An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Kyteler, Dame Alice

The case of Dame Alice Kyteler is of particular interest, because it was the first big witch trial to take place in Ireland. It happened in 1324, and the accused was a lady of wealth and high social position in Kilkenny.

She had been married four times, and at least two of her previous husbands had been widowers, with children by a previous marriage. Her husband at the time of her trial was Sir John le Poer. He was a sick man, suffering from some chronic illness, and a mischief-making maid-servant had hinted to him that his wife was poisoning him.

Sir John seems not to have been too ill to take forcible possession of his wife’s keys, in spite of her struggles to prevent him. He opened the boxes and chests she kept in her room, and sent their contents to the Bishop of Ossory, as evidence of poisoning and witchcraft.

Her stepchildren by her previous marriages joined in the accusations against her, saying that she had killed their fathers by witchcraft, and robbed them of their inheritance (because, of course, she had inherited their fathers’ estates).

What the truth of the matter was, we do not have enough evidence to be certain. Was Lady Alice a femme fatale, a poisoner who enriched herself by the death of three wealthy husbands and tried to encompass the death of a fourth? Or was she wrongfully accused by a spiteful maid and jealous step-children? Or was all the talk of poisoning an excuse by the Bishop of Ossory, whom the Seneschal of Kilkenny called “a vile, rustic, interloping monk”, to put down the heresy of Lady Alice and her followers, who were practising pagans?

Certain it is that many of the nobility of Ireland supported Lady Alice and opposed the Bishop. Here is the account given by Holinshed in his Chronicle of Ireland (London, 1587):

1323. In the eighteenth year of King Edward II, his reign, the Lord John Darcie came into Ireland, and to be lord justice, and the King’s lieutenant there. In these days lived in the diocese of Ossorie the Lady Alice Kettle, whom the bishop asscited to purge herself of the fame of enchantment and witchcraft imposed unto her and to one Petronill and Basill her complices. She was charged to have nightly conference with a spirit called Robert Artisson, to whom she sacrificed in the highway nine red cocks and nine peacocks’ eyes. Also that she swept the streets of Kilkennie between compline and twilight, raking all the filth towards the doors of her son William Outlawe, murmuring secretly with herself these words:

’To the house of William my son,

Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie town’.

At the first conviction they abjured and did penance, but shortly after they were found in relapse, and then was Petronill burnt at Kilkennie, the other twain might not be heard of. She at the hour of her death accused the said William as privy to their sorceries, whom the Bishop held in durance nine weeks, forbidding his keepers to eat or to drink with him, or to speak to him more than once in the day. But at length, through the suit and instance of Arnold le Powre, then Seneschall of Kilkennie, he was delivered, and after corrupted with bribes the Seneschall to persecute the bishop; so that he thrust him into prison for three months. In rifling the closet of the lady, they found a wafer of sacramental bread, having the devil’s name stamped thereon instead of Jesus Christ, and a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staff, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed. This business about these witches troubled all the state of Ireland the more, for that the lady was supported by certain of the nobility, and lastly conveyed over into England, since which time it could never be understood what became of her.

This quotation gives us some insight into the magical arts Dame Alice and her coven engaged in. The sweeping of the streets towards her son’s door is a typical piece of sympathetic magic. Compline was the last religious service of the day; and it may be relevant that some old fashioned housewives still believe it to be unlucky to use a broom after sunset. For ’unlucky’, perhaps we should read ’uncanny’, as such sweeping might have some purpose of witchcraft behind it.

The story of the sacrifice of “nine peacocks’ eyes” most probably refers, not to the actual eyes of the birds, but to their tail-feathers, which bear eyelike markings. In spite of their beauty, peacocks’ feathers have long had a sinister reputation and been associated with the Devil. Many people believe them to be unlucky, and will not have them in their houses. In Italy, peacocks’ feathers are called la penna maligna, and are associated with witchcraft and the Evil Eye. The marking upon them is indeed wonderfully and strangely like a dark eye, contrasted by the iridescent green of the feathers. In the Near East the obscure sect of the Yezidis is said to worship the Devil under the form of Melek Taos, the Peacock Angel.

The sacrifice was carried out, says another account, at the crossroads; and the name of the ’spirit’ is given as “Robin, Son of Art”. However, the account also tells us that he was Dame Alice’s lover, which shows that he was no spirit, but a man. His appearance is described as being “like an Ethiop”. Perhaps he blacked his face so as not to be recognised, as the Morris Dancers used to.

It is interesting that the names of the people accused with Dame Alice have survived; and, with “Robin, Son of Art”, they number thirteen. The roll call of the coven is as follows:

Dame Alice herself.

William Outlawe, her son, a wealthy banker.

Robert of Bristol, a cleric in Minor Orders.

Alice, the wife of Henry Faber.

John Galrussyn.

