INTRODUCTION
After Anne Bodenham became suspected of witchcraft in 1653, a panel of women was appointed to search her body.Footnote 1 At her trial these women testified that the 80-year-old defendant ‘had … the marks of an absolute Witch, having a Teat about the length and bignesse of the Nipple of a womans breast, and hollow and soft as a Nipple, with a hole on the top of it, on her left shoulder, and another likewise was found in her secret places, like the former on her shoulder’. A pamphlet describing the case commented on this evidence: ‘for which she was arraigned and condemned to be hang'd’.Footnote 2
The search for such bodily marks relied on a mixture of popular and learned theological ideas, and was typical in English witchcraft cases. The women who examined the body of Anne Bodenham were looking for ‘the devil's marks’. These were bodily marks allegedly imprinted by the devil on the bodies of his human accomplices. The belief was that the devil branded the bodies of witches with symbolic yet concrete corporeal malformations such as marks and growths. Such a mark was tangible, ostensible and also, according to contemporary theory, insensitive to pain.Footnote 3 These traits made the mark subject to search and to pricking, two common proof techniques related to the mark and employed in the quest for physical evidence of witchcraft.
The devil's marks were considered to be an example of physical evidence that could help to ‘discover witches’, as the contemporary expression put it. These marks, conceivably the early modern forensic equivalent to today's fingerprints or DNA, were seemingly straightforward, non-problematic physical traces that directly proved the suspect's guilt, and that did not depend on possibly untruthful witnesses.
Three consecutive acts of Parliament made witchcraft a secular criminal offence in England between the years 1542 and 1736.Footnote 4 These laws defined various instances of behaviour as witchcraft, but did not specify how to prove what was considered one of the most serious of crimes. Due to the secretive nature of the crime of witchcraft and the scarcity of physical evidence, it was extremely hard to ‘discover’ witches. Finding proof of witchcraft posed a legal and practical challenge which the method of the search for the devil's mark made it easier to meet.
During her trial for witchcraft in 1566, Agnes Waterhouse denied having allowed her cat, Sathan, to suck her blood. Subsequently, her kerchief was removed, exposing visible spots on her face and nose to the judges. Unfavourable conclusions were drawn, and after the queen's attorney had asked Agnes when her blood was last sucked, she incriminated herself by saying ‘not this fortnyght’.Footnote 5 This court demonstration is an early example of the evidentiary potential of suspicious ‘spots’ in witchcraft cases.
The comprehensive bodily search was a later development. The earliest documentation of a bodily search for marks relates to a case from 1579.Footnote 6 However, at that time the search was not yet used on a regular basis. Other cases from the same year also made use of evidence about suspicious marks. These, however, were not discovered through a search, but confessed to by the suspects.Footnote 7 Towards the 1630s the search became quite routine.Footnote 8 The search was most extensively used during the famous 1645–1647 trials in East Anglia orchestrated by Matthew Hopkins (‘Witchfinder General’) and his associate, John Stearne. The search continued to be employed after this exceptional episode as well, although the number of documented instances decreases in tandem with the decline in witchcraft prosecution. The last known search occurred in a case in 1712, which is also the last known case of conviction for witchcraft in England.Footnote 9
This article is part of a wider research project examining the social embeddedness of the law of evidence. My analysis relies on a body of 157 primary sources (pamphlets and learned tracts) published between the years 1561–1756 which discuss how to prove the crime of witchcraft. The public debate that unfolded in early modern England regarding the evidentiary techniques used in witch-trials provides a rare opportunity to uncover the basic assumptions and systems of meaning underlying the contemporary mechanisms of proof. This article focuses on the devil's mark and analyses the debate over its probative powers while paying attention to the social characteristics of its participants. My analysis places the evidentiary debate in a specific socio-historical context and examines the dynamics between legal standards, the wider social, cultural and intellectual context and the social diversity of the participants.
‘HIGH’ AND ‘POPULAR’ CONCEPTS OF THE DEVIL'S MARK
The English writers of the time were familiar with the work of Continental theologians, who were the first to articulate the theory of the devil's mark and the practical guidelines for its search, including searching under the eyelids, in the armpits, on the breasts, in the roof of the mouth, and on the rectum and the genitals.Footnote 10 And indeed primary sources attest that in order to find the devil's marks English witchcraft suspects were subjected time and again to obtrusive bodily searches. They were stripped naked, sometimes having their bodies completely shaved, and every part of their bodies was thoroughly examined. The search superseded the norms of modesty and decency. The suspected men and women, in the words of the sceptical physician John Webster,
were so unchristianly, unwomenly, and inhumanely handled, as to be stript stark naked, and to be laid upon Tables and Beds to be searched (nay even in their most privy parts) for these their supposed Witch-marks: so barbarous and cruel acts doth diabolical instigation, working upon ignorance and superstition, produce.Footnote 11
Although it was not part of official English criminal procedure, the technique of the search became highly elaborated and institutionalized. Almost invariably the search was not an expression of a spontaneous lynching, but rather a standard element of the pre-trial investigation, ordered by men of authority (mostly justices of the peace (JPs), but sometimes the mayor or another figure of authority), and conducted according to customary practice. Around 1645, at the peak of the Hopkins witch-scare, East Anglian communities and urban corporations hired witchfinders. During that episode the search was used extensively, and women searchers (not officially appointed) routinely accompanied Hopkins on his journeys.Footnote 12 However, the practice of the bodily search for the devil's mark continued in use even after the witch-scare episode of the 1640s, up to the early eighteenth century.
