned a substantial sum by supplying a ring with a helpful spirit inside it to a gambler. For more on the magical properties of herbs and stones, see Chapter Six.

  NECROMANCY

  Necromancy and sorcery were not, strictly speaking, witchcraft. Under Roman law, sorcery was only a crime if it was practiced with evil intent and caused damage. However, after 1541, prognostication and other kinds of sorcery, including using magic for treasure-seeking, to recover stolen goods, or to provoke unlawful love, became felonies without benefit of clergy. This law was repealed by Edward VI. The 1563 law carried a lesser penalty for similar crimes: a year’s imprisonment and four appearances in the pillory for a first offense. The 1604 law restored the death penalty. Conjuring of spirits was a felony under all three laws.

  ASTROLOGY

  Astrology competed with watercasting (see Chapter Six) as a diagnostic tool in medicine. The Royal College of Physicians could discipline unlicensed practitioners of astrological physic. The Anglican Church required its incumbents and churchwardens to denounce parishioners who engaged in fortune-telling or divination. At times this included astrologers. A consultation with an astrologer during Elizabeth’s reign lasted about fifteen minutes and cost 2s. 1d. a session.

  Henry VII consulted the Italian astrologer William Parron. Henry VIII consulted a German, Nicholas Kratzer, and an Englishman, John Robins. Jerome Cardan came to England to cast the horoscope of Edward VI. John Dee (1527-1608) was asked to choose an astrologically propitious day for the coronation of Elizabeth I. He was later called in to discuss the comet of 1577 with her. Dee was interested in alchemy as well as astrology and was popularly believed to he a sorcerer. At one point he asked King James to try him on that charge so that he could prove his innocence. His house at Mortlake was attacked at least once by a mob seeking to destroy all traces of his link to the occult.

  Simon Forman (1552
-1611) was not consulted by royalty, but he was the premier astrologer in London at the turn of the century. His casebooks are still extant. Testimony in trials which took place after his death (in connection with the Overbury murder) indicates that he used wax images for various magical purposes.

  Forman’s contemporary, John Lambe (1548?-1628), who was more fortune-teller than astrologer and ignorant even of the astrological “science” of the times, was indicted in Worcestershire in 1608 for practicing “execrable arts to consume the body and strength” of Thomas, sixth Lord Windsor of Bromsgrove. Lambe was found guilty, but judgment was suspended. Later the same year he was arraigned for having invoked spirits with a crystal ball. He was imprisoned in Worcester Castle, then sent to the King’s Bench Prison in London, where he may have remained for as long as fifteen years. He received “clients” there and in about 1622 was consulted by the duke of Buckingham. At some point after that, Lambe was released, establishing his reputation as the “duke's devil.” Because he was on the Thames during a violent storm on Monday, June 12, 1626, that natural disturbance was blamed on him. On June 18, 1628, as Lambe was leaving the Fortune, a playhouse in Finsbury Fields, he was attacked by a mob of apprentices and so severely beaten that he died the next day. A crystal ball was found on his body. Posters immediately went up all over London which read: “Who rules the kingdom? The king. Who rules the king? The duke. Who rules the duke? The devil. Let the duke look to it or he will be served as his doctor was served.” When Buckingham was assassinated on August 23, a new rhyme was heard in London: “The shepherd’s struck, / the sheep are fled; / for want of Lambe,/ the wolf is dead.”

  William Lilly (1602-1681) was far more respectable than either Forman or Lambe and better trained in astrology. In 1644 he published his first almanac, essentially a calendar which predicted weather, the appearance of comets, and so forth. Lilly continued to publish an annual almanac until his death. The 1645 edition accurately predicted the Roundhead victory at Naseby.

  GENERAL BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL

  Folklore

  In Cornwall, tommy-knockers lived in the mines and gave warnings of cave-ins. Pixies, fairies (Little People who lived in mounds and danced in fairy rings and could be malevolent), and ghosts were also part of the superstitious beliefs of the average Elizabethan. Persons believed to be suffering from a supernatural malady were “elfshot” or “pixyled” and someone haunted or bewitched was “fairy-taken.”

  Catholics in England under Anglican rule revived the story of Merlin’s “Mouldwarp prophesy” (a mouldwarp staff was a stick used for killing moles). The evil Mole, the prophesy said, would be driven from the land by a dragon, a wolf, and a lion, after which England would be divided into three parts. In the fourteenth century, Henry IV was accused of being the Mouldwarp. In the 1530s the term was applied to Henry VIII. In 1535, John Hale, vicar of Isleworth, was executed for making that treasonous accusation.

  Ancient Druid festivals surviving in England, which later came to be linked to witchcraft, were All Hallows’ Eve and the Eve of May Day. Walpurgis Night was actually the vigil of St. Walburga (Werburga), a Devonshire saint. In Scotland, witches were supposed to meet on Holy Cross (May 3) and All Saints (November 1). Seasonal festivals with pagan origins were given respectability by connecting them to Christianity: February 2 became Candlemas; June 23, the Eve of St. John the Baptist; August 1, Lammas Day; and December 21, the feast of St. Thomas.

