John Aubrey & Tales of Wiltshire Witchcraft
Source: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.
John Aubrey believed in magic. The 17th-century Wiltshire antiquary noted down folk remedies and practical magical techniques used by cunning folk (the practitioners of white magic which communities turned to for help). To cure thrush in children, he advised ‘take a living frog, and hold it in a cloth, that it does not go down into the child’s mouth; and put the head into the child’s mouth ’till it is dead; and then take another frog and do the same.’ Aubrey also offered a practical example of the ‘magick of the Sive and Sheeres’, a technique that used a sieve and shears to divine the name of a thief. He described women’s participation in magic or fortune telling, not just as cunning folk, but in examples that showed magic was involved in everyday life for many women.
This did not mean that Aubrey believed all practitioners of magic were benign or that all magic was always used for good. He suggested that horseshoes and ‘Whitty trees’ (possibly referring to Rowan trees) deterred witches; such a thing was necessary. And, in 1666, he had a bad year ‘under an ill tongue’, probably believing a witch had cursed him.
Witches could be real, and their malevolent presence could have real effects. Malmesbury, in particular, had a long-standing reputation for them. The inference was that this abundance in the town was due to Malmesbury’s wet clay soil. Aubrey identified a local problem but recorded only one specific example, writing, ‘About 167- there was a Cabal of Witches detected at Malmsbury [sic]: They were examined by Sir James Long of Dracot-Cerne, and committed by him to Salisbury Gaole. I think there were 7 or 8 old women hanged. There were odd things sworne against them, as the strange manner of the dying of H Dennny’s [sic] Horse: of flying the Air on a staffe &c. These examinations of Sir James &c hath fairly written in a Book, which He promised to give to the Royall Society.’ Aubrey's friend and collaborator, Long, never presented a manuscript to the Royal Society, nor was it published. Although, what appears to be a partial transcript of the paper was published in the Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1832.
Indictments to the Western circuit assize in 1670 and 1672 provide evidence of the judicial proceedings and suggest Aubrey was somewhat inaccurate in his remembrance, or maybe he wished to paint Long as more successful in his quest to take down the witches of Malmesbury. In 1670, the titular head of the Malmesbury coven/ cabal, Elizabeth Peacock was charged with one count of laming a boy, Thomas Webb, by witchcraft and found not guilty. In 1672, she was again charged with wounding the boy, but to that was added four counts of murder by witchcraft against Marye Tanner, Margey Neale, Mary Sharp, and Mary Brown, cases which went back years, and the killing of 15 horses owned by Henry Dennynge (likely the H Denny referred to by Aubrey). Elizabeth was again found not guilty on all counts. However, her sister, Judith Witchall, and another woman, Anne Tillinge, were found guilty of the laming of Thomas Webb and were left for execution, the only two Malmesbury defendants to face the full vigour of the law as convicted witches. Anne had confessed her guilt to the family, perhaps Judith had done the same in gaol. Thomas Webb had accused all three of being his tormentors. Unfortunately gaps in the documentary evidence make inferences as to why Judith was found guilty, and not Elizabeth almost impossible.
How Elizabeth had earned the dubious reputation of being an important local witch is unrecorded too, but James Long was not pleased and possibly somewhat fearful. He approached the judge, Justice Rainsford, claiming Elizabeth’s presence would ruin his estate by driving people away. It was perhaps an exaggeration, given the eight miles between his estate and the town. However, the judge was nonetheless sympathetic to Long's concerns and ordered Elizabeth to be kept in the county gaol at Fisherton Anger with the town paying 2 shillings 6 pence weekly for her maintenance there. Ironically, at the next session, Long returned and requested that she return to town because it would be cheaper to detain her there. How long Elizabeth, who was not guilty of a crime, was imprisoned by the caprice of Long and Rainsford is not recorded, but by the time she wrote her will in June 1675, she appeared to have been freed. Elizabeth died and was buried a few days later in Malmesbury Abbey churchyard, leaving her cottage to her surviving sister, Mary Browne, and her bed to her kinsman William Witchall.
The witches of Malmesbury were not the only alleged witches to whom Aubrey made direct reference. He did not name the witches from Malmesbury but he did name another, Anne Bodenham. Anne is possibly the most notorious of the convicted witches from Wiltshire. She was executed in 1653. She had worked as a cunning woman and a teacher for several years at Fisherton Anger just outside Salisbury. The case was written up in pamphlets, books, and ballads. Some of the details were fantastical; Anne was a shapeshifter and could become a cat, a lion, a dog, or a bear. She had made a pact with the devil. She could summon demons. However, it is clear from Aubrey’s notes that he was ambivalent about the trial process, and possibly the evidence presented. His account began, ‘About 1649 one Mris Bodnam of Fisherton Anger [a poor woman that taught children to read] was tried for a witch at Salisbury before the chief of Baron Wyld and was executed. Evidence against her was that she did tell Fortunes & shewed people visions in a glasse, and that a maid saw the Devill with her, with whom she made a contract, and that she knew twas the devil by his cloven feet that a boy was carried up in the air to a place with snow to gather certain plants and a black bore did show where she should dig for them. These Herbs were for a philtre.‘ He then noted the account of lawyer, Anthony Ettrick, ‘a very judicious gentleman’ who watched the trial and was not satisfied by the process. The judge could not hear Anne because of the furore in the court room. Nor could Anne hear the judge. Messages were handed ‘from one to the other’ but sometimes ‘not truly reported’. Aubrey finished by observing that the trial had been printed.
Aubrey's accounts of Malmesbury's witches and Anne Bodenham's case reveal the complex nature of witchcraft accusations in seventeenth-century England. While Aubrey firmly believed in the reality of magic, his accounts suggest a nuanced view of the nature of magic, witches and witchcraft trials. There was always more going on. Aubrey carefully recorded Ettrick's concerns about Bodenham's trial, and his inaccurate recollection of the Malmesbury cases' outcomes hints at the unreliability of even contemporary accounts. The fates of Anne Bodenham and Elizabeth Peacock - one executed despite procedural concerns, the other imprisoned despite acquittal - demonstrate how justice in witch trials could be influenced by local politics, economics, and social pressures, not just trial evidence. Magic, witchcraft and the law was a complicated thing in early modern Wiltshire.
By Louise Ryland-Epton