Red Poppies & Thousands of Years of Remembrance - Veterans Day

In the 21st Century  Poppy Field Remembrance, Adam Borman in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

From the classic myths of Greece & Rome, to poets Ovid & Martial during Classical Antiquity, to the fields of 19th Century Europe, to World War I at Flanders Fields, to the 21st Century - honoring & remembering those who have died.

 Walter Field (British painter) 1837 - 1901

The red poppy has become a symbol of war remembrance throughout much of the world. People in many countries wear the poppy to remember those who died in war or those who still serve in their nation's armed forces. In many countries, the poppy is worn around Veterans Day (or Armistice Day) on November 11th.

Hippolyte Camille Delpy (French painter) 1842 - 1910

In both Greek & Roman myths & classical antiquity, poppies were associated with sleep, death, & remembrance. The symbolic significance of poppies, particularly in the context of honoring the dead, can be traced to various mythological & literary traditions.

Anthonore Christensen (Danish painter) 1849 - 1926

In Greek mythology, the poppy was often linked to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, & her daughter Persephone, who was abducted by Hades & became the queen of the Underworld. According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, poppies grew in the meadows where Demeter mourned the loss of her daughter, symbolizing both the cycle of life & death.

In Greek lore, poppies were also associated with Hypnos, the god of sleep. In various myths, Hypnos is depicted wearing a crown of poppies, signifying the sleep-inducing properties of the plant.

Anthonore Christensen (Danish painter) 1849 - 1926

In Roman mythology, the festival of Floralia, dedicated to the goddess Flora, involved the wearing of wreaths made of flowers, including poppies. This celebration marked the renewal of life & the coming of spring.

The association of poppies with death & remembrance persisted in Roman culture. Poppies were often used in funerary customs & rituals to honor the deceased.

Dora Hitz (German painter) 1856 - 1924

During Classical Antiquity the Roman poet Martial wrote about poppies being scattered on tombs, emphasizing their connection to death & remembrance. Marcus Valerius Martialis (born between 38 & 41 AD – died between 102 & 104 AD) was a Roman poet born in Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his 12 books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 & 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva & Trajan. 

Ovid, another Roman poet, mentioned poppies as symbols of both sleep & death in his works. Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil & Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature.  Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last 9 or 10 years of his life. 

Alexander Mark Rossi (British painter) 1840 - 1916

The symbolism of poppies honoring the dead was later revived & popularized in the early 20th century during World War I. The famous war poem "In Flanders Fields" by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918) refers to poppies growing amidst the graves of soldiers in Flanders, Belgium. The poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance for those who served or died in war. Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian poet, physician, & soldier during World War I, & a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He died before the war ended. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields."

Anthonore Christensen (Danish painter) 1849 - 1926

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields. 

"In Flanders Fields" was first published in December 1915. Within months, this poem came to symbolize the sacrifices of all who were fighting in the First World War. 

 Robert Vonnoh (American painter) 1858 - 1933

Today poppies are often associated with memorial ceremonies honoring military personnel who have lost their lives in conflicts & to those still serving their country.

Olga Wisinger-Florian (Austrian painter) 1844 - 1926 (2

See Christa Zaat for many more poppy paintings.

See Adam Borman in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

1621 Foods at Plymouth Thanksgiving

“And God be praised we had a good increase… Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation: D.B. Heath, ed. Applewood Books. Cambridge, 1986.

“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which is place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports."

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation: S.E. Morison, ed. Knopf. N.Y., 1952.

1619 Thanksgiving at Berkeley Plantation in Virginia

"First Thanksgiving" by Sidney King.  The weary sailors rowed to shore and surveyed the landscape of their new settlement. As instructed by the Berkeley Company, the men, led by their leader, Captain John Woodlief, knelt on the dried grass to offer a prayer of thanks for their safe journey across the ocean. They prayed: “We ordain that the day of our ship’s arrival, at the place assigned for plantation, in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

The First British American Colonial

Thanksgiving Took Place in Virginia, not Massachusetts

Washingtonian Magazine by Matt Blitz Published November 18, 2015

The weary sailors rowed to shore and surveyed the landscape of their new settlement. As instructed by the Berkeley Company, the men, led by their leader, Captain John Woodlief, knelt on the dried grass to offer a prayer of thanks for their safe journey across the ocean. They prayed: “We ordain that the day of our ship’s arrival, at the place assigned for plantation, in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

"...A year and 17 days before those Pilgrims ever stepped foot upon New England soil, a group of English settlers led by Captain John Woodlief landed at today’s Berkeley Plantation, 24 miles southwest of Richmond. After they arrived on the shores of the James River, the settlers got on their knees & gave thanks for their safe passage. There was no traditional meal, no lovefest with Native Americans, no turkey. America’s first Thanksgiving was about prayer, not food.

"On September 16th, 1619, the Margaret departed Bristol, England, bound for the New World. Aboard the 35-foot-long ship were 35 settlers, a crew, five “captain’s assistant”, a pilot, & Capt. Woodlief, a...survivor of the 1609/1610 Jamestown’s “Starving Time.” The mission of those aboard Margaret was to settle 8,000 acres of land along the James River that had been granted to them by the London-based Berkeley Company. They were allowed to build farms, storehouses, homes, & a community on company land. In exchange, they were contracted as employees, working the land & handing over crops & profits to the company.

"After a rough two-&-a-half months on the Atlantic, the ship entered the Chesapeake Bay on November 28, 1619. It took another week to navigate the stormy bay, but they arrived at their destination, Berkeley Hundred, later called Berkeley Plantation, on December 4. They disembarked & prayed. Many historians think there was nothing but old ship rations to eat, so the settlers may have concocted a meal of oysters & ham out of necessity rather than celebration. At the behest of written orders given by the Berkeley Company to Captain Woodlief, it was declared that their arrival must “be yearly & perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.” And that’s exactly what they did–for 2 years. On March 22, 1622, the Powhatan, who’d realized the settlers intended to expand their territory & continue their attempts to convert & “civilize” them, attacked Berkeley & other settlements, killing 347. Woodlief survived, but soon after, Berkeley Hundred was abandoned. For 3 centuries, Virginia’s 1st Thanksgiving was lost to history.

"Graham Woodlief is a direct descendant of Captain Woodlief. While he’s known his family’s history since being a teenager; he’s devoted a considerable amount of energy to research, since he retired in 2009. Today, Woodlief is president of the Virginia Thanksgiving Festival, which has been held annually since 1958. Woodlief ...thinks the major reason that Plymouth, & not Berkeley, is...thought to be the site of the 1st Thanksgiving is that “they had better PR than we did.” He also said the emphasis on prayer, instead of Plymouth’s festive harvest meal, also made Virginia’s Thanksgiving a bit less appealing, though more accurate. “In fact, most Thanksgivings in the early days were religious services, not meals,” Woodlief says.

