Return to main page: index.html
Elizabeth Cary saves a 'witch'
The events here would apparently date to
c1595, as Elizabeth Cary's dates are 1585-1639.
- Being once present when she was about ten year old, when a poor old woman
was brought before her father for a witch, and, being accused for having
bewitched two or 3 to death, the witness not being found convincing, her father
asked the woman what she said for herself? She falling down before him
trembling and weeping confessed all to be true, desiring him to be good to her
and she would mend. Then he asked her particularly, did you bewitch such a one
to death? she answered yes. He asked her how she did it? One of her accusers,
preventing her, said, 'Did you not send your familiar in the shape of a black
dog, a hare or a [toad] cat, and he finding him asleep, licked his hand, or
breathed on him, or stepped over him, and he presently came home sick and
languished away?' She, quaking, begging pardon, acknowledged all, and the same
of each particular accusation, with a several manner of doing it . Then the
standers-by said, what would they have more than her own confession? But the
child, seeing the poor woman in so terrible a fear, and in so simple a manner
confess all, thought fear had made her idle*, so she whispered her father and
desired him to ask her whether she had bewitched to death Mr John Symondes of
such a place (her uncle that was one of hte standers-by). He did so, to which
she said yes, just as she had done to all the rest, promising to do so no more
if they would have pity on her. He asked how she did it? She told one of her
former stories; then (all the company laughing) he asked her what she ailed to
say so? told her the man was alive, and stood there. She cried, 'Alas, sir, I
knew him not, I said so because you asked me.' Then said he, 'Are you no witch
then?' [says he] 'No, God knows,' says she, 'I know no more what belongs to it
than the child newborn.' 'Nor did you never see the devil?' She answered , 'No,
God bless me, never in all my life.' Then he examined her what she meant to
confess all this, if it were false? She answered they had threatened her if she
would not confess, and said, if she would, she should have mercy showed her -
which she said with such simplicity that (the witness brought against her being
of little force, and her own confession appearing now to be of less) she was
easily believed innocent, and acquitted.
*idle - foolish, incoherent, crazy.
From the Life of Elizabeth Cary (written by one of her four daughters), in
the text of Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of
Jewry edited by Barry Waller and Margaret Ferguson (1993), pp. 186-7.