Debunking Witches: Francis Hutchinson, 18th Century Women’s Rights Activist
Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write unironically: I want to take a moment to thank you, Christian minister of 18th century England, for all you’ve done for women’s rights.
But recently I learned about Francis Hutchinson, so now I’m writing it.
Francis Hutchinson become a minister at St. James parish at Bury St. Edmunds at the dawn of the 18th century. Early in his ministry, he read a book that critiqued the Salem witch trials. Apparently, he found it persuasive. Hutchinson then wrote his own refutation of the very idea of witchcraft, coupled with a condemnation of witch trials in 1706, but he did not yet publish it, because the issue was so incendiary. In 1712, he witnessed the trial and conviction of one Jane Wenham. In 1718, he finally published his work: An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft. It’s not the most gripping read you’ll have encountered, but I can tell you this: his book probably saved the lives of hundreds of women in 18th century England, and so we should all raise a glass to Reverend Hutchinson.
And, as I’ll argue, his book both had an impact on and reflected changes in the idea of horror in this period.
Hutchinson, whom I’ll call “Franky,” says that witch stories “ tell us, that he [the Devil] makes Compacts with the Witches, and lies with them, and sucks their blood: And that at their bidding, he kills Children and Cattle, and sinks Ships by Sea, and carries them to foreign Meetings, where they revel with other Witches, and drink up the wine in Princes Cellars: Now the holy Scriptures tell us no such Tales as these, nor any thing like them. And howsoever some take Pains to join the Scripture Relations and these, as close as they can together; in my Opinion, they do Religion no Service by it.”[1] (13-14)
Do you see what he’s done there? Oh, Franky, you little maniac!
They do Religion no Service by it.
Rather than making an all-out defense of women—becuase you really can’t start a serious clerical work with something like that—he suggests that witchcraft rhetoric, by distorting and falsifying the contents of the Bible, is defaming Christianity. Sick move, bruh. When you are writing from within institutionalized Christianity, you know you have no real chance of saying that, for example, women are awesome and should be assumed to be human beings in all instances. Because: Eve. But you can say that making up fictional accounts about women and devils and witchcraft whole-cloth, and associating those fictional accounts with Scriptural knowledge is denigrating to the truth of the Bible itself.
They do Religion no Service by it.
Why not? Because, in Hutchinson’s opinion, Christianity is doing just fine on its own, without this added superstructure of persecution and the villainization of women. It does not serve religion. By saying this, Hutchinson implicitly asserts that he is, as ever, on God’s team. And he does not assert anything about the rights of women. Yet. But he’s getting there.
He points out that many of the signs and symptoms of witchcraft, like distorted facial expressions or superhuman strength, can originate in mental disturbances, with no clear affiliation with the occult.
Witches, then, might be sick, and deserving of our pity, rather than evil, and deserving of execution.
Later, Hutchinson makes a massive list of people in history who tried to prove the existence of magic, to persecute people for practicing it, or to avail themselves of it. Pythagoras. Nero. Appolonius of Tyana. Apuleius. Julian the Apostate. Roger Bacon. Albertus Magnus. Arnold of Villa Nuova. Joan of Arc. In all cases, he concludes, the alleged witchcraft was spurious, unsupported by facts.
Witchcraft, he avers, has no historical basis.
So, it fails to benefit Scripture, and it fails to be confirmed by history. Two strikes.
When he gets to recent history—like 16th century and beyond—he details the countless people who were executed for witchcraft without adequate justification.
Witch trials, he avers, have no historical basis.
The Reverend Hutchinson has worked out something important. When you want to counter patriarchal practices—like witch-hunting—you have to use the discourses of power that have the long-standing approval of the patriarchy. Discourses like Scripture and History. That is, he has worked out that if you want to Take up for Women, you have to speak in the Languages of Men.
He has also worked out that, when you want to make an impact on an entrenched belief system, quantity of data is more effective than anything else. His list of people executed unjustifiably for witchcraft is extremely long. Reading his list of executed “witches” feels very much like reading a war memorial. You see the names, but you also experience the sheer scale of slaughter.
After the massive listing of the persecuted and killed, Hutchinson reverts to the dominant form of his narrative, which is a dialogue between a witch-hunt-skeptical clergyman and a witch-hunt-hungry lawyer. The lawyer, at this point, expresses his doubt that the persecutors were wrong in all of the cases listed above. The Clergyman says back, “If they were mistaken but in one half of those Tryals, it makes a very sad case…But if I guess right, the Mistakes have been many more.” Whoa, hold up: this dude is saying that, even if some of the executed really were witches, it is wrong and lamentable to have accidentally executed others wrongly. Play out the logic: the value of the life of an innocent woman outweighs the danger posed by one witch to her community. A woman’s life has significant intrinsic value.
Franky, you sly dog! You are advocating for women!
One of the most important claims Hutchinson makes is this innocent little one: “Things odd and unaccountable are to be respited till we understand them.” (75) Hutchinson is presupposing that supernatural-seeming events have natural and recoverable causes. He’s assuming that “magic” can be explained by recourse to knowable phenomena. He is assuming, in point of fact, that the realm of supernatural dealings isn’t real, and that what’s needed to grapple with things that seem supernatural is patience, not persecution.
“False Principles,” he says, “will make false Conclusions. In Arithmetick, he that works by a false Rule will have a false Sum, and if he works by it a Hundred Times, and with never so great Care, it will give a Hundred wrong Instances as well as one.” (78)
Swoon! I love this guy. This guy is the 18th century equivalent of the reflexively feminist hyperrationalist man, who just doesn’t see sex-based prejudice as justifiable by logic. Here’s the thing, he says: if your principle is wrong, you can’t think right in individual cases. He doesn’t come right out and say “witches don’t exist,” but that’s what he’s driving at.