"Nearly 309 years after the 1622 battle with the Powhatans, Berkeley Plantation’s missing history was rediscovered. In 1931, retired William & Mary President (and son of President John Tyler) Dr. Lyon G. Tyler was working on a book about early Virginia history. While doing research, he stumbled upon the Nibley Papers, documents and records taken by John Smyth of Nibley, Gloucestershire, about the 1619 settlement of Berkeley. Originally published by the New York State Library in 1899, the papers’ historical significance had gone undetected. According to many Virginia historians, the papers are concrete proof that the New World’s “day of Thanksgiving” originated in their region. Upon his discovery, Tyler told Malcolm Jamieson, who had inherited Berkeley plantation in the 1920s. The plantation was already considered one of the more historic homes in the state, once a residence to a signer of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the birthplace of a US President. Now, it had another feather in its historic hat. Jamieson, with the help of descendants of Captain Woodlief, instituted the 1st Virginia Thanksgiving Festival in 1958. Its been celebrated ever since...

"In Kennedy’s 1963 Thanksgiving Proclamation (made 17 days before his assassination), the president acknowledged Virginia’s claim, saying “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving.” In 2007, President George W. Bush also noted the history while visiting Berkeley Plantation, commenting that, “The good folks here say that the founders of Berkeley held their celebration before the Pilgrims had even left port. As you can imagine, this version of events is not very popular up north.”

"The Berkeley Company, in England, had been given a grant of 8,000 acres, by King James I in Virginia, along the James River. England was going through a severe recession, especially in the woolen industry, & Englishmen were flocking to America to escape religious persecution & for a better life. The English town of Berkeley, a center for the woolen industry, was especially hard-hit by the recession.  The 4 adventurers who made up the Berkeley Company were William Throckmorton, John Smythe, George Thorpe, & Richard Berkeley, who owned Berkeley castle. They needed a leader for an expedition to Virginia & chose Capt. John Woodlief. He had been to the New World several times & had survived the starving time at Jamestown.  With a passenger list of 35 able-bodied craftsmen & a ship’s crew of 19, Woodlief headed to the New World. They sailed on the Margaret, a small ship that was only 35 feet long & weighed 47 tons, loaded with cargo. It was a perilous journey across the Atlantic, for 2 & a half months. They were plagued by storms, the men were homesick, conditions were claustrophobic, there was vermin infestation. They prayed constantly.

"The Margaret landed at Berkeley Hundred on Dec. 4, 1619. The men rowed ashore & surveyed the wintery landscape that surrounded them. As they were instructed by the Berkeley Company, the men knelt & gave thanks for their safe voyage across the ocean.  They were given a proclamation, by the Berkeley Company, when they departed England, with 10 specific instructions.  The first instruction was that they pray & give thanks for their safe voyage when they landed. And they were to do so perpetually & annually. It is thought the Englishmen gave thanks the next 2 years, as they were instructed, until the settlement was destroyed in 1622. It was the 1st Thanksgiving by Englishmen in the New World, 1 year & 17 days before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. It was considered “official,” as they were ordered by England to give thanks — & it was planned, not spontaneous, as many Thanksgivings in the New World were. It was also not a one-time celebration, but repeated annually, as the Englishmen were instructed."ere sailing home when they encountered a relief fleet & a new governor, who ordered them back to Jamestown."

1621 Thanksgiving in New England

A Colonial Revival Painting of The First Thanksgiving by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (American painter, 1850-1936)

Edward Winslow, (1595-1655) Mourt's Relation:"our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours ; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie."

The letter of William Hilton, (1591-1656) passenger on the Fortune written in November of 1621

From Alexander Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841.

Loving Cousin,
At our arrival in New Plymouth , in New England, we found all our friends and planters in good health, though they were left sick and weak, with very small means; the Indians round about us peaceable and friendly; the country very pleasant and temperate, yielding naturally, of itself, great store of fruits, as vines of divers sorts in great abundance. There is likewise walnuts, chestnuts, small nuts and plums, with much variety of flowers, roots and herbs, no less pleasant than wholesome and profitable. No place hath more gooseberries and strawberries, nor better. Timber of all sorts you have in England doth cover the land, that affords beasts of divers sorts, and great flocks of turkey, quails, pigeons and partridges; many great lakes abounding with fish, fowl, beavers, and otters. The sea affords us great plenty of all excellent sorts of sea-fish, as the rivers and isles doth variety of wild fowl of most useful sorts. Mines we find, to our thinking; but neither the goodness nor quality we know. Better grain cannot be than the Indian corn, if we will plant it upon as good ground as a man need desire. We are all freeholders; the rent-day doth not trouble us; and all those good blessings we have, of which and what we list in their seasons for taking. Our company are, for most part, very religious, honest people; the word of God sincerely taught us every Sabbath; so that I know not any thing a contented mind can here want. I desire your friendly care to send my wife and children to me, where I wish all the friends I have in England; and so I rest.
Your loving kinsman, William Hilton

1607 Thanksgiving in Popham Colony in Maine

Maine’s Lost Colony : 

Archeologists uncover an early American settlement that history forgot

Smithsonian Magazine February 2004

By Myron Beckenstein

A highway-marker at Popham Colony, located in modern-day Phippsburg, Maine, marks a 1607 Thanksgiving in Popham Colony. Fourteen years before the Pilgrims & the Wampanoag tribe feasted together, the short-lived settlement of Popham Colony held 2 celebrations considered by some to be thanksgiving observances. "The first occurred in September when the settlers encountered a native tribe (the Abenaki). Nine canoes arrived at the Popham settlement with about 40 people. The settlers gave them food & Skidwarres & one other Abenaki stayed the night," reports a researcher with the Maine Historical Society. "Later in October, 5 tribesmen arrived: Skidwarres, Nahandada & his wife, one other & a tribal leader named Amenquin. They feasted for 2 days with Popham & the others. The second day was Sunday, so they also joined the settlers in morning & evening prayers." Captain George Popham, leader of the colony, died within a year of the 2 ceremonies. 

Not far from Portland along Maine’s winding coast, someone has placed a neatly lettered sign on an otherwise undistinguished boulder. It reads: Popham Rock 1607. A play on Plymouth Rock 1620, some 200 miles south? Not entirely. A colony called Popham actually did precede the renowned Massachusetts settlement. “Popham was the cornerstone in the foundation of English America,” says Jeffrey P. Brain, 64, an archaeologist with the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, who is excavating the site of the forgotten colony. “The lessons learned were important to the later success of the Pilgrims.” Popham’s value lies in its failure. Its remains...have been called one of the most significant archaeological sites in the country. Unlike Jamestown, Popham’s successful sister colony in Virginia, whose footprint changed as it developed, Popham represents a unique, undisturbed time capsule of a very early North American settlement. 