  Portents

  In addition to the more commonplace portents, such as a cow in the garden foretelling a death, or a swallow nesting in the eaves bringing luck, lightning strikes, floods, earthquakes, comets, and the like were all suspected of being harbingers of disaster. Hindsight provided even more elaborate explanations. The storm and floods that coincided with the death of Edward VI were spectacular, but as the stories were retold, blood-red hailstones were added to the natural downpour.

  Comets tended to be blamed for any unfortunate event that happened in the same year. Notable comets were seen in England in 1500, 1506, 1514, 1518, 1527, 1531, 1533 (a blazing star foretelling the divorce of Henry VIII), 1556, 1577, 1579, 1596, 1607, and 1618. The floods in 1596 were supposed to have been caused by that year’s comet.

  There were earthquakes of note in 1571, 1575, and on Wednesday, April 6, 1580. The latter spawned an “instant book,” published on April 8 to report on damage and speculate on divine wrath. That quake was centered in the Strait of Dover (an earthquake zone—another earthquake struck the same area in 1598) and was felt all along the southeast of England, in Flanders, and in northern France. The watch-tower at Calais split. A piece of Dover Castle’s wall fell into the sea. Church bells in London rang of their own accord and two teenagers were killed by falling masonry. Modern experts estimate that this earthquake measured 5.6 on the Richter scale. This same earthquake wrecked the conversion of the George Inn into a playhouse, an act which was seen by some Puritans as proofof God’s disapproval of plays and players. The Puritans also saw the hand of God in an accident on January 13, 1583, when a scaffolding collapsed, killing eight spectators at a bear-baiting.

  Floods inundated the Great Hall at Westminster in 1515 and again in 1579, the same year in which there were extraordinarily heavy snow-falls. There were eclipses in 1506, 1514, 1518, and 1527, and four of them in 1544. An eclipse of the moon took place on October 7, 1576, from nine until a little after one.

  In 1532, people described seeing “a flaming sword and horse’s head in the sky and a blue cross over the moon.” This may have been a display of the northern lights. One took place in the mid-1570s and terrified everyone. In 1580 there were reports of “a strange . . . impression in the air . . . the shape of the lath of a crossbow without the string.”

  The predicted nova of November 11, 1572, was a great disappointment. People saw nothing more than a clear sky after sunset and a very bright star. Another bright star appeared in 1604. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter at noon on Sunday, April 28, 1583, was also unremarkable, but people still watched for the next conjunctions of these two planets in 1603 and 1623.

  Some days of the week traditionally brought bad luck. Almanacs printed lists of those to avoid, especially if one planned to get married or start a business venture. Unfortunately, lists printed in rival publications rarely agreed. Almost any day, it seemed, could be unlucky. Most authorities did think, however, that Fridays were especially unlucky and the age of sixty-three was particularly “fatal and climacterical.”

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

  Rowse, A.L. Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer. New York: Scribner, 1974.

  Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. New York: Scribner, 1971.

  APPENDIX: GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ashelford, Jane. A Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century. New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1983.

  Beer, Barrett L. Tudor England Observed: The World of John Stow. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998.

  Bridenbaugh, Carl. Vexed and Troubled Englishmen: 1590-1642. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

  Camusso, Lorenzo. Travel Guide to Europe 1492. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990.

  Davis, Michael Justin. The England of William Shakespeare. New York: Dutton, 1987.

  Girouard, Mark, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.

  Graves, M.A.R. and R.H. Silcock. Revolution, Reaction and the Triumph of Conservatism: English History 1558-1700. London and New York: Longman, 1984.

  Harrison, William. The Description of England. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994. (Note: This is a readable reprint of the 1587 text, edited by Georges Edelen.)

  Kinney, Arthur F. and David W. Swain, eds. Tudor England: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 2001.

&nbs
p; Palliser, D. M. The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors 1547-1603. London and New York: Longman, 1983.

  Reed, Michael. The Age of Exuberance, 1550-1700. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

  Rowse, A. L. The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Cultural Achievement. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972.

  Rowse, A. L. The Elizabethan Renaissance: The life of the Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971.

  Rowse, A. L. and John Hedgecoe. In Shakespeare's Land: A Journey Through the Landscape of Elizabethan England. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987.

  Russell, Conrad. Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509-1660. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.

  Sharpe, J. A. Early Modern England: A Social History 1550-1760. London: E. Arnold, 1987.

  Sim, Alison. The Tudor Housewife. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1996.

  Singman, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Elizabethan England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.

  Smith, Lacey Baldwin. The Horizon Book of the Elizabethan World. New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1967.

  Wrightson, Keith. English Society, 1580-1680. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1982.

  ON THE INTERNET:

  www.kathylynnemerson.com/biblio.htm (compiled by the author)

  http://renaissance.dm.net/compendium/home.html (Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge)