Matthew Hale

Samuel Johnson was an excellent writer of Latinized English, but I am confident that he never saw a real ghost.

Matthew Hale was a reasonably good judge of law, but he was mistaken about witches causing children to vomit crooked pins.

John Wesley was quite a man in a kind of religious way, but in this country few people sympathize with his hatred of Republican government, or with his contempt for the Revolutionary Fathers.

Sir Isaac Newton in the domain of science was the colossus of his time, but his commentary on the book of Revelation would hardly excite envy, even in the breast of a Spurgeon or a Talmage.

One of the accusers was convicted of a fragrant lie in the act of giving testimony, but the narrator, Hutchinson, while giving the fact, treats it as of no consequence.

One of the accusers was convicted of a fragrant lie in the act of giving testimony, but the narrator, Hutchinson, while giving the fact, treats it as of no consequence because Sir Matthew Hale and the jury of his court were satisfied with the condemnation of a witch under precisely the same circumstances.

The parting glimpse we have of this first victim is dismally true on the face of it.

It is most characteristic.

Ancient Greeks measured months according to lunar cycles, and the full moon was incorporated into religious observances.

Some Greek and Roman writers also connected the moon with witchcraft, including this idea that witches could magically draw the moon down from the sky.

That's so dangerous.

[laughs] It's very dangerous, the-

Yeah.

Set up a camera.

Ancient Greek and Roman writers discuss connections between lunar cycles and the natural world, as they really discussed connections with all kinds of things in the natural world.

Aristotle, for example, wrote about observations connecting the moon with marine life and tides.

It is not unpleasant to know that Justice Archer met with a good deal of criticism for his part in the affair.

In the following year occurred the trials at Bury St. Edmund's, which derive their interest and importance largely from the position of the presiding judge, Sir Matthew Hale, who was at this time Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and was later to be Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

He was allowed, according to the admission of one none too friendly to him, on all hands to be the most profound lawyer of his time.

Hale had been a Puritan from his youth, though not of the rigid or theologically minded sort.

On the following Sunday, Baron Hale composed a meditation upon the subject.

Unfortunately, it was simply a dissertation on scripture texts and touched upon the law at no point.

It is obvious enough to the most casual student that Sir Matthew Hale had a chance to anticipate the work of Chief Justice Holt and missed it.

In the 90s of the 17th century, as we shall see, there was a man in the Chief Justiceship who dared to nullify the law of James I.

One of the accusers was convicted of a fragrant lie in the act of giving testimony, but the narrator, Hutchinson, while giving the fact, treats it as of no consequence.

One of the accusers was convicted of a fragrant lie in the act of giving testimony, but the narrator, Hutchinson, while giving the fact, treats it as of no consequence because Sir Matthew Hale and the jury of his court were satisfied with the condemnation of a witch under precisely the same circumstances.

The parting glimpse we have of this first victim is dismally true on the face of it.

It is most characteristic.

One of the accusers was convicted of a flagrant lie in the act of giving testimony.

But the narrator, Hutchinson, while giving the fact, treats it as of no consequence because Sir Matthew Hale and the jury of his court were satisfied with the condemnation of a witch under precisely the same circumstances.

The parting glimpse we have of this first victim is dismally true on the face of it.

It is most characteristic.

Consequences must be had.

Would nature dish out consequence if you don't follow its laws? Is it doing it to just spite you or is it just because it's like a natural balancing system to make sure that you operate within the guidelines or FAFO, right? Here's Sir Matthew Hale.

Let me remember when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal.

that there is likewise a pity due to the country.

At the execution of Urban Grandier, the famous magician of London, in 1634, a large fly was seen buzzing about the stake; and a priest promptly seizing the opportunity of improving the occasion for the benefit of the onlookers, declared that Beelzebub had come in his own proper person to carry off Grandier's soul to hell.

In 1664 occurred the celebrated witch trials, which took place before Sir Matthew Hale.

The accused were charged with bewitching two children; and part of the evidence against them was that flies and bees were seen to carry into the victims' mouths the nails and pins which they afterward vomited.

There is an allusion to this belief in the fly-killing scene in Titus Andronicus.

The practice of witchcraft and magic involved the absolute and voluntary barter of body and soul to the evil one for the purpose of obtaining a few short years of superhuman power to be employed for the gratification of the culprit's avarice, ambition, or desire for revenge.

In the strange history of that most inexplicable mental disease, the witchcraft epidemic, as it has been justly called by a high authority on such matters, we moderns are, by the nature of our education and prejudices, completely incapacitated for sympathizing with either the persecutors or their victims.

We are at a loss to understand how clear-sighted and upright men like Sir Matthew Hale could consent to become parties to a relentless persecution to the death of poor helpless beings whose chief crime in most cases was that they had suffered starvation both in body and in mind.

We cannot understand it because none of us believe in the existence of evil spirits.