In 1612 the poet John Donne wrote:

Knows’t thou how blood, which to the heart doth flow,

Doth from one ventricle to the other go?

This was a rhetorical question – for no one did know. A common idea was that the central division of the heart (the septum) had holes through which the blood passed – though Vesalius had shown it had not. William Harvey (1578–1657), who probably knew Donne, solved this mystery with his discovery of the circulation of the blood. He was already lecturing about this at the College of Physicians in London in 1615, though he did not publish it until 1628. Even then, he records, many medical experts thought his great discovery ‘crack-brained’, and some, like René Descartes, stuck to the idea that the heart was a kind of furnace rather than, as Harvey had shown, a pump made of muscle.

As private physician to Charles I, Harvey looked after the two royal princes at the Battle of Edgehill, during which he sat under a hedge reading a book. His royal appointment also involved him in the affair of the Lancashire witches, recounted here by his biographer Geoffrey Keynes, which illustrates the gradual advance of science over superstition in the seventeenth century.

It was in 1633 that the events took place in Pendle Forest near Burnley in Lancashire that led to Harvey’s being called as a witness in the following year. This remote area in the north-west had been for some years agitated by a series of crimes attributed to witches, gossip leading to fanciful accusations conceived in the fertile brains of imaginative children or even taught them by their elders. The particular story that ultimately concerned Harvey began on 10 February 1633. A boy of 11 named Edmund Robinson made an elaborate deposition before two Justices of the Peace, Richard Shutleworth and John Starkey, at Padiham, alleging that on All Saints Day last (1 November 1632) he was gathering wild plums in Wheatley Lane, when he saw two greyhounds, one brown the other black, running in his direction over the next field. Each dog, he noticed, had a collar which ‘did shine like gold’, but though each had a string attached there was no one with them. At the same moment he saw a hare, and, thinking to set the dogs off after it, cried ‘Loo, loo, loo’, but they would not run. This angered him, and tying them by their strings to a bush, he beat them with a stick. Thereupon the black dog stood up in the person of the wife of one Dickenson, and the brown dog as a small boy he did not know. In his fright Robinson made to run away, but was stopped by the woman, who, producing a silver coin from her pocket, offered to give it to him if he would hold his tongue. This he refused, saying, ‘Nay, thou art a witch’. She then pulled from her pocket a sort of bridle that jingled, put it on the head of the boy that had been a dog, who then turned into a white horse. Seizing young Robinson, the woman mounted him on the horse in front of her and rode with him to a house called Hoarstones, a locality well known as a gathering place for witches. Many other people then came riding up on horses of various colours to the number of about threescore, and meat was roasted. A young woman tried to make him eat some of this and to drink something out of a glass, but he refused after the first taste of it. He then saw various people go into a neighbouring barn, where six of them kneeled and pulled on ropes fastened to the roof. This brought down smoking flesh, lumps of butter, and milk, which they caught in basins. Then six more people repeated the process, making such fearful faces that he stole out in terror and ran home, where he told his father that he had also seen the woman pricking pictures with thorns. When it was noticed that the boy had escaped, a party of people, several of whom he named, started in pursuit and had nearly caught up with him at a place called Boggard-hole, when two horsemen came up and rescued him. On the same evening Robinson’s father sent him to tie up two cows in their stalls, and on the way, in a field called the Ellers, he met another boy who picked a quarrel and made him fight until his ears were made very bloody. Looking down he saw that the aggressor had a cloven foot, which aroused fresh fears. He ran on to find the cows and saw the light of a lantern; thinking it was carried by friends he ran towards it only to find a woman on a bridge, whom he recognized, and turned back to meet again the boy with the cloven foot, who gave him a blow on the back and made him cry. The boy’s father in confirmation of the story said he had gone to look for him and found him in a state of terror and crying pitifully, so that he did not recover for nearly a quarter of an hour. In his deposition to the magistrates the boy gave the names of seventeen persons whom he knew as present at Hoarstones and said he could recognize others …

