Being Bewitched: A True Tale of Madness, Witchcraft, and Property Development Gone Wrong 9780271090986

Citation preview

Early Modern Studies 20 Truman State University Press Kirksville, Missouri

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Habent sua fata libelli Early Modern Studies Series General Editor Michael Wolfe

Queens College, CUNY

Editorial Board of Early Modern Studies Elaine Beilin

Mary B. McKinley

Christopher Celenza

Raymond A. Mentzer

Framingham State College Johns Hopkins University

Barbara B. Diefendorf

University of Virginia University of Iowa

Robert V. Schnucker

Boston University

Truman State University, Emeritus

Paula Findlen

Nicholas Terpstra

Stanford University

Scott H. Hendrix

Princeton Theological Seminary

Jane Campbell Hutchison

University of Wisconsin–­Madison

University of Toronto

Margo Todd

University of Pennsylvania

James Tracy

University of Minnesota

Merry Wiesner-­Hanks

University of Wisconsin–­Milwaukee

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Copyright © 2017 Kirsten Uszkalo / Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 All rights reserved tsup.truman.edu Cover art: A little girl stands in a room working with a needle and thread. Etching by Boulard the younger (1852–­1927) after Laura Alma Tadema. Wellcome Library, London (ICV No. 39360), Creative Commons License. Cover design: Teresa Wheeler Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Uszkalo, Kirsten C., 1973– author. Title: Being bewitched : a true tale of madness, witchcraft, and property development gone wrong / Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Description: Kirksville, MO : Truman State University Press, 2017. | Series: Early modern studies ; 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016048481 (print) | LCCN 2017003685 (ebook) | ISBN 9781612481654 (library binding : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781612481661 Subjects: LCSH: Witchcraft—England—London—History—17th century. | Jennings, Elizabeth, active 1622. Classification: LCC BF1581 .Z7 2017 (print) | LCC BF1581 (ebook) | DDC 133.4/30942109032—ººdc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048481 No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher. The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–­1992.

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Soo at this end of that Booke the Dr. questions relating to the nature of this Disease; & how to ease hir; and whither she were bewitched, or only troubled with the Epilipsie of the Mother. —Elias Ashmole, Autograph commentary on BL MS 36674 (1690)

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Contents List of Illustrations | x Principal Dramatis Personæ | xi Genealogical Charts | xv Maps | xix Chronology | xxi Introduction: “My mother sawe her in the kitchin” | 1 Provenance and Pattern

Chapter 1: The Background: Landed Power, Lunacy, and Libraries | 16 Power in the Land The Lunatic Lord Being in Thistleworth

Chapter 2: Blood Evidence: Sickness in the Blood | 34 Summoning Simeon Foxe Mentioning Margaret Russell

Chapter 3: Comparables: Familial Witchcraft | 51 Scandalized Cecils Bad Manners

Chapter 4: Models and Accusations for Being Bewitched | 67 Dazzling Demoniacs Preternatural Authority

Chapter 5: Tensions: Prohibitions and Projects | 87 Lawmen and Long Acre Langford, Churchill, Fenlands

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Contents

Chapter 6: Tensions: Magics and Medicines | 107 Gunpowder Alley Black and White Court Clerkenwell and Newgate The Female Physician

Chapter 7: The New Suspect: The Apothecary | 129 The House of Higgins Piccadillies and Piccadilly

Chapter 8: Witnesses and Persons of Interest, Bedside & Barside | 149 Frequent Visitors Ordinary Visitors

Chapter 9: Wrap Up: The Final Expert Assessment | 164 Richard Napier

Chapter 10: Post-­Bewitchment: Elizabeth Jenyns of St. Mary le Savoy | 172

“East, west, north and south, all these lye”

Conclusion: “They had power over all them” | 180 Appendix 1: “Of Elizabeth Jennings being bewitched,” 1622 | 187 Appendix 2: Indictments, 27 October 1616 and 3 December 1616 | 195 Appendix 3: Napier on Elizabeth Jennings, 1622 | 198 Appendix 4: Napier on Bulbeck, Arpe, and Latch, 1623 | 200 Appendix 5: John Latch’s Signature, 1620, 1622 | 202 Bibliography | 203 Index | 225 About the Author | 231

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Illustrations A. Map A: Detail of John Roque, Map of London, 1746, showing Margaret Russell’s area of activity. Courtesy of the Motco Project, Guildford, UK (www.motco.com). | xx B. Map B: Detail of John Roque, Map of London, 1746, showing development areas in vicinity of Piccadilly (Higgins/Baker family), Long Acre (William Slingsby and Thomas Cecil), and the Strand. Courtesy of the Motco Project, Guildford, UK (www.motco.com). | xxi 1. Detail of from Andrew Dury & John Andrews, A Topographical Map of Hertfordshire, 1766 (Reprint, London, 1782), showing the location of Saundridge in Hertfordshire. Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE DD-­2987 (2220 B, 1–­9). | 19 2. Holywell House, Hertfordshire, from John Britton, The Beauties of England and Wales or Original Delineations Topographical, Historical and Descriptive of each County Embellished with Engravings, vol. 9 (Hertfordshire by London, 1807). | 21 3. The Jennings family’s coat of arms, from John Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 3 (London: R. Bentley, 1836), page 582. | 22 4. The Parish Church of St. Helen, Ainderby Steeple. Photo by Kreuzschnabel, 2013. Wikimedia Commons/GNU Free Documentation License. | 27 5. Former rectory, Congresbury © Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons License. | 28

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Illustrations

6. Syon House (present day). Photo by Maxwell Hamilton, 2009. Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License. | 32 7. The Coat of Arms for the College of Physicians, ca. 1546, Lasdun Building, Regent’s Park. From History of Medicine Topographical Database/Creative Commons License. | 43 8. The Latch family crest, signaling John Latch’s work on the Fenlands drainage project. | 101 9. The Latch Monument in Churchill, purportedly representing John Latch and Sarah Latch (or Dorothy Jennings) and their children. Image courtesy of Chris Lee. | 103 10. Either Sarah Latch or Dorothy Jennings, detail of the Latch Monument. Image courtesy of Chris Lee. | 104 11. Newgate, from Old London Illustrated: A Series of Drawings by the late H. W. Brewer, illustrating London in the XVIth century . . . (London: The Builder, 1921). | 119 12. Coat of Arms for the Society of Apothecaries, ca. 1620, from C. R. B. Barrett, The History of the Society of Apothecaries of London (London: Elliot Stock, 1903). | 132 13. Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy: A Royal Peculiar. Photo by Neddyseadragon, 2007. Wikimedia Commons/GNU Free Documentation License. | 174 14. John Latch’s signatures, from the Records of the Exchequer, and its related bodies, with those of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths, and the Court of Augmentations 18 James I (1620–­1621). | 202

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Principal Dramatis Personæ Jennings Family Elizabeth Jennings: bewitched or hysterical thirteen-­year-­old daughter of John Jennings and Dorothy (Bulbeck) Jennings, stepdaughter to John Latch; accused Margaret Russell (and three others) of witchcraft Dorothy Jennings: mother of Elizabeth and Thomas Latch (and others), wife of John Jennings, then of John Latch, daughter of Thomas Bulbeck and Ursula (Grey) Bulbeck John Jennings: “the Lunatic Lord,” father to Elizabeth and John Jennings Thomas Jennings: brother to Elizabeth, stepbrother to Franke, son of John Latch and Dorothy Jennings; later business partner to John Latch John Latch: stepfather to Elizabeth and Thomas and father to Franke, second husband to Dorothy Jennings, later business partner of Thomas Jennings Franke Latch: daughter of Dorothy Jennings and John Latch, stepsister to Elizabeth and Thomas Latch

Cecil Family Robert Cecil: 1st Earl of Salisbury, half ­brother to Thomas Cecil; watched over the division of the Jennings estate Thomas Cecil: 1st Earl of Exeter, husband to Frances Brydges, father of William, Elizabeth, and Georgi-­Anne Frances Brydges: second wife of Thomas Cecil, mother of Georgi-­Anne; accused of witchcraft by her daughter-­in-­law Elizabeth (Brydges) Cecil

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Principal Dramatis Personæ

Georgi-­Anne Cecil: daughter of Thomas Cecil and Frances Brydges; died from phlebotomy

Higgins Family Stephen Higgins: apothecary, master to Nicholas Culpeper; physician to Mary Gargrave and Robert Cecil; builder; fought with and accused by Russell of bewitching the Jennings/Latch home Mary Higgins (the elder): wife of Stephen Higgins; made comment about Jennings/Latch family not able to prosper because of the fallout of ongoing feud between families Arnold Higgins: son of Stephen Higgins; builder; fought with Jennings/ Latch family Mary Higgins (the younger): daughter of Stephen Higgins; wife of developer Robert Baker Robert Baker: husband to Mary Higgins Jr.; prosperous tailor; popularized piccadilles; builder

Goodcole Family Anne Goodcole: female physician; previously prescribed Elizabeth medicine; had knowledge of conflict between Higgins and Jennings house; wife of Henry Goodcole Henry Goodcole: author of famous witch text; regular visitor at Newgate Prison; led pseudo-­legal examination of Russell; husband of Anne Goodcole Frances Ashton: female physician; possibly had knowledge of conflict between Higgins and Jennings houses; sister of Anne Goodcole

Medical Team

Simeon Foxe: aka Doctor Foxe; physician, primary caregiver to Elizabeth; later president of the Royal College of Physicians Richard Napier: astrological-­physician; later treated Elizabeth, John Latch, Franke Latch William Giddings: a surgeon named as witness to Elizabeth’s accusation against Russell

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Principal Dramatis Personæ

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Examiners

William Slingsby: justice, developer; examined Russell, Anne and Henry Goodcole, and Frances Ashton Thomas Fowler: Baron of Islington; justice, developer; husband of Lady Elizabeth Fowler and father of Jane Fowler (and ten others); examined Russell, Anne and Henry Goodcole, and Frances Ashton Thomas Bates: aka Doctor Bates, apothecary; examined Russell, Anne and Henry Goodcole, and Frances Ashton

Witches

Margaret Russell: aka Countess; accused witch, frequent visitor; imprisoned, questioned by Slingsby, Fowler, Bates, and Goodcoles; center of female medical/spiritual knowledge network Jane Flower: accused witch, may be Jane Fowler, wife of Sir Thomas Fowler Sr. or daughter of Sir Thomas Fowler Jr.; possible reference to Lincolnshire witches Katharine Stubbs: accused witch, possible reference to A Crystal Glass for Christian Women (1591) Nan Wood: accused witch, possibly Agnes Wood

Witnesses Elizabeth Arpe: aka Nan Arpe, a neighbor; witness to onset of Elizabeth’s bewitchment and her continued sickness; patient of Richard Napier Mary Gargrave: former maid of honor to Queen Anne; witness to Elizabeth’s bewitchment and Mary Higgins’s threat to the Jennings Katharine Percy: a witness to Elizabeth’s accusations against Russell Faith Saxton: a witness to Elizabeth’s accusations against Russell Agnes Faulkner: a servant who acted as a witness to Elizabeth’s accusations against Russell Anne Bradborne: a witness to Elizabeth’s accusations against Russell Katharine Browne: a servant, witness to Elizabeth’s accusations against Russell

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Sir Ralph m. 2 Margaret Rowlet == Cooke c. 1513–1558

*

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Sarah, Countess of Marlborough c. 1660–1744

Barbara Grifith

Sir G. == Hamilton

==

Frances Jennings c. 1647–1730

George Jennings

Sir John Jennings d. 1612

Ann Jennings

Grace Jennings

Thomas Jennings

Roger Jennings

Franke and 2 or more other children

m. 2 John == Latch

and 6 other children

Vere John Philip == Sarah James Latch Jennings Jennings Jennings Jennnings

Vera == Thomas Balmer Jennings

Dorothy Bulbeck

* Duplicate reference on another family tree.

m. 1 Sir John m. 2 Anne Bronnecker == Jennings ==

ELIZABETH JENNINGS

== Frances Hill

Abigail Masham Baroness Masham

Elizabeth Hill

Thomas Jennings

Ralph Jennings

Ralph Jennings

Dorothy ==

Joan == Bronnecker

Alice Spencer

William Skipwith

Thomas == Joan Skipwith Skipwith

Richard == Frances Ralph Robert Jennings Thornhurst Jennings Jennings d. 1619-1668

Jennings Family

Dorothy m. 1 Bowles ==

Ralph == Elizabeth Rowlet Esq. d. 1543

*

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*

Elizabeth == William Cecil Lake 17th Baron de Ros m. 1615 c. 1590–1627

Lady Diana Cecil d. 1658

m.1591 Elizabeth == Drury

Lady Elizabeth Cecil d. 1672

William Cecil 2nd Earl Exeter c. 1566–1640

*

Lady Anne Cecil m. 1629

Lady Elizabeth Manners m.1589 16th Baroness de Ros == c. 1575–1591

Edward Manners == Isabel 3rd Earl of Rutland Holcroft c. 1549–1587

Cecil Family Maternal

* Duplicate reference on another family tree.

Frances Knyvet m. 1 m. 1602 == d. 1605

Henry Manners d. 1613

Francis Manners d. 1620

m. 2 Cecily Tufton and 8 == m. 1608 others

Francis Russell 2nd Earl Bedford c. 1527–1585

m. 2 Bridget == Morrison

Francis Manners 6th Earl Rutland 8th Baron de Ros c. 1578–1632

Elizabeth Manners c. 1555–1590

Henry Manners 2nd Earl of Rutland c. 1516–1563

Katherine Manners m.1620 George Villiers 19th Baroness de Ros == Duke of Buckingham d. 1649 c. 1592–1628

Roger Manners 5th Earl Rutland c.1576–1612

John Manners == Elizabeth 4th Earl of Rutland Charlton c. 1559–1588

Margaret m.1536 Neville == d. 1559

Thomas Manners 1st Earl of Rutland c. 1488–1543

George Manners 11th Baron deRos c. 1470–1513

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*

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Lady Elizabeth Manners m.1589 16th Baroness de Ros == c. 1575–1591

Cecil Family Paternal

*

*

m.1591 Elizabeth == Drury

Thomas Cecil 1st Earl Exeter c. 1542–1622

m. 2 ==

Frances Robert Cecil Brydges 1st Earl Salisbury c. 1580–1663 c. 1563–1612

m. 1 William Cecil m.1545 Mildred == 1st Baron Burghly == Cooke c. 1520–1598 c. 1526–1589

Dorothy m. 1 Neville == c. 1548–1609

Mary Clark d. 1543

Anne Fitzwilliam

Elizabeth Slingsby d. 1696

Elizabeth Coke

Sir William m. 1 Elizabeth m.1598 Sir Edward and 9 other Georgi-Anne Cecil Newport == Cecil == Coke children c. 1616–1621 c. 1540–1597 c. 1578–1646 c. 1552–1634

Sir Ralph m. 2 Margaret Rowlet == Cooke c. 1513–1571

Anthony == Cooke

Elizabeth == William Cecil Lady Anne Lady Elizabeth Lady Diana Frances Coke m.1617 John Villiers m. 2 Lake 17th Baron de Ros Cecil Cecil Cecil c. 1599–1645 == 1st Viscount Burbeck == m. 1615 c. 1590–1627 d. 1672 d. 1658 c. 1591–1658

William Cecil 2nd Earl Exter c. 1566–1640

Dorothy m. 1 Bowles ==

* Duplicate reference on another family tree.

*

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John Villiers George Villiers Christopher Susan 1st Viscount Burbeck Duke of Buckingham Villiers c. 1588–1652 c. 1591–1658 c. 1592–1628 c. 1593–1630

Mary Beaumont == George Villiers c. 1570–1632 c. 1574–1606

Villiers Family

* Duplicate reference on another family tree.

*

8 children

Elizabeth m. 1 Nightingale ==

Mary

Robert

Robert m. 2 Mary Baker == Slye

Samuel

Arnold Higgins

Stephen == Mary Higgins

*

Higgins Family

Dorothy Bulbeck

Francis

2 other sisters

Sir William Slingsby

m. 2 Margaret == Montague

Elizabeth Slingsby

Thomas == Ursula Bulbeck Grey

Bulbeck Family

Henry Slingsby c. 1621–1688

Elizabeth m.1582 William Board == Slingsby

Slingsby Family

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2 4 1 3 5 6

Map A: Detail of John Roque, Map of London, 1746, showing Margaret Russell’s area of activity. Courtesy of the Motco Project, Guildford, UK (www.motco.com).

1. Gunpowder Alley 2. Newgate Prison 3. Black and White Court 4. Old Bailey 5. Amen Corner 6. St. Paul’s Church

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7 6 5

1 3 4

Map B: Detail of John Roque, Map of London, 1746, showing development areas in vicinity of Piccadilly (Higgins/Baker family), Long Acre (William Slingsby and Thomas Cecil), and the Strand. Courtesy of the Motco Project, Guildford, UK (www.motco.com).

1. Piccadilly 2. Long Acre 3. Buckingham Street 4. Cecil House 5. York House 6. St. Mary’s Church 7. The Strand

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Chronology 27 October 1616: Dorothy Jennings, her mother, Ursula Bulbeck (and eleven others) indicted for unlawful and armed assembly, disturbance of the peace, assaulting of Henry Fisher and James Axtell. 27 October 1616: Having broken down a wall, Stephen and Arnold Higgins, James Axtell, and Henry Fisher are indicted for starting a riot and for misdemeanor on John Latch’s property; given a formal warning that they need to maintain good behavior; they ask for a speedy trial. 3 December 1616: Writ created to summon a jury of twenty-­four men in St. Mary Savoy in the Strand for the 3 January 1617 trial of Dorothy Jennings (Latch), Ursula Bulbeck, Samuel Lee, William Whaverley, Robert Houghton, and Robert Gray for trespass and riot. 3 January 1617: Trial; result unknown. Date Unknown: A child of Jennings-­Latch union grows sick; Russell visits Higgins house to see, or arrives with, Mary Gargrave; Mary Higgins makes first ominous prediction that the Jennings “had much wronged them and that it wold come home by them and theirs.” 13 January 1622, Isleworth, London Borough of Hounslow: Elizabeth becomes sick, stops eating meat. 15 February 1622, Isleworth, London Borough of Hounslow: Elizabeth grows sicker and can no longer stand. 19 January 1622, Isleworth, London Borough of Hounslow: Elizabeth begins having fits and “talks idly”; Simeon Foxe comes to treat Elizabeth, but takes her back to rooms at Amen Corner in London; her body aches and she sobs incessantly. 28 February 1622 (approx.), Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth’s fits regularize, arriving at midnight and lasting 4 hours. She moans, sighs, complains of severe pain in different parts of her body.

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Chronology

March 1622 [exact date unknown], Gunpowder Alley, London: Margaret Russell visits Mrs. Saxby, a demoniac, seeking help for Elizabeth; Saxby suggests Elizabeth needs a special book and seminary priest. 17 March 1622, Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth experiences severe convulsions resulting in cognitive impairment, memory loss, and numbing of her right side; medical treatment proves counterproductive. 20 April 1622 (Saturday), Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth can only stammer and stutter. 21 April 1622 (Easter Sunday), Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth cannot speak throughout the day; her power of speech returns at night. 22 April 1622 (Easter Monday), Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth experiences violent fits twice in twenty-­four hours; remains speechless. 23 April 1622 (Tuesday), Amen Corner, London: Diagnostic team debates over three courses of treatment for Elizabeth: oil bath, induce vomiting, or phlebotomy. 24 April 1622 (Wednesday), Amen Corner, London: Physicians induce vomiting, but there is no improvement; they decide to bleed Elizabeth; Margaret Russell “the Countess” appears in the MS at this moment, with the dire warning that Georgi-­Anne Cecil had been killed by bleeding and Elizabeth might be too. 25 April 1622 (Thursday) 6 am, Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth begins to speak to an apparition of “the Countess” (Russell) during her fit. 25 April 1622 (Thursday), Black and White Court, London: Russell visits Mrs. Dromondby looking for treatment for Elizabeth; she refers her to Anne Goodcole. 25 April 1622 (Thursday), Clerkenwell, London Borough of Islington: Russell visits Frances Ashton and Anne Goodcole in Clerkenwell; Goodcole tells her she had prescribed medicine, but the child would not take it; Goodcole suggested that two of Dorothy Jennings’s children had died because of a conflict between the Jennings and Higgins houses. 25 April 1622 (Thursday) afternoon, Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth is bled. 25 April 1622 (Thursday) late afternoon, Amen Corner, London: Elizabeth accuses four witches (Jane Flower, Katharine Stubbs, Countesse, Nan Wood) of bewitching her and her siblings; claims her mother and Nan Arpe saw her bewitchment happen.

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Chronology

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25 April 1622 (Thursday) evening, the Strand, London: Dorothy Jennings and John Latch take Margaret Russell to Sir William Slingsby, who examines her. 25 April 1622 (Thursday) midnight, the Strand, London: Slingsby issues a warrant to have Russell committed to Newgate. 26 April 1622 (Friday) 10–­11 am, James the Clerk’s house in the Old Bailey, London: Henry Goodcole et al. have Russell removed from Newgate and interrogate her at James the Clerk’s house in the Old Bailey; Elizabeth suffers severe fits concurrently. 26 April 1622 (Friday) afternoon, James the Clerk’s house in the Old Bailey, London: Thomas Fowler, William Slingsby, and Thomas Bates interrogate Russell; she admits to being interrogated by Goodcole et al. and now claims Frances Ashton, not Anne Goodcole, mentioned the controversy between the Jennings and Higgins houses. 27 April 1622 (Saturday) afternoon, James the Clerk’s house in the Old Bailey, London: Thomas Fowler, William Slingsby, and Thomas Bates interrogate Frances Ashton; she admits to being part of the group who interrogated Russell until she wept, but denied knowledge of Higgins/Jennings feud. 27 April 1622 (Saturday) afternoon, James the Clerk’s house in the Old Bailey, London: Thomas Fowler, William Slingsby, and Thomas Bates interrogate Anne Goodcole, who admits to administering medicines to Elizabeth (and others) denied knowledge of Higgins/Jennings feud. 27 April 1622 (Saturday) afternoon, James the Clerk’s house in the Old Bailey, London: Thomas Fowler, William Slingsby, and Thomas Bates interrogate Henry Goodcole, who admits to interrogating Russell. 30 July 1622, Great Linford, Buckinghamshire: Dorothy Jennings takes Elizabeth and John Latch to see Richard Napier; he reviews her case, determines she will die within six months, but she does not; he reviews Latch’s symptoms; Latch appears to think he is himself bewitched.

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Introduction

“My mother sawe her in the kitchin” On 25 April 1622 in an airless bedroom at the College of Physicians Residences at Amen Corner and Paternoster Row in London, a thirteen-­year-old girl claws her way back to consciousness. She had spent the previous months swinging between silence and screams. Suddenly, and in a voice only sometimes her own, she awakes and commands: Put Countesse in prison this childe will bee well. If she had bin long agoo all th’other had bin alive. Them she bewitched by a catsticke. Till then I shall lye in great paine. Till then by fitts I shall be in great extremitie [ . . . ] Noo bodie knowse what ayles me within. When she is in prison then I shall bee well, now till then by fitts She came first of all that eve my mother sawe her in the kitchin And Nan Arpe was there. Nine stunned onlookers—­her mother and stepfather, a surgeon and servant, and neighbors and peers—­all hear these claims before Elizabeth lapses into mute palsies. They must have been flabbergasted as the realization hit. Badgering, bleeding, and nursing the girl back to health had failed­—they had spent weeks arguing and fighting among themselves— they were out of diagnoses and treatments. Suddenly a course of action presented itself, one prognosticated to be successful: imprison the witch and all would be well.

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Witchcraft made sense as causation and bewitchment as disease—­the ghoulish proof had struggled and sighed in front of them for a month. With no other treatment options and the child again suspended in nightmarish suffering, they did what the voices told them to do: they took the witch to a justice and sent her to prison. This book traces the influences needed to build the witchcraft accusation made by Elizabeth Jennings against Margaret Russell. High-­reaching political players in London held up this accusation to rigorous scrutiny; it was assessed against the latest medical theories and through painful treatments administered by respected practitioners. To understand how they arrived at this allegation, it is important to understand the very particular and peculiar context. Witchcraft was still a legal and medical reality in England at that time. The physician’s examination room that held Elizabeth and the jail cell that held Russell were part of an environment that, at best, could not refute the power of the witch’s curse or the bewitched’s prophetic skills; at worst, in that environment witchcraft was real. To understand this accusation, we also need to see that it was provoked by the same tensions Elizabeth absorbed to interpret her own disease. It emerged as an evolution of tensions between practitioners of all ilks as medicine sought to professionalize. It unfolded in a crowded treatment room where conversation between visitors became Elizabeth’s conviction that she was being bewitched.1 We must also come to see that natural and preternatural sickness did not only overlap in the countryside; as the countryside was slowly being absorbed into London, witchcraft was being wicked into the city. The story started with a curse in a country kitchen, metastasized inside a medical treatment room, came to a head in a prison, and is ultimately explained by the pressures of unstoppable urban sprawl. This book spins these threads together to weave a larger picture of how the accusation against Margaret Russell happened and whom she, in turn, crooked a finger at. But before we do that, we need to understand how witchcraft happened.

1. In keeping with the particulars of individual cases and accounts, this work uses the terms possession and bewitchment, demoniac and bewitched, broadly and interchangeably, much as they were used at the time of the events described; these terms speak to the intensely emotional embodied spiritual experience under discussion.

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“My mother sawe her in the kitchin”

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Witchcraft, like that which Elizabeth allegedly experienced, did not emerge from a single belief structure, although numerous attempts to impose a grid on the messiness of it all were made at the time.2 Nor was witchcraft wholly represented by a specified set of practices or prayers. The cursing, praising, and gloating depicted in witchcraft-­related trial documents and accounts was not substantially different from that described in everyday exchanges, where terms like “ould witch” were thrown around with few consequences.3 And although much was made of the witch as the devil’s servant and a familiar spirit’s master, the recounted details of these supernatural deals are unconvincing. The witch was typically depicted as making her pact under duress; its benefits to her were scant and petty. Still, the witch was seen as part pathetic, part predatory—­a victim and an opportunist who used fear rather than kindness to ensure Christian charity. Legally, she was a felon: her modus operandi—­curses, magic, and familiars—­enabled her to damage, hurt, spread disease, and kill. Spiritually, she was corrupt: she swore, cursed, thieved, and could not pray. Physically, she was monstrous: her skin numbed, flesh extended into witch’s marks, her body floated, and her eyes stopped shedding tears. Moreover, the witch was almost always female: 80 to ­90 percent of the approximately five hundred to ­one thousand people executed in England as witches were women. Women also acted as local arbiters of witch beliefs; they suffered as victims and mothers of victims and served as witnesses, accusers, and witch-­searchers. Witchcraft was a crime. The early English monarchs, for the most part, put their weight behind stopping it. Under Henry VIII (1541/42, 33 Hen. VIII, c. 8), Elizabeth I (1562/63, 5 Eliz. I, c. 16), and James I (1604, 1 Jas. I, c. 12. 1), those found guilty of using witchcraft as an instrument

2. See, for example, Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563); Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witches (1584); George Gifford’s A Discourse of the Subtill Practises of Devilles by Witches And Sorcerers (1587) and A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcrafts (1593); and James I of England’s Demonologie (1597, 1616). 3. “March 2, 1617, Information of Charles Irish, taken before Sir George Whitmore, Justice of Peace within the City of London,” in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1638–­1639. For a comparison, see John Tonken’s defense against his unknown attacker. He allegedly beseeched his attacker to disclose her identity, but “turning to the People, would say, the Old Witch will neither tell me her Name, nor where she dwells”; Anon., True Account of a Strange and Wonderful Relation of John Tonken, 5.

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of murder would themselves twist and thrash from the noose. These laws, designed to root out elements that tainted the female gender and polluted their homes, gave neighbors and family a language to explain inexplicable misfortunes and a means to address unresolved animosity. They were also a way of highlighting the state’s role as the arbiter of justice. Legally and socially authorized ideas about witchcraft worked to make sense of the unwelcome overlap between the natural and preternatural landscape. These beliefs were not the exclusive purview of children, fools, melancholiacs, and Catholics, as Reginald Scot wrote in his skeptical work, Discovery of Witchcraft (1584). Appearing across age, gender, education, and class divides, these beliefs were sustained by manuscripts like the one that tells the story of Elizabeth Jennings, as well as a myriad of popular pamphlets, sermons, and treaties. These texts were written with an obvious bias, built on a pattern, and went to press with an agenda in mind: to illustrate real-­life examples of sensationalized supernatural suffering. They illustrated one critical “truth.” Witchcraft was an event: one with a cause, a result, and a remedy. Something happened to witchcraft’s victims—­something its victims, their families, and their communities attributed to the influence of witches. It was something they felt as an actual experience, endeavored to end, and, sometimes, to avenge. Of course, there was silliness and superstition in some witchcraft accusations. For example, in the trial of Alice Goodridge, Thomas Darling claimed to have been cursed with this unlikely incantation: “Gyp [get lost!] with a mischiefe, fart with a bell: I will goe to heaven, and thou shalt goe to hell.”4 These cases, however, represent a minority in an otherwise strange and sad historical archive. Most accusations gave off a stench of acrimony and anxiety, the result of recent slights and long-festering suspicions. Witchcraft was often tied to everyday annoyances—trees fell on a still day, beer refused to brew, porridge boiled over. However, at the core of many witchcraft accusations, there was genuine loss. Witchcraft cost money. Livestock withered and went mad; cargo fell off boats and sunk. These were not insignificant events to those who witnessed them or to those who sustained the losses they caused. Those who suffered most were, of course, those who lost the most: the families of the

4. Anon., Most Wonderfull and True Story, of a Certain Witch Named Alice Goodridge of Stapen Hill, 4.

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bewitched, the sick and dying, who themselves screamed and panted in torment and fell silent in contorted paralysis. A number of sick girls like Elizabeth Jennings wept and writhed their way into print by the early seventeenth century. These figures may have suffered alone, but they were part of a larger sisterhood of women—­prophets, demoniacs, and fantastic fasters—­whose experience with pain brought them in close proximity to the preternatural.5 Although technically different, the ways they manifested themselves in the body of the afflicted were identical. The elision between spiritual sickness and physical sickness suggests that becoming bedeviled could originate from within, without, or both; the sick were especially vulnerable to the devil’s machinations. A curse, for instance, could make a person act possessed; a witch’s familiar would be a possessing entity. As victims, the bewitched claimed an authority that allowed them to accuse witches and spirits of tormenting them. In both cases, the vehemence of accusations and the sight of their bodies spookily suffering means that they are taken seriously. Vats of ink were pressed onto paper expressing the horrors that harrowed the bewitched. These witch stories make up part of a literary genre, a series of loosely knit histories where bewitchments were acted out with spirits and carved into flesh, where accusations were spat and screamed, where possession could make you into a quasi-­prophet and a quivering fool. Pamphlets recount how eighteen-­year-­old Anne Myler, for instance, experienced an afternoon onset of bewitchment in 1567. She suffered severe fits during which she could “cast her selfe (her belly being upwarde) into the fourme of a hoope.”6 Demoniac Anne Starkie, one of the Lancashire Seven,7 was treated in 1600 by John Dee, the famous astrologer-­magician and consultant to the queen, exorcists John Darrell and George More, and the witch Edmond Hartley. She blamed her possession on “a foule ugly man, with a white beard and a great bulch on his brest [breast] as big as a mans head.”8 Allegedly bewitched by her neighbor Elizabeth Jackson in 1603, 5. The physical experiences of the demoniac and the bewitched were so similar that many of Jennings’s contemporaries aligned them in the same way as Mistress Saxby, the demoniac-­consultant on the case. 6. Fisher, Copy of a Letter. 7. The possessed included five children—­Anne Starkie and her brother John, Margaret Hurdman, Ellinor Hurdman, and Eleanor Holland—­and thirty-­year-­old Jane Ashton and thirty-­three-­year-­old Margaret Byrom. 8. Darrel, True Narration of the Strange and Greuous Vexation by the Devil, of 7. Persons in Lancashire, and William Somers of Nottingham, 21.

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fourteen-­year-­old Mary Glover panted and prayed, shrunk and shrieked through the medical attention administered or advised by Robert Sheremen, Thomas Monderford, Stephen Bradwell, and Edward Jorden. Part fictionalized and part dramatized, witch texts were character assassinations and morality tales. Moreover, in their brevity these tales can seem too tall, and the amount of damage done by witchcraft in comparison to a perceived slight that enraged the witch seems too great. The law was used when medicines failed. But there are few “hard facts” in the legal record as it pertains to witchcraft. Suspicion and resentment were teased out by leading questions. Coincidence was made to appear as correlation. Trials unfolded with brutal efficiency. And all too often we have to reverse engineer what went into the making of witchcraft based on what was written in the trial documents and examining the testimony to see if we can discover something more than what is recorded. Although they are patently biased, formulaic, and scant, legal records provide some of the best sources of the history of the early English witch and bewitched because they are some of the only documented sources. Being Bewitched hopes to shift that. Being Bewitched will establish the motive, the opportunity, and the crime behind the alleged bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings. To do so, it will undertake a mission we can seldom embark on with witchcraft stories: it will investigate the real biographies and backgrounds of the victim, the accused, the witnesses, and the experts cited in the text. It will look at who they were, where they were from, what they knew, whom they knew, if they were credible, and what their motives might have been for participating in this accusation and extralegal examination. We are able to discover a lot of recognizable figures through this investigation. History favors the wealthy and renowned, and this story contains those in spades: the manuscript references Margaret Cooke, John Jennings, Thomas Cecil, William Cecil, Frances Manners, William Slingsby, Thomas Fowler, Mary Gargrave, Simeon Foxe, Stephen Higgins, Richard Baker, Henry Goodcole, Richard Napier, and even Satan himself. Many more figures like King James I, Queen Anne, John Donne, and John Dee, peer in from outside the margins and illustrate how tangled the network in which Elizabeth suffers was. We come to understand the sickness and suffering that happened to those around her when we can understand the beliefs and practices that pushed and pulled those around her to come to the inexorable belief that Elizabeth Jennings was bewitched.

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Armed with this information, the study will follow the roads Margaret Russell traveled, the visits she made, and the experts she consulted while looking for a cure for Elizabeth Jennings. During those travels, Russell discovered that a man named Higgins had opportunity and motive to hurt the Jennings family, a man she later accused of bewitching the girl. Since Russell’s alternate theory for the crime looks far more likely than the scenario Jennings conjured up from within her delirium—­the one which eventually landed Russell herself in proximity to Newgate Prison—­it provided reasonable doubt she committed the crime. The tract ends and one assumes Russell was free to go, but Jennings does not recover. Her real attacker still at large, she languishes, as does her family. Although accounts of curses and clay dolls or sketches of magic circles and astrological charts can make for fun reading, witchcraft, in its magical sense, is impossible to prove. We can only come to know witchcraft through the stories told about it. And although those stories are centuries old, they can haunt us still. This could be because they were experienced, in some sense, as real. This story, for instance, was told in an environment where witchcraft was not only real, but sometimes was the most reasonable explanation for the inexplicable. So whatever you may believe about witchcraft as you begin the story of Elizabeth Jennings, know this: in 1622 something had happened to Elizabeth; something the best-­educated and most experienced minds in London entertained, at least for a short time, was brought on by an act of witchcraft.

Provenance and Pattern The story of Jennings’s bewitchment comes from a handwritten case record likely penned by John Latch and possibly duplicated by Henry Goodcole. The manuscript was later included among the leaves of other magic-­related papers collected first by Elias Ashmole, and then by John Somers. Ashmole was the first to analyze the text, leaving his own notes about it as a postscript. The text must have fascinated him: he was an astrologer and antiquarian with a passion for the peerage and inquisitiveness about alchemy and magic. Elizabeth Jennings’s story touched on almost all his interests. Ashmole wrote two alchemical texts of his own: Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652) and The Way to Bliss (1658). He revived the chivalric Order of the Garter and worked with the College of Arms.

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Ashmole is perhaps best known, however, as an avid collector of curiosities. Many of his coins, books, prints, and manuscripts seeded Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. He could have originally acquired this manuscript from a number of sources. Ruth Lilly, widow of astrologer-­magician William Lilly, sold his collection to Ashmole for fifty pounds.9 The widow of astrologer John Brooker likewise sold his manuscripts to Ashmole. Either man might have originally owned it. It seems most likely, however, that the account of Elizabeth’s bewitchment came to Ashmole courtesy of Richard Napier’s son Thomas, who gave him a number of manuscripts he had inherited.10 John Somers, the lord high chancellor of England, who was a lawyer, politician, onetime president of the Royal Society, magic-­fancier, and dedicated bibliophile of the late seventeenth century (whose personal library had some nine thousand volumes), next acquired Jennings’s narrative. It then became part of the larger collection relating to “Magic and Witchcraft from the papers of various 16th and 17th century astrologers.” The Jennings document, along with the rest of his magical collection, passed to Somers’s sister Elizabeth’s husband Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls Jekyll, who shared Ashmole’s interest in angel magic. On 20 January 1740, after his own death, Jekyll’s literary holdings were auctioned off. Sir Hans Sloane, a major buyer of manuscripts at the time, acquired the Jennings document then.11 Throughout the seventeenth century, the manuscript survived as an obscure curiosity in the collections of various bibliophiles. It was owned by Christopher Bateman, Thomas Britton, and a man named Snelling who paid all of £2 4s for it at Joseph Ames’s sale in 1760. The manuscript disappeared from book history for the next century and a half, reappearing in Queen’s Gate, London, in 1902, when a man named Henry White commissioned Sotheby’s to sell it. On 28 April of that year, the story of Elizabeth Jennings was sold for £12 as part of “Lot 1408: Magical Treatises” to book dealer Bernard Quaritch, whose firm, at the time of this writing, survives still in London.12 Quaritch, in all likelihood, was acting on behalf of the British Library. Jennings’s tale resides there today, catalogued as British

9. Lilly, History of His Life and Times, from the Year 1602 to 1681, 71–­72, 248. 10. Ibid., 44. 11. Skinner and Rankine, Practical Angel Magic of John Dee’s Enochian Tablets, 46, 65. 12. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, Catalogue of the . . . Library of . . . Henry White, n.p.

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Library Manuscript 36674 (BL MS 36674) Of Elizabeth Jennings 13 years of Age Being Bewitched.13 BL MS 36674 has remained largely ignored since Ashmole studied its contents in the late 1600s. The manuscript has received almost no citations or mentions, despite Jennings’s position at the center of a spectacular case set along one of the busiest roads in what would soon be the world’s biggest city. Jennings is referenced in Thomas Wright’s Narratives of Sorcery and Magic (1851)14 and in Cecil L’Estrange Ewen’s Witchcraft and Demonianism (1933).15 Their treatment is necessarily cursory—­these authors could only address the details they found in the manuscript itself. The manuscript traces out the magical cause of Elizabeth’s troubles, revels in the resulting human suffering, and offers a remedy. However, this record of the bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings only hints at how her story fits into the much larger story of how early English witchcraft happened in London. The manuscript BL MS 36674 is obviously an unfinished piece. It lacks the usual “Authors Apologie,” an opening insertion of the writer’s personal voice, explaining why the pamphlet needed to be written. The reasons given are usually religious, though worldlier concerns sometimes surface. Henry Goodcole, who appears in this account, was a relatively prolific author in the genre. He begins his other witchcraft accounts with weighty religious justifications: “The anger and terrible countenance of God, of late shewed in this Land here amongst us, may awaken us from the fast sléepes of security, and turne us to the Lord by true repentance.”16 The opening of Elizabeth Jennings’s story offers no such excuses or warnings, leaping into the thick of things as they unfurled in 1622. Elizabeth the Daughter of the Lady Jenning a child now 13 yeares of age being in Thistleworth (shortly after she was frighted to the sight of an old woman who suddainly appeared to her att her dore and demaunded a pin of her) was taken

13. The British Library (www.bl.uk) describes it thus: “Examinations, etc., in the case of Margaret Russell alias Countess, accused of bewitching Elizabeth Jennins, 25–­27 Apr. 1622, with note by Ashmole referring to the practice-­book (Ashm. MS. 222) of Richard Napier (a pupil of Forman’s, Rector of Gt. Linford, co. Bucks), who was called in to the child Jennins in July following. f. 134.” 14. Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, 2:136–­39. 15. Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism, 81, 97, 134. 16. Goodcole, True Relation of Two Most Strange and Fearefull Accidents, sig. A3.

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with an infirmitie in her throate aboute the 13th of January refusing out after all manner of flesh-­meate. In a frantic flurry of detail, the opening sentence gives the reader names, places, dates, family relationships, symptoms, and etiology. Its level of detail remains unusually high throughout (instead of “by this time,”17 specific days and dates are given; instead of “good people that stood by,”18 a careful list of witnesses’ names is provided). Elizabeth’s story, as told in BL MS 36674, offers up only brief glimpses of an urban witchcraft illness as experienced by the elite in the seventeenth century. In quick cuts between scenes, it focuses on the highlights found in five months of bewitchment brought on by an unexpected incident at the threshold. Elizabeth is in Isleworth. An old woman knocks on the door and begs for pins. When Elizabeth tells the old woman she has none, the old woman wanders away, mumbling angrily. Elizabeth, terrified by the incident, grows ill. She worsens. Within a week, she is taken to London for the best care money can buy: treatment by Dr. Simeon Foxe. The record then falls silent for a month. The sound of her groans and sighs brings her back onto the page for a few lines, then she vanishes again, reappearing a month later wracked by convulsions and strangely numbed. A number of physicians apply their remedies—­none of them cures her and all of them seem to be contraindicative. By Good Friday, Elizabeth can only stammer incoherently. Her body violently convulses between life and death. There is no peace or joy on Easter Monday. Her fits redouble and she cannot speak at all. On Tuesday, her physicians decide to apply three last and desperate measures designed to still her contorting body, calm her raging blood, and expel whatever is disturbing her body and mind: they will bathe her in oil, make her vomit, and bleed her. None of these is an unusual approach; expectoration of any matter through any orifice is a common cure and oil baths seem pleasant enough. However, Margaret Russell (also known as “the Countess”), a neighbor present at the scene, pleads against the bloodletting, arguing that “Exeter’s child” died under a similar course of therapy. The physicians ignore her advice.

17. Flower, Witchcrafts, Strange and Wonderfull, sig. A4v. 18. Goodcole, Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer a Witch, sig. B.

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Elizabeth survives the bloodletting, but the slit in her arm opens up something else; a sibylline voice begins to pour out of her. As if reading out a list of charges line by line or reciting a script provided by an omniscient director, Elizabeth claims that four women—­Jane Flower, Katharine Stubbs, the Countess, and Nan Wood—­are damnable witches. Her words become a kind of gallows poetry: these witches have caused the great suffering and death of siblings, she asserts. She claims to be a survivor of their spree of infanticide. She is knit to her miserable life by her illness and will continue so until a person called only “she,” the woman who bewitched her, is sent to jail. The press of people around Jennings absorb these short phrases like shock waves. The manuscript lists them as witnesses to her claims, their roles and class diligently recorded: “John Latch, the writer; William Giddings, surgeon; Mistress Katharine Percy; Mistress Faith Saxton; Agnes Faulkner, a servant.” The ripple of her claims spreads, and still more people come on the scene: Mistress Elizabeth Arpe, Mistress Anne Bradborne, and Katharine Browne, a servant. Elizabeth’s words seem to rupture the membrane that has kept her illness private and painful. Bewitchment streams from her bedchamber and travels through London’s streets and social networks, contaminating other citizens. The witnesses stay on until Elizabeth at last falls shaking and silent. A written record of their daughter’s words in hand, Elizabeth’s parents approach the local justice, Sir William Slingsby, and demand he immediately examine Margaret Russell on suspicion of bewitching their daughter. Tricked into attending the examination, Russell calmly describes her involvement in the case. She claims to have diligently searched the streets and neighborhoods in London that radiate out from the Strand, one of London’s major roads, to find help to cure Elizabeth from her inexplicable disease.19 Russell first visits a bewitched woman, Mistress Saxby of Gunpowder Alley, a self-­ proclaimed expert-­consultant on demoniacs who claims to own a book

19. The Strand was one of the major roads in London at the time. The Savoy, part of the Manor or Liberty of Savoy (which contained four wards found along the Strand), was located, more or less, in the middle of the thoroughfare. St. Mary-­le-­Strand was the parish church in this area; it was later destroyed by Edward Seymour. The parishioners then regrouped and joined with the parishioners at St. John the Baptist, and founded St. Mary-­le-­Savoy. The name St. Mary-­le-­Savoy also came to represent the parish located there. A number of the people involved in this case lived in this ward.

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that might contain a cure to what ailed Elizabeth.20 In her meeting with Russell, however, Saxby suggests that nothing but a seminary priest could help the Jennings. She later visits Mistress Dromondby, a woman who lives in Black-­and-­White Court in the Old Bailey. Dromondby advises Russell to travel out to Clerkenwell in search of a particular female physician, Anne Goodcole. When Russell arrives, Goodcole tells her there is little else she can do. She has already seen Elizabeth, who refused to take the medicine she prescribed. Goodcole promises, however, to return that day to look in again on the sufferer. In her summation, Russell passes Slingsby a shocking judgment of her own. She has found cause and culprit. Moreover, two of the Jennings’s children had already perished because of him and none of the family would thrive for the same reason. This is because Elizabeth’s mother, Lady Jennings, shares a neighborhood with a local apothecary named Higgins and there is bad blood between their two houses. When asked to clarify what she means by this, Russell refuses to elaborate. She would have been wise to explain, however. Her discretion is read as obstruction; her answers are interpreted as inconsistent. Around midnight, she is imprisoned in Newgate. That evening in his capacity as the chaplain, officially Newgate’s ordinary visitor (a clergyman appointed to attend condemned criminals), Henry Goodcole arrives at Newgate with Master Edmonds. One of the jailers tells him that a warrant is out for Anne Goodcole, his wife, in connection with the Jennings case. Goodcole wielded the small amount of political influence he had; he asked for the warrant, and took it home to show his extended family. Incredulously, the next morning, Anne, Henry, Frances Ashton (Anne’s married sister), and Robert Duffield (a brother-­in-­law) arrive en masse at the home of the clerk, Mr. James, and demand Russell be removed from her cell so they can question her themselves. They do so in the clerk’s home in the Old Bailey. They later testify to this extralegal investigation. According to Goodcole’s version of events, while they were examining her, Russell clarifies that she never meant to attribute the claim about the

20. Whereas the country experienced outbreaks, London had a steady stream of witchcraft; it had enough people, pressed close enough together, in dire enough circumstances, that the seething tensions behind witchcraft accusations were bound to fester. See Uszkalo, “Witchcraft Statistics: Person Assertions Over Time,” Witches in Early Modern England, http://weme-­dev.uszkalo.com/stats/ combine.php (accessed 1 March 2012).

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quarrel between Higgins and Jennings to either Frances or Anne. In this alleged recantation, she cleared both women by denying that either of them had ever made mention of anything concerning Lady Jennings’s children as “bewitched and dead,” or of any “controversy betwixt two houses.” Yes, Anne Goodcole had met Russell the day before, and had also made a visit to Elizabeth with Jane Fowler, to drop off the medicines Elizabeth later refuses to take. Prior to this, however, she had no acquaintance with Russell, nor knowledge of any conflict between families. All of the Goodcole depositions more or less tally on these important facts. All this time, Elizabeth is suffering acutely. Her pain, once eased, redoubles during the brief time Russell is out of her cell. During these moments, Elizabeth is wracked by startling seizures. Dr. Foxe despairs for her life. Elizabeth awakes from her torments. She diagnoses herself. She proclaims that “the height of my disease is witchcraft.” After some silence, she asserts, “they have no power to witch me to death, but only to put me to pain.” Finally, she speaks again, presumably with some innate knowledge of what is happening beyond her bedchamber. She smiles as she says, “One is in prison, th’other is hanged.” With a sigh of joyful relief, she proclaims, “It is ceased, it is ceased.” Her health returns immediately, and the miraculous transformation is attested to by a list of witnesses: Sir Thomas Fowler; Dr. Foxe; William Power; Lady Jennings; Mistress Katharine Percy; and two servants, Katharine Browne and Agnes Faulkner. When Russell is finally examined legally, her account of the previous interrogation does not quite match the Goodcole version. According to Russell, the Goodcole party consisted of Anne, Henry, and a “Mistress Dromby”; Anne’s sister Frances did not appear. The claim about the neighborhood dispute, Russell says, originated with Frances. Russell adds one more incriminating detail: she had been visiting Mistress Gargrave who was receiving treatment at the Higginses’ house when her first child was ill. One of Lady Jennings’s servants came by to wash some things, and Mrs. Higgins inquired after Elizabeth’s health. She was not well, the servant replied. Mrs. Higgins responded, in Russell’s hearing, that the Jennings family “had much wronged them, and that it would come home by them and theirs.” A Mistress Gargrave could attest to it all; she had borne witness to the exchange. At this point, the manuscript abruptly falls silent. A postscript on a separate page, composed by Ashmole, connects the manuscript with

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the diaries of eminent astrological physician Richard Napier. Called in by Lady Jennings, Napier questioned whether Elizabeth was “bewitched, or only troubled with the Epilipsie of the Mother.” Elizabeth, he concluded, was a hysteric. The manuscript does not include any mention of a trial; if one was conducted, the record of it is lost. Much of the record of Elizabeth’s life has also been misplaced, if indeed it was ever composed. She appears almost exclusively as a single line in later genealogies as the only living daughter produced by Sir John Jennings and his second wife, Dorothy Bulbeck. She appears in funerary notes as a spinster who died in virgo. Beyond this, Elizabeth remains obscure. She produced no surviving textual or physical progeny. BL MS 36674 constitutes her primary mark on the English history. Elizabeth’s slight record aligns with infamy more strongly than with fame. She had only as much influence as any other prone and suffering young demoniac, which, of course, was more than she should have. Her relevance would have assuredly been unexpected to even her. Elizabeth was a kind of gravity well into which complicated patterns of association spin. The manuscript Of Elizabeth Jennings 13 years of Age being Bewitched gestures to the constellation of interconnected places and people involved in making witchcraft real, many of them so well known in their own context that they needed no introduction or expansion at the time. This book is a close investigation, a microhistory of the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings as played out across the people, places, and practices mentioned in BL MS 36674. Searches across library stacks, legal archives, and digital databases have yielded clues to how those referenced in her case knew one another, how they wielded the influence they did, and how their knowledge of witchcraft led them to assume Elizabeth was being bewitched by Margaret Russell. To fill in the blanks and see what went into the making of Elizabeth’s bewitchment, this study follows three rambling, crisscrossing roads. One road looks over the land, at the odd negative repercussions of the inherited, developed, or renovated properties in the country and in the city. Another path allows us to peer at the place occupied by the body and considers the enmeshing of a medical system of physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, and female physicians with the appearance of expert demoniacs and ministers all of whom comment on Elizabeth’s case. And yet another twisting route attempts to follow evolution of various beliefs and how they

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influence Elizabeth’s many diagnoses and her self-­construction: the competing powers of witchcraft, ministry, law, and science threaten damnation and promise salvation. In order to see the network as a whole, finally, one must first be willing to suffer the sight of Elizabeth Jennings, pinned like a live butterfly at the dark center of a network of greed, corruption, sickness, and accusation. The bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings offers something extraordinary. It provides a close-­up view of how and why the wealthy were believed to wield witchcraft as a weapon and the strings they pulled in the search for a cure. The story offers, with an almost unfound immediacy and intimacy, a beat-­by-­beat account of how accusation became incrimination. Moreover, in almost real-­time reporting, it illuminates what witchcraft meant to those in and around it. It was sickness. It was hatred. It was happening.

