Familiar spirits and devilish imps

In the history of the witch trials, which saw hundreds of women, men and children across England accused of witchcraft related crimes during the 16th and 17th centuries, Liverpool emerges relatively unscathed. It is impossible, of course, to know what whispered gossip went on behind closed doors, never making it to the official record. One case of Liverpool witchcraft that did make the light of day however concerns Margaret Loy or Ley, and her sister, known as Widow Bridge.

In 1667, Margaret found herself before the authorities accused of witchcraft. She confessed to having been a witch for thirty years since her mother died, before relating a startling tale. When her mother had died, there was precious little to pass on to her daughters: with no wealth or belongings of note, instead she bequeathed to them her familiars. Margaret and her sister had accepted this unusual inheritance, and they had been in possession of the creatures ever since.

What happened to Margaret and Widow Bridge after Margaret made her confession is unclear. Although talk of spirits and witchcraft sound fantastical to our modern minds, confessing to owning a familiar was very common among accused witches in England, and the historical record is rife with tales of what these imps got up to. There is no hint of what form these spirits took in the Liverpool case, but from the evidence of confessions elsewhere, it is possible to deduce various options.

Familiars, according to those who confessed often came to the witch in the form of an animal. The obvious choice was of course the cat, a creature long associated with witches and witchcraft. Agnes Waterhouse, the first woman to be executed in England for witchcraft in 1566, confessed to owning a cat named Satan that she had been given by her sister. This aptly – or perhaps rashly – named feline was used to kill and injure several people, along with bringing misfortune to those who incurred Agnes’ displeasure.

Ferrets were another popular choice. In the St, Osyth Trials in Essex in 1582, Ursula Kempe accused Elizabeth Bennett of keeping a ferret shaped spirit in a pot. This spirit had been used to bewitch both people and cattle, causing death to several people. Alice Hunt, another St. Osyth resident also kept a ferret in a pot: this creature had killed six animals belonging to a man named Hayward. Alice had reputedly rewarded this fine work by giving the spirit some blood to suck. The Edmonton Witch, Elizabeth Sawyer was accused of having white ferrets in her house in 1621, but she denied that they were imps.

Mice and rats likewise appeared in the confessions of accused witches as they related their crimes to their questioners. In 1645, Elizabeth Harris of Faversham, Kent, confessed that the Devil had visited her nineteen years ago in mouse form. He had promised to help her carry out revenge upon her enemies. Sure enough, a man who had accused her of stealing a pig fell ill and wasted away until he died. The mouse used Elizabeth’s blood to write the covenant between her and the Devil himself. Anne Cade from Great Holland confessed to having three mice familiars her mother had given her: their names were James, Prickeare and Robyn. She used them to kill and harm her enemies.

James Device, one of the infamous Pendle Witches, confessed to having been visited by a familiar named Dandy, who came in the form of a dog. Dandy asked for his soul in exchange for having revenge on anyone he chose. His grandmother, Demdike, was visited by her familiar Tibb in the shape of a dog, who sucked blood from her. The previously mentioned Elizabeth Sawyer was also said to have a dog familiar. He was called Tom and visited her as either a large black dog, or a small white one. Tom sucked her blood for a quarter of an hour, but according to Elizabeth this caused her no pain.

Perhaps one of the strangest familiars on record comes from across the border into Wales. In 1591, the local bailiff got more than he bargained for when he decided to put Gwen’s powers to the test. When he arrived at her home demanding refreshments, things took a nasty turn when Gwen was manhandled by one of his party. When the drink was produced however, Gwen had the last laugh – there was a large fly floating in the jug, and however hard the men, tried it couldn’t be removed. The fly was so large and behaved in such a strange way in fact that the men were certain this was no ordinary fly, but was in fact Gwen’s familiar. This seemed to be confirmed when the man who pushed Gwen discovered his arm broken – the very one used to push her - and the bailiff’s own wife was rendered unable to move her limbs.

Another unusual familiar form was recorded on 25 September 1645, when Jane Holt, a widow of Faversham, confessed to being a witch. Jane related how for the last twenty years a creature that resembled a hedgehog had visited her a couple of times a month. It sucked at her, causing her pain. Curiously, the creature was not prickly like a hedgehog however: when she pushed it away, it felt soft like a cat.

