A work of magenta-coloured imagination: Jeanette Winterson's 'The Daylight Gate'

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“I have a light within that directs me to renounce my husband”: the unnatural practices of Elizabeth Pigeon.

Lawrence Stone territory this posting, with A brief relation of the strange and unnatural practices of Wessel Goodwin, Mehetabell Jones the wife of Edward Jones, and Elizabeth Pigeon the wife of John Pigeon (1654).

This indignant pamphlet was written by Wessel Goodwin’s son-in-law Samuel Vernon, who followed up with another account of the disaster which struck the family in the form of two sisters, Mehetabel and Elizabeth. This second account comes in The trepan being a true relation, full of stupendious variety, of the strange practices of Mehetabel, the wife of Edward Jones, and Elizabeth, wife of Lieutenant John Pigeon, sister to the said Mehetabel, being both Quakers : wherein is discovered the subtle method whereby they cheated Mr. Wessel Goodwin, a dyer in Southwark, and all his children of a fair estate: with sundry copies of letters, perfumed locks of hair, and verses they sent him, and many other notable devices belonging to the art of trepanning (1656).

It’s a salutary work to read if one is minded to deplore the subordination of women in 17^th century England. Obviously, we do not get to hear what Mehetabel and Elizabeth could say for themselves, but, having read Samuel Vernon’s pamphlets about them, I am inclined to believe the one witness we have. The son-in-law looks on in horror as his wife’s father ruins the family under the manipulative influence of the two sisters. In the follow up pamphlet, he has incriminating letters by both women in his possession, and invites anyone interested to come and verify that they are as he says. Elizabeth Pigeon was appalling, a cunning and dangerous woman, of high ability, but entirely self-seeking and shameless.

The stories told, and personalities involved, are all interesting. In the end remarkable in social history terms is that both sisters managed to use the law to break off their marriages. Master Jones, a lutenist, and Mr Pigeon, were brow-beaten by factitious arrests for debt, sexual manipulation, by provocations to which their occasionally ill-considered responses are all made to play into the hands of two determined women. Both men limp wounded and penniless out of their marriages. They sign ‘divorce’ documents put to them by their wives, or associates of their wives, and leave the scene of their defeat for years.

But to the main story: Wessel Goodwin was a London dyer. He had an estate of about £2,000, and his trade as dyer clears him between three and five hundred pounds a year. He had a wife, and four children.

But he had an extraordinary combination of “a weak head, yet an obstinate will” (as the 1656 pamphlet puts it). His marriage had been plagued by his bizarre extravagance – he spent insane amounts of money on music.

“He was ever strangely given to music, to which he had a ravenous appetite; five pounds for pricking out two or three lessons, which when he had, he understood like Arabic; thirty pounds for a Lute, of which he had with other sorts of fiddles, a whole room full; and which is the wonder, can ply of none, only admires them, ten pounds at a time to a music Master for a months teaching (or rather playing to him.)”

Goodwin forced his children to learn music, and only if they did this (to the detriment of anything else, any other way of life) did he regard them as obedient. The biographer of his folly, his son-in-law, quarreled with him about this.

His obsession with music seems to have been genuinely unbalanced. When he was 58, his wife, who had struggled gamely with this impossible husband, asked from her deathbed that the music in the house might stop, and was refused:

“About the 58 year of his age, his virtuous wife fell sick of a painful disease contracted by melancholy, of which in a few months she died. 

When she drew near her death, some few days before her departure, overhearing the music which was daily in the next room, she desired one of her sons to call in their father, to whom with a broken sad voice she said, Husband, you well know what a burthen this Excess of music hath been to me all my life; must that which hath been so much affliction to me in my life, be brought to my death bed? may I not dye out of the noise of it? pray forbear, I have not many hours to live, and then you may have your fill of music. To which he replied not one word, but went out in discontent and so fell to his music again.”

Music was going to bring its own nemesis upon Wessel Goodwin. He was employing a lutenist called Edward Jones, and no doubt Jones’ incredulous accounts of his employer’s infatuation with music alerted Mehetabel Jones to an easy mark. She starts, acting with her sister, to secure sums of money from Goodwin, and denigrating his wife (while she lived) and his children. Her sister Elizabeth pushes the whole thing on. Samuel Vernon, fascinated and repulsed, gives this account:

“because Mrs. Pigeon is the chief agent and contriver in these sinful projects, I shall give this brief description of her: She is one that can transform her self into an Angel of light, and having her tongue tipped with Scripture, can with tears, sighs, gesture at command, set off what she would have believed, as Gospel, though very false, thereby to ensure such as hearken to her Charms; no sport to her like catching credulous persons with her faire Saint-like expressions, making sure prey of all that she can thus draw into her toils; and so implacable, that when she hath once got an advantage, nothing shall satisfy her but the utmost rigour, which she will rise at midnight to prosecute.”

Mrs Pigeon was what Roman satirists would have called a captator, a legacy-hunter. She had done well out of her first marriage, and has a second husband who is a Lieutenant of Oliver Cromwell’s regiment, one John Pigeon. You’d think an old Ironside like that might have been able to hold his own, but Pigeon has willed everything to her. In the course of procuring this, she has almost killed him (according to Vernon) with a mixture of aphrodisiac drugs and refusal to consent to sex (“if you touch me, I will cry murder”, she reportedly says to her husband – this in the 1656 pamphlet), until he left her everything. After this success, Mrs Pigeon went on to plot the judicial murder of her husband “it being immediately after the late Kings death, she makes show of much discontent against the actings of the present Governors; she projects to her husband to draw up a declaration against them, and their proceedings, which he must subscribe and avow, and then he should be her dear husband, and she vows to stand by him to the last in it. Let others think their pleasure, for my part, I believe this was a plot laid to have destroyed Mr. Pigeon; but he wisely refused to act in it.”