 "Each September since 1997, Brain has enlisted a few colleagues & some 30 volunteers & amateur archaeologists to work for 3 weeks at the mouth of the Kennebec River, about 25 miles northeast of Portland. This year’s team included an epidemiologist, an engineer, a nurse, a sociology professor & a historian from England. Popham was named after its principal financial backer, Sir John Popham, & his nephew George Popham, the colony’s president. It was founded about 20 years after Sir Walter Raleigh’s North Carolina colony disappeared in the 1580s, when, as the economic race with France & Spain heated up, England made another attempt to plant its flag in the New World. In 1606, James I granted a charter to a joint stock company to establish two colonies, one, Jamestown, on the southern Atlantic Coast, & the other, Popham, on the northern. On May 31, 1607, about 100 men & boys set sail for the northerly destination. Discharged soldiers made up most of the colonists’ ranks, but shipwrights, coopers, carpenters & a smattering of “gentlemen of quality” rounded them out. About three months later, the group landed on a wooded peninsula where the Kennebec River meets the Atlantic Ocean, & began building Fort St. George. In December, with winter coming & food scarce, half of the colonists returned to England. The next fall, after erecting several buildings, the remaining 45 sailed home.

 "Popham’s rediscovery came about by two events a century apart. In 1888, a researcher for an American diplomat happened upon a map of Fort St. George in government archives in Madrid. Drawn & signed by Popham colonist John Hunt, it was likely snatched, or copied, by a Spanish spy soon after it arrived in England in 1608. The only known detailed plan of an early English colony, the map contains sketches of trenched ramparts, a storehouse, a chapel & various buildings—in all, more than 15 structures. Though published in 1890, the map provoked little interest for 100 years, until Brain came upon a mention of the lost colony while vacationing in Maine. At first “I thought it was some sort of local mythology,” he says. “But it was historically known, & I decided it was time to look for it archaeologically.” Research led him to Hunt’s map, which took him to Sabino Head, a windy promontory on the Kennebec. Topographical features seemed to match Fort St. George’s modified star-shaped contours. Conducting a test excavation on the area in 1994, Brain & his team found a posthole after several weeks of digging. Baffled by not finding more postholes, he “fiddled with the map,” rotated it 20 degrees & came up with a dead-on match with the landscape. “It was a eureka moment,” he recalls. Soon the crew was “turning up one after another” of the three-foot-wide pine mold-filled holes, eventually 19 in all, outlining the 69-by-20-foot storehouse that Hunt had depicted on his blueprint almost 400 years before. "

Archaeologists are still not sure how many of the map’s structures were actually built, but so far, in addition to the storehouse, they’ve located parts of the trench wall & the “Admirals howse,” & they have leads on the buttery, a storehouse for wine & liquor. During the second week of this year’s dig, Kathy Bugbee, a retiree from Southport, Maine, unearthed an inch-long piece of decorated stoneware. A digger for seven years, she recognized the brown glazed fragment as part of a Bellarmine jug, a German-made container used throughout Europe to store liquor in the 16th & 17th centuries. In his on-site cache of artifacts, Brain found a wedge of Bellarmine that he had assembled from other fragments two years earlier. Bugbee’s find slid easily into a gap in the piece to reveal a medallion motif. The jug’s embossed seal reads: “1599.” In addition to Bellarmine, the site has yielded other ceramics, clay tobacco pipes, glass trading beads, bullets & tools, including a caulking iron, used in shipbuilding. The Popham settlers did succeed in constructing the Virginia, a small but durable vessel that would take them back to England & later make other transatlantic voyages. At the admiral’s house, the archaeological team turned up shards of delftware, more Bellarmine, fancy buttons, bits of etched wine glasses & jet beads—all reflecting the occupants’ upper-class rank... 

 "The main reason for abandoning the colony, Brain theorizes, was a loss of leadership. Only one member of the group, George Popham, is known to have died at Fort St. George. (Jamestown lost more than half of its 120 settlers the first year.) But he was the colony’s president, & on February 5, 1608, Raleigh Gilbert took command. Just 25, Gilbert was, according to one investor, “desirous of supremasy,” “a loose life,” with “litle zeale in Religion.” Six months later, a resupply ship brought Gilbert news that he had inherited a title & an estate back in England. When Gilbert decided to return to England to collect, the others headed back with him. “They were headless, so to speak,” Brain says. “English society was very stratified; people needed leaders.” Bad relations with the Indians, the fear of another severe winter & the area’s lack of easily exploitable resources, such as gold or other precious metals, also affected the decision to abandon Popham. 

 "Most of the returned settlers disappeared into history; a few crossed the Atlantic again to try their hand at Jamestown. The Pilgrims who arrived 12 years later, landing at Plymouth, had obviously learned some lessons from Popham. “They settled farther south in a milder climate that was more familiar to them & more conducive to agriculture,” says Brain. “They tried harder to work with the Indians. They also brought women & children. “Luck had a lot to do with these early ventures,” Brain adds, explaining that Jamestown, too, almost failed. Hit hard by disease & starvation, the 50 or so remaining settlers abandoned the colony in the spring of 1610 & were sailing home when they encountered a relief fleet & a new governor, who ordered them back to Jamestown."

Native American - Green Corn Dance of Thanksgiving

1590 North American Atlantic Coast Natives by John White (c1540 – c1593). The village of Pomeiooc (Pomeiock) was a Native America settlement, designated on de Bry’s map of Virginia, Americae Pars Nunc Virginia Dicta, between today’s Wyesocking Bay & Lake Landing, North Carolina. John White designates the settlement as Pomeyoo.

Extracted from:  Myths of the Cherokee.  Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau  of American Ethnology. Washington Government Printing Office 1902  Recorded by James Mooney (1861-1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee.

Thanksgiving

Among all vegetables the one which holds first place in the household economy and ceremonial observance of the tribe is selu, "corn," invoked in the sacred formulas under the name of Agawe'la, "The Old Woman," in allusion to its mythic origin from the blood of an old woman killed by her disobedient sons ("Kana'ti and Selu"). 

In former times the annual thanksgiving ceremony of the Green-corn dance, preliminary to eating the first new corn, was the most solemn tribal function, a propitiation and expiation for the sins of the past year, an amnesty for public criminals, and a prayer for happiness and prosperity for the year to come. 

Only those who had properly prepared themselves by prayer, fasting, purification were allowed to take part in this ceremony, and no one dared to taste the new corn until then. Seven ears from the last year's crop were always put carefully aside, in order to attract the corn until the new crop was ripened and it was time for the dance, when they were eaten with the rest. In eating the first new corn after the Green Corn dance, care was observed not to blow upon it to cool it, for fear of causing a wind storm to beat down the standing crop in the field.

1598 Spanish Thanksgiving - at the Rio Grande in Texas

Don Juan De Oñate celebrates Thanksgiving in 1598 at modern day San Elizario, Texas

One of  the earliest, colonial Thanksgiving took place in 1598.  The English arrived later than the Hispanics, as the Anglo-Saxon settlers founded Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620, and by these years it is claimed that more than four hundred thousand Spaniards were already living in America. When the pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, the America to which they arrived had been considered for more than a century as part of Spain.

