Belphares over Bingley

I've recently taken an interest in the local geography of witchcraft - in particular the case of Edward Fairfax and family. To this end, I purchased C. L'Estrange Ewan's Witchcraft and Demonism (1933), a work which still shows up in the bibliographies of many modern researchers into the historical phenomenon of witchcraft, collecting as it does hundreds of court records from England and Wales, from the 16th to 18th centuries.

A large number of the depositions published by L'Estrange Ewan follow a familiar pattern - a domestic quarrel between neighbours ends in an accusation of witchcraft when the child or beasts of one party falls ill. It's surprising to see how many of these cases were rejected due to the outlandishness of the claims. However, those who were established witches or 'cunning folk', known to their communities for healing and recovering lost objects, were often not as lucky when a charge of malevolent magic or misconduct was laid upon them. Even more unfortunate were those who fell into the hands of sadists like Matthew Hopkins, self-proclaimed witchfinder-general and his assistant John Stearne.

The fact that the poor, amongst whom these accusations usually arose, were largely illiterate means that the cunning folk have left little about their magical practices in their own hand. From contemporary accounts and critical reading of trial records we can deduce several of their methods, among them an oracular practice involving the sieve and shears, the practice of dowsing (so-called 'Mosaicall Rods'), herbalism, along with other techniques probably drawn from an oral tradition. There was also an element idiosyncratic to each cunning person concerning their relationship with invisible entities, usually identified as fairies. However in this period, the term 'fairy' applied to diverse spiritual creatures, amongst them ghosts and demons as well as 'the little people'. This explains why Scot's 'Experiment of the Dead' (mentioned in an earlier post) makes the (by modern standards) bizarre leap from necromancy to fairyland: to a contemporary there was no discontinuity between the two. As Emma Wilby shows in her book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits (2005) many of the common folk of early-modern England believed the spirits of the dead tarried for long periods on earth, often as serving as part of a 'fairy kingdom'.

However, there was another group of people practicing magic in England and Europe - the learned class. Those who were educated, professionals and could read and often access to the means to practice magic as set forth in the often complicated grimoires: the handbooks of what has been called 'ritual magic'. That is to say, forms of magical practice in which each step is prescribed by the author as a long set of instructions - for example: how to dress, observations for the parties in question to make (fasting and so forth), perfumes, special signs to be made on metal or parchment, the exact words which need to be said to call a certain spirit, and so on.

These literate, if credulous, magical practitioners came from across the educated classes. Often they were students. Keith Thomas cites numerous examples from England and Europe of such youthful enthusiasm. More recently Richard Kieckhefer has put forward the notion of a 'clerical underworld', in which the practice of 'necromancy' (a catch-all term for varieties of ritual magic) flourished amongst the clerics, a social group that would have included almost all educated people of the period in question, e.g. before the abolition of the monastaries in 1534. It is these learned sorcerers that the following tale is concerned.

The story occurs in Yorkshire in 1510, when nine educated men met together in a house at Bingley. I'll quote L'Estrange Ewan account in full, derived from the Archiepiscopal registers at York. Text in square brackets are my additions to clarify archaic place-names and terms:

"On Monday after Candlemas day (2 Feb.), at the house of Ottewell at Hagh, at Bingley, nine persons, viz., Sir James Richardson, priest, Sir John Wilkinson, Canon of Drax, Sir Richard Grenewood of Bingley, chaplain, Thomas Jefferson (Sherrif of York, 1496), John Steward of Knaresborough, clerk and teacher of grammar, Laurence Knolles of Knaresborough, Thomas Wodde of Bingley, William Wilson, and the said Ottewell, concluded that, on the information of Sir James and Sir John, "there was a chest of gold in Myxindale [Mixenden], every noble being as thick as five, and upon the chest a sword of maintenance and a book covered with black leather".One Leventhorpe, deceased, had actually seen the foot of the chest with the Devil sitting upon it, and using a sword to remove it, the custodian "nipped it asunder in the midst as it had been a rush". In the interests of the nine adventurers jointly it was decided to obtain the treasure. The priests had with them two "bogettes" [small bags], a circle of virgin parchment (that is of the first calf that a cow has), a great mass book, two "stoles" [part of priestly vestments], and a "thing gilt of a foot long like a holy water strynkill [aspergil?] and frankincense, with diverse books of their craft". In case the spirit would not obey, eighteen "singing loves" or "breeds" [breads, e.g. the sacrament], unhallowed, were to be consecrated and held up before him, when he would immediately become obedient.