After being drawn into an affray, which his wife (who, according to Vernon, improved mightily on her facial injuries with make-up) exploits to get him cashiered from the army, Pigeon is brow-beaten by one of his wife’s legal agents into signing a bill of divorce, “alleging he might lawfully in the sight of God do it”. After this, the couple separate. (What sort of confusion of mind had Milton created, with those divorce pamphlets of the 1640’s?)

Sister Mehetabel that makes the running with old Goodwin, and soon has the old man infatuated: “She must be freed from her husband, that so she may be free for old Mr. Goodwin, who is now so taken with her, that he can enjoy himself no where but in her company: scarce one day in the week but he is at her house, spending his time in dalliance with her.” Vernon has had report of her demeanor to Goodwin: “And Mr. Pigeon affirms, that about the year 1646. sojourning then in the house of his Brother Jones, he set himself to observe their carriage, and at one time he saw Mistress Jones take Mr. Goodwin about the neck and kiss him: at another time, being (as they thought) in private, he saw her take Mr. Goodwin’s hand, and putting it under her apron, holding it against the bottom of her belly, with many repeated mutual kisses, she saying, oh my dear Love! At which Mr. Pigeon being much scandalized to see his Sister Jones so behave her self to Mr. Goodwin, she being a married woman, and her husband in the house, went presently and told his wife what he had seen, and that he would tarry there no longer, for that he believed the house was a Bawdy house, and that her Sister Jones was Mr. Goodwins whore.”

Vernon himself cannot resist a bawdy comment on the complete change the women effect in Goodwin’s preoccupation: “Now the Lute and the Lute Master is quite laid aside, Mr. Goodwin speaks not one word more of musick; he hath found another manner of Lute that is easier to play on, which he had been long before a tuning…” I suppose you could say that Goodwin finds himself (as he sees it) transformed from being a passive admirer, into a participant, the admirer thinks himself admired.

Outsiders try to intervene: everyone in the neighbourhood knows what is going on, even small children report details of Goodwin’s infatuation. But “he is so bewitched with her, that as it is reported of leprous persons, into whose flesh you may thrust needles to the head, and they feel nothing; so though reproof, admonitions, prayers, from children, neighbours, Justices, Ministers, assault him daily, yet he is insensible of all.” His minister uses the final deterrent, and “suspends him from the Sacrament, which he values so little, that to this day he so continues, without so much as once desiring to be restored, professing his conscience is clear, and that he values the reproofs of Ministers no more then the dirt under his feet.”

Jones, the lutenist, no longer has Goodwin under the fairly innocent spell of his art. He has his own troubles, and undergoes a series of legal assaults, provocations, and is led into further problems when he unwisely fights back. The two women offer him money to emigrate. He ends up imprisoned in ‘The Counter’, and when this has happened, his wife “flies to [Goodwin], throwing her self into his arms, saying, Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Jones and I am now parted for ever, and you must keep me. The poor deluded old man being overjoyed, takes her in his arms, tells her, it was the best news to him that ever came to town, and that he would provide for her, with more to that purpose. Mr. Pigeon stands in admiration at these doings; at the last breaks out into these words; Now quoth he, I see the cause my brother Jones was put into the Counter”.

Jones gets himself out of prison, and agrees with his wife that she will leave him, the house and the children to stay with him. This deal she instantly breaks, entering the house while he is out giving lessons, and removing everything of value. He finally leaves the city entirely, penniless, and heads off to Norwich.

Finally, the sisters move into Goodwin’s house. This is accomplished by marrying off Mehetabel Jones’ daughter Lydia to one of Goodwin’s less promising sons, James, “a silly schoolboy” (says the 1656 pamphlet): “In brief, they presently clap up a Match between this boy, that a little before was intended for a prentice, and Mistress Jones her daughter, a girl 19 of about fifteen years old, but so small, that she looked more like one of eight or nine at the most. After short wooing, they are married together. This was a strong subtle device, worth Mistress Pigeons Invention. By this match Mr. Goodwin and his concubine are become brothers and sisters, and who can find fault at decent familiarity between such? By this the women have got an interest in the estate and family, that they dare own to the world, which they durst not before: This brings them boldly into the house to reside; Mrs. Jones pretending that because her daughter is such a childe, she hath the more need of a guide. In a word, this device draws a faire skin over a great many scabby places at once; and so they without any more Ceremony all enter the house, bringing all their children and retinue with them.”

Goodwin enters into “an adulterous contract of marriage with Mistress Jones”, convinced by their assurances that he can justly and religiously do so. The sisters continue spending all the money they can lay hands on. There remain two members of the original Goodwin family to be defeated. The first is a devout and moral minded senior apprentice, who is finished off when he goes down with a fever. During his illness, the sisters ply him with their own prescriptions, and he dies. Then there is the capable son Andrew, who has been acting in partnership with his father, doing his best to run the money side of the business. They unleash an able accountant on him, a Mr Lewis, whom they attempt to bribe, and though this attempt fails, Vernon does not disguise the fact that Andrew, in his anguish at his father’s behaviour, has let control of the money side escape him. They discredit him enough in his father’s eyes for the old man to allow them to break into Andrew’s room, lever open his strong boxes, and finally get him out of the house by having two sergeants and two bailiffs arrive nocturnally. Andrew barricades himself in his room, but his father consents that the bailiffs might break through the wall to arrest his son. Andrew surrenders, and is hauled away into the night.

Installed, and without any opposition left, the sisters take over the house and the business, using a male associate, a scrivener called Colborne. Old Goodwin loses control of his business, and is taken on as a journeyman “and which is to amazement, so far from being sensible of what he hath done, that he proclaims to all comers that he had rather be Mrs.  Pigeons Journeyman,  then to be Master of all without his two women.”