The evidential significance of the devil's mark in early modern England emerged out of two epistemologically inconsistent sources. In ‘high’ or ‘learned’ theory, which was influenced by Continental theology, the devil often sealed a covenant with the witch by branding her body with a mark. The mark signified the contractual-like and consensual relationship between the witch and the devil.Footnote 13 Although in England the value of the devil's mark was mocked as early as 1584 in Reginald Scot's influential treatise,Footnote 14 and although English culture emphasized the element of evil doing (maleficium) rather than the pact as the constituent element of witchcraft, significant English writers adopted the Continental theory of the devil's mark.Footnote 15
The other source for the meaning of incriminating bodily marks was the ‘popular’ English belief in imps, which figured prominently in English witch trials up to the early eighteenth century.Footnote 16 The ‘imps’ or ‘familiars’ were devils or demons embodied in animal form, assisting the witch in evildoing. The evil spirits could be transformed into domestic animals such as cats and dogs or other animals, such as toads, rats, ferrets, and even insects such as bees or flies. Documented instances of belief in animal-shaped demons date back as early as the fourteenth century, yet the origins of ‘familiar’ folklore remain vague.Footnote 17 The human witches often treated their animal accomplices as pets, naming them, and feeding them. It was widely held that witches suckled their imps with their own blood. The bodily indicator of such demonic suckling was either the ‘teat’, a nipple-resembling growth, or the appearance of a freshly sucked spot.Footnote 18 These growths were sometimes clutched to check whether blood or other fluids could be squeezed out.Footnote 19 Around the 1630s ‘teats’ or ‘spots’, which were believed to be habitually sucked by the imps, were often searched for in ‘shameful’ or ‘privy parts’, and were associated with the suspect's sexuality and carnal relationship with the devil.Footnote 20
Many popular elements challenged Christian dogma: could the devil, just like God, create life? If the imp was made of spirit (as the theologians, who denied that the devil had the ability to create ‘real’ life, claimed), why did the witches feed them? Why did they nurse them with blood? If the imps were an embodiment of supernatural spirits, what were they doing at the command of poor, old, and often demented women? The popular English stories about giving familiars to friends or relatives contradicted Continental demonology, which viewed the contract with the devil as an essential step in becoming a witch.Footnote 21 Another theologically unsettling element that persisted in popular perception was about enjoyable erotic or sexual contact with imps. While the demonologists emphasized the icy feeling and pain caused in contact with the devil, some English texts embraced the voices of suspects who expressed sensations of pleasure at the devil's touch.Footnote 22 The dissonance between theological principles and popular beliefs left room for doubt and scepticism.Footnote 23
Despite the theological difficulties, the widespread search for incriminating marks on the body of English witchcraft suspects was supported by a fusion of ‘learned’ and ‘popular’ concepts. A typical narrative in English witchcraft pamphlets is that of the witch who had made a contract with the devil, after which she was branded by the devil with a bodily mark through which she later nursed an imp with her blood. Some even held that the first drawing of blood by the devil was for the writing of the covenant.Footnote 24 Such a narrative combined the element of the pact with the devil and the suckling of the imps into a unified framework.
The conflation of the demonological concept of the devil's mark with ‘teats’ and ‘familiars’ is reflected in the theological reading of English folklore.Footnote 25 Locating the familiars in a theological framework alleviated the theological difficulties. The conflated narrative further served to support feasible methods of legal proof – search for bodily marks and testimonies about familiars.
The ‘high’ and ‘popular’ origins of the devil's mark have a clear linguistic manifestation. While authors of learned treatises used the term ‘mark’, the searchers of the bodily marks constantly reported to the JPs and judges about findings of ‘teats’ and ‘biggs’. This differentiated terminology does not necessarily signify distinct bodily traits. In some cases, the same bodily features are deemed to be probative, although the JPs and gentlemen called them ‘marks’ and the searchers ‘teats’. For example, the JPs ordered a group of women to search the body of Alice Goodridge and her mother, ‘to see if they could finde any such marks on them, as are vsually found on witches’, but the women reported to have found ‘teats’ and ‘warts’. Afterwards, the searchers exposed the suspicious body parts bare, demonstrating the evidence to the satisfaction of the JPs. Although the JPs used the term ‘marks’, they were clearly satisfied with ‘teats’ as physical evidence of ‘good worth’.Footnote 26 In a 1621 case against Elizabeth Sawyer, the bench ordered a group of three women to search the defendant's body for any ‘vnwonted marke’. When these women testified in court about their findings, they described something ‘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’.Footnote 27 In these cases, the differences in terminology were not a cause for conflict. It seems that, despite the different terms, there existed a shared meaning of the evidence of the devil's mark, a meaning which emerged in the context of the witchcraft trials and which combined ‘high’ and ‘popular’ elements.
This existence of a shared meaning becomes prevalent in later texts, which use the terms ‘marks’ and ‘teats’ interchangeably. In 1634, sanctioned by the Privy Council, a group of ten London midwives headed by physician William Harvey reported to have found nothing like ‘a teate or marke’ on the bodies of four women who had been convicted by the Lancaster Assizes.Footnote 28 A pamphlet authored by Edmund Bower refers to what was found on the shoulder of Anne Bodenham as ‘a certain mark or Teat’.Footnote 29 In 1702 Richard Hathaway was tried for making false witchcraft accusations, inter alia causing Sarah Murdoch to be searched for ‘any Teats, or other Signs of a Witch’.Footnote 30 A decade later, a local magistrate, Sir Henry Chauncy, ordered a search of the body of Jane Wenham, for ‘any Teats, or other extraordinary and unusual Marks about her’.Footnote 31 The fusion between the ‘high’ and ‘popular’ ideas is evident in the writing of Richard Bernard, a Puritan divine and the author of a manual for jurors. Bernard saw the devil's mark as a ‘seal’ of the league with the devil. Yet he also maintained that the mark was the devil's ‘sucking place’, and that the mark could appear in the shape of a ‘teat’.Footnote 32 (More on Bernard below.)
