Witchcraft-Bilson & Leicester Boys
Both Had Something in Common: They Accused Women of Witchcraft
Many innocent people were accused, tortured and executed based on false allegations, some outright fraud, especially during the Burning Times. Children also resorted to hoaxes, condemning the guiltless.
Leicester Boy
John Smith was the name of this boy. When he was 5 years old, he accused several women of bewitching him; however there were no convictions.
When he was 13, in 1616, he, again, accused women of bewitching him. Smith had violent seizures and it took several strong men to restrain him. He alleged the 15 women caused these fits and described their familiars in detail.
These demons were in the forms of a cat, toad, dog, horse, fish and foulmart, a carnivorous member of the European weasel family who can emit a stench. As Smith relayed information about the familiars, he made sounds, according as to which familiar was currently tormenting him, such as mewing like a cat.
Nine of the women who were tried for practicing witchcraft in the Leicestershire Summer Assizes were convicted and hanged. Six were imprisoned to await their trials. King James I heard about this while he was traveling through Leicester and had the boy brought to him so he could question the juvenile accuser.
Smith confessed that he feigned the fits because he liked the attention.
The King asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to further question the boy in order to validate that no witchcraft was involved and that Smith told him the truth. The Archbishop agreed with both. Five women were released; one died in jail.
Aftermath
King James was enraged at the judges who presided over the trials, Sir Randolph Crew and Sir Henry Winch, and publicly condemned them for their decisions. The monarch gave Ben Johnson, a famous contemporary playwright, permission to write about the judges to further rebuke them. The play was titled The Devil is an Ass.
This resulted in other judges becoming wary of accusations of witchcraft without corroboration, especially when the complainants were children.
The Bilson Boy
In 1620, another English boy, William Perry, accused an old woman, Jane Clark, of bewitching him and causing fits. This time, during the trial, the court was skeptical, most likely because of the results of the Leicester cases. The boy eventually confessed that he, like Smith, faked the fits because he also enjoyed the attention.
Perry didn’t let matters be. Not much later, he repeated the same fraudulent behavior. The Bishop of Lichfield, Thomas Morton, investigated. He saw the boy regurgitate different objects and was ready to concede witchcraft was involved when he saw Perry pass blue urine, but decided that there had to be further tests. A spy was stationed to secretly watch Perry when he was alone in his room. The boy put blue ink in his chamber pot to change the color of his urine.
Perry claimed that the devil caused him to have fits whenever the first words of the Gospel of Saint John were read. The boy didn’t have hysteria when the words were read in Greek, a language he didn’t understand. According to beliefs at that time, if this was the work of the devil via witchcraft, Perry would have comprehended the foreign tongue and acted accordingly.
What caused the phenomena was that a priest taught the boy how to vomit strange objects and other chicanery in order to pretend to be possessed. The priest hoped that by “exorcising” the boy, who was in cahoots with him, he would impress his superiors.
Related articles:
North Berwick Witches' Persecution
Source:
David Pickering, (Cassel, 1996)
Dictionary of Witchcraft,
