How to Vanish a Glass of Beer: Hocus Pocus, 1634

My colleague and friend Professor Adam Roberts, who writes novels and updates his blogs by prestidigitation

http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/

draws my attention to

http://www.bookride.com/2009/08/hocus-pocus-1.html

an account of “the object of great desire by collectors of conjuring books - it is the first devoted exclusively to magic as a performing art”, Hocus Pocus Junior The anatomy of legerdemain. Or, The art of iugling set forth in his proper colours, fully, plainly, and exactly; so that an ignorant person may thereby learn the full perfection of the same, after a little practise.

I was delighted to hear of this book, new to me, as 1634 is such an appropriate year for such a work to have appeared: the year of Heywood and Brome’s The Late Lancashire Witches, a play which certainly put some conjuring tricks with carefully prepared props onto the London stage, and the year of Milton’s Comus (“Thus I hurl / My dazling Spells into the spungy ayr, / Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, / And give it false presentments.”)

Hocus Pocus Junior is, by and large, hocus pocus itself: if you bought a copy, you had bought chapters 22 to 34 of Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft. Here are the tricks with cup and balls, coins (“the best piece for conveyance is a Tester, but with practice all will be alike”, this practice-minded redactor tells us, as Scot did before him), pieces of lace, along with instructions on how to construct trick boxes and other props.

Just how word-for-word the two texts can be is shown in two passages describing the same trick of palming a coin

Hocus Pocus Junior:

How to convey money out of one of your hands into the other by Legerdemaine.

FIrst, you must hold open your right hand, and lay therein a Tester, or some big peece of money, then lay thereupon the top of your long left finger, and use some words of Art, and upon the sudden, slip your right hand from your finger, wherewith you held downe the Tester, and bending your hand a very little, you shall retaine the Tester still therein, and suddenly drawing your right hand thorow your left, you shall seem to have left the Tester there, especially when you shut in due time your left hand. Which that it may more plainly appeare to be truly done, you may take a knife, and seeme to knocke against it, so as it shall make a great sound: but instead of knocking the peece in the left hand (where none is) you shall hold the point of the knife fast with the left hand, and knock against the Tester held in the other hand, and it will be thought to hit against the money in your left hand. Then after some words of Art pronounced, open your hand, and when nothing is seen, it will bee wondered at, how the Tester came removed.

Text in Scot:

To Convey Money out of one of your hands into the other by Legierdemain.

FIrst you must hold open your right hand, and lay therein a Testor, or some big piece of Money: then lay thereupon the top of your long left finger, and use words, and upon the sudden slip your right hand from your finger wherewith you held down the Testor, and bending your hand a very little, you shall retain the Testor still therein, and suddenly (I say) drawing your right hand through your left, you shall seem to have left the Testor there, specially when you shut in due time your left hand. Which that it may more plainly appear to be truly done, you may take a Knife, and seem to knock against it, so as it shall make a great sound, but instead of knocking the piece in the left hand (where none is) you shall hold the point of the Knife fast with the left hand, and knock against the Testor held in the other hand, and it will be thought to hit against the Money in the left hand. Then use words, and open your hand, and when nothing is seen, it will be wondred at how the Testor was removed."

The only difference is that Hocus Pocus Junior is instructing a would-be performer, so he is a little more emphatic about the ‘words of art’. At the start of his tract, the later writer outlines the basic requirements for successful performance: presence, speed, and well-timed misdirection:

“The Definition, or description of the Operator,

First, he must be one of an impudent and audatious spirit, so that hee may set a good face upon the matter.

Secondly, he must have a nimble and cleanly conveyance. Thirdly, hee must have strange termes, and emphaticall words, to grace and adorne his actions, and the more to astonish the beholders.

Fourthly, and lastly, such gestures of body as may leade away the spectators eies from a strict and diligent beholding his manner of conveyance.”

As Hocus Pocus Junior instructs a performer, we get to hear the rather rakish performance patter of the 17^th century stage conjurer: when a ball is found – surprise – to be under a cup: “do you see Gentlemen, they are snug’d like a young man and a Maid in bed together”, or an anecdote in which a simple trick of making coins seem to pass through a table top made acceptable by being framed as a retelling of a Faustus-like gulling of ordinary folk, in this case for a night’s free lodging and sex:

“Now sirs it was my fortune as I was travelling, to be benighted, and so forced to seeke for lodging, and as it happened, I tooke into an house of entertainment, where calling for my Ostesse, I drew my stocke, and said, what must I give you mine Ostesse for my meat, drinke, and lodging this night? My friend, quoth she, you must give me three French Crownes; with that I uncovered my boxe, and set it upon the Table (it must be done with the mouth of the boxe downward) tooke my boxe from off the Counters, and delivered her three from the top, saying, there they are; and casting my eye aside, I spyed a pretty lasse comming down the staires; Sweet-heart, said I to her, what shall I give thee to lye with thee this night?”

Hocus Pocus Junior also has various Latin magic words of command. These come to him from the original ‘Hocus Pocus’, whose performance routine is described in Thomas Ady’s sceptical tract (against too ready belief in witchcraft), A candle in the dark (1655):

“The first is profitably seen in our common Juglers, that go up and down to play their Tricks in Fayrs and Markets, I will speak of one man more excelling in that craft than others, that went about in King James his time, and long since, who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was he called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery, because when the eye and the ear of the beholder are both earnestly busied, the Trick is not so easily discovered.”

When Hocus Pocus Junior ends his account of how to perform these deceptions, he partly seeks to gain the credit of a ‘coney-catching’ pamphlet: his reader will have a notion of how all tricks are performed. But there is also a belated acknowledgement of the other means by which tricks might be performed, tricks that no-one can penetrate, because the confederate of the performer is the devil himself:

“If thou rightly understand this, there is not a trick that any jugler in the world can shew thee, but thou shalt bee able to conceive after what manner it is performed, if he doe it by a slight of hand, and not by an unlawfull and detested meanes. That there are such it is not to be doubted of, that doe work by unlawfull means, and have besides their own naturall endowments the assistance of some familiar.”

I leave with Thomas Ady’s brilliant account of just how far 17^th century performers were willing to go in playing with fire, a juggler equipped with a spring-loaded artificial ‘familiar spirit’, who keeps popping up into view, part the naughty puppet in the vein of Rod Hull’s ‘Emu’, part credible diabolic imp:

“First, A Jugler knowing the common tradition, and foolish opinion that a familiar Spirit in some bodily shape must be had for the doing of strange things, beyond the Vulgar capacity, he therefore carrieth about him the skin of a Mouse stopped with feathers, or some like Artificial thing, and in the hinder part thereof sticketh a small springing Wire of about a foot long, or longer, and when he begins to act his part in a Fayr, or a Market before Vulgar people, he bringeth forth his Impe, and maketh it spring from him once or twice upon the Table, and then catcheth it up, saying, would you be gone? I will make you stay and play some Tricks for me before you go, and then he nimbly sticketh one end of the Wire upon his waste, and maketh his Impe spring up three or four times to his shoulder, and nimbly catcheth it, and pulleth it down again every time, saying, Would you be gone? in troth if you be gone I can play no Tricks, or Feats of Activity to day, and then holdeth it fast in one hand, and beateth it with the other, and slily maketh a squeeking noyse with his lips, as if his Impe cried, and then putteth his Impe in his breeches, or in his pocket, saying, I will make you stay, would you be gone? Then begin the silly people to wonder, and whisper, then he sheweth many slights of activity as if he did them by the help of his Familiar, which the silliest sort of beholders do verily beleeve; amongst which he espyeth one or other young Boy or Wench, and layeth a tester or shilling in his hand wetted, and biddeth him hold it fast, but whilst the said Boy, or silly Wench thinketh to enclose the peece of silver fast in the hand, he nimbly taketh it away with his finger, and hasteneth the holder of it to close his hand, saying, Hold fast or it will be gone, and then mumbleth certain words, and crieth by the vertue of Hocus, Pocus, hay passe prestor, be gone; now open your hand, and the silly Boy or Wench, and the beholders stand amazed to see that there is nothing left in the hand.”

As for the glass of beer? It's easy enough, but you will get wet: "Though you spill a part of the Beere, it is no matter, neither is it any disgrace unto it; besides you may put it off very well."

The martyr in the fool's coat: Edmund Geninges, 1592

I approach once again my annual lecture on the religious poetry of John Donne. I will talk, again, about the third satire, and its difficult admonitions to seek true religion, while doubting wisely, dismissal of the available choices, and (to crown all this), earnest insistence that you must hold the truth you find at any cost, even if it means your death.

However eager to encourage others to martyrdom, Donne chose to opt out of it himself, while trying to establish that in his special cases like his own, ‘not to be martyrs is a martyrdom’.

A Catholic martyr local in time and place to the young Donne is Edmund Geninges, whose avid and successful pursuit of martyrdom is told in his brother’s biography, The life and death of Mr. Edmund Geninges priest, crowned with martyrdome at London, the 10. day of Nouember, in the yeare M.D.XCI.

Whoever drew up the title page had read carelessly: Geninges died on Friday 10^th December 1592. The print house over in St Omers also over-inked the woodcuts provided for the volume, at least in the EEBO copy – you can see squeezes of ink forced off the side of the prints. But the resultant crepuscular images are very appropriate for a story of darkness on the earth, and for a young man imprisoned in his last days by Topcliffe in the notorious ‘Little Ease’ cell in Newgate, in complete darkness with no room either to stand or lie down. (My composite image above is of his arrest and trial, and then his execution.)

Jennings was born in 1566 in Staffordshire. His biographer leaves such details unspecified, for obvious reasons, though the family were protestants. His brother-biographer tells instead of Edmund being born with a tooth, to the discomfort of his wet nurse, and the prophecy made about this by a venerable Catholic doctor of divinity who happens to be in the house, to the effect that the tooth meant that the boy would travel, and return to bring comfort to all. There’s even a tenebrous woodcut of the miraculous infant Edmund biting the wet nurse’s nipple.

Jennings’ mother was a widow, and when he was 16, she allowed him to enter the service of a gentleman who was looking for a ‘handsome youth’ to act as his page. This man (Richard Sherwood) was a Catholic, travelling in England to perform secular, quasi-legal services for Catholics, before escaping danger abroad. Without a father of his own, Jennings was immensely susceptible to his master’s influence, and when Sherwood entered a religious order, Jennings begged him to sponsor him in training for the priesthood.

Jennings had his way, as he did throughout his lonely and self-destructive course. He studied so intensely at Rheims, especially in his ‘spiritual exercises’, that he became ill. An attempt to send him back to England without a priesthood, for the sake of his health, foundered when Jennings prayed his way back to better vigour while waiting for passage.

Poor Jennings was so devout, and so ill, that he was allowed special papal dispensation to become a priest at just 23. Without his priesthood, he might miss out on his martyrdom, and he was clearly ill enough that they didn’t want to disappoint by condemning him to a merely natural death. At the thought of his status and what it meant, Jennings succumbed to a shaking that lasted till his death, and duly set off to England, ‘like a sheep to the slaughter’, as his brother-biographer rather unguardedly writes.

After being attacked by local pirates off Scarborough, Jennings landed, like Count Dracula would, under a cliff near Whitby. He has a companion priest with him, they part to make converts, with Jennings taking the long road to London, and to death.

He has learned that all his family are dead except a brother, who is in London. Jennings knew him only as a blonde haired child, eight or nine years before. After a long search in London has almost been despaired of, Jennings sees a dark haired youth in a brown cloak, thinks nothing of it, goes to pray, is suddenly convinced it was his brother, and miraculously runs into the same youth later on that same day, and it is his brother. John Jennings, talking to a man who has introduced himself as ‘Ironmonger’, and who opportunely discovers that the two of them are relatives, repudiates his brother as a ‘notable papist’. ‘Ironmonger’ confesses that he really is that Catholic convert brother, but sees that he cannot do anything with John, who (retrospectively narrating this after his own eventual conversion) says that Edmund went his way to convert souls, while his brother went off to ‘meditate how to corrupt his own’.

Did Protestant John Jennings betray his brother? He does not say so. But Edmund was swiftly caught, serving mass at the house of Swithin Wells in Holborne. Probably the house was already watched: the awful Richard Topcliffe arrived, and caught two priests, and a congregation of ten. Topcliffe was pushed down the stairs, breaking his head. Violently intemperate though he was, he seems to have allowed the mass to finish rather than start another struggle. His ghastly triumph comes when “They carried them all to Newgate, and were not ashamed to leade M. Geninges through the streetes in his Priestly vestements, for greater shew of this theyr insulting triumph, and the more to make him a laughing stocke to all the beholders, who are commonly ready (as they well knew) exceedingly to scoffe at such an vnwonted spectacle”.

Swithin Wells was not actually in his house at the time of the arrests, but courageously tried to get his wife released, talking himself into trouble as he did so. This has to be authentic dialogue: the ‘Justice began to storme when he found him so resolute, and therefore told him in playne termes, he came time inough to tast of the sauce, although he were ignorant how the meate savoured’.

Imprisoned, Jennings was seen as young enough to be broken. They use ridicule:

“especially M. Geninges was scorned and reviled, because he was a very young man, and had angred them with disputes. Nay the more to make him a scoffe to the people, they vested him agayne, not with his priestly garments, but (almost as King Herod and Pilates souldiours did our Sauiour) with a ridiculous fooles coate, which they found in M. Welles his house, and when they had so altered him, they laughing told him, he was more fit in that attire to be presented to the Queene for a jester, then to a Nune for a Confessor.”

Jennings is offered mercy in return for renunciation, but he says that he cannot accept the Queen as spiritual head of the church. He is kept in ‘little Ease’ until his execution. The others die at Tyburn, Jennings and Wells suffer in Gray’s Inn Fields opposite Wells’ house. The death is brutal, and best told in the author’s own words. Jennings confesses his priesthood, and says he would follow the same course at the hazard of a thousand lives:

“Which wordes M. Topliffe hearing, being much troubled therwith, scarce giving him leave to say a Pater noster, bad the Hangman turne the ladder, which in an instant being done, presently he caused him to be cut downe, the Blessed martyr in the sight of all the beholders, being yet able to stand on his feete, & casting his eyes towardes heaven, his senses were very little astonished, in so much that the Hangman was forced to trippe up his heeles from under him to make him fall on the blocke. And being dismembred, through very payne, in the hearing of many, with a lowde voyce he uttered these wordes, Oh it smartes; which M. Welles hearing, replyed thus: Alas sweete soule thy payne is great indeed, but almost past, pray for me now most holy Saynt, that mine may come. He being ripped up, & his bowelles cast into the fire, if credit may be given to hundreds of People standing by, and to the Hangman himselfe, the blessed Martyr uttered (his hart being in the executioners hand) these wordes, Sancte Gregori ora pro me, which the Hangman hearing, with open mouth swore this damnable oath; Gods woundes, See his hart is in my hand, and yet Gregory in his mouth; ô egregious Papist! Thus the afflicted Martyr even to the last of his torments cryed for the ayde & succour of Saynts, and especially of S. Gregory his deuoted patron, and our countries Apostle that by his intercession he might passe the sharpnes of that torment.

And thus with barbarons cruelty our thrice happy Martyr finished the course of his mortall life, and purchased no doubt a crowne of immortality in the glorious Court of heaven.”

After this ghastly scene, the quarters of the body are loaded onto the hurdle to be taken back to Newgate for boiling (before being placed on London Bridge, or wherever the authorities thought to put these mementos of their justice). The crowd follows, and Jennings’ first miracle occurs: “Amongst the rest there was a Virgin who had wholy dedicated her selfe to the service of God”. She is seeking a relic, and the text marginally annotates what happens with ‘A Miracle’:

“And comming to the prison, the people flocked togeather to behold the fresh bleeding quarters, according to theyr wonted custome, when any such thing is to be seene, before they were carryed vp to boyling, desiring the executioner to shew them peece by peece, that so their curiosity might give censure (as they said) whether he was fat or leane, blacke or fayre. To satisfie theyr request, by chance Bull the Hangman tooke up one of his forequarters by the arme, which when he had shewed to the People, he contemptuosly flung it downe into the baskett agayne wherin it lay, and tooke up the head that they might see his face. And (as God would have it) both arme and hand of the foresayd quarter hung out over the sides of the basket, which the said virgin espying, drew neare to touch it, and approaching warily with feare lest any should take notice of her so doing, having a determination and vehement desire to touch his holy & annoynted thumbe which then appeared next her, if it were possible; and because it was a part of his hand which so often had elevated the immaculate body of our B. Saviour Jesus Christ, she purposed not to leave it unhandled for her last farewell.

This her determination and purpose she presently performed, and taking the thumbe in her hand, by the instinct of Almighty God, she gave it a little pull, only to shew her loue and desire of having it. The sequele was miraculous: for behold she not imagining any such matter would have followed, by the divine power, the thumbe was instantly loosed from his hand, and being separated she carryed it away safely both flesh, skinne, and bone without sight of any, to her great joy and admiration. O strange and miraculous separation! O benefit past all requitall! The thumbe of a man newly dead and quartered, to depart from the hand, as it were, sponte sua, of it owne accord, to pleasure a friend, that loved him so entirely, and that in the middest of so many hundreds of people, of a different Religion, yet not espyed by any. But the strangnes therof I leave to your pious consideration, confessing my selfe altogeather unworthy, and not any wayes able to explicate the worthines of the same.”

John Jennings had ‘rejoiced’ at the death of his brother, though (counter to the ODNB account, which says he was present) he by his own account “neglected, yea rather scorned to go to see his brother, eyther imprisoned, arraigned, or martyred; such was the froward blindnes of his heresie”. But he continued in his bad courses of life for just ten days, until a night came when he fell into reflections which contrasted his late brother’s life with his own, and converted.

John Jennings went abroad, and became a Franciscan friar. He wrote his brother’s biography and published it in 1614. Edmund Jennings was canonized in 1970.

As for the unspeakable Topcliffe, here’s another of his executions of 1592, that of the priest Thomas Pormort (from the ODNB):

“During the proceedings Pormort informed the court not only of Topcliffe’s proposed deal, but also about the bizarre sexual fantasies with which his tormentor had regaled him: fantasies which focused on the person of Queen Elizabeth, whose legs, breasts, and belly Topcliffe claimed to have frequently fondled. Pormort was condemned to death. On the day of his execution in St Paul's Churchyard, 20 February 1592, he was ‘enforced to stand in his shirt almost two hours upon the ladder in Lent time upon a very cold day’ while Topcliffe ranted at him in a vain attempt to make him retract the accusations he had made in court.”

A misprint in a lost book

Thomas Webbe, Parson and Ranter, is fairly well known, with his own brief ODNB entry and having featured in Christopher Hill’s World Upside Down. I have been looking at the book by one of his antagonists, Edward Stokes’ The Wiltshire Rant (sic), 1653.

Webbe’s uneven career went through several phases of wild unconformity in thought and action, interspersed with spells when, for very understandable reasons, he chose to repent and conform. He was one of those people prosecuted under the May 1650 act which had made adultery a felony punishable by death. The jury, like sensible folk, had found him not guilty despite convincing testimony against him. From time to time, Webbe had to appear to have renounced his sins; but he went back to them as soon as he safely could.

The same resilience would have been manifest (I think) in his lost work, The Masse of Malice, where he seems to have chosen attack - without any scruple as to honesty - as the best way to defend himself. Edward Stokes was the local J.P., who had heard and believed one of Webbe’s repentances, but became his target in The Masse of Malice. Muddying the waters as much as possible, Webbe invented for Stokes a scatological blasphemy. This is Stokes’ report of what Webbe alleged in print, which was that:

“Finding a bottle he [Stokes] filled it with his Urine and set it by his Filth. He used the gesture of kneeling. And expressed himself in this abominable and blasphemous language to me, [Webbe] That I should kneel down and partake the Communion. Saith he, pointing to his dung, Here is the body of Christ. Pointing to his urine, saith he, Here is the bloud of Christ.”

Stokes could hardly let this go unchallenged. His account of Webbe’s talk and behaviour is fascinating for what it tells us about the ‘ranters’, and as a self-defence it is quite convincing. As Stokes points out, in his role as parson, Webbe (if he were as he claims to be, an innocent man reviled in a ‘mass of malice’) should not have let such blasphemy go unreported:

“The Libidinous Parson saith himself, That he made no words of the businesse till now, concealing it till now from all people, wherefore if M. Stokes were guilty, must not the Parson be as far forth guilty as himself; Is a man of his Coat and Calling to conceal a blasphemy of that nature, without check to the blasphemer or complaint to the Magistrate for two years together?”

But one thing particularly cheers Stokes – the intervention of the hand of God in the printing house, which subverted Webbe’s lies:

“Yet M. Stokes is beholding to the Christian moel-Parson, not for creating a most cursed and detestable blasphemy and fastening it upon him, but for weakning his own evidence, giving himself the lye, and clearing the accused, for so he doth in the 20^th line of the aforesaid 55. pag. in these words, Blasphemy that I never heard in my life. If he had said That he had never heard the like in his life, or never heard before, it might have been otherwise understood: But to conclude, after he hath filled up with most accursed circumstance a self-invented blasphemy, he clearly acquits the accused, and saith, blasphemy that I never heard in my life. Lord how good thou art? this is thy hand and thy doing! Thou hast made the Author of the Masse of malice to acquit the innocent, in the middest of his fierce and foul Charge, To thy name be all the glory.”