Theoretically, the early modern English had a simple and direct evidentiary method for proving the mysterious crime of witchcraft. However, putting the theory into practice was not trouble-free. The marks were not always easy to discern. It was believed that the devil habitually branded them on hidden body parts. If a mark was found, one needed to tell the difference between natural growths and marks and diabolical ones. If no mark was found, another kind of difficulty arose. Even learned theologians disagreed on the question of whether all or only some witches were marked.Footnote 33 The absence of a mole or growth, therefore, did not necessarily result in the exoneration of witchcraft suspects. It could also be explained by the suspect's cutting the mark off or by some devilish intervention, as these marks, it was believed, could come and go.Footnote 34
Therefore, the potential of the devil's mark as direct physical evidence and its interpretation were not as clear-cut as it seemed at first sight. The early modern English differed in their dispositions towards this evidentiary method. The participants in a debate, which stretched far beyond the boundaries of the legal profession, used diverse arguments to support their positions towards the mark. They also differed in the degree of their involvement in the practice of the search for the mark. In fact, the professional affiliation of the participants to a large extent shaped their disposition. Clearly, a complex picture of intellectual and practical positions cannot be attributed to a single aspect of social life. I do not wish to offer a simplistic one-dimensional formulation, but rather to shed some light on the affinity between professional affiliation and positions towards the evidentiary method of the devil's mark. I will first characterize those who took an active part in the search for the devil's mark, and then continue with discussion of the scholarly positions in relation to the practice.
THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE PRACTICE OF THE SEARCH
Professional mark-searchers
The search for the devil's marks was sometimes conducted by self-appointed suspicious neighbours, under no official authority. Yet the neighbours often preferred to hire the services of expert searchers. Professional witch-hunters, witch-searchers or witch-prickers were employed for the task of discovering the devil's mark more frequently than were doctors. This nascent forensic expertise was founded on demonology and experience, and the practising experts claimed to possess special knowledge that enabled them to distinguish between diabolical marks and normal morbid growths.Footnote 35 For the professional searchers, the solid probative value of the evidence of the devil's mark was a key factor in establishing their professional identity.
The hiring of ‘expert searchers’ occurred mainly in the exceptional times of 1645–1647, proliferating during the Hopkins–Stearne East Anglia witch-fright. During that episode, the technique of the search became much more intricate, with specially trained male and female ‘searchers’ chosen for that mission. The suspects were stripped naked and positioned on a stool in a closed room without food or sleep for up to two days, and they were they continuously watched to see if their imps would come and suck them. During this dire time they could be questioned by the professional witch-finders.Footnote 36
On their journeys the infamous witch-hunters Hopkins and Stearne were aided by Mary Phillips and Priscilla Briggs, women with years of experience in searching for the devil's marks, who were compensated for their services.Footnote 37 Hopkins emphasized both their skill and teamwork as contributing to a successful discovery.Footnote 38
Experience and expert knowledge were indeed the major assets of the professional searchers. When they reported their findings to the justices, they explained why these were not natural marks, and why they believed these were devil's marks, based on previous cases where confessions ensued on the basis of similar findings.Footnote 39 Even a professional witch-hunter like Stearne admitted it was hard to distinguish between natural and diabolical marks.Footnote 40 Though he had great confidence in his own ability to ‘discover’ witches, and to distinguish between natural and diabolical marks, Stearne recommended caution ‘lest others should unadvisedly and rashly proceed in the discovery of such persons wrongfully, and then fault me for the insight’.Footnote 41 Therefore, by his long and tedious description of the marks, and by his call for prudence, Stearne was not casting doubt on the probative value of the devil's mark, but rather establishing his own claim to privileged expert knowledge. The devil's mark was one of the major tools the professional witch-hunters had to offer, yet, in order to establish a position as experts, they needed to construct it as a valid evidentiary method, on the one hand, but on the other as one the detection of which required special skills and knowledge. This challenge was not always easy to meet, and a notable example is the very first trial of the Hopkins episode, at Chelmsford in July 1645, where six magistrates and a minister, being dissatisfied with the evidence, called for reprieves for nine of the condemned witches.Footnote 42
The ‘prickers’
Along with trained witch-hunters and searchers, another kind of professional practitioner appeared: the prickers. The ‘pricking’, a technique aimed at examining the lack of sensitivity of the mark (which was supposedly rendered insensible by the devil), was carried out by inserting a pin or a needle into the mark in question. Lack of pain or of streaming blood was a sign that the suspect was a witch. The suspects could be pricked repeatedly until they confessed.Footnote 43
Pricking was one of the main techniques used against witches in Scotland, where, unlike in England, torture was legal.Footnote 44 In Scotland, the search itself was one module in a saga of tortures, often employed after pulling the head with a rope.Footnote 45 The idea of the insensitive mark arrived in England from Continental and Scottish demonology.Footnote 46 Even though the English writings focused more on the suckling of imps with blood through bodily growths, there are several references to the employment of professional ‘prickers’.Footnote 47
‘Pricking’ was a matter for the professionals, and should be distinguished from the supernatural practice of ‘scratching’ the suspect by fingernails to draw blood, in order to relieve the symptoms of the bewitched victim. The prickers were usually men, unlike the juries of ‘matrons’ which consisted of women who were not compensated for their services.Footnote 48
The jury of matrons
Bodily searching was warranted by the court, which sometimes appointed a ‘jury of matrons’ for that purpose. These panels, usually consisting of two or three women, were similar to the ones employed to determine pregnancy. The first recorded appointment of a jury of matrons to search for the devil's mark appears as early as 1579.Footnote 49 The matrons reported their search findings to the court under oath.Footnote 50 Their testimony could be crucial.
The English courts had an established tradition of female jury panels deputized to perform intimate physical examinations to obtain proof. Most widely known are the juries of matrons appointed to ascertain whether female criminal defendants were ‘quick with a child’.Footnote 51 The women selected for the panel were not necessarily midwives but could include any respected and mature women, ‘honest matrons’, or ‘women of credit’.Footnote 52 Apparently, the women searchers, the ‘matrons’, were sought more on the basis of their respectability and much less on the basis of their medical knowledge. In the 1621 Old Bailey case against Elizabeth Sawyer, one woman was chosen based on her good reputation and the other two were respectable-looking women who simply happened to walk down the street when the officer went looking for ‘matrons’.Footnote 53
Can the fact that women were searched by other women counter claims that witchcraft prosecution was a mechanism for the oppression of women? Alan Macfarlane and Keith Thomas have discounted the ‘war-between-the-sexes’ as a plausible explanation to the prevalence of women among the accused, since complainants and witnesses were as likely to be women as men.Footnote 54 Clive Holmes reminds us that, nevertheless, it was men who brought the charges and orchestrated the prosecution.Footnote 55 The role of the matrons, who were always appointed by the male JPs and judges, supports his conclusion. The fact that the long-standing institution of the jury of matrons was adapted to the purpose of searching for the devil's mark is also congruent with Marianne Hester's analysis. She perceived the witch-hunts as yet another means of social control aimed at upholding patriarchy within a context of social change.Footnote 56 It was usually the female body that was scrutinized in the searches, being redefined as different and potentially diabolic.
