One-Eyed Joan, the Judge and the Fairy, 1555

Introducing Joan and the Judge

Have you heard the one about the judge, the fairy and the one-eyed woman? No, well settle back and prepare to be astounded. 19 March 1555, Joan Terry of Taunton walked into the Consistory Court at Wells and faced the magistrate. As a church official he could not personally order her execution, but he could hand her over to the secular courts as a heretic and there things might end with kindling.

And Joan? This sixty year old woman was a healer, and she had a sideline in witchhunting. It was the second of these activities that had got her into trouble with the authorities. Joan’s case has often been cited, particularly by scholars using Keith Thomas’ summary of what was a necessarily rapid reading of the records of Joan’s trial. To the best of my knowledge I’m the first person who has gone back to the originals and tried to make sense of the five ragged pages of sixteenth-century cursive (with an ecclesiastical flourish) since KT published Religion and the Decline of Magic in 1971. I hope to publish my transcript in the near future.

The Trial

In those five pages, a public notary did his best to keep the notes of the trial as a kind of legal stream of consciousness, with Joan’s words being recorded, but, save in a couple of instances, the judge’s voice is not heard: what mattered after all was what Joan said.

I’m going to do something rather risqué that I wouldn’t attempt in a formal publication. I’m going to try and recreate the trial as the dialogue it really was. As noted, the judge’s questions were not typically given so I’m going to guess at those and then translate Joan’s answers into modern English.

The case was very possibly started off by an observation from a local curate Mr Mallett. This, in any case, is the background (perhaps communicated in a letter to the court) as Joan was asked to stand before the judge. So get yourself up to speed before plunging in…

2 February 1555 Joan visited David Morris at Chilton, where his wife had a stomach ailment. Joan gave medicines and healed her. She told David and his wife that one of their nearest neighbours had bewitched both his wife and his cattle. David then asked her to return to treat the cattle, which were wasting away. She came back, this time with Mr Mallett the curate and several others. She publicly named Symon Ingard, Morris’s next-door neighbour, as the person who had bewitched Morris’s cattle, his wife, and other people’s cattle in the area. She then cured one of Morris’s cows.

The Questions, Part 1

So much for the summary now the questions begin. Again in a couple of cases the judge’s question is given. I’ve put an asterisk next to those. The other questions are reverse engineered: i.e. I invented them. If anyone can suggest better questions I’d be interested to improve these.

Judge: How did you know that Symon Ingard had bewitched the cattle?*

Joan: By the help of God and the fair fairies, with whom I have been acquainted for thirty years and more.

Judge: So you know these fairies, do you?

Joan: I have been in their company many and often times, and have been merry in their company, dancing in green meadows. I would be as glad to be in the company of them as any gentleman or gentlewoman, for they have taught me so much that I get my living by it.

Judge: And how did you first make their acquaintance?

Joan: Once I met with one of the fair fairies, a man, in the market at Taunton, who had a white rod in his hand. I came to him thinking to say hello, and then my sight was clean taken away for a time. And I am still blind in one of one of my eyes. And this fairy man told me that Symon Ingard had bewitched the cattle and the wife of David Morris and diverse other men’s cattle.

Judge: Have you spoken with the fairies since?

Joan: I spoke with certain of the fairies in my own house about mid-Lent, and they told me that Symon Ingard had hurt and bewitched the said cattle and the wife of the abovenamed David, and diverse others.

Judge: What else have the fairies taught you?

Joan: If any man’s pig should happen to be sick, then take fine earth newly cast up by a mole in a fair meadow and cast the said earth over the same pig, say the name of Jesus, and they shall recover health.

Judge: Do you think that Symon Ingard is acquainted with the fairies?*

Joan: No, for then he would do no hurt. The fairies teach no man to do hurt, but only good.

Judge: But the fairy who took your sight from you did you hurt. So it would seem that they can indeed cause others to do hurt.*

Joan: The hurt which I sustained, I deserved it, because I approached too near to him in the open market.

The trial was adjourned here for reasons that are not explained. My guess is that the judge wanted to give time to Joan to sort herself out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave her quite the talking to once the notary had put down his quill.

I should also note that the detail of the fairy in the market is extraordinarily exciting. This is a fragment of the legend Midwife to Fairies (ML 5070), where the midwife, subsequent to the birth, sees the husband of her fairy patient in the local market, goes to talk to him and is blinded in the eye that can see fairies. I could go on about this for two or three thousand words, but let’s keep on with the case…

The Questions, Part 2

14 June 1555 Joan was brought back to Wells and the questions started up again.

Judge: Do you maintain that the fairies told you Symon Ingard had bewitched the wife and cattle of David Morris?

Joan: Yes. But since I was last examined I have never seen nor spoken with the fairies, because I have heard their reputation.

Judge: What do you say when you go to heal bewitched cattle?

Joan: In the name of the Trinity, and Our Lady. Five Paternosters, five Ave Marias, and a Creed.

Judge: Have you had any further dealings with the fairies?

Joan: I went with the fairies in his [?Morris’] lands at Compton at the Feast of the Annunciation last. They declared unto me that Symon Ingard had bewitched the wife and cattle of David Morris.

Judge: Do you stand by your previous testimony?

Joan: All the confessions made are true. And my doings in healing of man and beast, by the power of God taught to me by the fairies, are both godly and good.

Joan came to the trial hoping to convince the judge that she had nothing to do with the fairies. But she almost slips up at the end introducing them back in. Note too that despite her protestations that she had avoided the faries, the feast of the Annunciation fell after the first hearing! She and the fairies had been clacking away like starlings. Naughty, Joan!

She got off with a slap on the wrist. She abjured the fairies and did a modest penance. In Mary’s England this was pretty much what one would have expected. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, with witchcraft back on the statute book, Joan would have very possibly ended in a secular court with a noose.

Help!

What? You thought this was a free ride? No, no, no, no… I’ve been struggling with some of the readings and I thought that the hive mind (and some people with training in sixteenth-century script) might be able to assist. Five samples. Can you do better?

‘she saith that she speake w[i]th certayne [?] of the ^said^ vayres yn her owne house & bowte myddelent last past’

Is this ‘certayne’? Note the word ‘vayres’ is frequently used in the text.

‘saithe for Instrucc[i]on that yf Anye ma[n]? swayne happen to be sycke drope then takethe fyne’ [continues: earth]

The worst sentence. Is that ‘instruction’?; I’m almost sure that ‘man’ is wrong (ma[le]??) but…; drope? = dropsy??…

‘Tunc tande[m] eide[m] iniecit that the said vayre w[hi]ch toke her sight from her dyd her hurte whereupon yt semyth that they can charge [?] other[s] to do hurte who Aunswered that the hurte w[hi]che’

I’m confident about the general sense of ‘charge’ but is that the word…?

Water damage makes these lines very difficult. The last three words, including the subscript in red are almost impossible to read. I’m guessing ‘until such time’ but I wonder whether a judge would have allowed folk healing under any circumstances…

‘[line before: nor practyse nor] worke any thinge taughte unto her by them [fairies] nor take upon her to heale any man or beast untill suche tyme [next page: as she shalbe thereunto by the ordynarye admitted and humbly submyttynge her selfe unto the correc[ti]on of the Iudge]

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