I think that ‘moel-Parson’ is an antedating of the OED’s ‘moil’ n. 1: so it means a tainted, besmeared parson. It’s a regional usage.

Webbe did cause a stir in Wiltshire. He’s mentioned in this webpage for Langley Burrell:

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getcom.php?id=134

After remarrying locally when he took up the living (Webbe, whose qualifications were his own invention, got the preferment by promising to take no tithes), Webbe rewarded his patron, Henry White, by starting an adulterous affair with the patron’s wife, Mistress Mary White, ‘the little gentlewoman’, as Stokes calls her. When they were charged with ‘the felonious committing of the horrible and crying sin of adultery’ together, Mistress White got her husband to stand surety for her lover, rather than him go to jail. Webbe had been persuasive enough for the evidently not-that-injured husband allow Webbe to move into the disrupted marital home. Meanwhile, Webbe had arranged the seduction of his own wife, also Mary, artfully caught by him at the compromising moment, to allay her jealous protests at his own affair.

More sensationally still, Webbe took John Organ as his ‘man-wife’:

“Wherefore note that Webbs most principall favourite, and greatest choicest associate in the whole Country; for one of his own Sex, was one J O. a comely young man, and a man of a seeming sober behaviour, even as Webbe himself, of whom a stranger cannot but say, or at least think, that butter would not melt in his mouth (as we use to say) yet here you will perceive, as the Proverb is, The still Sow eats all the draught. This man with his Cob-webb seeming sobriety, and unclean inside, is taken by Tho. Webbe, as men use to take their wives, For better for worse: So I say, this man is honoured with the title of Webbs wife, for so he cals him, My wife O; and O owns Webb for a husband; and now where ever they come, 'tis my wife O, and my husband Webb. True it is, Webb is become a great lover of Musick, which to prophane hearts is an in-let to lust: but whether ever he plaied any hellish tune with his Organ or Church musick yea or no, is not yet discovered…”

Stokes, who tells all this, attempts from time to time a wavering irony and uneasy humour: the jokes on the names ‘Webbe’ and ‘Organ’ are typical. He is restrained here: he seems capable of thinking that ‘ranters’ might just pretend love for their (male) ‘fellow creature’ as part of their general effrontery.

Webbe’s lasting sexual affair was with Mary White. It all began jovially enough, with arguments from nature:

“this Deponent did then and oftentimes since bear the said M. Webb say, That he did live above Ordinances, and that it was lawfull for him to lye with any woman. And at one time above the rest, the said M. Webb, Mistress White, this Deponent, and divers others sitting in the Gate-house of the dwelling-house of the said Mistress White (there being tame Pidgeons in the Court) the said M. Webb observing a great Cock Pidgeon to tread divers of the Hen Pidgeons there, said unto those that were there present, that it was lawfull for every man and woman, and that they ought to take that liberty and freedom one with the other, as those Pidgeons did, although they were not married the one to the other.”

But the affair led to serious quarrels, with Mary White sometimes willing to proceed and testify against Webbe (perhaps after he gave her the French pox), at other times wearing him when they were finally imprisoned together, when Webbe, the man beaten at his own game:

“was exceedingly wearied and tired out with Mistress Whites company in Goal, that she by her flatteries and frowns still indeavoured to keep him in his evil and unclean courses with her, whose provocations and temptations gave him no rest; and therefore he humbly desires to be removed into any other prison out of her company, where he might be at rest.”

Webbe finally “earnestly desired M. Stokes his assistance to work a separation between him and Mistress White, in putting of them to severall Goales.”

My image of Ranters enjoying the company of the 'fellow creature' is from The Ranters Declaration, 1650.

England as Polynesia: the strange allegations of Chalcondylus

As a spin-off from preparing a lecture on Lucrece, I found myself looking at Thomas Edgar’s The law’s resolutions of women’s rights: or, The law’s provision for women. A methodical collection of such statutes and customs, with the cases, opinions, arguments and points of learning in the law, as doe properly concern women (1632), to look at rape law in the period for myself. Edgar seems complacent about the state of the law, especially crediting Queen Elizabeth for tightening up the law to the effect that convicted rapists could not, on a first offence, escape punishment for their felony by pleading ‘benefit of clergy’ (and so have the noose taken from round your neck after your recitation of Psalm 51).

The hideous misprision enshrined in the law at this time that any pregnancy after an alleged rape indicated that the sex had been consensual drew groans of disbelief in the lecture audience. Edgar merely cites this without comment: he expounds the law as it stands, and regards the state of the law as good. He’s a stodgy read, unable to escape his legalese even though he is trying to explain the state of the law to a female readership who would not be legally trained. I was also struck by his book being black letter. By 1632, that’s a real sign of a text produced in a low-grade printing house, to sell cheaply.

But a passage that struck me was the one cited in full below (I have modernized the text). What seems to be going on here is that Edgar is generally concerned to show his readers that he is on their side (as well as how much the law has been improved, etc, as it appertains to women). He’s indicating that he is aware that the moral behaviour of English women is generally far superior to how it sometimes gets represented.