This was the situation that had been reached when Vernon wrote his first account of this hostile domestic and commercial takeover. His 1654 pamphlet ends with appeals to Goodwin to reflect on some pungent verses from the seventh chapter of Proverbs, with some additional commentary of his own, and calls to Mehetable Jones to repent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 1656 pamphlet continues the story. Mistress Pigeon settled down to making money from the business, the scrivener Colborne standing security for customers anxious about their goods.

But during 1654 and 1655 business gradually drops away – “nor could they with all their art keep on the paint which daily peeled off from their bold deluding faces”. The unity between the sisters falls away too: Mehetabel has got the old man, and most of the neighbourly reproaches; she observes that her sister has control of all the money that’s in the business. The two leave Goodwin’s house, and resume their former lodgings. When Goodwin comes to visit Mehetable: “the Fish once caught, off goes the bait. Now that all is in their hands, and now that he comes to them stripped, with his empty pockets hanging out, now nothing but quarrelling and caviling questions about the Trade.”

The sisters next get the scrivener Colborne into their power at their “rat-trap in Pauls Alley” (as Vernon calls the base from which they operate), pretending to nurse him during his last illness, in effect, keeping him hostage in hope of taking advantage.

Mistress Pigeon’s husband returns, and tries to get her to accept reconciliation. This does not work. Goodwin’s children appeal to Cromwell, who appoints a number of substantial Southwark citizens to hold a commission of inquiry into the whole affair. During this process, old Goodwin dies (in December 1655), once again he was completely in their power in his dying days. Vernon attributes the death to the sisters, that they withdrew his normal food, and made him subsist solely on their prescription of “Sage-Ale, Marmalade [and] strong extracts”. Goodwin died during a fit of retching.

There follows a horrible stand-off about who is to bury the body. Mistress Pigeon does not want an autopsy, and will not surrender the body to the dead man’s relatives. The body remains in the house for three days. Mistress Pigeon lets it be known that she will hold the funeral, and invites the chief members of the parish, letting it be known that gold rings and gloves will be given out as tokens of mourning. Only one invitee is venal enough to accept the invitation. Mistress Pigeon attends the funeral with an attorney at law, to deter angry interventions, but even with this intimidating presence at her side, she is bombarded with “kennel dirt”. Mistress Jones remains barricaded in the house. Had she gone to the funeral, the best of her bargain, Vernon concludes, would have been “to gauge the depth of mud in the mill-pond”.

The tide seems to turn against the sisters. The report of the local commissioners, p[rinted by Vernon, resoundingly endorses all that Vernon’s account alleges against them. The commission try to make a fair composition, to get Mistress Pigeon to leave with some recompense, but she refuses to budge. Cromwell himself reads the report, and is indignant, but unluckily action is passed on to his privy council, who do nothing for two months, and then recommend the children to go to law. They and their advisers reflect that there will be nothing left worth getting repossession of.

So Vernon’s second pamphlet is in a way the only retaliation left to the relatives. In his possession, he has letters written by both women (one of which does indicate that they read the first pamphlet, and regarded it as libel, so it did affect them), and letters framed by Mistress Pigeon for Goodwin to transcribe and sign as his own. Instructions for him too, in how to handle the commissioners. (He was flattered into assuming a resentful silence as the true sign of his wisdom, and Vernon testifies that he heard Goodwin refusing to answer all questions.) At its end, admitting that she has escaped justice, Vernon gives a pen-portrait of Mistress Pigeon, and compares this effort to the way that “in foreign parts when notorious malefactors have by some stratagem escaped the hand of justice, then they draw their picture as near as may be to the life, which being fixed upon public places of execution, gives notice to all men what manner of person he was, that so he may be discovered”. The chief contriver of all these ills emerges, in another of Vernon’s half-tributes to an utterly unscrupulous and artful woman, as a compound of Shakespeare’s Gertrude and Goneril: “would she win compassion from her Judge, she appears all in mourning, melting like Niobe in tears … if she be before such as she thinks another bait may take better, she will appear in gorgeous Apparel, her neck and breasts bare, her complexion beyond a natural fairness”.

Mehetabel Jones was an early modern woman poet (of sorts). Vernon has various verses in his possession. This one is a down-market ‘Relique’ or ‘Legacy’:

“beg leave for one more sample of her enchanting Madrigals; which with a parcel of her Hair richly perfumed (though all will not keep it from stinking) was found with the rest; and thus it chimes, forth:

            Accept this Bracelet from your friend,

            the owner knows it is your due,

            because she belongeth unto you.

            This paper read, let it see the flame;

            if you grant not this, you are to blame:

            For she that writ it, would for you

            burn paper, and her fingers too

            to light your snuff; which she has done,

            and burnt both fingers and her thumb.

            Burn it, then your friend will I rest;

            if not, say not you love her best:

            The hours I count, the minutes too

            make haste, farewell, adieu, adieu.

Vernon astutely observes the anxiety to have the poem burned. Poor besotted Wessel Goodwin couldn’t bring himself to do that, it seems. The two women hold out, and escape. A postscript to Vernon’s second pamphlet says that they have left Goodwin’s house, and that the building has been stripped, even the lead pipes have been dug up and sold.

Quite a pair.

The (very slow) downfall of the upstart chymist

These are the rather surprisingly good woodcuts for The devil upon Dun: or The downfall of the upstart chymist: being the second edition of a late song: to the tune of Smoak us, and choak us, a single-sheet drinking song of 1672.

On the left, the ‘chymist’ stands at his pestle and mortar, preparing his elixir by pulverizing the bones his has on the table before him, labeled ‘the matter’. “More bones”, he says.

In the middle pane, he is assisted by a devil in distilling his preparation, which he hails as “The Grand Elixir”. As the liquor flows, the devil cries that “The Spirits are mine”.