The boy was taken round by his father to various churches in the district and identified many more people among the congregations, money being paid for his services. It so happened that at the church of Kildwick, where he was taken, the curate was David Webster, who in 1677 published an important book, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, exposing the frauds perpetrated in witch-hunts. Webster related that he asked the boy if he had truly seen and heard the strange things that he described, but two ill-favoured men who were in charge of him forbade the boy to answer, saying that he had already been examined by two Justices. As a result of this nearly thirty people were imprisoned, and a variety of other accusations were hurled at them by their enraged neighbours. A trial took place at Lancaster after the prisoners had been searched for any suspicious marks on their bodies, and seventeen were found guilty on this evidence. Great importance was attached to the discovery of marks on witches’ bodies, since it was believed that the devil put his marks on those allied to him, and these places then became callous and insensitive. The law therefore required that the accused should be scrutinized by a jury of the same sex together with one doctor or several. The head was to be shaved and every part of the body handled. Any callous spot that was found was to be pricked with pins, and, if it was insensitive, that was evidence of guilt. Search was also to be made for anything resembling a teat capable of suckling the witch’s familiar or imp, which might take the form of a rat, mouse, frog, toad, bird, fly, or spider; sometimes the imps were in the form of larger animals such as a cat or dog. King James in his Daemonologie believed firmly in two ‘good helps that may be used for their triall: the one is, the finding of the marke and the trying the insensibleness thereof: the other is their fleeting on the water’, since those in whom the devil resided were lighter than normal people and so floated when thrown into a pond.

Fortunately for the seventeen Lancashire prisoners found guilty, it was requested that seven of them should be seen by John Bridgeman, Bishop of Chester, in whose diocese they lived. The Bishop went to the gaol, but by then three of them had died and a fourth, Jennet Hargreaves, was very ill. Of the remaining three, two denied all knowledge of witchcraft, but the third, Margaret Johnson, declared herself to have been a witch for six years. She had stated on 9 March 1633 before the same Justices who had examined Edmund Robinson, that in a fit of anger and discontent a devil had appeared to her in the form of a man ‘apparrelled in a suite of blake, tied about with silk pointes, whoe offered her, if shee would give him her soule, hee would supply all her wantes, and at her appointment would helpe her to kill and revenge her either of men or beeste, or what she desired’. To this she agreed and the devil bade her call him Memillion, and when she called he would be ready to do her will. She denied being at the meeting at Hoarstones on the particular day described by Robinson, but admitted being there on the next Sunday, when various evil plans were concerted. She further declared ‘that such witches as have sharpe boanes are generally for the devil to prick them with which have no papps nor duggs, but raiseth blood from the place pricked with the boane, which witches are more greater and grand witches then they which have papps or duggs’. After further boastings she said that since ‘this trouble befell her, her Spiritt hath left her, and shee never saw him since’.

After his examination the Bishop reported the affair to the Secretary of State, Sir John Coke, and so it came to the ears of King Charles. The King was a less credulous man than his father, and he ordered the Lord Privy Seal, Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester, to write to the Court doctors as follows:

The four prisoners, including Jennet Hargreaves, who had now recovered, had been brought to London and were held at the Ship Tavern in Greenwich. They were now examined by the prescribed jury at Surgeon’s Hall in Monkwell Street, and the following report was returned:

Surgeons Hall in Mugwell Streete London 2d July Ao Dni 1634 We in humble obeyance to your Lordshipps have this day caled unto us the Chirurgeons and Midwyves whose names are hereunder written who have by the directions of Mr. Doctor Harvey (in our presence and his) made diligent searche and Inspection on those women which weare lately brought upp from Lancaster and ffynd as followeth vidz.

On the bodyes of Jennett Hargreaves, Ffrances Dicconson, and Mary Spencer nothinge unnaturalle neyther in their secrets or any other partes of theire bodyes, nor anythinge lyke a teate or marke nor any Signe that any suche thinge haith ever beene.

On the body of Margaret Johnson wee fynd two things maye be called teats the one betweene her secretts and the ffundament on the edge thereof the other on the middle of her left buttocke. The first in shape lyke to the teate of a Bitche, but in our judgements nothinge but the skin of the ffundament drawen out as yt wilbe after the pyles or applicacion of leeches. The seacond is lyke the nipple or teate of a woman’s breast but of the same colour with the rest of the skin without any hollowness or yssue for any bloode or juyce to come from thence.

Midwives
              Margryt Franses Anna Ashwell          
  Aurelia Molins Ffrancis Palmer  
  Amis Willuby Katheren Manuche  
  Rebecke Layne Clifton  
  Sibell Ffellipps Joane Sensions  
Surgeons
Alexander Read
  W. Clowes Richd Wateson  
  Alex. Baker Ja. Molins  
  Ric. Mapes Henry Blackley  

This statement, bearing every mark of Harvey’s precise and logical mind, was not signed by himself, Alexander Read having taken his place. As a result four of the seven witches were pardoned by the King, who had himself seen them. Subsequently the boy Robinson, having been brought to London with his father, was re-examined alone and confessed to being an impostor. His father, he said, and some others had taught him what he was to say with a view to making some money out of the story; in fact at the time of the supposed meeting at Hoarstones he was some distance away gathering plums in another man’s orchard.