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When Mistress Bodenham had been hanged, the fits ceased, and she professed great thankfulness to God and a desire to serve him. The case of Joan Peterson, who was tried at the Old Bailey in 1652, is another instance of the struggle of a spirited woman against too great odds. Joan, like Mistress Bodenham, kept various kinds of powders and prescribed physic for ailing neighbors.
The history of Meres's work, a dissertation from which is here extracted, is curious. In or about 1596, Nicholas Ling and John Bodenham conceived the idea of publishing a series of volumes containing proverbs, maxims, and sententious reflections on religion, morals, and life generally.
It was believed, indeed, by neighbors that there had been a conspiracy on the part of some of the family to poison the mother-in-law. At all events, a maid in the family was imprisoned for participation in such a plot. It was then that Anne Bodenham first came into the story.
Vetch had dropped his musket at the Neck, and Bodenham and Cornelius were unarmed. "Let's have a look at the tucker," said Vetch. There was but one bag of provisions. It contained a piece of salt pork, two loaves, and some uncooked potatoes. Signal Hill station was not rich in edibles. "That ain't much," said the Crow, with rueful face. "Is it, Gabbett?"
That evening they reach the camping ground by twos and threes; and each wonders between the paroxysms of hunger if his face is as haggard, and his eyes as bloodshot, as those of his neighbour. On the seventh day, Bodenham says his feet are so bad he can't walk, and Greenhill, with a greedy look at the berries, bids him stay behind.
Salterne? For those times were the day-dawn of English commerce; and not a merchant in Bideford, or in all England, but had his imagination all on fire with projects of discoveries, companies, privileges, patents, and settlements; with gallant rivalry of the brave adventures of Sir Edward Osborne and his new London Company of Turkey Merchants; with the privileges just granted by the Sultan Murad Khan to the English; with the worthy Levant voyages of Roger Bodenham in the great bark Aucher, and of John Fox, and Lawrence Aldersey, and John Rule; and with hopes from the vast door for Mediterranean trade, which the crushing of the Venetian power at Famagusta in Cyprus, and the alliance made between Elizabeth and the Grand Turk, had just thrown open.
Cotton, Gleanings ... relative to the History of ... Exeter, 152. In the famous Warboys case of 1593 it was the witch's presence that relieved the bewitched of their ailments. York Depositions, 64-67. Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, pt. ii, 120-121. Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 120. York Depositions, 69. Ibid., 75-78. See the story of Anne Bodenham.
"It does seem close," said Bodenham; "I could pitch a stone on to the guard-house. Good-bye, you Bloody Spot!" he adds, with sudden rage, shaking his fist vindictively at the Penitentiary; "I don't want to see you no more till the Day o' Judgment." Vetch divides the provisions, and they travel all that day until dark night. The scrub is prickly and dense.
Swifte boates and barges to passe by winde and oare, covered with quilted canvas of defence againste shott from the shoare, to perce ryvers for discoverie, and to passe to and froe, offensive and defensive againste savages devised by Mr. Bodenham of Spaine. Shipwrights in some nomber to be employed on the timber. Oare makers, and makers of cable and cordage.
We may close with the observation that there is no finer instance of womanly courage in the annals of witchcraft than that of Anne Bodenham. Doubtless she had used charms, and experimented with glasses; it had been done by those of higher rank than she. As for the maid, she had got herself well out of trouble.
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