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Chapter One

The Background Landed Power, Lunacy, and Libraries Elizabeth’s biography, as it might have been written before she became bewitched, provides much-­needed insight into how and why her story was written. The first part of this book will give a background to Elizabeth Jennings, looking at who she was, where she was from, and why that all matters in terms of her being bewitched. She came from a privileged and influential but troubled family. Their vast estate, Saundridge, an assuredly astonishing home, was the site of so many deaths that the land itself may have seemed haunted. Whereas her contemporaries might have learned about witchcraft from whispers, Elizabeth, like some well-­ known demoniacs of her time, may have read about it, studied it, and perhaps modeled her own experience on stories she had read in an estate library. Although she may have had access to the idea of witchcraft, being bewitched does not seem like imaginative play for Elizabeth. She didn’t need to learn or imagine what witchcraft looked like; she saw torment and delirium up close. In the absence of much detail on her life before her bewitchment, we begin the search for Elizabeth Jennings with the titles and land that mark her place in the peerage. Numerous branches grow on her family tree. Some broke off while verdant. Others rotted off of the trunk. Some vibrant branches radiate today. To search for the history of Elizabeth, one can explore the parcel of land on which her family tree grew: the estate at Saundridge. It was there that her family became persons of quality. Although her maternal grandparents fought for her family’s rights, it was from Saundridge that she also lost, with the madness and death of her father, her place in that

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peerage. It was a connection that, at least in part, ensured Elizabeth could wield power beyond that sustained by her small and shuddering frame. The scene later moves from Saundridge to Isleworth. It was in Isleworth that Elizabeth might have seen the face of madness up close, and where we find at least two libraries, those of John Dee and Henry Percy, in either of which Elizabeth might have learned about witches. It was at Isleworth that she claimed to have been bewitched. Witch stories will come to play a critical part of this narrative. Something about the idea of bewitchment made sense to Elizabeth. Perhaps she used the idea of witchcraft to help her make sense of the loss and lunacy she had seen. Perhaps she simply read witch stories as all children do: because it was fun to be frightened. But between Saundridge and Isleworth, between scary stories and a home that echoed with screams, something happened to Elizabeth, something that eventually made her remember being in a kitchen where she was being bewitched.

Power in the Land How did the Jennings family come to occupy the estate at Saundridge? The estate itself was an old one; a great deal of history happened there before Elizabeth suspected she was being bewitched. Saundridge Abbey of St. Albans was founded during the reign of William the Conqueror (ca. 1028–87),1 and was held as part of the properties owned by the Roman Catholic Church. When Henry VIII split from Rome and created the Church of England, he dissolved the monasteries. In 1540, Saundridge was granted to Ralph Rowlet, Esquire, a master of the mint in Henry VIII’s service. The land did not come without a cost, however. It seemed to create short lives and bad blood in the line that leads to Elizabeth. Rowlet survived only three years after receiving Saundridge. His wife, Elizabeth, and his son, also named Ralph Rowlet, inherited the land.2 Edward VI, the king who also made him a justice of the peace, knighted Ralph Rowlet the younger.3 Rowlet married twice and both times he married

1. Saundridge was valued at the rate “ten hides.” A hide was an evaluative sum for property tax evaluation; it had less to do with actual geographic space than with perceived value of the land.The arable land around measured three carcuates in demesne land. Assuming a carcute is about120 acres, this would make Saundridge about 1,560 acres of land. 2. Page, “Parishes: Sandridge.” 3. Bindoff. House of Commons, 1598–­1558, 4:224.

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well. He first married a woman named Dorothy. When he married his second wife, Margaret Cooke, a lady-­in-­waiting to the queen, Rowlet also married into a family full of learned and influential women. Margaret was the daughter of Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI. Cooke saw to it that his daughters were so well educated and well matched that it is worth taking a moment to learn just how much so. Margaret’s eldest sister, Mildred, was the second wife of William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley and father to Thomas Cecil (see chapter 3).4 Her sister Elizabeth was twice married, first to Sir Thomas Hoby and then to John, Lord Russell. Her sister Anne—­noted translator of fourteen of Bernardino Ochino’s sermons (1550, 1570) and John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesia Anglicanae (1564)5—­was the second wife of William Bacon and mother of the renowned Anthony and Francis Bacon. Her sister Catherine married the diplomat Henry Killigrew. All four of Margaret’s sisters contributed to the Italian language manuscript of poetry, sermons, and philosophy on Giardino Cosmographico (1572); Mildred and Elizabeth wrote Greek epigrams, and Anne and Catherine composed Latin verses.6 Margaret simply may not have been able to participate in the composition. Her life, like her marriage, was shockingly short. Death came to the occupants of Saundridge shortly after happiness had. The sisters’ married lives started happily enough. Elizabeth and Margaret were married on the same day, Elizabeth to Sir Thomas Hoby and Margaret to Sir Ralph Rowlet. Hoby recounts this day in his diary as “Monday June 27, 1558, [when] a marriage was made and solemnized between me and Elizabeth Cooke, daughter of sir Anthony Cooke, knight. The same day was also her sister Margaret the queen’s maid married to sir Ralph Rowlet, knight, who [Margaret] shortly after departed out of this lief.”7 Her death came in such short order that it was memorialized almost as part of the wedding. George Ballard claimed to have come across this sad little elegy: On the nuptials of Ralph Rowlet and Thomas Hoby, who on the same day, espoused the two

4. Fuller, History of the Worthies of England, 1:543. 5. For more on Anne Cooke Bacon and the Bacon sisters, see Demers, Women’s Writing in English, 85. 6. Ibid., 88. 7. Hoby, Booke of the Travaile and Lief, ed. Powell, 126.

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1. Detail of from Andrew Dury & John Andrews, A Topographical Map of Hertfordshire, 1766 (Reprint, London, 1782), showing the location of Saundridge in Hertfordshire. Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE DD-­2987 (2220 B, 1–­9).

daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. Rowlet in purest heart thy Marg’ret wear, A casket proper for a gem so rare! The brother’s merit let the brother claim, The daughter emulate the Father’s fame: So shall the bridegroom to his like be join’d, The bride her virtues in her consort find.8 A brief mention of Margaret appears in Strype’s Memorials Ecclesiastical (1557) where, although her excellent education is noted, she is again remembered for her death: “December the eighth, the Lady Rowlet, one of the learned daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, and the youngest of the

8. The elegy that George Ballard claimed to have come across reads as this in the (supposedly) original language: “In Nuptias Rodolphi Rouleti, & / Thomæ Hobei, qui duas D. Antonii Coci silias, / duxere uxores eodem die / Margaritam Roulete tuam sac mente recondas, / Gemma sit ut tuto tam pretiosa loco. / Sit frater fratri similis, sit filia patri, / Sic vir erit dignus conjuge, sponsa viro.” For more on the elegy, see Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 209–10.

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five, wife of Sir Ralph Rowlet, Knight, was buried in the parish of St. Mary Staining London.”9 Rowlet died a widower at his home in St. Albans on 19 April 1571.10 With no heirs to his estate, the Rowlet family holdings—­three manors, including Holywell House (which will appear again in chapter 11), and the majority of his assets—­were passed on to his sisters and their heirs. The details of his will did not assuage concerns over the land, however. Even during Rowlet’s life, bad blood boiled. The land passed in life and in death between siblings and their heirs. Rowlet allegedly arranged to transfer one of the family’s manors to his sister Joan and her husband, Thomas Skipwith. According to Skipwith, Rowlet rescinded, creating perhaps the first property dispute in a family line whose identity was tied to their bitter battles over land rights. The men fought hard enough and long enough that they were removed from office for a time. The case was presided over in 1548 and 1549, when the court found that the Manor of Sandruge alias Sanruge and 20 messuages, lands and rent in & the rectory & tythes & advowson of the vicarage of Sandruge & a certain annual pension of 26s. 8d. issuing out of tho vicarage of Sandruge which Eliz. Roulett widow holds for life, etc. Settlement in favour of Tho. Skypwyth and Joan his wife.11 Although the court found in her favor, Joan did not enjoy the triumph or the property for long. After her death, her son William Skipwith inherited Saundridge. Skipwith, as if sensing there was something wrong with Saundridge (those inheriting it seemed, at the least to have some bad luck, or at the worst were cursed with sickness or infertility), hurriedly signed it back to Ralph Rowlet. Rowlet would in turn bequeath it to his sister Dorothy’s son, Ralph Jennings,12 a man who also acquired the manor of Churchill in Somerset in 1563.13 Within thirty-­three years, Overland Manor in Langford was leased to the Latch family, who, as we 9. Cited in ibid. 210. 10. “Sir Raff Rowlett had maryed ij. wyves, and dyed withowt issue of ether at his howsse of St. Albons the xix,b of Apryll 1571, and was beryed in the parish church of St. Albons by his father the xxix of May next foloinge.” Machyn, Diary, ed. Nichols, 364. 11. Brigg, Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, 1:202. 12. Bindoff, House of Commons, 1598–­1558, 4:224; Page, “Parishes: Sandridge.” 13. Phelps, History and Antiquities of Somersetshire, 1:74.

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2. Holywell House, Hertfordshire, from John Britton, The Beauties of England and Wales or Original Delineations Topographical, Historical and Descriptive of each County Embellished with Engravings, vol. 9 (Hertfordshire by London, 1807).

will see in chapter 5, would shortly come to be very important in the Jennings family’s history.14 Saundridge next belonged to Ralph’s son Thomas Jennings. We know little of his life. He was one of five sons and three daughters born of the union between Ralph Jennings and Joan Bronnecker from Erlestoke, Wiltshire. Sadly, Thomas seems to have been plagued by the Saundridge curse: he died young without an heir. The dispute over his property was presided over by numerous worthies, including Sir Edward Coke (who appears often in this story, the first time in chapter 3). That inquiry dates Thomas Jennings’s death in 1597.15 Saundridge fell to the next in line: his brother John Jennings. John leaves a more substantial record for us to study, a fact made all the better because he is a person of great interest in Elizabeth Jennings’s story.

The Lunatic Lord With the arrival of John Jennings, we have our first real biographical link to Elizabeth Jennings: her father. Having established the bad blood that must

14. Langford History Group, Every House Tells a Story. 15. Croke, Reports, 1.2:457.

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have created spectres haunting the halls of Saundridge, we can more easily perceive how the young Elizabeth may have come to experience something really terrifying, not just close to home, but howling and thrashing in the next room. With John Jennings we also get a hint that something might have been wrong with the bloodline, something that might make one look and feel bewitched. Unlike many of his predecessors, John Jennings fared well for most of his life. Recorded as having hailed from Saundridge, Hertfordshire, and Churchill, Somersetshire, he was sheriff of Churchill in 159816 and representative of Ralph Jennings.17 He first married Anne Bronnecker and had one son with her, his heir, also named John. The elder John Jennings continued to advance considerably, being knighted in 1603 by King James when the monarch passed through Saundridge on his way to London.18 This honor was meant to mollify Jennings. It was not awarded for valor, but to compensate him for the loss of Fanne Manor in Surrey,19 a property his elder brother, Thomas, had sold before John could inherit it.20 Despite all this good news, when Sir John died, he died badly. The later part of his life was, as indeed the first part of his children’s lives were, clouded by suspicion and sickness. Sir John Jennings died a madman. His mental deteriora3. The Jennings family’s coat of arms, from John Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of tion was part of a long, slow, and the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 3 (London: R. Bentley, 1836), page 582.

16. Phelps, History and Antiquities of Somersetshire, 1:74. 17. Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners, vol. 3, 582. 18. Hall, “Connexions between John Knight, Junior, and the Jennings, Latch and Gorges families,” 188. 19. The property may also be known as Fanscoombe Wood, or Fanscombe in Wye Fane. 20. Hall, “Connexions between John Knight,” 188.

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inauspicious demise. It is impossible to know when the lord first began to lose his mental faculties; mental illness can simmer for years, manifesting as bad moods and bad decisions. It is clear, however, that his condition was severe and public. Madness, in early modern England, could be the result of a physical ailment, a psychological disorder, a spiritual crisis, or a witch’s curse. The famous astrological physician Richard Napier (who appears at length in chapter 9) defined lunatics as exhibiting a myriad of disturbing behaviors: they could be frantic, distracted, or light-­headed; maddened or distracted by rage, they could become violent or menacing, incoherent, raving, and wild, and might wander in a dazed dotage.21 Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), also wrestled with what madness meant. As a diagnostic category, the more he tried to slice it up, the more limbs it sprang. Jennings’s lunacy, for instance, might be found along the vast continuum of other mental disorders Burton catalogued, such as “Phrensie, Madnesse, Extasie, Lycanthropia, Chorus sancti Viti, Hydrophobia, Possession or obsession of Divels, [and] Melancholy.”22 Burton finally summed up lunacy as a kind of “Dotage, Fatuity, or Folly, [which] is a common name to all the following Species, as some will have it [ . . . ] Madnesse, Melancholy, and the rest, under this name, and call it the summum genus of them all.”23 John Jennings’s dotage likely came on in stages beginning with what Burton called “false [conceits] and idle thoughts.”24 While visions of Satan and devils, witches, and ghosts were part of the purview of prophets and magicians, witches and demoniacs, they also, as Burton suggested, signaled the onset of mental demise. As such, Jennings may have also seen and heard things other madmen claimed, like “players, divels, hobgoblins, [and] ghosts,”25 and made the dire mistake of reacting to these phantasms. The terror of hearing her father debilitated by paranormal forces would have assuredly imprinted on Elizabeth’s mind. It could be that his madness was, by nature and by nurture, the site of her illness. We cannot know exactly what phantasms plagued John Jennings or how much influence they had, but it was clear that his influence would quickly come to an end.

21. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 140. Also see Elmer, Healing Arts, 235–­36. 22. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 11–­16. 23. Ibid., 11. 24. Ibid., 11. 25. Ibid., 252–­53.

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It was not easy to take power from a lord. The legal category of lunacy, considered the most severe form of madness, defined those who were distracted, light-­headed, and spoke idly as lunatics. It was rarely applied and, as such, it was not applied lightly.26 As early as 1506, the mentally compromised were not held liable for their actions.27 However, by law, lunatics also lost control of personal autonomy and control of their assets when they lost control of their faculties. Most details of Sir John’s illness can be gleaned from the political problems and financial wrangling that happened during and after his declaration as non compos mentis.28 References to his illness mainly appear in financial inquiries. Because of his stature, anxiety over Jennings’s lunacy centered less around the health of his mind and more on health of his considerable estate. By 1607, long before the knight’s death, legal measures were being taken to seize his property, chattel, and his eldest son and heir. Knowing what her father was worth helps us understand the scale of wealth Elizabeth came from and why, perhaps, her influence was so profound. While the loss of her father’s sanity, like the loss of his life, changed Elizabeth’s own life considerably, as the daughter of his second wife, she inherited his status but did not stand to inherit his estate. Most of Sir John’s money and property fell to his first surviving son by his first wife, Anne Bronnecker, the juvenile John Jennings. Such keen attention turned to him, as it would later turn to Elizabeth, that one might wonder if she was trying to compete with him. John was still a minor while his father’s property was taken and the wrangling over his rights began. Too young to assume responsibilities over his estate, the younger Jennings was himself a valuable commodity (whoever controlled him controlled the estate). His wardship, and the power over the holdings tied to it, were soon up for grabs. As early as 29 August 1607, Richard Ouseley29 wrote to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury (half brother to Thomas Cecil, whose family appears in the next chapter), confirming that “when he left London, one Sir John Jenninges was speechless, and not like 26. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 142; Elmer, Healing Arts, 240. 27. “A man was accused of the murder of an infant. It was found that at the time of the murder the felon was of unsound mind [de non saine memoire]. Wherefore it was decided that he should go free [qu’il ira quite]. To be noted”; from Y. B. Mich. 21 Hen. 7, pl. 16 (1506), quoted in Walker, “Insanity Defence before 1800,” 27–­28. 28. At this time I can discover no familial or private accounts. 29. Richard Ouseley, was a “major in the service of King Charles I. This gentleman, from expenses incurred in the royal cause, was compelled, in 1650, to dispose of his manor of Courteen Hall to Sir Samuel Jones.” Burke, General and Heraldic Dictionary (1832), 2:271.

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to live.”30 He therefore begged, “for the wardship of Jenninges’s son John.”31 The fight over who would control the younger John continued for three years. His stepmother, Dorothy Jennings (Elizabeth’s mother), thought she had the right of care. Likely someone in the Bronnecker family would have wanted to take control of the boy and his assets. The wardship of the thirteen-­year-­old John, however, was finalized on 28 June 1610, when John Gobert paid £360 for it, a transaction he arranged to pay off in three installments.32 The final legal action aimed at divesting the elder John Jennings of his responsibilities began on 2 December at St. Clement Danes (Middlesex), where a formal inquisition was held to determine his mental competency. On that day he was declared a “lunatic” and his mental decay was backdated to 16 August. Although he had “lucid intervals,” “the control of himself his lands tenements goods & chattels” was, according to the state, not sufficient.33 The next day, his debts to Simon Noble, guaranteed by Henry Long,34 had been paid off35 and he was a knight in name only. His estate needed to be put in order quickly. There was more estate than just the boy to consider, however. A second hearing, an accounting of the elder Jennings’s various assets, was conducted on 16 December 1607. His regional empire, spanning the Saundridge properties in Hertfordshire and those in Somerset (including manors in Churchill, Puxton, Edingworth, and Rolstone), was large enough to warrant a formal accounting of his assets. The Chancery Inquisition records his vast properties as including, The Manor of Sandriche alias Sandruge & of & in the rectory of Sandruge & a certain annual pension of 26s. 8d, issuing out of the said vicarage & of & in all messuages, lands, tenements, meadow, pasture, woods etc, pertaining to [said] manor & all other lands etc. in Sandriche, Whethamsted, Bishops Hatfeild & the parishes of St. Peter & St. Stephen [which are] near St.

3:60.

30. “Cecil Papers: August 1607, 16–­30,” in Calendar of the Cecil Papers, vol. 19, 1607, 219–­39. 31. Ibid. 32. “No. 185. Jennings. Wds. 5/17,” in Sales of Wards in Somerset, 1603–­1641, 180. 33. Chancery Inquis. p.m. Series IL vol. 298, no. 63, cited in Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, 34. “No. 185. Jennings. Wds. 5/17,” in Sales of Wards in Somerset, 1603–­1641, 180. 35. “Cecil Papers: December 1607,” in Calendar of the Cecil Papers, vol. 19, 1607, 351–­83.

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Albans & of & in the capital messuage called Halliwell [also] in St. Albans & [the] lands called the Parke, Bradford’s Close [lands which are believed to be] containing 30 acres & an acre of land in same parish late in tenure of Thos. Bradford & another piece of land called Pondwick containing 4 acres & a close in Halliwell containing 7 acres etc & of & in 3 messuages in the parishes of St. Michaels & St. Albans.36 Although most of his assets appear tied up in these large landholdings, they were not the total of Jennings’s estate. He also had extensive liquid assets. He had over 313 ounces of silver plate at his home in the Strand.37 He was also the owner of important cultural artifacts, such as the illustrious Wilton Diptych.38 This was a very trying time for Elizabeth’s family. Her mother, Dorothy, was a young wife busily worrying over a sick spouse.39 Moreover, her father had not taken good care of his assets and left his family with some debt. As luck would have it, Dorothy then demonstrated the determination, tenacity, and pugnacity that defined her in the later part of Elizabeth’s story. Unwilling to see her family impoverished because of her mad husband’s financial mismanagement of the estates, Dorothy petitioned three men, Robert Cecil (who appears often in terms of her family’s finances), Walter Cope, and Richard Perceval, for the right to grant smaller copyhold (or leasehold) estates out of the larger Jennings holding as a way of paying off some of her husband’s debts. They appear to have granted her petition.40 Dorothy acted quickly, but she did not act alone. Elizabeth’s maternal grandparents likewise stood their ground, aggressively protecting Dorothy, her dowry, and her heirs by Jennings. Where her father’s side seemed cursed, Elizabeth’s mother came from a resolute and clever family. During his life, Thomas was very protective of his daughter’s financial assets.41 After his death (1611), Dorothy’s mother, Ursula Bulbeck (née Grey), assumed the role of protector.

36. Brigg, Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, 3:60. 37. Harvey, “Wilton Diptych.” 38. Ibid., 4. 39. Dorothy Jennings may have also had two other children during this time who did not survive to make it into the genealogies (a point made in reference to Elizabeth’s illness, and not refuted). 40. See Ex Libro Decretor. Cur. Wardor. Trin. 16 Jacob. I. fol. 449 in Anderson, Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, 2:130. 41. Green, “Manor of Churchill,” 43.

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4. The Parish Church of St. Helen, Ainderby Steeple. Photo by Kreuzschnabel, 2013. Wikimedia Commons/GNU Free Documentation License.

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Dorothy’s father, Thomas Bulbeck, was from the St. Mary-­le-­Strand parish in Savoy liberty—­a neighborhood on the Strand (the home of much of the action and many of the people that appear in this story). He later became bailiff of the Manor of the Savoy.42 The bishop of London, in a letter written to Robert Cecil dated 21 July 1603, described Bulbeck as an “officer of the duchy” of Lancaster and an “honest man.”43 This was an important clarification. Common opinion of the Bulbecks was not so generous. There was a popular but unsubstantiated legend in North Somerset that the Bulbecks had been cattle traders and horse thieves.44 The family was doing considerably better by the early seventeenth century. King James, in 1606/7, granted the rectory of South Mimms in Middlesex to Thomas Bulbeck (and heirs) and William Turner, the dean of Wells Cathedral (and heirs).45 The men sold the deed to Cecil, Earl of Salisbury.46 James

42. “Bulbeck, Thomas, of Clevedon and Kingston Seymour, Som.” 43. “Cecil Papers: July 1603, 16–­30” in Calendar of the Cecil Papers, vol. 15, 1603, 136–­63. 44. Steed, Let the Stones Talk, 329. 45. William Harrison was also granted part of the rectory. See Lysons, Historical Account, 235. 46. Baggs et al., “South Mimms: Other Estates.”

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5. Former rectory, Congresbury © Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons License.

also granted Bulbeck and Turner the lease to the rectory of the church of Ainderby.47 In 1611, Bulbeck petitioned, along with his daughter Dorothy, to confirm his right to the deed of the rectory at Congresbury, North Somerset. Thomas Bulbeck was an articulate man who made it very clear to all those concerned that his daughter Dorothy had the legal right to continue holding the lands she had brought into the marriage. They were not part of the larger Jennings estate and as such were not up for grabs by John’s heirs or his debtors. To confirm Dorothy’s stake in the larger Jennings estate, Bulbeck wrote to Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, on 10 December 1607, asserting that he “conveyed a manor of his own to Sir John and his daughter, and to the heirs of his daughter by Jenyns.”48 He had, in turn, always been aboveboard in terms of the estate. He had “not procured conveyance of any part of Sir John’s lands to his daughter and her heirs, as has

47. Page, “Parishes: Ainderby Steeple.” 48. “Cecil Papers: December 1607, 1–­15,” in Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, vol. 19, 1607, 351–­83.

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been reported [and as such] prays for warrant to receive certain moneys for the supply of his daughter’s needs.”49 For all his clarity and force regarding the Jennings estate, Thomas Bulbeck left things rather muddied concerning his own. He died “insensate,” without a legal will. Dorothy was declared the rightful heir to the whole of the Bulbeck estate,50 an estate she, as the eldest of four daughters (including Florence and two other sisters51), inherited in full in 1613. This inheritance made her a wealthy woman. If she was not before, this made her a force to be reckoned with; those who fought with her smashed themselves against a wall of resolve.

***

Dorothy’s share of the Jennings estate, however, would not be altogether settled until it was settled with blood. She needed to bear her own heirs in order to secure her own position within the aristocracy. This was a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. John Jennings lived as a lunatic for at least two years before he died by varied accounts on 13, 18, or 20 October 1609,52 or in 1611.53 He is, by at least one account, buried in the Savoy.54 Despite being stripped of the right to rule his estates, he must have had periods of activity and lucidity, or at least reproductivity, during this time. In the two years between being declared a lunatic, and his death, he fathered two children (Thomas and Elizabeth) by his second wife. Thomas Jennings, named for his grandfather and/or his uncle, was born in 1607 or 1609.55 Thomas lived a healthy and productive life, and enjoyed a good (if busy) career and six healthy children.56 Elizabeth was born on 20 April 1609 in the Strand,57 the same year Sir John’s eldest son, John, turned 49. Ibid. 50. For a brief time, this estate, which included the rectory in the parish of South Mimms, was granted in part to Bulbeck by King James in 1606. However, Bulbeck evidently sold it the same year to Robert Cecil. See Cass, South Mimms, 41. 51. Benolt and Cooke, Visitations of the County of Somerset, 98. 52. Brown, Abstracts of Somersetshire Wills, 55; Green, “The Manor of Churchill,” 43. 53. Buckler, Stemmata Chicheleana, 136. See also Steinman, Althorp Memoirs, 57. 54. Buckler, Stemmata Chicheleana, 136. 55. I. V. Hall provides 1607 as a date; John Burke provides 1609 as a date. See Hall, “Connexions between John Knight,” 190; “Jenyns of Bottisham Hall,” in Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners, vol. 3, 582. 56. For more on Thomas Jennings’s biography, see Hall, “Connexions between John Knight.” 57. This date comes courtesy of Richard Napier whose curious involvement in the case will be

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thirteen.58 Despite his deteriorating mental health, there does not appear to be any doubt as to Elizabeth and Thomas’s legitimacy. The timing of the birth of her children and Dorothy Jennings’s relatively quick subsequent marriage to John Latch (detailed in chapter 5), are curious details in an increasingly curious account.

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All of these legal inquiries into lunatic states happened a decade before Elizabeth herself became sick. She only had a short time—­no more than two years—­with her father before he passed away. She was likely too young to remember the environmental influences of his behaviors, but Elizabeth certainly inherited the bad luck that followed the line. As sadness seeped into Saundridge’s soil, lunacy seemed to infect the blood. By her thirteenth year, Elizabeth speaks “idly” to herself. She hears invisible people, witches, or ghosts of witches. She acts mad. Here the story turns from Saundridge; its bad influence diminished after Elizabeth as the branches of the family tree grew farther from Rowlet. That does not suggest that Saundridge’s thirsty roots were not deep inside of Elizabeth. She is still in the country when she first gets sick. In following the pulsing vein of pedigree and indeed escalating body count, one expects the manuscript to place Elizabeth Jennings at Saundridge when she first falls sick. Saundridge is part of what ensured her family was part of the peerage. It gave its owners wealth and authority, authority that made Elizabeth’s illness a high profile affair. Their money paid for Elizabeth’s numerous physicians. Saundridge also hints as to the cause of Elizabeth’s illness: the land that defined the family seemed to curse them. There was something in the space, a blood-­born poltergeist perhaps, that made sure no part of the line could rest easily on those wide acres at Saundridge. However, this does not seem to be the case for Elizabeth. The curse followed her off the land inherited by her brother. Her illness begins in Isleworth, Middlesex.

discussed later. 58. The younger John Jennings is recorded as having been thirteen years old as of 20 May 1609. See “No. 185. Jennings. Wds. 5/17” in Sales of Wards in Somerset, 1603–­1641, ed. Hawkins, 179.

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Being in Thistleworth Searching Isleworth for Elizabeth is a somewhat perplexing task, beginning with a simple question: Why was she there? It could be that she was visiting her new family. Her stepfather, John Latch, previously held property in the Isleworth Hundred, Middlesex; however, his certificate of residence (1620–21) shows him as liable for taxation in Middlesex.59 His 1625/26 certificate of residence clarifies that he was not residing in the Hundreds of Spelthorne and Isleworth.60 So why was Elizabeth there? Perhaps she was visiting her extended family: the area has a number of other manors suitable to house a member of the elite like Elizabeth, such as Syon House. Syon was not John Jennings’s home, nor had it ever been. However, there is a somewhat curious connection between bewitchment and Syon House, the largest manor in Isleworth, that makes it a compelling, if imaginative backdrop for the beginning of Elizabeth’s tale. Syon House was, at the time of Elizabeth’s bewitchment, under a twenty-­one-­year leasehold to Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland. Percy acquired Syon upon his marriage to Dorothy Devereux, daughter of Walter Devereux, the 1st Earl of Essex. The idea that Elizabeth was invited to visit the earl’s family at Syon is not without merit; she was born within the peerage and was connected to some of England’s most influential families. However, there are more natural and preternatural matters to make one wonder if she ever spent time at this Isleworth Manor.

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Henry Percy was an alluring character. Nicknamed “the Wizard Earl,” he had an active interest in conducting scientific experiments. He also had a massive library that housed numerous volumes on witchcraft such as a heavily annotated copy of Johan Wiers’s index of demons De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563) and his book on witches, De Lamiis Liber (1577). Percy did not pursue his studies in a vacuum, however. An eclectic circle at Syon surrounded him.

59. “Certificate of Residence . . . John Latch,” E 115/240/14, Exchequer: King’s Remembrancer: Certificates of Residence . . . 18 James 1 (1620–­1621), National Archives, Kew. 60. “Certificate of Residence, John Latch,” E 115/239/4, Exchequer: King’s Remembrancer: Certificates of Residence . . . 1 Charles 1 (1625–­1626), National Archives, Kew.

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6. Syon House (present day). Photo by Maxwell Hamilton, 2009. Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons License.

Thomas Harriot lived there for years before his death in 1621. Astrologer/ magician and philosopher to Queen Elizabeth, John Dee (who appears in chapter 10) lived close by at Mort Lake and owned a library even larger than Percy’s: it was over four thousand books, a staggering number for the time, and considered one of the best in England.61 As Percy’s interests touched on the occult, they also aligned with the inspired. Percy was a supporter of the arts. Along with Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh, John Donne helped make up the literary part of Syon’s circle.62 Donne’s fame as a clergyman and poet is so well known it does not need to be detailed here, although his connections to Percy should be noted (his connection to Simeon Foxe will appear later in chapters 2 and 5). The earl allegedly “intervened with Sir George More of Loseley over the marriage of John Donne to Sir George’s daughter Ann.”63 Donne, in turn, had connections to a number of people in Percy’s circle, and owned his own copies of several of Harriot’s and Dee’s books.64

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61. Dee was also friends with William Cecil, who appears a few times in the story. 62. Walton, Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, 63. Batho, “Library of the ‘Wizard’ Earl,” 247. 64. See Hadden On the Shoulders of Merchants, 109; Hadden, “Introduction,” 40–­41.

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However, Syon house would have been, at least during Elizabeth’s visit, bereft of its host. Although he had previously enjoyed a positive relationship with the king, for most of the early seventeenth century Percy was in prison. Suspected of being part of the Gunpowder Plot, Percy lost all of his public offices, was held at the king’s pleasure in the Tower on charges of contempt, and fined £30,000.65 His wife and children appear to have lived at Syon in his absence. Elizabeth would have stayed with them. All of this is impossible to know for certain; however, the records for Syon House for the period of Elizabeth’s illness (in fact, for the entire ten-­ year period between 1618 and 1628) are missing from the Northumberland archives housed at Alnwick Castle.66 Percy was freed on 16 July 1621. Rather than returning to Syon House, he appears to have traveled to Bath before retiring to Petworth. It is likely that Dorothy Jennings and Percy crossed paths with Northumberland somewhere in Clerkenwell, where they both kept homes. This manor in Isleworth could be a scintillating backdrop for Elizabeth’s story to begin to unfurl. Syon often housed an important and eclectic group of renowned poets and ministers, wizards and peers. More importantly, its library could have provided Elizabeth access to the numerous stories of frantic, frightened, and sick young girls outlined in the next chapter; pamphlets focused on girls who saw themselves as victims of witchcraft. If Elizabeth had access to Percy’s library, she could have known why and how a witch might strike down a girl. Moreover, she could have learned how she might go about being bewitched.

65. Nicholls, “Percy, Henry, ninth earl of Northumberland (1564–­1632),” in Oxford DNB. 66. Many thanks to Christopher Hunwick, Archivist for Northumberland Estates at Alnwick Castle, for his help consulting the archives.

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Chapter Two

Blood Evidence Sickness in the Blood The blood that beads from the prick of a pin marks the small wound. However, in the context of the early English witch stories Elizabeth may have read, where the pin can become a supernatural weapon, the blood is a portent of sickness to come. Whereas we might now imagine the serene stillness of Sleeping Beauty when we think of a bewitched pin, contemporaneous cultural beliefs made the pin a more gruesome and horrifying magical object. Sleeping was a signal of enchantment, but bewitchment was a more likely diagnosis when comatose states and paralysis were aligned with agitation, starvation, and idle talk. When the body did not act quite human, it was more likely to be seen as under supernatural influences. The supernatural, however, was not part of Elizabeth’s first diagnosis. It may have colored her own experience from the start; she certainly remembers it that way. It may have even influenced her mother’s choice of physicians: her primary care physician was Simeon Foxe. However, those around her were more worried about natural causes than supernatural causation. The threat that looms at this part of the story is not embodied by a witch with her curse, but by a physician with his knife. And that threat was real. Distressed that Elizabeth inherited bad blood from her father, genetic weakness that made her prone to delirium associated with lunacy, her mother hired the best physicians and allowed them to undertake any aggressive treatments medical that might cure her daughter. Dorothy Jennings had seen madness take one member of her family and would not allow it to take another.

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Whereas the last chapter provided us with Elizabeth’s background, using the land to establish where she might have been and who she was, this chapter will follow the stain of blood to begin to establish motive and suspects in the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings. Although not a particularly gory story, blood seeps insidiously into the farthest corners of this account. It leads us to the first suspect, Margaret Russell, who appears in the narrative at the moment that Foxe announced his decision to bleed Jennings back to health. It is not clear if Russell insinuated herself into the story or if she had been an invited caregiver, but it is clear that the plan to use phlebotomy on Jennings was, in her opinion, a very bad one. She had seen girls Elizabeth’s age and status die at the hands of those like Foxe, men who were supposedly skilled with the knife. She wanted Elizabeth to avoid the same fate. Beginning with a pin and ending with a scalpel, this chapter will look at why Elizabeth Jennings comes to think she is bewitched and will introduce that woman she would come to think had bewitched her.

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Very bad things can happen at crossroads and thresholds.1 They certainly do for Elizabeth. Her illness begins one day with a knock on the door. Elizabeth the Daughter of the Lady Jenning[s] a child now 13 yeares of age being in Thistleworth (shortly after she was frighted to the sight of an old woman who suddainly appeared to her att her dore and demaunded a pin of her) was taken with an infirmitie. The appearance of an old woman standing on a threshold, begging for pins, food, or alms is the stuff of grim fairy tales and well-­worn witchcraft tropes.2 The reasoning is as follows. What begins as miserly becomes

1. See, for example, how in 1681, when Mary Trembles allegedly arrives at Agnes Whitefield’s door, at that very moment, Whitefield comes to understand that “Mary Trembles, together with the said Susanna Edwards, were the very persons that had tormented her, by using some Magical Art or Witchcraft upon her said Body as aforesaid.” See Anon.,True and Impartial Relation of the Informations Against Three Witches. 2. Popularized by Alan MacFarlane in Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, the “charity-­refused” paradigm located the alleged witch as wanting something for a low price, for free, or simply refusing to give a loaned item back. When ignored, dismissed, and treated cheaply, she would grumble angrily, causing bad feelings between neighbors. When unexpected or unfortunate events later transpired, the

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misery if you refuse the old woman who comes begging at your door.3 Contemporary examples are manifold. Something might happen to your property. For instance, immediately after Mother Atkins angrily departed from Master Burbridge’s door, having been denied milk, “the Creame beganne to swell and rise in the cherne,” so that it ran about the kitchen and down the sinkhole and “all their huswiferie for that day went to wracke.”4 Something might happen to your children. Mother Staunton, incensed at having been turned away from the door without the yeast she came to borrow, “went her waie murmuryng.”5 In short order Mrs. Saunder’s “yonge child in the Cradle was taken vehemently sicke, in a mervelous strange maner, whereuppon the mother of the childe tooke it up in her armes to comforte it, whiche beyng doen, the Cradle rocked of it self, sixe or seven tymes.”6 Or, of course, something could happen to you. Elizabeth Stile, irate that she missed the opportunity to get alms from Ostler of Windsor as she had before, allegedly bewitched him, causing a “greate ache in his limmes, that he was not able to take any reste, nor to doe any labour.”7 So although the beginning of this history may seem generic, genre dictated that Jennings has cause to be afraid. And she is afraid—­very afraid. The fear of witches and bewitchment might manifest as obsessive worrying, fretting, or trembling. These behaviors created fear in those who observed them and that, in turn, fed the fear until it became sickness. This happens to Elizabeth. Her illness spirals out of control as she is treated. It happens with such startling speed that one might think she is faking it. The pragmatic might suspect she is genetically prone to the illness; because her father was a lunatic, she might be mentally ill too. The superstitious might neighbor might look back at this event as lacking charity and causing the witch to justly or unjustly strike back. This model is still used to explain the genesis of witchcraft accusations; Deborah Willis employs it in Malevolent Nurture, and Diane Purkiss in The Witch in History, explores it among other approaches. In Witchcraft and Witch Trials, Gregory Durston (205) writes that “most prosecuted witches were unfortunate individuals, mainly older women, who had the misfortune to be unpopular amongst, and to be perceived as malign by, their immediate neighbours.” 3. See Potts, Wonderfull Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster. Twenty-­five years later Mother Lakeland would confess “that she sent her Mole to a Maid of one Mrs. Jenings in Ipswich, to torment her and take away her life, which was done accordingly: and this for no other cause, but for that the said Maid would not lend her a needle that she desired to borrow of her, and was earnest with her for a shilling that she owed the said Maid.” See Lakeland, Lawes Against Witches, 8. 4. G.B., Most Wicked Worke of a Wretched Witch, 6. 5. Anon., Detection of Damnable Driftes Practised by Three Witches, 11. 6. Ibid. 7. Anon., Rehearsal Both Strange and True, 18.

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assume she was under constant invisible attack. After all, something kept happening to her, something that made her worse and worse. Elizabeth thinks she is bewitched. Belief became conviction. Elizabeth seems pricked by the pin she had refused to give the old woman. Falling under the auspice of “magical thinking,” sympathetic cursing means that one can “catch” a curse through an object. In this kind of magical thinking, the tension between uncertainty about an event’s outcome and the desire to control it might make one imagine their words have undue weight, that they have power to dictate as opposed to just tell.8 Elizabeth’s refusal is not just a normal speech act for her—­it is the moment that she believes she is cursed. In the realm of bewitching stories, she could have found ample evidence for her concern. Swallowing and regurgitating pins became a defining element of being bewitched through the seventeenth century.9 Being pricked by pins was one way demoniacs were tested against charges of dissembling.10 Witches were tested with pins.11 In some cases, the pin played a key role in why witchcraft happened at all. Take for example how, in 1613, Alison Device was accused of bewitching John Law because he refused to give her pins from “his pack of wares.”12 Law claimed “he was tormented day and

8. Pronin et al., “Everyday Magical Powers.” 9. Two women in the city of York were brought before justices, where “swounding away they did vomit wooll, and crooked pins. and haf[t]s of knives, one whereof being of Marble made a great noyse by reason of the weight of it, as it fell upon the floore”; de Heer, Most True and Wonderfull Narration of Two Women Bewitched in Yorkshire, 3–­4. After she denied Cox her alms, Julian Cox allegedly “appeared to [a local maid] in the house wall, and offered her great Pins which she was forced to swallow”; Glanville, Saducismus Triumphatus, 196. William Spicer, “when he did call for Small Beer to drink, he would be sure to bring up some Crooked Pins; first and last, to the Number of Thirty, and upwards”; Anon., Great News from the West of England, 1. 10. Dissembling is a form of lying. John Aubrey recounted the story of Katherine Waldron who“pretended to be bewitched by a certain woman” and had acquired such a strange habit that she would endure exquisite torments as to have pins thrust into her flesh nay under her nails. These tricks of hers were about the time when King James wrote his Daemonologie. “His majesty being in these parts went to see her in one of her fits [ . . . ] majesty gave a sudden pluck to her coats and tossed them over her head which surprise it seems she had some innate modesty in her not imagining of such a thing made her immediately start and detected the cheat”; see Halliwell, Letters of the Kings of England, 2:124. William Helme saw pins in the ends of Anne Gunter’s toes and so many in her breast that it was “as if it had been a pinpillow”; he agreed that Anne did not bleed when they were removed; Sharpe, Bewitching of Anne Gunter, 103–­4. 11. This became popular practice, so much so that around 1649/50, Thomas Shovel and Cuthbert Nicholson brought a Scottish man to Newcastle as an expert witch-­searcher. He claims to be able to identify witches simply by their physical appearance. To do so, he strips women and uses the pin to test for witch’s mark (as manifest as an insensible spot). See Gardiner, England’s Grievance Discovered, 114. 12. Potts, Wonderfull Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster, sig. R4v.

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night by Device thereafter, and remained lame.”13 In a later case, demoniac William Perry allegedly vomited up eleven pins in one session; over three days after drinking holy water, he vomited pins, wool, knotted thread, rosemary, walnuts, and feathers, and then regained his speech.14 Elizabeth’s story, if it had any cultural currency in the 1620s, would have created more proof that wicked power could be attributed to an object. Bewitched pins came to occupy even more prominent roles in later cases long after the events at Amen Corner end. In those accounts, the pin comes back to haunt the girl who refused to give it up. It ends up sewn under her skin or pushed into her soft belly. In 1652, we find a relatively grisly tale of a young maid who grew ill after meeting a woman begging at her door. She vomited hair, feathers, knots of thread, pieces of broken glasses.15 She put Henri Heer’s hand “into her mouth, and sad [said] you may féele a pin comming up without a head.”16 He claimed “I did féele it. & thinking I had taken fast hold of it in her throat I did perceive that it was suddenly pluckt down into her body by force from me” and affirmed that “she did vomit forth all those things which she saw in the Witches basket when she begged of her.”17 The torment compounds as time passes. In 1662, Jane Stretton had a strange and violent fit shortly after giving her neighbor’s wife (a cunning woman and wife of a cunning man) a pin. Her “body swells like a bladder puft up with wind ready to burst,” and her limbs are completely distorted. She went to her neighbor’s house, where “her head being intoxicated by the violency of her fits, she falls down against the door and beats it open,” and lies on the floor.18 By 1665, we see the pin not just as a metaphor, but as a real weapon, albeit one that was wielded supernaturally. Elizabeth Brooker of Hointon, Devon, a servant of Mistress Heiron, was approached by a woman who asked her for a pin. Unsatisfied with the one from Brooker’s sleeve, having desired “a Pin of a bigger sort, out of a Paper which hung up to sell,” she left in a “great Fume and Rage, and told the Maid, she should hear farther from her, she would e’er long wish she had given her the Pin she desired; with

13. Ibid. 14. R. B., Boy of Bilson, 48–­49. 15. de Heer, Most True and Wonderfull Narration of Two Women Bewitched in Yorkshire, 5. 16. Ibid., 10–­11. 17. Ibid., 10–­11. 18. M. Y., Hartford-­shire Wonder, 4.

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many threatning Speeches.”19 The next day, Brooker shrieked that “she had a Pin thrust into her Thigh.”20 A midwife was called. She applied plasters, and many other cures, but in vain. A surgeon, Anthony Smith, later, after some unsuccessful attempts, excised a pin from Brooker’s leg.21 A plague of pin-­vomiting defined demoniacs through the final decades of the seventeenth century.22 The pins and nails Deborah and Elizabeth Pacy started vomiting, for instance, were mirrored in the fishhooks and hair found in the stomach of the horse Agatha Shipton allegedly killed.23 And so Elizabeth has reason to fear the witch and reason to feel the pin. Elizabeth feels the unspoken curse as a stabbing pain, as a stitch in her throat. She feels haunted. Her fear feeds off of her like a parasite. It becomes the “infirmity” that makes her sick. And this sickness could be deadly. It might kill her. Although she is a thirteen-­year-­old, there is no reason to think Elizabeth is playing or pouting. Behavior that might have otherwise been a tantrum became a condition. From 13 January onward, she refuses “ever after all manner of flesh-­meat.” Like the sudden, eerie presence of pins, fear-­induced vegetarianism appears amongst the symptoms of supernatural torments. Not eating “meat” might not be the equivalent of stopping consumption of all solid food. Jennings loses her appetite, but she may have been eating in snatches. In 1564, Anne Mylner, after “she saw a whyte thing compassing her round about,” felt herself “gr[i]eved, & very sore in al the

19. Baxter, Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, 67. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Grace Thomas accuses Temperance Lloyd of making her feel as “though Pins and Awls had been thrust into her Body, from the Crown of her Head to the Soles of her Feet [ . . . ] as though it had been upon a Rack”; Anon., True and impartial relation of the informations against three witches, 8. Mary Farmer’s parents swore, “that their Child being taken ill in an extraordinary and violent manner, the Neighbours told them it was bewitched,” other neighbors “swore, That they had divers times taken out pins from [Farmer’s] Arms, and other parts”; Anon., Account of the Tryal and Examination of Joan Buts, 1–­2. According to Richard Dirby, “the Daughter of one John Ballard of Ditchingham-­ Dam, near Bungy in Norfolk, who was Bewitched for above 2 Years, she voiding out of her Mouth many Stones, Crooked-­pins, a piece of Glass, a Buckle, Buttons, and other things”; see Dirby, Dreadful news from Wapping, 7–­8. Mary Hill allegedly begins throwing up strange objects during her fits. It begins with crooked pins, progresses to nails and pins, and within a month, her vomiting includes “Nails again, and Handles of Spoons, both of Pewter and Brass; several pieces of Iron, Lead, and Tin, with several clusters of Crooked Pins; some tied with Yarn, and some with Thread, with abundance of Blood between.” The final catalogue also includes window lead, pieces of lump lead, wire and large board nails; see Anon., Great News from the West of England, 2. Richard Hathaway allegedly passed pins in his excrement; Anon., Full and True Account of the Apprehending and Taking of Mrs. Sarah Moordike, 1. 23. Head, Life and Death of Mother Shipton, 6; Anon., Tryal of Witches at the Assizes, 27–­30.

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partes of her body, which so increased, that thereupon she was enforced to keepe her bed, beyng verye sicke,” suffered hourly fits, and refrained from eating.24 Despite this general restraint, Mylner gobbled bits of bread and cheese throughout her illness.25 In Elizabeth’s case, however, her refusal to eat flesh-­meat signals the beginning of a spectacular bout of fasting, the sort that comes courtesy of an otherworldly influence.26 In the later seventeenth century, fasting was part of the Protestant prophetic profile: Sarah Wight allegedly ate only “faire water, or small Beere, and that onely at once in two, or three, or foure dayes,” over her seventy-five-day fast.27 Martha Hatfield could “not digest her meat, but vomited up all that she took, which yet was a small quantity for a long time,” and had extraordinary fits of “violent vomitings” and “convulsions.”28 Although Anna Trapnel rarely ate during her ecstatic experiences, she recounted a twelve-­day period in which, “for the first five days she neither eat nor drank; and the rest of the time, once in 24 hours sometimes a very little toast in small beer; sometimes onely chewed it, and took down the moysture; sometimes she drank the small beer, and sometimes onely washed her mouth therewith.”29 Fasting was also a marker of possession and bewitchment.30 Contemporaneous demoniacs whose own suffering Jennings might have read about or even heard about experienced a withdrawal from food as they moved further into supernatural suffering. Alexander Nyndge, for

24. Fisher, Copy of a Letter Describing the Wonderful Woorke of God in Deliuering a Mayden within the City of Chester, 5. 25. Ibid. 26. In the medieval tradition, fasting has been read as a renunciation of the corporeal world in an attempt to grow closer to the spiritual. Some female saints and prophets ate nothing but the Eucharist. Alapis of Cudot allegedly survived solely on the Eucharist for forty years; Catherine of Siena, one of the most renowned ascetics, deadened her bodily sensations and her desire for food. See Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 134. 27. Jessey, Exceeding Riches of Grace, sig. A3v. 28. Fisher, Wise Virgin, sig. C2. 29. Trapnel, Cry of a Stone, 193. 30. Writing about famed faster Martha Taylor in A Discourse upon Prodigious Abstinence, John Reynolds provides miraculous precedents, but argues for medical explanations of long-­lasting fasts. One of the most crucial aspects of sustaining long fasts, in his opinion, is the lack of evacuation; without spitting, menstruating, urinating, or defecating, the body needs no food. However, he claims, the retained menstrual blood ferments within the body, causing irrationality. For more information on Reynolds, Martha Taylor, and early modern fasting, see Hollis,“Fasting Women.” Also see Brumberg, Fasting Girls; Schwartz, Never Satisfied, 115–­19; Shaw, “Fasting Women”; and Shaw, “Religious Experience and the Formation of the Early Enlightenment Self.”

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example, could not eat meat,31 neither could Elizabeth Throckmorton32 nor Helen Fairfax,33 nor could the numerous demoniacs who appeared in print decades after Elizabeth like Margaret Muschamp, whose fast lasted sixteen weeks.34 Some physical functions had to give way when the body became a site of a spiritual battle. Fasting, as a physical marker, like inedia, amenorrhea, and trances, divested the demoniac of some of her corporeality as it gave her an authority that transcended natural human limits. Jennings grows weaker and sicker over the course of a month without food or fresh air and with constant medical ministrations. She withers, pines, and pales—­behaviors traditionally part of the possession symptomatology. By 15 February, she complains that she is “exceeding sicke, and from that present time left her use of both her leggs. The 19th Day at night she was taken with extreame fitts of panting and sighing and began to talke idlely and growe very ill.” Elizabeth is not entirely herself, and she is not going to get better. Her mother begins to panic. Having a sick child who could not walk and would not eat would have Dorothy Jennings wringing her hands. Having a daughter who spent the day groaning and sighing assuredly would have been unnerving. However, when Elizabeth’s sickness moves from physiological to psychological, it is more than Dorothy could bear. Of all of her daughter’s symptoms, one symptom, “idle talk,” that might otherwise have been construed as youthful babbling, alarmed Elizabeth’s mother, and with just cause. Idle talk, or discourse that totters on the cusp of reason, was one of the manifestations of bad magic. Some forty years earlier, Margaret Hooper’s condition was read as bewitchment in part because she simply spoke too much when she spoke; it was “much idle talk.”35 It was also a manifestation of madness. As much as Elizabeth’s condition looks like witchcraft, it also looks like lunacy. Insensible speech was, as seen with her father, a sign of dementia. Fear, madness, and possession

31. Nyndge, True and Fearefull Vexation of One Alexander Nyndge, sig. A4. 32. Anon., Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 49–­50. 33. Fairfax, Daemonologia, 130–­33. 34. Girls like Margaret Muschamp, whose poetic accusations and bloodlust would, twenty-­four years later, mirror Jennings’s experiences, are part of the long thread that weaves the demonic with the prophetic. Figures like Muschamp make later prophets vulnerable to diabolism, and help give the words of demoniacs their unusual weight. 35. Anon., True and Most Dreadfull Discourse of a Woman Possessed with the Deuill, 2.

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seem part of the same spectrum of diseases of the mind.36 An old horror had returned this time to claim her daughter. Dorothy was terrified by what she saw. It had not been too long since her husband, John Jennings, Elizabeth’s father, had slipped from instability into insanity. Her daughter might as well. Maybe she already had. Dorothy had every reason to worry about her daughter’s health. She had no reason to doubt how quickly a situation could become serious. She needed help. It would take more than home remedies to treat Elizabeth. It would take an experienced physician who knew how to drain disease and despair from her veins. Dorothy called in reinforcements. She summoned Simeon Foxe.

Summoning Simeon Foxe When BL MS 36674 refers to Dr. Foxe, it is referring to the famous physician Simeon Foxe. Unlike many of those listed in the manuscript, Foxe left a relatively large mark on the historical record. He was born in London in 1569, his schooling began at Eton College where he was awarded a bachelor’s degree (1587) and master’s degree (1591),37 and he left the academy to pursue medical school in Padua, Italy. He entered military service and was shipped off to Ireland and to the Netherlands, and was detained as a prisoner at Dunkirk. Somewhere among all those travels, Foxe realized that a soldier’s life was not for him. He began practicing medicine when he returned to London in 1603. On 30 September 1605, he was admitted as a candidate of the College of Physicians. By 25 June 1608, he was granted the rank of fellow.38 Foxe occupied a number of important posts in the college throughout his life. In 1625 he was appointed censor. The same year that, along with later society president, William Harvey (a man whose studies in circulation should have put the phlebotomists out of business, and who himself tested witchcraft by dissecting a witch’s familiar), was one of four men appointed to evaluate, treat, and diagnose living and dead plague victims. This evaluative team’s work was done, in part, as a political play intended to reas-

36. Gentilcore, “The Fear of Disease and the Disease of Fear,” 201. 37. Birken, “Foxe, Simeon (1569–­1642),” in Oxford DNB. 38. Munk, Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 1, 1518–­1700, 148.