Conquistadors under the leadership of Don Juan De Oñate celebrated Thanksgiving in 1598 at modern day San Elizario, Texas.  Over 20 years before the widely known feast in New England, Spanish Conquistadors held a mass & a feast giving thanks in what is now San Elizario, Texas.  

Al Borrego, artist & spokesman for the San Elizario Genealogical & Historical Society, said "Oñate, colonizer of New Mexico, entered what is now the United States, near San Elizario, Texas, on April 20, 1598, at the banks of the Rio Bravo," Borrego said.  "They built a church with a nave large enough to hold the expedition (over 500), held a mass followed by the 'Toma' (official taking possession of the territory the river drained into), followed by a feast & celebration & even a comedy in the afternoon." 

The San Elizario celebration had all the key trappings of a Thanksgiving, right down to the local indigenous population joining in the meal.  Juan de Oñate was a member of a distinguished family that had loyally worked for the Spanish crown. His father had discovered & developed rich mines in Zacatecas, Mexico. Oñate, himself, had opened the mines of San Luis Potosí & performed many other services for the Spanish king. But he wanted to carve an unquestioned place in history by leading an important expedition into unexplored land.

He was granted land in the northern Rio Grande Valley among the Pueblo Indians by the viceroy of New Spain. The viceroy moved to a new post, however, & his successor was slow to grant Oñate permission to begin his expedition. Finally, in 1597, approval came. To reach his new holdings, Oñate chose to bypass the traditional route that followed the Rio Conchos in present-day Mexico to the Rio Grande & then northward along the Rio Grande into New Mexico.

In the summer of 1597, Oñate sent Vicente de Zaldívar to blaze a wagon trail from Santa Barbara in southern Chihuahua, along which could be found adequate water supplies. Zaldívar underwent many hardships, including capture by Indians, in carrying out his instructions. No mention of the hardships was made, however, when he made his report to Oñate. (The trail blazed by Zaldívar has become the route of today's highway between Chihuahua City & El Paso.)

By early March 1598, Oñate's expedition of 500 people, including soldiers, colonists, wives & children & 7,000 head of livestock, was ready to cross the treacherous Chihuahuan Desert. Almost from the beginning of the 50-day march, nature challenged the Spaniards. First, seven consecutive days of rain made travel miserable. Then the hardship was reversed, & the travelers suffered greatly from the dry weather. On one occasion, a chance rain shower saved the parched colonists. Finally, for the last five days of the march before reaching the Rio Grande, the expedition ran out of both food & water, forcing the men, women & children to seek roots & other scarce desert vegetation to eat. Both animals & humans almost went mad with thirst before the party reached water. Two horses drank until their stomachs burst, & two others drowned in the river in their haste to consume as much water as possible.  The Rio Grande was the salvation of the expedition, however. After recuperating for 10 days, Oñate ordered a day of thanksgiving for the survival of the expedition. Included in the event was a feast, supplied with game by the Spaniards & with fish by the natives of the region. A mass was said by the Franciscan missionaries traveling with the expedition. And finally, Oñate read La Toma -- the taking -- declaring the land drained by the Great River to be the possession of King Philip II of Spain.  A member of the expedition wrote of the original celebration, "We built a great bonfire & roasted the meat & fish, & then all sat down to a repast the like of which we had never enjoyed before. . .We were happy that our trials were over; as happy as were the passengers in the Ark when they saw the dove returning with the olive branch in his beak, bringing tidings that the deluge had subsided."

After the celebration, the Oñate expedition continued up the Rio Grande & eventually settled near Santa Fé. As one historian noted, when Jamestown & Plymouth were established early in the 17th century, they were English attempts to gain a foothold in the New World. Santa Fé was but one of hundreds of towns the Spanish already had established in the New World.

Adapted from an article by Mike Kingston, then editor of the Texas Almanac 1990–1991.

1578 Thanksgiving in The Americas - Newfoundland

Sir Martin Frobisher, English mariner, privateer, explorer (born c 1535-1594)

In 1578, English explorer Martin Frobisher landed in what is now Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, as part of his quest to locate the fabled Northwest Passage. Before the Europeans arrive, First Nations across Turtle Island had traditions of thanksgiving for surviving winter & for receiving crops & game as a reward for their hard work. These traditions appear to include feasting, prayer, dance, potlatch, & other ceremonies, depending on the native peoples giving thanks.

In response to his safe travels to the Great White North, over 4 decades before the Plymouth Colony celebration, Frobisher & his men held a service of thanks. "Frobisher, an English explorer in the uncharted northern territories, organized the 1st religious Thanksgiving for his crew & early Canadian settlers as a way to take stock of all they had accomplished in a short time." 

During his 1578 voyage to Baffin Island to set up a new English colony, Frobisher's ships were scattered. At Frobisher Bay, the explorer was happily reunited with his fleet, & all who had survived the storms honored their reunion with a day of thanks.

Martin Frobisher, mariner, explorer, 3 three voyages from England to the “New World” in search of a passage to Asia. He failed, but he was the 1st European to discover the bay that is named for him & returned with tons of dirt that he thought contained gold. Each expedition was bigger than the preceding one & on his 3rd, in 1578, he commanded a flotilla of 15 ships & more than 400 men. They set sail on 31 May for Baffin Island, where they intended to establish a gold mining operation & the 1st English colony in North America. On 1 July, they sighted Resolution Island, but they were driven by storms across the entrance to Hudson Strait. The fleet was dispersed & one ship, which carried their prefabricated barracks, was sunk by ice. Another ship deserted the flotilla & sailed back to England. 

The remaining ships assembled at the Countess of Warwick’s Island, which is known today as Kodlunarn Island, a tiny speck of land in Frobisher Bay. They established 2 mines on the island & set up shops to test the ore from other mines. The mine sites & the ruins of a stone house are still clearly visible.  

Vicious storms blew the fleet around Hudson Strait for most of July & when they finally assembled at their anchorage in Frobisher Bay, they celebrated Communion & formally expressed their thanks through the ship’s Chaplain, Robert Wolfall, who “made unto them a godly sermon, exhorting them especially to be thankefull to God for theyr strange & miraculous deliverance in those so dangerous places” (Richard Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher: In Search of a Passage to Cathaia & India by the North-West, Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Frobisher sailed for Elizabeth I, whose reign was marked by public acts of giving thanks. Elizabeth expressed her gratitude for having lived to ascend the throne, for delivery from the Spanish Armada and, in her last speech to Parliament, for her subjects.  

The 1st known use of the word “Thanksgiving” in English text was in a translation of the bible in 1533, which was intended as an act of giving thanks to God. The tradition of gratitude was continued each fall as people gave thanks for the harvest that would see them through the winter.