So he dredges up from somewhere a reference to Laonicus Chalcondyles, (c. 1423 – 1490) a Byzantine Greek scholar, whose Proofs of Histories apparently ‘sketches other manners and civilization of England, France and Germany’. ‘Chalcondylus’ just pops up occasionally in other works on EEBO’s full text database: his work was evidently fairly recondite.

However, his sketch of England and the English was evidently a lively one, representing England pretty much as Margaret Mead represented Samoa:

“These are the Laws, whereby rapes and ravishments of women are repressed, which if they be well looked unto, will prove that there is now no cause, why lying Laonicus Chalcondilus should be believed, who writing of Englishmen, affirmeth that we have no care what becomes of our wives and children; That in our peregrinations and travels we interchange and use one the others wives mutually: That we count it no reproach by whomsoever our wives or daughters be got with child; That (with us) if a man come to his friends house, he must lye with his wife the first thing that he doth, ut deinde benigne hospitio accipiatur. And though some of the last recited Laws were unmade, when Chalcondilus did write, above one hundred years since, yet there were then Laws enough to prove him a deep liar; and had he been in England, to have trussed him up too perhaps for lechery, had his learning steaded him no better than his honesty; this is no less cause, why I should be thus bitter against Chalcondilus a dead man, for that it may seem he wrote by hearsay, nullo odio gentis: and in other matters he reporteth honourably of us.

Edgar, rather conscious of having dragged Chalcondilus up from a hundred years before, next seems to express his detestation of a more current satirist (I can’t think who he means, anyone writing after the manner of Juvenal seems likely):

“But it is strange that a man writing, not a great while since, but even the other day, not at Athens, neither at Rome, or Reams, where they use to belie us head and foot, but here at London should be bold to write and put in print matter to this effect, That beggers and the poorest sort of our women, we doe use to punish and to whip them, when they are taken for lechers and dishonest livers, But Gentlewomen and Ladies of honour and worship, they are never punished for incontinency, but rather for their amorous wantonness, and lubricity the more esteemed and magnified.”

“This fellow deserveth plainly better to be hanged, than to be believed. For neither is it true that any woman with us can better her reputation by dissolute life and manners; Neither can any woman learn a more devilish lesson, than so to be persuaded. And seeing the Laws themselves declare what detestation they have of brutish concupiscence, by punishing consent, with loss of inheritance; I would I could persuade all women to eschew, not only these gulfs, but also the ecclesiastical Censures, (which I meddle not with) together with the infamy, which they purchase sometime with outward lasciviousness, from the report of them, which judge a careless liberty in behaviour, an infallible argument of sensuality whereby some men have been emboldened to offer force, because they thought it was expected.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laonicus_Chalcondyles

"this Monster eating beast"

After a frustrating few weeks with, initially, a failing broadband connection, and then all the chores of getting started with a new ISP, I can at last return to my neglected blog.

I was reading Robert Baron’s An apologie for Paris for rejecting of Juno and Pallas, and presenting of Ate’s golden ball to Venus (1649). This fawning, over-written and highly derivative book re-tells the story of the Judgment of Paris. I was initially interested in how Venus is described, for instance in getting Paris’s full attention with a timely wardrobe malfunction:

“faire Aphrodite approached with a world of winning majesty in her looks; and as the Elixar turneth all things into gold, so the Sunny beames of this illustrious Deities eyes, (whose every motion shot ten thousand Cupids into the hot Phrygians soule) reflecting upon his, soon affected him with her passion, and made him ready to prostrate (without further cunctation) the Ball, with his glowing heart, at her feet. First she slipt downe her loose flower-embroydered mantle, and inriched his gullon eyes with the wealth of her lovely breasts, those nectar running fountaines, as farre excelling those two Pallaces of pleasure which Juno even now promised, as they did the humble colleges that were the mothers of the Capitoll; and before she opened the cherry of her lips, she emparadised him with a winning smile…”

Prior to this, Minerva had told Paris that, if he awarded the ball to her, he would as a reward:

“make a new edition of, and addition to, Arithmeticke, and compleate her with numbers enow to count those many Atomes whose accidentall concourse made this big-bellied earth, and how many minutes have thrust out one another since that accident happened”.

Not exactly tempting, so when Venus offers Paris a ravishingly beautiful partner (Helen of Troy, of course), it’s a done deal that she gets the golden ball. She entices him with these reflections: “Tell me for Loves sake, is it not more lovely to lie intwined in her foulding armes, like a Lilly imprisoned in a Jaile of snow, or Ivory in a band of Alablaster, than to sit muffled in furres like a bedrid Miser?” - where of course Baron is having his goddess quote Shakespeare’s poem about her -

(“Full gently now she takes him by the Hand,
A Lilly prison’d in a Jayl of Snow,
Or Ivory in an Alabaster Band,
So white a Friend ingirts so white a Foe…”)

But Baron writes by assembling poeticisms. A more original expression struck me: I was interested by how Venus “inriched his gullon eyes with the wealth of her lovely breasts”: what does ‘gullon’ mean?

The OED is not immediately helpful, but rooting around with the stem of the word gets you to the animal depicted above in Topsell’s The history of four-footed beasts (1658 edition, p.205), the ‘Gulon’.

Baron is simply transferring the nature of this beast to Paris’s eyes, which are greedy, or gluttonous. But Robert Baron’s prim excursions into erotica lack all interest compared to the ‘gulon’ itself. We call it a wolverine,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverine

but Topsell’s account of it largely ignores the real animal, and embroiders upon the ‘gulon’ as a signal instance of four-footed beastliness: it has been ordained by God to typify the gluttony of the men in Russia, Lithuania, and other intemperate zones.