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sert the authority of physicians in a healthcare marketplace where surgeons were treating more and more cases of the plague.39 Foxe was elected register of the college in 1627, 1628, and 1629.40 In 1629, he became treasurer when Harvey resigned that post.41 Between 1634 and 1640 he was president of the college.42 During his lifetime, Foxe was praised as a “a man of great worth.”43 For his long-­standing service to the college, he was also memorialized: the College of Physicians commissioned a marble bust of him. This portrait, along with the famous bust of Harvey,44 were the only two monuments that survived the fire of 1666. Foxe’s portrait later disappeared.45 Foxe may have been sympathetic to those whose illness transcended the physical into the preternatural. He would have been familiar with the textual construction of spiritually significant people. He was the younger son of the martyrologist John Foxe (author of Acts and Monuments, 1563) and his wife, Agnes Randall. Simeon Foxe was, in turn, the likely author of his father’s biography, printed for the first time in 1641, along with a new edition of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1570). Foxe’s famil7. The Coat of Arms for the College of Physicians, ca. 1546, Lasdun Building, Regent’s iarity with his father’s interest in Park. From History of Medicine Topographical marvelous cases of martyrdom Database/Creative Commons License.

39. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 53. 40. Ibid., 31. 41. Munk, Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 1, 1518–­1700, 138. 42. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 62. 43. Walton, Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert. 44. Harvey would be educated at Cambridge Caius College, taking an arts degree (1597), and then went to medical school in Padua, Italy, where Simeon Foxe witnessed his diploma. Padua also produced Edward Jorden, whose refutation of Mary Glover as a demoniac and diagnosis of her as a hysteric would supersede Foxe’s similar work with Jennings in fame. 45. MacNaulty, “Review: Physician’s Portraits,” 761; Wadd, Memories, Maxims, and Memoirs, 207.

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must have influenced how he read Elizabeth Jennings’s illness and her actions. The unpublished manuscripts Harley MS 590 and Lansdowne MS 101, for instance, record how John Foxe had famously exorcised a thirty-­year-­old gentleman, Robert Brigges, in 1574. Brigges had been in school in 1573 when he was struck with a religious malaise that galloped into depression, melancholia, and self-­harm. By Easter 1574, he looked possessed. His condition worsened and three weeks later, John Foxe delivered him, albeit temporally, from the devil.46 This dispossession happened before Simeon’s birth, but the story must have been told, and even if not, Simeon likely had his own early experience with demoniacs. Foxe grew up having seen at least one demoniac. He was around five years old in 1574 when Elizabeth Pinder boldly strode into his home and declared that her eleven-­year-­old daughter Rachel was “possessed of a Devil.”47 She later suspected a woman known as “Old Joan” bewitched her48 because Rachel would “swell and heave” and fell into trances. The twenty-­year-­old Agnes Brigges, upon seeing the spectacle, also “fell into a trance.”49 Although he grew up in a spiritually fecund household, Foxe would not have been too easily swayed by the idea of the supernatural. Baldwin Hamey, his friend and colleague (and himself the onetime physician to the tzar of Russia) described Foxe as “grave without morosity, religious without superstition.”50 Although he believed in devils, it would not have been the fear of demons that made Foxe ride out to Isleworth on a house call.51 He galloped out to the suburbs out of respect for the class of his client, who would hire the best physicians they could find for their daughter. He would have hurried because there was something sufficiently urgent about Elizabeth’s condition. He was right to. Foxe quickly decided he was unable to treat Elizabeth in Isleworth. He rode back with her to London. He likely installed her in his suites at the college houses. During his tenure at the College of Physicians, Foxe maintained a room 46. Sands, “John Foxe: Exorcist.” 47. Anon., Disclosing of a Late Counterfeyted Possession by the Deuyl, sig. A7v. Also see Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England, 58–­61. 48. Anon., Disclosing of a Late Counterfeyted Possession by the Deuyl, sig. A6v. 49. Both women later retracted their possessions; ibid.; and Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England, 58–­61. 50. Munk, Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 1, 1518–­1700, 148. 51. Foxe would be one of the last Presidents of the Society of Physicians to make house calls on horseback; Ward, Lives of the Professors of Gresham College.

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at the College Houses on Amen Corner, Paternoster Row.52 The College moved there when their residences at Thomas Linacre’s house in Knightrider Street grew too small. The college maintained their residences at Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, until the Great Fire of 1666 burned them out. The close proximity of the college residences to St. Paul’s enabled Foxe to maintain a close friendship with John Donne (see chapter 1 and chapter 5). Foxe was Donne’s personal physician and a “faithful friend” who “loved him entirely.”53 A monument found at St. Paul’s Cathedral (where Foxe also requested to be buried) stands as a testimony to their close friendship and mutual respect in life and in death.54 Although he left the design of the dean’s rather ghoulish marble shroud monument to him,55 Foxe commissioned the monument and contributed half the cost, one hundred marks, to the memorial.56 The close proximity of his room at Amen Corner to St. Paul’s, moreover, meant that he was always close to Donne and close to work. Never allowed to retire his post, nor leave it, Foxe died on April 20, 1642, in his room at Amen Corner, Paternoster Row. He was buried four days later in St. Paul’s.57 Although Elizabeth’s stepfather58 and her father owned property in the Strand59 (where she was born), her grandparents lived somewhere in the Liberty of the Savoy—­the severity of her illness means she needs constant care. The college houses provide a likely site for it.

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It is uncertain how long Foxe treated Elizabeth. Her illness—­ severe, systemic, and lingering—­lasts at least a few months. Although she was receiving the best medical treatment money could buy, her health rapidly

52. Birken, “Foxe, Simeon (1569–­1642),” in Oxford DNB. 53. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 31. 54. Birken, “Foxe, Simeon (1569–­1642),” in Oxford DNB. Also see Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 31. 55. Walton, Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, 73–­76. 56. Ibid., 70. 57. Birken, “Foxe, Simeon (1569–­1642).” 58. In 1619, a “Grant to John Latch of the Strand of the next presentation to the rectory of Wigan co Lancaster”; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James 1, 1619–­1623, 109. 59. There is some indication that John Jennings may have lived at times in Churchill; Steinman, Althorp Memoirs, 57; and Green, “Manor of Churchill,” 43.

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declines after she arrives in London. She continues “languishing, complaining of aches in divers parts of her body and often weeping extremely” all the while she is there. Moreover, she begins to manifest different and frightening symptoms. She is sick and she is tormented. For the previous month, Simeon Foxe and Dorothy Jennings repeatedly invest their trust in modern medicine. Elizabeth continues to sigh and groan, pain chases around her body, and she feels as though she was being broken limb by limb. By 17 March, it was obvious that Elizabeth’s condition is growing critical. She convulses and contorts and is no longer coherent. Her mother and physician become frantic. Other doctors are hired to provide second opinions and alternate treatments. Hiring one physician in London was a costly affair since the College of Physicians kept their rates high to ensure a good profit margin for their members.60 Hiring an entire diagnostic team was exorbitantly expensive. The medicines they recommended and sold made it doubly so. As single purgative was dear, repeated doses could cripple some families’ finances.61 The success of medical treatment was not assured. Then, as now, treatment was based on an educated best guess. And no one seemed to know what was wrong with Elizabeth, so they had to keep guessing. They did so for almost a month: “during this time many things were applied [by] her phisitions for her helpe but all in vaine, the medicines rather producing contrarie effects.” The treatment she received, or all the attention that accompanied it, made matters much worse.62 Elizabeth loses “all motion and sense” in her right arm “as if it had bin taken with a dead palsie.”63 Her body arches. Her illness comes to a dramatic head on Easter night: she can only stammer and stutter. On Easter Sunday, 20 April, she is mute and is suffering from violent fits. The day 60. Only 5 to 15 percent of the English populace could afford to hire a physician at all. See Evenden, Popular Medicine in Seventeenth-­Century England, 21. 61. Wallis, “Apothecaries and the Consumption and Retailing of Medicines,” 20. 62. Help became harm: the medicines were contraindicative. This would not be the last time Foxe’s medicines would contradict one another; he would likewise prescribe John Donne medicines that produced contrary effects, a move likely made to treat a complex symptomatology; Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, xvii. 63. The phrasing used to described Jane Throckmorton’s condition is very similar: “sometime shee would shake one legge and no other part of her, as if the paulsie had bin in it, sometimes the other, presently she would shake one of hir armes and then the other, and soone after hir head, as if shee had binne infected with the running paulsie”; Anon., Most Strange and Admirable Discouerie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 3.

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after, her “physitions finding her estate desperate, had a consultation, and resolved of three courses for remedie, 1.To give her a vomit. 2.To lett her blood. 3.To bath her in Oyle.” An oil rubdown was meant to move her misplaced organs back into place.64 Purgation was used to force the expulsion of bad humors and bad spirits.65 Jennings is rubbed. She is “made to vomit.” But to no surprise, these remedies have no effect. The physicians decide to move on to the most extreme treatment; they will slice Jennings open. They will bleed her back to health.

Mentioning Margaret Russell The Countess first asserted herself into the record of Elizabeth’s illness when her physicians decided to use phlebotomy as a curative. Her knowledge of the case must have been considerable; it made her enough of an authority to contradict the physicians’ recommendations. We know she visited Elizabeth during the “divers times [she] came to the house.” Whereas the Countess may have become increasingly disquieted throughout Jennings’s increasing illness, biting her tongue as a silent witness, this act, the move to cut open Elizabeth’s veins, was more than she was willing to suffer in silence. She “with much earnestnes desired it might not be soo.” Who was the Countess? Margaret Russell was a sixty-­ year-­ old woman. Her nickname, “the Countess,” or, according to Richard Napier, “Goodi-­Countis,” may have been given because she shared her name with Margaret Clifford (née Russell), the lady-­in-­waiting to Queen Elizabeth.66 This Margaret Russell shares no apparent relation to this family line, nor does she seem to have had a place in the peerage. She was, however, a woman of some influence. She was tied into a vast network spanning the upper class like the Cecils, those sometimes on the fringes of power like Mary Gargrave, and quasi-­professional women like Anne Goodcole (see chapter 9). Russell might have been a cunning woman, a healer, or a gossip, but even if she was lacking status or profession, she

64. Petrus Foresti notes that some hysterics are rubbed with nard oil or rubbed with the “oil of lilies, musk root, crocus”; Foresti, Observationum et curationum medicinalium, 312–­13. 65. Fairfax, Demonologia, 38, 135. 66. That Russell, upon marrying George Clifford, became the Countess of Cumberland (and would be mother of Sir Robert Clifford, Francis Clifford, and famous female diarist Lady Anne Clifford).

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had enough knowledge of Jennings and of early modern medicine to vehemently contest the phlebotomy plan.

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Bleeding signals injury; whether from the prick of a pin or the slice of a scalpel, it lets the inside out. For some it can terrify, nauseate, or, if enough blood is lost, debilitate. Nevertheless, bloodletting was a common remedy for a myriad of ailments, ailments that might manifest as frenzy, melancholia, or moodiness.67 The casebooks of John Symcotts, for instance, recount bleeding as regular practice,68 and Dr. Baker of Shrewsbury also routinely bled patients.69 The treatment was a common practice. Petrus Foresti did it.70 Amatus Lusitanus bled Dina Clara to end her hysterics.71 Proscribed often and sometimes lightly, bloodletting was still dangerous. The practice was a subject of vehement debate amongst physicians, “some chiefly and above all magnifying it, some with execrations detesting it.”72 Nicholas Gyer, an otherwise adamant proponent of the practice, explained this prejudice as rightfully caused by untrained phlebotomists, those he classified as witch-­doctors and defined as “bloodsuckers indeede, who for want of skil in this profitable practise of blood letting, in every corner of the countrey without controlment, either presently kyl, or at leastwise accelerate the immature deaths of [diverse] faythful Christians.”73 This treatment, should it be “rashly and unconsiderately attempted,” supposedly killed patients by wasting their spirits and blood, and by overcooling and prematurely aging the body.74 The fear of bloodletting ran deep. Russell was right to fear for the child. Elizabeth might have herself, had she understood what was happening. John Cotta provided examples of trepidatious women who, terrified of the procedure, refused to be bled.

67. Barrough, Methode of Phisicke, 148–­57. 68. He used black soap on the soles of a young woman’s feet to cure her of her fits. 69. He also used the offensive smell of burnt feathers to tame a hysteric’s womb. See Beier, Sufferers and Healers, 104, 126. 70. Foresti, Observationum et curationum medicinalium, 320. 71. Fontoura, “Neurological Practice in the Centuriae of Amatus Lusitanus,” 304. 72. Cotta, Short Discoverie of the Unobserved Dangers, 16. 73. Gyer, English Phlebotomy, sig. A5. 74. Harward, Harwards Phlebotomy, sig. A3.

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Some heard horror stories secondhand. One gentlewoman, frightened of “bloud-­letting” because other “womens counsell by many ill reports thereof had confounded her,” refused the treatment.75 According to Cotta, her blood continued to rage and boil within her.76 Finally it broke “the wonted bounds and limits of her veines, with violence it gushed out not onely at her mouth and nose with diverse other passages of her body besides, but also made a di[s]ruption in the veines of one of her legs, from whence issuing in great abundance it speedily dispatched her.”77 So certain that phlebotomy was a death sentence, she died having proclaimed that she would “rather die thusly, than have her blood taken otherwise.”78 Others learned to fear phlebotomy. A different woman who had regularly engaged the phlebotomist finally refused treatment at seventy-­four years old. According to Cotta, she became ill when “her body well liking [it],” was no longer receiving the treatment.79 Cotta prescribed a return to phlebotomy, but based on her advanced age, advised that blood “be sparingly let” from her arm, “whereupon without any farther other helpe she immediately recovered her strength, and was freed the space of eight yeares together from the issue, which had continually vexed her many yeares before.”80 The fear of phlebotomy was not simply squeamishness; it was a fear of poor assessment of patients and botched procedures. Simon Harward specifically recommended against using phlebotomy on children and the elderly.81 The author A. T., who in 1595 published on the benefit of the other evacuative cures Foxe tried on Elizabeth, warned specifically against bloodletting in “children under 14. yeares of age, and old folke [  .  .  .  ] unlesse great necessitie require it.”82 With all the controversy surrounding bloodletting, it is easy to see why, in Russell’s opinion, the situation is not dire enough to risk bleeding Elizabeth. Russell ominously and emphatically warned against it. She pleaded with the doctors. She must have taken Dorothy by the shoulders, stared

75. Cotta, Short Discoverie of the Unobserved Dangers, 26. 76. Ibid., 26. 77. Ibid., 26. 78. Ibid., 26. 79. Ibid., 26–­27. 80. Ibid., 26–­27. 81. Harward, Harwards Phlebotomy, 54. 82. A. T., Rich Store-­house or Treasury for the Diseased, sig. B3.

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into her eyes, and promised her that if she allowed her daughter to be drained of her blood, “the doctors would kill [Elizabeth] thereby as they had done Exeter’s child.”

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Comparables Familial Witchcraft The Cecil name must have set off warning bells for Dorothy Jennings. Their families were geographically close. Thomas Cecil had a home, Exeter House (or Burghley House/Cecil House), on the Strand, as Dorothy Jennings did. She could well have known the Cecil family personally. Thomas’s half brother Robert Cecil helped adjudicate the fate of John Jennings’s financial estate.1 The Cecils were part of a small circle of England’s elite who were inculcated in witchcraft. And eerily enough, the Jennings-­Latch and Cecil families both had young daughters who were sick enough to be bled. Russell’s argument, therefore, was meant to be a compelling one. She was, after all, invoking a comparable family when she invoked Exeter’s child. Cecil’s daughter had died because of overaggressive medical treatment. Dorothy’s might too. The previous chapter looked to the potential blood evidence in Elizabeth’s bewitchment. This chapter will begin to illustrate Russell’s place in the case. She was not a suspect yet. Rather, she first appeared as a nosey neighbor or a vigilant caregiver. She appeared in BL MS 36674 with only a few words: her plea that Elizabeth not be bled. However, she packed a great deal of meaning into those first words. They established her as knowing that phlebotomy was a potentially fatal medical treatment. They suggested she had access to intimate knowledge of the elite in the Strand. But most critically, and perhaps foolishly for Russell, they brought, with the Cecil name, the first suggestion of witchcraft into the Jennings case.

1. Cunningham, Handbook of London, 178–­79.

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Over the course of Elizabeth’s lifetime, Cecil’s family was linked to four different witchcraft accusations. Thomas Cecil’s second wife, Frances Brydges, was accused of witchcraft by her daughter-­in-­law. Cecil’s son-­in-­ law Sir Edward Coke clarified the legal definition of witchcraft, making it illegal to consult with the devil himself. Her brother-­in-­law the Duke of Buckingham would accuse Cecil’s granddaughter, Frances, of witchcraft. And Cecil’s cousin by marriage, Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, and his wife, his sons, and his daughter Katherine, were all plagued by witchcraft. In short, witchcraft touched the Cecil name many times over. As this knowledge colored what it meant to invoke a Cecil during treatment of Elizabeth’s bewitchment, this chapter will look at all four accusations in depth to see just how much meaning was packed into that single reference to Exeter’s daughter. These parallel stories tell something of the environment Elizabeth lived in, one where dark veins of confusion, suspicion, and resentment made fertile ground for accusations of witchcraft. They provide precious insight into how the elite framed and suffered witchcraft. Moreover, they all happen close enough to Elizabeth to make them possible examples of iterative influences. The fate of Exeter’s child was a thundering warning of what might happen to those who allow their children to be bled; the Cecil family also pointed to the place of the nobility in various aspects of witchcraft beliefs. If for only a while, the reference to Georgi-­Anne appears to have been effective in stopping the bloodletting because it may have started the witch-­finding in this case.

Scandalized Cecils The first Earl of Exeter, Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley, had five sons and eight daughters by his first wife, Dorothy Nevill. After her death and despite his advanced age (he was in his seventies at the time), Cecil quickly remarried, choosing Frances Brydges, the daughter of William Brydges, for his second wife.2 Thirty-­eight years younger than her new husband,3

2. William Brydges was the 4th Baron Chandos and Frances was sister to Grey Brydges, the 5th Baron Chandos. Grey also had bad luck; he was the first husband of the ill-­fated Anne Stanely, Lady Audley; Anne would become the second wife of Mervyn Tuchet and sister-­in-­law of the author Eleanor Davies. More on Stanley and Tuchet appears later. 3. Dennis, House of Cecil, 129–­30; Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, 4th ed., 2:50.

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Frances was a well-­educated and intensely curious woman whose interests lay in medicines for health and healing, like much of the Cecil family (and many of those in this case).4 Despite their age difference, the union appears to have been happy. They had one child together, a little girl born in 1616 named Georgi-­ Anne.5 She was baptized on 30 July 1616. Queen Anne and Edward Somerset, 6th Earl of Worcester and Lord Privy Seal, served as witnesses. Sadly, there is little more we can discover about Georgi-­Anne. Tragedy soon struck this branch of the family three times over. In 1619, her mother (Frances Brydges) would be accused of witchcraft by her daughter-­in law Elizabeth Lake. Georgi-­Anne died in 1621; she was five years old.6 Cecil died one year later, on 7 February 1622; he was eighty years old. Georgi-­ Anne’s death may have been tied to an infantile illness or caused by excessively aggressive medical treatments of her physicians. Margaret Russell summoned the spectre of Georgi-­Anne as an object lesson against bleeding the young back into health. In her opinion, her physicians had killed Georgi-­Anne Cecil. Elizabeth’s would kill her as well. The Cecil name alone, however, might have also signaled something else to those who knew it. The women in the family, for instance, did not fare well. Unhappiness, madness, marital problems, and property disputes damaged one branch of this family. Following this limb, we discover the haunting history of Cecil’s daughter Elizabeth. She first married William Newport, becoming Lady Hatton. After Hatton’s death, she married a man twenty-­six years her senior, Sir Edward Coke. Coke was best known as a strong proponent of the power of common law and a firm rival of Sir Francis Bacon. There is not sufficient space in this project to give Coke a comprehensive biography, so we will turn our attention to a few select familial and political moves. As mentioned, Coke 4. Caroline Bowden points out that “Frances, countess of Exeter, wife of Thomas Cecil first earl of Exeter received two dedications”; Bowden, “The ‘Cecil’ Glossary of Materia Medica and Medical Terminology.” 5. In the registers of St. Mary’s Church, Wimbledon, is the following entry: “The thirteenth day of Julie, being Satterday, in the yeare of our Lord, 1616, about half an hour before 10 of the clocke in the forenoon of the same day at Wimbledon, in the Countie of Surrie, was born the Lady Georgi-­Anna, daughter to the right honourable Thomas Earl of Exeter, and the honourable Lady Frances Countess of Exeter; and the same Lady Georgi-­Anna was baptized the thirtieth day of the same moneth of Julie, in the saide yeare, 1616, being Tuesdaie in the afternoone of the same daie; Queen Anne and Lord Worcester, Lord Privie Seal, being witnesses; and the Lord Bishop of London administered the baptism”; quoted in Dalton, Life and times of General Sir Edward Cecil. 1:274. 6. Ravenscroft, House of Cecil, 129–­30; Pembroke, Memoriors of 1603, 94.

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once presided over the property rights case for Elizabeth Jennings’s father, John Jennings. They likely knew one another; both men were knighted the same year.7 Coke also wielded some power, but he was far from being a royal favorite: he made a few loud and public acts that kept him from becoming one, including his arguments against the king’s right to prohibit building in London. The king, in Coke’s opinion, had no right to make the prohibition at all. The laws against building, and the fights that erupted because of them, played an important part in the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings and will be explored more fully in chapters 5, 7, and 8. For the present discussion, Coke might be most intriguingly linked to witchcraft and possession as a crime. In the Witchcraft Act of 1604, James I of England expanded the definition of witchcraft, making it illegal to practice the invocation, conjuration, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding of any evil spirit, or to use spirits, witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery so that any person should be “destroyed wasted consumed pined or lamed in his or her bodie” (as was allegedly done to Elizabeth) or killed (as allegedly happened to her siblings).8 It was also illegal to “take any dead man woman or child out of his her or theire grave or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone or any other parte of any dead person, to be imployed or used in any manner of Witchecrafte, Sorcerie, Charme or Inchantment.”9 To clarify the gravity of the 1604 law’s addendum against grave-­robbing, Coke cited the history of the Southwark necromancer, whose tools—­a human head and face—­were burnt to stop him from ever practicing necromancy again.10 He also cites the case of Margaret Gurdeman, who was herself burnt at the stake after her second prosecution for witchcraft.11 Coke further expanded this already comprehensive legal definition of a witch to recognize her as someone who was also in league with the devil: “a witch is a person that hath conference with the devill, to consult with him or do some act.”12 This was an important clarification; with it, the idea of an English witch was brought more in line with how witches were seen on

7. Shaw, Knights of England, 2:107, 109. 8. An Acte against conjuration Witchcrafte and dealinge with evill and wicked Spirits, 1604, 1 Jac. 1, c. 12, 1. 9. Ibid. 10. Coke, First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, sigs. E3r–­v. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid.

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the Continent. It also made the English witch, by choice and by practice, evil. It would be impossible to see someone who worked with the devil as anything but. Coke not only theorized and defined the preternatural, he questioned its application. Coke initiated the case against and exhibited information against Anne Gunter and her father, Brian, in the Court of Star Chamber. The prosecution’s case was led by Samuel Harsnett and Richard Neile, the dean of Westminster, and likely judged by Archbishop Bancroft. The Gunters were brought up on charges of having “by false and wicked devices to bring [Gregory and the two Pepwells] into infamy and cause them to be reputed and taken for witches and there­upon also to cause them to be indicted and arraigned for witchcraft.”13 While he presented against the validity of Gunter’s bewitchment, Coke also prosecuted what he saw as real incidents of witchcraft. In a high-­profile case tried in 1615, when she was found guilty of acting as an accomplice in the murder of Thomas Overbury by poisoning, Coke declared that Anne Turner embodied “the seven deadly sins: viz. [she was] a whore, a bawd, a sorcerer, a witch, a papist, a felon, and a murderer, the daughter of the devil Forman.”14 However, Turner’s connection to this story extends beyond Coke’s vitriolic curses against her. Queen Elizabeth favored Turner’s husband, George; she supported him when his Catholic sympathies threatened to prevent his election to the College of Physicians, where he served as treasurer.15 George was friends with Simon Forman, the physician-­astrologer and mentor to Richard Napier (more on him in chapter 11), and may have had alchemical leanings.16 After George’s death, Anne continued to be linked to Forman, a man she referred to affectionately and perhaps deferentially as “father,” and who supposedly instructed her in the arts of sex magic. She was tied to the use of magical objects and parchment curses. She was also linked to the building of a fashion empire, or at least, the creation of new fashionistas. Turner popularized and marketed the use

13. Levack, “Possession, Witchcraft, and the Law in Jacobean England,” 1613–­14, 1630–­33. 14. Turner lived in Paternoster Row and was the widow of physician George Turner. “The Trial of Anne Turner, Widow at King’s Bench, on the 7th of November, for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, Mich 13 James 1 A. D. 1615,” in Cobbett et al., Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason, 2:935. 15. Moore, “Turner, George (d. 1610),” in Oxford DNB. 16. Ibid.

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of yellow starch on the ruffs,17 otherwise known as piccadilles, which had become increasingly in vogue as tailor Robert Baker—­a man also linked to this story—­made them increasingly available. We will investigate Baker and his piccadilles in chapter 7. For now we will continue to look at Coke as a way of understanding the spectre of the name Exeter, moving from the political to the personal (although they were with Coke one and the same). Coke was promoted to chief justice of the King’s Bench (a move made to ensure his obedience), but his elevation did not last long. He was soon removed from office. Coke’s problems were not just political, they were also personal. Coke’s marriage to Thomas Cecil’s daughter Elizabeth, a twenty-­year-­old woman (thirty years his junior), was done in secret. They were almost excommunicated for marrying without posting banns. The union was described as “a strange match, and which seemed to afford more amusement to bystanders than comfort to the parties concerned.”18 It was a fruitful pairing: two daughters were soon born. However, the marriage darkened and relations between the couple seethed and then stormed. Elizabeth finally refused any voluntary contact with her husband. Ultimately, the forced nuptials of their fourteen-­year-­old daughter Frances,19 a move Coke made to curry royal favor, irredeemably destroyed their marriage.20 This marriage brought with it, again, a connection to witches that would color what it meant to invoke the Cecil family.

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At the behest of her father, the young Frances, “having first been tied to the bed-­post and whipped into consent, became [on] 29 September, 1617, the struggling and reluctant bride of Sir John Villiers.”21 John Villiers was brother to George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, renowned favorite of King James, and husband of infamous demoniac Katherine Manners (her story follows soon in this chapter). Coke’s wife, Elizabeth, had tried to hide her child from her husband. She fought viciously, first legally—­obtaining warrants, charging and countercharging in the Star Chamber—­ then

17. Bellany, “Mistress Turner’s Deadly Sins.” 18. “Chronology of Events,” in Coke, Selected Writings and Speeches, 1:xxxiii–­lxxii. 19. Queen Elizabeth was Frances’s godmother. See ibid. 20. Boyer, “Coke, Sir Edward (1552–­1634),” in Oxford DNB. 21. Burke, Genealogical History of the Dormant . . . Peerages of the British Empire, 559.

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extra-legally; “troops of bully-­boys were hired, pistols issued to servants, and two doors smashed in with a heavy piece of timber.”22 As his servants moved forward with their makeshift battering ram, Coke is said to have dispersed his wife’s men by shouting that it would be justifiable homicide if his men killed any of them, “but murder if he or his own people were killed.”23 The marriage, however harrowing for the family, helped Coke and Villiers to be restored to the Privy Council. Villiers became the Viscount of Purbeck (1619). Despite their political elevations, the story did not end well. Coke soon brought back several policies, including a foreign policy that challenged the king’s policy and, by extent, his power. Beginning 27 December 1621, Coke spent eight months locked in the Tower. During this time, the first two years of his marriage, Villiers suffered a profound bout of mental illness. He was likely ill long before and stayed intermittently ill long after, however. Frances Coke describes him as suffering from sickness and an “afflicted mind.” By 1624, after Elizabeth Jennings’s ordeal falls off the pages, Frances gave birth to a son. Buckingham had exiled her from her home and seems to have genuinely thought his sister-­in-­law was a witch, who “with powders and potions [ . . . ] did intoxicate her husbands braines.”24 The charges did not stick. But by 1627, Frances was accused of something else: having an adulterous affair with Robert Howard. The legitimacy of Frances’s child was a point of contention. She claimed it was Villiers’s child. His family claimed it was Howard’s. The infamous astrologer-­magician Dr. John Lamb was later pressured to declare that he knew Frances’s son was illegitimate and therefore not a rightful heir to Buckingham’s estate.25 Frances Coke was not alone in the world, however. She became friends with Kenelm Digby, a natural philosopher and courtier (whose connection with James Howel, Gunpowder Alley, and Richard Napier will appear later). Digby later described Frances as having more “prudence, sweetinesse, goodnesse, honor and bravery” than any woman he knew.26 Villiers allegedly recovered from his brush with madness and

22. Boyer, “Coke, Sir Edward,” in Oxford DNB. 23. Ibid. 24. Longueville, Curious Case of Lady Purbeck, 94–­101. 25. Frances and Howard had allegedly visited John Lamb. For more on this case, see Gaskill, “Witchcraft, Politics, and Memory.” Also see McConnell, “Lambe, John (1545/6–­1628),” in Oxford DNB. 26. On the letter to Lady Purbeck, see Foster, “Digby, Sir Kenelm (1603–­1665),” in Oxford DNB. On the bewitchment scandal, see Longueville, Curious Case of Lady Purbeck, 94–­101.

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when Frances died (1645), Villiers married Elizabeth Slingsby, daughter of the judge of this case, Sir William Slingsby (who will appear again in chapter 5).27 It is easy to see how this all must have cast a shadow on the Cecil line, a shadow that cast all the way back to Elizabeth Jennings’s sickbed. During Elizabeth’s lifetime, one of Thomas Cecil’s children, Georgi-­Anne, died. Another child, Elizabeth Cecil, married Edward Coke, a man who helped legally define witchcraft, debunked false claims about possession, and helped prosecute witches. That man, Coke, forced his daughter Frances to marry John Villiers, a madman and brother of George Villiers, who was himself married to someone who had spent her youth being bewitched. As horrifying as this all sounds, there were other Cecil children who may have also been the ones referenced to Jennings as a negative exemplum. Allegations of incest, witchcraft, and property disputes devastated another branch of this family. Following that limb, we find the history of one of Thomas Cecil’s sons, William, the second Earl of Exeter. Through his son, he too helped connect the family to witchcraft. William Cecil married Lady Elizabeth Manners, the daughter and heir of Edward Manners, the 3rd Earl of Rutland and 15th Baron de Ros. This union, the first of William’s two marriages, produced a male heir, a man also named William Cecil. William Jr. inherited the Barony de Ros from his mother’s estate, an inheritance hotly disputed by his cousin Francis Manners, the Earl of Rutland who claimed the lordship (and whose own battles against witchcraft will be discussed below). However, in 1616, William conquered and the title was officially confirmed to him, making him the sixteenth Baron de Ros. The same year the younger Cecil also took a wife: the excitable and beautiful seventeen-­year-­old Elizabeth Lake. Lake was described as having a “bold, original and capricious” mind, having “received all the cultivation derivable from the concurrence of wealth, opportunity, and an insatiable desire for self-­improvement.”28 Her spoiled outlook and fiery personality were exasperated by the sheer frustration of her marriage. William Cecil was neither mature nor congenial; rather he was extravagant, reckless, and

27. Burke, Genealogical History of the Dormant, . . . Peerages of the British Empire, 559.There is also a likely connection here to the accusations lofted at Lady Purbeck; witchcraft accusations appear to have run in the family. For more information, see Longueville, Curious Case of Lady Purbeck. 28. Burke and Burke, Patrician, 6:395.

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morally lax. Their marriage was not a happy one.29 The new couple spent most of their time apart. Cecil traveled much of the time and reunions were sporadic. Lake became ill-­tempered, brittle, and cruel. After returning from Spain, Cecil made his excuses and abandoned his increasingly unpleasant young wife for good. Word reached home two years later (in 1618): he had died in Naples. Familial conflict continued without him.

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In this part of the Cecil backstory, we come to the strange account of the time when Elizabeth Lake accused her mother-­in-­law Frances Brydges Cecil (wife of Thomas Cecil and mother of the ill-­fated Georgi-­Anne) of an increasingly immoral set of crimes. The case was so purulent, scandalous, and high-­profile that King James himself investigated and judged it30 and so complicated that it took over five full days in court. In 1619, Elizabeth and her mother accused Brydges of witchcraft, of poisoning, and of committing incest with her stepgrandson, the late William Cecil the younger.31 This story served, perhaps, as a warning to Dorothy Jennings. What would it have meant to her to know the mother of Georgi-­ Anne, a child sick as her own was sick, had been accused of witchcraft? Even though Dorothy Jennings did not have a malicious daughter-­in-­law to accuse her, this story would have assuredly reminded her of her own vulnerabilities: it must not have escaped her that having a husband and daughter both get sick would have put her own qualities as a caregiver into question. The accusations against Brydges were mean-­spirited character assassinations, built on forged and falsified confessions. They hinged on the credibility of Sarah Swarton, Elizabeth Lake’s maid. Swarton claimed to have been hidden securely behind a wall hanging at Wimbledon Hall when she saw Frances Brydges compose a letter where she confessed all these crimes. King James tried the case because of who was involved. However, despite having written an influential treaty on witchcraft, Dæmonologie

29. Cited in Dalton, Life and Times of General Sir Edward Cecil, 1:274–­75. 30. By the time James VI became James I of England, he was avidly interested in using scientific principles to prove or disprove witchcraft charges as well. He wrote Dæmonologie (1597) in Scotland and was actively involved in witchcraft trials there. See Gaskill, Witchfinders, 27–­31, 105. 31. Burke, Genealogical History of the Dormant, . . . Peerages of the British Empire, 312.

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(1597), by 1619 James was more invested in debunking possessions than studying witchcraft.32 Still, James was intrigued by possession phenomena. In 1606, he interviewed Anne Gunter, a woman who had enjoyed considerable fame as a demoniac up to that point. She retracted her claims after being seen by Archbishop of Canterbury Richard Bancroft, and Bishop of York Samuel Harsnett.33 James also deduced that a different maid had “dissembled such a possession.”34 Although she suffered “strange fits of fuming and foaming” when the verses of the Gospel of Saint John were read, when the “King caused one of his Chaplains to read the same in the Original; the same Maid (possessed, it seems, with an English devil, who understood not a word of Greek) was tame and quiet without any impression upon her.”35 James’s trip to Wimbledon to investigate the suspect witchcraft claims against Frances Brydges was part politics and part personal interest. In his investigation, he discovered the tapestry could not have concealed Swarton well enough to allow her to spy on Frances when she was supposedly writing out her confession to witchcraft, incest, and murder. Even if it had, she could neither see nor hear from behind it. The allegations against Frances were unfounded and she was found innocent on all charges. Sarah Wharton “was sentenced to be whipped at the cart’s tail about the streets, and to do penance at St. Martin’s church.”36 The Lakes were imprisoned and fined upwards of twenty-­two thousand pounds.37 Ten thousand pounds of the fine was awarded to the Crown, five thousand pounds to Frances Brydges, and fifty pounds to Luke Hutton, who was slanderously implicated in a false confession.38 The Lakes had to pay the fines, but they were promised that charges against them would be dismissed if they acknowledged their guilt. One by one, they eventually capitulated to the king’s request. They admitted they had lied: Brydges 32. James began his work on witchcraft after he suspected he and his wife, Anne of Denmark, had been under attack by witches on their honeymoon. For more on this, see Levack,“Possession, Witchcraft, and the Law in Jacobean England,” 1626. 33. See Sharpe, Bewitching of Anne Gunter, 62. 34. Fuller, Mixt Contemplations in Better Times. 35. Ibid.. 36. Burke, Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, 2:207. 37. Dennis, House of Cecil, 129–­30. Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, 4th ed., 2:50. Burke comes up with different total amounts, arguing that “Sir Thomas and Lady Lake were fined ten thousand pounds to the King, five thousand pounds to Lady Exeter, and fifty pounds to Hutton.” See Burke, Historic Lands of England, 2:108. 38. Burke, Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, 2:207.

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was no witch. The relief of having her name cleared, and a fine paid as restitution, could not have lasted very long. She would soon after lose her daughter and her husband. Although this case closed before Elizabeth’s opened, it would not be surprising if it echoed still through the Strand, bringing accusations uncomfortably close to Elizabeth’s neighborhood. Still, perhaps there was yet another branch of the family that presented an even more compelling comparable.

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Without a male heir (William Cecil and Elizabeth Lake did not have children), the contested barony reverted to William Cecil’s second cousin Francis Manners, a relation of Edward Manners, who became the 6th Earl of Rutland, and the 17th Baron de Ros. Manners moved his family to his new estate at Belvoir Castle. However, with the title came something of the misfortune or malediction that appear to have plagued Thomas Cecil’s second wife, Frances, their daughter, Georgi-­Anne Cecil, and his granddaughter, Elizabeth Coke. Manners had bitterly and unsuccessfully petitioned against the matrilineal descent of the Barony of Ross,39 a title he passed to his only remaining heir, his daughter Katherine (the later wife of George Villiers) at his death in 1632. Belvoir Castle shared something of the bad luck that radiated out of Saundridge; the place was plagued by witches and would be haunted by dead children.

Bad Manners Inheriting the Barony de Ros from his deceased cousin William Cecil may have felt like a bit of justice. However, it did not mark the end of Francis Manners’s conflicts. The 6th Earl of Rutland’s branch of the family tree was blighted by infertility, death, and witchcraft. The alleged malefic attack and the legal counterattack were recorded in the renowned pamphlet The Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip Flower (1619). Although the witchcraft supposedly began some seven years earlier, reading the pamphlet that recounted how those

39. Jones, “Disputed Dignity.”

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at Belvoir were being bewitched may have provided the kind of alternate diagnosis that Dorothy Jennings needed to understand what was happening to her daughter. The story at Belvoir Castle began happily enough. According to the pamphleteer, upon taking charge of the estate, Francis Manners “proceeded so honourably in the course of his life, as neither displacing Tenants, discharging servants, denying the accesse of the poore, welcoming of strangers, and performing all the duties of a noble Lord, that hee fastened as it were unto himselfe the love and good opinion of the Countrey wherein he walked the more cheerefully and remarkable, because his honourable Countesse marched arme in arme.”40 With him and his wife, Cecily, at its helm, Belvoir Castle “was a continuall Pallace of entertainment, and a daily receptacle for all sorts both rich and poore.”41 Three women counted themselves among the “poor” entertained at Belvoir: Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Phillip Flower. Joan and Phillip were given jobs as charwomen (cleaning ladies) and Margaret was employed in the castle taking care of the chickens and the laundry. That is until the neighbors started gossiping. The pamphleteer of The Wonderful Discovery traded on negative stereotypes to both describe and discredit the family. In short, he argued that Joan was a bully, Margaret a thief, and Phillip a hussy. Joan was catalogued as a “monstrous malicious woman, full of oathes and curses, and imprecations irreligious,” whose “countenance was estranged, her eyes were fiery and hollow, her speech fell and envious [and] her demeanor, strange and exotick.”42 She was a tyrant in her community, frightening anyone who dared displease her, cursing and threatening revenge against any and all slights. Her daughters may not have had “ill tongues,” but Margaret allegedly had light fingers. She supposedly came and went from the castle at all hours, stole small goods, and otherwise maintained base and debasing company. Moral laxity ran in the blood. Phillip had a torrid affair with Thomas Simpson, “who presumed to say, that shee had bewitched him: for hee had no power to leave her, and was as hee supposed marvellously altred both in m[in]de and body, since her acquainted company.”

40. Anon., Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip Flower, sig. C2. 41. Ibid., sig. C2. 42. Ibid., sig. C3.

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When Margaret was fired, Joan grew “past all shame and Woman-­ hood, and many times cursed them all that were the cause of this discontentment [the dismissal of her daughter] and made her so loathsome to her former familiar friends, and beneficiall acquaintance.”43 She allegedly orchestrated numerous attacks against the Manners family after they had dismissed Margaret from their employ without just cause. She may have sworn she would make them pay for their folly. And something did happen to the Manners. Francis and Cecily Manners soon became extremely ill with “sicknesse and extraordinary convuxlsions,” sickness that led to infertility.44 Francis Manners Jr. was “severely tormented by [fits] and most barbarously and inhumanely tortured by a strange sickness”; his elder brother Henry sickened and perished.45 And Katherine was, at “many times in great danger of life, through extreame maladies and unusuall fits.”46 Joan, Margaret, and Phillip were seen culpable and were soon indicted for attempted murder by means of magic. Margaret confessed that, on her mother Joan’s instructions, she had taken a “peece of a handkercher of the Lady Katherine the Earles daughter, and her mother put it into hot water, & then taking it out, rub[be]d it on Rutterkin, bidding him flye, and go.”47 Whereas Rutterkin had been successfully used against Francis and Cecily Manners and their sons, Henry and Francis, the cat had no power over the girl “to hurt her.”48 Unsuccessfully powered, it seems, by their familiar spirit, this bit of image magic, a cursed handkerchief, may have acted as a model for the cat-­stick, which Elizabeth suggests she was cursed with (see chapter 4). She may well have heard the story firsthand from Katherine Manners herself. The Flowers’ story did not end as well as Katherine’s. Joan Flower died on the way to her trial; Sir Henry Hobart and Sir Edward Bromley tried her daughters, Margaret and Phillip. They testified against her and one another, claiming that their mother had instructed them on how to use image magic to attack the Earl of Rutland’s family. King James, said

43. Ibid., sigs. C4–­C4v. 44. Ibid., sigs. F2v–­F3. 45. Ibid., sigs. F2v–­F3. 46. Ibid., sigs. F2v–­F3. 47. Ibid., sigs. D2, Dv–­D2. 48. Ibid., sigs. D2, Dv–­D2.

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to be moved by the Mannerses’ torturous loss, claimed to rethink his increasing skepticism. James Howel, a friend of Kenelem Digby, reported that for “a great while, [the king] was loath to believe there were witches; but that which happened to my Lord Francis of Rutland’s children convinced him [otherwise].”49

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Among these many tragic stories tied to Exeter’s children, it is hard to ascertain whose tale so haunted Margaret Russell that she felt compelled to stop Jennings’s phlebotomy. The most likely contender for the position of poltergeist was Georgi-­Anne Cecil, whose early death made her an especially provocative example of what happened when children were bled. However, in invoking the Cecil name, Margaret Russell also invoked a haunting hydra of stories that align the name Exeter to the preternatural. Dorothy Jennings certainly knew the Cecil name. Robert Cecil had been involved in deciding her financial fate. She most likely knew Thomas Cecil and the implications of invoking Exeter’s name. His second wife and Georgi-­Anne’s mother, Frances Brydges, was publicly slandered as an incestuous adulteress and a witch. His son-­in-­law Edward Coke helped define witchcraft. His granddaughter Frances was only a year older than Elizabeth, when, three years before Elizabeth was being bewitched, Coke tortured her until, surprisingly and perhaps out of physical proximity, she agreed to marry John Villiers, a madman and the brother of George Villiers. However, it would have been the fate of the Manners family, particularly the suffering of the young Katherine Manners, later the wife of George Villiers, that most compellingly brought to mind the possibility of easily enacted maleficum against the nobility. The only heir to survive the bewitching at Belvoir, Katherine Manners became a very wealthy woman before she became the wife of the king’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham George Villiers, in 1620.50 Around 1621/22, around the exact time Elizabeth Jennings was being

49. This is contradictory to the tenor of the Daemonologia, which was published long before. See Turner, Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences, 632; Granger, Biographical History of England, 30. 50. Dennis, House of Cecil, 129–­30; Burke and Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage… 4th ed., 1:34.

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bewitched, Katherine Manners’s husband, George Villiers, took possession of and immediately started to renovate York House, his home in the Strand (begrudgingly surrendered by Sir Frances Bacon, who called it the “place my father died and I first breathed”). This made these duo demoniacs, Katherine Manners and Elizabeth Jennings, occasional neighbors.51 They may have been neighbors beforehand too. Francis Manners rented “Rutland House,” a home in the part of the Strand called Durham Rents.52 It seems entirely possible that those at Amen Corner, including Elizabeth herself, knew the fate of the entire family, from Georgi-­Anne Cecil through to Katherine Manners. They were close in proximity and experience. They provided models for how witchcraft happened to the elite and how it might happen to her.

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For her part, Elizabeth may not have even registered the threat of phlebotomy or understood what the fate of Georgi-­Anne Cecil was meant to represent. But Dorothy Jennings understood the meaning of the Cecil name. It means she needed to choose medicine as a treatment and to think of maleficium as a cause. She chose a course of therapy that addressed both: she let Foxe bleed out whatever disease or devil was torturing her daughter. This line of reasoning had precedent. Robert Brigges, the melancholic demoniac temporarily dispossessed by Foxe’s own father, was bled and purged. Joseph Blagrave’s later astrological-­medical manual suggested phlebotomy as the most powerful medicine and counter-magic. He bled the maid living at Newton near Newbery in the County of Berks back to health after her bewitchment.53 And so the scalpels came out at Amen Corner too. The results of this final medical assault were mixed. Although Jennings does not die, as Russell warned she might, she does not recover either. Rather, the child passes further through the veil and slowly disappears into

51. “York House,” in Survey of London, vol. 18, St. Martin-in-the-Fields II: The Strand, 51–60. See also Weinreb et al., London Encylopedia, 3rd ed, 1036; Sainsbury, “Duke of Buckingham’s York House.” 52. “Salisbury House,” in Survey of London, vol. 18, St. Martin-­in-­the-­Fields II: The Strand, 120–­23. 53. Blagrave, Blagraves Astrological Practice of Physick, 122, 126.

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something that looks like lunacy and prophecy. After four days of fevered silence, Elizabeth is heard to chat in snatches with invisible figures and speak with spirits. From that moment on, Elizabeth is no longer simply a sick girl. She is being bewitched.

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Chapter Four

Models and Accusations for Being Bewitched Elizabeth suffers like a demoniac. She has fits, numbed and palsied limbs, convulsions, and memory lapses. If Elizabeth had access to a library like Northampton’s at Syon House, or could have visited John Dee’s close-­by archive (as postulated in chapter 1), she would have had opportunity to read all about other possessions. Bewitchment narratives, vivid accounts of the sweat and stench, provided guidelines and a gridwork on which other possessions might be built. These popular print pamphlets, like those that recounted her neighbor Katherine Manners’s plight, salaciously sang out what the bewitched had been experiencing for the previous forty years: they had been transmitting supposed supernatural phenomenon though bodily gesture. The trend began early. In the decade following John Phillip’s publication The Examination and Confession of Certaine Wytches (1566), the account of Mother Agnes Waterhouse’s alleged attacks on her neighbors, detailed accounts of what it meant to be bewitched appeared in print. In 1579, Mother Staunton was accused of bewitching William Turner’s child who “was presently taken with suche a sweate and coldnesse of bodie, and fell into suche shrickyng and staryng, wringyng and writhyng of the bodie to and fro, that all that sawe it, were doubtfull of the life of it.”1 The next

1. Anon., Detection of Damnable Driftes Practised by Three Witches, 4.

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few decades continued to catalogue well-­known symptoms. The bewitched felt violently victimized. They were afflicted by a strange sickness. But they were also considered credible accusers. When no one could quite figure out what was happening to them, being bewitched brought a kind of supernatural sense to the senselessness of their suffering. So although they may have spent much of their time in mute paralysis or babbling delirium, when they seemed coherent their words could start a chain reaction that could land a woman in jail, in the stocks, or hanging from a noose. The last chapter looked at what it meant when Russell invoked the Cecil name; she meant to warn against phlebotomy, but inadvertently introduced the idea of witchcraft into an already emotionally charged atmosphere where it ignited suspicions. This chapter will look at what it meant to be bewitched in terms of personal experience and preternatural authority. It will begin by exploring some examples of demoniacs and look at how bewitchment played out across the senses and through the body. It will then look at the textual beginning of Jennings’s experience to see how she might have come to the belief that she was being bewitched. For instance, she could have read about famous examples like Mary Glover or heard haunting stories of sick girls from closer to her own peer group, like Helen and Elizabeth Fairfax. These cases may have been models for her behavior. Expanding out from the lived experience of bewitchment, the chapter will then suggest that very inexplicable and iterative nature of her sickness became a behavioral model that Elizabeth recognized put her in the company of other preternatural sufferers. It takes four months from the time she is first frightened for her sickness to fall into a pattern (it waxes and wanes and will not be cured) but there is no explanation for her shift from suffering to condemnation. It is quite possible that leading questions were omitted from BL MS 36674; they were often omitted from witch texts for the sake of brevity, clarity, or to efface the bias they introduced. However, it seems that iteration is the key to understanding and once she comes to the conviction that her suffering is supernatural, she places blame and suggests a cure. The chapter will conclude with an interrogation of the explanation Elizabeth herself offers for her sickness. She recounts a scenario where she observes and experiences her bewitchment at once. With an eagle-­eye view that spans out across time and geography, she indicates that four witches—­Jane Flower,

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Katharine Stubbs, the Countess, and Nan Wood—­attacked her siblings and suspended her in suffering for the sheer joy of watching her being bewitched. Here we find the first accusation against Russell. In Elizabeth’s mind, she is more than a victim or a witness. She is an investigator with a detailed criminal case in hand. She provides a manifest of suspects. She gives a timeline to the crime. She suggests the best course of action for catching and stopping them. Put the Countess in prison, she advises, then all would be well.

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Being bewitched was an equal opportunity ailment; rich and poor alike were sick with it. Bewitchments can be understood in a number of different ways: a demoniac might have felt under siege by a possessing agent that causes a loss of bodily and cognitive control. Or she might have experienced a kind of parasitic possession by a witch or a witch’s familiar that causes physical, mental, and/or spiritual illness such as despair, madness, lunacy, or hysteria. Some combination of the two plagued Elizabeth Jennings. However, recognizing the role of environmental and social influences in creating meaning allows us to perceive the ways in which her spectatorship validated, propagated, and reproduced Elizabeth’s bewitchment experience. Historically, the witch seemed to hold all the cards. She could harm someone with very little provocation: turning her away from a door or casting her out of a home would be enough. She could attack with words or familiar magic: an angry mumble or poorly timed bit of concern could become a curse. She was frightening, but far from infallible. Witchcraft could be negated by easy acts of counter-­magic. Fire was one of a catalogue of especially efficacious curatives. Heat could be applied to objects being bewitched: a heated knife could be thrust into beer that would not brew or milk that would not curd. Animals that died mysteriously could be incinerated to stop the spread of bewitchment. Burning a bit of thatch from her roof could influence the witch to come to the scene of a crime. The cruelty and brutality demonstrated in some accounts of counter-­magic crossed age, gender, and social status. It was supported by and practiced in tight social networks. It was cast as a curative; with little effort and surprising efficacy counter-­magic undid most maleficence. Its most powerful manifestation, however, was the legal system: the examination, the confession, and the noose

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stripped the witch of her potency and undid her magic. This was the route Francis Manners took to stop three witches. It was the one that Dorothy Jennings would later turn to. There are some wild stories of the wondrous happenings around possessions and bewitchments, including the bizarre evacuation of pins, nails, and shells. Demoniacs found themselves bedridden and besieged by spirits or at war with them. The bewitched claimed intuitive knowledge of when they were bewitched and by whom. Elizabeth, like other demoniacs and bewitched, seems to enjoy wielding previously unknown power, or taking advantage of the opportunity for outright dissembling.2 Bewitchment experiences also create a window through which readers can see the personal and visceral emotional starting points where possessions began. Beyond the hype, the bewitched—­ like the demoniac—­ suffered strange and violent sickness and psychological distress. The bewitched were obsessed, possessed, enchanted, and haunted. They felt churlish, depressed, angry, and suicidal. They raged. They thrashed wildly as though at war with themselves.3 They seemed demonically fueled and did things they simply should not be able to do.4 Their tongues extended; they frothed at the mouth. They suffered bizarre and frightening muscular spasms and tics, violent gestures, raving, raging torments and contortions, twisted paralysis, and spoke in hushed and choked whispers. 2. A number of possessions were debunked before Elizabeth Jennings was bewitched. These widely publicized cases would have provided Elizabeth a model of possession behaviors while serving as stern warnings against gullible belief in the phenomenon. In 1574 at St. Paul’s Cross, Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pindar confessed to faking their possessions; see Hutchinson, Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, 27. Mildred Norrington, the “base daughter of Alice Norrington,” often seen “roaring, crying, striving, and gnashing of teeth, and otherwise with mowing, and other terrible countenances, and was so strong in the maid, that four men could scarce hold her down.” She confessed under examination that she had faked and performed her possession as proof; see Scot, Discovery of Witchcraft, 71–­72. In 1582, Elizabeth Orton confessed that her 1579 interactions with the other world were feigned; see Hutchinson, Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, 30. The Denham demoniacs were discovered as far as a decade after their exorcisms in 1585; Harsnett, Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. Also see Brownlow and Harsnett, Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the Devils of Denham. King James discovered the feigned possession of a celebrity demoniac by having the Gospel of Saint John read to her in Greek; where before she had “strange fits of fuming and foaming,” when the “Chaplains read the same in the Original; the same Maid (possessed, it seems, with an English devil, who understood not a word of Greek) was tame and quiet without any Impression upon her.” See Fuller, Mixt Contemplations. 3. Mary Hall, for instance, is taken with fits “so strong and violent, that Four or Five Persons were scarce able to hold her.” Anne Styles, for instance, has such bad fits, “the violence thereof had wearied Six men that held her”; see Bower, Doctor Lamb Revived, 19. The maid in Evil Spirit Cast-Out was seen “twisting and turning her body up and down, rowling about the room”; see Anon., Evil Spirit Cast-­Out, 5. 4. Anon., Great News from the West of England, 2.

