Witchcraft in Old and New England

temptuous “Yea, hazelwood!” in Chaucer’s Troilus. We may also adduce, tentatively, the common saying, “Your wits are gone wool-gathering.” It was manifestly possible, if the sequel should warrant, to interpret Alice’s jeering words as a threat that John should lose his mind. The sequel did so warrant.

Within three weeks after [Joan alleged], the said John Baddaford made a voyage to Rochelle, in the Hope of Dittsham, and returned home again out of his wits, and so continued by the space of two years, tearing and renting his clothes, in such sort as four or five men were hardly able to bind him and keep him in order.

In like manner, as we learn from Potts’s Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, John Bulcock and his mother Joan were indicted, in 1612,

for that they feloniously had practiced, exercised, and used their devilish and wicked arts, called witchcraft, enchantments, charms, and sorceries, in and upon the body of Jennet Deane, so as the body of the said Jennet Deane, by force of the said witchcrafts, wasted and consumed, and after she, the said Jennet, became mad.

But we must return to the testimony of Joan Baddaford.

On the occasion of the same quarrel, Joan averred, Alice Trevisard had “further threatened this examinate Witness under examination. that within seven years after she should not be worth a groat A small silver coin, worth four pennies., nor have a house to dwell in, nor a coat to her back.” And these threats came true, for “whereas she had at that time the fee simple of an house worth one hundred pounds, now is she worth nothing.”

Let us bear in mind that the things to which poor Joan Baddaford bore witness must have been facts. Her insane husband and her fallen fortunes were neither delusions nor superstitions. We cannot ridicule or denounce; we can only pity. If Joan was a bad logician — if she reasoned post hoc ergo propter hoc Latin: "After this, therefore because of this" (a logical fallacy assuming causation based on sequence). — so do we, every day of our lives. And as to threats, they are still admissible as evidence against an accused murderer.

The next section of Joan’s examination may seem trivial, but it was significant of inveterate malice on the part of the alleged witch, and thus was clearly pertinent. Some three years before the date of this document, Joan had asked