Shape shifting was not unheard of where familiars were concerned. Satan the cat for instance, after consultation with his impoverished mistress, was turned into a toad so that Agnes could sell the wool that the familiar lay on. This same spirit was also seen in the form of a dog, terrorising young Agnes Browne and threatening to kill her.

The naming of such spirits varied as much as the forms they took. Self-styled Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins used the naming of familiars as proof of their existence: citing such names as Pyewacket, Grizzel Greedigut and Vinegar Tom, he concluded that no mortal could have invented them. Others however were more mundane, going by names such as John or Nan.

All credit for this article is given to:Willow Winsham, Witchcraft Historian and Author

Halloween is nearly upon us! And in the spirit of the season, today’s spooktacular Story from the Museum Floor by Stephanie, who works in the Museum Shop and with the Visitor Team at the Whitworth, explores the involvement of witches’ animals, or ‘familiars’ in the English Witch Trials of the seventeenth century.

Part One traces the evidence for the cat as the diabolical accomplice to witches and cunning folk… Then join us next time, on Halloween week when Stephanie turns her attention in a canine direction to ‘a thing like unto a black dog’…

For more about animals and nature, have a look at the Curator’s blog.

The Nature of the Familiar and its Origins.

Have a walk around Manchester Museum this Halloween and you’ll spot many an animal that was thought to be a possible guise for a witch’s ‘familiar‘ or had some sort of superstition attached. The figure of the familiar is one which is etched into our minds whenever we think of witches; whether we realise it as children or not. However, the being, often in animal form, accompanying the witch as she, or he, goes about their work is not merely a pet. The familiar, a spirit of a morally ambiguous or downright evil nature, was a prominent feature of beliefs about witchcraft in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was also found in Scotland. Even the accusation that someone might have a familiar could cause them some trouble.

Familiars did not exclusively appear as animals, they might also take a more human-like form or that of strange hybrid creatures, but they most often appeared as animals that people might encounter in their daily lives in rural communities – sometimes domestic animals and others that might be classed as vermin. The animal form a familiar assumed could vary; birds, cats, dogs, hares, ferrets, moles, rats, toads, even horses were possible guises. Witches might also assume the guise of an animal themselves.

There are various theories as to the possible origins of familiars, with some citing medieval sorcerers and their summoning of spirits as one inspiration. Others have suggested that some stories were inspired by pets kept by the accused and anxieties about the propriety of doting on animals. Further theories have pointed to earlier beliefs about the devil and the forms in which he might appear.

Witches were not the only people who were believed to work with animals and spirits. Cunning folk were men and women who used magic to heal people and cattle, help someone to recover lost property, cure cases of bewitchment, help people in matters of love and many other things that might be causes of anxiety in daily life. They sometimes consulted spirits in order to achieve these ends and occasionally utilised animals in their cures. If their clients or neighbours took a disliking to them, cunning folk could be accused of being witches. These people and their clients were usually quite poor and may have believed in and held on to old superstitions about different kinds of fairies and spirits. They might also have retained some elements of Catholicism.

Witchcraft and the Law – Punishable by Death

In England in 1563, a statute was passed stating that charms, the conjuration of spirits and the use of witchcraft to harm or kill others were felonies. Bewitching someone to death was punishable by death. In 1604 another Witchcraft Act stated that associating with and keeping wicked spirits was a felony, placing more emphasis on familiars, although a belief that the nature of the relationship between a witch and her familiar was diabolic had already been present.

Cunning folk didn’t necessarily see themselves as witches but both ecclesiastical authorities and the secular courts that took control of witch trials were more inclined to view the use of spirits and charms as witchcraft, especially if it was thought that harm had been done to a person or their property. In more privileged circles, the familiar was believed to be one of the means through which a witch might harm or kill a person or their property.

It is worth noting that most people who were accused of witchcraft in England were not executed. However, stories about familiars and the discovery of a ‘witch’s mark’ on the body of the accused – a strange blemish or growth from which the familiar was said to suckle blood – could be damning evidence of a diabolic pact.