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They saw strange things and most importantly, they, or someone close to them, supposed that they were cursed, or “forespoken” or “overspoken.”5 In these ways, with symptoms that might express other medical conditions, Elizabeth’s body speaks her bewitchment.

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Bewitchment would not have been Foxe’s first diagnosis. Normative illnesses, even those that seemed incurable, lasting, and severe (such as those associated with apoplexy, epilepsy, convulsions, fevers, and worms) were, according to the skeptical Reginald Scot, misattributed to bewitchment by “ignorant parents” and “unskilled physicians.”6 The problem seemed to be with scale. Popular apologies by men like John Darrell hypothesized that something supernatural was surely transpiring when myriad maladies came on in an intense onslaught. Darrell, whose authority was garnered from his exorcism of the Lancashire Seven, argued that only bewitchment could cause a concordance of so many diseases. The bewitched shook, coughed, and convulsed. They grew weak, quiet, and stopped eating.7 He asked, could it simply be that “their swelling [is] arising from the Mother: their foaming from the Epilepsie, [and] their extraordinarie strength from mania?8 Could they be systemically plagued with “Melancholy, Lunacie, Phrensy, Epilepsy, Mother, Convulsion, and the Crampe?”9 No, he concludes. Only something preternatural could simultaneously attack so many physical systems. In an environment where witchcraft was a felony and when all other medical efforts had failed, it was reasonable to see the sick as bedeviled instead of diseased.10 This was the case with Jennings. It was not only the lack of a cure that makes Elizabeth seem supernaturally sick. Rather, it is how her sickness was manifest: her suffering 5. Stearns, “‘Strangely Handled in All Her Lyms,’” 468. 6. Scot, Discovery of Witches, 5. 7. Stearns, “‘Strangely Handled in All Her Lyms,’” 467–­69. 8. Darrel, Replie of John Darrell, 6–­7. 9. Ibid. 10. Jane Stetton also lay “for the time as if she were deprived of life”; M. Y., Hartford-­shire wonder, 5. The elongated pause between life and death remained a symptom in later accounts as well. Matthew Hale’s Tryal of Witches, an account of the Lowestoft witch trials of 1664, contains the same kinds of possession-­paralysis as does Richard Head’s account of Agatha Shipton, who is perceived to be “in a trance, or else she is bewitched”; Head, Life and Death of Mother Shipton, 5.

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synchronizes to the clock. About the end of February, Elizabeth sighs every night at the same time. After midnight, her fits last four hours. Within two weeks, she begins to have severe fits, convulsions, and paralysis. Aboute the end of February, every night after midnight she had a great fitt of sighing and groning oppressing divers pains in her knees, armes, head & hart very suddainly removing from one of these pats [parts] to another, and at last being settled in her head and hart, she note hear lie continually sighing & groning 4 houors at the least as if death were att hand. Apart from their extremity, it is the regularity of her symptoms that makes Elizabeth’s illness look like bewitchment. The predictablity of suffering was a defining element of bewitchment. For instance, Anne Myler’s fits appeared “almost fro[m] houre to houre, and had never above three houres rest in the day & night.”11 Mary Glover’s fits “were wont to kepe their returnes as due the tyde,” except, of course, when they did not.12 Although they might endure any number of fits on any given day, when asked when their fits would end, Jane, Mary, and Grace Throckmorton would reply “we shall presently enter into another fitt like unto this, and then you shall heare newes, for by that time the two howers will be almost spent: yet after we have told the newes we shall have a paying fit, but it shall be short.”13 Helen and Elizabeth Fairfax, over a series of four days, allegedly also experienced simultaneous trances.14 The regularity of fits signified the extent of her torments. A girl whose fits appeared at the same time, all the time, was not just under attack, she was under siege. Moreover, when behavior becomes regular, however horrific it is, it also becomes normative. As with chronic illness, for the bewitched these experiences are not just part of a bad day, they are a new way of being. Elizabeth’s symptoms continue to compound. By 17 March, she is ravaged by an “exceeding great fitt of strange convulsions, noo part of her bodie being free, which lasted the greatest part of the night.” She is broken and shaken, her “understanding had very much weakned, and her mem-

11. Fisher, Copy of a Letter, 5. 12. Swan, True and Breife Report, of Mary Glover’s Vexation and of her Deliverance, 16. 13. Anon., Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 62–­63. 14. Fairfax, Daemonologia, 66–­68.

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ory of all things past quite lost.” And shortly after “all her right side was benumbed, and for her right arme lost all motion and sense as if it had bin taken with a dead palsie [and] in her fitts her dead arme was as violently moved as any other part of her bodie.” This short circuit in the extremities was a certain sign of bewitchment; it often signaled the part of the body that was being occupied or attacked. For instance, Mary Glover’s fingers stretch outright as “stiff as iron” and the left side of her body was “benumbed.”15 Mary Hall’s possession “took her first in one foot with a trembling shaking and Convulsive motion, afterwards it possessed both; she would sit stamping very much; she had sometimes like Epileptick, sometimes like Convulsive fits, and strange ejaculations.”16 While Thomas Spatchet’s fits were sometimes “benumming him,” at other times his legs “would shake and no other part, and then his whole Body, Chair and all in Violent Motion.”17 Demoniacs like Jennings suffered prolonged attacks from two vantages—­they felt excruciating pain and then nothing at all—­making it impossible to habituate to or recover from their torments. By now, Elizabeth is no longer just sick. She is bewitched.

Dazzling Demoniacs There were a few major accounts beyond that of the bewitchment at Belvoir Castle that may have informed how Elizabeth is being bewitched and how those around her interpreted her state. Her physician Simeon Foxe would have been familiar with the bewitching of Mary Glover.18 Glover, the fourteen-­year-­old daughter of Timothy Glover, lived in the parish of All Hallows in Upper Thames Street (about five blocks down from St. Paul’s Cathedral and close to Amen Corner). Glover’s troubles began in 1603 after she informed on Elizabeth Jackson, telling her mistress about Jackson’s

15. Swan, True and Breife Report, of Mary Glover’s Vexation and of her Deliverance, 37. 16. Drage, Daimonomageia, 32. 17. Petto, Faithful Narrative of the Wonderful and Extraordinary Fits which Mr. Tho. Spatchet (late of Dunwich and Cookly) was Under by Witchcraft. 18. Glover has been the subject of a great deal of critical interest; as such, this section will provide only a brief sketch of her medical problems. For substantial treatment of Mary Glover, see MacDonald, Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London. Also see Scull, Hysteria, 1–­6; Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England, 287–­90; Levack, Witchcraft Sourcebook, 249–­51; Sands, Demon Possession in Elizabethan England, 175–­190; Coventry, Demonic Possession on Trial, 21–­33; and Connor, Dumbstruck, 118–­39.

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“subtile and importunat begging,” after the two women had fallen out.19 Seemingly oblivious to the bad blood, Glover’s mother sent her to see Jackson on an errand, a chore Mary undertook in a very ill humor and one Jackson did not welcome. Outraged at Mary Glover’s presumption for arriving at her threshold at all, Jackson allowed the girl into her house and quickly locked the door. For over an hour she grimly harangued the adolescent: it had byn better that you had never med[d]led with my daughters apparrell; And then rayled at her, with many threates and cursings, wishing an evill death to light upon her. And when she had geven her such kind of intertaynment the space of an hower, at last she let the mayde goe, with this farewell; my daughter shall have clothes when thou art dead and rotten.20 Glover looked and acted differently after this encounter. She grew pale and wan. When Glover saw Jackson again her throat closed up. Her family began to worry. They called reinforcements. Robert Sheremen, a fellow of the College of Physicians,21 treated her for the tightness in her throat, diagnosing tonsillitis. When he could find no other diagnosis, even that of hysteria, that could explain the girl’s suffering, he finally suggested “her affliction did exceed both arte and nature.”22 Glover was also seen by seven-­time president of the college Thomas Monderford, whose expertise in melancholia allowed him to get as far as dismissing hysteria as a disorder, but who, after more than two months of treatment, could not provide definitive answer on what was ailing Glover.23 Glover kept getting sicker. Her symptoms grew more complex and her fits redoubled when Jackson was close. According to John Swan, her deliverance minister, she suffered blindness, a pale pallor, muteness, and dumbness; her belly, breast, and throat became swollen; she moved in frantic fits and lost feeling in her extremities. She suffered vexations, perturbations, and torments in irregular but unrelenting sequences.24 Glover wept and prayed, spat, raged, barked, contorted, and twisted, uttered

19. Bradwell, Mary Glover’s Late Woeful Case, sigs. 3v–­3r. 20. Ibid. 21. MacDonald, Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London, xii. 22. Swan, True and Breife Report, of Mary Glover’s Vexation and of her Deliverance, 3. 23. MacDonald and Jorden, Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London, xii. 24. Swan, True and Breife Report, of Mary Glover’s Vexation and of her Deliverance, 16–­17.

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incoherent and inhuman sounds, such as “cheh cheh” or “keck keck,” threw off men, and fell down before she finally predicted her torments were “almost almost” over.25 In the end, four more doctors and a divine weighed in on Glover’s torments. The minister John Swan treated Glover as possessed, and the physician Stephen Bradwell diagnosed her as bewitched. Whereas John Argent (who served as college president eight times) counseled that she was faking or plagued with a natural malady, Francis Herring and Dr. Spenser supposed her torments had a supernatural, as opposed to a natural, cause. Finally Edward Jorden, whose subsequent publication A Brief Discourse marked an important diagnostic move from bewitchment to hysteria, diagnosed Mary Glover as a hysteric in 1603. Elizabeth Jackson was convicted of bewitching Glover, and was imprisoned and pilloried for her supposed crimes. The bewitching of Mary Glover played out across three pamphlets and a courtroom; the details provided by BL MS 36674 are skeletal in compare. Thomas Monderford and John Argent resisted diagnoses of witchcraft; Foxe would likely do the same. The presidents of the College of Physicians (if not all their fellows) stood together in defining what modern medicine was and what it was not. Medicine was not counter-­magic or exorcism. It seems from Foxe’s reaction to Elizabeth that he may have suspected hysteria in Jennings’s case too. Foxe may have been familiar with the work done by John Cotta (whose opinions on phlebotomy appear in chapter 2) on medical case studies of possession behaviors. They provided contemporary equivalents to the ancient physicians Edward Jorden cited for treatments for hysteria. Cotta was one of several physicians who treated the thirteen-­year-­old daughter of a “gentleman of ancient name and seate in Warwickshire” in 1608.26 She was severely ill with fits that were so terrifying that some fervently believed she was bewitched. The adolescent suffered from afternoon attacks: sneezing, staring, grimacing, grating and grinding her teeth, and exhibiting convulsions, paralysis, tumbling, and a kind of automatic hairdressing.27 Cotta concludes,

25. Ibid., 13–­17. 26. Cotta, Short Discoverie of the Unobserued Dangers, 61, 62. 27. Ibid., 61, 62.

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however, that the girl was not bewitched. Two major factors supported this diagnosis. First, the young woman recuperated when she undertook his recommended treatment: she was sent to Bath and recovered her health there. Second, her parents supported the purely medical diagnosis, not only because it made sense but also because the alternative was unreasonable and unpalatable. Their child could not have been bewitched because at “no time in the height of their daughters affliction, or a good space after, could [they] resolve upon whom with any just shew of reason to cast the suspition of bewitching.”28 Cotta’s account was able to provide narrative closure that BL MS 36674 can only gesture to, and as such could dismiss the possibility of supernatural causes. His reasoning was simple: the girl simply had not done anything to deserve being bewitched. Presumably, however, neither had Elizabeth. It would appear that whatever Foxe may have thought, Dorothy Jennings was willing to believe her daughter had been bewitched for having committed a petty crime: denying a witch a pin. After all, in another part of the peerage, their lessors, for equally insignificant slights, had attacked girls. As Dorothy and her daughter may have been familiar with Katherine Manners’s story, they may also have heard rumors of what was happening to the Fairfax girls in York. Edward Fairfax’s daughters’ bewitchment would surely have been of great interest to her. Fairfax’s daughters were the same age and rank as Elizabeth Jennings, and were, according to their father, obviously being bewitched. Like BL MS 36674 and many other ephemeral accounts of witchcraft, Fairfax’s Demonologia was written for an audience. Fairfax often spoke to his “Reader” in asides, but as with BL MS 36674, the manuscript was never published nor was it finished.29 The manuscript recounts how Fairfax scrambled for answers and retribution for more than two years. He did quasi-­scientific tests that look like counter-­magic on a wicked penny that Lady Dorothy Fairfax had accepted (around November 23, 1621) from Margaret Waite Senior as a tariff on her corn sales. This coin was never where it was supposed to be and would not melt in the fire; it would come to haunt Helen. Edward finally “dissolved [it] with brimstone and

28. Ibid., 61–­68. 29. Fairfax, Demonologia, ed. Grange.

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fire and beat it to powder upon a stone.”30 He interviewed his daughters at length. Out of his studies, he composed one hundred and twenty pages of relentlessly meticulous text, detailing the daily and, at times, hourly incidents exposed during the possession of his daughters. He highlighted the intersections between their possession and the possession of the neighbor girl Maud Jeffrays. He recounted frustrated legal developments. Fairfax took accused witches before the York Assize twice.31 Like Jennings, Helen and Elizabeth Fairfax were profoundly and performatively ill. In fact, they were sick in the same ways, at almost exactly the same moment as Elizabeth Jennings; so similar are their symptoms that one might think the girls were co-­conspirators. Since Simeon Foxe was not making Dorothy’s daughter better, Dorothy began to believe something happened to Elizabeth like that which happened to her neighbor Katherine Manners, like that which was still happening to Helen and Elizabeth Fairfax. She believed her child had been bewitched. She had only one way to set things right: she could pluck the culprit’s name from her daughter’s dazed speeches. She could then take that name to the legal authorities, in the hopes that they would use the threat of the cell and the noose as counter-­magic where the physician’s knife had failed.

Preternatural Authority The demoniacs who came before Elizabeth and suffered alongside her spoke with an authority that accompanied their preternatural state. They diagnosed themselves, claiming that a witch, or a number of witches, had caused their suffering. They suggested that if the witch were caught, they would be healed. Elizabeth followed suit. Two days after Easter, Elizabeth recovers just enough to begin an unbidden soliloquy-­cum-­deposition. With an authority that makes her sickbed a pulpit, she spontaneously begins to answer the questions that

30. Ibid., 45. 31. The first time, on 1 April 1622, at the York Assize, Fairfax’s case was dismissed. The second, on 8 August 1622, also in York, was before a grand jury and initially seemed to go well. The jurists were impressed with the copious amount of “evidence” Fairfax produced; however, the judge eventually dismissed the charges against the accused. The account ends abruptly after 11 April 1623, with most of the victims having more or less recovered, though the resolution of Elizabeth Fairfax’s possession is left undisclosed.

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had hung heavily around her. She moves between speaking in third person, allowing someone who knew what had happened to speak through her, and speaking for herself, borrowing authority from this invisible second self and from that which comes from being close to death. She claims that medical remedies cannot save her. Her problems cannot be purged, bled, or rubbed away. Her illness is inside of her, but its cause is not. In twinned voices she claims to know the cause and the cure. Uttered with eerie starts and stops, she reveals it. On Thursday, April 25, 1625: in the midst of her accustomed fitt at 6 a clocke in the morning (having bin 4 daies speechles) she spake only these words: Well I thanke you and after a good space of time: how dost thou doo Countesse? and not long after how dost tho doo Jane, and after remained speechles as before: This day she was lett blood, and in her fitt in the afternoone she lay still being drawne spake these words following, distinctly and with an audible voice staying an equall distance of time betwixt each sentence: Jane Flower. Katharine Stubbs. Countesse. Nan Wood. These have bewitched all my mothers children. East, west, north and south, all th[e]se lye. All these are damnable witches. Elizabeth adopts the position taken by prophets, witches, and demoniacs, whose proximity to the supernatural gave them investigative, interpretive, discursive power outside of their regular stations. She sees the details of her bewitchment laid out before her like a living diorama and knows things she otherwise could not. As tempting as it is to try to untangle her speeches, it is almost impossible to do so. And considering she was a sick young girl, it may be fool’s errand to even try. Notwithstanding, it is worth looking at her words, especially those uttered after she being bled, because they were recorded and studied by those around her at the time.

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There were three ways Dorothy Jennings could have interpreted Elizabeth’s words. Firstly, she is a child telling a story peopled by a dramatis personae of characters she knew, including the Countess, Jane Fowler, and Nan Wood. Secondly, Elizabeth is absorbing the anxiety, accusations, and acrimony around her neighbors. Her visitors were worried about her, as well as about their own finances, positions, and properties. Some of them may have been openly hostile to one another. Incorporating fragments from her environment, she composes a composite explanation for her illness and proposes her treatment. Finally, it could be that, in experiencing what Burton diagnosed as “enthusiasms, revelations, and visions  .  .  . obsession or possession of devils, sibylline prophets, and poetical furies,”32 Elizabeth had become lunatic, as her father, John Jennings, had before her. All the explanations would have made sense. However, when vetting imagination or mental illness as alternate explanations, it is critical to understand that the knowledge Elizabeth claims to access is part of the experience of being bewitched. Her two invisible visitors make sense as a part of a history that recounts visions of angels, devils, animal spirits, and witches. Visions were defining elements of preternatural experiences, so much so that they become standard tropes of prophets and possession dissemblers alike. While visions of people, particularly witches, appear often, the majority of visions are linked to the sighting of animals, those suspected of being witch’s familiars. Visions of menacing black dogs with horns, as Agnes Brown imagined Satan, link the animal to the witch.33 A spirit in the form of a dun chicken allegedly regularly appeared to the Throckmorton girls, starting with their uncle Henry Pickering’s visit. This spirit claimed to have been sent by Mother Alice Samuel to torment and vex them, and told them “many things concerning Mother Samuell, insomuch that she coulde doo almost nothing at home for a great time, but the spirit woulde disclose.”34 Margaret Hooper saw a vision of a bear without a head and the image of a child.35 All these examples link accusation with visual and auditory hallucinations—­the sound of thunder, the smell of smoke,36 the sounds of people and animals also appear in bewitchments. The maid

32. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 13. 33. Phillips, Examination and Confession of Certaine Wytches, 28. 34. Anon., Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 33. 35. Anon., Most fearefull and strange newes from the bishoppricke of Durham, 4, 6. 36. Anon., Strange and wonderful news, 6.

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whose case is recounted in News from Old Gravel-lane, for instance, heard “the sudden mewing of kittens.”37 Richard Jones heard a “noise like the croaking of a Toad.”38 The Fairfax children imagined, perhaps, the most elaborate tangle of tormentors. Helen’s dead siblings appeared to her, a foul feline stole her breath, a gentleman devil tempted her to suicide, a boyish spirit threatened to drown her, and devils transformed from a “beast with many horns,” to a calf, to a little dog.39 Helen and Elizabeth shared visions of two cats fighting, a woman, an old man, and a “deformed thing, having the face of a woman, and all the body besides rough and mis-­shapen.”40 However eerie these sights were, it was witches that haunted Helen. She accused Margaret Waite (Sr.), Margaret Waite (Jr.), Jennet Dibble, Margaret Thorpe, Elizabeth Fletcher, and Elizabeth Dickenson of tormenting her. It was the visions, however, she had of the Strange Woman and the Wet Woman that suggested that real people, witches, were out to get Helen. Most demoniacs, at one time or another, claimed to see the witch who was worrying them. This happens to Elizabeth. Four witches torment her. She will soon target one.

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It is difficult to track down all the people the feverish girl named, but it is possible to make some likely suggestions on who could have been the inspiration for Jane Flower, Katharine Stubbs, Countess, and Nan Wood. Why she suspected them to be damnable witches is a bit harder to hypothesize. Although we can come to some idea on why the Countess was named as a witch, for the rest of the women we will have to settle with some suggestion on who they were and how Elizabeth might have known them. The name Jane Flower most strongly invokes the Lincolnshire witches, Joan, Margaret, and Phillip Flower, whose attack on the Manners family is mentioned earlier in the chapter. The name also invokes a Jane Fowler, a name shared by the elder Sir Thomas Fowler’s wife and the younger Sir Thomas

37. Anon., News from Old Gravel-­lane, 2. 38. Glanville, Saducismus Triumphatus, 124. 39. Fairfax, Daemonologia, 38, 39, 60–­61. 40. Ibid., 66–­68.

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Fowler’s daughter (who will be explored in chapter 9). The name may have simply been the name of a local woman in attendance or known to Elizabeth.41 Jennings may have known Katherine Stubbes, as she may have known Katherine Manners, by her place in print. Katherine Emmes, at fifteen years old, married Phillip Stubbes, the author of Anatomy of Abuses (1583) and had two sons by him. After the birth of their first child, she began to prognosticate her death would follow the birth of her second.42 It did. At twenty, she fell severely ill. She lived only six more weeks, and during that time she became a prophet-­cum-­demoniac who spoke piously and wrestled with the devil. She would not have been able to look in on Elizabeth. Stubbes’s torments, as recorded in A Crystal Glass for Christian Women (1591), end well before Elizabeth becomes ill. However, Elizabeth may have well been familiar with Stubbes’s story as it was reprinted numerous times.43 Nan Wood could be one of a few different women. “Nan” is a shortened form, for instance, of the names Elizabeth, Nancy, and Agnes. “Nan” is also a common term of reference for “grandmother,” a colloquial for any older woman. For instance, Nan Arpe is short for Elizabeth Arpe, a neighbor in the Strand who acted as witness to the onset of Elizabeth’s bewitching (see below and chapter 11). It seems more likely, however, that Nan Wood is the short form of Agnes Wood, a woman who lived with her daughter (of the same name) in Crows’ Cross, Clerkenwell. It could be that the mother and daughter simply looked like witches to the young Jennings, or maybe that they had reputations that made them slightly scary. The acrimony and resentment that accompany most witch accusations slowly compounded and Wood spent years garnering a bad reputation.44 She appeared with her daughter in the Middlesex session records in 1613 as having been involved in a neighborhood conflict.

41. Don Foster suggests this Jane Flower may have been a local woman, although I have been unable to find a reference to one; Foster, “Bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings.” Foster’s class transcription was a lucky discovery in the early days of this study, and his permission to use it for the Witches in Early Modern England project is very much appreciated. 42. See Travitsky, Paradise of Women, 44–­46; Pollard, Shakespeare’s Theater, 115–­23; Mascuch, Origins of the Individualist Self, 55–­70. 43. See Foster, “Bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings.” 44. 20 July, 11 James I [A.D. 1613]. Hugh Wood of Cow Cross, collier, and Alice his wife, Thomas Pickering of the same, blacksmith, and George Gittens of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, glover, for the said Hugh and Alice, and for Agnes Wood of Cow Cross, widow, and Agnes Wood her daughter of the same, spinster, to keep the peace towards Susan Clerke of Clerkenwell, spinster, who swore the peace against them; and of William Price, cobbler, and Owen Powell, fletcher, both of the same, for the said Susan to keep the peace towards the said Alice. Sess. Roll 525/74, 75, 76; Sess. Reg. 2/7.

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She also appeared some fifteen years earlier as part of a violent mob attack against Alice Hayse, prompted by Hayse’s choice to enclose her property in 1597.45 Intriguingly, Agnes Wood was also referenced one year later in 1598, during the inquisition over John Taylor’s estate. This may have been a high-­stakes investigation: Elizabeth’s father, Sir John Jennings, was at the hearing, as were the mayor and William Harvey (who is referenced in chapters 2 and 6).46 That being said, Whitechapel is some distance away from Clerkenwell, so this may not be the same Agnes Wood. Wood is a relatively common surname, but this does not preclude the possibility that Wood relocated to Clerkenwell. We do know that a widow named Agnes Wood was tried in 1613 and alive in 1622. Her death is recorded as happening in 1627/28 in Clerkenwell. As for the Countess, Russell was the most familiar of these women. She was, quite simply, present and, as with many accusations of witchcraft, proximity was culpability. For instance, Mother Alice Samuel, neighbor to the north of Robert and Elizabeth Throckmorton’s home, came to see their daughter Jane when she became suddenly and violently ill, with a “strange kinde of sickenes and distemperature of body,” as if “shee had binne infected with the running paulsie.”47 Jane, who had been cradled in a woman’s arms, suddenly cried out to her grandmother, “looke where the old witch sitteth (pointing to the said mother Samuell) did you ever see (said the Child) one more like a witch than she is: Take off her blacke-­thrumbed cappe, for I cannot abide to looke on her.”48 Elizabeth moves from speaking in first and third person, targeting the Countess as she broadly invokes the hundred witches executed in the West Country, specifically signaling the four women who bewitched her and her siblings, and finally identifying the woman who first frightened and bewitched her. I have sent this childe to speaker to show all these witches. Set up a great sprig of Rosemarie in the middle of the house. Put Countesses in prison this childe willbee well. If she had bin long agoo all th’other had bin alive.

45. Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1589, 182–­89. 46. “Inquisitions: 1597,” Abstracts of Inquisitiones Post Mortem for the City of London, 245–­56. 47. Anon., Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 3. 48. Ibid., 4.

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Them she bewitched by a catsticke. Till then I shall lye in great paine. Till then by fitts I shalbe in great extremitie They dyed in great miserie. A hundred more have bin hanged in the West Country. The gutts and garbadge and all that was within them was drawne nyne waise. No man co[u]ld tell without. They had power over all them to bewitch them to death but me And me in great miserie but to live Noo bodie knowse what ayles me within. Whe she is in prison then I shalbee well, now till then by fitts She came first of all that eve my mother sawe her in the kitchin And Nan Arpe was there. . . . And noo sooner was her fitt ended but she remained speechles and in her palsie as before. This citation of acquaintances serves a personal and political purpose. It allows Jennings to publicly self-­identify as a suffering demoniac, and in the tradition of demoniacs, calls for the witch to be punished so that she might be set free. This elaborate, sad, and cruel narrative is spoken with authority and conviction: Jennings names her tormentors. She recounts specifics she could not have known, or should not have known. As Katherine Manners’s siblings were slaughtered by witchcraft, her siblings (the “others” Elizabeth mentions) were also bewitched to death. She is made to ingest the pin she refused to give away. She becomes bewitched. And her mother and Nan Arpe knew it.

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How is the crime actually committed? As we saw in chapter 3, under King James’s 1604 proclamation, it was against the law to lame or take lives through witchcraft. Although English witchcraft was often done through familiar spirits, it was not done so exclusively. Jennings mentions rosemary as a possible magical medium. Rosemary is popularly associated with counter-­magic to bring about protection, fidelity, and remembrance.

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Rather than suggesting it was a means of attacking her, Elizabeth may be demanding rosemary is used to keep the evil spirits away from her.49 The protective spell comes after the fact, however. Russell has already bewitched her, Elizabeth claims, with a catstick (a two pronged bat used in the games of Tip-­cat and Trap-­ball).50 The presence of a cursed object makes some sense. Katherine Manners was bewitched by a cursed object; her kerchief is rubbed on Rutterkin, Flower’s familiar-­spirit-­cum-­cat, as sympathetic bad magic. Magical objects were not impervious, however. Helen Fairfax once found a hazel staff belonging to the witch that plagued her: the Strange Woman. The Strange Woman, who appeared only to Helen, confessed to leaving the staff out in the open as a bewitchment-­contaminant. She then tried to wrestle it from Helen’s hands. Fairfax escaped with it, ran inside, and held it in the fire to burn the spell off of it and render it benign again.51 Why hadn’t Elizabeth put her hand to counter-­magic? It could be that counter-­magic would bring Elizabeth too close to witchcraft. Helen Fairfax acted without her father’s consent when she burnt the staff. Her father, Edward Fairfax, saw counter-­magic, as usually practiced by “the sewing of certain words in set forms, the heating of iron tongs, the scratching of the witch and the like,” as having been devised by the devil, although he admits to often being advised and tempted to try scratching.52 He does not allow his daughters to scratch any actual witches (although they are shockingly violent to the apparitions of them) and decides that the law that defines witches will be how he defeats them. Although Elizabeth had the power to accuse, she explains that she does not have the power to act. That was the very essence of her curse. She needs help. She needs to be unwitched. It is the legal system that must do the job. Elizabeth twice claims that she would hover in between life and death, in extremities of pain and anguish, until it was used to end her bewitchment. Although her claims might read as vindictive, they are understood at the time as prophetic. Spectacular prophetic powers were a signal of demonic influence.

49. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 75. 50. Ironically, the essential salts of rosemary were described as “almost like a Tip-­Cat, which Boys play with, split down the midle”; Grew, Anatomy of Plants, 265. 51. Fairfax, Demonologia, 90. 52. Ibid., 88.

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Like many of the bewitched that preceded her, Elizabeth predicted the timing of their torments. Eleanor Holland and Elizabeth Hardman, for instance, accurately predicted the number and length of fits they would suffer; they claimed their information came courtesy of a white dove.53 Demoniacs likewise identify their tormentors. Despite being blindfolded, Mary Glover hummed “hang her” through her nose and tossed and turned when Mother Sawyer was present.54 They predicted events: the Throckmorton children foresaw that Joan Samuel would hide in her home to escape their father. They were also able, even when separated by great distance, to tell what happened during their siblings’ fits.55 Demoniacs peered into the preternatural. Helen Fairfax speaks to dead siblings during a series of trances.56 Elizabeth Jennings may not have spoken to the dead, but speaks of things she should not or could not know. Dorothy was left with two options: either her daughter was speaking prophetically or nonsensically, or she was a demoniac or demented. It is easy to see why Dorothy wanted to believe the former rather than the latter. Elizabeth’s utterances of the unknowable are, like her fits, heard by a group of worthy witnesses. Their presence acted as proof and these witnesses watched witchcraft happen. The list of witnesses that established the veracity of her experience includes John Latch, the writer William Giddings, Surgeon. Mrs. Katharine Percie Mrs. Faith Saxton Agnes Faulkner, a Servant. These persons came after she had began to speake. The Lady Jennings. Mrs. Elizabeth Arpe. Mrs. Ann Bradborne57 Katharine Browne, a Servant

53. Darrel, True Narration of the Strange and Greuous Vexation by the Devil, of 7. Persons in Lancashire, and William Somers of Nottingham, 2. 54. Bradwell, Mary Glover’s Late Woeful Case, 18–­19. 55. Anon., Most Strange and Admirable Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys, 35–­36, 45–­47. 56. Fairfax, Daemonologia, 37. 57. This may be Anne Broadbourne, daughter of Sir Humphrey Bradbourne.

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The presence of these people speaks to the increasing gravity Jennings is accumulating. Something was happening in Foxe’s rooms at Amen Corner that was worth witnessing, something that looked like witchcraft. Moreover, the possession of Elizabeth Jennings was worth recording—­if not for posterity, then for court—­because whatever happened next, and however it might be supplemented by medical treatment, would be framed by legal interventions. The man recording the events, John Latch, was no stranger to Elizabeth or to the court system. Latch was Dorothy’s second husband and Elizabeth’s stepfather. He may well have prepared BL MS 36674 with the plan of sharing it with Justice Sir William Slingsby. The stories of both men, and how they connect to the land, will appear in the next chapter.

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The bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings is as much a story about changing the physical landscape as it is about diagnosing the physical body. Although Jennings appears to be surrounded by busily worrying women, many men who play parts in this story, like Latch and Slingsby, are busy builders. We need to first see what they invested in to see how they were to evaluate the worth of Elizabeth’s claims. As understanding the implications of her refusal to give charity helps illuminate Elizabeth’s witch-­beliefs, understanding the trouble caused by land development sets us on the road to explaining why Russell contended that Elizabeth Jennings had become bewitched. Investigating the ways the land was recovered leads us to the Latch family in Langford and at the Fenlands. Interrogating how suburban sprawl was stopped leads us to Sir William Slingsby and Long Acre: the petitioner of the Jennings case and the justice who heard it.

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Chapter Five

Tensions Prohibitions and Projects There are three scenarios that provide likely explanations for why Elizabeth accuses four women around her of being witches: that she is playing “make believe,” that she is suffering mental illness, or that she becomes sick with the tensions and acrimony around her. The truth could likely be found in some combination of all three. However, if we needed to weight them, the most likely explanation was that she was in a highly suggestible state and absorbing the tensions of those around her. Animosity introduced anxiety into Elizabeth’s sickroom at Amen Corners on two fronts: through tensions across the medical profession and tensions across the building industry. Here, in the midpoint of the manuscript, we will scrutinize those tensions to show how they influenced the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings. Medical interests will be explored in chapter 6. Following the twists in the tale, chapter 7 will introduce a new suspect, a man entwined in property development and in healthcare, and will explain how these two concerns intersect. The point where they meet points to the reason why, in Margaret Russell’s opinion, Elizabeth Jennings was being bewitched and by whom. For now, we will turn our attention to the critical background of the business of building in London and Long Acre and Langford. Palpable concerns over property rights and money were at least one way that the figures in this case came together. Many of the players in this case were busily reshaping England’s landscape. Building was big business, big money, and big trouble. Queen Elizabeth tried to curtail it. King James tried to put a stop to the uncontrolled expansion, renovation, and infill happening in London. However, the often

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reckless and potentially dangerous business of building continued. It was that trade that also facilitated the familiarity of many of the characters in this case, creating an equally dangerous sphere that led to favors being called in and accusations being bandied about. To understand how building laid the groundwork for these dual influences, this chapter will first look at why both Queen Elizabeth and King James created legal prohibitions against building and why the now-­ familiar Edward Coke argued against their right to do so. It will then move to introduce one man, Sir William Slingsby, who was in business with Thomas Cecil to build up Long Acre in London, despite the illegality of doing so. He also happens to be the man who examined Margaret Russell on the charge of witchcraft. It would be hard to dismiss the possibility that his interest in one business influenced another. Building was not prohibited across England as it was in London. As such, the chapter will then turn to look at one example of planned property development: the Fenland drainage project. This massive project was meant to develop the land, reclaiming it from the marshes to make it arable. The man in charge of this project was no other than Elizabeth Jennings’s stepfather, John Latch. Their connection to the land established men like Slingsby and Latch as movers and shakers in the property development business. They not only knew one another, but they may also have been able to influence one another. It is no coincidence that Latch took Russell to Slingsby.

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Property development was booming in early modern England. The Enclosure Acts reshaped arable land and displaced its people, creating conflict like the attack Agnes Wood joined when Hayse enclosed her property (see chapter 4). Land recovery schemes, like those Latch participated in, sought to dry out the marshy places to make them suitable for suburban growth. Urban development in England at this time, especially as it expanded and reshaped the city, was a high-­finance affair and those who played too lightly with the laws ran into legal troubles. Building and renovating without permission were flourishing white-­collar crimes in early modern London, the kinds of crimes men like William Slingsby brashly committed on a large scale. There were numerous proclamations against building in and around London

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throughout all the decades around Jennings’s illness. An Act of Parliament (35 Eliz. c. 6, 1593) allowed a person to fix or enlarge their own home for personal use, but prohibited building, subdividing, subletting, or renting out rooms inside the city gates and within three miles of London. Overbuilding and bad renovations created conditions for overcrowding, enabled the spread of disease, and created a food and fuel shortage, moral laxity, and a lack of county laborers. The bill read: The great mischiefs and inconveniences that daily grow and increase by reason of the pestering of houses with divers families, harbouring of inmates, and converting of great houses into several tenements, erecting of new buildings within the cities of London and Westminster, and other places near thereunto adjoining, whereby great infection of sickness and dearth of victuals and fuel hath grown and ensued, and many idle, vagrant and wicked persons have harboured themselves there, and divers remote places of the realm have been disappointed of workmen and dispeopled.1 Despite grim warnings, the proclamation was widely ignored and Queen Elizabeth grew increasingly irate. By 1602, building in London would land one in prison.2 Elizabeth was right to worry that overcrowding created an unhealthy environment. The bubonic plague in 1603 killed over three thousand people in and around the environs of London.3 When James took over the kingdom, he likewise released proclamations against overcrowding and included an addendum that no demolished building could be rebuilt.4 By 1605 he released a full-­fledged “Proclamation for Building, in and about London.” Framed in terms of ensuring the maintenance of the Navy, he decreed that “no new house be built within the same City of London, or the Suburbs thereof, or within one mile of the same Suburbs.” Homes could not be rebuilt or refaced either, unless the work was done in brick. Even then, the new structures had to meet

1. Statutes at Large, of England and of Great Britain, vol. 4 [1553–­1640], 484–­87. 2. Analytical Index to the Series of Records Known as the Remembrancia, 45. 3. Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain, 470–­96. 4. King James, “A Proclamation against Inmates and multitudes of dwellers in strait Roomes and places in and about the Citie of London” (16 September 1603), in Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, King James, 47–­48.

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building regulations and conform to the uniform standards of the street.5 However, it is not until 1607 that the regulations against building stop being about plugging holes in the dyke and start to explicitly be about the evolving shape of London. The ongoing sound of building in London must have been deafening. Building sites were messy and builds were long. Some dwellings were constructed or renovated to provide rental income, bringing undesirables into the city and creating overcrowding. James proclaimed that there would be “No new buildings erected in or neere the said City of London,” a move meant to save much-­needed lumber for shipbuilding and to make the city less flammable. James was not able to completely shut down the reshaping of the city, however. Homeowners could renovate if they maintained the same footprint and generally worked to “adorne and beautifie his said City of London.” Moreover, only “persons of some ability” could occupy newly improved buildings. High rental costs were meant to encourage only skilled and semiskilled laborers to move into London: if you could not pay, you could not stay. James’s proclamation was designed to clear up confusion, close loopholes, and otherwise make very clear that the business of building in London was all but shut down. From that moment, those expanding or subdividing their homes were committing a crime.6 Completed buildings were pulled back down; structures would be stripped; reclaimed timber would be sold to maintain the poor; builders would be imprisoned. Building did not stop, however. Rather, slumlords continued to accommodate the “overflow [of the] meaner sort of people” who allegedly kept swamping the city, eating London’s food and bringing plague and disorder. However, these new builds and renovations were not easily concealed and James soon lost patience. Too many people, James lamented, “presumed & adventured to offend against” the king’s law, something he considered a “notorious disobedience.” Following closely on the heels of the previous two proclamations, James identified two groups as particularly testing his patience and liberality. He was outraged by greedy developers inflamed by a “covetous desire

5. Ibid. 6. King James, “A Proclamation touching new buildings and Inmates,” in Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, King James, 171–­74.

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of gaine & private benefit arising from such buildings.” He was also upset with the “neglect of Justices & Officers in executing his Majesties said Proclamations.” James could see no reason for noncompliance: the fines meted out by the Star Chamber had been “mild and moderate.” As such, property developers—­those who built where there were no buildings before—­would be severely prosecuted in the Star Chamber. Those who undertook rebuilds without permits would be as well.7 Although there are assuredly a number of stories that recount the dangers of these builds, in the context of the Jennings case, one might best look to Alexander Read (Reid/Reade) for an anecdote on the dangers these renovations might cause and the anxious anger they fueled among Elizabeth Jennings’s unfortunate neighbors.

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Reade appears most often in the historical record as the king’s official physician in Scotland. Although he claims to have been practicing medicine since 1592,8 Reade was incorporated as a member of Oxford for his MA in 1620, and was admitted to the College of Physicians in 1621. He was made a fellow by 1624, the same year he was incorporated into Cambridge.9 By the 1630s, Reade was living in Bishopsgate.10 He was a flexible and capable medical man: a practicing barber-­surgeon, physician, and anatomist. Reade famously stood in for William Harvey (see chapters 2 and 6) as the lead physician examining the women Edmund Robinson accused of witchcraft in Pendle Hill, Lancashire, in 1633.11 Seventeen were found guilty of witchcraft; seven were detained in the jail for further examination by the bishop of Chester, John Bridgeman. While in the jail, three died, one grew ill, and only one woman, Margaret Johnson, confessed to being a witch for the six years prior to the trial. Bridgeman sent his report to King

7. King James, “A Proclamation for Buildings,” in Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, King James, 193–­95. 8. Menzies, Alexander Read. 9. Shona MacLean Vance, “Reid, Alexander (c. 1570–­1641),” in Oxford DNB. 10. “Alderman Rowland Backhouse to the same, ‘Alexander Reade, doctor of physic, and Sir William Salter his patient, Sir Henry Guildford and Lady Winter, are the only lodgers in Bishopsgate Ward. 21st June 1633’ ”; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1633–­34, 237. 11. Reade would later study more on witches at Harvey’s behest. He did so sometime during Simeon Foxe’s tenure as the president of the College of Physicians (1634 to 1640).

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Charles I, who, in turn, asked Harvey to send up a panel including William Cloves, Alexander Baker, five other surgeons, and ten certified midwives, to investigate the surviving four women. With Harvey’s directive and in his presence, they conducted a close anatomical inquiry of Jennet Hargraves, Frances Dicconson, and Mary Spenser. They could find nothing witchy about the women. On Margaret Johnson’s body, however, they “find two things which may be called teats, the first in shape like the teat of a bitch, but in their judgment nothing but the skin drawn out as it will be after the piles on application of leeches; the second is like the nipple or teat of a woman’s breast, but without any hollowness or issue for any blood or juice to come from thence.”12 The king subsequently pardoned four of the seven witches; hopefully, those who had not died were also pardoned when Edmund Robinson retracted his bewitchment.13 Around the time Elizabeth first grew ill, Reade operated on a tailor with hand tools and amid the life-­threatening chaos caused by home renovations. The short story that follows acts as a strange synopsis of other elements that appear in the bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings, including the role of physicians, property, and fashion. About twentie yeares agoe [1618] returning from the Bathe in Somerset-­shire to the Howlt, five miles from Chester, where then I remained, having lodged in Newport in Shropshire by the way, I was called by this Lord Gerrard’s Grandfather to Gerrards Bramley to take a view of his Taylor, who had fractured both the focils of the legge, a little below the knee, about the bredth of a Palme. When I did behold a fracture with a wound, & the extremity of the body, for the [accident] fell out ten weeks before neither were the bones united; & besides, there was a great tumour in the knee. I pronounced a lingering death to the party unless he were out of hand dismembred above the knee. Being entreated by the sicke partie and the Earl to perform the operation, I yeilded unto their request; but having by me neither instrument nor medicament, thus I supplyed the defect of both:

12. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1634–­35, 129–­30. 13. Keynes, Life of William Harvey, 211.

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I made a medicament of Umber and unslaked Lime, taking equal parts of both, which I found there, ‘the house being then in reparation; I used a Joyner’s whip-­saw newly toothed: and in the presence of two Chirurgeons, Mr. Cole who dwelt in Lichfield and Mr. Heywood, who dwelt in Newport, I dismembred the Lords Taylor.14 Reade tells us that despite his earlier grim prognosis, the tailor lived for many years afterward on a pension provided by Gerrard of ten pounds a year. Builds were hazardous to the health. Neighbors may have felt more than annoyed by the mess and frazzled by the noise; they may well have felt that they and their children were in danger.

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Despite James’s blustering, the proclamations against building were not simply ignored. They were actively resisted, practically in all the homes that rose, and politically with inquiries designed to see if James even had the right to make such laws. In September 1610, James and his Privy Council consulted Edward Coke (whose story appears in part in chapter 3) on James’s legal right to make proclamations prohibiting building in London. Coke argued that the King cannot create any Offence by his Prohibition or Proclamation, which was not an Offence before, for that was to change the Law, and to make an Offence which was not, for Ubi non est lex, ibi non est transgressio, ergo, that which cannot be punished without proclamation, cannot be punished with it.15 Coke maintained that James did not have the constitutional right to make it illegal to erect buildings. This was very much in Coke’s style. Although he would have worked diligently to curry favor, becoming chief justice by 1613, his refusal to side with the king on matters like this meant he would lose it quickly thereafter.

14. Read, Treatise of the First Part of Chirurgerie, 15–­16. 15. Coke, Reports of Sir Edward Coke, 4:298.

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By 1620, however, James was determined to “ratify Our formers Commandments [about building stopping], and to use all possible endeavour by Our further care and discretion to accomplish Our intention,” promising to cherish and comfort those who obeyed, and punish those who “by subtile evasions” frustrate his wishes. He then bolstered his authority by citing precedent: the building codes enforced by Richard I. He first condemned those who did bad renovations on old homes (putting up new chimneys, staircases, and dormers), weakening the structures, devaluing the property, and creating eyesores. The building regulations that followed were detailed and specific: no sheds, no rezoning, and no renovations without a permit. No repairs, builds, or rebuilds unless they are done in brick. James targeted those who, hungry for floor space but confined by the narrow footprint of their urban building, sought to expand out over the road. Regulations dictated ten-­foot ceilings on the first floors; seven-­and-­a-­half-­foot ceilings on the second. The second floor could not be “jutting,” or cantilevered out over the first. Nor could there be bay widows, then known as cant windows. There was to be no digging out of cellars. All government officials, including the mayors, sheriffs, and justices of the peace, had the right to stop illegal building, and the attorney general informed against builders to the Star Chamber.16

Lawmen and Long Acre By 1624 James was still loudly calling on those officers to enforce his proclamations.17 However, the justices who were meant to prohibit building might be the very ones doing it. As a case in point, we find Sir William Slingsby, a man of some measure in London. He kept a home in the Strand.18 He came from good stock. His father was Francis Slingsby and his mother was Mary Percy, the only sister of Henry Percy, the Earl of Northamptonshire and owner of Syon House.19 Slingsby was a justice 16. King James, “A Proclamation for explaining and enlarging his Majesties former orders for Buildings, in and about London (17 July 1620),” in Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, James I, 1603–­25, 495–­488, 597–­98. 17. King James, “A Proclamation concerning Buildings in, and about, London,” 14 July 1626 in Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 2, Charles 1, 1625–46. 18. “Sessions, 1616: 3 and 4 December,” in County of Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series, vol. 4, 1616–­18, 42–­84. 19. Burke, Genealogical History of the Dormant . . . Peerages of the British Empire, 274.

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of the peace in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, in 1603 and later was a representative in Parliament. In 1603, he was made the lieutenant of Middlesex, a post he continued to hold under James and Charles. This was only one degree of separation from the monarchy. Slingsby also knew Queen Anne; he was her carver, and in 1619, a pallbearer of her coffin.20 Slingsby married twice. He first married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Stephen Board, with whom he had no children. After her death, he married Margaret (daughter and coheir of Simon Montague, of Brixton, in Northamptonshire) with whom he had three children: Henry, William, and Elizabeth, who became Sir John Villiers’s second wife. There is some confusion regarding the date of Slingsby’s death. Some scholars record it as 1624, others record his death a decade later in 1634.21 However, Slingsby appears in the Calendar of State Records as judging cases in the 1620s.22 He appears again in the 1630s when asked to house Anne Stanley Brydges, Lady Audley (widow of Grey Brydges, 5th Baron Chandos), during the official investigation of rape and sodomy against her husband, Mervin Touchet, the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (brother of the self-­proclaimed prophet and accused witch Eleanor Davis). Touchet was found guilty of sodomy. He was also found guilty of facilitating and participating in the rape of Anne and their daughter by his servants-­cum-­lovers Giles Broadway and Lawrence Fitzpatrick.23 He maintained he had been the victim of a treacherous family smear campaign. So compelling was this self-­defense that “even the chaplains sent him by the King grew shaken.”24 Curiously, Slingsby may not have been the only man we can connect to Audley from Jennings. Newgate minister and true-­crime author Henry Goodcole (who appears in chapters 6 and 8) may have produced a manuscript based on his eyewitness account of the trials and execution of Broadway and Fitzpatrick, an account that served as background material for the account of Mervyn Touchet’s trial, The Case of Sodomy, in the Tryal of Mervin Lord Audley, Earl of Castlehaven, for Committing a Rape and Sodomy with two of his Servants (1708).25

20. Nichols, Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, 3:540. 21. Sabine, “Sir William Slingsby.” 22. See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1628–­28, 32, 168, 232; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic series, of the reign of Charles I, 1625–­49 Addenda, 51, 205. 23. Herrup, House in Gross Disorder, 39. 24. Ibid., 92. 25. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate.”

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Slingsby was somewhat of a Renaissance man and a profiteer, or perhaps more accurately, both. He may have discovered a natural spa in 1595. A monument was erected to a Slingsby that proclaimed as much, but that may have been erected for a different Slingsby.26 We cannot know if Slingsby was in the business of water, but we do know that he was in the business of glass. In 1610, he was granted the patent for the first coal furnace purposed for making glass,27 an idea he allegedly stole from a “poor man” who had brought the plan out of Germany and Hungary. His rights were soon set aside.28 In 1611, he requested “that Sir Edw. Zouch and others may not obtain a patent of the newly invented furnaces for making glass with sea coal, as it would infringe on the original patent to himself and others, the inventors, which he desires a printed declaration to enforce.”29 By 1623, he was drawing a £600 profit from his coal mine at Kippax.30 Whereas the Cecil and Manners families represent the first intersections of title and witchcraft, Slingsby represents the first intersection of witchcraft and property development in the Jennings case. Development and renovation caused considerable tension in London in the early part of the seventeenth century. King James’s repeated proclamations also suggest that although he was prohibiting building, it was happening all around London all the time. Property development was as lucrative as it was obvious. However, when those enforcing the laws were also those profiting, the scales were stacked to their benefit.

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Long Acre may have been part of seven acres of property purchased by Henry VIII (along with Covent Garden). It passed through a series of hands, including Edward, Duke of Somerset, and John, Earl of Bedford.31

26. Murray, Handbook for England and Wales, 203. The idea that this is Sir William Slingsby has been contested, however, as confusing him with a younger Captain William Slingsby; see White, “Note.” 27. Jansson, Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons), 110. Also see Nef, Rise of the British Coal Industry, 1:215. 28. Price, English Patents of Monopoly, 171. 29. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, James I, 1611–­1618, 13. 30. Heal and Holmes, Gentry in England and Wales, 121. 31. There is some disagreement on this point. See Kingsford, Early History of Piccadilly Leichester Square Soho and Their Neighborhood, 39. Also see “Long Acre,” in Survey of London, vol. 20, Trafalgar Square and Neighbourhood, 125.