Justices and judges
The appointment of ‘juries of matrons’ to search the bodies of witchcraft suspects manifested a recognition by the justice system of the value of the devil's mark as a method of proof. The justices of the peace, who were usually not lawyers, and the judges of the assizes, who travelled into the counties twice a year to dispense royal justice, differed in their involvement in the practice of search. The JP conducted a pre-trial investigation which included an examination of the suspect. Theoretically, a judicial search warrant could be issued by the judges on the bench of the assizes, but a search was almost invariably ordered at the pre-trial stage of the case by the examining justice of the peace.Footnote 57 A search ordered by a JP pursuant to receiving complaints about the suspect seems to have been a standard occurrence.Footnote 58
Occasionally, JPs allowed the searchers to ‘prick’ a suspect.Footnote 59 It was not rare for magistrates to order a search on the basis of intuitive suspicions or evidence which more sceptical contemporaries would have deemed flimsy.Footnote 60 In some cases the JPs appointed searchers who were likely to be biased: for example, a woman who was the ‘attendant’ of the alleged victim for the past six weeks,Footnote 61 or the mother of the alleged victims,Footnote 62 or searchers hired by the accusers (after the first searchers had found no suspicious marks).Footnote 63
In some cases the accusers themselves searched the body of the suspect, after she was arrested. The pamphlets do not always mention whether these searches were done pursuant to a judicial order. However, it seems that in order to search a suspect in jail, the cooperation of the authorities was necessary.Footnote 64
Witchcraft cases were generally heard by the travelling assize judges who tried practically all serious crimes and reinforced unified standards of procedure and proof. Although the judges of the assizes did not typically initiate a search for the devil's mark, which was not a part of any official procedure, they repeatedly heard testimonies about such searches.
Surrounding the actual search for the devil's mark was a lively scholarly discourse about the validity of this method of proof. An array of views was expressed by various social actors from different professions. The dominant voices in the debate belonged to members of three professional groups – those of medicine, law, and the clergy. Examination of their discourse reveals an affinity between the professional affiliation of the speaker and the perception of the evidentiary value of the devil's mark. I have chosen to focus on this three-fold division into clerics, lawyers, and physicians because their voices emerge as the most significant in the witchcraft debate. Clearly, there were other relevant social groups. Identity is constructed from many different layers, and voices cannot always be neatly classified to fit into a single category. For example, a physician might rely on interpretation of the scriptures, or a demonological tract might contain practical instructions to jurors and examples of particular cases. However, reading the texts demonstrates that generalizations can be made on the basis of professional affiliation, and that this classification proves analytically useful.
THE SCHOLARLY DISCOURSE ABOUT THE DEVIL'S MARK
Physicians
Rarely did a doctor conduct a search for the devil's mark. One famous example is of a 1634 case in which a group of London midwives and surgeons, supervised by William Harvey – who discovered the circulation of blood and who was James I's physician (and later Charles I's) – examined Lancashire suspects who were found to have marks by the provincial searchers. Harvey's group cleared the suspects completely.Footnote 65
In the 1652 case against Joan Peterson, a JP ordered a search after the suspect had denied the allegations during examination. The search cleared Peterson and she was subsequently released on bail. The accusers brought her to another examination and caused her to be searched again – this time by searchers they themselves had hired, and who did not fail to find a ‘teat of flesh in her secret parts’.Footnote 66 The JP arrested her based on this guilt-proving finding. The author of a pamphlet who criticized this search as ‘unnatural & barbarous’ remarked that the day before Peterson's execution she was searched by physicians, who declared the ‘teat’ natural and that there were grounds for reprieve (pregnancy).Footnote 67 Their opinion failed to save Peterson, who was nevertheless executed. Reprieve was probably denied in this case because Peterson had refused to confess.
