Mediæval Byways. L. F. Salzman

the images were ready the magician bade his assistant thrust a leaden bodkin into the head of that image which represented Richard de Sowe, and next day sent him to the house of the said Richard, whom he found raving mad. Master John then removed the bodkin from the head of the image and thrust it into the heart, and within three days Richard died. And at that point Robert Marshall’s story comes to a lame and impotent conclusion. Not a word of explanation does he give as to why, when the preliminary experiment had proved so successful, they did not go on with their fell design. The unfortunate ‘nigromancer’ died in prison before the case had been thrashed out and reported upon by a jury, and the case against the citizens was allowed to fall through. Even if the trial had followed its normal course it is not probable that we should have had more than a plain and enlightening verdict of ‘not guilty,’ for Robert Marshall was a liar of inventive genius. He accused two men of assisting him in the robbery and murder of a merchant from Chester ‘in Erlestrete, Coventry, near the white cellar,’ with a profusion of ‘corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative,’ which proved, as he afterwards admitted, utterly false. One or two other wild accusations also came to nothing, and Robert was duly hanged. But while we cannot say that the procedure he described was actually used in this case, we know it was quite in accord with the orthodox methods of magicians. That the story was believed at the time we may conclude, as the younger Despenser wrote this year to the Pope complaining that he was threatened by magical and secret dealings. The Pope, with much good sense, recommended him to turn to God with his whole heart and to make a good confession and such satisfaction as should be enjoined upon him; adding that no other remedies were needful.

      Passing again over a century we find in 1426 William, Lord Botreaux, complaining that Sir Ralph Botreaux, William Langkelly, and others, ‘unmindful of the salvation of their souls and not having God before their eyes,’ had procured John Alwode of Trottokeshull, Hugh Bower of Kilmington, chaplain, and John Newport, who were said to practise soothsaying, necromancy, and art magic, ‘to weaken, subtly consume, and destroy by the said arts,’ the complainant’s body. Commissioners were appointed to inquire into the matter, but any further proceedings that there may have been have vanished, or at best are lying hid in some unsuspected corner of the Record Office.

      Another instance of the use of magical ceremonies with evil intent is alluded to fifty years later, when John Knight, chaplain, complained that he had been arrested and committed to the Marshalsea for going with the servants of ‘the Lord Straunge’ to search the house of Alice, wife of John Huntley, ‘which of long tyme hath used and exercised the feetes of wychecraft and sorcery,’ in Southwark. They went into ‘an house called the lasour loke in Suthwerk in Kenstrete’ (a hospital founded originally for lepers, but by this time used more as an almshouse or infirmary) ‘and there found dyvers mamettes for wychecraft and enchauntements with other stuff beryed and deeply hydd under the erthe.’ The circumstances are very similar to those related in the case of an old woman turned out of the almshouses at Rye in 1560 for using magical ceremonies, including the burial of pieces of raw beef, to the intent that as the beef decayed away so might the bodies of her enemies, though it is possible that in the case of Alice Huntley the objects had only been buried for secrecy. Five-and-twenty years later, in 1502, a still clearer case of the use of ‘mamettes’ or images occurred in Wales. The bishop of St. Davids, having vainly remonstrated with Thomas Wyriott and Tanglost William for living ‘in advoutre,’ imprisoned the woman Tanglost and afterwards banished her from the diocese. She went to Bristol, and hired one Margaret Hackett, ‘which was practized in wychecraft,’ to destroy the bishop. Tanglost and Margaret then went back to Wyriott’s house, and in a room called, most unsuitably, Paradise Chamber, made two images of wax, and then, possibly thinking that a bishop would take more bewitchment than an ordinary mortal, sent for another woman, ‘which they thought cowde and hadde more cunning and experiens than they,’ and she made a third image. The bishop was not a penny the worse for this ‘inordinat delying,’ but ordered the arrest of Tanglost for heresy; Wyriott intervened by getting her imprisoned through a trumped-up action for debt, in order to keep her out of the bishop’s clutches, and the bishop had to invoke the assistance of the Court of Chancery.

