Tag Archives: 1641

1641: Maren Splids, Jutland witch

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On this date in 1641, one of Denmark’s most famous witches suffered at the stake.

Maren Splid, Spliid, or Splids (English Wikipedia entry | Danish) remains a paradigmatic exemplar of the witch-hunt’s terrifying capacity to make magicians of anyone some neighbor might one day accuse. In Splids’s case, the neighbor was a competitor of her prosperous husband, a tailor in the Jutland town of Ribe; the commercial motive obviously suggests itself but one dismisses superstitious folly at one’s peril. Apparently Maren Splids had given him some nasty words a full 13 years before the trouble started and the neighbor nursed the grudge along as if he was carrying a flame for her.

In 1637 this accuser, Didrik by name, denounced our misfortunate principal for bewitching him unto an infernal illness; he even delivered to gobsmacked investigators some strange object that he had vomited up under her spell.

Now, Maren and husband were big enough wheels to defeat this case in Ribe — but the diligent Didrick proceeded to carry the matter all the way to King Christian IV, a supernatural paranoiac in the mold of his witchsniffing contemporary and brother-in-law James VI of Scotland/James I of England.

This sovereign ordered the case re-tried and put it on goodwife Splids to produce no fewer than 15 witnesses to her witchless character. The headsman is not quite certain whether, in a pinch, he could conjure 15 witnesses capable of credibly exonerating him of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping; neither did Splids manage to satisfy the court with a sufficient chorus.

Still supported by her husband, Splids leveraged a right of appeal which initially resulted in the grandees of Ribe overturning the conviction but her enemies were able to kick the appeal to the national government. Tortured in Copenhagen’s Blue Tower, Splids at last cracked and admitted the charges, also implicating several other women,* and was returned to Ribe to burn at the stake.


Marker at Maren Splids Hus in Ribe, which is a tourist attraction. (cc) image by Wolfgang Sauber.

She’s one of Denmark’s best-remembered sorceresses and an emblem of the witching era that saw 22 such prosecutions in Ribe alone from 1572 to 1652. She’s also been latterly reclaimed as an admirable figure — for instance, there was a 1970s feminist magazine called Maren Splids.

* One other woman, Anne Thomasdatter, would be put to death on the basis of Splids’s confession. Several others endured stays in the dungeon.

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1641: Not Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, chosen by lot, saved by hemp

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Dutch New Amsterdam’s council minutes give us today’s remarkable story, of the chance condemnation and chance deliverance of an Angolan

Our Manuel — his “de Reus” surname came from his Dutch owner — appears to have been among the very earliest slaves imported into New Amsterdam when the Dutch West India Company first introduced this institution in 1626.

By every indication apart from this brush with the scaffold he was a respected man who prospered about as well as his situation permitted. Manuel received (partial) freedom in 1644 along with nine other slaves, prominently including several others charged in this same fracas. These freedmen and their families would thereafter form the nucleus of Manhattan’s first black community by settling (post-manumission) neighboring farming plots north of Fresh Water Pond.*

We can continue to track Manuel, fleetingly, through colonial records as late as 1674 — by which time his place was no longer New Amsterdam at all, but New York.

Anno 1641. In the Name of God

On Thursday, being the 17th of January, Cornelio vander Hoykens, fiscal, plaintiff, vs. little Antonio Paulo d’Angola, Gracia d’Angola, Jan of Fort Orange, Manuel of Gerrit de Reus, Anthony the Portuguese, Manuel Minuit, Simon Conge and big Manuel, all Negroes, defendants, charged with homicide of Jan Premero, also a Negro. The plaintiff charges the defendants with manslaughter committed in killing Jan Premero and demands that Justice be administered in the case, as this is directly contrary to the laws of God and man, since they have committed a crime of lese majesty against God, their prince and their masters by robbing the same of their subject and servant.

The defendants appeared in court and without torture or shackles voluntarily declared and confessed that they jointly committed the murder, whereupon we examined the defendants, asking them who was the leader in perpetrating this deed and who gave Jan Premero the death blow. The defendants said that they did not know, except that they committed the deed together.

The aforesaid case having been duly considered, it is after mature deliberation resolved, inasmuch as the actual murderer can not be discovered, the defendants acknowledging only that they jointly committed the murder and that one is as guilty as another, to have them draw lots as to who shall be punished by hanging until death do ensue, praying Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, to designate the culprit by lot.

The defendants having drawn lots in court, the lot, by the providence of God, fell upon Manuel of Gerrit de Reus, who shall be kept in prison until the next court day, when sentence shall be pronounced and he be executed.