In the right-hand panel (which is really two scenes in one), we see the effect upon the patient. A man who is unwell lies in bed, and receives the preparation from the chemist, who assures him of its safety and curative power (“I warrant you”). But the effect of the touted elixir is rapid death: two mourners for the late patient react: “Sumus fumus” (‘We are but smoke’) and the wry “Thankes to the Chymist”, while a third, his elbow on the catafalque, concludes sorrowfully “Not by art but Chymicallie”.

The verses accompanying the picture are less impressive:

'Mongst all Professions in the Town,
Held most in renown,
From th’Sword to the Gown,
The upstart Chymist rules the Roast;
For He with his Pill
Does ev’n what he will,
Employing his skill,
Good Subjects to kill,
That he of his dang’rous Art may boast,
O 'tis the Chymist, that man of the fire,
Who by his Black Art
Does Soul and Body part:
He smoaks us, and choaks us,
And leaves us like Dun in the mire.

A subsequent stanza in which the chemical doctor miraculously silences two disputing parsons contains a solid OED antedating:

As for the Parsons, both Pro and Con,
Dispute, and Objection,
Can’t save them, th’Chymist anon
With th’Elixir can soon end the strife,
Straight silence them both,
Who t’agree are loth,
For th’Ginny-pigs sake, though
Their quarrels give th’Old Cause new life.

If this is a clumsy joke on that newly-named animal, the guinea pig, with “jocular or contemptuous applications with allusions to the coin”, the OED does not have this till

1821, in W. Combe’s Third Tour Dr. Syntax: ‘Oh! oh!’ cried Pat, ‘how my hand itches, Thou guinea pig, in boots and breeches, To trounce thee well.’

The verses go on in a ragged fashion: here’s a stanza about the response of the orthodox medical profession:

The College Doctors with great heat,
Do very much brow-beat
So desp’rate a cheat,
Using prov’d methods safe to cure;
Yet these Chymists cry,
Who dares it deny?
At easy rates they’ll make all sure.
O 'tis the Chymist, &c.

Here the writer declares that the elixir is in fact a good means of domestic murder:

If Wife of Husband, or Husband of Wife,
By reason of strife
Are weary, Or Fathers life
Hinders th’Heir; his Laboratory
Can perform with hast,
Without much distaste,
What Indian poison can’t supply.
O 'tis the Chymist, that man of the fire,
Who by his Black Art
Does Soul and Body part:
He smokes us, and chokes us,
And leaves us like Dun in the mire.

He wishes all the ‘chymists’ sent to Algiers, to kill the population there, leaving England’s population free to grow:

Then may New Troy with Citizens fill,
Being secur’d from ill;
Then no printed Bill,
No Almanac; no Tradesman’s Shop
Shall th’Elixir vent,
To make Experiment
On liege people, killing with one drop.
O 'tis the Chymist, &c.

No printed adverts, or adverts in almanacs will sell this deadly elixir in this future ‘New Troy’ (or London).

The famous elixir just on the market had been announced in 1670 by Anthony Daffy: Direction given by me (Anthony Daffy, student in physic) for taking my safe, innocent and successful cordial drink, elixir salutis; proper to the cure of each distemper (in the printed sheet of its virtues mentioned,) and suited unto the patients several ages, sexes and constitution.

The ‘chymist’ in the woodcut may be just a generic figure, but might well have been Anthony Daffy himself. The original mixture for the elixir was apparently formulated by his uncle. Here’s the Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffy%27s_Elixir

This gives some idea of the ingredients. They varied over time, but certainly would have had a laxative effect. The writer of the entry has Anthony Daffy move to London from Nottingham in the 1690’s: but he can be seen calling himself ‘of London, citizen and student in physick’ in 1675.

The success of the preparation he marketed was such that rival ‘elixirs’ were quickly concocted, and promoted with materials copied from his own pamphlets (as he complains). By 1675 he was putting into print Daffy’s original elixir salutis, vindicated against all counterfeits, &c. or, An advertisement by mee, Anthony Daffy, of London, citizen and student in physick by way of vindication of my famous and generally approved cordial drink, (called elixir salutis) from the notoriously false suggestions of one Tho. Witherden of Bear-steed in the county of Kent, Gent. (as pretended), Jane White, Robert Brooke, apothecary, and Edward Willet.

 Despite the poem announcing Daffy's downfall, it was a long time coming. ‘Daffy’s Elixir’ is advertised all the way through the 18^th and 19^th centuries: 2,188 hits are returned by the gale 18^th century newspaper database, 5,522 hits by the Gale 19^th century newspapers database. In the Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence or News Both from City and Country (London, England), Tuesday, March 16, 1680, Daffy lets it be known that he is still alive (counter to the reports of those who counterfeit his preparation), that he has enjoyed the benefits of the elixir for above twenty years, and that the real things can only be got from him or from the authorized outlets he had advertised in print.

The elixir makes itself familiar in literature: Pope tells the reader of the Dunciad that ‘the Balm of Dulness’ “is a Sovereign remedy, and has its name from the Goddess herself. Its ancient Dispensators were her Poets; but it is now got into as many hands as Goddard’s Drops or Daffy’s Elixir.”

Thackeray makes the best use of it, accurately capturing that tension between the generations over infant care:
“Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness about this boy, and a secret jealousy---for one evening, in George’s very early days, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little parlour scarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran up stairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had been asleep until that moment---and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously administering Daffy’s Elixir to the infant. Amelia, the gentlest and sweetest of every-day mortals, when she found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all over with anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed up, until they were as red as they used to be when she was a child of twelve years old. She seized the baby out of her mother’s arms, and then grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her, furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon. Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. “I will not have baby poisoned, Mamma,” cried Emmy, rocking the infant about violently with both her arms round him, and turning with flashing eyes at her mother. “Poisoned, Amelia!” said the old lady; “this language to me?” “He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for him. He told me that Daffy’s Elixir was poison.” “Very good: you think I’m a murderess, then,” replied Mrs. Sedley. “This is the language you use to your mother.”
The elixir – and later rivals like Holloway’s ointment – was the recourse of those obliged to try ‘self-doctoring’. Doctors would always have dismissed it as poison, but they wanted their fees.

