Mediæval Byways. L. F. Salzman

copy I do not know; whether it was due to the unfair incidence of taxation under the budget of that year or to more permanent causes, my funds did not permit of its acquisition, and I left it sorrowfully in company with a much-desired Augsburg Missal and Pine’s edition of Horace—the rare edition of the ‘post est’ blunder. I did, however, secure Fludd’s Macrocosm, by aid of which I might myself, if time and my mastery of the movements of the whirling spheres permitted, open a branch of the heavenly Scotland Yard.

      ‘... sware “gret othes” and took himself by the hair.’

      The early astrologers, thanks to the cautious vagueness of their statements, seem to have avoided the clutches of the law, into which other magicians fell. The stars reveal no names, recording only, by an anticipation of the Bertillon procedure, the measurements and physical peculiarities of the thieves. If from these particulars the querent jumps to a false conclusion and accuses the wrong man, so much the worse for him—the stars and their interpreters are not to blame. No one said hard words of the London astrologers whom Robert Cooke consulted. Cooke was a carrier from Kendale who came south in 1528 with £30 in money, much of it belonging to other men, in a ‘bogett,’ and put up at John Balenger’s house in St. Ives. During the course of the day he opened his packs, bought and sold and drank with his customers, allowing a number of people in quite a casual way to feel the weight of his ‘bogett,’ but not opening it. It was late that night before they got to bed at John Balenger’s, for ‘it was ten of the clok or they went to soper, for as much as every man pakked up his wares or they sooped,’ and when they went up to their rooms the house was apparently pretty full, as Cooke shared a bed with John Foster, a draper, and there were others in the same chamber. Next morning, as they were putting their packs on their horses, Cooke suddenly noticed that one of his packs was fastened with a different kind of knot from that which he used. Thereupon he suddenly exclaimed, ‘My pak is wrong knyt, by the passhion of God, sith yesternight,’ and opening it took out the precious ‘bogett’ and found it full of stones. So he sware ‘gret othes’ and took himself by the hair and altogether carried on mightily, and finally ‘made his advow that he would never ete fisshe ne fleissh until he had been at Saint Rynyons in Scotland if he might here of his goodes.’ Then, with his bed-companion of the previous night, he rode over to Cambridge ‘to make calculacion for the said goodes,’ but at that seat of learning ‘they coude find noo clerk or other person that wold take on hand to calcle for the said money.’ However, when Robert Cooke got to London he had no difficulty in finding astrologers, who expressed the utmost confidence in their ability to ‘calcle,’ and told him that ‘he shulde by the crafte of astronomye, if he wold, have hys eye or arme or other joynte of hys body thatt hadd robbed hym, att hys pleasure.’ This ferocious promise, it may be pointed out, merely meant that the astronomer could give a description of any particular physical traits necessary to indentify the robber. In this particular instance the description was that of a fair man with large eyes, hair neither curly nor straight, and a large nose, of medium height, good looking, with a bright expression, and having one or more black teeth. This elaborate account the astronomer, with becoming modesty, had submitted to the judgment of others more learned and experienced than himself, and they guaranteed its accuracy. It was found to correspond with the appearance of John Balenger the younger, son of Cooke’s host, except that the latter ‘hath no blak toth in his hed as yt apperith iff ony lust to serch therfor,’ and in order to prove this ‘the said John Balenger was caused to sytte down and in large wyse to gape and open his jowes to be duely seen ... and after due serch therin made yt appeared that the said John had alle his teth whyte and in good maner proporconed.’ Adding to this the fact that he was ‘callid a good young man and wele ruled, not slaundered neither with dicyng, carding ne other misrule,’ and the rather suspicious circumstance that the biggest stone found in Cooke’s ‘bogett’ after the supposed robbery was a piece of ironstone of a kind not found within forty miles of St. Ives but very plentiful in Kendale, it is not surprising that the magistrates should have dismissed the case against the younger John Balenger. After all, a black tooth is like a finger-tip print—damning evidence if present but powerful for acquittal if absent, and who is a Justice of the Peace that he should contradict Jupiter?

      ‘... caused to sytte down and in large wyse to gape.’

      BLACK MAGIC

      Considering how large a part magic and the supernatural played in the life of the people in the Middle Ages it is curious that there should be so few references thereto in the English judicial records prior to the Reformation. The ancient chroniclers and historians enlivened many a dull page with the most astonishing tales of sin and mystery, vouched for on the testimony of their own eyes or of unimpeachable witnesses, but the chains of legal evidence are as powerless to bind these legendary sorcerers as were the triple chains of iron to bind the famous Witch of Berkeley. With the exception of general vague accusations of witchcraft levelled against the Lollards and kindred heretics, references to magic are casual and rare in the records of our courts.

      With the reign of Elizabeth this ceases to be true, and from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth the Black Arts attracted their full share of judicial and magisterial attention. Probably twenty instances of legal proceedings taken in connection with these ‘ungodly practices’ could be produced after the Reformation for every one prior to that date, and while this is in part due to the fact that local records of the later periods have survived in far greater number than their predecessors, there is a possibility that post hoc is in the case also propter hoc. It is arguable that the Reformation having abolished, for all practical purposes, belief in the miracles of God and His saints, the natural craving of the unscientific man for a supernatural explanation of the abnormal could only be satisfied by a belief in the miracles of the Devil and his sinners. Be that as it may, the fact remains that after the Reformation witches and warlocks became as common as holy nuns and anchorities had once been—the marvels reported of the one class are about as unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view as those of the other. It is, however, with a few chance references of earlier date that I am concerned.

      Suitably enough it is from the land of ‘Cunning Murrell’ that my earliest instance comes. The Sheriff of Essex in 1169 made a note of having expended 5s. 3d. on ‘a woman accused of sorcery.’ The record is brief and unsatisfactory, telling neither the details of the offence, the method of trial, nor the result. These two last items we get in another case which occurred in Norfolk in 1208, when Agnes, wife of Odo the merchant, appealed a certain Galiena for sorcery, and Galiena successfully cleared herself by the ordeal of the hot iron. For a century after this any magical offenders who may have been brought to trial have eluded my search. Then in 1308 began the proceedings against the Knights Templars, based very largely on accusations of practising Black Magic. In England, however, nothing of the kind was even held to have been proved against the knights, although not only ‘what the sailor said’ was considered to be evidence, but also what the clerk thought the priest said the soldier heard the sailor say.

      ‘... thrust a leaden bodkin into the head of that image.’

      It is rather remarkable that the year 1324, in which the great Irish trial of the Lady Alice Kyteler took place, was the date of the fullest and in many ways the most interesting of the early English trials for sorcery. In that year Robert Marshall of Leicester, under arrest for a variety of offences, endeavoured to save his own neck by turning King’s evidence and accusing his former master, John Notingham, and a number of Coventry citizens of conspiring to kill the King, the two Despensers, and the Prior and two other officials of Coventry by magical arts. Marshall’s tale was to the effect that the accused citizens came to John Notingham, as a man skilled in ‘nigromancy,’ and bargained with him for the death of the persons named, paying a certain sum down and giving him seven pounds of wax. With the wax Notingham and Marshall made six images of the proposed victims and a seventh of Richard de Sowe, the corpus vile selected