Unlike the professional witch-hunters and searchers, the physicians' approach, as it appears in the texts was to treat the devil's mark with reservation. The sceptical John Cotta, Thomas Ady and John Webster all assumed the existence of witches. However, using the tools of reason and medical experience, they strove to reform the customary methods of proof. Cotta, writer of The triall of witch-craft (1616), whose intellectual method allowed for detection of witches by reason – including by presumptions and conjectures – rejected the devil's mark as inadmissible evidence. Cotta accepted as a fact that in some cases the allegedly bewitched victim could specify intimate bodily marks of the suspected witch without ever having seen her body before: ‘This is reputed a certain conuiction of a Witch’, he wrote.Footnote 68 Yet such a ‘miraculous’ event might be the devil's work, and could not serve as a basis for conviction. Cotta made clear that it was entirely illegal to use evidence of ‘supernatural illuminations or revelations’ as any grounds of a just trial. He explained that judgements based on supernatural evidence were void, and ought not to be credited by ‘just and righteous men’.Footnote 69
A much harsher criticism of the theory of the devil's mark was voiced by Ady, author of A candle in the dark (1655). All bodily marks, he argued, could be attributed to natural causes, whether they were congenital or a consequence of disease. Ady listed many natural reasons for formation of ‘teats’, and explained why in some cases those growths could issue blood.Footnote 70 He questioned the theological theory on which belief in the devil's mark was supposedly founded.Footnote 71 Ady regarded the marks as an invention of Catholic theologians, with no basis in scripture or medicine.Footnote 72
Ady drew a very sharp line between the physicians and the professional witch-hunters and searchers. He emphasized the medical angle and relied on rational reasoning, not on doubtful demonology. He referred to medical books, used Latin and Greek medical terms, and distinguished himself from men who ‘cavil against Philosophy, and Physick Rules’.Footnote 73 Those who sought to discover witches by bodily marks he called ‘witchmongers’ or ‘ignorant people’, and he severely denounced cases in which such evidence served as a basis for conviction.Footnote 74 Ady asserted that the demonologist account of the devil's mark ‘is folly and madness, and to affirm, is a phantastick Lye, invented by the Devil, and the Pope’.Footnote 75
A third influential and radical physician's voice was that of John Webster. In The displaying of supposed witchcraft (1677) he explicitly negated the treatises of the clerical writers Casaubon, More, and Glanvill from the perspective of a Royal Society philosophy.Footnote 76 Webster's rhetorical methods resemble Ady's. He wrote as a physician and man of reason, but he spoke in theological terms when denouncing the mark-finding practices not only as ‘unChristian’ but as diabolical practices in themselves.Footnote 77 Webster rejected the idea of suckling the devil through teats. In answer to Glanvill he proposed not to rely on suppositions but on observation and that ‘in a thing of this nature, arguments to prove it probable are insufficient’. Webster stressed that since suckling was never observed, it should not be believed in.Footnote 78
Like Ady, Webster distinguished himself from the ‘witchmongers’, and especially from the ‘prickers’. According to Webster, the practices of the prickers were manifested deceit, and were directed by greed. The lack of pain could be medically explained by inserting the needles and pins into warts and ‘hollow excrescences’, which does not cause pain. Innocent people lost their lives on account of the ‘wicked means and unchristian practices’ of ‘wicked Rogues’, whose acts were encouraged by ‘greater persons’, including clerics.Footnote 79 The searches were ‘barbarous and cruel’, motivated by ‘diabolical instigation, working upon ignorance and superstition’. Webster explained that bodily growths had many natural reasons, ‘sufficiently known to learned Physicians and experienced Chirurgions’. He made it clear that it was against logic to deduce a diabolical contract from insensate warts or excrescences.Footnote 80
An exceptional voice is that of Richard Boulton, an ‘obscure figure’ as James Sharpe defines him.Footnote 81 Boulton, a physician who ran an unsuccessful practice and a writer of medical treatises who was familiar with up-to-date natural philosophy, strongly advocated the belief in the existence of witchcraft. In A compleat history of magick, sorcery, and witchcraft (1715), he vehemently asserted that the ‘surest way’ to discover witches, other than by their confessions, was first ‘by their Mark, which is insensible; and, secondly, by their swimming upon the water, God having ordained, that such as had cast off thee Water of Baptism should not be received into Water, but swim upon it’. These are the same two signs that James I had recommended in 1597 while sitting on the Scottish throne (as James VI), and which had been widely criticized since.Footnote 82 Boulton's adversary in the debate was the Protestant churchman Francis Hutchinson, a precursor of the modern approach to witchcraft, who perceived belief in witches as the product of superstition and ignorance.
Boulton's position was exceptional among medical men. Most writers of medical treatises adopted a quite radical tone, declaring bodily growths and excrescences to be a medical issue, and not marks branded by the devil. It is interesting to see that, despite their opposing views about the validity of the devil's mark as a proof of witchcraft, both the generally sceptical physicians and professional witch-searchers bolstered their arguments by claims of unique professional expertise. The heated debate concerning witchcraft and its ways of proof provided a valuable stage for achieving much wider goals, such as wider professional autonomy and public recognition of worth. The physicians were the most radical critics of the body search. The tone of legal scholars is quite different, a rather conservative perpetuation of the concept that the devil's mark was a valid proof of witchcraft.
Legal scholars
The writers of legal treatises and manuals took a more descriptive line, which allegedly reflected their picture of the existing law. The descriptive approach defines law as based on common practices, and thus assimilates non-legal elements (such as medical, theological and popular notions) into the legal discourse. The references in the texts of legal scholars demonstrate familiarity with the works of Continental writers but they rely mainly on English cases. The starting point of all these writers is that witches exist. All legal writers then stress the difficulty of trying the crime of witchcraft, and discuss the appropriate evidential standards.
Michael Dalton, author of the popular The countrey justice (1618) provided evidential rules based on the 1612 Lancaster precedent, documented in detail by another legal practitioner, the court clerk Thomas Potts. One of the proofs Dalton listed was that of the mark allegedly sucked by the familiar.Footnote 83 Dalton linked the physical appearance of the mark and the rationale behind it (that it was a trace of diabolical suckling).
The technique of treating the statements of witnesses and confessions of suspects as legal precedents enabled the infiltration of popular beliefs into the body of law. The witnesses told what they found relevant or important. Their stories contain many popular customs and beliefs, including their conception of the contact between the witch and her imps. The courtroom was the meeting point of official rules and laws and customs, of elite and popular cultural views. The influences were mutual. Laws and procedures were dictated by a central judicial system; popular concepts were imported through testimonies and depositions, practically implemented by laymen participating as jurors and JPs and, being sometimes adopted as precedents, they became the law. Potts's pamphlet describes the relationship between suspects and imps, based on statements made by witnesses and defendants. The stories about the imps are not denounced as impossible, but their probative power is limited. First, the contact with the imps, per se, was not the basis for any of the criminal charges. All the indictments in the Lancaster case concerned malefic acts such as killing or injuring. The indictments did not include charges of communication with spirits or familiars. The relationship between the witches and the imps was brought forward as background or supporting evidence. Second, there is no clear affirmation of the evidential sufficiency of testimonies about imps. On the one hand, the imp narratives were not denounced but, on the other, the jury's verdict did not reveal the grounds and reasoning. Thus, there was no judgement which specifically formulated a guiding normative statement as to the evidentiary value of the imp narratives. Third, while the imps (in human and animal shapes) star in Potts's pamphlet, the issue of suckling is seldom mentioned.