In the illustration, the gulon is performing its unpleasant and signature habit of squeezing its fully-gorged body between two closely adjacent trees, so that it excretes copiously (as shown), and is able to resume eating. In case this seems at all implausible, Topsell goes into the details of what happens if the creature can’t find trees close enough together.

This is Topsell's whole entry:

Of the GVLON.

This Beast was not known by the Ancients, but hath been since discovered in the Northern parts of the World, and because of the great voracity thereof, it is called (Gulo) that is, a devourer in imitation of the Germans, who call such devouring creatures Vilsiuss, and the Swedians, Gerff; in Lituania and Muscovia, it is called Rossomokal. It is thought to be engendered by a Hyaena and a Lioness, for in quality it resembleth a Hiaena, and it is the same which is called (Crocuta:) it is a devouring and an unprofitable creature, having sharper teeth then other creatures. Some think it is derived of a Wolf and a Dog, for it is about the bigness of a Dog: it hath the face of a Cat, the body and tail of a Fox; being black of colour: his feet and nails be most sharp, his skin rusty, the hair very sharp, and it feedeth upon dead carkases.

When it hath found a dead carkass he eateth thereof so violently, that his belly standeth out like a bell; then he seeketh for some narrow passage betwixt two trees, and there draweth through his body, by pressing whereof, he driveth out the meat which he had eaten: and being so emptied returneth and devoureth as much as he did before, and goeth again and emptieth himself as in former manner; and so continueth eating and emptying till all be eaten. It may be that God hath ordained such a creature in those Countries, to express the abominable gluttony of the men of that Countrey, that they may know their true deformed nature, and lively ugly figure, represented in this Monster eating beast: for it is the fashion of the Noble men in those parts, to sit from noon till midnight, eating and drinking, and never rise from the table, but to disgorge their stomachs, or ease their bellies: and then return with refreshed appetites to ingurgitate and consume more of Gods creatures: wherein they grow to such a heighth of beastliness, that they lose both sense and reason, and know no difference between head and tail. Such they are in Muscovia, in Lituania, and most shameful of all in Tartaria.

These things are reported by Olaus Magnus, and Mathias Michou; But I would to God that this same (more then beastly intemperate gluttony) had been circumscribed and confined within the limits of those unchristian or heretical-apostatical countries, and had not spread it self and infected our more civil and Christian parts of the World; so should not Nobility, Society, Amity, good fellowship, neighbourhood, and honesty, be ever placed upon drunken or gluttonous companions: or any man be commended for bibbing and sucking in Wine and Beer like a Swine: When in the mean season no spark of grace, or Christianity, appeareth in them: which notwithstanding they take upon them, being herein worse then Beasts, who still reserve the notes of their nature, and preserve their lives; but these lose the markes of humanity, reason, memory and sense, with the conditions of their families, applying themselves to consume both patrimony and pence in this voracity, and forget the Badges of Christians, offering sacrifice to nothing but their bellies. The Church forsaketh them, the spirit accurseth them, the civil world abhorreth them, the Lord condemneth them, the Devil expecteth them, and the fire of Hell it self is prepared for them; and all such devourers of Gods good creature.

To help their digestion, for although the Hiena and Gulon, and some other monsters are subject to this gluttony, yet are there many creatures more in the world, who although they be Beasts and lack reason, yet can they not by any famine, stripes, or provocations be drawn to exceed their natural appetites, or measure in eating or drinking. There are of these Beasts two kindes, distinguished by colour, one black, and the other like a Wolf, they seldom kill a Man, or any live Beasts, but feed upon carrion and dead carkasses, as is before said; yet sometimes when they are hungry, they prey upon Beasts, as Horses, and such like, and then they subtilly ascend up into a tree, and when they see a Beast under the same, they leap down upon him and destroy him. A Bear is afraid to meet them, and unable to match them by reason of their sharp teeth.

This Beast is tamed, and nourished in the Courts of Princes, for no other cause then for an example of incredible voracity. When he hath filled his belly, if he can finde no trees growing so near together, as by sliding betwixt them, he may expel his excrements; then taketh he an Alder-tree, and with his fore-feet rendeth the same asunder, and passeth through the midst of it, for the cause aforesaid. When they are wilde, men kill them with bows and gins, for no other cause than for their skins which are precious and profitable; for they are white spotted, changeably interlined like divers flowers; for which cause the greatest Princes, and richest Nobles use them in garments in the Winter time, such are the Kings of Polonia, Sweveland, Goatland, and the Princes of Germany; neither is their any skin which will sooner take a colour, or more constantly retain it. The outward appearance of the said skin is like to a damaskt garment, and besides this outward part, there is no other memorable thing worthy observation in this ravenous Beast, and therefore in Germany, it is called a four-footed Vulture.

Bishop Foxe's 'Ding-dong the witch is dead' moment

I am swapping my ISP at the moment, and my access to Blogger here has been patchy. A scholar called Sue Ward sent me an interesting comment on a posting I did about William Lilly. I can’t get it out of my old inbox into ‘Blogger’ at the moment, I’d be grateful for the chance of another try now I have changed my primary email (and Blogger seems to know who I am again).

