Europe's inner demons

As for Susan Tooker (or Turke), she had complaints to bring against all three Trevisards, father, mother and son. Some years before Alice Trevisard had threatened: “I will not leave thee worth a gray groat!”; and sure enough, Susan’s husband, on his very next voyage, lost ship and goods, and in a calm sea. Young Peter, being refused a drink by Susan, replied “that it had been better to have delivered him drink”. Next day Susan sickened, and she remained sick for seven weeks. And Susan had a tale to tell of Michael Trevisard as well. When Mr Martin, as mayor of Hardness, set up a fold or pound, Michael Trevisard mocked him, saying that wind and weather would tear it up. Mr Martin had done his best to counter the threat, moving the pound to places quite sheltered from the weather; “yet sithence it hath been plucked up very strangely, for it riseth up altogether, being timber of an exceeding great weight and bigness”. There was also the case of Joan Laishe, who had once refused Alice Trevisard a half-pennyworth of ale. “That shall be a hard half-pennyworth,” cried Alice, “I shall not leave you worth a groat!” Two days later one of Joan’s ale-casks fell to the ground and burst and all the ale was lost.

Like the Lucerne material, this story of the Trevisard family of Hardness, Devon, shows just how suspicions and accusations of maleficium

arose amongst the common people when they were left to themselves, without interference from the secular or ecclesiastical authorities or from professional witch-hunters. And the picture that emerges is confirmed by the researches of Dr Alan Macfarlane on some hundreds of witchcraft prosecutions in Essex at the same period.⁽³⁹⁾

Macfarlane found that the accusations arose not necessarily as a result of a direct quarrel between two persons, but when a number of village families fell out with the same person or the same family. For each “witch” there were, on an average, four people who believed themselves to be the witch’s victims. But the number of those involved was far greater, for it included the families and friends of the “victims”. Often the whole population of a village would get caught up in the tension and gossip; the formal accusation would then express the consensus at which the village community had arrived after a lengthy exchange of complaints and rumours.

Accusations were made between people who knew each other intimately. Almost always, the “witch” belonged to the same village as the “victims”; often he or she was a neighbour, someone with whom the “victims” had been closely involved, socially or economically. Indeed Macfarlane argues that an accusation of witchcraft was often in effect (though not of course consciously) a device for severing a close relationship which had become a burden. The refusal to give food or money, or to lend some household implement, would then symbolise the breaking of the bond between two neighbours. The person who made such a refusal would feel uneasy and expect retaliation; and any misfortune which befell him would be interpreted in the light of his expectation. Moreover to be able to bring a charge of witchcraft against the person he had himself treated shabbily would relieve him of his sense of guilt: “… it was the victim who had made an open breach in neighbourly conduct, rather than the witch. It was the victim who had reason to feel guilty and anxious at having turned away a neighbour, while the suspect might become hated as the agent causing such a feeling.”⁽⁴⁰⁾

This is certainly a pattern one soon comes to recognize in studying these cases; but there are other patterns also. In the Lucerne material, the “witch” Dichtlin, who was a midwife, was felt to be jealous of another more successful midwife. In the Devonshire material, Michael Trevisard provoked a crisis by refusing to pay his rent. There are many possible causes for friction between neighbours in a village; and any one of them could give rise to accusations of maleficia in certain circumstances.