“After this they fell all to dancing the Hays, about three flower-pots”: welcoming the apocalypse in Berkshire, 1650.

My text is a Thomason tract. Only ‘…ber’ for the month appears in his title page dating, it was perhaps September, certainly the 20^th of the relevant month.

A most faithful relation of two wonderful passages which happened very lately (to wit, on the first and eighth days of this present September, being Lords days) in the parish of Bradfield in Berk-shire 1650.

The London writer has a preamble, in which the millenarian hopes entertained by Dr John Pordage and his wife are represented as (inevitably) the devil’s work prospering in Berkshire, just as they are prospering everywhere as never before:

“This is an Age of wonders: for I dare affirme, that since the deplorable Fall of our first Parents, at which time Sin was first ushered into the World, the ill spirit was never so busie, he never made such a harvest, or had such a latitude of power given him to ramble up and down in any part of the earth, as he hath had lately in this island; witness else in what various forms he hath appeared, and what sundry feats he hath played in Essex, Suffolk, Cambridge-shire, and other places, especially in Scotland, where thousands have been possest by him, and so brought to the Gallows: And now it seems he hath taken footing in Berk-shire, as appears by these two uncouth Examples following.”

The writer renders Pordage’s name as ‘Doctor Pordich’ (making me wonder how often you would give, in those spelling-permissive days, a subtly denigratory spelling to a person’s name – ‘poor ditch’). John Pordage, as his ODNB life makes clear, was only just holding on in the regular church. The ‘Commissioners for ejecting of Scandalous Ministers’ would finally oust him in 1655. Pordage seems to have been involved or interested in the Family of Love, was prone to denunciations of marriage, was accused of denying the Trinity, was a Behmenist; while the ‘Everet’ named here as the likely ‘conjurer’ who has directed the devil to make these possessions in Berkshire, was actually John Everard - Leveller, Grindletonian, alchemist, etc, etc.

So, what would be represented as diabolic intrusion into parish life in Berkshire was really product of Pordage’s earnest and ecstatic belief that the heavens were about to open. Marvellously, he was in his pulpit preaching when it became somehow apparent to him that the big moment had come, and he exited his church then and there, anxious to get back to where the real action was going to be:

“Doctor Pordich being preaching in the Parish-Church of Bradfield (on the eighth of this instant September, being Lords day) within a quarter of an hour he fell into a Trance, running out of the Church, and bellowing like a Bull, saying that he was called, and must be gone.”

In its small way, it is a moment with something of the significance of the famous time when Mohammed turned his followers round during worship, away from Jerusalem, and towards Mecca. The Vicar of Bradfield exits his church, to be translated into heaven from home, along with his true followers - his wife, and some of their female friends. In his case, it proved not to be so epochal.

Understandably, when he left his church at such a moment in such a state, Pordage was pursued and questioned, but only replied that he must be gone ‘home to his house’. Fortunately, William Foster (a local gentleman rich enough to own a coach) followed Pordage home and witnessed what happened when the vicar got home:

“Where being come, he going up the Stairs, found his Wife, (Mistress Pordich) Clothed all in White Lawne, from the crown of the head, to the sole of the foot, with a White Rod in her hand.”

What’s pleasing about all this is that the apocalypse seems to be egalitarian in regards to gender. Now Pordage had heterodox views about marriage, and ambiguous relations with a number of women. He probably regarded his women followers as being in a state higher than marriage anyway. But at this moment, his wife (in the eyes of the normal world) Mistress Pordage, is garbed as a prophetess, and will soon call for ‘Elijah’s mantle’. Female followers gather: “Mistress Chevill coming in fell on her knees, saying, That she was to meet with her Spouse, and her Prophetess. After this comes in Mistress Tracie, holding of her head, and making of strange noyses, that were heard within her, in a very hideous passion. After this they fell all to dancing the Hays, about three flower-pots…”

Mr Foster, who has followed from church, asks Pordage what is meant by the dancing, and learns that “It was a rejoicing, because they had overcome the Devil.” Of course, joy that you have vanquished Satan in Berkshire can easily be represented in London as Satan’s victory over you. Perhaps there is a Familist touch in Mistress Chevill arriving to meet ‘her Spouse’ – Christ? Pordage? Though being the man he was, Pordage was inclined to deny that there was very much significant difference.

“With that his Wife cries out for Elijah’s Mantle, and then comes up Mistress Chevill, and Mistress Pordich fell of adoring her; and then in came one Goodwife Pukerig, and bended her body, and kissed her knee; Mistress Pordich assuring her that there was a place prepared for her in heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Virgin Mary.”

‘Elijah’s mantle’ because of the second book of Kings, verse 11: “And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” Mistress Pordage is ready to ascend to heaven without death, as happened to Elijah. (“Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to day?”)