On the 24th of January, being Thursday The governor and council, residing in New Netherland in the name of the High and Mighty Lords the States General of the United Netherlands, his highness of Orange and the honorable directors of the Chartered West India Company, having seen the criminal proceedings of Cornelio vander Hoykens, fiscal, against little Antonio, Paulo d’Angola, Gracia d’Angola, Jan of Fort Orange, Manuel of Gerrit de Reus, Antony the Portuguese, Manuel Minuit, Simon Conge and big Manuel, all Negroes and slaves of the aforesaid Company, in which criminal proceedings by the fiscal the said Negroes are charged with the murder of Jan Premero, also a slave, committed on the 6th of January 1641, which said defendants on Monday last, being the 21st of this month, without torture or irons, jointly acknowledged in court at Fort Amsterdam that they had committed the ugly deed against the slain Premero in the woods near their houses; therefore, wishing to provide herein and to do justice, as we do hereby, in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and secular ordinances, we have, after due deliberation and consideration of the matter, condemned the delinquents to draw lots which of them shall be hanged until death ensue. And after we had called upon God to designate the culprit by lot, finally, through the providence of God, the lot fell upon Manuel of Gerrit de Reus, who therefore is thereby debarred from any exceptions, pleas and defenses which in the aforesaid matter he might in any wise set up, inasmuch as the ugly murderous deed is committed against the highest majesty of God and His supreme rulers, whom he has deliberately robbed of their servant, whose blood calls for vengence before God; all of which can in no wise be tolerated or suffered in countries where it is customary to maintain justice and should be punished as an example to others; therefore, we have condemned, as we do hereby condemn, the afore­said Manuel of Gerrlt de Reus (inasmuch as he drew the lot) to be punished by hanging until death follows, as an example to all such malefactors.

Thus done and sentenced in our council and put into execution on the 24th of January of this year of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ anno 1641.

On the 24th of January 1641 Manuel of Gerrit de Reus having been condemned to be executed with the rope so that death would follow, standing on the ladder, was pushed off by the executioner, being a Negro, having around his neck two good ropes, both of which broke, whereupon the inhabitants and bystanders called for mercy and very earnestly solicited the same.

We, therefore, having taken into consideration the request of the community, as also that the said Manuel had partly under­gone his sentence, have graciously granted him his life and pardoned him and all the other Negroes, on promise of good behavior and willing service. Thus done the day and year above written, in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland.

* Also (and better) known as Collect Pond. Although the body of water itself has long since gone the way of urban infill, we touched on its interesting proximity to Gotham’s criminal history in a footnote to this post.

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1645: Conor Macguire, Lord Baron of Enniskillen

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On this date in 1645, Conor Ma(c)guire, Lord Baron of Enniskillen, was drawn, hanged, and quartered at Tyburn.

Lord Macguire’s offense had occurred three-plus years earlier during the Irish Rebellion of 1641 — a bloody Catholic-Protestant civil war that would start the ball rolling towards Cromwell‘s depredations.

If the grievances of the latter are still well-remembered, English and Scottish Protestants had their own bill of particulars from the Irish Rebellion over Catholic-perpetrated slaughters like the Portadown Massacre. (Irish Catholics had their grievances from spending the preceding decade suffering land grabs for English settlers under the authoritarian rule of Thomas Wentworth. And on it goes.)

Actually, in the wake of the Irish Rebellion, there was a systematic project to collect witness testimony (not all of it reliable) about Catholic-on-Protestant violence. This codex would come in handy for Cromwell’s subsequent statecraft; it’s freely available online in an enormous searchable database.

Such beyond-the-pale doings took place literally beyond “the Pale” around Dublin, and outside similar fortified spots where the English holed themselves up.

These outposts gave the foreign heretics quite a bit of leverage, which Macguire and some other lords contrived to reverse via a plot to seize Dublin castle, kill its English lords, “and to put all the Protestants there likewise to the sword.” It was the lynchpin of an audacious coup that involved similar actions at English strongholds all around the island.

While some other fortresses did succumb, the plot against Dublin failed when Macguire’s co-conspirator Hugh “the Stereotype” MacMahon got drunk the night before and blabbed about it to his Presbyterian brother-in-law. Thus narrowly preserved, Dublin authorities arrested MacMahon and Macguire. (MacMahon was drawn and quartered in November 1644.)