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The property we are concerned with, however, is not the full seven acres, but just “the Long Acurs, the ba[c]k syd[e] of Charyng Cross.”32 By 1612, the name was recognizably applied to a “certain slip of ground, then first used as a public pathway, as Long Acre.”33 This land called Elmfield, located on the north of Long Acre, was the possession of the Mercer Company. In 1614, they granted “30 years’ lease of it to Thomas [Cecil], Earl of Exeter, who in the following year sold his lease to Sir William Slingsby.”34 This real estate deal confirms the connection between Cecil and Slingsby and demonstrates another way in which the players in the Jennings possession knew one another. When Margaret Russell cites Georgi-­Anne’s death as a negative example, she demonstrates her knowledge of the peerage and the medical business in London. This land connection between Cecil and Slingsby suggests that, for both men, social bias and financial benefit were built on their mutual familiarity. Long Acre was the name of both the street and the neighborhood. It was constructed by William Slingsby and his cousin Edward Russell (or his son Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford)35 as it approximately divided their two properties.36 Despite the stature of the men involved, building Long Acre had negative political ramifications. In an era when erecting new buildings in London was prohibited, Slingsby suffered for his overreaching. From 1616 onward, there were numerous complaints lodged against the structures raised along Long Acre, all of which were erected “contrary to the King’s Proclamation.”37 Slingsby obviously decided that it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. On July 18, 1616, he petitioned the king for direction, not on when to remove the 32. Wheatley and Cunningham, London, Past and Present, 2:437. 33. Ibid. 34. “Long Acre,” in Survey of London, vol. 20, Trafalgar Square and Neighbourhood, 125. 35. As the Earl of Bedford was married to Catherine Brydges, Bedford was William Slingsby’s cousin by marriage through his wife, Frances Brydges (Thomas Cecil’s wife and Georgi-­Anne’s mother), and her brother Grey (Lady Audley’s first husband). Ironically, of the eight children Francis Russell and Catherine Brydges would have together, one born in 1618 would be named Margaret Russell; she would later (25 April 1636) become the Lady Margaret Russell, Countess of Carlisle, upon her marriage to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle. This Margaret was, of course, too young to have been the Margaret Russell in the Jennings case, so is not the Margaret we are looking for, but she is a point of convergence between Exeter and Bedford (who built up Covent Garden), who were both busy builders in this time. Nor is the Margaret we’re looking for the famous Margaret Russell, Countess of Cumberland, who died in 1616. 36. “Long Acre,” in Survey of London, vol. 20, Trafalgar Square and Neighbourhood, 125–­27. 37. Ibid.

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illegal road he created in an unwelcome subdivision, but on how to rejig it as to best please the king.38 Slingsby continued to build. In 1618 a shed erected in Long Acre was ordered to be “pulled down.”39 In 1630 Francis, Earl of Bedford, and Sir Henry Cary (then tenant of Elmfield) replied to a letter ordering them “to cleanse and make passable the way called Long Acre” for which their predecessors had granted long leases of their lands adjoining the street “in hope to procure fair and spacious buildings to be there erected,” and wrote that if the king would give them leave to build, they would “pave and keep it as well as any other street in London.”40 By 1635, Sir Henry Spiller and Laurence Whitaker found eight buildings built within the previous five years in the parish of St. Martin’s-­in-­the-­Fields, mostly in and near Long Acre, that were a “general offence to the neighbors and passengers that way, and a public nuisance.”41

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Slingsby was busy building in London; John Latch began his own property development later on. Although it happens well beyond the time of Elizabeth’s bewitchment, it is worthwhile to consider the short history of Latch’s involvement in the Fens. It will illustrate the massive momentum of the tensions caused by property development: they coiled inward to the point of breaking at Elizabeth’s bewitchment and continue beyond it to spiral outward well beyond her sickbed, Amen Corner, or even London itself.

Langford, Churchill, Fenlands The connection between the Jennings and the Latch families was a long-­standing one. It was always tied to property but not always to its development. Rather, the connection began with dilapidation. In 1558, Ralph Jennings (John Jennings’s father) leased Langford Manor to the Latches. The property was leased to Thomas Latch, but his uncle, Edmund Latch,

38. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, James I, 1611–­1618, 383. 39. Kingsford, Early History of Piccadilly Leichester Square Soho and Their Neighborhood, 39. 40. “Long Acre,” in Survey of London, vol. 20, Trafalgar Square and Neighbourhood, 127. 41. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1635–­36, 595–­96.

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managed the property for him for the next eighteen years. Clearly there was some resentment between the men. During this time, despite the fact that Edmund regularly collected rents, he allowed the property to fall into extreme disrepair. He then damaged that which had not yet decayed. He ripped out the wainscoting, broke the glass, cut down trees, and damaged the hedges and property boundaries so that the property repairs and renovations were extremely expensive.42 As a punishment for allowing the estate to deteriorate, Thomas made his uncle pay an annual bond, “paid in the porch of Churchill Church every Christmas Day.”43 Thomas left the house in the care of his son, Elizabeth Jennings’s stepfather, John Latch. John Latch was a barrister-­at-­law of the Middle Temple.44 Educated in law, Latch does not appear to have completed his degree. He was well enough educated and respected to be given administrative work; he continued to move up in the world. His whole estate, Langford Court, spanned the two parishes of Burrington and Churchill in Somerset,45 formally part of the Hundreds of Winterstoke. Dorothy Jennings was his neighbor; their estates bordered one another.46 John and Dorothy married sometime around 1612, and with her two children, Elizabeth and Thomas, she made the relatively easy move out of her first husband’s manor into her second husband’s. Latch appears in Middlesex session records (1 May 1617) as “John Latch of St. Mary-­le-­Savoy, gentleman.”47 A decade later, he was high sheriff of Somerset (1627). However, like most men in this tale, Latch was a property developer. In the 1630s, he was occupied with a major undertaking; he was the expeditor general of the Fens drainage scheme. It was for this undertaking that the Latch family created their heraldic crest: the blue wave that slices their shield represents Latch’s waterworks.48 Labor on the Fens appears to have gone well; hundreds of acres of swampland were drained and reclaimed. In the 1640s, however, there were some concerns over how Latch was distributing payment for the work

42. Butler, Churchill People and Places, 21. 43. Lee, “Over Langford Manor,” 20. 44. Phelps, History and Antiquities of Somersetshire, 1:75. 45. Weaver, Visitations of the County of Somerset in the Years 1531 and 1575, 98. 46. Hall, “Connexions between John Knight, Junior, and the Jennings, Latch and Gorges families,” 195. 47. “Sessions, 1617: 14 and 16 July,” in County of Middlesex: Calendar to the sessions records, new series, vol. 4. 1616–­18, 172–­209. 48. Many thanks to Christopher Lee whose work on the Latch family and Langford Manor was invaluable in composing this section.

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undertaken in his charge. The contract between Latch and Philiberto Vernatti, a Dutchman involved in the Scottish glass industry, began circa 1641.49 We do not know if Slingsby also had stakes in Vernatti and Latch’s business, but as he was in some kind of business with Vernatti, perhaps in the glass business (the two men owed one another around £300), it is a possibility.50 It would be hard to tell, since all this happened some twenty years after Elizabeth’s bewitchment, but it might have been best had he not been involved: the Vernatti and Latch business soured and fermented for years. Vernatti finally appealed to the House of Lords for relief, suggesting that Latch was trying to quash him financially.51 The fight between the men raged. John Latch was not the only recognizable figure who was tied up in this case. Thomas Jennings, Elizabeth’s brother, worked with their stepfather. In the 1630s, he was sharing the office of the clerk of bankruptcy52 (Latch appears to have been granted the job in 161953). Thomas later worked on the Fenland project and acted as Latch’s legal representative through most of the 1640s as this case lingered on. He must have been good at his job; as Vernatti’s main debtors, Latch and Thomas Jennings were given first pass at Vernatti’s estate upon his death (1643).54 This was not the only fight Latch faced. The Fenland privateers hired Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, another Dutchman, as an engineer for the project. Vermuyden supervised the technical aspects and the laborers. They diverted the water and drained 150,000 acres of land; however, Latch did not give Vermuyden money to pay his workers. His staff grew increasingly agitated. A petition was soon filed with the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury on behalf of the supervisors (and those who worked under them).

49. Vernatti is recorded in 1635 as an immigrant, a “Dutchman” living in St. Martins in the Fields as of 1635; see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1635, 465. By 1643, he may be living in the Strand; see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1631–­33, 339. 50. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I, 1631–­33, 339. 51. See The Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, pt. 1, Report and Appendex, 47. 52. “14/08/1632 John Latch & Thomas Jennings esqs granted the office of the execution of the laws & statutes concerning bankrupts & the writing & the passing under the great seal of all commissions, writs of supersedeas, precendo &c during life”; Calendar of the Chancery Docquets of Lord Keeper Coventry, 1625–­1640, 36–­37:487, 34–­35:184. 53. “Feb. 10. Grant to John Latch and Hum. Bradborne, of the office of passing commissions for bankrupts, & cf., for life. [Ibid., 268.],” Feb. 1619; Calendar of State Papers Domestic, James I, 1619–­23, 12. 54. Turnbull, Scottish Glass Industry 1610–­1750, 101–­2.

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They claimed that Latch had been paid £24,000 to undertake the drainage scheme (and subcontracted much of that work to Cornelius Vermuyden), but held onto more than £7,000 of that money, “neglecting to make payment,” causing the petitioners “great distress.” They hoped that the “sums of money now due to them, which amount to £3,500, may be paid.”55 There was some debate about exactly how much money was owed to the Fenland laborers, but it appears the amount exceeded £4,500. In July 1642, the problem hit the desk of the accountants. Latch did indeed owe money to the unpaid workers, but the commissioners could not wring it out of him. They could not find any way of raising the unpaid wages off of Latch’s lands or estates, or indeed to find the missing £7,500. The money was sunk into his miry lands on the Great Level but its diggers went unpaid. Despite his involvement in these disturbing financial irregularities, Latch continued to work on the Fenland project until at least 1643. After that he was no longer on the Fens because he was no longer in the country. We know this because his wife, Dorothy, then living in the Strand, claimed she could not provide the Parliamentary forces money to support their cause; her husband held the purse and he was in Holland.56 Latch fought as a Royalist sol8. The Latch family crest, signaling John Latch’s work on the Fenlands drainage project. dier in 1644.57 He used his property as a site for drafting soldiers and allegedly died at the second battle of Newbury (October 1644).58 The story of Latch’s death, bolstered in 1884 by a relative of the Latch family

55. Calendar of State Papers: Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles I, 1625, 363. 56. It could very well be that Latch was in the country of Holland, as opposed to Holland, Lincolnshire; he may have gone to that country to learn drainage strategies. “Cases brought before the committee: July 1643,” in Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for the Advance of Money, 1:181–­217. 57. Lee, “Over Langford Manor,” 20. 58. Hall, “Connections between John Knight, Junior, and the Jennings, Latch and Gorges families, 1641–­1653,” 192–­93.

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who paid to restore the striking and saddening bas-­relief memorial plaque of Latch in St. John the Baptist Church in Churchill, Somerset,59 has become somewhat mythologized. Brokenhearted, he is said to have died of shock upon returning home to find that Dorothy Jennings had died giving birth to their twelfth child.60 This moment was made into a monument. The family crest crowns it. At its heart lay the figure of the uniformed John Latch, overcome by grief. Unable to stand, he reclines, longingly gazing at the figure of the departed woman at his side. With a single hand, he gently moves the funeral shroud to look upon her face. Underneath him, one can see their legacy. Together they produced five sons and three daughters. Mirroring the tragic figure of their mother, the effigies of twin boys and one daughter are carried by their siblings, while the body of a stillborn brother lay at their feet.61 The shroud monument62 is flanked by two sets of initials, JL and SL, supposedly for John Latch and Dorothy Jennings, but reading Sarah Latch. The identity of the figures may be difficult to establish, but the sentiment, inscribed on a plaque behind them, is not. Lyveing and Dead, thou seest how heere wee lie I doate on Death prepareing now to die, Ah fleeting Life shee’s gone. Age summons me Unto the grave. So will posteritie Though singling death ye sacred knot undoe By parteing two made one once more in two. I see its Lord by thy divine decree Thus one by one to bring us home to thee Whose risen Christ doth us assurance give. He’ll rouse this grave and we with him shall lyve, Hee rich in grace though poore in stable cratch, Soe have you her heere laide up. Obiet anno dom. 1644 Sara Latch. 59. This relative is C. J. Simmons, a seventh-­generation decedent of the family; “Churchill Church,” 26. 60. John Rutter suggested that “some portions of the armor of this Sir John Latch, including his casque and leg pieces, were, until lately, in the old chest of the church, but are now removed to the neighbouring court house”; Rutter, Delineations of the North Western Division of the County of Somerset, 108. 61. Plaster, “Churchill,” 20. 62. Hurtig, “Seventeenth-­Century Shroud Tombs,” 227; Scodel, English Poetic Epitaph, 199.

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9. The Latch Monument in Churchill, purportedly representing John Latch and Sarah Latch (or Dorothy Jennings) and their children. Image courtesy of Chris Lee.

The dirge is “said to have been written by the celebrated Dr. Donne.”63 Considering Donne’s connections to Simeon Foxe, Elizabeth’s primary care physician, this may not be as wild an attribution as it first appears.64

63. Kelly’s Directory of Somersetshire, 166; Wade and Wade, Somerset, 96. 64. Inscription from Hardman, “Curious Inscription on a Churchill Church.” See also Kelly’s Directory of Somersetshire, 166. On the claim the inscription was written by John Donne, also see Worth, Tourist’s Guide to Somersetshire, 74. Also see Fairley, Epitaphiana, 68.

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10. Either Sarah Latch or Dorothy Jennings, detail of the Latch Monument. Image courtesy of Chris Lee.

They must have spent some time within earshot of one another. Donne may have been in geographic proximity to the Jennings family at Syon House in Isleworth; they may have even had overlapping visits there. They would have been in proximity to one another in one or more places in London. Elizabeth was born in the Strand and her family held property in Clerkenwell. Donne preached a sermon to the gentry at Clerkenwell in the Earl of Exeter’s chapel.65 More notably, Donne preached at Paul’s Cross in 1617 and was appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621. Both were close to the

65. Philip West argues that it can be established that John Donne preached at the “Earl of Exeter’s chapel at St. John’s in Clerkenwell, formerly the choir of the Priory church, and derelict until James’s grant of it to the Earl (William Cecil) in 1610, and thus an intriguing early example of Jacobean ecclesiastical renovation”; description for Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, vol. 6, Sermons Preached for the Nobility and Gentry (forthcoming), http://www.cems-­oxford.org/donne/ volume-­6.

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Strand, where Dorothy Jennings awaited her daughter’s cure. Both were close to Simeon Foxe’s rooms at the College of Physicians. John Donne likely could not have composed this little memorial poem in 1644, having died some thirteen years before Sarah Latch had. Nor is there hard proof he wrote a version of it in his lifetime. However, knowing the many possible degrees of separation between Elizabeth Jennings and John Donne makes this apocryphal attribution compelling: an unknown poem attributed to Donne appears on the wall above the image supposedly of Dorothy Jennings and John Latch, designed after Donne’s shrouded corpse memorial, a tribute paid for by Simeon Foxe, Elizabeth Jennings’s physician. However romantic this history may be and however firmly it might be defended in Churchill, it cannot be substantiated. Dorothy was alive in 1644. Parliamentary forces tracked her down in an attempt to extort a forced loan to help pay their expenses; a tithe on the peerage was widely used at the time. Dorothy’s estate, however, was assessed as too small to support the £500 loan, her husband was away, and she was now only an honorific peer.66 She did not have to pay, but she was most obviously alive. Most genealogies record Dorothy as John Latch’s widow, not dead until five years later in 164967, and then buried in the Savoy.68 If Latch died of grief, it was not over Dorothy’s death. John Latch did have a daughter named Sarah. She was married to Roger, Thomas Jennings’s son.69 It could well be that father and daughter died the same year and this is a monument to profound family loss.

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The grief expressed on the Latch monument was still twenty-­years in the future, however, and his role in the Fenland drainage scheme was another decade in the making. Back in 1622, Dorothy Jennings had been John Latch’s wife for ten years. They were in London wondering what they could

66. “Cases brought before the committee: July 1643,” in Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for the Advance of Money, 1:181–­217. 67. Searle, Coins, Tokens and Medals, 120; Harvey, “Wilton Diptych”; Hailstone, History and Antiquities of the Parish of Bottisham and the Priory of Anglesea, 187, 120. 68. Buckler, Stemmata Chicheleana, 495. 69. Hall, “Connexions between John Knight, Junior, and the Jennings, Latch and Gorges families, 1641–­1653,” 190; Burke cites Sarah’s father as “Joseph Latch”; Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners . . ., vol. 3, 583.

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have done to save their deceased children, worried about what was ailing Elizabeth, and wondering what they could do to protect her. They were determined to do whatever it took.

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Tensions Magics and Medicines Concerns over land electrified the connections that webbed around Elizabeth, allowing the case to unfold quickly after the first accusation. They fueled debate in Elizabeth’s sickroom. Concerns over medicine likewise played out across competing interest groups in the Strand. The primary medical concern of the case was introduced in chapter 2: frustrated attempts to heal Elizabeth led to a disagreement over bleeding her, which in turn led to the invocation of Georgi-­Anne Cecil and all the meaning packaged into that reference. That was not the only medical discord, however, because the physicians in that room were not the only healthcare providers Jennings may have consulted. There was a rich network of alternate caregivers working in London at the time of Jennings’s case. We know that Elizabeth was being treated by Simeon Foxe (and at least one or two other physicians). Margaret Russell’s knowledge of the botched medical treatment that killed Georgi-­Anne Cecil might have come from neighborhood gossip, or a connection to the Cecil family, but this chapter will contend that that knowledge was derived from her associating with a network of alternate medical providers operating (sometimes) under the radar in London. Chapter 2 explored how the College of Physicians worked to establish itself as the preeminent authority for medical knowledge. Chapter 7 will look at how the Society of Apothecaries formalized their role as medicine makers and distributors. For now, however, we will look at how alternative medicine continued to thrive, albeit sometimes in seedy places like Gunpowder Alley, despite these societies’ efforts to extinguish it.

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Alternative medicine was then, as it is now, a miscellany of practices. Practitioners could focus on tending the spirit to heal the body, doing the work of cunning women and ministers. They might cross into the realm of the apothecaries, or they might practice medicine without a license. Without regulations, the slippage between practices was considerable, but it also made these medicines more accessible. People chose alternate healthcare when “modern” medicine was not affordable or efficacious. That choice alone, to supplement care with alternative medicines, would have caused considerable conflict between licensed and unlicensed practitioners that might have surrounded Elizabeth. As the last chapter introduced building prohibitions and surveyed the development in Long Acre and the Fenlands, this chapter will trace Russell’s footsteps as she walked the streets of London. Carefully unpackaging Russell’s testimony, we discover that she spanned three neighborhoods to consult with women who knew and worked in the alternate medicine profession. The chapter will first trace Russell’s travels to the disreputable and squalid Gunpowder Alley—­the site of much alternative medicine—­to see Mistress Saxby. The location suggests Russell’s willingness to entertain almost any alternative diagnosis. However, for someone already suspected of witchcraft, admitting to being in Gunpowder Alley, a place infamous for fraudulent and dark medicines, was tantamount to an admission to comfort with dark dabbling. As if anticipating this very objection, Russell recalls traveling to consult another woman in a very different kind of neighborhood. She goes to see Mistress Dromondby in Black and White Court. In looking at Mrs. Dromondby, that chapter does not suppose that she was a medical practitioner, although she very well could have been. Rather, it will use her as an example in kind of the network of women who knew about alternate medicine, the very network we are arguing that Russell is a part of. Moreover, it will use Dromondby as a way to get to the final figure, a female physician named Anne Goodcole. The chapter will conclude with an introduction to Goodcole as a woman practicing medicine without a license in Clerkenwell. It will also show how her marriage to Henry Goodcole, author of a famous witch text and regular visitor at Newgate Prison, brought Anne into the crosshairs as cunning woman (rather than a female physician) and enabled the rapid pseudo-­legal examination that Russell was subject to just outside

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of Newgate Prison, an interrogation which will be fully considered in chapter 8. This chapter will take us on a kind of walking tour of early modern London to show how close each of the figures was, how Russell could have made the journey she claimed to, and how diligently she sought help for the sick girl. It will also illustrate how complicated the healthcare efforts administered to Elizabeth were and how all this relentless overtreatment and medicine may have influenced Elizabeth to think she was under attack. One can see how, in her fever, Elizabeth comes to that belief. Unrelenting sickness, exhaustion, and anxiety must have made her suggestible. Witches were malevolent anti-­nurturers who assaulted naughty children by attacking their bodies. It must have made sense to Elizabeth that the most provocative person visible as she was being administered painful treatment was a witch. Witches were testy women and Russell was at least belligerent if not outright hostile. Russell was also the one woman in the room who, by her own testimony, had consulted with demoniacs and a minister’s wife to come up with new treatment plans. For Margaret Russell’s part, she was establishing a timeline and producing a list of character witnesses who would attest to her attempts to help Elizabeth. The last chapter showed how contentious property development was, and how Dorothy Jennings and John Latch’s connection to Slingsby may have allowed them to push for an extralegal investigation at such speed. This chapter locates Russell soundly in the crosshairs of seething acrimony between registered and nonregistered medical practitioners, the very kind of acrimony that may have been absorbed into the nightmarish dreamscape where Elizabeth Jennings sees witches.

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Sufficiently frightened by Elizabeth’s poetic accusation and with her words in hand, Dorothy Jennings and John Latch acted immediately. They believed the haunting refrain sighed by their daughter: Elizabeth promises that if they “Put Countesse in prison this childe will bee well [ . . . ] When she is in prison then I shal bee well, now till then by fitts.” With Elizabeth’s suffering as testimony and proof, Latch and Jennings appealed to Slingsby to imprison Russell for breaking the law: assault by witchcraft was a criminal offense. Slingsby acted immediately. He sent Latch and Jennings to get Russell. The

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same afternoon, they arrived with her in tow and Slingsby began his examination. There was a palpable sense of urgency on Dorothy and John’s part; after months of agonizing suffering, they finally had proof of why their daughter is sick. They wanted immediate action taken to stop it. Russell, who arrived “not knowing their intent,” must have assumed she was a witness, not the defendant. She soon unraveled her involvement in the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings, casting herself as an active agent in Jennings’s healthcare, doggedly hunting the city for someone who could help this child. Following a line of referrals, she consulted three different women in her efforts to help Elizabeth, a group of quasi-­professionals that peddled treatments for preternatural injury. Russell long suspected that Elizabeth was bewitched. She first sought out help for Elizabeth from a woman who had herself wrangled with witches: Mistress Saxby.

Gunpowder Alley Saxby was not a physician, surgeon, or apothecary. She was not a witch, a cunning woman, or a female physician. She was a demoniac-­consultant. She had an intimate knowledge of bewitchment because she was, herself, being bewitched. All we know about Mistress Saxby comes from Russell’s short claim about what happened when she consulted Saxby in March. She recounted that above a month agoo she went to Mrs. Saxey in Gunpowder Alley who was forespoken herselfe and that had a booke that cold helpe all those that were forespoken, and that shee wold come and show her the booke and helpe her under God. And further said to this examinate that none but a seminary priest cold cure her. Saxby’s condition afforded her immediate perspective and insights on demoniacs, who in turn lent evaluative eyes to possession cases.1 This kind

1. Their close proximity in Edward Fairfax’s home at Newhall encouraged possession behaviors to bounce between his daughters Helen and Elizabeth. The effect is ratified when they visit another demoniac in the text, Maud Jeffrays. Recognizing themselves and their experience in her, they wanted more: “the community of their sufferings moved them to desire more acquaintance”; Fairfax, Demonologia, 83.

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of consultation was not without precedent; spiritually significant people might be visited by those seeking council or those looking for an exemplum for their own spiritual journey.2 At the turn of the eighteenth century, for instance, former demoniac Elizabeth Willoughby supported Richard Hathaway’s bewitchment accusations against Sarah Morduck.3 And Saxby clearly wanted to help the suffering somehow. It is never clear if Saxby did “come and show [Russell] the booke and helpe her under God.” If she did, the act, in and of itself, would have given the already sick, impressionable, and maybe even delusional Elizabeth more knowledge about bewitchment than she might have discovered in Northampton or Dee’s libraries. The visit would have also given Elizabeth an up-­close idea of what living, breathing demoniacs said and did. Saxby’s continuing spiritual sickness illustrates that the cures she was offering were not efficacious.4 The supernatural and preternatural made it into early English healthcare more often than one might expect. Respected physicians like Simon Forman and Richard Napier based part of their diagnoses and treatment on astrological predictions. There were also a number of less respectable piss-­pot prophets, empirics, quacks, and female physicians5 operating in England at the same time who offered treatments for those plagued by undetermined ailments. Moreover, Saxby had set up shop in the seedy locale of Gunpowder Alley, a backdrop almost designed to invoke the unhappy mix of religion, astrology, and medicine that the church, the state, and physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries tried to quash. Gunpowder Alley, now a bright pedestrian pass-­through, was then a tiny alley off the west side of Shoe Lane that ran from Holborn to Fleet Street (straight up from Legate) close to Amen Corner (where Elizabeth lay in her sickbed). It is described in John Strype’s 2. Ecstatic prophet Anne Trapnel, for example, visited ecstatic prophet Sarah Wight. Quaker prophets also had a rich network of prophetic associates. Robert Brigges accompanied John Foxe during ministerial/educational rounds to visit a possessed man named Stephens. 3. Cobbett et al., Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason, 5:487, 508. 4. It also suggests that the root of her problems is not spiritual, but physiological. Saxby might be a hysteric whose physical and emotional afflictions were read as spiritual. However, the intense embodied experience of the forespoken, and indeed the treatments given to them—­the purging, bleeding, bathing, and even the normal prayers for fast recovery—­were treatments used for a number of other physical and physiological ailments, including hysteria. The ailments that plague the body and the spirit may be differentiated, but they are also organically interwoven. The hysteric feels her torments in her spirit as the demonic feels hers in her viscera. 5. See Brian, Pisse-­prophet.

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Survey of London as “long and narrow; falls into Shoe Lane, crossing Little Newstreet, which is but ordinary.”6 Strype notes that the Alley was the site of “10 Almshouses (homes for the poor, elderly, or distressed) for Men and their Wives, being the Gift of the Lord Banning, and now called Oxford’s Almshouses, the Earl marrying an Heiress of the Banning’s; but these have but small Allowances.”7 However, Gunpowder Alley is not remembered for the comfort provided by alms, but rather as a neighborhood so seedy and impoverished that it required them. Of course, in hosting notorious men like John Evans and William Lilly, the other kind of assistance it provided came in the form of astrological medicines.

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Gunpowder Alley is best remembered for the two famous men who lived there: John Evans and Richard Lovelace. Evans, a cunning man, physician, and astrologer, lived “at the corner house ‘over against Strand-­bridge.’ ”8 The astrologer William Lilly visited him there in 1632. A good friend of Elias Ashmole (who appears in the introduction and again in chapter 9), Lilly was known as “an excellent wise-­man” who “studied the Black Art.”9 When Lilly became interested in magic, he took eight weeks of lessons from Evans, one presumes in Gunpowder Alley, studying how to “set figures,” and interpret signs, until he grew weary of Lilly’s pandering to his clientele.10 He also began a course of self-­study, which eventually included publishing numerous astrological and prophetic texts, one of which included an edition of the Mother Shipton prophecy.11 Kenelm Digby and Lord Bothwell likewise attended one of Evans’s séances held there in 1633.12 Digby may have grown more cynical about the preternatural later in his life. By 1669, he saw preternatural phenomena like possession as a form of contagious hysteria.13

6. Strype, Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, bk. 3, p. 282. 7. Ibid. 8. “Memorial Tablets of Great Men and Events,” 754 (listing for Lilly, William). 9. Lilly, History of His Life and Times, from the Year 1602 to 1681, 54. 10. Curry, “Lilly, William (1602–­1681),” in Oxford DNB. 11. See Lilly, Collection of Ancient and Moderne Prophesies, 35–­39. Also see Thornton, Prophecy, Politics and the People in Early Modern England, 80–­81. 12. Foster, “Digby, Sir Kenelm (1603–­1665),” in Oxford DNB. 13. Digby, Of the Sympathetick Powder, 182–­83.

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The alley was also associated with pharmaceuticals. Mary Glover (possibly the same woman who, in her youth, had accused Elizabeth Jackson of bewitching and would have been around seventy-­four at the time) provided a written testimonial, praising the skills of Mr. Restrick in Gunpowder Alley, whom she visited in the 1660s to find a cure for her deafness and blindness.14 However convincing Glover’s positive review may have been, Robert Fludd, himself an astrological physician and occult philosopher who supported men like William Harvey and Richard Napier, was concerned about what was passing for medicine there.15 On April 3 (1636/37) Dr. Fludd raised a serious matter when he reported “‘that in Gunpowder Alley at the sign of the Megpy [Magpie] antimonial cups are to be sold, with that inscription upon the sign. He asked the price and they said 50s.’ The President said that ‘Sir Nathaniel Kitch died of a vomit made by the antimoniall last summer,’ and Dr. Wright said that ‘the Lady Ayme Blunt died of the same medicine in the Chaterhouse yard.’ ” According to Keynes, William Harvey heard a similar report. However, the College of Physicians does not appear to have acted on the information about bad medicine in Gunpowder Alley.16 Gunpowder Alley also appears in early proclamations against building in London. Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s secretary and sometimes her spy, discovered building in the alley that contravened the queen’s direct order. Walsingham and Jeamys Crofte wrote to the lord mayor of London and its alderman to remind them of the proclamation. Although Richard Woodrof and Thomas Conie were building in Gunpowder Alley, they had started, evidently, before such things were made illegal and their buildings were allowed to stand.17 14. Greatrakes, Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, and Divers of the Strange Cures by Him Lately Performed, 90. 15. Heisle, “Robert Fludd: A Picture in Need of Expansion.” 16. Keynes, Life of William Harvey, 264. On this case and on antimonyall cups, see Thomas, “Antimonyall Cupps,” 669. 17. “Commanding all persons to forbear from any new building within three miles from any of the gates of the City of London, and stating they were informed that Richard Woodrof had obtained a lease from William Chambers, Gent., of a piece of ground with buildings thereupon, in Gunpowder Alley, alias Crown Court, within the City. The interest in the lease had been conveyed to Thomas Conie, who had entered into bonds with a great penalty, over and besides the forfeiture of his lease,

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Saxby was likely part of the Catholic community hiding in plain sight in Gunpowder Alley. The alley “was formerly the scene of the ceremony of burning the Pope, which took place towards the close of the reign of Charles II, when there were fears that the future King would favor Roman Catholicism.”18 In the 1620s, a community of Catholic printers and vendors were “lurking in such districts as Gunpowder Alley, Clerkenwell Green, Holborn, Fetterlane and Little Britain, if John Gee’s infamous Foot out of the Snare is to be trusted.”19 Saxby asserted that they needed a special book and a seminary priest. This makes sense based on her location in Gunpowder Alley, but it also speaks to contemporary beliefs. Even in an Anglican environment, the idea that Catholics were better at exorcism maintained currency. Anglican ministers did not have the Latin, relics, or iconography believed to be necessary components in the fight against magical or spiritual entities. Saxby’s book may have been the Latin rite of exorcism included in Girolamo Menghi’s Flagellum Daemonum, translated as Flail of Demons (1576). Menghi’s works were popular, appearing in numerous copies and anthologies, including Thesaurus Exorcismorum (1608),20 and Flagellum Daemonum was supposedly used to exorcise the Denham demoniacs.21 Alternatively, her book may have been the authorized Roman Ritual released by Pope Paul V in 1614.22 Exorcism guides were not hard to get ahold of at the time and Saxby, a spiritual healer, would have likely had an exorcism how-­to on hand. Mistress Saxby’s inclusion in the plot might signal anti-­Catholic rhetoric; seminary priests and exorcism should not be needed to cure bewitchment. However, Saxby and her home in Gunpowder Alley also signal sites of alternative medicine—­religious and medical—­which was what Mistress Saxby was practicing and definitely how she was being treated herself. Mistress Saxby’s book may have even come courtesy of the book racks of one to reedify the building within certain years, nearly expired, but which the City, by virtue of the said Proclamation, had prohibited under a penalty of £20 to the Chamber of London. They request that he may be suffered to complete the building, which had been commenced before the issue of the proclamation, 12th June, 1582.” “Letter from Jeamys Crofte and Sir Francis Walsingham to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, reciting the Queen’s Proclamation dated at Nonsuch, the 8th of July, in the 22nd year of her reign,” in Analytical index to the series of records known as the Remembrancia, 42. 18. Rawlings, Streets of London, 55. 19. Barnard and MacKenzie, Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 4, 1557–­1695, 45. 20. Cameron, Enchanted Europe, 235–­37; Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 78. 21. The group includes William Trayford, Sarah Williams, Fireside Williams, and Anne Smith; Brownlow and Harsnett, Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the Devils of Denham, 209, 286. 22. Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 88.

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Mrs. Udall, a well-­known Catholic bookseller who lived in Gunpowder Alley until her death in 1623.23 Gunpowder Alley appears in only a few later legal or historical references, moments in which, more often than not, it is frowned upon. Most famously, however, we remember Gunpowder Alley because the cavalier poet Richard Lovelace died there in abject poverty.24 By the nineteenth century, it was regarded as a “low and mean place.”25 In the early twentieth century, it was a “known haunt of indigent refugees, lurking papists, and delinquents.”26 These descriptions continue to paint a dingy, decrepit, and slightly scary setting, one apropos for Mistress Saxby’s brief introduction into the already labyrinthine tangle of associations. Saxby’s additions to Elizabeth Jennings’s story seem to support the twentieth-­century assessment of the place.

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The treatment options offered and perhaps even provided by Mistress Saxby in the previous month do not appear to have done much to help Jennings. If Saxby had come in March to visit the girl, her visit might have signaled the shift from sickness to bewitchment in Elizabeth’s mind. Perhaps it was Saxby herself whose compelling presence and expert opinion convinced Elizabeth that she was being bewitched. Although we cannot know if Russell ever brought Saxby and her book back to Amen Corner, we do know from Russell’s testimony that Russell did not stop trying when this treatment failed.

Black and White Court Russell claims she then traveled to a better part of town looking for a cure for Elizabeth. She went to see Mrs. Dromondby who lived in Black and White Court, near the Old Bailey. Black and White Court, a “good large

23. Duncan, “Udall [Uvedale], William (fl. c.1595–­1636),” in Oxford DNB. 24. “Richard Lovelace: 1618–­1656/7,” in Rudrum, Black, and Nelson, Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-­Century Verse & Prose, 764. 25. The British metropolis in 1851 (153) describes Gunpowder Alley: “In Shoe-­lane, which runs from Holborn to Fleet-­street, is a low and mean place, called Gunpowder alley. Here, in 1658, died Richard Lovelace, the poet, who by vicissitudes of fortune had been reduced to great distress.” 26. Bell, Fleet Street in Seven Centuries, 439.

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and open Place, with handsome Buildings, at the upper end of which is Checker Yard, taken up for Stablings and Coach Houses,”27 stands in stark contrast to Gunpowder Alley. This pleasant residential area was connected to Fleet Lane, was close to the Old Bailey, London’s courthouse, and was a very short walk to Amen Corner where Elizabeth lay suffering.28 Although we know where she lived, we do not know who Mistress Dromondby was. In a text with monikers like “the Countess” and designations like “the minister’s wife,” Mistress Dromondby’s name may have been a way to signal she was from Dromondby, a hamlet in York, or that she was part of the de Dromonby family29 or the Dromondby family in Cleveland, York.30 Mistress Dromondby may have also been related to the Constables of Dromondby: Sir John Constable, Knight, of Dromondby, York, married Dorothy Barnham (coheir, with her sister Alice, to the estate of Benedict Barnham, alderman of London). Their daughter, Alice Constable, married Edmond Anderson, who was the grandson of Sir Stephen Soame, lord mayor of London.31 Apart from these rather important Londoners and heirs to the Dromondby Manor, I have found no other Mistress Dromondby. Whoever she was, when Russell told her that “Lady Jennings had a daughter strangely sicke,” Dromondby suggested that Russell “goe to inquire at Clarkenwell for a ministers wife that cold helpe people that were sicke.” She clarified that Russell “must not aske for a wise or cunning woman but for one that is a phisition woman.” Russell’s account of Dromondby’s advice is particularly poignant: Dromondby knew the treatment options that might be applied. The city had its fair share of wise women and cunning women who might prescribe the use of certain herbs—­most physicians did the same. However, a cunning woman’s knowledge of counter-­magic would have brought a physician in close proximity to the witch. Dromondby’s recommendation suggested one of two things. First, that what was wrong with Jennings was not supernatural, but natural: the girl was not bewitched, she was sick. Second, that Dromondby shared the belief that cunning women were ignorant, superstitious, or simply charlatans,

27. Strype, Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, bk. 3, p. 281. 28. Ibid. 29. Ord, History and Antiquities of Cleveland, 439–­40. 30. Atkinson, “On the Danish Element in the Population of Cleveland, Yorkshire,” 355. 31. Wotton, Baronetage of England, 293.

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and that Jennings needed a keen clinical eye to assess a supposedly severe supernatural condition. Because the medical men had been unable to help the girl, she could turn to a female physician for a fresh perspective. It might be best if she brought in one who knew something about witches, just in case. Perhaps she used this female physician herself, they certainly knew one another personally, as Dromondby accompanied her when she later went to see Russell. When Russell claimed she then ran from Clerkenwell to Newgate to look for “the minister’s wife,” Anne Goodcole was the physician woman she sought.

Clerkenwell and Newgate Anne Goodcole’s knowledge of medicine and her husband, Henry Goodcole’s, knowledge of criminal witchcraft make them something of a power couple in this plot. Little is known of Anne Goodcole. Born Anne Tryme, she married Henry Goodcole on 24 August 1606 in Clerkenwell.32 The first of their three children was born six months after they were wed. The suspicion around the libidinous nature of the Goodcoles, although as tasteless a bit of gossip now as it was in 1606, merits inclusion in her history for a few reasons. This bit of scandal may have been one of the reasons for her husband’s slow career trajectory.33 If his marriage marred Goodcole’s reputation, his wife’s involvement in a witchcraft case would surely have been another blow to his precarious public identity. Goodcole’s fame made him a far more recognizable figure to us now than was his wife. His role at Newgate meant he had the power to question Russell; his role as a pamphleteer, especially one who had already published the story of a witch, drew him inexorably into Elizabeth’s tale. Goodcole was a Protestant minister and prolific real-­crime drama author. He was born in St. James’s, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, son of James Goodcole and Joan Duncombe. Goodcole does not seem to have received a university education, but became a lecturer at Ludgate Prison in 1613.34 By 1620, he

32. Hovenden, True Register of all Christeninges, Mariages, and Burialles in the Parishe of St. James, Clarkenwell, vol. 3, Marriages, 1551 to 1754, 31. 33. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 196. 34. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 160.

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was appointed to the post of ordinary and visitor of Newgate Prison.35 His job involved not just preaching and leading Sunday services, but ensuring that no one went to the gallows or the pyre unrepentant. Clergy-­visitors were charged with acting as the final interrogators-­cum-­confessors to the condemned, a kind of spiritual fail-safe for the church and the state.36 He seemed genuinely invested in saving the souls of the cellmates, or at least having them see themselves, in part, as his parishioners. Within the first year of working there, he requested Newgate build a chapel “for the assembly of the poore prisoners.37 Goodcole fashioned himself as a minister, ethnographer, journalist, and expert on crime.38 While he condemned popular and competing criminal ballads as distasteful and suspect, he saw his work as appreciably different. And while he thought pulp writers traded in rumor, Goodcole claimed his work was a “matter of fact.”39 Writing a different class of narrative, Goodcole presented his as necessary to steam the slew of “ridiculous rumors” that threatened to smother the truth.40 His first publication, A True Declaration of the Happy Conversion, Contrition, and Christian Preparation of Francis Robinson, Gentleman (1618), was an act of self-­promotion as a moral authority.41 Despite his protestations about publishing for the betterment of his community, Goodcole is best known for his crime pamphlet, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer a Witch, Late of Edmonton (1621), a tale that became part of the source material for Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley’s dramatic comedy, The Witch of Edmonton, staged the same year.

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Goodcole’s source material on Elizabeth Sawyer allegedly came from the source herself. He met her during his rounds at Newgate Prison. She had 35. Chapman, “Goodcole, Henry (bap. 1586, d. 1641),” in Oxford DNB. 36. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 154. 37. Chapman, “Goodcole, Henry (bap. 1586, d. 1641),” in Oxford DNB. 38. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 153. 39. Butler, “Swearing Justice in Henry Goodcole and The Witch of Edmonton,” 130. 40. Randall Martin suggests there was some anxiety about sexual and social improprieties in Newgate prison. The jail had worked to suppress the “lewd and shamefull comforts” allegedly up for offer within its walls. On this idea, see O’Mahoney, “The Witch Figure,” 238. Also see Lake and Questier, “Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric under the Gallows,” 97. 41. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 157.

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11. Newgate, from Old London Illustrated: A Series of Drawings by the late H. W. Brewer, illustrating London in the XVIth century . . . (London: The Builder, 1921).

been arraigned and indicted at the Old Bailey in London on 14 April 1621 for the malefic murder of infants and livestock in Edmonton and was indicted on charges of bewitching Agnes Ratcliefe to death. Sawyer was found guilty of this crime, and was found by Goodcole at Newgate awaiting her execution shortly thereafter. She was hanged at Tyburn on 19 April 1621. As Sawyer was one of his charges, it was Goodcole’s responsibility to extract confession and contrition from her before her death. He carefully recorded their conversations and added his own editorial material to flesh out Sawyer’s story. Sawyer was, according to Goodcole, the picture of a witch. Aged, anemic, and crippled, her “face was most pale & ghoast-­like without any bloud

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at all, and her countenance was still dejected to the ground. Her body was crooked and deformed, even bending together, which so happened but a little before her apprehension.”42 Known for “swearing, blaspheming, and imprecating,” her ill temper and ill tongue, according to Sawyer, summoned the devil, and convinced her neighbors she was a witch.43 She reputedly acted like a witch. She chose to “revenge her selfe on them in this manner, namely, witch to death their Nurse Children and Cattell,” because her neighbors “would not buy Broomes of her.”44 Then to stall the discovery of her witch’s marks, she “behaved her selfe most sluttishly and loathsomely” towards the women appointed to search her. Still, they “found a thing like a Teate the bignesse of the little finger, and the length of halfe a finger, which was branched at the top like a teate, and seemed as though one had suckt it, and that the bottome thereof was blew, and the top of it was redde.”45 Sawyer was convicted of using maleficium with murderous intent aided by her canine familiar, Tom. Although she was suspected of killing her neighbors’ offspring and livestock, it was the bewitchment of Agnes Ratcliefe for which she hanged. Sawyer and Ratcliefe fell out after Ratcliefe, with a washing beetle (a wooden bat used to violently agitate dirt from laundry), did Strike a sow of hers in her sight, for licking up a little Soape where shee had laide it, and for that Elizabeth Sawyer would be revenged of her, and thus threatned Agnes Ratcliefe, that it should be a deare blow unto her, which accordingly fell out, and suddenly; for that evening Agnes Ratcliefe fell very sicke, and was extraordinarily vexed, and in a most strange manner in her sicknesse was tormented, Oath whereof, was by this Agnes Ratcliefes Husband, given to the Court, the time when shee fell sicke, and the time when shee died, which was within foure dayes after she fell sicke: and further then related, that in the time of her sicknesse his wife Agnes Ratcliefe lay foaming at the mouth, and was extraordinarily distempered, which

42. Goodcole, Wonderfull Discouerie of Elizabeth Sawyer, sig. A4v. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., sig. A4v. 45. Ibid., sig. B3v.

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many of his neighbours seeing, as well as himselfe, bred suspition in them that some mischiefe was done against her, and by none else, but alone by this Elizabeth Sawyer it was done; concerning whom the said Agnes Ratcliefe lying on her death-­ bed, these wordes confidently spake: namely, that if shee did die at that time shee would verily take it on her death, that Elizabeth Sawyer her neighbour, whose Sowe with a washing-­ Beetle she had stricken, and so for that cause her malice being great, was the occasion of her death.46 The extraordinary distemper that plagued Ratcliefe, the vexation, the foaming saliva, and her death four days after Sawyer cursed her, all pointed to the symptoms of maleficium. Most damning, however, was Ratcliefe’s deathbed accusation against Sawyer. Goodcole believed that deathbed declarations carried considerable weight. In A True Declaration (1618), he wrote that “dying mens wordes are ever remarkable, & their last deeds memorable for succeeding posterities, by them to be instructed.”47 The court considered themselves instructed. With this dying declaration, coupled with eyewitness testimony against her and the physical evidence of Sawyer’s own body used against her, Sawyer was convicted. Goodcole’s later examination, A True Relation of the Confession of Elizabeth Sawyer Spinster, after her Conviction of Witchery, taken on Tuesday the 17. day of Aprill, Anno 1621, was an alleged transcription of Sawyer’s jailhouse confession and the gallows retraction of her cursing, swearing, and blaspheming ways. It was meant to signify how effective Goodcole’s ministering was. Goodcole may have felt he had to defend his ministry; there had been some rumors that the devil had managed to penetrate Newgate—­and presumably Sawyer herself—­while Goodcole was in charge of her spiritual welfare. However, according to Sawyer, the devil had done worse to her in the past. Sawyer confessed to Goodcole that “the Divell would put his head under my coates, and I did willingly suffer him to doe what hee would.”48 He would suck her blood from a place “a little above [her] fundiment, and

46. Ibid., sigs. Bv–­B2. 47. Goodcole, True Declaration of the happy conversion . . . of Francis Robinson, sig. A4r. See also Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 154. 48. Goodcole, Wonderfull Discouerie of Elizabeth Sawyer, sig. C2v.

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that place chosen by himselfe; and in that place by continuall drawing, there is a thing in the forme of a Teate.”49 Goodcole had some reason to worry about his reputation if the devil was suspected to have visited Sawyer in her cell and under her skirts.50 Aware of this rumor, he forced Sawyer to field it, threatening her with the possibility of divine wrath should she lie—­a rather heavy-­handed move that suggests some anxiety on his part. Sawyer supposedly represented prison as a place of freedom from the pestering preternatural. She confessed that “the Divell never came unto me since I was in prison, nor I thanke God, I have no motion of him in my minde, since I came to prison, neither doe I now feare him at all.”51 Goodcole had done a good job of exorcising the prison and the woman. Goodcole suggested his account of Sawyer “shall be Authenticall” enough to “free mee from all censorious mindes and mouthes.”52 This charge clearly indicates he was worried about the public opinion, something that becomes an important element in chapter 8, which looks to understand why Goodcole acted so combatively when his wife was implicated in the case. It was not his authority on witches, nor was it his position in Newgate, that caused Henry Goodcole to become implicated in this tale. Rather, his wife’s unlicensed medical practice caused him to be found in the midst of another tale of bewitchment. Still, he may have sought to use the accusations against Russell to his advantage, leveraging this as an opportunity to chase a story. After all, he took Sawyer’s story to the Stationers’ Register within eight days of her death53 and it sold very well. It would have made sound financial sense to do the same. However, something must have happened that night, something Goodcole, who purported to report only the truth, decided he had better remain silent about. In fact, Sawyer’s story would be the last pamphlet Goodcole published for a decade; there are almost no records of him during this time either.54 Perhaps he simply decided after the fact that he did not want his wife’s and his own name tied so closely to the practice of witchcraft. Her medical practice was not licensed, after all.

49. Ibid., sigs. C2–­C2v. 50. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 163. 51. Goodcole, Wonderfull Discouerie of Elizabeth Sawyer, sig. D. 52. Ibid., sig. A3. 53. Martin, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 163. 54. Dobb, “Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate,” 18.

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The Female Physician Anne Goodcole was actively providing alternate healthcare in London operating, at least somewhat publicly, between 1617 and 1642 near the parish church of St. Gregory by St. Paul’s (which stood at the southwest corner of the cathedral and was burnt to the ground in the Great Fire of 1666).55 This put her within walking distance of Newgate where her husband worked, and Amen Corner where Elizabeth lay. Anne may have worked because she needed the money. Goodcole was employed, but not wealthy. He spent much of his career worrying about money, once borrowing fifty pounds from London’s aldermen. Writing was one way Goodcole supplemented the family’s income; Anne’s medical practice was her contribution. There were not many careers for middling class women that ensured steady income. Healthcare was one of them and Anne was one of the only wives of ministers to choose this profession. Even if she had begun to practice medicine out of financial need, she was obviously known in the community for her skills: Mistress Dromondby and Margaret Russell both recognized her as a female physician. According to the standards of the time, however, Anne was practicing medicine without a license. Perhaps this would have been a different kind of story if the minister’s wife was a gentlewoman. Gentlewomen coexisted with members of the medical profession to treat the ill in their communities.56 Had she been a peer, her medicines might have been read as home-­remedies, her efforts as noblesse oblige. Had she been a cunning woman, she may have been able to fly under the legal and professional radar. Henry Goodcole, already actively distancing himself from the witch who had been in his prison, would not have tolerated a witch under his roof, however, even if she was the mother of his children—­and if her clients were unhappy or fatally unsuccessful, she could have faced the gallows as a witch. The term “cunning woman,” with its close conceptual proximity to wise women and witch, was also conceptually fraught and not within the realm of possibility for this minister’s wife. In practice, Anne Goodcole likely did what witches and cunning women did, curing those who would not or could not go to physicians

55. “Goodcole, Mistress (?Anne),” in Pelling and White, Physicians and Irregular Medical Practitioners in London 1550–­1640. 56. Evenden, Popular Medicine in Seventeenth-­Century England, 71.

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for help. She resisted the title of cunning woman, which would make her practices seem spiritually suspect; however, the title she opted for—­female physician—­was almost as problematic.

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Women operating as physicians in London were not licensed by the College of Physicians; however, they were not operating in secret either. Female physicians kept a low profile and maintained peace among themselves; no female physicians informed to the college against another.57 Women like Anne Goodcole were not welcome and did not receive a great deal of respect from licensed male physicians, or indeed, by members of the surgeon or apothecaries guilds either. Female physicians encountered a mixed textual reception. The female physician was a metaphor for a good wife. Robert Cleaver praises the biblical Sarah, wife of Abraham, by saying, “beside a yoke-­fellow, she is called an helper, to helpe him in his labours, to helpe him in his troubles, to helpe him in his sicknesse, like a woman physition, sometime with her strength, and sometime with her counsell.”58 Thomas Heywood, who coauthored the play The Late Lancashire Witches (1634), wrote a positive history of women in medicine: in Gynaikeion: or, Nine bookes of Various History: Concerninge Women Inscribed by ye Names of ye Nine Muses (1624). In it, he praised Agnodice, an Athenian maiden who disguised herself as a man to train under a physician and learn the art of surgery. She revealed herself to be a woman only to her female clients in order to gain unfettered access to them. She was able to help women in labor; however, when her success cost other members of the College of Physicians their clients, they claimed Agnodice’s clinical success was based on her sexually ministering to her clients (who began to feign illnesses to get an appointment for just such purposes). Upon revealing herself to the Senate as a woman, and with the emphatic support of the city’s matrons, Agnodice’s life was spared. Based on her example, women were thereafter permitted to become midwives.59 A follow-­up text, The Generall History of

57. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 120. 58. Cleaver, Godly Forme of Houshold Government for the Ordering of Private Families. 59. Heywood, Gynaikeion: or, Nine bookes of Various History, 204.

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Women Containing the Lives of the Most Holy and Prophane (1657), although published long after his death in 1641, is attributed to Thomas Heywood. It is a more divisive work, which explores the exploits of the most holy and the most profane of women. It was likely collected and published by Edward Phillips who himself included “Agnodice, a Virgin, who putting her self into mans apparel, grew famous in physick by the instruction of Herophilus”60 Outside of print, however, when female physicians left their homes to tend to others, elbowing in on the services and the profits of their male counterparts, they became less praiseworthy. James Hart twice criticized female physicians in The Anatomie of Urines (1625). In this text he recounted the treatment he administered in 1615 for the “hystoricall passion,” suffered by a “young maid, much molested with that disease which is commonly called the Mother.”61 Her fits were “so violent and tedious, and the intermissions so short, that both her father and other friends tooke (as they thought) their just leave of her.”62 As part of her disease, she passed four or five chamber pots of clear, thin urine a day, which is, according to Hart, difficult to diagnose. It might signify a problem with the liver, spleen, or kidneys, accompany a disease called Diabete, or, if it presents with a “burning feaver and phrensie,” is a deadly sign.63 Since the most skilled physician could have only tentatively diagnosed this woman, Hart suggests that the task was impossible for the “ignorant Empiricke, the peticoate or woman-­physitian, or the cunningest pisse-­prophet among them all.”64 Hart failed to mention what treatment he administered to this hysteric. He did, however, suggest that her cure from this urinary problem also cured her hysteria, writing that when she was “freed from this infirmitie, she was likewise freed from the aforementioned accident.”65 She relapsed once after she was married—­curious considering that the regular sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth that accompany marriage is meant to cure the hysteric—­but he suggested that her illness was “nothing in regard of the former extremitie.”66

60. Phillips, New World of English Words, 20. 61. Hart, Anatomie of Urines, 85. 62. Ibid., 85. 63. Ibid., 84. 64. Ibid., 84. 65. Ibid., 84. 66. Ibid., 84.