But, as usual with these moments when the rapture is about to commence, there’s a snag – someone is missing, and it seems that this someone, who perhaps was important in making up the right numbers, was Foster’s own wife. Foster, having seen enough, leaves, but is urgently sent after and asked to return, bringing his wife with him. With her husband very much awake to strange goings-on, Foster’s wife gets cold feet, and simply refuses to go. In his 1655 publication, Innocencie appearing, through the dark mists of pretended guilt, Pordage over-confidently (and very conveniently) cites all the charges that were made against him, and in that work, it sounds as though Mistress Foster was rather frightened by the thought of seeing the heavens opened, as had been promised. As for Foster himself, he was probably involved at some lesser level himself. His wife having refused to answer the summons to be present at this Pang Valley ascension into heaven, Foster “tooke his Coach, and went alone: so coming into the Doctors house, he found the Doctor sitting in a Chaire all in black Velvet.” Costumes, as ever with early modern culture, were important for the show – as prophetess, Mistress Pordage has head to foot white linen, and her husband, black velvet (costly material and dye!). The mantle of Elijah itself was probably still in a wardrobe waiting to be deployed.

Asked where his wife is, Foster says she is not well, and therefore she cannot come: “Then said the Doctor, there is nothing can be done without her.” Crisis indeed! Mistress Pordage also asks the coachman, and hears confirmation that it is all going wrong. But they seem to have endeavoured to prolong the celestial window of opportunity, perhaps in hope that Mistress Foster would relent and show up just in time: “So there they keep dancing of the Hayes, and Trenchmore, and expecting when they shall be taken up to heaven every hour.”

The writer concludes with a dark imputation – Everard, as witch, was directing all this from far away: “By what means this Distraction came, is not as yet certainly known; but it is thought it was done by one Everet (a man suspected to be a Sorcerer or Witch) who much-frequented the Doctors house, and would often play with the children; and he was seen at London in a frantick posture, much about the time that these things happened.”

The little tract has ‘two wonderful passages’, however. Out of a sense of social status, the London  writer has told the story of Doctor Pordage’s folly first. He then moves on to detail what had happened the week before in the very same parish church. As this had happened to a thirteen year old youth, an illiterate member of a poor man’s large family (well, illiterate for the moment, but that all would change), it became the secondary story. The writer has relegated the one of the local signs that probably triggered Pordage to announce the apocalypse from its proper chronological place. Something of this sort would happen in Pordage’s church: on Sept 1^st, a youth of 13, “son to one Goodman Snelling”, “being in the Parish-Church of Bradfield, fell into a very strange Fit, foaming at the mouth for the space of two hours.”

Now to fall into a fit and foam at the mouth seems to me a very likely reaction to one of John Pordage’s sermons – he seems to have been a preacher worth hearing, wildly unpredictable, charismatic, full of novel doctrines, and easily misunderstood. The youth, whose sanity has probably been affected by listening to Pordage preach every Sunday,  finally emerges from his fit, and announces that he must go to London, taking his father with him. In London, they will find an old man there “living without Temple-bar, and said to be a Gold-smith”) who was “possest with two devils, and had the Root of Corruption in him.”

Exactly what you’d want to visit London to do – to locate the root of corruption. One can perhaps sense Pordage’s influence here, and a touching willingness on behalf of his young parishioner to come up with some marvel to interest his raving vicar. Exactly as foretold, they do indeed find the old man, who has been lying in a trance, from which he revives at the very instant that they arrive. This mysterious personage gives them yet more bewildering instructions: they are to go to Beacon Hill (it is just south of Newbury, close to Highclere house, aka Downton Abbey), “and there he should finde, at such a place, a crooked stick lying on the ground, and in it there should be an Inkhorn and a pen, and directions how to write and read, and to speak several Languages, and by the stick should be lying a lamb.”

The eagerness to attain literacy, by hook or by crook, is commendable. Off they trudge out to the west. Arrived at the hill, first of all they see the lamb, then they find the crooked stick, and “therein an Inkhorn and pen: and the boy taking up the stick, the Lamb vanished.” Then the visionary experiences start: they hear “strange voices in the air; and they saw the King with his head off, and then again they saw him with his head on, and a Crown upon it: also they saw Wallingford on fire, and the Governours head off.”

Emotional perturbation indeed, a perfect 17^th century mixture of political and religious anxieties: the King, a troubling beheaded phantom, and then re-headed. Heaven’s anger striking Wallingford (which had been the last royalist stronghold to hold out in 1646, but finally failed the king’s cause) and its Parliamentarian governor (Colonel Arthur Evelyn, it would have been). The father and son take the bad news to Wallingford, and seem to have been received in a level-headed way: “Whereupon, this Goodman Snelling and his son went to the Governour of Wallingford, and told him of it; who answered, that he hoped no such thing would come to pass.”

No great outcome at Wallingford, which would not burn down till 1675, and they are left with the suddenly literate younger Snelling, who also does his best to manifest the languages he has supernaturally acquired:

“This Goodman Snelling hath a great family, and they are all in a very strange frantick condition. he is a pot-ash-maker; and when his Fit is over, he is as sensible as any one; and he hath told his neighbours that he would give all that he has in the world, so that he were free of this business. And he saith that his son did bring him to such a hill, as right as though he had been there a thousand times before. And the boy can now write very well, which before he could not. Also, there are strange confused sound of Languages heard within him, but he does not speak them distinctly.”

Our writer concludes: “These things are certainly true, and avouched by a cloud of witnesses, young and old, who are the people of the best reputation in that County. My Conclusion shall be with this short prayer, which never was more seasonable then now: God deliver us from the Devil and all his shifts.”

As I said, Pordage somehow kept his job in the church until he was ejected in 1655 after hearings in1654. There’s nothing at the church in Bradfield that remains from his time: the Victorians made a thoroughgoing and very heavy-handed restoration of the building in 1848.