Forty-eight years later on November 14, 1606, inhabitants of New France under Samuel de Champlain held huge feasts of thanksgiving between local Mi’kmaq & the French. Though not known at the time by the settlers, cranberries, rich in vitamin C, are credited with helping avoid scurvy. The neighbouring Mi’kmaq likely introduced the French to cranberries, or as they called them, petites pommes rouges (little red apples).

Champlain’s feasts were more than an annual affair. To prevent the scurvy epidemic that had decimated the settlement at Île Sainte-Croix in past winters, the Ordre de Bon Temps (Order of Good Cheer) was founded, offering festive meals every few weeks. Medical treatises recommended better nutrition (more food) & entertainment to combat scurvy.

However, despite this history of uniquely Canadian thanksgivings, modern concepts of Thanksgiving were influenced by the American neighbors to the South. Foods that are associated with a “traditional” Thanksgiving, such as North American turkey, squash, & pumpkin, were introduced to citizens of Halifax in the 1750s by the United Empire Loyalists, who continued to spread this “traditional” fare to other parts of the country.

See

Bicheno, Hugh. Elizabeth's Sea Dogs. Conway, 2014.

Brigden, Susan. The Penguin History of Britain. Penguin, 2001.

Courtauld, Augustine. From the Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of Polar Writings. Oxford University Press, 1958

Elton, G.R. England Under the Tudors. Routledge, 2018.

Ferriby, David. The Tudors. Hodder Education, 2015.

Guy, John. Tudor England. Oxford University Press, 1988.

Wagner, John A. Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World. Greenwood, 1999.

Williams, Neville. The sea dogs. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.

1565 Spanish Thanksgiving in St Augustine

Bry Theodor De Bry (528-1598), The Natives of Florida Worshiping the Column Erected by the Commander on his First Voyage 1564

There are actually several events claiming to be the 1st Thanksgiving in colonial Spanish & English America. One of  the earliest, colonial Thanksgiving took place on September 8, 1565.  The English arrived later than the Hispanics, as the Anglo-Saxon settlers founded Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620, and by these years it is claimed that more than 400,000 Spaniards were already living in America. When the pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, the America to which they arrived had been considered for more than a century as part of the Crown of Castile.

An explorer, Pedro Menéndez de Avilé, along with 800 Spanish settlers celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving to commemorate the successful sea voyage & founding of the town of St. Augustine, which would go on to be the 1st & longest-lasting port within the present-day United States. St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement on  the Atlantic Coast of the United States.  

Occurring as it did so soon after trans-Atlantic landfall, this was a maritime Thanksgiving, with sailor's fare making up the bulk of the feast, probably along with local native food, which would likely have included oysters & fish. 

It is said he invited members of the Timucua tribe to dine along with them. The local St. Augustine Timucua were known by the Spanish as the "Agua Salada," or Salt Water, Timucua, a testament to the maritime culture that existed in St. Augustine prior to European colonization. 

This 1st Spanish Thanksgiving took place 55 years before the Pilgrims landed.  Following the sacrifice of the Holy Mass, Menindez ordered a communal meal to be shared by the Spaniards & the Indians who originally occupied the landing site.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519-1574) was a Spanish admiral, explorer & conquistador from Avilés, in Asturias, Spain. He is notable for planning the 1st regular trans-oceanic convoys, which became known as the Spanish treasure fleet, & for founding St. Augustine, Florida, c 1565.

Egypt - Ancient Thanksgiving Celebrations - Harvest Festivals

The origins of Thanksgiving celebrations stem from the Harvest Festivals existing thousands of years before European colonists sailed for the Americas. Harvest festivals flourished, when hunger was a constant threat, & many societies often felt at the mercy of the gods. The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution resulted in the wide-scale transition of many human cultures & communities beginning 10-12,000 years ago as "hunter gatherers" began to settle down & farm. Their more permanent communities permitted humans to experiment with plants. Once early farmers invented agricultural techniques like irrigation, crops could yield surpluses that often needed storage. 

Most who earlier peoples who had foraged for their food could not easily store food for long due to their migratory lifestyle, whereas those with sedentary dwellings & fields carved in the landscape could grow & store their surplus grain. With this more reliable supply of food, populations could expanded & began to develop specialized workers & more advanced tools. This evolving knowledge led to the domestication of both plants & animals. 

A successful harvest was vital for the healthy stability of a community. Prior to the establishment of formal religions, some believed that their crops were controlled by gods or contained spirits. Harvest celebrations often marked the end of summer & were a time of feasting & paying tribute to gods for bounty, prosperity, & good health. These harvest festivals were common around the globe in one form or another for millennia. Some harvest festivals, more commercial than sacred, continue today.

Egypt's Harvest Festival of Min - The Feast of Dais

In Egypt, Min was a central god of reproduction & vegetation, & the Feast of the Dais was held in his honor.  Min was the Egyptian god of fertility, rain, the desert, & travelers. He was also considered a god of regeneration which is believed to symbolize the forceful renewal of the sovereignty of the Egyptian pharaoh. Min was honored in the coronation rites of new pharaohs to ensure their production of a male heir. Min was depicted as a human male with one arm, one leg & a prominent penis. He carried a flail & wore the Double Plumed Crown. 

The harvest festival to Min was an important celebration attended by the reigning pharaoh & the royal court. The pharaoh sitting on a canopied litter, his court, soldiers, standard bearers, fan bearers, dancers, musicians would form a great procession to his temple. The priests of Min also formed a large contingent in the procession, burning incense & carrying shrines & images of the pharaoh & his ancestors.  Elaborate floats formed part of the procession. At the front pf the procession was a white bull, the symbol of Min, that had a sun-disk fastened between his horns representing Min himself. 

During the Feast of the Dais, Min received the 1st wheat of the harvest cut by the pharaoh himself.  Pharaoh cut the first sheaf with a sickle & put it in front of the statue of God.  Min's holiday was celebrated at the beginning of the farming season, when Pharaoh hoeing a field with a hoe & poured water under the personal supervision of the god Min. When Pharaoh came to reign, he was also considered the heir of Min. During the festivals dedicated to Min, men participated in contests, games dedicated to God, such as climbing a high pole, probably from a tent.  Bouquets of flowers & the lettuce were also offered to Min. The relief above, from the funerary temple of Ramses III  at Medinet Habu, shows the harvest festival of Min featuring a statue of Min, which formed a major part of the procession, behind the carnival float of Min.  

The above relief of the procession float of Min depicts it followed by 2 priests. The priests carry sacred lettuce plants, the symbol of Min & similar in shape to Romaine lettuce. The pointed lettuce plants are stylized & frequently appear in many images depicting Min. The wild prickly lettuce Lactuca virosa was domesticated & this version of the lettuce was Lactuca sativa which was said to have both aphrodisiac & opiate qualities.

The cult of Min lasted for 3000 years & following the Roman conquest of Egypt even the Roman Emperor Augustus was depicted offering lettuces to Min god in the temple of Kalabsha, aka the Temple of Mandulis, that was located approximately 50 km south of Aswan.

