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Thomas Ady

Written and compiled by George Knowles

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
The bed be blest that I lie on.

Four corners to my bed
Four angels round my head,
One to watch and one to pray
And two to bear my soul away.

(from:  ‘A Candle in the Dark’ by Thomas Ady 1656).

Few men of the early 15^th - 16^th century were brave enough to speak out against the Catholic Church and the atrocities inflicted on witches and other poor souls by the inquisition.  One such person was Thomas Ady, an English physician, about whom very little is known except for the books he left behind as a legacy.  While they did little to ease the situation during his time, they survived to inspire others and opened the way for credible thought and rational reason against the delusion.

Many writers sought to convince potential jurors of the fictional misinformation being spread about the actuality of witchcraft.  As such Thomas Aby’s books were considered and used by some as an authority to counter claims of witchcraft, as in the case of the Rev. George Burroughs during his trial in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.  Sadly for the Rev. Burroughs, quoting from one of Ady’s most popular books did little to convince anyone on his jury, nor alter the course of his execution.  The book in question has for its full title:  A Candle in the Dark, or a Treatise concerning the nature of witches and witchcraft:  being advice to the judges, sheriffs, justice of the peace and grandjurymen what to do before they pass sentence on such as are arraigned for their lives as witches (Printed for R.I., to be sold at the Three Lions in Cornhill by the Exchange, 1656.)  In it, Ady wrote against the delusion and attacked the misinformed beliefs about witchcraft head on, by using the same tools as the ‘witchmongers’ themselves, ‘the Bible’.

‘A Candle in the Dark’ was written in three parts.  In the first part, he gives multiple meanings and descriptions of a witch, and disproves the contemporary application of the biblical injunction:  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”.  Deuteronomy xviii. 10-11 for example, gives nine classifications of a witch, including:  astrologer, enchanter, pythonist (as with the Endor Witch), soothsayer, necromancer and juggler (Exodus xii. 15).  According to these definitions, real witches were merely ‘popish routs and contrivers of charms’.

In the second part, Ady shows that contemporary beliefs in witchcraft are nowhere to be found in the Bible:

“Where is it written in all the Old and New Testaments that a witch is a murderer, or hath power to kill by witchcraft, or to afflict with any disease or infirmity?  Where is it written that witches have imps sucking of their bodies?  Where is it written that witches have biggs (nipples) for imps to suck on… that the devil setteth privy marks upon witches… that witches can hurt corn or cattle… or can fly in the air…  Where do we read of a he-devil or she-devil, called incubus or succubus, that useth generation or copulation?

And in the third part, he attacks some of the so called ‘authoritative’ writers concerning witches, most particular that of ‘Demonology’ written by King James I, which Ady suggests was ghost-written for him by James, Bishop of Winton (Winchester).  He also opposes Matthew Perkins’s ‘Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (published posthumously in 1608)’ as “a collection of mingled notions taken from the writings of Bodin, Spina and other popish blood suckers who composed great volumes of lies and impossibilities”. 

Throughout his book Ady remembers his mission function was to sway judges and juries, and like Reginald Scot before him, he exposes swimming, witches marks, malediction by witches, their reliance on charms and amulets, ventriloquism (speaking from the belly) and jugglers (who often use to delude people with a imitation mouse attached to a springy wire as a familiar).

The tenets of evangelical Protestantism were rooted in the Bible, and the Protestant belief in witchcraft although originally carried over from Roman Catholicism, was therefore easily vulnerable.  Once the biblical sanction for witchcraft had been disproved and removed, they could not claim as did the Roman Catholic demonologists, the tradition of the Church.  Ady therefore was very shrewd in basing his arguments, not on discrediting individual cases or trials of witches, but on the absence of scriptural authority.

Ady’s second book was published 5 years later in 1661 and was entitled:  A Perfect Discovery of Witches, Shewing The Divine Cause of the Distractions of this Kingdome, and also of the Christian World.  Justitia Thronum firmat. Prov. 19-14 The King that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall bee established.  Very profitable to bee read by all sorts of people, especially judges of assizes, sheriffs, justices of the peace, and grandjurymen before they passe sentence on those that are condemned for Witchcraft (Published in London, Printed for R. I. to bee sold by H. Brome at the Gun in Ivy-Lane, 1661).  In this book Ady courageously addressed the notorious Witch Hunts and Witchfinders of the era.  He questioned the blame attached to witches by incompetent Physicians when they failed to heal a patient, and the general responsibility placed on witches for any unexplainable catastrophes such as storms, drought, illness and disease.  The blame on witches, he argued, was to disguise the ignorance of the people in power.

His third and last book was published some 15 years later in 1676 and was entitled:  The Doctrine of Devils, Proved to be the grand Apostacy of these later Times.  An Essay tending to rectifie those Undue Notions and Apprehensions Men have about Daemons and Evil Spirits (Published in London, Printed for the Author and are to be sold at the Kings-Arms in the Poultry, 1676).

Original copies of Thomas Ady’s books are today very rare indeed, and are extent only in a few of the worlds top libraries.  One such library where all three books can be found is the ‘Witchcraft Collection’ held at Cornell University Library in America, text copies of which have been made available online, and can be accessed at: http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/witch/docviewer?did=002

End.

Sources:

The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology - by Rossell Hope Robbins

Plus a number of websites:

http://www.rhymes.org.uk/a58-matthew-mark-luke-and-john.htm

http://illusionata.com/mpt/view.php?id=192&type=articles

http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/witch/docviewer?did=002

First published on the 04 March 2007, 18:22:06 © George Knowles

Best wishes and Blessed Be