Pordage himself features pricelessly in A Collection of modern relations of matter of fact concerning witches & witchcraft upon the persons of people (1693), which has an account of the quite staggering manifestations taking place in the Pordage’s house in 1649. The fun here is that it starts as Pordage’s defence of himself from charges of conjuration. He too takes the line that Satan is empowered as never before:

“How then can Bradfield, or any other Place, be exempted from his Appearing when God permits? And may not all this be for the manifesting of his Glory, Goodness and Power? And who can tell whose Family may be next exposed by God’s permission, to be tryed and proved by the Representation of Satan? And I desire you seriously to consider how any such Apparitions raised by the Devil, and permitted by God for his own Glory, argue me either Ignorant, Scandalous, or Insufficient …”

But, whenever he was in a hole, which (unsurprisingly in view of his beliefs), was often, and seriously, Pordage could not resist enlarging and improving the hole to suit his own fancy. He can’t hold back from telling how, yes, the spirit of Everard appeared nocturnally in his bedchamber in August 1649, how then he saw a terrifying giant, then a dragon.

Pordage sounds off (as was his wont) largely about the different spiritual worlds, and then produces this undeniably striking witness to the activities of the evil side of the spirit world: “the Spirits made some wonderful Impressions upon visible Bodies without, as Figures of Men and Beasts upon the Glass Windows and the Ceilings of the House, some of which yet remain. But what was most remarkable was the whole visible World represented by the Spirits upon the Bricks of a Chimney, in the form of two half Globes, as in the Maps. After which, upon other Bricks of the same Chimney, was Figured a Coach and four Horses, with Persons in it, and a Footman attending, all seeming to be in Motion, with many other such Images, which were wonderful exactly done. Now, fearing lest there might be any Danger in these Images, through unknown Conjuration and false Magic, we endeavoured to wash them out with wet Cloths, but could not, finding them engraven in the substance of the Bricks, which indeed might have continued till this day, had not our fear and suspicion of Witch-craft, and some evil design of the Devil against us in it, caused us to deface and obliterate them with Hammers. Now, what the Devil’s End in the former Apparitions, and those figurative Representations was, the Lord knows: But it was certainly Evil.”

In Innocencie appearing, through the dark mists of pretended guilt, Pordage obligingly lists all the charges made against him locally, and something of the same kind of optical hallucination appears: “in Dr Pordage’s house in Bradfield, lately the new Jerusalem hath been seen to come down from heaven, all of precious stones; and in the new Jerusalem was a Globe, which Globe was eternity”.

I wonder what was going off. Were these things products of Pordage’s heated imagination? He was capable of seeing a lot, indeed, seeing infinity, in almost anything, as his wild commentary on very basic images of circles and dots in Theologia mystica shows. But his house seems to have become notorious, and to have had all kinds of people turning up there. Everard was an experimenter: could he have done devised some method of projecting or etching the pictures?

I cycled over to what had been his church earlier today. The church as an institution expelled Pordage, and the over-sized and frowsty Victorian pile, which seems in part to have been used for services attended by boys from Bradfield College, testifies to the enduring dull power of that church. Pordage is listed in a manuscript list of previous incumbents as one who ‘intruded’ on the proper pastoral succession: Elias Ashmole is down as his patron to the living. The Victorians in their re-build obliterated any chance of finding a church with a furtive alchemical emblem or Rosicrucian enigma.

Executing all the enemies of a Utopian England: John Dunton's 'The Informer's Doom', 1683

These curious woodcuts derive from and expand on the familiar woodcut frontispiece to Matthew Hopkins’ The Discovery of Witches. I found them - among many others - in The informer’s doom, or, An unseasonable letter from Utopia directed to the man in the moon giving a full and pleasant account of the arraignment, tryal, and condemnation of all those grand and bitter enemies that disturb and molest all kingdoms and states throughout the Christian world (1683),which John Dunton probably both wrote and published, or maybe just put into print as bookseller (the former seems more likely). As publisher, Dunton is keen to let his potential purchasers know what a good deal they are getting: “I have comprized this Treatise in an Eighteen Penny Book, (though considering the Cuts, it cannot be well afforded so) that as it is of real use and publick concern, so it might be the better disperst throughout this English Nation.” The sixty plus woodcuts – as they are small, derivative, and crude - in a book priced at eighteen pence might not have been all that much of a bargain.

Whoever wrote The informer’s doom, he was a keen reader of John Bunyan, whose Pilgrim’s Progress had appeared five years before. The work closely copies Bunyan’s very direct allegory, even down to that reluctance some of Bunyan’s allegorical characters understandably show about disclosing their all too revelatory names. It is a fantasy of a Utopian England, where “all those grand and bitter Enemies, that disturb all Kingdoms and States, throughout the Christian World” (‘the Christian world’ actually means England) can be brought to trial, found guilty, and (surprise, surprise!) executed. Pope Innocent XI, supreme pontiff when Dunton was writing, is depicted being burned at the stake, Justice Implacable (part of Dunton’s long campaign against Judge Jeffreys) gets hanged himself, Mrs Bad Wife ends up “Carted to the Great Ducking-stool that is in this Town, and there shall you sit (in the presence of all the women in Utopia for a warning to them) till you expire out your poysonous and infectious breath.” A long denunciation of Sir John Fraud, as he appears in all professions, rounds out the work.

In each allegorical trial, suitable witnesses appear to testify to the guilt of the accused: “there came into the Court Mr. Witch-finder General, Mr. Hate-device, and Mr. Spy-Imp, and said, They could prove all the Prisoners at the Bar guilty of hainous Crimes and Offences, and that they were real Witches.”

