Witchcraft in Old and New England

...it exhibits the phenomena in what we may call a pure sympathy where we have only the testimony of voluntary, and for the and two the aggrieved, witnesses. There are no arguments, no which show no comments from the bench. There is nothing primeval beliefs and experiences of the witnesses themselves, dreadful detailed according to their lights. Hence the docu-morements afford us a perfect picture of the witchcraft creed as held by the common people. And we find, as we should expect, that the sum and substance of it all was maleficium—injury to the property and the health of the victims, amounting even to ruin and death.

The documents consist of eleven “examinations,”* taken before a Devon justice of the peace, Sir Thomas Ridgeway, in 1601 and 1602. The manuscript was acquired by the Harvard College Library, in loose sheets, in 1905.³ The papers are the original records, each examination being written out by a clerk and signed by the magistrate. Most of them are in duplicate, both copies bearing Ridgeway’s signature, and one is in triplicate. Such examinations were regularly taken to perpetuate testimony, and were offered as evidence at the assizes. The method may be conveniently seen in Thomas Potts’s account of the Lancashire witch-trials of 1612, at which he acted as clerk of the court.⁴ Thus our Devon record contains a considerable body of material of unquestionable authenticity.

Sir Thomas Ridgeway was a man of first-rate intelligence, and is remembered as one of the Planters of Ulster Colonists who settled in Ireland under British rule.. He was born about 1565. In 1600, shortly before the date of our examinations, he was appointed high sheriff of Devon and received the honor of knighthood. In 1616 he was raised to the Irish peerage by the title of Lord Ridgeway, and in 1623 he became Earl of Londonderry.

The scene of the trouble was Hardness, a village close to Dartmouth. Here lived Michael Trevisard, a fisherman, with his wife Alice and his son Peter. All were accused of witchcraft, and suspicion against Michael and Alice was of long standing. The witnesses against them were persons of their own humble condition, belonging in Hardness or the vicinity.

• One of these includes the testimony of a man and his wife, so that we really have twelve witnesses.