Therefore, when Dalton treated the suckling of imps as a precedent set forth in the Lancaster case, he assigned to the suckling narrative the authority of a rule of law. In his view, testimony about suckling imps was relevant for proving the crime of witchcraft. His book is a guide for justices of the peace, and was therefore aimed at the stage of pre-trial investigation and supposedly not at determining admissibility rules for the trial itself. However, as a popular handbook, likely to be referred to in cases of difficulty, Dalton's work must have shaped the perception of justices and of those sitting on grand juries and petty juries about the proofs for witchcraft. Pre-trial examinations were later affirmed in court, so these statements about imps would have been heard there. In any case, Dalton used the Lancaster case in a way that broadened the possibilities of ‘discovering’ witches and of adding popular beliefs (such as those about the suckling of imps) to the repertoire of proofs. I cannot, therefore, agree with Barbara Shapiro, who lists Dalton as one of the writers whose work brought about the decline of witch prosecution.Footnote 84
Richard Bernard (1568–1641), a divine from Batcombe in Somerset and author of a great number of religious tracts, was also the author of A guide to grand-iury men (1627). This work, which advocates caution in the prosecution of witches, has demonological aspects, but it also has sections that were drafted as a legal manual. A more detailed discussion of his attitude towards the devil's mark will appear below, with my analysis of other clerical works. However, due to the legal-manual characteristics of his Guide (starting with the title), I will briefly note here its resemblance to Dalton's. Like Dalton, Bernard saw the mark as a good proof of the crime, and based his claim on previous English cases as precedents. His legal scholarship is moulded with layer upon layer of quotations. It is illuminating to notice that in a later edition of The countrey justice (1630) Dalton relied heavily on Bernard's Guide when discussing the probative value of the devil's mark. Dalton quoted Bernard, who had previously quoted him. Repeatedly referring to Bernard's Guide, Dalton's discussion of the mark became much more elaborate, weaving together the elements of folklore and demonology. Dalton then explained that witches ordinarily had a familiar, which sucked ‘a little teat upon their body’. The devil could also make other marks upon the witch's body (such as spots resembling flea-bites or ‘suncke in and hollow’ flesh) and could make them insensible and incapable of bleeding upon pricking. These marks were found ‘often in their secretest parts, and therefore require diligent and carfull search’.Footnote 85
An advertisement to the jury-men (1653) was written by Sir Robert Filmer after the bitter experience of the 1645 witch-scare and following an execution of witches in 1652. Filmer, though trained in law and having had experience as a JP, took a more radical tone than that of other legal scholars. His rhetoric was more political and philosophical than legal, and he criticized the theory of William Perkins, a renowned Puritan theologian, and claimed, inter alia, that the devil's mark had no probative value. Filmer held royalist and conservative views, and Sharpe had noted the irony that this unprogressive thinker should have composed a radical text against the persecution of witches.Footnote 86
However, most legal scholars and practitioners did not argue against the probative value of the devil's mark. Indeed, the notion of the devil's mark as sufficient physical evidence made the proving of the serious-but-hard-to-prove crime of witchcraft much easier. The implied acknowledgement of the devil's mark as a way of proof in the legal discourse might also be attributed to the structural elements of laymen's participation in the proceedings (as parties, witnesses, jurors, JPs) and to the notion of precedent. Once an issue (contact with imps, for example) had been acknowledged as relevant for the determination of guilt, it became a criterion for determination in subsequent cases. In addition, the fact that lay jurors did not explain their verdicts might have made it easier to rely on principles which, had they been made explicit, might have created difficulties for the elite legal professionals.
Clergymen
The theory of the devil's mark originated from demonology. Men of the Church tried to formulate diagnostic criteria for the mark and to solve the theological difficulties embodied in the popular concept of the imp. A vast body of literature tried to distinguish between normal bodily formations and unnatural marks. This distinction was the Achilles' heel of the demonologist theory. The sceptics claimed that many people have natural bodily marks, warts or growths.Footnote 87 The ‘certainty’ of the marks as proof was mocked as early as 1584 in Reginald Scot's famous treatise, The discouerie of witchcraft.Footnote 88 While the sceptics classified many ‘marks’ as natural, an opposing intellectual current included even common bodily features as devil's marks. Henry Goodcole, an ordinary and visitor of Newgate from 1620 to 1636 who was convinced of the guilt of Elizabeth Sawyer, and who obtained a confession from her after her conviction, regarded her paleness, deformed body, and rude and blasphemous language as devil's marks.Footnote 89 Proof, for Goodcole, was not a purely legal issue. He kept looking for evidence of Sawyer's guilt and interrogated her although she had already been convicted. Moral certainty was more than a standard of conviction; it was a religious necessity. From this perspective the theological and legal discourses about ‘evidence’ diverge. Goodcole's readiness to expand the scope of admissible mark-related evidence can be inferred from his willingness to accept rumours about marks as proof. From information given by Elizabeth Sawyer's neighbours – that she had ‘a priuate and strange marke on her body’ – Goodcole concluded that ‘by [this] their suspition was confirmed against her’.Footnote 90 His credulity becomes more evident from his relying on the findings of randomly picked searchers and from his suggestive questioning of the convicted witch concerning where, when and how the devil sucked her.Footnote 91
Some clergymen, aside from preaching and writing, took an active part in witchcraft cases, trying to influence the result.Footnote 92 These were usually local ministers from the lower ranks, and their involvement included taking part in the examination of a case, assisting the magistrates, and pressuring the suspect to confess, either before or after the conviction. They were usually supporters of beliefs in witchcraft, and used the justice system and specific cases as a platform to advance their position. However, one of the later pamphlets (of 1702) documents an event in which a local minister, Richard Martin, defended a suspect, Sarah Murdock, against false witchcraft accusations and assaults launched by the accusers.Footnote 93
An example of the noticeable involvement of clerics is the 1712 case against Jane Wenham. Francis Bragge, son of a clergyman and himself a Cambridge graduate about to launch his clerical career, wrote several pamphlets in the debate surrounding this case, and took an active part in investigating and conducting experiments to prove Wenham's guilt. Two other local clerics, the Rev. Mr Strutt and the Rev. Mr Gardiner, also participated actively in securing the conviction of Jane Wenham, and were publicly criticized by various writers.Footnote 94 Bragge's pamphlet about this case alleged that Jane Wenham voluntarily offered to be submitted to a search and to the swimming test, and indeed a search was ordered by the JP the following day.Footnote 95 A sceptical anonymous writer remarked on Wenham's offer to be searched that she was ‘willing to undergo all those Trials that never fail of discovering a Witch, according to the Country Probations’.Footnote 96
High-ranking clerics were also preoccupied with the mark. The devil's mark was a subject of profound scholarly treatment in the theological discourse. The most distinguished Puritan theologian, William Perkins, drew a clear line between grounds for suspicion and the evidence used at a trial. In A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft (1608) he listed 18 signs for the discovery of witchcraft. One of the signs, the devil's mark, was, according to Perkins, a ‘presumption’ that warranted examination but was not a sufficient proof in itself. Sir Robert Filmer attacked Perkins' reasoning as incomplete. Even supposing that a search did reveal a mark with no evident natural explanation, he argued, its meaning would still have to be proved.Footnote 97 Perkins' view was typical of the English Puritans, who generally regarded the devil's mark only as a ‘presumption’ that was insufficient for conviction.