      Three cases of magic occurred in 1432. On May 7 of that year an order was issued for the arrest of Thomas Northfelde, D.D., a Dominican friar of Worcester, and the seizure of all his books treating of sorcery or wickedness, and two days later Brother John Ashwell of the Crutched Friars, London, John Virley, priest, and Margery Jourdemain, who had been imprisoned at Windsor for sorcery, were released. In these cases it is very likely that the sorcery consisted in an uncanny and suspicious addiction to unusual branches of learning, combined possibly with experiments in chemistry or heretical tendencies, both alike dangerous in the eyes of the orthodox, but the third case was clearly a matter of bewitchment—in the opinion of the victim. The facts are quite simple. John Duram of York had a field with a pond in it, and having in some way incurred the enmity of Thomas Mell, a farmer, the latter, ‘per divers artes erroneous et countre la foy catholice cest assavoir sorcery,’ withdrew the water from John’s pond, to the great injury of his cattle, besides certain other unnamed injuries wrought by his ‘malveys ymaginacion et sotell labour.’ Mell being under the patronage of men of influence because of his magical abilities, Duran did not dare to bring an action against him in the ordinary court, and therefore sought the intervention of the Court of Chancery, with what success I do not know.

      So far my magicians, it must be admitted, have been rather commonplace people, proceeding on the usual lines of their craft and displaying little originality, but my final instance is, so far as I know, unique. In an eighteenth-century manuscript in my possession, formerly in the Phillipps collection, amongst a mass of extracts from all kinds of records is an entry said to be taken from the court rolls of the manor of Hatfield in Yorkshire. According to this, at a court held in 1336 Robert of Rotheram brought an action against John de Ithen for breach of contract, alleging that on a certain day, at Thorne, John agreed to sell him for threepence-halfpenny ‘the Devil bound with a certain bond’ (Diabolum ligatum in quodam ligamine), and Robert thereupon gave him ‘arles-penny,’ or earnest-money (quoddam obolum earles), ‘by which possession of the said Devil remained with the said Robert, to receive delivery of the said Devil within four days,’ but when he came to John the latter refused to hand over the Devil, wherefore Robert claimed 60s. damages. John appeared in court and did not deny the contract, but the steward, holding that ‘such a plea does not lie between Christians,’ ‘adjourned the parties to Hell for the hearing of the case,’ and amerced both parties.

      The first question is, is this a genuine extract from the rolls? The critic who is inclined to think that he smells a rat may be confuted by Camden, according to whom no rats have ever been known in the town of Hatfield. The extremely solid nature of all the other extracts in my volume is almost a guarantee of good faith so far as the eighteenth century copyist is concerned, and the probability that he took it from the original is strengthened by his having in one place misread unde as vide and subsequently corrected the error. But allowing that it occurred on the rolls, was it a genuine transaction or was it a facetious invention of the manor clerk? I incline to believe that it was genuine. A man who invented such a case to fill up a blank space on the roll would have been almost certain to have elaborated it further, while, on the other hand, having noted the adjournment of the case to ‘another place,’ to use parliamentary language, he would not have been likely to add that both parties were fined. Granting that the action was actually brought, we are left in doubt whether Robert was a simple gull with whom John had been amusing himself, or whether the defendant really believed that he could fulfil his contract. Again, what was that contract? Latin, though admirably clear in many respects, suffers from the absence of the definite article, and it is difficult to be certain whether it was a question of ‘the Devil’ or ‘a devil’; judging by the price, the latter seems more probable, as threepence-halfpenny for the Prince of Darkness seems absurdly little, and I believe that Diabolus ligatus was sometimes applied to a divining spirit imprisoned by magic arts in a bottle or crystal. However that may be, it is not probable that a law court has ever before or since been asked to decide the question of proprietary rights in the devil or his imps.

      ‘Diabolus