The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in parish registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner. On August 21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for the imaginary crime of witchcraft. "A grave, for a witch, sixpence," is an item in the municipal accounts. And the grave was a cheap haven for the poor woman who had been committed to the tender mercies of a Scotch witch-trier. Cetewayo's medicine-men, who "smelt out"witches, were only some two centuries in the rear of our civilisation. Three hundred years ago Bishop Jewell, preaching before Elizabeth, was quite of the mind of Cetewayo and Saul, as to the wickedness of suffering a witch to live. As late as 1691, the register of Holy Island, Northumberland, mentions "William Cleugh, bewitched to death," and the superstition is almost as powerful as ever among the rural people. Between July 13 and July 24 (1699) the widow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch. She was not drowned, but survived her immersion for only five months. Asingular homicide is recorded at Newington Butts, 1689. "John Arris and Derwick Farlin in one grave, being both Dutch soldiers; one killed the other drinking brandy." But who slew the slayer? The register is silent; but "often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peck of hasty pudding at a time caused the death of James Parsons," at Teddington, in Middlesex, 1743. Parsons had resisted the effects of shoulders of mutton and hasty pudding till the age of thirty-six.
And so the registers run on. Sometimes they tell of the death of a glutton, sometimes of a GRACE WYFE (grosse femme). Now the bell tolls for the decease of a duke, now of a "dog-whipper.""Lutenists" and "Saltpetremen"--the skeleton of the old German allegory whispers to each and twitches him by the sleeve. "Ellis Thompson, insipiens," leaves Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled and scrabbled on the doors, and follows "William, foole to my Lady Jerningham," and "Edward Errington, the Towne's Fooll" (Newcastle-on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death. Edward Errington died "of the pest," and another idiot took his place and office, for Newcastle had her regular town fools before she acquired her singularly advanced modern representatives. The "aquavity man" dies (in Cripplegate), and the "dumb-man who was a fortune-teller" (Stepney, 1628), and the "King's Falkner," and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined the professions, not frequently united, of "attorney and husbandman," in Barwell, Leicestershire (1655). "The lame chimney-sweeper," and the "King of the gypsies," and Alexander Willis, "qui calographiam docuit," the linguist, and the Tom o' Bedlam, the comfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the suicide, they all found death; or, if they sought him, the churchyard where they were "hurled into a grave" was interdicted, and purified, after a fortnight, with "frankincense and sweet perfumes, and herbs."Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the Longborough register mentions a fresh way of death, "the swat called New Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy master." Another malady was 'the posting swet, that posted from towne to towne through England.' The plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth from the Levant, just as British commerce still patriotically tries to introduce cholera in cargoes of Egyptian rags. The register of Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24, 1625), has this strange story of the plague:-"Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and perceiving he must die at yt time, arose out of his bed, and made his grave, and caused his nefew, John Dawson, to cast strawe into the grave which was not farre from the house, and went and lay'd him down in the say'd grave, and caused clothes to be lay'd uppon and so dep'ted out of this world; this he did because he was a strong man, and heavier than his said nefew and another wench were able to bury."And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the "wench" already spoken of, died, the last of the household.
Old customs survive in the parish registers. Scolding wives were ducked, and in Kingston-on-Thames, 1572, the register tells how the sexton's wife "was sett on a new cukking-stoole, and brought to Temes brydge, and there had three duckings over head and eres, because she was a common scold and fighter." The cucking-stool, a very elaborate engine of the law, cost 1L. 3S. 4D. Men were ducked for beating their wives, and if that custom were revived the profession of cucking-stool maker would become busy and lucrative.
Penances of a graver sort are on record in the registers. Margaret Sherioux, in Croydon (1597), was ordered to stand three market days in the town, and three Sundays in the church, in a white sheet. The sin imputed to her was a dreadful one. "She stood one Saturday, and one Sunday, and died the next." Innocent or guilty, this world was no longer a fit abiding-place for Margaret Sherioux. Occasionally the keeper of the register entered any event which seemed out of the common. Thus the register of St. Nicholas, Durham (1568), has this contribution to natural history:-"A certaine Italian brought into the cittie of Durham a very greate strange and monstrous serpent, in length sixteen feet, in quantitie and dimentions greater than a greate horse, which was taken and killed by special policie, in Ethiopia within the Turkas dominions.
But before it was killed, it had devoured (as is credibly thought)more than 1,000 persons, and destroyed a great country."This must have been a descendant of the monster that would have eaten Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of the blameless Ethiopians. Collections of money are recorded occasionally, as in 1680, when no less than one pound eight shillings was contributed "for redemption of Christians (taken by ye Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish slavery." Two hundred years ago the Turk was pretty "unspeakable" still. Of all blundering Dogberries, the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish register at Melton Mowbray:-"Here [he writes] is a bill of Burton Lazareth's people, which was buried, and which was and maried above 10 years old, for because the clarke was dead, and therefore they was not set down according as they was, but they all set down sure enough one among another here in this place.""They all set down sure enough," nor does it matter much now to know whom they married, and how long they lived in Melton Mowbray. The following entry sufficed for the great Villiers that expired "in the worst inn's worst room,"--"Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire, 1687.
Georges vilaris Lord dooke of Bookingham, bur. 17. April.""So much for Buckingham!"