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In his vitriolic tract Klinike, or The diet of the diseased (1633), James Hart went further in his attempt to discount female physicians by invoking the story of a “she-­Physitian” working in Northampton. He railed against her curatives, condemning them as being too few and too aggressive, medicines that were carelessly mixed and too liberally applied. He complained that her chiefe purge being a little Manna, a certain diet-­bread composed of severall cordiall ingredients, without any due proportion of quantity: and this diet-­bread she used indifferently in all consumptions and weakenesses of whatsoever kind. A vesicatory or blistering medicine composed of Cantharides she used much, and applyed the same to divers parts of the body, according as her she-­skill could direct her, which was one of her master medicines, and with her supplyed the place of Phlebotomy and other generous evacuations.67 Careful to qualify that his claims about female physicians were not simply misogynist, Hart cited an unnamed but learned “French Physitian” who criticized women for overfeeding their patients and stifling them with too many covers. For his own part, Hart did not want women “to prove busy-­bodies, smatterers, going from house to house, and controlling the learned Artist in his owne profession, nor his prescriptions for the sicke, the reason whereof they are not at all able to comprehend.”68

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There were some women who appeared to comprehend both the art and the medicines: the minister’s wife was one of them. Anne Goodcole seemed to know what she was doing when she made house calls through most of the 1620s. She must have been doing something right, or at least managed to avoid doing anything significantly wrong. She worked within walking distance of the College of Physicians for years without recorded criticism or noted incident. Her luck, however, soon ran out. She was implicated in the

67. Hart, Klinike, or The Diet of the Diseased, Divided into Three Bookes, 10. 68. Ibid., 11.

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bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings in 1622. In 1627 she would be brought before a disciplinary committee at the College of Physicians. Three accusations were brought against Anne Goodcole. On 1 June 1627, the apothecary John Southerton formally accused her of being an irregular practitioner, practicing medicine without a license. Three years after that, on 6 December 1630, Richard Spicer, a practicing physician since 1620 and a college censor (1630–­37),69 reported an accusation made by Dr. Dunton against her.70 Goodcole admitted to providing healthcare, but only a discrete selection of cures—­those limited to treatments for livergrowne, convulsions, colic, and stomach ailments, concoctions provided by an apothecary named Larymore who may have been either George Larrymer or a female healer called Laramour. Goodcole did not wither under the sharp glare of the College of Physicians, however. In 1630, a Mrs. Goodcole initiated charges against a Larymore herself.71 By 2 November 1631 the college began the process of formulating formal charges against her, consulting Justice Long on how to accomplish this. The results of this process are unclear and Goodcole stayed on the college’s radar, as did her sister Frances Ashton. Frances Ashton appeared in the college’s record sometime in 1624, three years before her sister Anne did. By January 1634, matters became more serious: a Dr. Grant formally “complayneth of Mrs. Goodcoales sister.”72 It is possible that Ashton was at least as infamous as her sister Anne. The appearance of both women suggests Russell was tapping into a known family practice as much as a community of female physicians. Although this particular patient did not appear in the college’s register, the house call they made to Newgate was perhaps their most problematic.

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Margaret Russell claimed she sought out Anne Goodcole at her home, having arrived in some haste after traveling from Gunpowder Alley to

69. Munk, Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 1, 1518–­1700, 183. 70. On 12 May 1593; “Thomas Dunton, of Upminster, co. Essex, Tanner, & Letitia Trott, of Enfield, co. Midx., Spinster, dau. of John Trott, late of same, Yeoman; Gen. Lic.,” in Allegations for Marriage Licences Issued by the Bishop of London, vol. 1, 1520–­1610, 211. 71. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 120–­21n112. 72. “Goodcole, Mistress (?Anne),” in Pelling and White, Physicians and Irregular Medical Practitioners in London 1550–­1640.

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Clerkenwell on the recommendation of Mistress Dromondby to consult her regarding Jennings’s illness. Goodcole allegedly told Russell that she had already visited Elizabeth and had left her with a treatment plan. The problem was, according to Goodcole, not with the medicine but with its administration. Either Dorothy did not administer the treatments or Elizabeth refused to take them. This lack of compliance with her treatment had frustrated Goodcole but she promised Russell she would return to Elizabeth’s sickbed and see what more she could do. This promise established Goodcole as one of Elizabeth’s many active healthcare providers. Implicating Anne Goodcole in her illness meant she would be questioned as a person of interest in her case. This would have created a great deal of bad blood between the Jennings, Russell, and Goodcole families. It may be that Russell and Goodcole were acting as alibis for one another—­or at the very least, Russell hoped that, in demonstrating her efforts in securing a female physician for Elizabeth, she could prove that she had the girl’s best interests at heart. It is not what Goodcole did or did not do, however, that proves most relevant and as such will become the focus of the next part of the book. According to Russell, in a few short sentences, Anne Goodcole mentioned the murder of two other children (the dead siblings Elizabeth had earlier summoned in her speech), provided the name of the suspect, and alluded to his motive. She allegedly broke the case wide open when she mentioned yet another medical man, an apothecary named Stephen Higgins.

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The New Suspect The Apothecary The last few chapters have illustrated how Elizabeth Jennings may have arrived at the idea that she was being bewitched. Chapter 4 looked at how she might have been exposed to the idea of bewitchment. She could have heard secondhand stories of girls from her peer group like Katherine Manners or Helen and Elizabeth Fairfax. She may have also read accounts of the bewitchment of souls like Mary Glover in the libraries of some nearby great houses. By incorporating conspicuous details from her own experience into the well-­worn rubric most witch texts followed, Elizabeth could create her own convincing bewitchment account. Chapters 5 and 6 sought out some of the material Elizabeth used to parse those missing pieces. Main characters in this account intersect at two anxiety-­provoking topics: property development and the practice of medicine. These connections may have brought some of them together in Elizabeth’s sickroom at Amen Corner (John Latch’s connection certainly facilitated his easy access to William Slingsby when he needed a justice), but it did not mean they shared the same ideologies. Case in point: we recall the disagreement between Foxe and Russell over appropriate medical care. That disagreement introduced the Cecils (and all the points of contact they had with witchcraft) and was the site of the first bit of conflict in the case. Russell’s very aggressive behavior in this instance may have encouraged Elizabeth to cobble together pieces of information and imagine Russell was a witch. Russell was not combative without cause, however. She disagreed with Foxe because she did not believe he was offering Elizabeth good medicine. Frustrated by his lack of success, she walked the blocks consulting with at

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least two other women before she heard of a female physician who could help, Anne Goodcole. This chapter will investigate the claim Goodcole allegedly made, not about the medical care she prescribed for Jennings, but about a new suspect, the man she said was responsible for her sickness and the death of her siblings, a man named Higgins. Russell told this story while under examination. Although Russell had her own motive to alter the direction of the investigation—­the most obvious being that it shifted focus off of her as a person of interest and onto someone else—­her assertions were, as we will finally discover in full in chapter 7, more than a shot in the dark. They were recitation of a well-­known fact. This chapter will provide a kind of background check on Stephen Higgins. In it, we will discover that he becomes a prime suspect not because Russell tried to use misdirection, but because Higgins sits smack-­dab in the intersection of the two streams of anxiety—­property and medicine—­that Elizabeth absorbs to create her own bewitchment backstory.

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Margaret Russell traveled to Clerkenwell to seek out Anne Goodcole, who was sitting, likely in her home, in the company of one other woman when Russell arrived. After Russell explained the reason for her journey, Goodcole explained she would be willing to see Elizabeth again, despite the fact that she had not taken her medicine. It is unclear how the conversation took a turn, but somehow, and apparently unbidden, she explained the futility of a second visit. Medicine could only do so much to help Elizabeth. There was something much more sinister afflicting the girl, both preternatural and in close proximity. Goodcole reportedly said that two children that the Lady Jennings had by this husband that were bewitched and dead, for there was controversie betweene two houses and that as long as they dwelt there they cold not prosper. And that there shold be noo blessing in that house by this man. And being demanded what she meant by the difference betwixt two houses, she answered it was betwixt the house of God and the house of the world. This may be how Goodcole saw it, or it may be that she was simply stalling. When prompted, she finally admits that “we,” or everyone there,

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“knewe it well enough it was the difference betwixt Higgins the apothercarie the next neighbour and the Lady Jennings.” Goodcole does not make her assertion lightly. Nor was it, in her opinion, unsubstantiated. They all knew the suspect; he was the Jenningses’ neighbor. They all knew his motive; there was a long-­standing feud. They all knew his crimes: two children had been bewitched to death, and Elizabeth is suffering from that same sickness. But where had Goodcole’s alleged accusation come from? The conflict between Jennings and Higgins may have originally been caused by poorly administered prescriptions. Foxe was Jennings’s primary care physician, but he was not her only one. When one physician was not providing a cure, Dorothy added another physician to the team. It would have been very much in line with her character for her to hire a neighboring apothecary to prescribe treatments for her ailing children. It could be that she hired Higgins and that the death of these children first lit the taper that became this bonfire. It could have been that her children grew sick after the conflict began making her suspect retributive foul play. Goodcole’s claim seems to be well-­known neighborhood gossip, a bit of tattle that points to how Elizabeth had come to understand bewitchment was a form of siege against her household. If the attribution on the Churchill monument is correct, Dorothy Jennings and John Latch together had twelve children; four of them (twin boys, a daughter, and infant) died young. It would not have been a far stretch for Elizabeth to imagine that the otherwise inexplicable death of her siblings could be explained by witchcraft, and that it could also kill her. The difference between these two houses, by the time Elizabeth writhes in pain and calls for release, was not just a story of spiritual sickness or medicine cures. This conflict between neighbors was firmly grounded in matters of brick and mortar.

The House of Higgins Stephen Higgins, a mutually famous and infamous apothecary who lived and practiced in the parish of St. Mary le Savoy on the Strand, appears in BL MS 36674.1 He was married to a woman named Mary and had two children with her: a son, Arnold Higgins, and a daughter, Mary Baker. 1. “Early History of Piccadilly,” in Survey of London, vols. 31–­32, St. James Westminster, Pt. 2, 32–­40.

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The title that accompanies Higgins, simply “the apothecary,” was an apt one; he helped to create the very definition of apothecary medicine. He was a founding member and first warden of the Society of Apothecaries,2 created in 1618 when King James I split apothecary from grocer.3 Higgins was also one of the authors of the influential first edition of the Latin pharmaceutical tome, London Pharmacopeia (1618), which was an important policy-­setting document.4 In 1620, James I banned medicine not described by the Pharmacopeia. In doing so, he gave apothecaries hitherto unknown power to define what medicines were and exasperated existing tensions between physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries.5 Although Higgins was active in his society, he was not universally admired there. Rather, he appears to have been a provocateur. In the 1620s, Higgins, in “an unpleasant, or at any rate troublesome, way,” alleged that the society (which was looking to purchase a guild hall at the time), owed him money.6 A committee of six considered his case: “three chosen by the Master and Wardens, and three by Higgins. After some negotiation the affair was settled satisfactorily, though the details are not given.”7 The conflict 12. Coat of Arms for the Society of Apothecaries, ca. could not have been too 1620, from C. R. B. Barrett, The History of the Society of Apothecaries of London (London: Elliot Stock, 1903).

2. See in Society of Apothecaries, Charter to the Society of Apothecaries of the City of London, where Stephen Higgins is the sixth member listed and is written into the charter as the first warden: “And for the better execution of this Our will and grant in this behalf, We have assigned, named, created and constituted Our well-­beloved the said Edward Phillips to be the first and present master of the art, mystery and society aforesaid, and also the said Stephen Higgins and Thomas Fownes to be the first and present wardens of the mystery and society aforesaid”; in Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons, vol. 36, Medical Education. Pt. 3, Society of Apothecaries, 83, 84, 86. 3. Thompson, Mystery and Art of the Apothecary,181. 4. Goodall, Royal College of Physicians of London, 121, 124, 131. Also see Whittet, “Charter Members of the Society of Apothecaries,” 30. 5. Weber, “Women’s Early Modern Medical Almanacs,” 358–­402. 6. Barrett, History of the Society of Apothecaries of London, 11. 7. Ibid., 11.

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dreadful, however; he was elected as a master of the society the next year.8 In 1621, like almost all the men in this book, he was embroiled in some property issues. The Apothecaries Guild ran into difficulty buying the property for their hall. They voted to temporarily hold off on the purchase and to leave the money allocated for real estate in the care of the societies’ wardens and masters. Higgins, elected master at this same meeting, was put in charge of the money—­a near-sighted move, perhaps, considering his avarice. Soon after, he fought loudly and politically with a Mr. Darnelley; the two men “quarrelled over some paltry matter and had mutually given utterance to very hard words” and continued to do so until Darnelley wrote an “apologetic letter, in which he averred that Mr. Higgins was free from all imputations and objections wherewith he had charged him either by word or on paper.”9 Higgins appears to have quieted if not reformed in his dealings with the society for nearly a decade. He again disputed with the society in earnest in 1631 when he refused to pay the monies to support the “preparations for a barge and other things against the Lord Mayor’s Day.”10 His post was suspended and it was ordered that “he shall sit no more as an Assistant until he hath conformed himself,” and—­likely the real reason—­“brought in the moneys demanded of him by the Company.”11 Finally, after legal measures were taken by both sides, and at risk of causing a public scandal, Higgins was dismissed from his office in the society on 12 April 1632.12 Like the wicked returning penny that plagued the Fairfax family, Higgins came back again: he was reelected as a master in 1638. Higgins was not only an administrator; he was also a teacher. He accepted apprentices until he retired in 1640. One of his most famous apprentices was also one of his last. Higgins took on Nicholas Culpeper as an apprentice, a final gesture of goodwill as he served out his term.13 Culpeper, who went on to translate the Pharmacopeia into English as A Physicall Directory, or, A Translation of the London Dispensatory (1649) and

8. Ibid., 14. 9. Ibid., 9. 10. Ibid., 37. 11. Ibid., 38. 12. Ibid., 38–­39. 13. See Kelly, Scientific Revolution and Medicine, 118; and Woolley, Herbalist, 144.

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published a number of important texts, including A Directory for Midwives (1651), The English Physician (1652), and the Complete Herbal (1653), did not have many positive things to say about his time as an apprentice apothecary, however. He would describe his apprenticeship as “‘seven years’ of care and fear, which makes a man never the wiser and not a farthing the richer.’”14 Higgins was not the only famous man Culpeper studied under. He also studied with Thomas Johnson and William Lilly. Lilly encouraged his study of astrology, suggesting to Culpeper that “astrological science should be very useful in guiding your medical enquiries to promote the cure of overt and latent diseases.”15 Higgins spent a great amount of time pressing charges or having charges pressed against him. At a time when medical societies were defining themselves apart from one another, there were also ongoing, loud, personal, precedent-­setting conflicts between Higgins and members of the College of Physicians. He ran afoul with the college a few times. He appeared in the proceedings of one meeting on 12 February 1619, and testified against James Blackbourne who, in turn, accused Higgins of “giving a vomit to a maid of Mr. Denny, the Lord of the Exchequer’s man.”16 He also appeared in the Royal College of Physicians’ account of proceedings against “empiricks and unlicensed practisers.”17 Richard Spicer, who likewise played a part in the inquiry on Anne Goodcole seen in chapter 6, filed a lawsuit against Higgins accusing him of criminal negligence causing death. This accusation was neither made nor treated lightly; the case went to trial. Basing his argument on his place above his accuser’s in the class system, the ever-­litigious Higgins petitioned for a mistrial. In a move that made precedent, he was granted one. According to Thomas Coventry and Samuel Hughes, the coroner investigating the botched healthcare was “lessor to the plaintiff” as well as being a “master of one of the coroners; and for this cause, in ejectment, the ven. fac. was issued to the coroners, so that the servant should not intermeddle” (Higgins v. Spicer,

14. See Kelly, Scientific Revolution and Medicine, 118; Woolley, Herbalist, 144; and Woolley, Heal Thyself, 144. 15. Thulesius, Nicholas Culpeper. 16. Margaret Pelling has identified a great number of women who appeared in the records of the meeting of the College of Physicians of London; Pelling and White, Physicians and Irregular Medical Practitioners in London, 1550–­1640, Database. 17. Goodall, Royal College of Physicians of London, 131–­34.

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Mo. 623).18 The case appears first in Richard Brownlow’s Report (1651)19 and appears again as a precedent cited in Sir Francis Moore’s Cases Collect and report (1663).20 One wonders if Higgins’s work as an apothecary meant he was also involved in the botched healthcare provided to Thomas Cecil’s daughter, Georgi-­Anne, or indeed the death of the other Jennings children. Despite this court case and the on-­again, off-­again love affair between Higgins, his society, and the Society of Physicians, Higgins maintained a sound reputation as a medical man. He continued to charge premium rates for his goods and had clientele that included Lady Whitlock,21 Mrs. Sherfield,22 and Mary Gargrave (whose role in this case we learn about in chapter 8). He also supplied and administered medicine to Robert Cecil, the 1st Earl of Salisbury (Thomas Cecil’s half brother, who appears at length in chapter 1 in reference to John Jennings’s estate).23 The Cecils were heavy users of healthcare: Higgins gave up the rest of his practice and spent six months as the earl’s personal apothecary. Higgins traveled with Robert Cecil to Bath, tended to him, and stayed with him until his death. He claimed that although he spent a great deal of his own money arranging for the dying earl’s medicines, he was not paid for his time nor reimbursed for the medicine he administered. He sued the Cecil estate in 1612, taking William Cecil, Walter Cope, George Calvert, Roger Houghton, and John Dackombe to court for unpaid wages and costs. He claimed that untill his death was imployed as apothecarie to the said Earle, who used him the plaintiff soe honorablie that he addicted

18. Coventry and Hughes, Analytical Digested Index to the Common Law Reports, 1:270. 19. Brownlow, Reports of Diverse Choice Cases in Law, 134. 20. A “sheriff (who was lessor to the plaintiff) was master of one of the coroners; and for this cause, in ejectment, the ven. fac. was issued to the coroners, so that the servant should not intermeddle. Higgins v. Spicer, Mo. 623”; Moore, Cases Collect and Report, 520–­29. Also see Coventry and Hughes, Analytical Digested Index to the Common Law Reports, 1:270. 21. A receipt for supplies he provided to Lady Whitlock dated December 1626 appears in the Whitlock Papers, BL Harleian MS 1545 and Salisbury Manuscripts, Hatfield House, Bills 34B 1608, Bills 45 1609, Bills 90 1617. 22. See “Letter from Stephen Higgins to Henry Sherfield re flowers and roots for Mrs. Sherfield. London. 19 Sept.” 44M69/L30/30 1611, and “Letter from Stephen Higgins to Henry Sherfield. 6 April.” 44M69/L30/44 1617, Jervoise family of Herriard, Hampshire, Miscellaneous Letters, Hampshire Record Office, National Archive. 23. The bills of sales can be found in BL Harleian MS 1454 and Salisbury Manuscripts, Hatfield House, Bills 34B, 1608; Bills 45, 1609; Bills 90, 1617. See Bowden, “The ‘Cecil’ Glossary of Materia Medica and Medical Terminology.”

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himself more to him then to anie other whatsoever. That during all that tyme he bought most costlie, cheife and excellent materialls for medicines according to the advice and directions of his phisitions, and from tyme to tyme tooke extraordinarie paines in attending and watching with the said Earle, and in the making, mixinge, working and compoundinge of medicines and other things applied to the said Earle. That the plaintiff in his respect and care which he had of the health of the said Earle, did spend soe much tyme in watching with and attending upon his Honor that by meanes thereof he did much neglecte his other patients to the greate losse and hinderance of the plaintiff in his trade.24 However much Higgins may have protested the necessity of collecting the monies he was owed, he had other sources of income. Higgins was an apothecary and a very busy builder. Like William Slingsby, he was developing property in the city during the period when the king had declared this unwelcome business. Higgins did not escape unscathed, locally or nationally. He was often called to court. In 1610, he appeared in the minutes of the Westminster Court of Burgesses, which refer to “the Annoyance about the building of an House in Drewry Lane which was sometime a Stable in the occupation of Stephen Hidgings.”25 Higgins had built two stables from the ground up. Since it was illegal to build new housing, he may have built these “stables” as general-­purpose buildings, places he could rent to tenants when the proclamations against building subsided.26 One year later, he was caught having converted one stable into housing. He was ordered to appear in the Westminster court in November 1611. Ordered to appear four times in all, he refused to appear at any of those proceedings.27 Higgins was in trouble with the courts again in 1615 for not securing building permits and was “ordered to bring in tomorrow morning a warrant from the Lords of the Council, which he says he has, to warrant the new buildings he proceeds withal,

1–­9.

24. “Cecil Papers: 1612,” in Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, vol. 22, 1612–­1668,

25. Early History of Piccadilly,” in Survey of London, vols. 31–­32, St. James Westminster, Part 2, 32–­40. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid.

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which he has performed, and therefore is discharged.”28 As much paperwork as Higgins caused in court, he created worse mayhem in the neighborhoods where he built. His neighbors did more than report on him, they fought with him. By 21 July 1619, Higgins was once more in trouble. He illegally renovated the front of his house in the Strand when he “built up the forefront of his dwellinge house there, all saving the first story which he leaft staundinge, with timber out of gutties [jutties] and cant windowes.”29 King James had specifically prohibited both. If this was not flagrant enough, he had built three brand-­new buildings, one place described simply as “one tenement of bricke behind his said dwelling house upon newe foundations.”30 Higgins’s criminal property development was not confined to the Strand, however. He also built two new timber buildings on brand new foundations in White Hart Yard.31 Higgins did not roll up his sleeves and do his own labor, however. In one apt example, Higgins is known to have paid a tailor named John Baker to convert two stables into rental properties.32 He then rented the spaces out and, adding insult to injury, fathered an illegitimate child with one of the renters.33 London had to contend with more unwanted bodies and buildings. Higgins was called before the Privy Council, who required he reform his wicked ways: to stop building, obey the king’s commission, and pay a fine for his illegal activities. He obstinately refused. The council might be annoyed, but they would not be denied.34 Shortly thereafter, a petition was filed to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex “for the pollinge down and utter demolishing of the buildings contayned in a schedule,” buildings “erected contrary to his Majestie’s proclamations by Stephen Higgens, apothecary.”35 Higgins likely paid up. Stephen was not the only Higgins to create a nuisance by building. His two children, Arnold Higgins and Mary Baker, were also known as land developers in London. These two Higginses were tied, albeit for a moment, 28. “Sessions, 1615: 24 and 25 May,” in County of Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series, vol. 2, 1614–­15, 297–­306. 29. Acts of the Privy Council of England, vol. 13, 1581–­1582, 29. 30. Acts of the Privy Council of England, vol. 37, 1619–­1621, 20–­21. 31. Ibid., 20–­21. 32. Ibid., 20–­21. 33. Sheppard, Robert Baker of Piccadilly Hall and His Heirs, 20. 34. Acts of the Privy Council of England, vol. 37, 1619–­1621, 20–­21. 35. Ibid.

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not to how medicine treated what was wrong with the body but to how fashion dictated what was on it and where it went for a good time.

Piccadillies and Piccadilly Tracing why part of London was coined Piccadilly is almost as complicated as trying to follow the fussy folds of the collar itself. The word “piccadilly” was long thought to have first appeared in John Gerard’s controversially flawed and much-­pirated tome The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597), a book prefaced in part by Stephen Bradwell, one of the physicians now famous for his treatment of demoniac Mary Glover in 1603.36 Gerard was a barber-­surgeon by trade who rose to become one of the society’s wardens in 1556 and 1561 and the master of the Society of Barber-­Surgeons in 1607.37 More importantly for our current purposes, he was also well-­ respected amateur herbalist and botanist. Gerard supervised the elder William Cecil’s gardens at Cecil House in the Strand and Theobalds for over twenty years. He was also appointed to cultivate the garden for the College of Physicians (although it is unclear as to whether or not he did this).38 Gerard was famous for the quality and variety of his own garden. He was renowned in his time39 for first cultivating the Papus orbiculatus (1596) or “Bastard potatoes” (1599)40, as well as the Lycopersium, now simply known as potatoes and tomatoes.41 He planted them in the medicinal gardens he rented from the College of Physicians (1587) and we owe their place at our tables, in part, to his work.42 Although Gerard was commonly thought to have first coined the term “pickadilla,” the first edition of The Herball (1597) does not contain any reference to the word; there we are told only that “these do grow in gar-

36. Gerard, Herball, sigs. 7v–­8. Also see MacDonald, Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan England, xvi. 37. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray, 204. 38. Pelling and Webster, “Medical Practitioners,” 172–­73. 39. Arber, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution, 129; Hoeniger and Hoeniger, Growth of Natural History in Stuart England, 7. 40. Salaman and Hawkes, History and Social Influence of the Potato, 78; Gérard and Jackson, Catalogue of Plants Cultivated in the Garden of John Gerard, 13. 41. Gerard, Herball, sig. 7. 42. Davenport, McDonald, and Moss-­Gibbons, Royal College of Physicians and Its Collections, 61; Smith, Tomato in America, 17.

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dens everywhere.”43 The word is found in the second edition of The Herball (1633), which was “very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson citizen and Apothecarye of London.” Johnson, assistant of the Society of Apothecaries, obviously had enough knowledge by training to edit and expand The Herball. However, the company he kept may have influenced his knowledge of common usage of the term. His shop was in the Strand44, and he took Higgins’s apprentice Nicholas Culpeper on excursions to identify and collect medicinal herbs.45 Johnson likely knew London well enough to suggest any number of places where Buglosse would be grown. However, when he suggested in particular that “the little wild Buglosse growes upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla,” he thereafter connected the herbalist and the fashionista. Johnson, through his relationship with Culpeper, may have known Higgins and had insight into his family dealings. The term “piccadilles” appears in Cotgraves French-­English Dictionary (1611) as defining “the severall divisions or pieces fastened together about the brim of a collar of a doublet.”46 The term “piccadilles” soon picks up popular traction. Barnaby Rich, in texts published in 1616 and 1618, mocks the overworked piccadilly and the overdressed men and women who wear them.47 In 1649, he likewise criticized the increasing decadence of the female sex by mockingly suggesting that a great Lady cannot eat her break-­fast in bed, and dine within an houre after, make one colation at Hide-­Parke, and another at Spring-­Garden, and then goe to a great Supper at Picadilly, or the Beare, and at last, be entertained with a Banquet on the water, and this not above six times a week, but these will be apt to thinke her a glutton.48 A decade later James Harrington referenced going to Piccadilly as an event, along with attending playhouses or horse-­matches.49 However, Edward

43. Gerard, Herball, sig. 7. 44. Sanders, Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama, 197; Anna Parkinson places Thomas Johnson’s shop on Snow Hill in the parish of St. Sepulchre’s; Parkinson, Nature’s Alchemist, 320. 45. Sloan, English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century, 98; Davis, “Nicholas Culpeper, Herbalist to the people.” 46. Cotgrave, Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, sig. Pic. 47. Rich, My Ladies Looking Glasse; Rich, Irish Hubbub, 48. 48. de la Garde, Mercurius Venereus, 8. 49. Harrington, A Letter unto Mr. Stubs, 1.

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Phillips published the definition of the word “Pickadil” in 1658 as a garment, an idea, and a place in London, writing, “Pickadil, (from the Dutch word Pickedillekens) the hem about the skirt of a garment, also the extremity or utmost part of any thing, also an Ordinary at St. James’s so called.”50 The second edition of Thomas Blount’s Glossographia defines Pickadil (à Belg. Pickedillekens, i.e. Lacinia. Teut. Pickedel) the round hem, or the several divisions set together about the skirt of a Garment, or other thing; also a kind of stiff collar, made in fashion of a Band. That famous Ordinary near St. James called Pickadilly, took its denomination from this, that one Higgins a Taylor, who built it, got most of his Estate by Picadilles, which in the last age were much in fashion.51 Piccadilles were big business for most of the seventeenth century; they did more than change the look in London, they helped change its landscape.52

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It may be that Arnold Higgins was a tailor in the Strand.53 He was not identified by his employment or status, but he was likely a builder working with his father. As such, the claim about “Higgins a Taylor” building Piccadilly is most likely a misattribution. The person who built Piccadilly was not a Higgins, but he was married to one. Mary Higgins married Robert Baker, a prosperous tailor in Piccadilly who employed some sixty men to create the widely popular piccadilles

50. Phillips, New World of English Words, 137. Randle Holme would define a pickadil as associated with man named Higgins: “a stiff Collar made in fashion of a Band; which kind of wear was much in use and fashion in the last Age by our English Gallants both Men and Women, as the Monuments of that time doth further manifest; for it is credibly reported that that famous place near St. James called the Pickadilly, took denomination from this, that one Higgins, a Taylor, who built it, got most of his Estate by Picadill; Holme, Academy of Armory, 171. N. H. defined the Pickadil as “(à Belg. Pickedillekens, i. e. Lacinia. Teut. Pickedel) the round hem, or the several divisions set together about the skirt of a Garment, or other thing; also a kind of stiff collar, made in fashion of a Band. That famous Ordinary near St. James’s called Picadilly, took denomination from this, that one Higgins a Taylor, who built it, got most of his Estate by Picadilles, which in the last age were much in fashion”; N. H., Ladies Dictionary. 51. Blount, Glossographia, sigs. Hhr–­Hhv. 52. N. H., The Ladies Dictionary. Also see Blount, Glossographia. 53. “Sessions, 1616: 3 and 4 December,” in County of Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series, vol. 4, 1616–­18, 42–­84.

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at his shop in the Strand.54 Piccadilles were a long-­lasting fashion—­the papist-­witch-­madam Anne Turner kept them popular by changing their color—­and so Baker did very well financially. In 1616 he was still referred to as “a tailor” in accounts prepared by the churchwardens. It was by the profession of tailor that he was memorialized in 1623 with the epitaph, “Robertus Baker, scissor, sepultus erat in ecclesia.”55 However, Baker did attempt to rebrand himself, appearing in church records as “gentleman” to publicly signal his move up in the world.56 Baker was also, like most men of means in this story, a builder. It was how he made most of his money in his later years and how he changed his status. One of the more interesting locales among his many aggressive land purchases was originally in the parish of St. Giles.57 Here he built Piccadilly Hall in 1611/12, around the same time he married Mary Higgins and Cotgrave published his dictionary. Baker had other developments. He built at least two large framed homes on Windmill Field (ca. 1617), one dwelling for himself, and one for a Mr. Drummond. Soon after in 1618/19, he purchased a great deal more land, acquiring twenty-­two acres in Windmill Fields and Scavenger’s Close from Richard Wilson, property that the brewer Thomas Wilson had owned.58 His wife, Mary Higgins, appears to have provided the money for these enterprises and was a landowner and developer in her own right. Her brother, Arnold, and father, Stephen, who were never far from her ear or her wallet, likely influenced these purchases and how she and Robert shaped the city. Mary’s own developments did not go unnoticed. We know this because she was fined £1,000 for unlawful building and ordered to pull down her home and stables at Piccadilly Hall. The main issue was not the building itself, but the way the water flowed through it. Mary lived upstream from Whitehall; she was suspected of fouling its water with overflow from her property. Rather than move or tear down, she petitioned the state for permission to reroute the stream away from her home, so that it might flow more cleanly to Whitehall. According to the city surveyor, Inigo Jones, she

54. Sheppard, London, A History, 194. 55. Kingsford, Early History of Piccadilly, 73. 56. Ibid., 72. 57. Ibid., 32. 58. Ibid., 72; Survey of London, vols. 31 and 32, St James Westminster, Part 2, 32–­40.

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did just that. She was allowed to keep her home and stables, having engineered her way out of the troubles her property development had caused her.59 After her husband’s death in 1623, and bolstered by her father and brother, she would spend the next few decades contesting her right to the land. By 1622, the name Piccadilly had gained traction. The attorney general noted that there was a “Baker as dwellinge att Peckadilla” and Lammas payment records for 1623–­24 note that Baker built upon “ground neare the Windmill [ . . . ] and lately called Pickadilly.”60 Building continued. By 1626 there were “seaven messuages with the stables and other buildinges and curtelages thereupon built.61 The 1627–­28 rate books list the street name of “Pecadilly” as a street heading,62 signifying homes owned or occupied by John Wood, Isabel Ridley, and Mrs. Mary Baker, widow.63 A parliamentary survey from June 1651 records eleven homes on Robert Baker’s land. Mary’s Piccadilly Hall estate was considerable. She held onto her property and her money tenaciously as the rest of her family. John Richardson notes her numerous appearances in the legal record.64 Her father and brother stayed close to her and her financial affairs in the Strand as they would stay involved in their own business in the Savoy. And that business was building.

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More than any other figure in BL MS 36674, the Higginses embodied the tensions, at a local and legal level, that medical profession and property development caused. These were the same kind of tensions the last few chapters have argued might have poisoned that already fevered rest of Elizabeth Jennings, making her imagine that she is being bewitched. Although Stephen Higgins helped author London Pharmacopeia (1618), solidifying the authority of apothecaries, and seemed to maintain

59. Richardson, Annals of London, 128. 60. Kingsford, Early History of Piccadilly, 32–­49. 61. Ibid., 32–­40. 62. Ibid., 32–­40. 63. Ibid., 73. 64. Richardson, Annals of London, 128.

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a high-­end client list including the likes of Robert Cecil, he was not a shining example of anything. He fought with the Society of Apothecaries and largely ignored his final apprentice, Nicholas Culpeper. From what we can discover, there was something acerbic, if not combative, about how he practiced medicine. One can only shudder to think of his bedside manner. Higgins was also an unapologetic juggernaut when it came to the part he played in reshaping London. His influence can be felt even now. He was not “Higgins, the Taylor,” for whom we can thank for the popularization of the term “piccadilly” and the popular tourist attraction Piccadilly Circus. That was his son-­in-­law, Robert Baker. However, Higgins did strongly influence the decisions his daughter, Mary Higgins Baker, made in regard to the land after she became a widow, so his role in developing that stretch of land cannot be negated. Although Higgins railed against authority and responsibility and did not like to be beholden to anyone, he had a very strong sense of his own rights. He flagrantly disregarded prohibitions against building and fought with his neighbors. Although he refused to pay fines, he was happy to sue or counter-­sue. He was not an easy man to be around. Higgins fought with his neighbors. In 1620, one of Higgins’s neighbors in the Savoy began renovating his home, making additions that compromised Higgins’s access to natural light. Higgins had the right to forbid new construction that would restrict natural illumination from reaching his windows and so he did, complaining to the Manor Court of the Duchy of Lancaster that he “findes himself much aggrieved.”65 The neighbor seethed that Higgins was a “man of verie naughties disposition [and one often] transported with heate of rage and furie,” and began his own countersuit.66 As Higgins created chaotic conflicts with London’s leaders, the Privy Council, and the Star Chamber, he also encouraged conflict close to home: he enflamed the ire of his neighbors. Some of these neighbors were the Jennings-­Latch family. It is at this point in the story where we finally discover not only who made Elizabeth sick but why. Elizabeth herself contends that four women—­ Jane Flower, Katharine Stubbs, the Countess, and Nan Wood—­had killed her siblings and wanted to kill her too; a far-­fetched, fever-­fueled accusation. The child names the Countess, Margaret Russell, as her primary foe.

65. Sheppard, Robert Baker of Piccadilly Hall and His Heirs, 21. 66. Ibid., 20.

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When the Countess was in prison, Jennings argued, she would recover. One can see how she arrived at this thesis: from her sickbed she had seen the Countess and concluded she was the witch. Her theory was bolstered when she grew well during Russell’s imprisonment. History supported her: demoniacs recovered when their tormentors were prosecuted. However, Elizabeth’s contentions were not treated as hallucinatory ramblings. They were taken seriously. In the wake of months of failed medical treatment and worsening symptoms, the idea that something preternatural was at play made as much sense as anything else. Margaret Russell agreed with the diagnosis, but differed considerably in her opinion of the cause. Something foul was afoot and had been for a while. Already “two children that the Lady Jennings had by this husband were bewitched and dead.” The Jennings-­Latch union had lost children, but there did not appear to be any accounts of bewitchment before this brief account. So how had Russell come to the conclusion that these younger siblings were bewitched to death? As in other alleged bewitchments, motive and opportunity were linked after the fact to suffering; victims claimed sickness was caused by a criminal act when they recognized there had been cause to make them suffer. Elizabeth may have become sick the moment she turned a beggar away in Isleworth, but it was not that property that appears to have done her in. Nor was it Saundridge that made her sick, although it was assuredly haunted by her sickly and suffering ancestors. In lieu of unearthing an apt explanation for what was causing Elizabeth’s illness, or indeed, what had caused the death of two of her siblings, Russell argues that Elizabeth was the victim of preternatural volleys across property lines in the Strand. Russell says this with conviction. She knew both families and that there had been a long and terrible “controversie betweene two houses and that as long as [Elizabeth and her family] dwelt there they cold not prosper.” And she later confesseth that when Mrs. Gargrave lay att M. Higgins house when my Lady Jennings first child was sicke, that she was then there with her, and that a maide servant of the Lady Jennings came thither to wash a mapp, of whome Mrs. Higgins did inquire how they right did and she answered not well, to whome Mrs. Higgins replied, that they had much wronged them and that it wold come home by them and theirs.

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The elder Mary Higgins made an ominous prediction about the suffering experienced in the Jennings-­Latch household: it was, in her mind, righteous retribution for the distress her house had experienced by their hands. This textual fragment articulates the long presence of tension between the house of Higgins and the house of Jennings. The first threat happened when a different child was sick, perhaps one of the children who died; by then they had already “much wronged the Higgins house,” and payback was coming. The Higgins must have known Elizabeth was sick; the other neighbors who hovered in her sickroom knew of her illness. We also can establish that the two homes were in close enough proximity to encourage servants to pop by to borrow things. Mary Higgins, Stephen’s wife, was obviously well aware of the conflict between her husband and Dorothy Jennings. Higgins may have been a medicine man, but this was not a dispute over bad medicine. Although he certainly treated other aristocrats, there is no record that he ever treated a Jennings or a Latch. He had a motive to hurt Elizabeth, however. There is a record of him in legal and physical fisticuffs with the Jennings family. The controversy between these houses began over bad building renovations.

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Anyone who has ever renovated his or her home knows just how stressful the entire undertaking can be. Those who have lived next to a construction site know the escalating irritation of having to endure the ongoing cacophony, chaos, and invasion of supplies and workers without any appreciable personal benefit. Add to that the endless tensions over who owns what landscaping, how site lines are drawn, or where the property lines lie and one can recognize how easily something can slip from waiting it out to war. Dorothy Jennings lived next to one of Higgins’s building projects in 1616. It may have been his home, it may have belonged to a relative, or it may have been repaired for rental or resale, but the argumentative Higgins clearly started this renovation next to the wrong lady. She was determined to force Higgins to stop building next to her. She may have tried to negotiate with him. She may have reported the building in an effort to stop it. However, when Higgins’s workers broke down her wall, she had enough. To finally bring quiet to her neighborhood, she

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escalated matters substantially. She had Stephen Higgins’s workers nearly beaten to death. Dorothy suffered consequences for arranging this crime. She was taken to court on assault charges. She did not wilt or shy away from the charges against her. Rather, she retaliated by pointing an accusatory finger back. Higgins’s men, she simply insisted, had started it. Stephen and Arnold Higgins, James Axtell, Henry Fisher, and John Knaresboroughe smashed her wall down. She claimed the actions she took against them, appearing as anger, were actually done in defense of her estate. She countercharged them with creating “riot and misdemeanor” at her home.67 This conflict was the conflict between the two households, playing out across land and body. Discord that began in October 1616 raged through the end of the year and fomented still in 1622 as Elizabeth gets sick. Margaret Russell argued that Elizabeth is being bewitched because of a bitter brawl over land, a struggle between her parents and the house of Higgins. It is easy to assume the two houses must have been actively provoking one another. Higgins’s men broke down Dorothy Jennings’s wall and, in retaliation, Dorothy Jennings and her gang of twelve malefactors launched a physical attack on Higgins’s workers Henry Fyssher and James Axtell. Higgins had motive for his alleged attack against the children of the house of Latch. He wanted revenge. And two of the Jennings-­Latch children died in the five years after this conflict began. Elizabeth grows sick in 1622. If Higgins had orchestrated any of these assaults against these three children, it reasons he would have used poison; his knowledge of medicines would have made it a more likely modus operandi. There is no mention of poisoning, however, possibly because poison was perceived as a womanly method of attack. The final venue of antagonism between the families was played out in the realms of belief. Higgins bewitched, or paid someone else to bewitch, Elizabeth Jennings as an act of vengeance. Goodcole allegedly suggested the knowledge was common, and her thesis would have made sense in context. London had a steady stream of witchcraft accusations. If Higgins himself had not done the malefic act, any number of London’s working witches might have been hired to do the deed. Witchcraft, although it seems wild, made for an invisible crime that created painfully obvious results. And Eliz-

67. “Sessions, 1616: 3 and 4 December,” in County of Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series, vol. 4, 1618–­18, 42–­84.

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abeth looks, behaves, and suffers as one bewitched. Moreover, in witchcraft accounts there needed to be motive, a reason for retribution: lack of charity, demonstrated cruelty, jealousy. Elizabeth herself interprets her illness as beginning when an old woman frightened her at the threshold. It could just as easily have begun when Higgins’s workers were assaulted.68 The conflict between Jennings and Higgins is an urban translation of the long-­standing resentment and anxiety at the root of most rural witchcraft accusations. Witches were not popular people; they might be outspoken, poor, or needy. A witch needed charity and knew it was her due. Problems happened when neighbors did not properly follow suit. Like a witch denied a pin she thought was her right to ask for, Higgins demanded the right to develop. When denied land, he broke her wall. When that did not frighten, he broke her children. Witchcraft is an act of counter-­medicine. A medical practitioner, like a cunning woman or a witch, has as much knowledge of how to damage as she does how to cure. Witching and unwitching, like healing and harming, are two sides of the same coin. Suspicions assuredly seethed and curdled around Higgins. Witchcraft seldom happened without cause, although those recounting cases of bewitchment might stretch their necks far back looking for causality as a foundation for accusation. Witchcraft also worked as an explanatory tool when motive is more obvious than method. Those looking for an explanation might note that Higgins was not a nice man: he fought with his neighbors, his society, and his city. He was engaging in criminal activities: his children and his son-­in-­law, Robert Baker, the tailor, were major players in illegally reshaping London’s landscape. He built without a license in the Strand, destroying property and refusing to pay fines. He had motive: a bitter, escalating property dispute, one where he and his son already attempted to punish the Jennings-­Latch household for their part in attacking his workers. Moreover, he had opportunity. Higgins, as a neighbor and medical practitioner, had numerous occasions over the years to find ways

68. In the indictment we see the presence of Elizabeth’s mother, Dorothy, and Dorothy’s mother, Ursula Bulbeck. Ursula, as much a part of the property dispute as she was a part of Elizabeth’s healthcare, supposedly helped orchestrate and participated in the violent mob of twelve people who, en masse, beat two of Higgins’s workers. The indictment also tells us two things about the men in Dorothy’s life. Although he was some seven years dead at this point, the spectre of her late husband John Jennings would continue—Dame Dorothy Jennings was still Lady Jennings. The indictment also illustrates the poignant absence in the indictment of her current husband, John Latch, who may have been away on Fen business at the time.

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into the Jennings-­Latch home and health. There was a witness; Russell and Gargrave witnessed at least one of his weapons. Retribution was met without messiness the moment Mary suggested that the Jenningses had “wronged them and that it wold come home by them and theirs.” It was in that moment that words became witchcraft.

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Witnesses and Persons of Interest, Bedside & Barside The first part of the book looked at who Elizabeth Jennings was (the daughter of a lunatic lord), that she was sick (of something mysteriously resistant to treatment), and the conflict between Simeon Foxe, her primary physician, and Margaret Russell (a conflict that invoked the Cecil family, as well as other nobles, and their own experiences with death and witchcraft). That conflict may have been representative of some of the tensions Jennings absorbed (tensions created by property development and healthcare) and internalized to make sense of her experience of sickness. The diagnosis she gave herself was that she was being bewitched (she may have come to this conclusion by recalling the stories of demoniacs and bewitched of her time). Imprison the Countess, she suggested, and all would be well. The middle part of the book explored what those tensions were through the people who appeared in the narrative. It suggested the diverse group of people inculcated in the story intersected at one or both points of strife created by overdevelopment and medical practice. The figure that looms largest at that intersection was apothecary and property developer Stephen Higgins. Higgins had motive: a long, violent, and almost deadly feud with Elizabeth Jennings’s mother and stepfather. He had opportunity: their houses were in very close proximity, so close that servants could and did pop by to do chores. And he had means: as an apothecary, he could have used poison, but the supposition was that he used witchcraft. Anne Goodcole allegedly all but said that Higgins had

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killed Elizabeth’s siblings and was responsible for Elizabeth’s suffering. Mary Higgins supposedly quipped, witnessed by Margaret Russell and Mary Gargrave, that the Jenningses “had much wronged them and that it wold come home by them and theirs.” As vehemently as Elizabeth Jennings suggests the Countess was to blame for her suffering, the Countess testified that fault lay with Stephen Higgins. The final part of the book will look at the fallout from that testimony, what happened next, and how Elizabeth’s story—­as best we can trace it—­ended. To begin that work, this chapter will look at the growing group of witnesses and persons of interest amassing around the prone Elizabeth Jennings, waiting to see if, in fact, she did recover when the Countess was incarcerated. It will explore who Thomas Fowler, William Power, Katharine Percy, Katharine Browne, and Agnes Faulkner may have been. Goodcole quickly became aware that she had been named as a person of interest in what was promising to become a witchcraft investigation. This chapter will look at how a jailor at Newgate named Wells tipped Anne off about her warrant. If this was not enough insider information, the Goodcoles broke with all procedure by having Russell taken out of her cell, away from prying eyes. They brought her to the house of James, a clerk whose house was in the Old Bailey, to talk to her themselves and talk her into changing her earlier testimony. What they say from this point on matters; it tells us that they are thinking about themselves and what they can do to distance themselves from the idea of any intimate knowledge of witching.

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William Slingsby was not impressed by Russell’s first examination. Perhaps he was hesitant. The weight of Jennings’s illness and her mother’s violent, litigious, and desperate condition may have made him want to get things right. He had to be careful because he certainly could not be unbiased. Slingsby likely knew Higgins; he was knee-­deep in the mud caused from the fallout of his own building schemes in Long Acre and likely to have crossed paths with this other busy builder, perhaps through Vernatti. A memorandum by Slingsby likewise appears just before the indictment of Dorothy Jennings for assault against Higgins’s son, and the charge against

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Higgins and his son for breaking down her wall.1 So he may have known exactly what had happened on those properties. We cannot know exactly what his reasons were; however, we do know Slingsby wrote up a writ for Russell’s commitment. By midnight, Margaret Russell had begun her long night in Newgate Prison. At Amen Corner, Elizabeth sleeps soundly in the knowledge that her tormentor had been contained. Elizabeth’s easy rest lasts only as long as the Countess is safely incarcerated, however. On 26 April, Russell is twice taken from prison for questioning. Elizabeth’s bewitchment is reset by Russell’s release. She “had another very dangerous fitt of convulsions” so traumatic that “Doctors Fox beholding said it neerely touched her,” and nearly killed her. Even if Russell had been officially released, Jennings’s rapid regression would have put a quick end to her freedom. Elizabeth recovers enough that she was soon able to speak: The height of my disease is witchcrafte. After a good space she spake againe thus: They have noo power to witch me to Death but only to putt me to paine Although her preternatural knowledge of Russell’s imprisonment left her audience awestruck, it was not without precedent; the legal system was used as a kind of counter-­magic. Should she be set free, the counter-­magic would fail, and she would regain her malefic power. Imprisonment and execution would un-­witch a woman: the death of a witch was the assured way of undoing her magic. When Russell was removed from her cell, it created Elizabeth’s painful and prophetic declarative spasms. Russell would not be kept from Newgate for long. The moment she was returned to the prison, Elizabeth begins to beam: And anon after she said with a smiling countenance she said: One is in prison, th’other is hanged And presently her fitt went off; her speech returned; and her palsie arme recovered motion and sense, and ever since hath bin and is perfecte in her understanding and memories,

1. “Sessions, 1616: 3 and 4 December,” in County of Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series, vol. 4, 1616–­18, 42–­84.

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and of very good health in all respects, and eateth her meate as well as ever she did before she fell sicke. There seems to be very little concern about the other witch who allegedly conspired to hurt Jennings—­whoever she may have been (Joan Flower died and her daughters, Margaret and Phillip, were hanged as witches in 1618), she was now, at least according to Jennings, dead and gone. Russell’s imprisonment seemed to calm Elizabeth’s nerves, satiate her bloodlust, or both. Suddenly Elizabeth is feeling ever so much better.

Frequent Visitors Elizabeth’s final fervid accusations, grandiose and terrible, are made in front of an ever-­expanding audience. Their presence there, meant to add legitimacy to the witching events, soundly locates Jennings in the arena of the performative preternatural. The participants in her damnable drama are worth considering in terms of how closely this neighborhood knit the peerage to the building and healing happening in London. First we need to see who the final figures in the case are to see if we can understand why they were watching. Elizabeth Jennings steps out of the shadow of death “in the presence of Sir Thomas Fowler, knight; Doctor Fox[e], the minister; William Power, esq; the Lady Jennings; Mistress Katharine Percy; Katharine Browne [and] Agnes Faulkner, servants.” In attempting to unravel who was watching, we can also begin to surmise whom Dorothy Jennings allowed into her home to witness these events: some were servants, some were family, some were merely curious neighbors. Others, by class, marriage, or experience, however, may have been handpicked to witness these curious events because of what they might bring to later legal proceedings. The presence of Dorothy Jennings and Simeon Foxe do not need explanation, although it would perhaps surprise some medical historians that Foxe remained involved in the case even as it had wandered into the realm of the supernatural. Some of these other witnesses, however, appear for the first time in BL MS 36674 while Jennings makes her miraculous recovery. It could be that the marvelousness of her fits had begun to garner attention. Or it could be that these were family friends who happened to stop by at this auspicious moment. However, it seems to be the spectacle of suffering they came to see at this point. Although there are unnamed servants in

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attendance, making up some of the pressing crowd, it is not composed of mere hoi polloi. There were persons of note in the audience; their names, worth recording to Latch, are difficult to trace.2

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William Power is a name with some resonance. He may have elected to serve as an expert witness: a William Power was part of an infamous possession debacle. John Darrel claimed to dispossess William Sommers. Sommers, in turn, claimed to be possessed, then claimed to have faked his possession, and finally then claimed to have lied when he retracted his original claim: he was indeed possessed. Power acted as a kind of witness to the dispossessions. He claimed that he demanded John Cooper, “one of the keepers of the sayd Sommers,” to confirm that “when Mr. D[a]rrell did cast out the Devill, he had not appoynted him anie place to goe unto.3 Power confirms that Cooper seems to try to downplay Darrell’s dispossession error, and suggests rather that the other dispossession assistants sent the Devil, “into a heard of [s]wine at the townes end: or words to that ef[f ]ect: which words were spoken about Amonets past.”4 Could it be that William Power was called in as an expert witness to establish the veracity of Elizabeth’s bewitchment? If this is indeed the same man, the timing of her recovery might be read as somewhat prompted, if not scripted and staged. Power seems to err on the side of skepticism, but may well have lent a hand in helping events unfold.