1671 Halloween & Roe v Wade Reversal - Matthew Hale on Abortion, Rape, Witches, & All Women in General

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion detailing his reasons for overturning Roe v. Wade. In both his alleged draft opinion* & his final opinion for this case, Alito leaned liberally on the views of Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676), a 17C English jurist who was adamant that it was legal that a married woman could be raped by her husband; & wrote an instruction to jurors to be skeptical of reports of rape. Hale´s views on rape, marriage & abortion have had a long legacy not only in Britain’s legal system, but also in those of the British Colonies. Hale also believe in female witches, & presided over the trials & executions of 3 women accused as witches in England.

Hale became Lord Chief Justice of England in 1671. Hale wrote a 2-volume legal treatise, “The History of the Pleas of the Crown,” that has influenced court proceedings ever since. Hale wrote that if a physician gave a woman with child a potion to cause an abortion, it was “murder.” 

Hale also believed there was no such thing as marital rape, “for the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife for by their mutual matrimonial consent & contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract.”

Hale described the abortion of a dead child (who died in the womb) as a "great crime." Hale believed an abortion could qualify as homicide. Hale wrote that if a doctor gave a woman "with child" a "potion" to cause an abortion, & the woman died, it was "murder" because the potion was given "unlawfully to destroy her child within her," Judge Alito declared in his draft opinion.

Hale’s pronouncements became the accepted common law & served as foundation in the British American colonies for immunizing a husband accused of raping his wife. Law review articles have questioned Hale's pronouncements. “Hale appears to have been the first to articulate what later would become an accepted legal principle, that a husband cannot be charged with raping his wife,” according to a footnote in one law review article. Another law review article, titled “The Marital Rape Exemption: Evolution to Extinction,” called Hale’s pronouncement “an unsupported, extrajudicial statement...” 

Like the marital rape exemption, the so-called Hale Warning to jurors caused centuries of misfortune in the American courts. In his 1680 “Pleas of the Crown,” (which was published by the House of Commons in 1736) Hale called rape a “most detestable crime...It must be remembered, that it is an accusation easy to be made & hard to be proved, & harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.”

Hale declared that in weighing the evidence in cases of alleged rape, jurors  needed to consider "Did the woman cry out? Did she try to flee? Was she of “good fame” or “evil fame”? Was she supported by others? Did she make immediate complaint afterward?"

In 1793, in New York City, an aristocrat, Henry Bedlow, was accused of raping a 17-year-old seamstress, Lanah Sawyer. Bedlow hired six lawyers, who used Hale’s framework to destroy Sawyer. Sawyer said she screamed. But, one attorney asked the jury, did she also stamp her feet? He continued,  “she may have had the art to carry a fair outside, while all was foul within.” The jury took 15 minutes to acquit the accused.

The written record of Hale’s trial in Bury St. Edmunds, served as a model in Salem, Massachusetts, in the infamous witch trials in 1692.  His beliefs guided elimination of justice for females in America's witch trials. In 1662, Hale had presided at a jury trial in Bury St. Edmunds in which 2 women, Amy Denny & Rose Cullender, were accused of being witches. Hale instructed the jurors that witches were real. 

At their trial, Hale declared: “That there were such creatures as witches he had no doubt at all; for first, the scriptures had affirmed so much. Secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime.” Found guilty, Hale sentenced both women to hang. Four years earlier, Hale had also sentenced to death another woman convicted of being a witch.

The judgment of Hale in this case was extremely influential in future cases in England & in the British American colonies, & was used in the 1692 Salem witch trials to justify the forfeiture of the accused's lands. As late as 1664, Hale used the argument that the existence of laws against witches is proof that witches exist.

It is probable that English Jurist Matthew Hale (1609-1676) read Malleus Maleficarum 1486 (translated by Montague Summers 1928 - see Google Books) Written in Latin & first submitted to the University of Cologne on May 9th, 1487, the title is translated as "The Hammer of Witches." Written in 1486 by Austrian priest Heinrich Kramer (also Kraemer) & German priest Jakob (also James) Sprenger, at the request of Pope Innocent VIII. 

As the main justification for persecution of witches, the authors relied on a brief passage in the Bible (the book of Exodus, chapter 22, verse 18), which states: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The Malleus remained in use for 300 years. It had tremendous influence in the witch trials in England & her North American colonies, & on the European continent. 

The Malleus was used as a judicial case-book for the detection & persecution of witches, specifying rules of evidence & the canonical procedures by which suspected witches were tortured & put to death. 

Thousands of people (primarily women) were judicially murdered as a result of the procedures described in the book because of having a strange birthmark, living alone, mental illness, cultivating medicinal herbs, or simply because they were falsely accused (often for financial gain by the accuser). The Malleus serves as a chilling warning of what happens when intolerance & violence take over a society.

Hale's General Thoughts on Women

Later in life, Hale wrote a long letter to & about his grandchildren, dispensing life advice, in which he described women as “chargeable unprofitable people” who “know the ready way to consume an estate, & to ruin a family quickly.” (See: Hale’s “Letter of Advice.” Google Books)

Hale's views of women are recorded in the book-length Letter of Advice to His Grandchildren : Matthew, Gabriel, Anne, Mary & Frances Hale. Of his granddaughter Mary, he wrote, possessed great wit & spirit, & “if she can temper the latter, will make an excellent woman, & a great housewife; but if she cannot govern the greatness of her spirit, it will make her proud, imperious, & revengeful.” Of granddaughter Frances, Hale wrote that she possessed great confidence: “If she be kept in some awe, especially in relation to lying & deceiving, she will make a good woman & a good housewife.” Of granddaughter Anne, Hale said she had a “soft nature.” “She must not see plays, read comedies, or love books or romances, nor hear nor learn ballads or idle songs, especially such as are wanton or concerning love-matters, for they will make too deep an impression upon her mind.”

After holding the office of Chief Baron for 11 years he was raised to the higher dignity of Lord Chief Justice of England, which he held until February 1676, when his failing health compelled him to resign. He retired to his native Alderley, where he died on the 25th of December of the same year. He was twice married & outlived 8 of his 10 children.

See:

Barton, J. L. (1992). "The Story of Marital Rape". Law Quarterly Review. Sweet & Maxwell. 108 (April): 260–271.

Brown, David C. (1993). "The Forfeitures at Salem, 1692". William and Mary Quarterly. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 50 (1): 85–111. 

Geis, G. (1978). "Lord Hale, Witches, and Rape." British Journal of Law and Society. Wiley-Blackwell. 

Hasday, Jill Elaine (2000). "Contest and Consent: A Legal History of Marital Rape". California Law Review. UC Berkeley School of Law. 88 (5): 1373–1505.

Ryan, Rebecca M. (1995). "The Sex Right: A Legal History of the Marital Rape Exemption". Law & Social Inquiry. Blackwell Publishing. 20 (4): 941–1001. 