Due to the sheer breadth of information we have on familiars from pamphlets discussing witch trials, in this series of blog posts I will focus on just a few prominent forms of familiars that appeared in English witch trials – dogs and toads, but first, the cat…

Halloween decorations are dominated by sleek black cats, believed by some to cause bad luck, although sometimes said to be lucky in England and Scotland. However, familiars taking feline form in the witch trials were not exclusively black.

A literary connection

The three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth mention their familiars as they are about to depart from each other’s company in Act 1, Scene 1;‘Graymalkin’ refers to a grey cat, while ‘Paddock’ refers to a toad familiar. Macbeth was probably written during the reign of King James VI of Scotland and I of England, who wrote Daemonologie, first published in 1597. This was a treatise which, amongst other things, argued that witches were very real, that the devil could appear to them in various forms and discussed the kinds of magic they used. This emphasis on evidence was intended to make sure that the ‘right’ people were tried and executed as witches. James himself became involved in a number of witch trials when he believed there was reason to doubt the accusation of witchcraft.

Three Witches and a cat called Sathan

In 1566, three women stood accused of witchcraft in Chelmsford, Essex. Their names were Elizabeth Francis, Agnes Waterhouse and Joan Waterhouse. Agnes Waterhouse was about to become the first recorded case of a person executed for witchcraft in England. At the heart of the trial was a story about ‘Sathan’ or Satan, the feline familiar of Elizabeth and then Agnes. He was the devil in animal form. Elizabeth said that she inherited the spirit, which first appeared ‘in the likeness of a whyte spotted catte’, from her grandmother. His first act of service for Elizabeth was to provide her with some sheep when she asked to be rich, although the sheep soon disappeared.

Sathan was quite vocal. He supposedly spoke to Elizabeth and advised her on how to attract a suitor and abort a pregnancy when the suitor refused to marry her. He killed the suitor in revenge for not marrying Elizabeth. Sathan was also said to have killed Elizabeth’s infant daughter and lamed her husband at her request when she was later unhappily married. Sathan’s payment for such services was food, such as bread and milk, and some of Elizabeth’s blood, which was suckled from a witch’s mark on her body. He was later traded to Agnes Waterhouse in exchange for a cake.

The Black Cat – A Familiar Story

Tales of a black cat familiar appeared in a pamphlet in 1579, discussing a trial in Windsor. This familiar, ‘Gille’, belonged to Mother Devell and was fed, like Sathan, with blood and milk. ‘Bunne’, another familiar, assuming the likeness of a black cat, appeared in this trial and was said to have tried to have persuaded its mistress to escape rather than confess her crimes. Elizabeth Stile, who was not liked by her neighbours, was said to have a familiar called Phillip, who took the form of a rat. Clearly demonic cats did not seem to mind working with equally demonic beings that might normally serve as prey items!

Why Cats?

So, why did the devil, or devils, and familiars sometimes appear as cats? It’s hard to say exactly why certain animal forms were thought to be more favoured by such spirits than others but it’s likely that some of it was down both human and animal behaviours. Cats have not been domesticated nearly as long as dogs have and seem to retain a fair amount of wild instincts, such as their strong hunting instinct. In dogs this instinct could easily be channelled into hunting for sport, due to their nature as pack animals, meaning that hunting breeds were prized amongst the nobility for whom hunting was a favourite pastime. The dog, as a pack animal, could be more easily trained to perform a variety of tasks for humans and seemed to bend more easily to our will.

Cats have not been as selectively bred or regulated by humans to the same extent as dogs. Their nature has often been perceived as aloof and mysterious in the West. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the behaviour of cats, such as their nightly activities and tendency to do as they please could have been interpreted as being sinister in a world that was still very religious and did not have the scientific and medical resources available to us today. However, that is not to say that cats were not celebrated at all. Some stories had cats aiding heroes, such as the cat in the story of Dick Whittington, although some of these cats also seemed to be supernaturally intelligent.

Although the strong hunting instinct of cats was utilised to control vermin, cats themselves could be regarded as a risk to human health; in the seventeenth century, some physicians thought that a cat’s breath could have a poisonous effect on the lungs. Stray cats and dogs were killed during the Great Plague of London in 1665 in an effort to control the spread of disease. With people unable to fully explain how the plague spread, it is easy to see how some animals were wrongly blamed for the disease.

Stephanie Studders