Helen Galrussyn.

Syssoh Galrussyn.

Petronilla de Meath, Dame Alice’s maid.

Sarah, Petronilla’s daughter, who was also known as Basilia (this was probably her witch name).

William Payne de Boly.

Eva de Brounestoun.

Annota Lange.

Robert Artisson, the ’Devil’.

It is notable also that in the Annales of John Clynn (quoted in The Geography of Witchcraft by Montague Summers, Kegan Paul, London, 1927), these people are spoken of as being “de secta et doctrina praedictae dominae Aliciae”, “of the sect and doctrine of the aforesaid lady Alice”. They are repeatedly accused of heresy, and of renouncing the Christian faith and refusing to come to the Christian Church; in fact it is obvious that it was the accusation of heresy, and not the alleged poisonings, that the trial was really all about. Dame Alice and her associates were quite clearly a coven of thirteen, who held a non-Christian faith.

After a good deal of controversy, in which, as we have seen, the Bishop by no means had all his own way, Dame Alice was found guilty of witchcraft, heresy and sacrificing to demons. However, she had by this time fled to England, taking with her Sarah, Petronilla’s daughter; and the two were never found again.

The Bishop had, meantime, with typical religious zeal, imprisoned Petronilla, Dame Alice’s maid, and had her subjected to six floggings, before he got her to confess to witchcraft. She was burned at the stake, refusing to the last to accept any Christain rites.

William Outlawe, the son, was released from prison upon agreeing publicly to recant and abjure his heresies in the Cathedral Church of St. Mary at Kilkenny, to perform a religious pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, and—a nice commercial touch—to roof the Cathedral with lead. As for the rest of the coven, some were burned at the stake, others whipped in the market-place and through the streets, and others were banished and declared excommunicate, which probably meant that they had already fled. The identity of Robin, the Son of Art, was never discovered.

The Bishop had troubles of his own. As we have seen, he was imprisoned in his turn by the Seneschall of Kilkenny. The Archbishop of Dublin brought a charge of heresy against him, and he took refuge in flight and appealed to the Pope for protection. In 1329 King Edward III seized his revenues, and it was not until 1347—8 that he returned from exile. He remained under a cloud until 1354, when peace seems to have been restored. He was then an old man, and he died six years later.

For human drama as well as occult interest, the case of Dame Alice Kyteler and her coven is outstanding in the history of witchcraft. We have the story of the alleged poisoning of rich husbands; and the tale of midnight orgies at lonely crossroads, where the witches are accused of using the skull of an executed criminal as a cauldron in which to boil a mixture of loathsome ingredients over a fire of oak-wood, in order to make magical powders and ointments.

We have also the curious details about the mysterious figure of “Robin, Son of Art”. The Bishop insisted that Dame Alice’s lover was an incubus demon, and the prosecution stated at her trial (held in her absence) that Robin or Robert had appeared not only as a man but in the shapes of a cat and of a big black dog. On one occasion, when he appeared as a dark-visaged man, he had brought with him two tall companions, one of whom carried an iron rod in his hand; probably some kind of ceremonial wand. Perhaps the two companions were visitors from some other coven.

The evidence forced from Petronilla de Meath shows that Robin, Son of Art was no bodiless demon. As usual with celibate clerics, the Bishop was very interested in the details of the sexual relations between Dame Alice and her supposed demon lover, and Petronilla was questioned about them. She confessed that she had been present when Robin had intercourse with the Lady Alice, and after this sinful act, she herself had wiped with a handkerchief the place of wickedness upon the bed. Dame Alice, she said, had taught her the secrets of witchcraft, and she herself was a mere novice in comparison to her mistress, than whom there was not a greater witch in all the English realm.

Petronilla died bravely and unrepentant; and if Dame Alice could not save her maid, at least she rescued Petronilla’s daughter, and took her on her flight to England. After these events, there was continuing drama; for some influence, probably that of Dame Alice’s friends and sympathisers, effectively pursued and ruined Bishop Ledrede of Ossory, who had brought the prosecution.

This case of 1324 is of historical importance, for several reasons. A good deal of evidence has survived in our own day, and can be found (though much of it is in Latin) in Proceedings Against Dame Alice Kyteler, edited by Thomas Wright for the Camden Society in 1843. Furthermore, the affair shows clearly the early stages of the struggle between the Christian Church and the Old Religion, in the days when the former was by no means so firmly entrenched as it became later, especially in the wilder and remoter countries such as Ireland. It also demonstrates the existence of the coven of thirteen; the people who recorded the names of those involved, amounting to twelve with Robert Artisson as the thirteenth, did not do so because they had been reading Margaret Murray.

The commencement of the use of torture to extract confessions, and of the blatant self-enrichment of the witch-hunters from witch trials, two features which assumed major importance in later years, are also plainly evident here.