The personal was very much political here, with the loss of lands and revenues under Wentworth stoking national and religious resentments against the English lords and settlers. Macguire described the recruiting pitch made by one of the rebellion’s leading spirits, Rory O’Mo(o)re: “[O’More] began to lay down to me the case that I was in then, overwhelmed in debt, the smallness of my estate, and the greatness of the estate my ancestors had, and how I should be sure to get it again, or at least a good part thereof.” (Source)

Whatever rank greed held in Conor Macguire’s motivations, however, he was constant to his horrific end. This interesting account of the scene on the scaffold will hardly fail to move the most ardent Orangeman to a bit of pity for the poor bastard enduring in his last moments on earth an endless badgering by the London sheriff to endorse a policy statement on intersectional strife.

On Thursday, February 20th, he was drawn on a sledge from the Tower, through London, and so to Tyburn; when being removed into a cart, he kneeled and prayed awhile; after which Sheriff Gibbs spake to him, representing the heinousness of his crime, and the vast numbers who had been murdered by that conspiracy, for which he was to suffer, and, therefore, exhorted him to express his sorrow for it: to which he answered, ‘I desire Almighty God to forgive me my sins.’

Sheriff Gibbs.—Do you believe you did well in those wicked actions?

Macg.—I have but a short time, do not trouble me.

Sher.—Sir, it is but just I should trouble you, that you may not be troubled for ever.

Macg.—I beseech you, Sir, trouble me not; I have but a little time to spend.

Sher.—I shall give you as much time after as you shall spend to give satisfaction to the people; I do require you, as an instrument set in God’s hands here, to make an acknowledgment to the people, whether you are sorry for what you have done or no; whether it be good or no.

Macg.—I beseech you do not trouble me; I am not disposed to give you an account. Pray give .me leave to pray.

Dr. Sibbald.—Give glory to God, that your soul may not be presented to God with the blood of so many thousand people.

Sher.—You are either to go to heaven or hell. If you make not an ingenuous confession your case is desperate. Had you any commission or not?

Macg.—I tell you there was no commission that ever I saw.

Sher.—Who were actors or plotters with you? or, who gave you any commission?

Macg.—For God’s sake give mo leave to depart in peace. They then asked him if he had not some pardon or bull from the Pope for what he did? to which he only answered, ‘I am not of the same religion with you.’ And being further urged about a bull, or pardon, said, ‘I saw none of it; all that I knew I delivered on my examinations; all that I said on my examinations are true; all that I said is right. I beseech you let me depart in peace.’ And so not returning them any answer to their question, he continued mumbling over a paper, which he had in his hand, as he had done from his first coming. The sheriffs commanded his pockets to be searched, whether ho had no bull or pardon about him, but they found in his pocket only some beads and a crucifix, which were taken from him. And then Dr. Sibbald said to him, ‘Come, my Lord, leave these, and acknowledge your fault to God and the world: one drop of the blood of Jesus Christ is able to purge you of all the heavy load that is upon you; it is not your Ave Marias nor these things will do you any good, but it is Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata Mundi.’ The Lord Macguire seemed not to regard his discourse, but read out of his paper to the people as followeth:

Since I am here to die, I desire to depart with a quiet mind, and with the marks of a good Christian; that is, asking forgiveness first of God, and next of the world. And I do forgive, from the bottom of my heart, all my enemies and offenders, even those that have a hand in my death. I die a Roman Catholick, and although I have been a great sinner, yet I am now, by God’s grace, heartily sorry for all my sins; and I do most confidently trust to be saved, not by my own works, but only by the passion, merits, and mercy of my dear Saviour Jesus Christ, into whose hand I commend my soul.

And then added, ‘I beseech you, gentlemen, let me have a little time to say my prayers.’

Sher.—Sir, if you answer ingenuously to those questions we shall ask you, you shall have time afterwards; whether do you account the shedding of Protestant blood to be a sin or not, and whether do you desire pardon of God for that sin?

Macg.—I do desire pardon of God for all my sins: I cannot resolve you in anything for my part.

Sher.—You can tell what your conscience dictates to you. Do you think it was a sin or not?

Macg.—For my part I cannot determine it.

Sher.—Then now it seems nothing to you to kill so many.

Macg.—How do you mean killing of them? to tell you my mind directly, for the killing, I do not know that, but I think, the Irish had a great cause for their wars.

Sher.—Was there any assault made upon you? Had you not entered into a covenant? Had you not engaged yourselves by oath to the king?

Macg.—For Jesus Christ’s sake, I beseech you, give me a little time to prepare myself.

Sher.—Have pity on your own soul.

Macg.—For God’s sake have pity on me, and let me say my prayers.