Amidst all this, a short post: an anecdote about John Foxe, the martyrologist, being tipped off by the Holy Spirit that his exile is over, Mary Tudor having died. It must be 1558, and (if this ever did take place), it might have happened in Basle. Foxe got home in 1559. Atwell says:

‘Whether is it possible or whether is it lawful for one to tell of one that died this very hour 100 miles off. This is not a foretelling, but an aftertelling, but such a one as exceeds the common apprehension of man. If you say it is impossible, I prove it thus, I teaching a School at Hitchin in Hartfordshere, about anno 1634 where amongst others, I teaching three of one Mr. Christopher Butlers children of Stapleford near Hartford, who inviting me to keep my Christmas with them, I being there discoursing with his wife, a godly Gentlewoman, she told me she was the famous Doctor Foxes grand-child, that wrote the Book of Martyrs, and withal told me this story of him, that he being beyond Sea at the time of the death of Queen Mary as he was preaching, about the midst of his Sermon he stood still a pretty while and paused, insomuch that the people marveled, by and by he stands up, and utters these words: My Brethren, I can do no less then impart unto you what the Spirit of God hath now revealed to me, that this very hour Queen Mary is dead in England, and so it proved.’

George Atwell, An apology, or, Defence of the divine art of natural astrologie (1652)

It’s like John Donne in Paris, knowing that his child has died. I suppose Foxe would have been kept apprised of the state of Bloody Mary’s health. Perhaps one day he did suddenly become convinced that the nightmare was all over.

Holy Shittlington! Great ball of fire, 1628

The following rather spectacular anecdote of ball lightning occurs in An apology, or, Defence of the divine art of natural astrologie being an answer to a sermon preached in Cambridge, July 25, 1652. ... / written by the learned and ingenious mathematician, Mr. George Atwell; and now published by a friend (1660).

Atwell is answering the objection made to astrology to the effect that the stars were simply made by God as an ornament. He confutes this idea by telling the story of what he clearly believes to be a star – a fiery sphere – let loose for some inscrutable diving purpose in Bedfordshire, in the village of Shithlington (it used to be Shittington, and has become present-day Shillington):

“Or was that Star of fiery Foot-ball what to call it I know not, that came July the 25, 1628 to Shithington in Bedfordshire, the young men having appointed a Match at Foot-ball with Luton, and to meet in the midway to get together, they goe to ring, in the midst of their zeale comes this Star, first up a narrow lane to the Churchyard, where it overthrew a little Maid named Hester, but did her no harm: it comes unto the Churchporch where it overthrows on Mr. Malineux, and took the ring off his finger, it goes into the Church where Mr. Parrat the Minister was praying at the corner of the Mid-alley, it past him and did him no harm, it goes into the Belfree, layes dead every one of the Ringers, it strikes against the wall and breakes to pieces, whereon fell such thunder, rain, and lightning as I never heard before: the first that came to live again, was one Kitchiner a Shoemaker & kindsman of mine, all recovered save one Deare that made the Foot-ball, who never revived, was this Star an ornament either to heaven or earth. I think all the paper in the town will not hold what I can say for it, if time and meanes would serve.”

The event did not go without other notice:

“I heare of two barnes fired by lightning, and burned down, near wetherfield; as also a confirmation of ye miraculous lightning in Shithlington, in Bedfordshire, and ye consequents thereof, which you have ere this heard of.” This was the pro-astrology divine Robert Gell, writing from Christ’s College. August 9, 1628 to Sir Martyn Stuteville, in a letter preserved in The Autobiography and correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Bart. The editor, J. O. Halliwell, refers to a ballad about the event, which I haven’t myself seen: ‘In the Bodleian Library is a curious contemporary ballad, entitles ‘Strange and wonderful news from Bedfordshire, being a true relation of the wonderful judgement of God shown at Shithington, &c’

Ann Geneva, without quoting the whole passage, makes a joke about it in a footnote to her book on Lilly, along the lines of the star being sent by God to uphold ‘The Booke of Sports’. But there is nothing here to indicate that it was a Sunday, and

http://scphillips.com/units/dayform.html

indicates that 25^th July 1628 was a Friday. The ball lightning doesn’t harm the footballers, floats off towards the church, knocking over the little girl and Mr Malineux, leaving the minister unscathed as he prays, but then in the belfry, causes all the bell-ringers to fall down as if dead, and one of them apparently does not recover. That he was the man who made the football takes us back to the first sighting. But it hardly makes an argument for divine pleasure or displeasure at football. It was certainly more hazardous to be in church than in the ‘ring’ (interesting expression) for football.

As far as I can tell, that great bell-ringer and pious man of Bedfordshire, John Bunyan, does not mention this. It happened in the year of his birth, but the story might have cropped up locally, as Bunyan debated with his newly tender conscience whether bell-ringing was a vain activity (Grace Abounding, paragraphs 33 and 34).

Nor do any of the many sites about ball lightning discuss this early exam, though they do get the disaster in the church at Widecombe, discussed by me here at:

http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/2009/03/his-brains-fell-entirely-whole-into.html

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/BDF/Shillington/#ChurchHistory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shillington,_Bedfordshire

My image is of the overthrow of Professor Tarragon in the Tintin adventure, The Seven Crystal Balls. My resident authority points out to me that Hergé used this motif twice, here extensively, but as a wild deus ex machina in the earlier adventure, The Broken Ear (where one comes down the chimney and blasts a bound-up Tintin out of a window just as he is about to be shot).