At this point, the adversarial lawyer quips back at the Clergyman, giving an instance of successful recent witchcraft convictions. The Clergyman’s response? “[I]t is a monstrous Tale, without any tolerable Proof to support it.” (88)
Hang on a second: rationalism in the service of women? Who’d have thunk it?
“Observe the monstrous Absurdity of these supposed Facts: for I think they make the coarsest Story that I ever met with. These Women and Children, they say, rode to Blockula upon Men; and those Men when they came there, where reared against the Wall asleep. Then again, the rode upon Posts, or upon Goats with Spits stuck into their Backsides. They flew through Chimnies and Windows, without breaking either Brick or Glass. When they were there, they lay with the Devil, and had Sons and Daughters; and those Children again were married, and brought forth Toads and Serpents…Now Mr. Advocate, either these things are real, or else they are Dreams. If you would have me think there is any Reality, tell me why I must deny the Tales of the Golden Legend, and yet receive these? I love to have a Reason for what I do, and if you would not have me swallow all the Lies that are told me, give some Criterion or Mark of Distinction, whereby I may judge what is natural and probable, and what is not.” (116)
Probability in the service of women? Woot.
Later, the Lawyer reminds the Clergyman of a particular English witch who confessed. And—be still my heart—the Clergyman points out that the woman accused was an abuse victim, and that her confession was clearly coerced and should be discounted: “I pray take notice how her Confession was drawn from her. For about two years after the first Accusation, she maintain’d her Innocence stoutly…But by long ill usage, her Husband on one side swearing at and beating her, and on the other side Mr. Throgmorton…trying unfair Tricks, and keeping her from her own Home…I reckon her own Health was so impair’d, that one Night she was vapour’d to that degree, that they though the Devil was in her. Then observe how very foully they drew her Confession from her…The Children with Tears begg’d, that she would confess, They said they should be well, if she confess’d, and they would forgive her from the Bottom of their Hearts…Still this would not do. She would not confess…But Mr. Throgmorton prevailed with her to charge the Spirit in the Name of God, that they might have no more Fits. She yielded to that, and then the Children would grow well. This surpriz’d the poor Woman, and, very likely, made her believe that all had really proceeded from her ill Tongue.” (134-5) What, what? An 18th century minister is explicitly talking about domestic battery, verbal violence, coercion, manipulation, and gaslighting? He’s suggesting that, when a woman is subjected to these things, her testimony against herself should be discounted? Ka-blam!
This is miles ahead of current legal practice around coercively controlled women. A female victim of coercive control can still—and, indeed, often does—testify against herself and her own best interests, because of the way in which her abuser has crept into her mind and rewritten her reality. Hutchinson is well aware of this as a possibility and he is not fucking having it.
Oh, Reverend Hutchinson, come preach at my church.
Rachel Louis Snyder’s incredible book No Visible Bruises talks about the frequency with which abused women recant or disavow their testimony against their abusers. Snyder’s well-substantiated postulate is that the women do this because they believe they will be safer siding with their abuser than siding against him. Women under threat of physical harm and women in situations of coercion routinely give testimony that they know will be injurious to themselves, testimony that they know is false, because they are afraid. That is what happened in the 1593 case to which Hutchinson refers. Four hundred and thirty years ago. And he called it out as what it was: unreliable testimony. Not because the woman was a liar, but because she was literally driven out of her better judgement and her truth by those around her. She was driven to harm herself legally out of fear for her children and desire to avoid further disaster.
So. Franky’s treatise was the first nail in the coffin of witch trials and witch hunts. And it stuck in there not because of Franky’s startling level of psychological compassion for abused women, but because he insisted that the premises of witch prosecutions were logically unsound. Not backed up by the research, as we now say. He came at witch trials not just as a moral evil, but an intellectual one.
How and why was he able to do that? Well, first, he was apparently kind of a genius. But second, he lived in the Age of Enlightenment, when rationalism was starting to take precedence over superstition as a broad cultural value. He’s living and practicing as a clergyman at a moment when people are starting to value things like objective evidence, facts, proof, and probability are all starting to hold sway in the popular imagination as not just possible but necessary elements for assessing Truth.
Reverend Hutchinson’s balls-out feminist critique of witch-hunting, then, coincides with, reflects, and advances the decay and decline of The Supernatural as a credible thought category. Such being the case, his writing also augurs the decline of one genre of horror, and its eventual supplantation by another. Reverend Hutchinson’s writing augurs the decline of the witch narrative and anticipates the rise of something new: science-fiction horror.
But sci-fi horror won’t really get going for another hundred years or so—Franky is way ahead of his time. First, and throughout the rest of the 18th century, we’ll see a kind of intermediate form of horror, one far less supernatural than witches, but far less—ahem—scientific than we might expect. And that’s the Gothic.
I’m not going to engage presently with Gothic novels as a genre. Instead, I’m going to skip ahead to my very, very favorite one. The other significant Franky in the evolutionary history of women and horror: Frankenstein.
So that’ll be next week. But meanwhile, I want to take a moment to thank you, Francis Hutchinson, Christian preacher of 18th century England, for all you’ve done for women’s rights.
[1] Francis Hutchinson, A Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, retrieved at https://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=witchcraft057#page/43/mode/1up