In 1662 England was gripped with excitement. Charles I had been beheaded in January 1649 in an act that abolished the monarchy only for Parliament to establish rule for eleven years and then invite his son, Charles II, to once again take the crown, in 1660. Contemporaries talked of parties, celebrations and drinking as new coins were minted bearing the king's likeness and preparations were made to bring his future bride, Catherine of Braganza, over from Portugal for the royal wedding. In the undercurrent of this craze however, was another. In that year, in the town of Bury St Edmunds, a woman named Amy Duny prepared for her execution on charges of witchcraft.
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| Head of an old woman, Orazio Borgianni c1610. Met Museum of Art, Public Domain |
Amy - and another woman, Rose Callender - appeared in court at a trial that was as dramatic as it was unsettling. It described its victims as members of the Durent, Chandler and Pacy families that all lived close to Amy Duny. On their arrival at the hearing, it was noted that Anne Durent, Susan Chandler and Elizabeth Pacy immediately ‘fell into strange and violent fits, being unable to give in their depositions during the whole assizes’. Another was the infant, William Durent. Durent's mother gave evidence against Amy that, needing to leave the house one day, her neighbour had looked after the young boy. When she returned, Amy told her that she had 'given suck' to the child although, the trial stated, she was an old woman. The mother was understandably displeased, and they exchanged some words, Duny leaving the house in an angry state. While this is strange behaviour to us, it may simply have been Duny's desperate attempts to settle William if he was crying inconsolably and his mother had been taking longer than she expected to come home. The fact that she openly mentioned to Anne that she had put the baby to her breast suggests that she thought nothing bad of it. Her leaving, visibly upset, probably conveys more embarrassment than guilt.
The next eveninig, the child fell into fits which continued for several weeks. The family's physician, Dr Jacob, told the mother to hang the child’s blanket near the chimney all day, and if anything came out of it to throw it into the fire. Dr Jacob was also therefore a sympathiser of the 'witch-craze' of the period, and therefore already suspected this when consulted, as there is no sign that he gave any other medical advice. When they picked the blanket up in the evening, a toad fell out of it. The family caught it and threw it into the fireplace, where it made a ‘horrible noise, and flashed like gunpowder’. Now, her 10-year old daughter Elizabeth also came down with fits.
In the court, the fits experienced by the children were described as lameness, soreness and a lack of awareness of their senses, and they were sometimes unable to speak, see or hear. They would cough and bring up phlegm, and on other occasions, the horrified jury heard, would vomit crooked pins or a nail. They were unable, during these fits, to speak the name of God or Jesus. Sometimes the children saw mice scurrying around the house, and when thrown into the fire they ‘schreeched out like a rat’. On another occasion, a bee flew towards a child’s face, which was also blamed on the spellcraft of Amy Duny. It was also noted that when children had these fits, where they often clenched their hands into fists, when opened, bent pins would magically appear in their palms.
On another occasion, the trial heard, Amy Duny was found in the family's house and was sent out. Duny allegedly replied ‘you need not be so angry, your child will not live long’ and foretold that the mother would also soon be on crutches. Within three days the child sadly died and soon afterwards the mother had a ‘lameness’ in one of her legs and needed to walk with crutches. It was noted at court that she had arrived using them to walk. The jury also recorded, in shock, a miracle. As soon as Duny was found guilty, ‘Durent was restored to the use of her limbs, and went home without her crutches’.
Within thirty minutes of the beginning of the trial, Amy Duny was found guilty. As well as Mrs Durent's miraculous return to health, the children’s fits subsided within ‘within half an hour after the witches were convicted’. Amy was executed with Rose Callender, who stood accused of killing a man's horses after she had an argument him. His cart later became stuck in a gate and his horses died.
Away from our modern perceptions of witchcraft and the medical explanations we have today of seizures and fits, it is a wonder that Amy Duny's case was ever heard in a court of law. The 'crimes' that she was accused of are vague and there is no evidence for her involvement in any of them. A buzzing bee flying too close to a child's face and a toad taking cover in a child's blanket were cited as among her spells, but are freak instances of nature simply given supernatural meaning.
Amy Duny never confessed to her guilt. It is far more likely that, rather than this being a legitimate act of witchcraft, Mrs Durent was so shocked by Amy offering her breast to her baby to soothe him, that Amy became a scapegoat for his fits, and later, his death. Durent's doctor did not encourage rational thinking either, suspecting witchcraft himself and telling her to throw anything in her son's blanket into the fire. And as for the crutches and the fits of the other children, their actions in court are revealing. The other witnesses, when in the court room, fitted so violently that they were unable to answer any questions. Could they have been 'acting', to get Amy Duny a guilty sentence? If they could not answer questions, they would not have given conflicting evidence and endangered the case, saying anything to contradict Mrs Durent's testimony. As for her crutches, she cast them away the second Amy was declared guilty which suggests, from a medical point of view, that either she did not need them at all, or that any symptoms she had were psychosomatic. At the death of her infant son, Amy needed a reason for it, and in the middle of aching and desperate grief, turned to the older woman who had been in her house and suckled him at her breast: Amy Duny. Amy and Rose were hanged at Bury St Edmunds in 1662.
You might also like Elspeth M'Ewan, the 'Witch' of Balmaclellan, Scotland and How Not to be Executed as a Witch in Tudor and Stuart Britain.
Source
Richard Boulton, A compleat history of magick, sorcery, and witchcraft; ... 1715: Vol 1, archive.org
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