 

"Three circles, each of thirty foot compass, were completed, with many genuflections and orisons. It was agreed that eight persons should stand within a circle, and Steward, who had no fear of devils, being strong in the faith, should stay without, Sir John Wilkinson, the canon, being deputed to invoke the sprite called Belphares. Sir John, Sir James and Jameson, sworn upon a book, conferred together "to make a lamina for the invocation of the sprite Obirion, and to have knowledge of Jameson's servant and his goods, and to know whether there were any goods in Myxindale". The parties arranged to meet at Solen End, or Solehill [Soil Hill, Ovenden] in Halifax parish at sunset, but, in the mist, failed to find one another, and they also lost the holy strynkill on the moor. Thereafter, some dissention arose amongst the principals, Jameson evidently having concluded, with a good deal of reason, that the priests were fooling him.

 

"Steward, in his examination denied giving his blood to spirits in the form of humble bees, or that he had ever baptised a cock or any animal. Nevertheless, the investigation being ended on 11 June 1510, he was excommunicated and suffered various penances, including carrying a banner round sundry market-places. The other culprits had to go with bare feet and heads in processions at York and Bingley, Jameson carrying a sceptre, Ottewell a strynkill, Wood a thurible with incense, and Knolles a torch with salt on it "super hastas" [upon a spear]. The treasure hunters were fortunate with these light sentences, for later on in the reign of Henry VIII conjuration of spirits became a statutory felony punishable by death, and with the exception of a slight break, so continued for nearly 200 years." (pp.142-3)

This incident took place in 1510. It would be 32 years before the first English witchcraft act explicitly condemned the use of spirits to find treasure, but it's apparent from this and numerous other surviving records that magical treasure-hunting was regularly carried out - sometimes by common cunning men, at other times by educated men. In the case above the main instigator of the search seems to have been the teacher John Steward, while the misuse of the sacrament for attempting to conjure spirits is something that the authorities would have taken the very dim view of. There was a belief throughout the early-modern age that the English countryside was riddled with ancient hordes of treasure, and in some cases this may have been true - a man who did not fear otherworldly denizens may well have made a tidy sum raiding prehistoric burial mounds, and as Keith Thomas points out "in the absence of an alternative system of deposit banking the possibility of coming across hidden treasure was by no means a chimera."

A description of the incident can also be read in A History of the County of York, Vol.3, in which the Canon of Drax admits that the magical circle, measuring 30ft, was constructed by himself. He also mentions being involved "when a boy of twelve, he had been present at an invocation made at Wakefield by 'a scolar of Orlyaunce' (Orleans), for a pair of bedes; he had seen 'in a glasse, a woman that had the beides in her hand, and a sprite, crouned like a Kyng, in a chare of gold, and the clerke said that he was a sprite.'" Children were often used by magicians as seers of spirits - there is the often related incident in the life of Cellini involving a conjuration with a priest and his child assistant in the ruins of the Coliseum, similar procedures can be found in texts from Coptic Egypt (e.g. PGM IV.850-929) to Medieval and Renaissance Europe (e.g. CLM 849). I'd often wondered whether the children involved themselves became magicians later in life, and in this case it appears so. There is also the sinister overtone of a blood sacrifice - "that the goode cowde not be had without losse of a Cristen Saule," - perhaps this was the cause of the dissention amongst the party?

Most interesting to me are the names of the spirits involved. First is Oberion, a spirit that occurs in the works of magicians throughout England. For example, 18 years later the same spirit was called upon with two others (Andew Malchus and Inchubus) by ex-priest William Stapleton and his friends in Norfolk. Furthermore the British Library Sloane Ms. 3826 contains a spell headed 'Raxhael' (Raziel) to conjure Oberion into a crystal, in which, along with making the usual prayers and supplications, the magician anoints his eyes with a mixture of rose oil, black cat's blood and the fat of a white hen. Apparently calling upon Oberion led to a certain Londoner being pilloried in 1444.

As for the spirit Belphares, he makes an appearance in the collection of magical texts that Reginald Scot compiled from T.R. and John Cokar. I've previously mentioned the influence of these texts and their accompanying magical designs on local (often illiterate) cunning men, here we see the spirits being worked with in their original environment of sophisticated, ritualised 'learned' magic accompanied by the trapppings of liturgical ritual. Scot describes Belphares having the appearance of "a faire man, or faire woman […] and if thou wilt command him to tell thee of hidden treasures that be in anie place, he will tell it to thee." Scot described Belphares as "a noble carrier", something echoed by the Canon who said he "cowde make the spirite Belphares carye it [the treasure] wherdir he wold."

So, here we have two spirits with a reputation for finding treasure that haunted the countryside of 16th century England. In the popular imagination Oberion is 'Oberon, king of the fairies' thanks to the ancient romance of Huon of Bordeaux and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. The name Belphares has resonance with the demonic Belphegor and also Belphebe (Beautiful Phoebe) from Spenser's The Faerie Queene. Spenser's work appeared six years after the publication of Reginald Scot's Discoverie and it seems likely that he was acquainted with the work. This leads me to wonder if the name had perhaps caught his poetic ear when he came to write his great allegory?

Whatever the case, I'm sure I'll find myself on Mixenden Moor some day, searching for an abandoned strynkill and a spectral hoard.