This witchcraft material is part of the final resistance to the middle to late 17th century movement to deny the existence of witches and their pacts. I have already shown Dunton retailing a witch yarn in his most successful venture, The Athenian Mercury:
http://roy25booth.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/witch-detected-en-route-for-america.html
Dunton is lining up beside the recently dead Joseph Glanvill, whose Saducismus triumphatus had appeared in 1681, with a flurry of reprints. But to turn back to Matthew Hopkins as late as 1683 suggests that Dunton was either a witchcraft die-hard, shrilly insisting that it all had to be believed, at whatever cost in hangings, or (perhaps just as likely) that a page-covering motive impelled this part of the text. No specific witchcraft case is in view, witches in general are the subject. There are some signs of confusion between the demonic familiar and the witch. When, finally, a witch named ‘Holt’ is singled out, it seems confusingly derived from ‘Holt’, a familiar spirit in the form of a ‘white kitling’ in Hopkins’ Discovery of Witches. There’s a similar suggestion of confusion in this extract from the allegorical trial: “Mr. Witch-finder General, ‘My Lord, then first as to Vinegar-Tom, He is a Witch in grain …’

Dunton has his presiding man of law ask an intelligent question about why spirits should want to suck blood from a witch:

Mr. Attorney General,

Pray Mr Witch-finder, How comes it to pass, that the Devil being a Spirit (and so consequentially wanting no Nutriment or Sustentation, should desire to suck any blood; and indeed as he is a Spirit he cannot draw any excresences, having neither flesh nor bone, and cannot be felt.

Mr. Witchfinder,

He seeks not their blood, as if he could not subsist without that Nourishment, but he often repairs to them and gets it, the more to aggravate the Witches Damnation, and to put her in mind of her Covenant

As so often happened in the ruthless speed of a real 17^th century court, a weak-minded accused person is harried into confession: “The old Hag stands up and answers for her self, confessing her Imps Names to the Judge, and the reason how she come to turn Witch.”

Hag. My Lord, I must confess I am a Witch, and have several Imps, whose Names are Illemauzer, Pye-wacket, Peck in the Crown, Griezel Greedigut; but I hope your Lordship will spare my life.

But Dunton goes on in a more considered fashion, with his ‘Hag’ explaining why she made her pact with the devil:

The reason why some become Witches.
“Because I had never been a Witch had not Poverty come upon me like an armed man, and that continuing, filled my mind with discontent; and in that discontented humuor, the Devil striking in, told me, if I would give up my self to him, I should not want as long as I lived. Oh, pray my Lord, therefore spare me, spare me, for I had never been a Witch had it not been for Poverty! Poverty! Poverty! and a discontented mind.”

And likewise beg’d of the Judge that her Life might be spar’d, adding withal, that if the Judge would forgive her, she would confess to his Lordship, The Cheats and Delusions the Devil imposeth upon Witches, and many other remarkable things. When she had done speaking, the Judge told her, He could not save her life, but if she would make any Confession, he would not put her to so severe Death as she deserv’d both by the Law of God and Man.”

Using the invented ‘Holt’ as his mouthpiece, Dunton addresses the much-discussed issue of the limits of a devil’s power. His version isn’t unprecedented, but he does at least go into the detail of the devil’s deceptive pretence to power, he has thought through the whole process. The devil has no power to kill; rather, thousands of years of observation have made him an excellent physician. When he infers that a person is about to die, the devil actually promotes an enmity between the person who will soon die, and the witch he wishes to delude. Once a quarrel, or fear, has been provoked, the purely natural death of the newly created opponent is represented to the witch as the devil carrying out her malefice. By this means the devil simultaneously convinces the witch, and damns her through a metaphysical version of the legal mens rea.
Here is the whole bizarre edifice of argument, in Dunton’s own invented exchange:

Holt makes large Confessions of the Wiles of the Devil.

Holt, “My Lord, (to begin then) The Devil doth (as I now can tell by dreadful experience) often play the Deluder and Impostor with Witches, in perswading them that they are the cause of such and such a Murther, and that he hope them in the effecting of it, when indeed neither he nor they had any hand in it: And he being of long standing, above six thousand years, must needs be a great Scholar in all knowledges of Arts and Tongues, and so have the best skill in Physick, judgment in Physiognomy, and knowledge of what Disease is reigning or predominant in this or that mans body, (and so for Cattel too) by reason of his long experience. This subtile Tempter knowing such a man liable to some sudden disease, (as by experience I have found) As Plurisie, Imposthume, &c. he resorts to divers Witches; If they know the man, he seeks to make a difference between the Witches and the party, it may be by telling them he hath threatned to have them very shortly searched, and so hanged for Witches; then they all consult with Satan to save themselves, and Satan stands ready prepared.”

The Devil’s Speech to the Witches. “What will you have me to do for you, my dear and nearest children, covenanted and compacted with me in my hellish league, and sealed with your blood, my delicate firebrand-darlings.”

“Oh thou (say they) that at the first didst promise to save us thy Servants from any of our deadly Enemies discovery, and didst promise to avenge and slay all those, we pleased, that did offend us; Murther that Wretch suddenly who threatens the downfall of your loyal Subjects. He then promiseth to effect it: Next news is heard, the party is dead; he comes to the Witch, and gets a world of reverence, credence, and respect for his power and activeness, when and indeed the Disease kills the party, not the Witch, nor the Devil, (only the Devil knew that such a Disease was predominant) and the Witch aggravates her damnation by her familiarity and consent to the Devil, and so comes likewise in compass of the Laws. This is Satans usual impostring and deluding, but not his constant course of proceeding, for He and the Witch do mischief too much.”

Dunton’s judge has no hesitation in passing sentence; and Dunton (who earlier in the same work denounced 'Judge Implacable' so resoundingly, seems to invent a new mode of appropriate execution for convicted witches
“The Judge passes Sentence upon the Witches.
And so the Judge past Sentence upon them all, which Sentence was this: Viz. You Vinegar-Tom, Holt, old Hag, with your four Imps, &c. shall return from the place whence you came, and from thence he dragged upon an Hurlde to the chiefest Street in Utopia, there to be buried alive in the mid-day, that all may see your sin and folly, and fly for ever, the first thought that ever shall dare to enter into their minds of making Contracts with a deceitful Devil.”