[Illustration: '_... caused to sytte down and in large wyse to gape._']
Considering how large a part magic and the supernatural played in the life of the people in the Middle Ages it is curious that there should be so few references thereto in the English judicial records prior to the Reformation. The ancient chroniclers and historians enlivened many a dull page with the most astonishing tales of sin and mystery, vouched for on the testimony of their own eyes or of unimpeachable witnesses, but the chains of legal evidence are as powerless to bind these legendary sorcerers as were the triple chains of iron to bind the famous Witch of Berkeley. With the exception of general vague accusations of witchcraft levelled against the Lollards and kindred heretics, references to magic are casual and rare in the records of our courts.
With the reign of Elizabeth this ceases to be true, and from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth the Black Arts attracted their full share of judicial and magisterial attention. Probably twenty instances of legal proceedings taken in connection with these 'ungodly practices' could be produced after the Reformation for every one prior to that date, and while this is in part due to the fact that local records of the later periods have survived in far greater number than their predecessors, there is a possibility that _post hoc_ is in the case also _propter hoc_. It is arguable that the Reformation having abolished, for all practical purposes, belief in the miracles of God and His saints, the natural craving of the unscientific man for a supernatural explanation of the abnormal could only be satisfied by a belief in the miracles of the Devil and his sinners. Be that as it may, the fact remains that after the Reformation witches and warlocks became as common as holy nuns and anchorities had once been--the marvels reported of the one class are about as unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view as those of the other. It is, however, with a few chance references of earlier date that I am concerned.
Suitably enough it is from the land of 'Cunning Murrell' that my earliest instance comes. The Sheriff of Essex in 1169 made a note of having expended 5_s._ 3_d._ on 'a woman accused of sorcery.' The record is brief and unsatisfactory, telling neither the details of the offence, the method of trial, nor the result. These two last items we get in another case which occurred in Norfolk in 1208, when Agnes, wife of Odo the merchant, appealed a certain Galiena for sorcery, and Galiena successfully cleared herself by the ordeal of the hot iron. For a century after this any magical offenders who may have been brought to trial have eluded my search. Then in 1308 began the proceedings against the Knights Templars, based very largely on accusations of practising Black Magic. In England, however, nothing of the kind was even held to have been proved against the knights, although not only 'what the sailor said' was considered to be evidence, but also what the clerk thought the priest said the soldier heard the sailor say.