In early modern English jurisprudence, the term ‘evidence’ included documents and testimony, while the ‘circumstances’ surrounding a case created an entirely distinct evidential category.Footnote 98 ‘Presumption’ was an inference implied by the circumstances, a logical construct used in the absence of perfect evidence. It was an assumption about probable facts, which was deduced from known facts or experience. The now-established legal distinction between ‘presumption of fact’ and ‘presumption of law’Footnote 99 had not as yet been crystallized, but different presumptions were credited with varying degrees of strength.
Perkins regarded the devil's mark only as a presumption inferred by ‘some’,Footnote 100 a phrasing which implies that not everybody shared the view of the devil's mark as a significant proof. Considering that James I, who advocated the devil's mark as a proof for witchcraft, was among these ‘some’, we can only surmise as to whether Perkins' criticism would have been more blatant had this not been the case.Footnote 101
The use of the term ‘presumption’ in itself demonstrates that, in Perkins' view, the devil's mark was not direct physical evidence but rather an assumption. Perkins' method considerably limited the possibilities of searching the suspect. A JP might order a bodily search upon two cumulative conditions: first, if the mark on the suspect's body had been casually observed (not through a deliberate search), and second, if it might not be explained by any evident natural reason. Thereupon the magistrate might order a search so ‘that the truth may appear’.Footnote 102 The mark, for Perkins, was a presumption that warranted an examination by the magistrate but that was definitely not a basis for conviction. Through his discussion of the mark, Perkins imported the Continental concept of varying degrees of probative strength into the English witchcraft debate. He was followed by other theologians.
Thomas Cooper, author of The mystery of witch-craft (1617) and a witch-prosecution enthusiast, borrowed much from Perkins, but he took a tougher line. For him, if an observed sign had no apparent natural cause it was ‘a shrewd presumption, to examine at least’.Footnote 103 For Cooper, the presumption of the devil's mark was a ‘shrewd’ one, but it was still merely a presumption and not actual evidence.
John Gaule, vicar of Great Staughton in Huntingdonshire, published his Select cases of conscience touching vvitches and vvitchcrafts (1646) in the aftermath of the Essex witch-hunt.Footnote 104 Gaule believed that witches existed but he attacked witch-hunting, Hopkins' investigation techniques, and popular superstitions. For Gaule, unusual bodily marks were a ‘probable’ sign, yet insufficient for conviction.Footnote 105 Gaule maintained that a ‘learned Physician’ could reach sound conclusions as to whether bodily marks were natural while professional witch-finders lacked such ability.Footnote 106
Richard Bernard, the minister from Batcombe in Somerset I have mentioned earlier in relation to the legal discourse, spoke in a different voice. This clergyman titled his book A guide to grand-iury men (1627), a text which cannot be labelled either purely theological or legal. Bernard advocated caution in the ‘discovery’ of witches. The question for him was not whether witches existed, but rather how to discover them. Nevertheless, for him, the devil's mark was a sufficient proof for conviction. His confidence was based on previous cases. Judging from his references, Bernard was well versed in the Continental literature,Footnote 107 but the foundation of his argument was a corpus of English cases in which the devil's mark was presented as a sign of the crime of witchcraft.Footnote 108 Bernard's discussion maintained the following theses: witches exist; the devil exists; the devil marks the witches; in some of the cases the devil sucks on the body of the witches; the marks can be in ‘very hidden places’.Footnote 109 Bernard relied on accumulated experience from actual cases, and this technique of treating previous testimonies as precedents reminds us of Dalton. The conclusion of Bernard was that ‘where this marke is, there is a league and a familiar spirit’.Footnote 110
Bernard not only regarded the mark as an excellent proof, but he also recommended pricking. He claimed that the mark was insensible and that it did not bleed when pricked. Pricking for Bernard was a means of caution, a way to distinguish between natural and devilish marks. In the name of prudence he suggested pricking the suspect not only in the mark but in unsuspicious spots as well, for comparison. This tormenting method was proposed for the sake of avoiding the conviction of the innocent.Footnote 111
Despite the alleged certainty of the mark, Bernard's text implies doubts. First, it hints that not all witches had the mark but that it was branded only ‘vpon [the] baser sort of witches’.Footnote 112 Second, in addition to pricking, Bernard used the standard physical description of the teats and spots, thus burdening the readers with a thorny diagnosis.Footnote 113 He also held that marks could disappear and grow again, which would make negative findings inconclusive.Footnote 114 The remedy Bernard offered for this frustrating predicament was procedural: to ensure a thorough and diligent search the searchers must be under oath.Footnote 115 Bernard's solution was deficient, however, because the most diligent search could not detect the disappearing marks.