Halloween's Female Witches & Roe v Wade cited by Justice Samuel Alito & Roe v Wade

Who was Matthew Hale, the 17C jurist Alito invokes in his draft overturning Roe?

By Deanna Pan Globe Staff, May 6, 2022.

In his leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leans heavily on the scholarship of 17th-century English judge Sir Matthew Hale to underpin his argument that prohibiting abortion has a long “unbroken tradition” in the law.

Not only have many legal scholars disputed Alito’s reading of history, they’ve also criticized his reliance on Hale because of what the jurist’s writings reveal about his attitudes toward women. Hale is notorious in the law for laying the legal foundation clearing husbands from criminal liability for raping their wives, and for sentencing two women accused of witchcraft to death, a case that served as a model for the infamous Salem witch trials 30 years later.

Alito’s invocation of Hale has stunned some lawyers and historians, who say Hale’s discredited ideas have been used for centuries to subjugate women.

“There are many themes running through America’s legal traditions that have deep injustices embedded within them,” said Jill Hasday, a constitutional and family law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, about Alito’s reliance on Hale. “We have to decide how we’re bound by the past. And nothing is forcing us to carry the consequences of women’s legal subordination forward in time.”

Lauren MacIvor Thompson, a historian at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, said she was shocked Alito referenced Hale in his draft opinion. Even among his contemporaries, she said, Hale “was particularly misogynistic.” “For a Supreme Court justice to be doing that in 2022 is really astonishing,” she said.

In his 98-page draft, Alito approvingly refers to Hale as one of the “eminent common-law authorities,” and cites him more than a dozen times in his argument challenging the historical narrative of abortion laws in the United States.

“The right to an abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” Alito argues in the draft opinion. “On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of common law until 1973.”

Alito notes that Hale described the abortion of a “quick child” as a “great crime.” (”Quick” refers to “quickening,” which, in English common law, occurs when a mother can detect fetal movement, typically between four and six months of pregnancy.)

Many historians disagree with Alito’s argument. In an amicus brief submitted in the Mississippi abortion-rights case before the justices, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians counter that up until the Civil War, most states barred abortion only in the later stages of pregnancy, and that abortions before fetal “quickening” were legal.

Alito does not mention Hale’s other writing on women, such as his views on rape. In his treatise, “History of the Pleas of the Crown,” published posthumously in 1736, which Alito cites throughout his draft opinion, Hale famously argued that marital rape is exempt from criminal prosecution. Once a woman consents to marry, Hale argues, “the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.”

Hale’s defense of marital rape remained the legal standard in the United States until the 1970s, when Nebraska became the first state to outlaw it. Although spousal rape is illegal in every state, several states still have statutory exemptions for spouses, depending on a variety of factors, including the age of the victim or the victim’s capacity to consent, according to AEquitas, a nonprofit focused on the prosecution of gender-based violence.

Hale’s legacy also includes his deep skepticism of rape accusations. Although he called rape a “most detestable crime” that ought “to be punished with death,” Hale believed that rape is “an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.”

“One of the things Hale helped embed in the law is this intense suspicion of women,” Hasday said. “This premise that women who claim to be raped are liars, and the idea that proving rape should be extraordinarily difficult because you just can’t rely on women.”

Hasday said Hale’s suspicion of women extends to his handling of witchcraft cases. In Bury St. Edmunds in 1662, Hale presided over one of England’s most notorious witchcraft trials, which resulted in the hanging of two older widows, Amy Denny and Rose Cullender, accused of bewitching their neighbors.

The proceedings were remarkably similar to the witchcraft trials in Salem, according to Cornell University historian Mary Beth Norton. The complainants in Hale’s case were young girls who “screeched and screamed in the courtroom so much that they could not testify,” Norton said, and their relatives testified in the girls’ place. Hale admitted the witness testimony, including claims that the accused had appeared before the afflicted children in visions, as “spectral evidence.”

Thirty years later, judges in Salem consulted an account of the trial, “A Tryal of Witches at the Assizes,” Norton said, and used Hale’s permitting of spectral evidence to justify their own proceedings.

Hale’s work “was an important backing for the legitimacy of the trials in 1692,” Norton said. “That is, this opinion of Sir Matthew Hale that you could accept these statements by these young girls who were screaming and crying and having fits in the courtroom as legitimate evidence.”

Hale’s writings about women were not limited to his legal scholarship. In a 206-page letter of advice to his grandchildren, Hale laments that young English gentlewomen “learn to be bold [and] talk loud.” These young women, he charged, “know the ready way ... to ruin a family quickly.”

“They are a sort of chargeable unprofitable people,” Hale concludes, before imploring his granddaughters to learn “good housewifery” for the sake of their families and husbands. “A good wife is a portion of herself; but an idle or expensive wife is most times an ill bargain.”

1664 Halloween's Female Witches, a Deadly Myth promoted byJurist Matthew Hale (1609-1676)

An engraving of a portrait of Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) by Thomas Phillibrown, likely mid-C (no date recorded). [Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division]

The Female Witch Myth advocated by English Jurist Matthew Hale 

Hale's writings & court rulings on women were far-reaching & long-lasting. In 1662, he was involved in one of the most notorious of the 17C English witchcraft trials, where he sentenced 2 women to death for witchcraft. The judgment of Hale in this case was extremely influential in future cases in England & in the British American colonies, & was used in the Salem witch trials to justify the forfeiture of the accused's lands. As late as 1664, Hale used the argument that the existence of laws against witches is proof that witches exist. 

The Female Witch Myth was strengthened by English Jurist Matthew Hale (1609-1676), whose writings & court rulings on women were/are far-reaching & long-lasting. In 1662, he was involved in one of the most notorious of the 17C English witchcraft trials, where he sentenced 2 women to death for being witches. The judgment of Hale in this case was extremely influential in future cases in England & in the British American colonies, & was used in the 1692 Salem witch trials to justify the forfeiture of the accused's lands. As late as 1664, Hale used the argument that the existence of laws against witches is proof that witches exist.

It is probable that English Jurist Matthew Hale (1609-1676) read Malleus Maleficarum 1486 (translated by Montague Summers 1928 - see Google Books) Written in Latin & first submitted to the University of Cologne on May 9th, 1487, the title is translated as "The Hammer of Witches." Written in 1486 by Austrian priest Heinrich Kramer (also Kraemer) & German priest Jakob (also James) Sprenger, at the request of Pope Innocent VIII. As the main justification for persecution of witches, the authors relied on a brief passage in the Bible (the book of Exodus, chapter 22, verse 18), which states: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The Malleus remained in use for 300 years. It had tremendous influence in the witch trials in England & her North American colonies, & on the European continent. 

The Malleus was used as a judicial case-book for the detection & persecution of witches, specifying rules of evidence & the canonical procedures by which suspected witches were tortured & put to death. Thousands of people (primarily women) were judicially murdered as a result of the procedures described in the book because of having a strange birthmark, living alone, mental illness, cultivating medicinal herbs, or simply because they were falsely accused (often for financial gain by the accuser). The Malleus serves as a chilling warning of what happens when intolerance takes over a society.