Sher.—I say the like to you, in relation to your own soul, whether do you think the massacre of so many thousand Protestants was a good act? For Jesus Christ’s sake have pity on your soul.

Macg.—Pray let me have a little time to say my prayers.

All this time his eye was mostly on his papers, mumbling something out of them to himself. Whereupon one of the sheriffs demanded these papers from him; he flung them down; they were taken up and given to the sheriff. They asked him further, whether they were not some agreement with the recusants in England? Whereunto he answered, ‘I take it upon my death, I do not know that any man knew of it;’ and after some other such like talk, the sheriff bidding him prepare for death, he said: ‘I beseech all the Catholics here to pray for me. I beseech God to have mercy on my soul:’ and so was executed.

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1641: Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford

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On this date in 1641, the doomed English monarch Charles I regretfully sacrificed one of his ablest ministers to the headsman.

Thomas Wentworth and loyal doggie, painted c. 1639 by Anthony van Dyck.

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford had cut his teeth in Parliament in the 1620s as an advocate of the rights of the Commons as against those of the king, but the notion that he’d be hoisted by his own petard would be little comfort to a King soon destined to find himself in similar straits.

After Parliament forced through the 1628 Petition of Right (and Wentworth’s pro-monarchist personal rival George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham had been conveniently assassinated) Wentworth went over to the king’s camp with the sententious declaration

The authority of a king is the keystone which closeth up the arch of order and government.

The authority of that king, which Wentworth now worked vigorously to uphold during the crown’s Parliament-free Personal Rule of the 1630s, also elevated Wentworth to higher honors.

He would have occasion to exercise his own “personal rule” as dictatorial viceroy in Ireland, and when push came to shove between King and Commons, advocated the most tyrannical measures to compel the compliance of obstinate Englishmen.

By 1640, Wentworth had become in the eyes of his enemies the very embodiment of the monarch’s every sin, and when Charles was obliged by his deteriorating situation to summon Parliament once more, its first order of business was the impeachment of this obnoxious retainer. When Wentworth skillfully repelled the charges and won acquittal on April 10, his parliamentarian opponents simply passed a bill of attainder condemning him to death anyway.

The only thing that stood in the way of the chop was the signature of that ruler whom Wentworth had served so loyally. As Charles dithered — for he had personally guaranteed Wentworth his safety upon his most recent summons to London — popular hatred for the Earl threatened to escalate the crisis into something much more dangerous for the throne.

In one last gesture of fealty, Wentworth dashed off a note to his sovereign, magnanimously releasing him from any obligation save political calculation.

Sire, out of much sadness, I am come to a resolution of that which I take to be the best becoming me; and that is, to look upon the prosperity of your sacred person and the commonwealth as infinitely to be preferred before any man’s private interest. And therefore, in few words, as I have placed myself wholly upon the honour and justice of my peers, I do most humbly beseech you, for the preventing of such mischiefs as may happen by your refusal to pass this bill, by this means to remove this unfortunate thing forth of the way towards that blessed agreement, which God, I trust, shall for ever establish betwixt you and your subjects. Sire, my consent herein shall acquit you more to God than all the world can do beside. To a willing man there is no injury done; and as, by God’s grace, I forgive all the world with a calmness and meekness of infinite contentment to my disloding soul, so, Sire, I can give the life of this world with all cheerfulness imaginable, in the just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours; and only beg that, in your goodness, you would vouchsafe to cast your gracious regard upon my poor son and his three sisters, less or more, and no otherwise, than their unfortunate father shall appear more or less guilty of this death. (Quoted here)

This letter’s place in the annals of sacrificial loyalty is compromised only slightly by its author’s dismay upon finding out that his feckless majesty had quickly taken up the offer:* Wentworth rolled his eyes heavenward and exclaimed

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.**

But the miscalculation was done.

Two days after Charles signed off, Wentworth was beheaded on Tower Hill to the rapture of an audience supposed to have numbered 200,000 strong.


Strafford Led to Execution, by Paul Delaroche, with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Stafford, receiving the blessing of his ally, the imprisoned Archbishop William Laud.


1642 pamphlet illustration of the beheading, from here.

As things went from bad to worse for Charles in the years ahead, he would have many occasions to regret the sacrifice of so loyal and energetic a minister … and to lament, upon hearing his own death sentence, that he was suffering divine judgment for this date’s act of expedient faithlessness.

A few books about Thomas Wentworth

* In acceding to the sentence, Charles proposed giving Strafford the best part of a week to prepare himself. Parliament ignored that request and set the execution for the very next day.

** That’s Psalm 146:3.

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