The Witch-Family in Elizabethan and Jacobean Print Culture

Abstract

In modern historical scholarship as well as in sixteenth- and early seventeenth- century pamphlets, religious tracts, plays, and other literary texts, we frequently encounter the witch as the solitary difficult neighbor, the impoverished older who knocks at neighbor's door to ask for help, then goes away cursing or uttering threats when she is refused.1 In A detection of damnable driftes (1566), for example, Mother Staunton wanders throughout the parish of Wimbish in Essex seemingly without friends or craving yeast or milk from neighbors. Repeatedly she is turned away by villagers who already suspect of witchcraft, including housewife who barred the doores against her; repeatedly Mother Staunton takes offense and goes her waie in greate anger (A8-A8v). Chickens die and children sicken, presumably as result of occult power. The portrayal of Mother Staunton in 1566 closely resembles the later depiction of Elizabeth Sawyer in 1621 pamphlet by Henry Goodcole and then in William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford's play The Witch of Edmonton (1621). Poor, deformed and ignorant, / . . . like bow buckled and bent together (2.1.3-4), Elizabeth is first glimpsed pathetically gathering a few rotten sticks (2.1.20) with which to warm herself. Abused and beaten by villager, she then is ridiculed and called names by group of village youths. As result, she is ready to welcome the devil when he appears to in the guise of the amiable Dog: 'Tis all / To be witch as to be counted one (2.1.118-19). Dog offers the lonely love, pity, and the power to attain just revenge. In portraying Elizabeth Sawyer as socially isolated, abused, and aching for revenge, the play is unusual only in the sympathy it invites for her.But other stories were told about the witch. As the work of recent historians has demonstrated, in English trials accused witches often had families and were related by blood or marriage to other witches.2 The earliest trial records provide glimpses of the accused witches' relationships with children, parents, husbands, siblings, and friends, some of whom were reputed to be witches themselves. Authorities routinely sought out family members for questioning, and the assumption that witch may have learned craftfrom relative is evident in the documents of the first known case in England.3 The once-common idea that most people charged with witchcraftwere either widows or single women has been shown to be mistaken: in some regions, more than half of the accused were married; others lived with children or with aging parents. Indictments were occasionally issued against husbands and wives together, or, more frequently, against mothers and children, particularly daughters.4 In few cases, entire family groups were tried and convicted of witchcraft. 5 The witch came from suspect household, perhaps even crime family, associated not only with witchcraftbut also with other anti-social acts.6To what extent did images of family relationships among witches become part of contemporary perceptions beyond the immediate trial context? And what cultural or ideological weight did such images carry? Despite the relatively large number of English witchcrafttrials featuring witch-families, historians still tend to claim that the dominant stereotype of the time was, as James Sharpe puts it, that of the bent, aged, poor and isolated woman (Instruments 61). In similar vein, Malcolm Gaskill provides many examples making it clear that the image of the witch as wandering old beggar-implicitly solitary figure-was pervasive in cheap print and popular opinion.7 Although elite discourse, influenced by the classics, often portrayed the witch as younger, more attractive, and higher in rank, it was similarly dominated by images of the solitary witch: Homer's Circe, Lucan's Erictho, Horace's Candida, the Bible's Witch of Endor, Spenser's Duessa and Acrasia-all are grandly solitary figures, charismatic individuals unburdened by family ties. …