United States or Brazil ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But in this case the women involved seem, so far as we know, to have had no connection with the earlier cases. The fate of Elizabeth Francis and that of Elleine Smith are more instructive as proof of the long-standing nature of a community suspicion. Elleine could not escape her mother's reputation nor Elizabeth her own. Both these women seem to have been of low character at any rate.
Elizabeth had admitted illicit amours, and Elleine may very well have been guilty on the same count. All of the women involved in the two trials were in circumstances of wretched poverty; most, if not all, of them were dependent upon begging and the poor relief for support. It is easy to imagine the excitement in Essex that these trials must have produced.
One of them was almost certainly Elleine Smith, daughter of a woman hanged as a witch, another illustration of the persistence of suspicion against the members of a family. The Chelmsford affair of 1579 was not unlike that of 1566. There were the same tales of spirits that assumed animal forms.
The young son of Elleine Smith declared that his mother kept three spirits, Great Dick in a wicker bottle, Little Dick in a leathern bottle, and Willet in a wool-pack. Goodwife Webb saw "a thyng like a black Dogge goe out of her doore." But the general character of the testimony in the second trial bore no relation to that in the first. There was no agreement of the different witnesses.
It is possible that the whole affair started from the whim of a sick child, who, when she saw Elleine Smith, cried, "Away with the witch." A caution here. The pamphlets were hastily compiled and perhaps left out important facts. Her eight-year-old boy was probably illegitimate.
Word Of The Day