Sir Matthew Hale & Evidence of Witchcraft

 in Custodia Legis Blog by Law Librarians of Congress. October 30, 2021 by Nathan Dorn

...Spectral evidence was testimony in which witnesses claimed that the accused appeared to them & did them harm in a dream or a vision. The Court of Oyez & Terminer that presided over the Salem witch trials permitted this form of evidence to be presented in support of accusations of witchcraft. According to Reverend John Hale, (Note: John Hale (1636-1700) was a Puritan pastor of Beverly, Massachusetts, who took part in the Salem witch trials in 1692) who witnessed those proceedings, the court based its decision to use spectral evidence on the opinion of Matthew Hale, one of the leading legal authorities in England. In this post, I take a look at the case that the Salem judges relied on & the record of the instructions Matthew Hale gave in that trial.

The trial was one of 2 well-known witch trials ending in conviction that took place in Bury St. Edmunds, England, in the mid-17C. The earlier trial, which was instigated by Matthew Hopkins, sometimes called the Witchfinder General, resulted in the execution of 18 people on a single day, August 27, 1645...The case that Matthew Hale presided over took place some 17 years later from March 10-13, 1662, & it dealt with charges of witchcraft against 2 women from Lowestoft, a town in Suffolk some 50 miles from Bury St. Edmunds. Their names were Amy Duney & Rose Cullender. Neighbors leveled a number of accusations against these 2 women; chief among them, that they had bewitched their children, & that these enchantments led to the death of a child in one case.

Title page of “A Tryal of Witches at the Assizes held at Bury St. Edmunds in 1682.” an anonymous pamphlet giving an account of the Bury St. Edmunds Witchcraft Trial. The title page gives the incorrect year of the trial as 1664. The correct year, 1662, is mentioned in original records of the indictments. 

The trial is recorded in an anonymous pamphlet published in 1682. (It can be found online here.) In a brief foreward, the author explains that he chose to make the story public so that people could see the awkward situation it created: on the one hand, many people at the time of the pamphlet’s writing doubted that witchcraft was real, & implicitly that it should form the basis of any criminal charge; on the other hand, several highly influential men were involved in this trial – namely Hale, who was the Chief Baron of the Exchequer at the time of the trial; the medical doctor & philosopher Thomas Browne (Note: Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English polymath & author of varied works in diverse fields including science, medicine, & religion.); & Sir John Kelyng (Note: John Kelynge KS (or Kelyng) (1607–1671) was an English judge & politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1661 to 1663.), who became Chief Justice of the King’s Bench only 3 years after the trial. 

Was the trial an embarrassment? Or on the contrary does the weight of tradition force conclusions such as the ones Hale arrived at in that courtroom? Or both?

In the pamphlet’s record of his instructions, Hale explained crisply that the jury must consider only “first, whether or no these children were bewitched, [&] secondly, whether the prisoners at bar were guilty of it.” He stated that the question of whether witchcraft is real was not under discussion, since its existence was recognized in the Bible, & Parliament had already recognized its reality in several criminal statutes. He pointed out that, “the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons [witches], which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime.” (A Tryal of Witches, p. 55)

The crime of witchcraft was certainly spelled out in a number of statutes, but it was no simple matter to decide how to prove that a given ill effect was caused by a particular person’s specific act of witchcraft. The nature of witchcraft allegedly depended on occult forces, both invisible & untraceable by direct evidence. What sort of evidence could then support a conviction? (Gaskill, p. 40) 

The pamphlet does not directly record Hale’s answer to this question. Indirectly, one can see the kind of evidence that he admitted: testimony by the parents of the injured children stating that they came into verbal conflict with the accused & that the accused made statements threatening the health of their children & in one case the life of a child; testimony by the parents stating that they witnessed paranormal events that they could connect to the accused; testimony by the parents regarding the children’s abnormal psychic & physical states following verbal altercations with the accused; & physical evidence of pins & nails allegedly vomited by the children. The court also permitted the parents to recount that the children had visions of the accused entering their homes & standing menacingly at the foot or head of their beds.

The children were permitted to speak & to give testimony at the trial. One of the afflicted, an 18-year-old girl, reported having visions of Rose Cullender, who appeared to her in her home – one time trying to lure her out of the house, another time at the foot of her bed, & another time appearing with a large dog. In addition to these visions, she suffered violent fits, that included temporary blindness & vomiting metal pins. This young woman came to court with the intention to testify, but briefly “fell into her fits” & was removed from the court until she could regain her self-possession. When she returned & was sworn in, she appeared entranced again & “shrieking out in a miserable manner” only repeated, “burn her, burn her, burn her.” Hale advised the jury at the end of the trial to allow the evidence to stand as presented. (A Tryal of Witches, p. 55)

Another unusual piece of evidence came in the form of an experiment performed with one of the afflicted children in the courtroom. Some of the children were not able to speak & appeared to be in a trance-like state, one feature of which was that they clenched their fists tightly. The record states that men in their presence attempted to open their fists & that they were unable to, so strongly were they closed. But at the request of the court, Rose Cullender approached & touched one of the children. This made the child open her fist. A man in the court raised a skeptical question about this procedure, so the experiment was repeated. This time, they covered the child’s face with an apron so that she could not see who touched her. Meantime, several people touched her. Nevertheless, she only opened her fist when Rose Cullender touched her. This did not convince the skeptic. (A Tryal of Witches, pp. 42-45) But according to the record, it stood as evidence without special instructions from Hale.

Thomas Browne made a statement in which he acknowledged the reality of witchcraft, & proposed that the devil has the ability to influence the humors of the body to produce physical illness & that he does so at the behest of witches. (A Tryal of Witches, pp. 41-42)

John Kelyng made a statement in which he acknowledged that the children were bewitched, but he objected that the evidence from the children’s imagination was insufficient for a conviction. He argued that if it were accepted, “no person whatsoever can be in safety, for perhaps they might fancy another person who might altogether be innocent in such matters.” (A Tryal of Witches, p. 40)

Rose Cullender & Amy Duney maintained their innocence throughout the trial & after their conviction. They died on March 17, 1662, by hanging...

Secondary Sources:

Darr, Orna Alyagon. “Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Dynamics & Spectacles of Proof in Early Modern English Witch Trials.” Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 152-175.

Gaskill, Malcolm. “Witchcraft & Evidence in Early Modern England.” Past & Present, No. 198 (Feb. 2008), pp. 33-70.

Geis, Gilbert. “Lord Hale, Witches, & Rape.” British Journal of Law & Society, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Summer 1978), pp. 26-44.

Geis, Gilbert. A trial of witches: a seventeenth-century witchcraft prosecution. London ; New York : Routledge, 1997.

Holmes, Clive. “Women: Witnesses & Witches.” Past & Present, No. 140 (Aug. 1993), pp. 45-78.