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The presence of Sir Thomas Fowler, justice of the County of Middlesex, suggests that Dorothy Jennings was stacking the cards to legally legitimize her claim that witchcraft was happening in their midst. Like Elizabeth’s 2. Listed among the witnesses was one Katherine Percy. This Katherine may be a relation of the Percy family (Henry Percy, owner of Syon House, was also William Slingsby’s uncle, so it could be this is another of that clan), but she is not one of the more famous Katherine Percys. Information on Katherine Brown and Agnes Faulkner likewise was not covered in my investigations. 3. Co., Breife Narration of the Possession . . . of William Sommers, sig. Dv. On William Sommers, see Gibson, Possession, Puritanism, and Print. 4. Co., Breife Narration of the Possession . . . of William Sommers, sig. Dv; Gibson, Possession, Puritanism, and Print.

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father, Fowler was a knight. There were two Sir Thomas Fowlers who might be the man referred to here. Both were knights connected to Islington and aligned with Barnsbury Manor,5 a famously small garden building called Queen Elizabeth’s Lodge.6 Thomas Fowler the elder was knighted in 1603.7 He was one of the judges at Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial.8 He worked alongside Sir Edward Coke, acting as the foreman at Anne Turner’s trial, which was part of the larger Overbury murder trial.9 This Fowler would have known, at least from Coke’s point of view, what a witch would have looked like. He was alive until 1624.10 Soon after, on 19 May 1628, Fowler the younger was granted the baronet of Islington,11 a title that became extinct after he died. Fowler’s third wife was also an Elizabeth (née Pierson), daughter of and heir to the estate of William Pierson, a barrister of the Inner Temple.12 They had four sons and seven daughters,13 one named Jane, who like Elizabeth Jennings died unmarried.14 This Jane gives us a Jane Fowler in the story (the elder Sir Thomas Fowler’s wife and the younger Sir Thomas Fowler’s daughter were both named Jane). This name is tantalizingly close, so close to Jane Flower, the name of one of the women Elizabeth Jennings accuses of witchcraft, that they might be the same woman. The name change is perhaps best explained by a simple transposition of letters made in the composition or transcription of BL MS 36674. This tidbit is even more titillating because, according to Anne Goodcole’s later testimony, when she made her house call to Elizabeth Jennings she went accompanied by Lady Fowler, who must have been Elizabeth Fowler, the younger Sir Thomas Fowler’s third wife. It could have been Lady Fowler who convinced her husband to come and witness the wonders unfolding at Amen Corner. If so, the Fowlers were as tied to the Jennings case as the Goodcoles were. As knitted as Thomas Fowler already was to the bewitchment case, he was also knotted to property development in England. Unlike Higgins 5. Yseldon. Perambulation of Islington, 97–­105. 6. Howitt, Northern Heights of London, 493; “Sir Thomas Fowler’s Lodge, Islington,” in Percy and Timbs, Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction [16 June 1832], 19:392. 7. Nichols, Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James, 1:219. 8. “Trial of Sir Walter Raleigh...,” No. 74 in Complete Collection of State-­trials, vol. 2, col. 4. 9. “Trial of Anne Turner...,” No. 104 in Complete Collection of State-­trials, vol. 2, col. 931. 10. Lewis, History, Topography, and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Mary Islington, 201. 11. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles I, 1638–­1629, 15. 12. Burke and Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies, 209. 13. Lewis, History, Topography, and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Mary Islington, 201. 14. Lysons, “Islington,” in Environs of London, vol. 3, County of Middlesex, 123–­69.

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and Slingsby, who had stakes in building, Fowler had stakes in enforcing the prohibitions against it. A letter was sent on 30 August 1613 from the Privy Council to Sir Lewis Lewkenor, Sir Thomas Fowler, and Sir William Smyth, Knights, and to Edward Forcett in regard to the building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.15 They were to restrain and, if obedience were not forthcoming, to commit to jail any who persisted in building there.16 A copy of the letter, dated 4 September 1613, reiterated that building was happening in “Lincolns Inn. Fields, with an intent to convert the whole Field into new buildings, contrary to his Majesties Proclamation, and all other publick Orders taken in that behalf, and to the great pestering and annoyance of that Society.”17

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Having established why some of the worthies may have been watching, we need to ask why Russell was taken from her cell to the home of James, the clerk whose house was in the Old Bailey, for questioning, not just once but twice in one day. We also need to ask why Russell’s liberty sends Elizabeth into paroxysms, as she herself prophesies it will. It may be that someone was signaling to Elizabeth that she should be sick again. In knowing who took Russell out of her cell and to what end, however, we can also find out something larger about the way witchcraft worked from behind the scenes. Here we see how witchcraft stories are made, who is making them, and under what conditions the confessions might first be born. It is unclear for how long the first examiners questioned Russell or if they even had a plan; but incontrovertibly, two of them took turns trying to break Russell, who was already mortified and mystified as to why she had been imprisoned. It appears they succeeded. They grilled her until she could only “weepe and cry.” Word that Russell had suffered through an unofficial interrogation earlier in the day came out when Thomas Fowler, William Slingsby, and Doctor Bates examined Elizabeth. Dr. Bates was likely Thomas Bates of Holywell, an apothecary who was twice mentioned

15. Ironically, despite Fowler’s role in prohibiting building there, within 137 years, a Lady Fowler would be living at 45 Lincolns’ Inn Fields; “Lincoln’s Inn Fields: No. 45,” in Survey of London, vol. 3, St. Giles-­in-­the-­Fields I: Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 62–­64. 16. Brett-­James, Growth of Stuart London, 87. 17. Dugdale, Origines juridiciales, 268.

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as an irregular practitioner by the College of Physicians (once for acting as a physician, and once on suspicion of being a crypto-­Catholic).18 He may have been there to represent the family’s interest; the Jenningses would come to be invested in what happened in Holywell. An extralegal examination conducted by the Goodcoles and Mistress Dromondby ties them as tightly as any other figures to the bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings. [Russell] confesseth that this morning aboute 10. or 11. a clocke she was brought out of Newgate to the house of James the Clerke, where we did nowe examine her, to speake with M. Goodcole and his wiffe and with Mrs. Dromondbye. In the light of Goodcole’s publication of his interviews with Elizabeth Sawyer, his decision to interview the Countess, a suspected witch, seems obvious. He was mandated to negotiate resolution between prisoner and victim. Here Russell was the prisoner and his wife was the victim of her slanderous accusations. Goodcole may have been acting as a consulting expert on witchcraft. Based on the confession he extracted from Sawyer about what she had done to Agnes Ratcliefe, he may have thought he could shed some light on Jennings’s torments. Goodcole may have been the expert on witches in the house, but his wife, Anne, here was made into the authority on demoniacs. When they took Russell out of her cell for her interrogation, the Goodcoles were likely working to change the way this story ended. Mistress Dromondby may have joined the interrogation to make sure her name stayed out of the record. At one time Anne Goodcole and Mistress Dromondby may have tried to help Elizabeth. It became apparent, with accusations of bewitchment flying, that they were working very hard to write themselves out of this witchcraft narrative. They cajoled Russell into changing her story of how the bewitchment happened. In front of Thomas Fowler, William Slingsby, and Thomas Bates, Russell confessed that she had misspoken and that Anne Goodcole did not mention the conflict between the two houses. The person who spoke on that matter was Anne’s sister, Frances Ashton. The minister’s wife was off the hook.

18. In 1627, he was a grand juror in 1627; he was also prosecuted for recusancy. See Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry . . . 1852, 1:69.

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As Russell attempted to shift the burden of knowledge from Anne Goodcole to Frances Ashton, she also suggested that someone else had heard something more compelling than Ashton’s bit of slanderous gossip: a direct threat. She claimed that Mistress Gargrave was present at the Higgins house when Mary uttered her threat, “that they had much wronged them and that it wold come home by them and theirs.” The statement that Mary Higgins made against the Jennings-­Latch household, with its ominous undertones, did much to confirm the animosity between neighbors, promising that wheels were in motion, either practically or karmically, to ensure that Elizabeth’s family would pay for their actions against the Higginses (although one wonders why Jennings would send her maid over at all then). From a contemporary view, Mary’s words might simply seem rude—­the Jenningses would rightly get their comeuppance—­but in an environment where witchcraft was perceived as a reality, this is read as curse. Critical here is that someone besides Russell hears the threat. Someone Russell was there to visit: by establishing who Gargrave was, we can also find out a bit more about the circles she walked in. And someone who could establish Higgins’s motive and support Russell’s claims. That person is Mistress Gargrave.

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There are two women, two possible Mary Gargraves, who may have heard Mary Higgins curse the Jennings household. John Gargrave was a shopkeeper in London around this time—­it may be that this was his wife.19 This trail does not get us that far, however. The shopkeeper’s wife has left little to the written record. It seems more likely that it was another Mary Gargrave, one who left quite a few marks in the archives. This Mary Gargrave was connected to this community, in part, by being connected to the queen: Slingsby served as the queen’s carver, the queen was godmother to Cecil’s daughter, and a Mary Gargrave served as maid of honor to Queen Anne for over seventeen years.20 After Queen Anne’s death in 1619, however,

19. “Inhabitants of London in 1638: St. Michael le Querne,” in Dale, Inhabitants of London in 1638, 152–­53. 20. “March 21, 1653–­1654: Petition of Mary Gargrave to the Protectorate,” in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Interregnum, 1654, 44.

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Mary fell on hard times. She came from a once noble family, which in her generation rotted on the vine. One of her nephews (her brother Thomas’s son), Thomas Gargrave, was hung as a murderer and her brother Robert frittered away the family fortune and became “an utter bankrupt in means and reputation, Gargrave is stated to have been reduced to travel with the pack-horses to London, and was, at last, found dead in an old hostelry!”21 Mary Gargrave did not suffer poverty quietly. Although she avoided the infamy some of her family experienced, she ended up bankrupt. The crushing weight of familial disgrace and financial burden surely must have made Gargrave distraught. Whereas she appeared in the historical record as an active representative of Queen Anne, she also appeared for decades after, starting in January 1619 when she pleads for the annual dividend, claiming she had wasted her fortune in service of the queen. She is granted £300 of the £1,000 she is allegedly owed the following year, on 7 February 1620. A year later, she prayed for the renewal of her protection, being then £1,000 in arrears, “to prevent an old servant of the King’s late mother from dying miserably in prison.”22 Gargrave made the same exhausting plea at court annually, for the renewal of this pension through the 1620s,23 1630s, and 1640s.24 After deliberations, Mary Gargrave was paid £20 in lieu of recognizing her many demands and was finally sent away for good.25 If this is indeed the same Mary Gargrave, why is this woman, who so often enters the courtroom, not brought in for questioning? She may have questioned if Russell had any influence on what was happening around her. Gargrave was, after all, the only eyewitness to the threat that Mary Higgins makes against the Higgins family. She might have been staying with the Higginses, as Elizabeth Jennings had been staying at Foxe’s home, to receive ongoing care. Staying with a medical professional was an expensive

21. Burke, Vicissitudes of Families, 320. 22. Issues of the Exchequer [1603–­1625], 251. 23. She received this pension, it seems until 1640, when she appears to have been cut off, or more likely ignored, during much of the chaos of the Civil War; Chapters in the History of Yorkshire, 86–­87. 24. She appears one last time, a desperate old woman begging for relief of the debt and poverty she had suffered between 1640 and 1653, pleading to two kings and a protectorate incessantly and with an iron backbone. In front of a new government, she pointed to the pittance she had lived on; she claims to have appeared there, by “stealth, for fear of imprisonment, and is in age and extreme want”; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Interregnum, 1654, 44. 25. “March 18–­31, 1654,” in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Interregnum, 1654, 44.

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privilege not available to the lower classes. Mary is the only peer named Gargrave; she was in the right place at the right time. Russell states that she was at Higgins home with Gargrave. Had Russell taken a sick Gargrave there for medical treatment? Or was Russell visiting Gargrave in her sickbed as she had been visiting Elizabeth in hers? Rather older than most hysterics, Gargrave might have been suffering from symptoms similar to those of Elizabeth Jennings and Mistress Saxby. She certainly would have been stressed enough about money to be in hysterics. If Russell has been visiting an ill Gargrave, surely the two women were close. If Gargrave had accompanied Russell on the visit together, they had to be at least on good terms; Russell would have been in her confidence as she had been in Dorothy Jennings’s. Gargrave may have been helping provide home remedies under the auspice of noblesse oblige, but plagued by financial worries, as a sort of income. If Russell had been composing the narrative, we might have heard what Gargrave said, as we might have heard what Saxby and Dromondby had to say. But Russell is not the one calling the witnesses here, nor is she the one calling the shots. Whereas Slingsby is in charge of the legal plays of the bewitchment of Elizabeth Jennings, the Goodcoles are busy trying to change the odds. Gargrave, the final witness, is not called, at least so far as the manuscript can show. Whatever she might have had to say about the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings has been lost to history.

Ordinary Visitors The final part of the case recorded in BL MS 36674 recounts the reactions of Anne Goodcole, Henry Goodcole, and their sister Frances Ashton. The three were brought in to explain, perhaps, what they were doing at Newgate questioning Russell off the record. Or perhaps, how it was that they seemed to have inside knowledge of the conflict between the house of Higgins and the house of Jennings. Their words, not Margaret Russell’s or Elizabeth Jennings’s, conclude the narrative. What follows from all three of them is narrated through a flurry of shock, anger, and denial. The Goodcoles acted quickly and aggressively upon hearing they had become people of interest to the court. Their reactions make sense. They were suddenly and unwelcomely pulled into an examination about witchcraft where it was suggested that they made a slanderous statement about

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Stephen Higgins. The fact that Goodcole’s professional reputation was slightly singed before and after he published his encounter with Elizabeth Sawyer explains his rapid, vehement, and aggressive reaction: he was trying to clear his and his wife’s names. In this examination, he might have simply been doing his job, which was to “faithfully and truliue use and beare [himself ] betwene partie and partie [ . . . ] prisoners and the parties to whom them have offended; exhorting them the uttermost of your connyg, to make restitution.”26 Regardless of his reasoning, three curious things come out of their examinations. Frances Ashton confessed that she had been practicing some form of medicine and had been to see Jennings. We find out, however, that she cannot read. Rather, she needed her brother to read the note that suggested Anne Goodcole had become a person of interest. Upon learning the contents of the note, Ashton confessed that Henry, Anne, and Robert Duffield (a brother-­in-­law) all marched over to James the clerk’s home. James was absent. They demanded his return, and when he returned, they demanded to see the Countess. Ashton then confessed she wanted Russell to explain why she had made speeches against her and her sister—­Russell denies having done so and had not. Goodcole took a turn interrogating her. Russell was by then inarticulate with her grief. Ashton reasserted her innocence and fell silent. Anne Goodcole followed suit. She “confesseth that on Thursday Countesse came to her and asked her if she were a physition woman, and she said she had medicines that did sometimes helpe children in sickness.” Goodcole is obviously aware that the College of Physicians might press charges against her (as they eventually did) for practicing medicine without a license; she did not actually confess to being a female physician. Rather, she confirmed that Russell “told her there was a Ladies child in the Strand in great extremitie, whome she thought was bewitched and therefore desired her helpe.” This is an interesting comment in itself. Goodcole is reflecting the idea of witchcraft back at Russell. It was Russell, she claims, not she, who thought Elizabeth bewitched. In good conscience, she admits that she and Lady Fowler had gone to visit Elizabeth and left her a prescription. It may be that the record is vague at this moment, or that Goodcole was being necessarily obtuse, but she does not

26. “The Visitour of Newgate” from the Order of the Hospital of St. Bartholomews, cited in Dobb,“Henry Goodcole,Visitor of Newgate.”

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mention what exactly she had been medicating—­whether she thought the child suffered from fits or thought Elizabeth was forespoken. Regardless of her diagnosis and treatment regimen, Goodcole clarified that her treatment would have been efficacious had Elizabeth taken it. Perhaps none of this would have happened had Elizabeth swallowed her medicine. Anne Goodcole was more vehement in denying she or her sister had said anything at all about a controversy between the two houses. Denying this was a way of denying dangerous knowledge. It was one thing to know about medical treatments for maladies that looked like bewitchment—­healers had to treat a large number of illnesses—­but knowledge of the efficacy of a curse put on the house of Jennings by the house of Higgins was an entirely different thing. This kind of information would place Goodcole soundly in the realm of witches, unwitchers, and cunning women, for whom diagnosing, curing, and enacting curses was stock-­in-­trade. In this light, her vehement denial of this one “fact” begins to make sense. Following this, she also denied that Russell had told her she’d been sent by Mistress Dromondby, or that Ursula Bulbeck beseeched her to come treat her granddaughter.

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There may not be a lot of new and illuminating information in the first part of Anne’s examination, but it provides a second, unexpected, element. The morning that Anne discovered the allegations against her, a “black man” came and fetched her husband out of bed. This is a particularly curious detail, especially in a case that gravitates around witchcraft. In most contemporary accounts of witchcraft, the presence of a black man suggests the presence of the devil. In only one account of spiritual suffering, that of Sarah Wight, does a person of color appear as just part of the regular, although notable, spectators, as opposed to a spectre of evil. However, Anne further saith that yesterday in the morning there came a man to speake with her husband who was in bedd with her, but she knewe him not, being a blacke man aboute 40 yeres old like a cittizen who did desire him to doo some business for him sometimes the next week.

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The devil in the shape of a gentleman, or the “black man,” appears relatively early in English witchcraft tracts. Reginald Scot, in his skeptical Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), criticizes Jean Bodin’s theories that God “sometimes alloweth the Devil the shape of a Blackmoor.”27 He makes very few appearances in Elizabeth’s era, but appears again as witchcraft accusations resurge in the later part of the seventeenth century. Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) recounts Julian Cox’s (1663) relationship with her familiar, who appears in the shape of a black man as an “astral spirit” that could transform its shape. Around the same time, Annabil Stuart testifies that “the Devil in the shape of a Black man came to her Mothers House, and required the Declarant to give her self up to him; and that the Devil promised her that she should not want any thing that was good.”28 The devil appearing in the shape of a black man was a well-­established trope by the end of the witch hunts. True and Impartial Relation (1682) went to great lengths to contextualize how Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards entered into demonic pacts through their use of imps. Susanna Edwards testified that the devil came to her in the shape of a gentleman dressed all in black, although “something in the shape of a little boy, which she thinks to be the devil did suck at her breast.”29 By 1696, George Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World discovered notes that Jennet Dowglas created a clay figure to conduct image magic while “the black Gentleman being present (which was the name she gave the Devil).”30 In 1698, Francis Cullen’s inclusion in Sadducimus Debellatus of a “Black Grim man,” described as “Gentleman,” who had cold hands, seems normative. Henry Goodcole’s words provide the final bit of testimony in the case. He suggested that “aboute 7 a clocke he did rise and went abroade with M. Edmondes a minister.” The arrival of Minister Edmondes seems to suggest that the black man who roused her husband out of bed was not the devil, but a minister of African descent. Neither option makes a great deal of sense: the devil roused the minister from bed or a black citizen did. Regardless, when he was done with his rounds (by eight or nine in the morning) he went to work at Newgate, which is where he discovered the warrant out for his wife.

27. Scot, Discovery of Witchcraft, 50. 28. Glanville, Saducismus Triumphatus, 201, 291. 29. Anon., True and Impartial Relation of the Informations Against Three Witches, 36. 30. Sinclair, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, 7.

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Henry Goodcole is identified in his examination as the ordinary [visitor] of Newgate Prison. When he examined Margaret Russell he must have had Elizabeth Sawyer in mind. Goodcole took on the same position of authority he had with Sawyer, and examined Russell as if she were guilty. He carried this authority with him, it seems, because he was willing to act as an ordinary even outside of Newgate. Goodcole did not examine Russell in prison. He interrogated her at James the clerk’s home. It could be that he was trying to keep this business away from his day job, as he wanted to put a quick end to it. He was not looking for a witch; rather, he was looking to have Russell remove his wife’s name (and his by virtue of the relationship) from this bit of nastiness. He said nothing about interrogating Russell till she wept. Nor did he mention the post-­interrogation dinner his family enjoyed together. He did, however, mention moving between Ashton’s and Duffield’s homes, making this a rather close extended family. His testimony does end, however, with the final assertion that Russell confessed to him that she had never seen his wife before that Thursday. The Goodcoles had played no part, for good or ill, in the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings. He claimed to have sworn testimony to prove it. For all intents and purposes, the case ends here. C. L’Estrange Ewen argues, quite reasonably, that one must assume that no formal indictment was framed against Russell.31 I have not been able to find an account of one. Perhaps there simply was nothing of sufficient evidentiary value that would allow them to hold Russell beyond this night. Although BL MS 36674 ends, Elizabeth’s story leaps the margins of the manuscript. It becomes more faded the further it travels from this source; however, the story of Elizabeth Jennings extends far beyond the bottom of the page.

31. Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism, 240.

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Wrap Up The Final Expert Assessment On a facing page and offset from the rest of the transcription, writing some seventy years after the fact, the manuscript’s first critic, Elias Ashmole, claims the last word in BL MS 36674. He writes a note to himself: July 30. 1622. The Lady Jennings applied to Dr. Napier for care of hir Daughter. Since the Figure, & his wrote this upon in his Diary for that day & yeare. The Dr. calle this disease Epiliptica Matricis, and Morbus Matricis. Soo at this end of that Booke the Dr. questions relating to the nature of this Disease; & how to ease hir; and whither she were bewitched, or only troubled with the Epilipsie of the Mother. Ashmole 1690 With these words, BL MS 36674 concludes. But the story of Elizabeth’s illness does not end with the imprisonment of Margaret Russell or with Goodcole’s signature. It does not end happily, with a cure from Foxe, her physician. Elizabeth’s bewitchment does not end at all. It resurfaces and rages on through the next year. Although the notes left by Ashmole provide a useful pointer, they do not conclude the actual case. In looking at her next medical prognosis, one written by Richard Napier, we can see that Elizabeth’s illness held on with tenacity if not with preternatural strength. His account gives us some indications to why.

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Richard Napier Born on 4 May 1559 in Exeter, Richard Napier was the son of Alexander Napier and Ann Burchley. He was trained as a minister and ordained at Oxford in 1590. He lived, if not practiced, as the rector of Great Linford, North Buckinghamshire, for the next forty years; Napier did not enjoy the pulpit and employed a substitute preacher.1 When he looked up to the sky, he was not gazing at the heavens. Rather, he was looking at the stars; he studied astrology with Simon Forman. According to William Lilly, at Forman’s death, “all his rarities, secret manuscripts, of what quality soever, Dr. Napper of Lindford in Buckinghamshire had, who had been a long time his scholar; and of whom Forman [ . . . ] used to say he would be a dunce: yet in continuance of time he proved a singular astrologer and physician.”2 Napier rubbed shoulders with a great number of scholars. Napier appears to have known John Dee3 and was friends with medical philosopher Sir Kenelm Digby;4 both men appear as references in this case. Although Dee’s library (referenced in chapter 1) may have provided a place to find accounts of possession, the story of Dee’s failed dispossession and the subsequent death of his maid Anne Frank would have provided Napier something of a case study for the spiritual treatment of demoniacs.5 Digby was, conversely, at the forefront of those who argued that the symptoms of “bewitchment” were signs of a specific physical malady “peculiar only to females,” because “women and children being very moist and passive are most susceptible of this unpleasing contagion of the imagination.”6 Napier also treated the wealthy; they comprised about 25 percent of his clientele. He famously treated those in the Duke of Buckingham’s circle as well as the duke’s brother, John Villiers, the “lunatic” Viscount Purbeck (husband first to Frances Coke, the daughter of Edward Coke, and then husband to Elizabeth Slingsby).7 Although Napier treated the elite, those who could pay more for the privilege of staying in his home with servants

1. Andrews, “Napier, Richard (1559–­1634),” in Oxford DNB. 2. Lilly, History of His Life and Times, 44. 3. Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London,12. 4. Intriguingly, Digby lived for a time at Clerkenwell; his father was executed for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. See Foster, “Digby, Sir Kenelm (1603–­1665),” in Oxford DNB. 5. Dee, Private Diary, ed. Halliwell-­Phillipps, 35–36. 6. Digby, Late Discourse Made in a Solemne Assembly of Nobles and Learned Men, 92–­93. 7. Andrews, “Napier, Richard (1559–­1634),” in Oxford DNB.

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to tend them,8 his reasonable rates meant that his client base was also varied in terms of class, as well as age and gender. Some of his clients, like those involved with Villiers, were famous for their place in the peerage. Others, like Elizabeth, were notable for their preternatural problems. This astrologer-­cum-­physician was called “the most renowned physician of both body and soul.”9 By different scholarly accounts, one can find claims that Napier diagnosed between 100 and 250 of his 2,000 patients as demoniacs. Those numbers vary wildly, however, with references to the numbers as being 109,10 148,11 164,12 and 264 persons.13 Regardless of the exact number, Napier clearly associated specific physical and behavioral symptomatology to bewitchment and performed quasimedical exorcisms on his possessed patients.14 He was not alone in this, nor were bewitchment symptoms categorically recognized. Among those who felt “strangely or sorely afflicted,” Napier diagnosed severe forms of mundane illnesses such as melancholia, anxiety, strange fancies, conceits, or, in Elizabeth’s case, “epilepsye of the mother” or hysterical epilepsy, a disease that mimicked bewitchment without the need for witches.15 Hysteria was an increasingly popular diagnostic category. This was not in opposition to superstition, but because the physical and psychological suffering of bewitchment overlapped relatively transparently with the suffering experienced by some hysterical young women. It would be a long time before this developing trend took hold. For a number of decades, sickness and bewitchment operated in tandem, and sometimes in the same body, as they seem to have done so in Elizabeth’s. For Napier’s part, he rarely linked bewitchment and hysteria.16 We find them side by side, but not necessarily aligned. Napier’s treatment regime seems like a pastiche of the other medical, religious, and magical practices seen thus far. His shorthand case notes, like an epitaph to the case, act as an unintentional summation of all the other treatments. Napier’s notes also include a few crucial 8. Evenden, Popular Medicine in Sixteenth Century England, 22. 9. Andrews, “Napier, Richard (1559–­1634),” in Oxford DNB. 10. Stearns, “‘Strangely Handled in All Her Lyms.’” 11. MacDonald, Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London, 199. 12. Bonzol, “Medical Diagnosis of Demonic Possession.” 13. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 107. 14. Ibid., 215. 15. Ibid., 211. 16. Stearns, “Strangely Handled in All Her Lyms,” 468.

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additions to the Jennings story, which make it an even more entangled and harrowing affair. The following details may represent the patient history Napier took when he took over Elizabeth Jennings’s case from Simeon Foxe. Or it could be that Napier was one of the assisting physicians treating Jennings throughout her illness. ‘m[ist]res ^Elis^ Jennings feb 19 [Tuesday] 9. 30 pm 1622’: ‘not likely to live | longer then halfe a yere’. He moves backwards, however, to recount much of the case as we know it now: Easter Eve th[e] 20 of Ap she [be]gan to stutter [in] her speach yea [to] growe speachles Easter mu[n]day [alto]geath(e)r speachles A[p] 22) [ . . . ] resolut [1:] for a^ a vomyt 2: to be let blood [in] her arme. 3 [:] to be [bathed] in oyle. on weddens had [a] vomyt w(hi)ch wro[ght no [change] both an[d] no alterat[ion] nor a[mend]ment a woma(n) ^Countys so called but her p[ro]per name is Margaret Russle 60 y.^disswading fro[m] le[tting] of blood yet was let [blood] useth to be sick about 9 of the clock at night usually17 The first part of this passage suggests one of two things. First, as follows in the manuscript, Simeon Foxe takes Jennings to London, where he began his rigorous treatment regime. One Wednesday, Foxe began a process of purgation: the emetic did not soothe her symptoms—­nothing changes. She is rubbed down with oil. Second, we find that despite Russell’s vehement protestations against bleeding Elizabeth, her blood was

17. Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 181, fol. 195r. The transcription of Napier’s notes was very generously provided courtesy of Lauren Kassell and Rob Ralley. I am exceptionally grateful for their help.

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let. Elizabeth does not die as Georgi-­Anne Cecil had, but she does not recover either. Napier saw Jennings a second time on 30 July 1622. The fact that Elizabeth is able to survive the medical treatments she endured is as startling as the fact that her family and doctors believed she might be bewitched. There seems to be some thought that she would not survive, however. A supplementary passage (195r), the one Ashmole cross-­references, concerns the possibility of this having supernatural causation and natural causation. Napier’s own notes on Jennings contain an even more startling fact not included in BL MS 36674, Ashmole’s synopsis, or the references to this case that appear in current scholarly criticism. He asks wheath[e]r yo[u]ng M[ist]res[s] Elis J[en]nings of 13 y[rs] be bewitched or only be troubled w[i]th the epilepsye of the mother & I shall cure her & howe & wheather on called goody Countis be a witch and hathdone it will dye halfe a yere henc[e]18 The wording on this final note is somewhat opaque as many of Napier’s casebooks are (this could be a query). However, it seems to read that Elizabeth is not long for the world. Napier concludes that she has only six months to live! Ashmole’s notes about Napier’s diagnosis of Jennings as suffering from hysteria suddenly are more interpretation than transcription. Napier was, at this time, still contemplating causation here (or Dorothy Jennings may have been). It was possible, he thought, that a witch caused Elizabeth’s illness. Or it might be that she was suffering from hysteria. Napier suggests, however, that Jennings is suffering from something worse: her illness is fatal.

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18. Ibid.

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causation for, if not diagnosis of, spiritual illness is familial influence.19 Something was plaguing the whole house. One begins to wonder suddenly whether Elizabeth Jennings was actually patient zero. Perhaps this preternatural plague had a different origin? In this note, Napier asks, Wheath[e]r Mr Latch her father in lawe, Henry troubled w[i] th epilept convuls in his sleepe & at no tyme els be by witchen, or els by strong impression of the fantasy, by his owne fantasy.20 Elizabeth was not the only one suffering from fits while in the Savoy. Two children, perhaps her half brothers, Latch’s twin sons, died from something that Russell aligned with neighborly vengeance (administered via bewitchment). John Latch was being tormented at night. He seems to be, at the very least, experiencing night terrors he attributed to witchcraft. It makes sense, of course, that the whole household suffered exhaustion and anxiety: Elizabeth was sick, Dorothy was fighting with the neighbors, and the haunting spectre of witchcraft was hanging over them all. There is not enough in this short reference to know what Latch was suffering from, but he felt strongly that the convulsions he experienced in the dark of night came courtesy of witchcraft. Maybe Latch, like Elizabeth and Mistress Saxby, was one of the forespoken. This addendum and the ongoing concern about Russell also suggest that the case did not make it to court, or at the very least that Russell had not been convicted. In order for her to be still causing a threat, she had to be still around and most likely out of jail. Elizabeth had recovered when Russell was first jailed, although the recovery appeared to be short-lived. If Jennings and her stepfather are both sick and worried about witches at the end of July, that means they have either come to fear someone else or they suspect that Russell could still be causing the chaos. Nor would this be the last time Elizabeth Jennings’s family would be seen by Richard Napier. Elizabeth’s grandmother Ursula Bulbeck and neighbor Nan Arpe are both seen by Napier: “the old Lady Bulbeck of ye Strand” was seen for headaches and eye troubles; “Mrs Arpe of the Strand,” for jaundice, shortness of breath, and bowel troubles. Ursula Bulbeck was Elizabeth Jennings’s grandmother who was present at Dorothy’s fight with Higgins and at her granddaughter

19. Stearns, “Strangely Handled in All Her Lyms,” 466; MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 81. 20. Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 181, fol. 195r.

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Elizabeth’s fits. And it was Nan Arpe who Elizabeth claimed was there when she first began to have her fits and who acted as witness to the torments that ravaged the girl. A final note in an undated letter from John Latch also appears in Napier’s records. In it Latch inquires about the physical health of his little girl Franke and the efficacy of a pomander prescribed to cure her fits.21 One wonders what cure he would have applied. Simon Forman taught Napier how to construct talismans and amulets for his bewitched patients.22 Could this be a little amulet, a bit of counter-­magic, or early modern aromatherapy like that used to stave off the plague? Near the bottom of Napier’s record, one can find a note amongst the medicines he suggests that reads only “Mrs Fraunces Latch halfe a year old.”23 Was this one of the children whose death set the whole house on edge? Elizabeth has an aunt named Frances,24 so she may well have had a half sister named the same. Could the skull of the deceased girl grimly held by her siblings on the Latch memorial represent Franke’s death? From this perspective, it appears that the family was plagued by sickness and death. This part of the story unfolds from medical records, however, so we should not be drawing too many conclusions from their presence in Napier’s records alone. What we do know is that Latch is shaken by the idea of witchcraft. He internalized it. He had bad dreams about it. Beyond Elizabeth’s illness, he worried for his other daughter. He had cause to worry: Elizabeth had been severely ill and at least one daughter and two sons (at least as they were represented on the memorial) were already dead. From the laws in place and enacted by local justices, from the various streets where healers proffered cures, to the privacy of her own bedroom, Elizabeth lives in an environment that believed in witchcraft and sustained the belief that she was bewitched. Elizabeth’s narrative extends beyond Latch, Napier, and Ashmole’s texts. We know little about what happened to her after the witchcraft stopped happening, but we do know Elizabeth lived beyond the climax of her bewitchment. We know her family tree went on to prosper after her branch ended. In following the life that pulsed through it, we can see

21. Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Bodleianae. 22. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 215. 23. Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 181, fol. 228r. 24. Brown, Abstracts of Somersetshire Wills, 1:20.

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through an increasingly distant lens a dynastic history indelibly influenced by a girl who was once busy being bewitched.

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Chapter Ten

Post-­Bewitchment Elizabeth Jenyns of St. Mary le Savoy Beyond the brief mention of Elizabeth Jennings’s bewitchment and her accusations against the four women who supposedly tormented her, history leaves us very few other hints to her life. Almost all of Elizabeth’s life after her possession and before her death remains a mystery. This is in itself not that unusual; the continuing lives of spiritually significant women—­women whose stories blaze so brightly that they momentarily catch the collective eye of their communities—­are often lost after the fact. These women simply slip from the historical record. In the case of Elizabeth Jennings, what we have of her is already mediated. Her story and her words are transcribed by another hand. Elizabeth lived far beyond Richard Napier’s best estimate of half a year; her name appears three more times in his own casebooks in 1630.1 She lived well into old age and she lived relatively well on a pension of “£80 per annum during her life for £1000.”2 She does not appear to have inherited lunacy from her father, but she may have been seen as suffering still from some form of hysteria; motherhood was a supposed curative and Elizabeth died a spinster. For as lonely as her life may have been, Elizabeth had company in the grave. She was buried in the Savoy Chapel, a building that would be rechristened the Chapel Royal at St. Mary le Savoy after being burnt down in a fire in 1864. According to early records from the chapel register, dated 24 August 1684, Elizabeth was laid in the same tomb as (or 1. See Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 238, fols. 81r, 156v, 196v. 2. Hailstone, History and Antiquities of the Parish of Bottisham and the Priory of Angelsey, 120.

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shared a brass plate inlaid on her tomb with) her bachelor great-­uncle Francis Bulbeck of Clevedon, North Somerset (who died in 1585).3 Francis, the eighth Bulbeck brother, was brother to Elizabeth’s grandfather Thomas Bulbeck,4 who acted as the executor of his will. He would have ensured Dorothy was heir to her father’s estate.5 Elizabeth’s monument, a memorial laid next to that of acclaimed poet Anne Killgrew, read For Elizabeth Jenyns, Daughter of Sir John Jenyns; died Aug. 7. 1684. She gave to the Poor of this Parish the Sum of £100 to be from time to time for ever imployed at Interest, for the Use of the said Poor; and the growing Interest to be bestowed upon, and equally divided among twelve poor People.6 It is a sad and poignant memorial to both Francis and Elizabeth that the family chose to rest these two unmarried relatives in the same tomb, as if it was where the family kept the clan’s virgins. Like her memorial, Elizabeth’s will lays out something of her life. She chose a female executor: her brother Thomas’s only daughter (of his six children), a girl named for her mother, Vere Palmer.7 She left the majority of her estate to Thomas’s son Roger, a man who married a girl whose name will now be familiar from the Churchill Monument, Sarah Latch.8 Her will reads Elisabeth Jenyns, of St. Mary le Savoy, co. Midd., spinster. Will dated Oct. 16, 1677, proved Oct. 28, 1684, by Vere Macdonnell. [126 Hare.] To be buried in St. Mary le Savoy. There is due to me from my nephew Roger Jenyns, esq’, by Bill, £200. I bequeath to his three sons, John, Roger, & Thomas Jenyns, £50 each. £50 for my funeral. To the poor, £100, a marble

3. Strype, “Map of the Parishes of St. Clements Danes, St. Mary Savoy,” in Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 2.4:109. 4. William John Loftie gives the date of Francis Bulbeck’s death as 1585 and notes that Elizabeth shared her uncle’s tomb. See Loftie, Memorials of the Savoy, 224. 5. Brown, Abstracts of Somersetshire wills, 1:20. 6. Strype, “Map of the Parishes of St. Clements Danes, St. Mary Savoy,” in Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 2.4:109. 7. Thomas would come to inherit the manor of Hayes in the county of Middlesex. Elizabeth’s portion came in the form of a yearly stipend. Jenyns, Pedigree of the Ancient Family of the Palmers of Sussex, 12. 8. Hailstone, History and Antiquities of the Parish of Bottisham.

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stone to be set up, purporting the time of my death & manner of my gift. My cousin Mary Parry, £20. To my niece Vere Macdonnell, widow, my Exix, £1,000 due on mortgage from my nephew Roger Jennings. My estate to my nephew Roger Jenyns, of Bristol, & the picture of my grandfather Thomas Bulbeck, of gold, blue enamelled.9

13. Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy: A Royal Peculiar. Photo by Neddyseadragon, 2007. Wikimedia Commons/GNU Free Documentation License.

Elizabeth’s wishes appear to have been somewhat successfully carried out by her executor and her chapel, at least as far as later forensic accounting can determine. Monies made off of the interest of her endowment were indeed given out each year on Easter Monday to twelve impoverished souls in the parish of Saint Mary-­le-­Savoy.10 On 9 May 1851, H. C. Selby, the clerk of peace for the county of Middlesex, in compliance with An Act for the Registering and Securing Charitable Donations, forwarded his reports, ensuring copies were transmitted to the Enrolment Office of the High Court of Chancery. One small part of those reports had to do with

9. Brown, Abstracts of Somersetshire Wills, 3:54, 55. 10. Miscellaneous Papers viz Charitable Donations, Parish Returns, and the Poor Clergy, 134.

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the financial aspects of Elizabeth Jennings’s memorial. F. Hittgrave, Francis Smith, and David Cameron prepared a report for Selby, which was presented, or submitted to him at the Session House in Clerkenwell. Therein they report the “legacy was vested in the parish, but is supposed to have been many years ago expended in aid of the poor rates; notwithstanding; five pounds, as for the interest on the said one hundred pounds, is annually distributed to such poor people by virtue of the said will.”11 The interest on Elizabeth Jennings’s will was meant to help relieve the suffering of the poor in perpetuity; however, the majority of the money was squandered or simply withered away. In 1851, only £5 a year was still being given out in her name, hardly enough to support the twelve souls she had hoped would be her beneficiaries.

“East, west, north and south, all these lye” Elizabeth Jennings’s relatives went on to achieve some degrees of success. Her brother Thomas, had five sons: Roger (the eldest), John, Thomas, Philip, and James. Thomas was great-­grandfather to Soame Jenyns.12 The majority of the large estate passed on to the younger John Jennings. This was good news for John the younger: he sired a brood large enough to populate the property. This John Jennings allegedly fathered somewhere between thirteen13 and twenty-­three children.14 His fecundity necessitated

11. Ibid. 12. Burke, Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, 2:346. See Jenyns, Pedigree of the Ancient Family of the Palmers of Sussex, 12. 13. This number comes from Alice, the wife of the younger Sir John Jennings II and sister-­in-­law to Elizabeth Jennings. In 1643, she is called to lend the parliamentary force money, based on the perceived value of her estate. She claims at this time that she had already sent in the £40 that the parliamentary forces had demanded of her and clarified that her “husband made his son executor, and left above £3,000. debts, to which his goods are liable, and left me no interest but what the law gives. Most of our estate is in the West country, where we receive no rents. Our lands in Hertfordshire—­my husband’s mother-­in-­law, Lady Jennings, of the Strand, has £400 a year out of; I have 12 children beside my eldest son; and we are all to have shares out of the estate. If I had the money I would willingly pay all that is demanded”; Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Advance of Money, 1:191. 14. This number comes courtesy of Sarah, the Countess of Marlborough, who claimed “my father had in all two-­and-­twenty brothers and sisters, and tho’ I am very little concerned about pedigrees or family, I know not why I should not tell you that his was reckoned a good one; and that he had in Somersetshire, Kent, and St. Albans, £4000 a year. However, it was not strange, that when the children were so many, their portions were small.” Marlborough, Correspondence of Sarah Duchess of Malborough, 2:104. Also see Marlborough, An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, 177: “Our grandfather, Sir John Jenyns, had two and twenty children, by which means the estate of the family (which was reputed to be about 4000£. a year) came to be divided into small

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divvying up the large estate into tiny parcels, so small that his wife, Lady Alice Jennings (née Spencer), inherited only a £3,000 debt. Two of his children produced three famous daughters. Most scholars who know Sir John Jennings at all, know him through this second branch of powerful women: Richard, heir to John Jennings Jr., was married to Frances and was the father to Barbara, Sarah, and Frances. Frances Jenyns (the daughter), also known as “la Belle Jenyns,” was praised as one of the most beautiful women in all of England. She was first married to Sir George Hamilton and then to Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyconnel. Her fame was eclipsed by her sister Sarah, who upon marriage in 1677/78 became Duchess of Marlborough. Sarah was, for a time, one of the most powerful women in England; she was the favorite to Queen Anne.15 John Jennings built Holywell House, where Sarah, his most famous heir, is believed to have been born in 1660.16 A property acquired by the first Ralf Rowlet, Water End House (built in Saundridge in 1610), also makes this claim.17 Because she had no way of inheriting the whole of her house, Sarah’s husband, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, bought the property off the estate to give to his wife.18 The elder Frances Jennings, mother to these two remarkable women, appears to have been responsible for some of their successes. Although she did not wield actual political power, she was criticized for the machinations that placed her daughters so well. Under the pens of Tory pamphleteers, this “Mother Jennings” became “Mother Aggy” or, less generously, “Mother Haggy,” cruel nicknames given to her by Jonathan Swift in part because she lived at the manor of Agney, Kent. Swift knew the family; he corresponded with Frances Jennings’s niece Abigail Masham.19 More apt for this history, Mrs. Delarivier Manley, in The Secret History

parcels. Mrs. Hill had only £500 to her portion.” 15. Wroghton, Routledge Companion to the Stuart Age, 204. 16. John Churchill secured the rights to the house from Sarah’s sisters; she appears to have wanted it as a kind of sentimental item. Mrs. A. T. Thomson argues that “it appears from indisputable testimony that Sarah Jennings was born on the 29th day of May in the year 1660, at Holywell, a suburb of St. Albans, and in a small house, very near the site of the spacious mansion afterwards erected by her husband”; Thomson, Memoirs of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, 1:9–­10. 17. Cussans, History of Hertfordshire, vol. 3, Hundreds of Dacorum and Cashio, 222; Falkner, “Churchill (née Jennings), Sarah, duchess of Marlborough,” in Oxford DNB. 18. Wolseley, Life of John Churchill, 1:152–55. 19. For a full record of the correspondence between Abigail Masham and Jonathan Swift, see “Abigail Masham, Lady Masham,” http://www.e-­enlightenment.com. Also see Swift, Correspondence, ed. Williams, vol. 5, 1737–­1745.

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of Queen Zarah (1743), features a character based on the elder Frances Jennings, who“by the power and influence of her magic art [had] placed a daughter in the same station [as Arabella Churchill] at Court.”20 This is a bit of intriguing slander in an already twisted and knotted narrative that made Frances Jennings into simulacrum for the famous prophetical witch, Mother Shipton. By all accounts, Mother Shipton (ca. 1488 to 1561) was a quasi-­ mythological figure of a prophet or prognosticator. She first appears in print in the anonymous Prophesie of Mother Shipton (1641) where the brief biography traces an anecdotal account of her 1530 prediction that Cardinal Wolsey never reached York during the reign of King Henry VIII. Outraged by this presumptuous prophecy, the pamphlet continues, Wolsey sent Henry Grey, the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Thomas Percy, the 7th Earl of Northumberland and Lord Thomas Darcy to confront Shipton at her home.21 Mother Shipton predicted the future of the three men who visited her: the Duke would fall as low as she; Percy would do well, but after his death his head would be stolen and transported to France; and Darcy would go to war, paining men, but killing none. By the time Sarah Marlborough was at Court, Shipton’s infamy had grown through numerous publications, including three more versions of Shipton’s alleged prophecies, William Lilly’s “Shipton’s Prophecy, after the most exact Copy,”22 The Life of Mother Shipton (1668), a play attributed to Thomas Thompson, and Richard Head’s biography, The Life and Death of Mother Shipton (1667)23 which introduced the core of the Shipton

20. See Anon., Oliver’s pocket looking glass, B2. For more on the remaking of Frances Jennings into Mother Shipton, one can also see the poem transcribed by Dr. Barrett as quoted in, Swift, Works, vol. 6, Tracts, Historical and Political, 192. Than all the losses of a twelve years war; No wonder prelates do the church betray, Old statesmen vote and act a different way; No wonder magic arts surround the throne, Old Mother Jennings in her Grace is known; Old England’s genius rouse, her charms dispel, Burn but the witch, and all things will do well. 21. This gives us a fourth possible Percy aligned with the Jenningses; the other three are the aforementioned Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, his nephew William Slingsby, and Katherine Percy, the witness to the wonders at Amen Corner. 22. Lilly, Collection of Ancient and Moderne Prophesies, 35–­38. 23. Although the oldest extant edition of Head’s Life and Death dates from 1677, the work’s subtitle, Being not only a true Account of her strange Birth; and most important Passages of her Life but also all her Prophesies, now newly Collected, and Historically Experienced, from the time of her Birth, in the Reign of King Henry the Seventh, until this present Year 1667, suggests, of course, that the text came

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witchcraft legend.24 Henceforth, Shipton was thought of as a witch. So, although Frances Jennings’s slippage into Mother Shipton is assuredly tongue in cheek, this nod to the witches in the family lends a nice bit of symmetry to the bewitched girl who appears generations before her as the first bit of Shipton mythology nods at the 7th Percy of Northumberland who wrangled with witches in the century before. The junior John Jennings’s other daughter, Elizabeth, married an Anabaptist named Francis Hill, a turkey merchant who lived on the bad side of town, in Speedwell Lane. One of their daughters, Abigail Hill, secretly married Samuel Masham (ca. 1707). Sarah Jennings and Abigail Hill were favorites of Queen Anne, with Abigail supplanting her cousin in the queen’s service.25 The story of Abigail’s rise to influence and Sarah’s feelings of indignation, betrayal, and loss are well documented in numerous contemporary and current texts, but the influence which Elizabeth Jennings may have had on her nieces is not. It is apt that the strange case of Elizabeth Jennings ends in court, while her poorest niece allegedly wielded power she should not have had, as Elizabeth had wielded power she likewise should not have had. It also seems apt that the story of Elizabeth Jennings should end, two degrees removed, in the hushed corners of the queen’s bedchamber. Elizabeth Jennings’s family, however, would go on to wield power long after Elizabeth’s fits stopped and Sarah and Abigail ceased to serve the queen. Far in the future, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, was grandfather to Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. The Jennings’s family property, Saundridge, the land on which we began this investigation into the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings, would be passed by Sarah Jennings to her grandson John Spencer, and from him to his son, the first Earl of Spencer. As the family history moves closer to our own times, the

out in 1667. James G. McManaway suggests that an earlier version of Head’s tract may have served as a source for Thompson’s version of Shipton’s life. He points to an entry in the Stationer’s Register to Mrs. Anne Maxwell, dated 30 August 1667: “The Life and Death of Mother Shipton, or rues Relation of what she did and spake” (294). McManaway suggests that this might be a lost Richard Head publication on Shipton which would predate the earliest known Head publication which appears in 1677 and make it possible that “The Life and Death of Mother Shipton” was a source text for T. T.’s version; McManaway, “Philip Massinger and the Restoration Drama,” 276–­304. 24. Other versions of Shipton’s prophecies include the anonymous tracts The Prophesie of Mother Shipton in the Raigne of King Henry the Eighth (London, 1641); Two Strange Prophesies Predicting Wonderfull Events to Betide this Yeere of Danger (London, 1641); and A True Coppy of Mother Shiptons Last Prophesies (London, 1642). 25. Harris, “Masham, Abigail, Lady Masham (1670?–­1734).” in Oxford DNB. Also see Wroghton, Routledge Companion to the Stuart Age, 204.

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8th Earl of Spencer was father of Diana, who became Princess of Wales and mother to William, the future king of England. So from a turbulent history of superstition, bewitchment, and madness, power struggles, family feuds, and lawsuits, the Jennings family’s descendants emerged to take their place in the aristocracy, and ultimately, in the royal palace.