Bernard guided the JPs to inquire of the friends and relatives of the afflicted whether a search for a devil's mark on an alleged witch had been conducted. In cases where the accusers had found marks, he suggested asking them how they distinguished them from natural marks. If they had not conducted a search, Bernard guided the JPs ‘to command some fittest for the purpose, to make diligent search’.Footnote 116 These guidelines legitimized private searches committed by interested accusers, acting under no warrant.
Bernard did caution against the conviction of the innocent. When in doubt, he favoured dismissing the bill of indictment (ignoramus) rather than returning it as a ‘true bill’ (billa-vera). Nonetheless, the same author vehemently supported the value of the devil's mark as a sign and the procedure of searching and pricking. On a practical level, it seems that for Bernard the mark was physical evidence that cleared away all doubt. However, his Guide implies that even after a most diligent search the diagnosis remained knotty, and doubt still lurked.
Bernard died before the witch-hunt of 1645–1647. We can only wonder whether the attitude of this generally cautious writer towards the devil's mark would have been more reserved had he been writing in the aftermath of this mass prosecution. In any case, not all clergymen were reserved. Years before the publication of his Guide, when he was still a minister in Worksop, Bernard himself took an active part in the exorcism of the allegedly possessed John Fox of Nottingham.Footnote 117 Generally speaking, while the high-ranking religious scholars were reserved, peripheral clergymen were more supportive of witch-persecution.
The theory of the devil's mark as a sign of a covenant with the devil originated from demonology. Therefore, it is ironic that while legal scholars upheld the mark as valid proof of the crime of witchcraft (with the exception of the radical voice of Filmer), on the whole clerical writers were more reserved in their judgement.
CONCLUSIONS
A reading that recovers the polyphony of views regarding witchcraft and its proof, as they were expressed in early modern tracts and pamphlets, demonstrates that modes of legal proof are not merely a technical and intrinsically juridical matter but are rather part of a wider social, cultural, and intellectual context. In early modern England, the cultural association between bodily marks and witchcraft was not the result of a unified theory but rather a combination of different, sometimes inconsistent or even competing concepts, and the product of a social struggle between various players. The different social players and groups employed evidentiary strategies as a resource to materialize their own distinct goals.
Social identity is multifaceted, composed of social class, gender, profession, religious affiliation, and more, and the full picture of the intellectual currents around the devil's mark as a proof of witchcraft is naturally complex. Yet some generalizations can be made about the connection between the social attributes of the participants in the debate and the nature of their discourse and evidentiary dispositions. Analysis of the debate about the proper ways to prove witchcraft points to a high correlation between the professional affiliation of the participants and the evidential value they ascribed to the devil's mark. The discussion above demonstrates notable differences between physicians, professional witch-hunters, clergymen, and legal scholars in their approaches towards the devil's mark as proof. These evidentiary inclinations are closely related to the interests or structural elements of the different professions. Thus the scepticism of the physicians was expressed through rhetoric that was meant to enhance their professional jurisdiction. The medical expertise was constructed by the physicians as being requisite to the making of legal decisions.
Legal scholars upheld the probative value of the devil's mark by treating testimonies in previous cases as precedents. The notion of the devil's mark as sufficient physical evidence made the judicial struggle with the dilemma of the serious-but-hard-to-prove crime of witchcraft much easier. Paradoxically, high-ranking clerics, whom we would expect to identify most with demonology, were the ones who were most reserved about the devil's mark, and tended to regard it as a mere presumption. The explanation may be that they, most of all, were aware that the devil's mark was a (theo)logical construct and not concrete, direct evidence. It is also possible that the legal system, relying on lay jurors and local magistrates who were not necessarily trained in law, was more structurally prone to the assimilation of popular ideas and other types of discourse.
Members of the clergy and the legal profession seem to have been divided in their dispositions along a centre/periphery axis. The local JPs and parish ministers took an active part in the search for ‘proofs’ in preparation of cases for court and tended to be more lenient towards the popular frame of mind regarding the devil's mark. This fact is not surprising, considering their embeddedness in the local community and their obligation to cooperate with various local interests. The judges of the assizes and high-ranking churchmen, by contrast, treated the devil's mark with more suspicion.
The debate about the probative value of the devil's mark also demonstrates the connection between social class and ideology, and interactions between the different ideas and practices. Popular beliefs about suckling imps and learned demonological concepts infiltrated and percolated into other social circles through the criminal proceedings. The English perception of the marks, which combined the learned element of the pact with the imp narrative, is indeed a striking example of the interaction and blending of ‘learned’ and ‘popular’ frames of thinking.
In theory, the probative value of the devil's mark was no different if found on a male or a female body. Yet most documented instances related to suspicious marks found on women.Footnote 118 In practice, it was mostly the female body that was scrutinized, observed, and searched. The practice of the search for the devil's mark reflected and reasserted the asymmetrical power grid in which the men orchestrated and ordered the searchers and the women complied with their orders, either as searchers or as the objects of search. The voices debating the value of the devil's mark were male.
Supposedly the mark was direct physical evidence that made it possible to overcome the difficulty of obtaining convictions for the serious-but-hard-to-prove crime of witchcraft. However, the case of the devil's mark demonstrates that even physical evidence – a concrete object that would presumably ‘speak for itself’ and not through human witnesses whose honesty and reliability needed to be assessed – is not necessarily a direct trace of a crime. Physical evidence is a sub-category of circumstantial evidence, and its significance is determined through a culturally mitigated mental process of inference. Nowadays, fingerprints or DNA evidence are frequently considered to create an immediate and direct link between the suspect and the crime. Yet, such evidence relies on a socially acceptable body of knowledge that needs to be interpreted and explained to the court by expert witnesses. Similarly, the link between physical evidence (such as bodily marks) and the crime of witchcraft was socially and culturally constructed, and relied on contemporary theories and assumptions. In addition, the epistemology underlying the evidential logic of the devil's mark was the result of diverse interests and conflicting social influences. The discussion above demonstrates the important role of the socio-cultural context in shaping and directing the trajectories of evidence law.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Amos Megged, Assaf Likhovski, Esther Cohen, Robin Briggs, and the editors and anonymous referees of this article for their helpful comments.