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Conclusion

“They had power over all them” There is something about Elizabeth Jennings that continues to resonate. Something happened to her, something that looks like witchcraft. Although her accusations are grounded in delirium, the brutality outlined in her account, both in terms of her bewitchment experience and the copious medical treatments she is made to endure, still radiates pain. So what do we make of her strange case? How do we place Elizabeth Jennings within her auspicious family tree? Perhaps we read her as a coddled young girl, taking advantage of a mother who must have spent most of the early 1620s vacillating between fear and frustration. Dorothy Jennings may have been a bit quick on the draw—­she certainly let loose her rage with the likes of Stephen and Arnold Higgins—­but anyone who has lived in or around property development and renovations can attest to how they utterly fray one’s nerves and how this kind of exhaustion can unravel rational thought. And Dorothy already had depleted emotional reserves. She had lost her first husband to mental illness years before he died. Her father died shortly thereafter. And in a matter of years, two of her children with her second husband died. Still, Dorothy seemed a strong enough woman to face Elizabeth’s frenetic fits without automatically assuming they grew from supernatural soil. She was not the type to turn hysterical; she could not afford to—­someone had to run the family. Her second husband soon suffered night terrors. He later left her for the Fens drainage project and then went to war. But Dorothy came from a potent pedigree. Her father, Thomas Bulbeck, a “good

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man,” defended her right to maintain his estate and then left it to her. Her mother, Ursula, cast a figure of a woman wielding a cudgel against the Higgins hoard. Her great-­nieces went on to success. Within two generations, Sarah Jennings and Abigail Hill enjoyed great influence in England as ladies-­in-­waiting to Queen Anne. Within ten generations, they would make it all the way to the palace again, but this time via Diana Spencer, mother to Prince William, born to be king. The daughter of the lunatic lord leveraged her assets. Too young to claim the right to property or medical knowledge employed by women like Anne Goodcole, Elizabeth Jennings speaks with blood-­born and preternaturally gifted authority. She pieces together the bits of experience and references to people she had met in order to create the narrative that explains her otherwise inexplicable suffering. In short, she tells a witch story. Pricked by a pin she refused to give away, the wound infects and she is bewitched. Those around her believed her claims because they were there too: Nan Arpe and Dorothy Jennings both saw this happen. If Elizabeth had not been cursed because of the pin, she might have been cursed because of the “tailor.” Stephen Higgins may not have made his money from picadilles, as was supposed of him and as his son-­in-­law had, but he did make his money by medicines. If he could heal, he could hurt, and he could certainly hire. The Countess, aligned in retrospect with the kitchen cursing and in her own defense with Mrs. Higgins’s prognostication, was at the scene of both crimes. And so it was with most people attached to this witch story; overlapping interests were the norm. This case is assuredly unique among bewitchment cases because of these professional class issues. Whereas their lesser-­ranking neighbors attack the Fairfax girls, and their servants, according to Russell, attack the Manners family, Elizabeth Jennings is besieged by a member of the burgeoning professional class, an apothecary. Higgins was not the only member of the professional class here, however. Elizabeth hails from the peerage, but her stepfather, John Latch, does not. He was part of the mercantile mercenaries who, like Robert Baker, were supplementing their income by developing property. They were not alone in this financial enterprise. Men like William Slingsby were getting in on the action. Title was tied to the land and peers had long maintained their money by trading and selling leaseholds. Slingsby, Higgins, Baker, and Latch were making new identities by building, leveraging the foundation of

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their professional reputations to build on the land, and men like Thomas Fowler were meant to stop them. Maybe it was London itself that made Elizabeth sick. The city was metastasizing. An already suffocating space was made cacophonous by the noise and pollution of building and the onslaught of new occupants who came from the country. The once-­bucolic fields outside the city were destroyed under the auspices of urban development. John Latch played a part in reclaiming boggy land, Cecil sold his land, and Slingsby developed his. The seedy parts of the city became even more shabby and squalid when overcrowded by new occupants. The anger and anxiety caused by building, from King James down the peers and populace, has been established. The physical dangers of renovations and building were embodied by Lord Gerrard’s amputee tailor; the closer proximity of neighbors meant that Elizabeth had a ready audience more or less on hand. They watched her health decay, and still more came to watch. The city in the 1620s helped keep her sick. This unwholesome urban soup gave rise to the fetid fears that created Elizabeth’s bewitchment. Of course, the events did not require the chaos of London to transpire. It did not take a city to make a superstition: there were demoniacs across England. Bad luck followed those who inherited Saundridge; bewitchment plagued those at Belvoir Castle at Leicestershire and at Knaresborough, York. Prolonged possessions seem a product of the country where isolation allows long-­standing suspicions to fester and the lack of entertainment makes bewitchment big news. However, beyond the troubles caused by London’s thickening and twisting in on itself, a prohibited surging ingrowth and outgrowth meant the city had arrived at a moment of professional identity overlap that made it like a possessed thing fighting its own urges. The conflict between the house of Jennings and the house of Higgins may have been based on property; the results, however, were not simply spatial ones, they were also physical ones. The conflict was created by the simultaneous desire for developers to define the land and for competing medical guilds to define the body. The medical profession’s desire to define itself professionally and practically met with a pushback by popular anxieties about magics. Two contradictory ideas did not immediately negate one another; for a moment, before one repulsed the other, these movements hovered in an uneasy static tension. Edward Coke, a justice, helped define what witchcraft was. Simeon Foxe, a physician, treated bewitchment. Stephen Higgins, an

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apothecary, caused one. Higgins was not the only apothecary who was suspected of being a witch; his apprentice Nicholas Culpeper was tried and acquitted on charges of using witchcraft.1 These seemingly superstitious reactions had a basis in the basic change of medical practices. Physicians like Foxe, who resisted bewitchment diagnostics, were defining themselves by doing things to the body. Apothecaries, surgeons, physicians were defining their profession through establishing members (and stopping irregular practitioners) but also by making their marks on the land: building their gardens and guildhalls. Mistress Dromondby was a consultant on female medical matters; she went with Anne Goodcole once to help treat Elizabeth Jennings and once to interrogate Russell. Russell’s recognition of her as a physician woman suggests Goodcole’s rank among the irregular medical practitioners. Russell wanted to carefully clarify the difference between a cunning woman and physician woman, and she used Goodcole as an example of what she was herself: a professional woman. Providers of alternative healthcare—­physician women and midwives—­tried to differentiate themselves from witches. Where do we locate Elizabeth in the history of witchcraft, possession, and madness? If BL MS 36674 came to Ashmole courtesy of Ruth Lilly, the widow of his friend William Lilly, the manuscript was catalogued in the context of magical matters happening in a 1620s London filled with astrologers, witches, magicians, wise men and wise women, demoniacs, and desperate persons. Elizabeth Jennings acts like a person possessed for months, accusing four women of witchcraft and having one of them jailed. Whereas her illness seemed to enable what must have been at least a somewhat pleasurable inversion of power, at thirteen years old, Elizabeth was the center of attention and the authority on her own illness. We are not talking about a simple tantrum here. Nor are we talking about an exceptionally insolent child. Though perhaps she was those things too. It would have taken a superhuman effort to keep her mother hovering and numerous physicians scrabbling for all those months. Although she speaks as in a trance, Elizabeth does not make up witches. Her numbers are off; one hundred women had not been drawn and quartered in the West Country. Between five hundred and one thousand women were executed in all of England under English law; the majority of them 1. McCarl, “Publishing the Works of Nicholas Culpeper,” esp. 227.

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were hanged. Elizabeth does imagine that Margaret Russell had been the old woman at the threshold in Isleworth. But she is right in thinking there were witches. The monarchs Henry, Elizabeth, and James passed a number of laws to hinder them. Although Edward attempted to do so, it was not until 1753 that George I was able to unmake the legal reality of witchcraft. Within the sermonizing of popular preachers, witchcraft was happening throughout England and even closer to home in London. Henry Goodcole published a tract based on his Newgate interview of Elizabeth Sawyer, witch; Sir William Slingsby brought Margaret Russell in on suspicion of being one. Elizabeth does not imagine how easy it was to be cursed. It was a well-­known practice. Scolding and cursing were also commonly used speech acts. In that Alice Samuel’s query to Lady Cromwell of “Madame why do you use me thus? I never did you any harme as yet” was read a curse, Mary Higgins’s comment that the Jennings-­Latch household has “much wronged them and that it would come home by them and theirs” would assuredly be read the same way. Elizabeth was part of a history of cursing, bewitchment, and possession. Although she was currently a powerless player, not all demoniacs remained so. There was a demoniac consultant, Mistress Saxby of Gunpowder Alley, who claimed she could help the possessed. She could speak on this topic with authority because she was herself bewitched. Should she fail, a number of physician women like Anne Goodcole and Frances Ashton, who also had experience treating just such sinister quasi-­spiritual/physical ailments, might help. Although Saxby worked from Gunpowder Alley—­a rather seedy space where one might expect to find the possessed (the witch Joan Peterson and the demoniac Sarah Bowers later lived in the bad part of the Wapping wharves)—­witches did not only lurk in the shadowy depths of the bad part of town. Witches also moved among the elite. Eleanor Davies, Lady Audley, was accused of witchcraft as much for her prophecies and prognostications of her husbands’ deaths as for her support of her brother, the Earl of Audley, the infamous Mervyn Touchet. Katherine Manners, heir to the Belvoir Castle, had for a time (as had the rest of her family) been bewitched—­almost to death—­in the comfort of her own home. Despite her bewitchment, the eternal life of Elizabeth’s soul was not in question. Like most savagely suffering demoniacs, she is not damned by her experience, she is sick with

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it. In understanding how witchcraft operated as a criminally supernatural (and by virtue indefensible) attack on the “real”—­bodies and properties, bloodlines and titled estates—­one can see clearly why Lady Jennings was determined the attack on her daughter was a medical mystery, with supernatural causation and a prosecutable offense. If BL MS 36674 came to Ashmole courtesy of Thomas Napier, Richard Napier’s son, the document may have always been part of Elizabeth’s medical case history, making medical treatment the foundation of her case. Although the manuscript commits to the idea of bewitchment, it concludes after the fact with the diagnosis of hysteria. Elizabeth may have always been suffering from hysteria, but was recognized as a hysteric when it no longer made sense that she was a victim of witchcraft: that is, once the charges against Margaret Russell went away. The diagnosis of hysteria was not a particularly useful one either. Hysteria was usually seen in young women. It had any number of treatments, some much more invasive than those for bewitchment, but marriage and motherhood usually did the trick in curing hysterics. Jennings never married or became a mother, however, so her diagnosis of hysteria did not prove to be a particularly helpful one either. And, of course, more than any other explanation, hysteria has been dismissed as a condition. Hysteria stayed on record as part of the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until the late 1990s, when it was replaced by the categories of derealization and depersonalization. Depersonalized and derealized experiences include “altered perceptions of self and the environment, such as the experience of feeling disconnected from one’s own body, feelings, and thoughts” in order to cope with them.2 From our current perspective, we cannot see Elizabeth as being hysterical any more than we can assuredly know she was being bewitched. Regardless, we must recognize that both of those were sound diagnoses at the time. Elizabeth’s identity as an authority on her own bewitchment would not prove to be a useful category for her for long. Elizabeth is a sick girl seeing things and speaking to spirits in a family where “idle talk” was madness. The physicians around her, including Simeon Foxe and Richard Napier, treated her illness as real. Her mother and her stepfather took her seriously. Thomas Fowler and his wife, Lady Fowler, witnessed her suffering.

2. Calamari and Pini, “Disassociative Experiences and Anger Proneness in Late Adolescent Females with Different Attachment Styles.”

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Regardless of her ramblings, something is seriously wrong with Elizabeth. Moreover, she is not cured. Despite a brief respite from her torments when Margaret Russell was examined, Napier sees Elizabeth again, as he saw her stepfather, John Latch, her stepsister “Franke,” her grandmother Ursula, and her neighbor Nan Arpe. Illness ran in the family and the neighborhood. Her siblings died. Her mother mourned. Elizabeth lived in a gravity well where anger, anxiety, and sickness rushed down onto her. She lived in a house that continued to be sick with worry and haunted by the spectres of her lunatic father and the lost Latch children. In the end, we must both read the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings as her story and recognize the cacophony in which it was composed. Her history, illness, and accusations draw from the land, through the body, and are articulated through belief. Like arteries, these feed into the dozens of influences and inferences, connected by various degrees of separation. Cobbled, connected, and overlapping, they form a picture of what was happening to Elizabeth. Her story begins at the threshold between the natural and the preternatural. In it, she is eternally pinned to the kitchen, her mother, and Nan Arpe, and to an idea of a witch. She is coddled, bled, and studied. She pines, palsies, and accuses. Her words have a weight born from a family tree planted in Saundridge’s soil and the authority granted to those who have preternatural knowledge. Her story exists because family and neighbors, medical men and women, property developers, lords and ladies—­many of whom believed that witchcraft could happen and that Elizabeth was being bewitched—­bolstered it. The strange case unfolded at a fevered pitch once the accusation against Russell is made because all these elements and players are, albeit loosely, connected to one another and to her. Elizabeth’s story is knit together with the sum of their superstition. The manuscript ends, not because something had refuted the idea of Elizabeth’s bewitchment, but because too many of those pulled into this chaos had too much to lose in their normal lives. These people snipped the threads. They abandoned the idea that Elizabeth was being bewitched so they could all just go home. And so one witch story ended. But in expanding out from the sight of Elizabeth in a sickbed in Amen Corner, to the city and countryside in spatial and financial flux where bodies are as vulnerable to medical and malefic ministrations, one can read in BL MS 36674 the organic components of how witchcraft happens.

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Appendix 1

“Of Elizabeth Jennings being bewitched,” 1622 “Of Elizabeth Jennings 13 years of age being bewitched,” spans six pages and is written in a small but relatively legible hand. The manuscript was prepared, if not for publication, then for preservation. There appear to be two editorial comments, clarifying the timing of Elizabeth’s accusation against the witches. Although the original transcription was composed by John Latch, the final words on the page are Henry Goodcole’s name. It is possible that either man organized and transcribed the story for the page. A short synopsis and analysis of the story appears on the following page. It is written in a clear hand, signed by Alias Ashmole, and dated 1690. It was from Ashmole that we learned that Elizabeth Jennings was also seen by Richard Napier. Napier, whose notes on this case and three others are also given in appendices 3 and 4, looked at hysteria as well as bewitchment as a cause for Elizabeth’s torments. The transciption provided here is based on the copy held at British Library Museum, from “Collections Relating to Magic and Witchcraft from the papers of various 16th and 17th century astrologers, finally put together probably in the library of John Somers, Lord Somers” (shelf number 36674). Page numbers of the manuscript are indicated in brackets.

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Appendix 1 [1] Elizabeth the Daughter of the Lady Jenning a child now 13 yeares of age being in Thistleworth (shortly after she was frighted to the sight of an old woman who suddainly appeared to her att her dore and demaunded a pin of her) was taken with an infirmitie in her throate aboute the 13th of January refusing out after all manner of fesh-­meate. The 15th of February she complained to be exceeding sicke, and from that present time left her use of both her leggs. The 19th Day at night she was taken with extreame fitts of panting and sighing and began to talke idlely and growe very ill, in so much, that her parents feareing for death sent presently to London for Doctor Foxe, who brought her being very sicke, to London with him, where she continuous languishing complaining of aches in divers parts of her bodie and often weeping extreamely. Aboute the end of February, every night after midnight she had a great fitt of sighing and gronoing oppressing divers pains in her knees, armes, head & hart very suddainly remoueing from one of these parts to another, and at last being settled in her head and hart, she note then lie continually sighing & groning 4 houors at the least as if death were att hand. The 17th of March at night she had an exceeding great fitt of strange convulsions, noo part of her bodie being free, which lasted the greatest part of the night, After this fitt her understanding had very much weakned, and her memory of all things past quite lost, And shortly after all her right side was benumbed, and for her right arme lost all motion and sense as if it had bin taken with a dead palsie, And after this these fitts of con[v]ulsions now failed comeing once or twice in 24 houres but only for 4 or 5 daies aboute fortnight before her recouverie, and in her fitts her dead arme was as violently moued as any other part of her bodie. During this time many things were applied to her phisitions for her helpe but all in vaine, the medicines rather producing contrarie effects. On Easter eave the 20th of Aprill after her fitt in the afternoone she began to stammer in her speake and cold not pronons divers words. After her fitt on Easter Day she lay speakles[s] for divers hours, but towards night spake againe, but on Monday she became altogeather speekeles, for strang fitts still continuoing in their violent mannor twice in 24 houers. Uppon Tuesday the physitions finding her estate desperate, had a consultation, and resolved of three courses for remedie, 1. To give her a vomit, 2. To lett her blood. 3. To ba[the] her in Oyle. On Wednesday she had the vomit accordingly which wrought neither amendment nor alteration, but the intention of letting blood being discovered to Countesse (who divers times came to the house) she with much earnestnes desired it

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might not be soo, saying the Doctors mite kill her thereby as they had done Exeter’s child. On Thursday in the midst of her accustomed fitt at 6 a clocke in the morning (having bin 4 daies speechles) she spake only these words. | Well I thanke you | and after a good space of time | how dost thou doo Countesse? | and not long after | how dost tho doo Jane | and after remained speechles as before : This day she was lett blood, and in her fitt in the afternoone she lay still being drawne spake these words following, distinctly and with an audible voice staying an equall distanse of time betwixt each sentence: [2] Jane Flower. Katharine Stubbs. Countesse. Nan Wood. These have bewitched all my mothers children. East, west, north and south, all the[s]e lye. All these are damnable witches. Set up a great sprig of Rosemarie in the middle of the house. I have sent this childe to speake to show all these witches. Put Countesse in prison this childe will bee well. If she had bin long agoo all th’other had bin alive. Them she bewitched by a catsticke. Till then I shall lye in great paine. Till then by fitts I shal be in great extremitie. They dyed in great miserie. A hundred more have bin hanged in the West Country. The gutts and garbadge and all that was within them was drawne nyne waise. No man cold tell without. They had power over all them to bewitch them to death but me And me in great miserie but to live Noo bodie knowse what ayles me within. Whe she is in prison then I shal bee well, now till then by fitts She came first of all that eve my mother sawe her in the kitchin And Nan Arpe was there.

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Appendix 1 All these words were spoken and presently written 25th of Aprill 1622 in the presence of John Latch, the writer William Giddings, Surgeon. Mrs. Katharine Percie Mrs. Faith Saxton Agnes Faulkner, a Servant. These persons came after she had began to speake. The Lady Jennings. Mrs. Elizabeth Arpe. Mrs. Ann Bradborne Katharine Browne, a Servant.

[3] 135; And noo sooner was her fitt ended but she remained speechles and in her palsie as before. That evening her parents (having sett downe the words aforesaid by her spoken) resorted to Sir William Slingsbye the next Justice, to advise what to doo. And they found the meanes to bring Countesse to him to be examined she not knowing their intent, whose examination following. The examination of Margarett Russell alias Countesse taken before Sir William Slingsbye, one of the Justices of the peace in the county of Middlesex. 25th of Aprill. Margaret Russell alias Countesse accused for bewitching Elizabeth daughter of the lady Jennings being examined confesseth that yesterday she went to Mrs. Dromondbys in blacke and white Court in the old Baylye and told her that the Lady Jennings had a daughter strangely sicke, whereupon she said Dromondbye wished her to goe to inquire at Clarken well for a ministers wife that cold helpe people that were sicke, but she must not aske for a wise or cunning woman but for one that is a phisition woman, and there this examinate found her and a woman sitting with her, and told her in what state the child was, and she said she wold come this day but shee ought for noo service, and said she had bin there before and lefte [the] receipts there, but the

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child did not take them. And she said further that there was two children that the Lady Jennings had by this husband that were bewitched and dead, for there was controversie betweene two houses and that as long as they dwelt there they cold not prosper. And that there shold be noo blessing in that house by this man. And being demanded what she meant by the difference betwixt two houses, she answered it was betwixt the house of God and the house of the world, but being urged to expresse it better, she said wee knewe it well enough it was the difference betwixt Higgins the apothercarie the next neighbour and the Lady Jennings. And she further confesseth that above a month agoo she went to Mrs. Saxey in Gunpowder Alley who was forespoken herselfe and that had a booke that cold helpe all those that were forespoken, and that shee wold come and show her the booke and helpe her under God. And further said to this examinate that none but a seminary priest cold cure her. Sir William Slingsbye haveing thus examined her and finding much inconstancie in her answeres, made a warrant for her comittment by virtue whereofe she was carryed away and about 12 a clocke that night delivered into Newgate. [4] On Fryday the 26th of Aprill betweene 10. and 11. a clocke in the forenoone (at time Countesse was brought out of the goale to speake the minister and his wiffe and others att a private house) the child had another very dangerous fitt of convulsions, which Doctors Fox beholding said it neerely touched her, in which fitt she began to speake againe as followeth. The height of my disease is witchcrafte. After a good space she spake againe thus: They have noo power to witch me to Death but only to putt me to paine. And anon after she said with a smiling countenance she said: One is in prison, th’other is hanged. And presently after: It is ceased, it is ceased.

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Appendix 1 And presently her fitt went off; her speech returned; and her palsie arme recovered motion and sense, and ever since hath bin and is perfecte in her understanding and memories, and of very good health in all respects, and eateth her meate as well as ever she did before she fell sicke. These words were spoken and she thus recovered in the presence of Sir Tho. Fowler, Kt. Doctor Fox. the minister. William Power, Esq The La. Jennings Mrs. Katharine Percie Katharine Browne Servants Agnes Faulkner

}

[5] 136; The second examination of Margarett Russell alias Countesse, taken before Sir Tho: Fowler and Sir William Slingsbye, Kt. and Doctor Bates Justices of the peace in the countie of Middlesex the 26th of Aprill. That Mrs. Goodcole the ministers wiffe did not as in her former examination is sett downe, but that it was a woman that satt by her working whoo was her sister. But she confesseth that this morning aboute 10. or 11. a clocke she was brought out of Newgate to the house of James the Clerke, where we did nowe examine her, to speake with M. Goodcole and his wiffe and with Mrs. Dromondbye. And she further confesseth that when Mrs. Gargraue lay att M. Higgins house when my Lady Jennings first child was sicke, that she was then there with her, and that a maide servant of the Lady Jennings came thither to wash a mapp, of whome Mrs. Higgins did inquire how they right did and she answered not well, to whome Mrs. Higgins replied, that they had much wronged them and that it wold come home by them and theirs. The examination of Frances Ashton Anne Goodcole and Henry Goodcole taken before Sir William Slingsbye one of the Justices of the peace in the Countie of Middlesex 27th of Aprill.

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Francis Ashton the wiffe of M. Thomas Ashton dwelling in Clerkenwell examined, confesseth that yesterday aboute nyne a clocke her sister Goodcole sent for her and showed her a note in writing the which her brother M. Goodcole did read unto her, the which did containe that there was a woman in Newgate comitted for a witch who had named a woman in Clarken well with whome she had lately beene: And presently M. Goodcole, his wiffe and this examinate and Robert Duffield a cutler who marryed one of their sisters went to M. James his house in the old baylye who is Clerke of Newgate, and being there they sent for M. James, att whose coming M. Goodcole and his wiffe desired to have Countesse the prisoner brought unto them, which was betwixt ten and eleven a clocke, where this examinate did first ask her whether shee were scquainted with her sister or noo, and what reason she had to make a speech of her as was in the note and she answered she had said noo such thing: and in like manner M. Goodcole did question her, to whome she made her like answere, but did weepe and cry. But she utterly denieth that either shee or her sister did speake any thing concerning the Lady Jennings’ children that were bewitched and dead, or of any controversie betwixt two houses. Anne Goodcole wiffe of M. Henrie Goodcole minister dwelling att Clarken well confesseth that on Thursday Countesse came to her and asked her if she were a physition woman, and she said she had medicines that did sometimes helpe children in sickness, And that Countesse told her there was a Ladies child in the Strand in great extremitie, whome she thought was bewitched and therefore desired her helpe: to whome this examinate replied that shee had bin there with my Lady Fowler [6] and had lefte a medicine there but that the child had not taken it. Butt she utterly denieth that she or her sister did either speake any thing or know any thing either of the death or bewitching of her Lady Jennings other children that were dead, or of any controversie betwixt two houses. And that Countesse told her she was sent to her from a woman in the Strand that she had done good unto, and from the childs grandmother, and prayed her att the last that she shold come when she heard further from her. And further saith that yesterday in the morning there came a man to speake with her husband who was in bedd with her, but she knewe him not, being a blacke man aboute 40 yeres old like a cittizen who did desire him to doo some business for him sometimes the next

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Appendix 1 week. After he was gone her husband did rise and went abroade, but did returne aboute 10. a clocke to her sisters house Mrs. Duffeilds, and send for this examinate and her sister to goo with him to M. James his house before 11. a clocke whose maide fetched him thither as soone as they came. M. Goodcole and his wiffe desired him to bring Countesse unto them, And then they did inquire of her whether shee knew examinate. She answered that she non saw her nor knewe her but the day before as is confessed. And she also confesseth that her brother Robert Duffieild went with them: Which done James carryed the prisoner to the goale and they returned to M. Duffeilds againe and there dyned togeather. M Henrye Goodcole being the ordinarie in Newgate examined saith that aboute 7 a clocke he did rise and went abroade with M. Edmondes a minister, and aboute 8 or 9 a clocke went to Newgate to visite the prisoners according to his custome where he heard by Wells the Jaylor that there was a warrant which did concerne his wiffe, which warrant he did desire to have of James, and did presently carry it to shewe his wiffe, to his sisters house M. Duffields, to which place he sent for her, and when she and his other sister Ashton were come thither they and M. Duffeild went presently to James his house after he had read the warrant unto her, and being there he desired James to sende for Countesse who they asked if she knew Mrs. Goodcole but she denyed that ever she sawe her before Thursday in the afternoone concerning the business confessed about the helping of the Lady Jennings child. Henry Goodcole [7] July 30. 1622. The Lady Jennings applied to Dr. Napier for care of hir Daughter. Since the Figure, & his wrote this upon in his Diary for that day & yeare. The Dr. calle this disease Epiliptica Matricis, and Morbus Matricis. Soo at this end of that Booke the Dr. questions relating to the nature of this Disease; & how to ease hir; and whither she were bewitched, or only troubled with the Epilipsie of the Mother. Ashmole 1690

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Appendix 2

Indictments, 27 October 1616 and 3 December 1616 The controversy between the Jennings/Latch household and the Higgins family was long-standing. By the time Elizabeth grew sick in 1622, it had been dragging on for almost six years. The following indictments represent two moments in time. The first refers to an indictment handed down in October 1616. In it, Dorothy Jennings, her mother, Ursula Bulbeck, and their co-conspirators are accused of organizing a violent assault against Henry Fisher and James Axtell. They plead not guilty. Their motive for this attack is not mentioned in the indictment; however, Axtell, Fisher, John Knaresborough, and Stephen and Arnold Higgins were, at the same time, formally called to appear for property destruction at the Jennings/Latch house. The second time Dorothy Jennings appears is to hear that the date for her trial has been set as 13 January. Although I cannot find records of the final trial, enough is known about the causation of the controversy between the houses to make them worthwhile to cite at length. The indictments explain, in part, how the dispute turned savage and might explain how assault might have become murder, how anger may have translated into bewitchment. The transcription below is based on the version in Calendar to the Sessions records, vol. 4, 1616–­18, 42–­84.

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Appendix 2

27 October, 14 James I [A.D. 1616]. Indictments of:—­ Dorothy, wife of John Latche of St. Mary otherwise le Savoy in the Strand, esquire, late wife of Sir John Jennings, knight, deceased, Ursula Bulbeck, spinster, Samuel Lee, gentleman, William Whaverley, upholsterer, Robert Houghton, yeoman, and Robert Gray, yeoman, all of the same, together with other malefactors unknown to the number of seven people, for an unlawful and armed assembly in the same parish to the disturbance of the peace, and for assaulting and beating Henry Fyssher [Fisher] of St. Giles’-­in-­the-­Fields, carpenter, and James Axtell of Knightsbridge, carpenter, so that they despaired of their lives Prosecutors:—­Arnold Higgins of the Strand, son of Stephen Higgins of St. Mary-­le-­Savoy, apothecary, William Mortram, and John Knaresboroughe of “St. Peter’s in Noble Street” [of the Savoy], London, plasterer. And now to wit to the same Sessions of the Peace came the said Dorothy, Ursula, Samuel, William, Robert and Robert in their proper persons, and having heard the indictment aforesaid they severally say that they are not guilty thereof, and of this they put themselves upon the country. And George Longe, gentleman, who prosecutes for the King in this behalf, came likewise. Therefore the Sheriff is ordered to cause to come twelve etc. by whom etc. and who etc. to acknowledge etc. Certified into the King’s Bench by writ of certiorari in the term of St. Hilary, 14 James I [A.D. 1616–­17]. The said Axtell, Knaresborough, Fisher, Stephen and Arnold Higgins all bound over to appear for breaking down the wall of the said John Latch, gentleman, in a riotous manner. Brought a writ of certiorari, also a writ of procedendo, also a writ of certiorari. The said Knaresborough acknowledged the indictment, fined 2s. Let a writ of good behaviour be brought against the said Stephen and Arnold Higgens, James Axtell and Henry Fisher to answer at the next Sessions, who are indicted for a riot and misdemeanour in the house of the said John Latch.

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3 December, 14 James I [A.D. 1616]. Writ, witnessed by Sir Thomas Lake, knight, at Hicks Hall, to summon a jury of twenty-­four lawful men of the neighbourhood of St. Mary otherwise Savoy in the Strand to the Sessions to be held at Hicks Hall on 13 January next coming, to enquire between George Longe, gentleman, prosecuting for the King in this behalf, and Dorothy, wife of John Latche of St. Mary otherwise Savoy aforesaid, esquire, late wife of Sir John Jennings, knight, deceased, Ursula Bulbeck, spinster, Samuel Lee, gentleman, William Whaverley, upholsterer, Robert Houghton and Robert Gray, yeomen, all of the same, in a plea of trespass and riot, whereupon as well the said George Longe for us as the said Dorothy, Ursula, Samuel, William, Robert and Robert for themselves, between whom there is contention, put themselves upon the country.

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Appendix 3

Napier on Elizabeth Jennings, 1622 Although it is unclear if Richard Napier was one of the many physicians treating Elizabeth Jennings at the time, it is clear that he was consulted a few months after BL MS 36674 ends. Written in Napier’s messy hand, these notes provide a few bits of critical information. They back up the version of events that appears in BL MS 36674, confirm that Elizabeth’s fits continued, and uncover that Napier thought they might be caused by hysteria. They show Napier’s prognosis: Elizabeth Jennings will only live six more months. More critically, they show just how contagious possession symptoms were. By the time Dorothy Jennings took Elizabeth to Napier, her stepfather, John Latch, had begun to suspect he was also suffering from bewitchment. This transcription is derived from Ashmole 222, fol. 6v, and emerged as part of the work done by Dr. Lauren Kassell (director), Dr. Michael Hawkins (technical director), and Dr. Robert Ralley and Dr. John Young (senior editors) for The Casebooks Project: A digital edition of Simon Forman’s and Richard Napier’s medical records 1596–­1634.

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‘Easter Eve th[e] 20 of Ap she [be]|gan to stutter [in] her speach yea [to] | growe speachles

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Easter mu(n)day [alto]|geath(e)r speachles A[p] | 22 (Moon) sep a (square) [. . .  ?] | ap (square) (Venus) had ^the Port(?) resolut for a^ a vomyt 2 to be let blood [in] | her arme. 3 to be [bathed] in oyle. on weddens had [a] vomyt w(hi)ch wro[ght no] [?] boath an[d] | no alterat nor a[mend]|ment a woma(n) ^Countys so called | but her p(ro)per name is margaret Russle 60 y.^ disswading fro(m) le[tting] of blood yet was let vseth to be sick about 9 of the clock at night vsually’ ‘wheath(e)r yong m(ist)res Elis Ienings of 13 y be bewitched or only be troubled w(i)th the epilepsye of the mother & shall cure her & howe & wheather on Called goody Countis be a witch and hath done it ^will dye halfe a yere | henc^ wheath(e)r Mr Latch Latch her father in lawe henry troubled w(i)th epilept convuls in his sleepe & at no tyme els be by witchen, or els by strong impression of the fantasy, by his owne | fantasy’

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Appendix 4

Napier’s Notes on Bulbeck, Arpe, and Latch, 1623 The following notes come from Richard Napier’s treatment of Ursula Bulbeck, Nan Arpe, and Frances Latch from Ashmole MS 181, fol. 228r, 1623. In and of themselves, the notes do not tell us much about the older women, at least as they are involved in BL MS 36674; their symptoms suggest rather more normal health concerns. These references, however, do point to Napier as family physician and the closeness of Nan Arpe to the Jennings/Latch family. More important, however, is the scant reference to “mrs fraunces lach halfe a year old.” It seems that Napier saw, or at least consulted on the health of three members of the Jennings/Latch family: Elizabeth, John Latch, and Franke, who, we know from a letter Latch wrote to Napier, wore a pomander to cure her fits. It is possible that Elizabeth and her stepfather were prescribed the same. This transcription is from Ashmole MS 181, fol. 228r. It emerged as part of the work done by Dr. Lauren Kassell (director), Dr. Michael Hawkins (technical director), and Dr. Robert Ralley and Dr. John Young (senior editors) for The Casebooks Project: A digital edition of Simon Forman’s & Richard Napier’s medical records 1596–­1634.

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Napier on Bulbeck, Arpe, and Latch, 1623

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The old lady Bulbeck of y^e^ Strand 69 y octob 8: [Mercury, i.e. Wednesday] h. 8. 25. p m sent her water indiff head eys 1623. eyes waterish & reddish. & bloodshotten’ ‘head ach extremly. bloodshotten eyes a bad’ Mres Arpe of the Strand 48 the last of noveber [i.e november] next Octob 8 [Mercury, i.e. Wednesday] h. 8. 30 p m 1623 | vrye [i.e. vryne] good but | more thicke spitteth mutch ptysis et Astrog[? or Asach or . . . ?]. a bad stoale[? or steale/stoate . . . ?] a shortnes of breth ablackish[?] | co[m]pl [i.e. complexion] like y^e^ | jadish [i.e. jandish, jaundice?]./‘ ‘mrs fraunces lach halfe a year old’. Quatro (No. 181.1623)

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Appendix 5

John Latch’s Signature, 1620, 1622 It is difficult to ascertain who wrote and who transcribed BL MS 36674. We know that John Latch transcribed at least some of the events surrounding the bewitching of Elizabeth Jennings. However, it might be possible to postulate authorship based on handwriting analysis. Not much of the handwriting of John Latch exists, but here we can compare two signatures to see if it is possible to suggest that authorship may have been Latch’s. The first example of Latch’s signature comes straight from BL MS 36674. The second is John Latch’s signature from E 115/240/14, the Certificate of Residence showing John Latch to be liable for taxation in Middlesex and not in the Hundred of Winterstoke, etc., Somerset, the previous area of tax liability. From National Archives, Records of the Exchequer and its related bodies, with those of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths, and the Court of Augmentations 18 James I (1620–­21).

14. John Latch’s signatures, From the Records of the Exchequer, and its related bodies, with those of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths, and the Court of Augmentations 18 James I (1620–­1621).

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Bibliography Archival Sources Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Ashmole MS 181: Richard Napier’s notes of his astrological practice of medicine, from 1598 to 1629 . . . . Ashmole MS 238: Richard Napier’s Casebooks, vol. 48, 3 June–­27 November 1630. Harleian MS 1545: Whitlock Papers. British Library (BL), London Add. MS 36674: “Collections Relating to Magic and Witchcraft from the Papers of Various 16th and 17th Century Astrologers.” Hampshire Record Office, National Archives 44M69, Jervoise family of Herriard, Letters. Hatfield House, Hertfordshire Salisbury Manuscripts. The National Archives, Kew E 115, Exchequer: King’s Remembrancer: Certificates of Residence, from the Records of the Exchequer, and its related bodies, with those of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths, and the Court of Augmentations.

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Index italics indicate a figure or illustration

A

Act of Parliament, 54, 89, 174 Ainderby, 27, 28 All Hallows (parish), 73 Alnwick Castle, 33 Amen Corner, London, xix, xxi–­xxii, 1, 45, 73, 111 Ames, Joseph, 8 Anne (queen), xiv, 53, 95, 157–­58, 178, 181 Apothecaries Guild, xi, 107, 124, 132, 132–­33, 139, 143 Arpe, Elizabeth/Nan, xxii, 1, 11, 81–­85, 169–­70, 181, 186, 189–­90, 200–­201 Ashmole, Elias, 7–­9, 13, 112, 164, 168, 170, 183–­85, 187, 194 Ashton, Frances, xii, xiii, xxii–­xxiii, 12, 127, 156–­57, 159–­60, 163, 184, 192–­ 94 Ashton, Jane, 5 assault Lady Jennings accused of, xxi, 146–­51, 195 witchcraft as. See under witchcraft astrology, 111–­12, 135 Atkins, Mother, 36 Axtell, James, xxi, 146, 195–­96

B

Bacon, Anthony, 18 Bacon, Francis, 18, 53, 65 Bacon, William, 18 Baker, Dr., of Shrewsbury, 48

Baker family Alexander, 92 John, 137 Mary (née Higgins). See Higgins, Mary Richard, 6 Robert, 140–­43 Bancroft, Richard (archbishop), 55, 60 Barony of Ross, 58, 61 Bateman, Christopher, 8 Bates, Dr. Thomas Blackbourne, xiii, xxii–­ xxiii, 155–­56, 192 Bath, 33, 76, 92, 135 Belvoir Castle, 61–­65, 73, 182, 180 Black-­and-­White Court, xix, xxii, 12, 108, 115–­17, 190 Blagrave, Joseph, 65 bleeding/bloodletting xxii, 1, 10–­11, 48–­ 49, 52–­53, 65, 107, 167 Board, Elizabeth, 95 Board, Sir Stephen, 95 Bradborne, Anne, xiv, 11, 85, 190 Bradwell, Stephen, 6, 75, 138 Bridgeman, John, 91 Bridges, Agnes, 44, 70 Brigges, Robert, 44, 65 Britton, Thomas, 8, 21 Broadway, Giles, 95 Bromley, Sir Edward, 63 Bronnecker, Anne, 22, 24–­25 Bronnecker, Joan, 21 Brooker, Elizabeth, 8, 38–­39 Brooker, John, 8 Brown, Agnes, 79

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G226 Browne, Katharine, xiii, 11, 13, 85, 150, 152, 190, 192 Brownlow, Richard, 135 Brydges family Anne Stanley (Lady Audley), 95 Catherine, 97 Dorothy, 14, 180 Frances, xi, 52, 59–­60, 64 Grey (5th Baron Chandos), 52, 95 Thomas, xi, 27–­29, 174, 180 Ursula, 26, 147, 161, 169, 173, 195–­97, 200–­201 William, 52 Bulbeck family, xviii Dorothy, 26–­30, 145–­50, 195–­97 Thomas, 27–­29 Ursula (née Grey), 169, 195–­97 Burbridge, Master, 36 Burton, Robert, 23

C

Calvert, George, 135 Cambridge, 43, 91 Cary, Sir Henry, 98 Cecil family, xi, xvii Elizabeth, 98 Frances (née Brydges). See under Brydges family Georgi-­Ann, 6 Robert (1st Earl of Salisbury), 26–­29 Thomas (Lord Burghley, 1st Earl of Essex), 88 William, 6, 18 Cecil House, xx, 51, 138 Chancery, 25, 174 Chester, 40, 91, 92 Church of England/Anglican Church, 17, 114 Churchill, xi, 20, 22, 25–­26, 45, 98–­99, 102–­3, 105, 173 Clara, Dina, 48 Cleaver, Robert, 124 Clerkenwell, xxii, 12, 33, 81–­82, 104, 108, 114, 117–­18, 128, 130, 165, 175, 193 Clifford, Margaret (Russell), Countess of Cumberland. See Russel, Margaret

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Index Coke, Sir Edward, 21, 52–­58, 61, 64, 88, 93, 154, 165, 182 College of Physicians, 1, 42–­46, 55, 74–­ 75, 91, 105, 113, 124, 126–­27, 134, 138, 156, 160 counter-magic, 65, 69, 75–­77, 83–­84, 116, 151, 150, 170 Countesse; Countess, the, xiv, xxii, 1, 9–­ 11, 47, 78–­82, 97, 109, 116, 143–­44, 149–­51, 156, 160, 181, 188–­94 court (legal) Higgins case, 133–­37 Jennings assault case, 145–­46 Jennings family debt, 24–­28, 176 property disputes, 20–­21, 58, 135–­37, 147–­48. See also debt and inheritance disputes witchcraft cases, 59, 75, 120–­21, 158–­ 59, 169 Court of Star Chamber, 55–­56, 91, 90, 143 Culpeper, Nicholas, xiii, 133–­34, 139, 143, 183 curses/cursing, 2–­7, 20–­23, 26, 30, 34, 37, 39, 55, 62–­63, 69–­71, 74, 84, 121, 157, 161, 181, 184

D

Darrell, John, 5, 71, 153 Davis, Eleanor, 52, 95, 184 debt and inheritance disputes Bulbeck family inheritance, 29 Cecil family inheritance, 58, 61 Higgins dispute, 132–­33, 136 Jennings family debt. See under court (legal) Jennings inheribance, 22–­24, 176 Latch family debt, 100–­101 Mary Gargrave, requests for money, 158 Dee, John, 5–­6, 17, 32, 67, 111, 165 devil, 3, 5, 22, 42–­43, 50, 54, 59, 65, 78, 79–­80, 84, 119, 120, 152, 161–­62 Device, Alison, 37–­38 Digby, Kenelm, 57, 64, 112, 165 Donne, John dirge on Latch memorial, 102 memorial, 45

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G

Index Dromondby, Mistress/Mrs., xxii, 12, 108, 115–­17, 123, 128, 156, 159, 161, 190, 192 Duffield, Robert, 12, 160, 163, 193–­94

227

Easter, xxii, 10, 44, 46, 77, 167, 174, 188, 198–­99 Edmondes, Minister, 12, 162, 194 Edward VI (king), 17–­18 Elizabeth I (queen), 3, 32, 55, 88–­89, 113, 154 Elmfield, 97–­98 Emmes, Katherine, 81 Enclosure Acts, 88–­91 Evans, John, 112 Exeter, Earl of/Countess of, xii, 10, 50–­53, 56, 58, 60, 64, 97, 104, 165, 189

144, 148, 150, 157–­59 Gargrave, Robert, 158 Gargrave, Thomas, 158 Glover, Mary, 6, 43, 68, 72–­75, 85, 113, 129, 138 Goodcole, Anne, xii, xiii, xxii–­xxiii, 12–­13, 47, 108, 117–­24, 126–­28, 130–­31, 134, 146, 149–­50, 154, 156–­57, 159–­64, 181, 183–­84, 187, 192–­94 Goodcole, Henry, xiii, xxiii, 6–­7, 9, 12, 95, 108, 117–­22, 156, 159–­64, 184, 187, 192–­94 Great Fire of 1666, 43, 45, 123 Gunpowder Alley, xix, xxii, 11, 57, 107–­8, 110–­16, 127, 184, 191 Gunpowder Plot, 33, 165 Gunter, Anne, 55, 60 Gunter, Brian, 55

F

H

E

Fairfax family Edward, 76, 84, 110 Elizabeth, 72–­77, 153 Helen, 72–­77, 84–­85, 129 Lady Dorothy, 76 Faulkner, Agnes, xiii, 11, 13, 85, 150, 152, 190, 192 Fenland drainage project, 86, 88, 98–­101, 105, 108 Fisher, Henry, xxi, 146, 195–­96 Fitzpatrick, Lawrence, 95 Fleet Street, 111, 115–­16 Flower, Jane, Margaret, and Phillip, xiii, xxii, 11, 61–­63, 69, 78, 80–­81, 84, 143, 152, 154, 189 Fowler, Jane, xiii, 13, 79–­81, 154, 160, 185, 193 Fowler, Thomas, xiii, xxiii, 6, 13, 80–­81, 150, 152–­55, 182, 185, 192 Foxe, Simeon, xii, xxi, 6, 10, 13, 32, 34–­ 35, 42–­47, 49, 65, 71, 73, 75–­77, 86, 103, 105, 107, 129, 131, 149, 152, 158, 164, 167, 182–­83, 185, 188

hanging (execution), 13, 83, 119–20, 141, 151–52, 184, 189, 191 Harsnett, Samuel (bishop of York), 55, 60 Harvey, William, 42–­43, 82, 91–­92 Hatfield, Martha, 40 Hathaway, Richard, 111 Hayse, Alice, 82, 88 Henry VIII, 3, 17, 96, 177 Hertfordshire, 19, 21–­22, 25, 175 Heywood, Thomas, 93, 124–­25 Higgins family, xii, xviii Arnold, xxi, 140–­41, 195–­96 Mary (wife of Stephen), 145, 157, 184 Mary (daughter of Stephen), 140–43 Stephen, 131–­38, 180–­81 Holborn, 111, 114, 115 Holland, Eleanor, 85 Holywell, 20, 21, 155–­56, 176 Hooper, Margaret, 41, 79 House of Lords, 100 Hughes, Samuel, 134–­35 Hundreds of Winterstoke, 99, 202

G

illness, 10–­11, 166 epilepsy, 71–­73, 166–­69, 199

Gargrave, John, 157 Gargrave, Mary, xiii, xxii, 6, 13, 47, 135,

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I

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G228 illness, continued hysteria, 14, 48, 69, 74–­75, 166–­68, 185 infant, 53 mental, 16–­17, 22–­26, 34, 41, 53, 57–­ 58, 64, 69, 79, 87–­89, 180–­83, 185 Inner Temple, 154 Ireland, 42 Isleworth, xxi, 10, 17, 30–­31, 33, 44, 104, 144 Islington, xxii, 154

J

Jennings (Jenyns) family, xi, xv, 21 Dorothy (née Bulbeck). See Bulbeck, Dorothy. John, 22–­25, 29–­31, 175–­78 Thomas, xi, 21, 29, 30, 100

K

King’s Bench, 55–­56, 196 Knaresboroughe, John, 146, 195–­96

L

Lake, Elizabeth, 53, 58–­61, 197 Lamb, Dr. John, 57 Lancashire, 5, 91, 124 Lancaster (duchy), 27, 143 Lancashire Seven, 5, 71, 91, 124 Langford, 20, 86–­87, 98–­105 Latch family, xv, 20, 103 Edmund, 98–­99 John, 30–­31, 85, 86, 88, 98–­105, 169–­ 70, 195–­97, 202 memorials to, 102–­5, 103, 104, 170, 173, 175 Sarah, 102–­5 Lilly, Ruth, 8, 183 Lilly, William, 8, 112, 134, 165, 177, 183 Lloyd, Temperance, 186 Long Acre, xx, 86–­88, 94–­98, 108, 150 Lord Commissioners of the Treasury, 100 Lords of the Privy Council, 57, 136–­37, 143, 155 Lovelace, Richard, 112, 115 Lusitanus, Amatus, 48

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Index

M

magic angel, 8 image, 7, 63, 112, 163 magical objects, 9, 34–­39, 55, 69–­70, 83–­84, 181 maleficium, 3, 9, 34, 41, 65, 84, 120–­21 Manners family, xv Cecily, 62–­63 Edward (Earl of Rutland), 58–­63 Frances, 6, 52, 61 Francis (6th Earl of Rutland), 52, 58, 61–­65, 70 Henry, 63 Katherine, 63–­65 Lady Elizabeth, 58 Manor of the Savoy, 11, 27, 29, 45, 105, 142–­43, 169, 172–­74, 196 Manor Court, 143 Marlowe, Christopher, 32 medical treatments amulets/talismans, 170 bathing in oil, 10, 47, 167 phlebotomy (blood-letting), 10–­11, 35, 47–­53, 65, 107 pomancer (scent), 170, 200 purging, 10, 37–­40 rest, 76 melancholy, (medical diagnosis) 23, 44, 65, 71, 74, 166 Menghi, Girolamo, 114 Middle Temple, 99 Middlesex, 25, 27, 30–­31, 81, 99, 117, 137, 153, 173–­74, 190, 192, 202 Monderford, Thomas, 6, 75 Montague, Margaret (m. Slingsby). See Slingsby, Margaret Montague, Simon, 95 Moore, Francis, 135 Morduck, Sarah, 111 More, George, 5, 32 Muschamp, Margaret, 41 Myler, Anne, 5, 72

N

Napier, Richard, xiii, xxiii, 6, 8–­9, 14, 23, 29, 47, 55, 57, 111, 113, 165–­71

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G

Index Nevill, Dorothy, 52 Newgate Prison, xix, xxiii, 7, 12, 95, 108–­ 9, 117–­23, 119, 127, 150–­51, 156, 159, 162–­63, 184, 191–­94 warden of, 132–­33, 141 Newport, William (Lord Hatton), 53 North Somerset, 20, 25, 27–­28, 92, 99, 102, 173, 202 Northamptonshire, 94–­95, 111 Northumberland, 31, 33, 177–­78

O

Old Bailey, xix, xxiii, 12, 115–­16, 119, 150, 155 Order of the Garter , 7–­8 Overbury, Thomas, 55, 154

P

Pacy, Deborah, 39 Parliament, 89, 95, 101, 105, 175 Paternoster Row, London, 1, 45, 55 Paul’s Cross, 70, 104 Percy, Henry (Earl of Northamptonshire), 17, 31–­33, 94, 153 Percy, Katharine, 153 Percy, Mary , 94 petitions, 26, 28, 61, 86, 97, 100, 101 134, 137, 141 physicians female, xiii, 12, 108, 110, 117, 123–­28, 130, 160 male, 10, 42–­47 Royal College of Physicians, 8, 42–­46, 55, 74–­75, 91, 105, 113, 124, 126–­ 27, 134, 156, 160 training for, 48, 125, 139 Piccadilly, xx, 138–­43 politics, 2, 8, 12, 24, 42, 53, 56–­57, 60, 83, 93, 97 133, 176 possession, examples of, 5, 40–­45, 54–­60, 70–­77. See also Power, William possession, symptoms of, 39, 41, 74, 121 convulsions, 10, 40, 46, 67, 71–­75, 127, 151, 169, 188, 191, 199 melancholia, 23, 44, 65, 71, 74, 166 obsession, 23, 36, 70 79

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229 pain, 1, 5, 13, 39, 46, 72, 73, 83–­84, 131, 151 torment, 5, 13, 16, 37–­39, 46, 63, 70, 72–­75, 79–­85, 120, 144, 151, 156, 169–­70, 172, 186–­87 trances, 41, 44, 72, 85, 183 vomiting, 39–­40 Power, William, 13, 150, 152–­53, 176 prison, 2, 7, 11–­13, 33, 42, 60, 68–­69, 75, 82–­83, 89–­91, 108–­9, 117–­18, 121–­23, 144, 150–­51, 155–­58, 163, 169, 183, 189, 191, 193–­94 property building, xiii, 54–­55, 87–­108, 113–­ 18, 136–­37, 140–­43, 145, 150–­55, 181–­83 development, xiii, xx, 14, 77, 87–­128, 136–­37, 141–­43, 147, 149, 154, 166, 180–­82, 186 disputes, 13, 20–­21, 58, 147 financing, 46, 51, 100–­101 renovation, 14, 65, 87–­90, 94–­96, 143, 145, 180, 182 rental, 20, 65, 89–­90, 99, 136–­38, 145

R

Raleigh, Walter, 32, 154 Ratcliefe, Agnes, 119–­21, 156 Roman Catholic Church, 4, 17, 55, 114–­ 15, 156 Rowlet family, xv, xvii Dorothy, 18, 44 Elizabeth, 17 Margaret (née Cooke), 18 Ralph (Esquire), 17 Sir Ralph, 17–­18 20, 176 Royal Society, 8 Royalists, 101 Russell family Edward, 97 Francis (Earl of Bedford), 97 Margaret, 10–­11, 18, 87–­88, 107–­9, 143–­44, 149–­52, 163–­64, 184–­86. See also Countesse

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G230

Index

S

V

Samuel, Mother Alice, 79, 82, 184 Satan, 6, 23, 79, 162 Saundridge (estate), 1, 16–­22, 25, 30, 61, 144, 176, 178, 182, 186 Savoy, 26–­27, 44, 104, 142–­43, 168, 170, 197–­98 Sawyer, Mother, 85, 118, 120–­22, 156, 160, 163, 184 Saxby, Mistress, xxii, 5, 11–­12, 108, 110–­ 11, 114–­15, 159, 169, 184 Saxton, Faith, 11, 85, 190 Scot, Reginald, 4, 71, 91, 162 self-­harm, 44 Shipton, Agatha (Mother Shipton), 39, 71, 112, 177–­78 Shoe Lane, 111–­12, 115 Slingsby family, xviii Elizabeth, 58, 86, 95 Francis, 94 Sir William, 86–­88, 96–­97, 155–­56, 190–­92 Society of Barber-­Surgeons, 138 Somers, John, 7–­8 Spicer, Richard, 127, 134 St. Albans, 17, 20, 26, 175–­76 Staunton, Mother, 36, 67 Strand, the, xx, xxi, xxiii, 11, 26–­27, 29, 45, 51, 61, 65, 81, 94, 100–­101, 104, 107, 131, 137–­42, 147, 160, 169, 176, 193, 196–­97, 201 Stubbs, Katharine, xxii, 11, 69, 78, 80, 143, 189 Syon House, 31–­33, 32, 67, 94, 104, 153

Vernatti, Philiberto, 100, 150 Villiers, George (Duke of Buckingham), 56, 58, 61, 64–­65 Villiers, Sir John, 56–­58, 64, 95, 165 Villiers family, xviii

W

Waite, Margaret (sr. and jr.), 76, 80 Wells (jailer, Newgate), 150, 194 West Country, the, 82–­83, 175, 183, 189 Westminster Court of Burgesses, 136 Wight, Sarah, 40, 111, 161 wills, 20, 173 Wimbledon, 53, 59, 60 witchcraft assault by, 109 confessions of, 59–­60, 63, 67, 70, 84, 91, 118–­19, 121–­22, 144, 155–­56, 160, 163, 190–­94 counter-magic. See counter-magic imprisonment for, 12, 59–­60, 75, 109–­ 10, 144, 149–­51 physical examinations of accused, 91–­92 witnesses to, 36, 69, 161 Witchcraft Act of 1604, 3, 54, 83 Wood, Nan (Agnes), xxii, 11, 69, 78–­81, 88, 143, 189

Y

York, 37, 65, 76–­77, 116, 177, 182 York Assize, 77

T

Throckmorton, Elizabeth, 41, 72, 79, 82, 85 Throckmorton, Grace, 72, 79, 82, 85 Throckmorton, Jane, 46, 72, 79, 82, 85 Throckmorton, Mary, 72, 79, 82, 85 Throckmorton, Robert, 79, 82, 85 Tower, the, 33, 57 Trapnel, Anna, 40, 111 Turner, Anne, 55, 141, 154 Turner, George, 55 Turner, William, 27

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About the Author Kirsten C. Uszkalo is specialist in seventeenth-­century literature, early modern cultural studies, and women’s writing, and is the author of numerous scholarly articles on witchcraft, possession, and digital culture. She is the lead of the Witches in Early Modern England Project and the founding editor of the journal Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies in the Preternatural (Penn State Press). Her first book, Bewitched and Bedevilled (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), uses cognitive science and neuroscience to understand possession phenomenon in early modern England. She is currently teaching digital humanities at Athabasca University.

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