The Conjurors of Birdlip Hill

There was once a conjuror who lived under a hill called Birdlip in Gloucestershire. This conjuror was both 'famous and able', according to the noted educationalist and fanatical anti-Catholic, Israel Tonge, who died in 1680. Tonge was also an alchemist; maybe this was the reason he travelled to converse with the cunning man, and maybe it was why John Aubrey was interested.

Aubrey recorded Tonge's brief account of the conjuror in a transcribed astrological treatise entitled 'Zecorbeni sive Claviculae Salamonis libri iv', or rather the section of the manuscript that included Aubrey’s own recipes, incantations and anecdotes. Here he noted that Tonge refused to tell him of the practitioner's name. Whether this was the conjuror's desire for anonymity or Tonge’s discretion who can tell.

Interestingly, Aubrey's (great) uncle, Thomas Danvers told Aubrey of another conjuror who once lived thereabouts, though likely some decades before. This one went by the name of Bub.

I admit that this name has me thinking. Was Bub short for Beelzebub? A conjuror might adopt the name to suggest he had power over or had communed with dark forces, or maybe to add a bit of theatricality to his magical practice, but perhaps I am just tired, and it was nothing of the sort.

Just like the unnamed practitioner imparted by Tonge we know very little about Bub's work. However, Danvers told his nephew that Bub had once supplied 'Swinburne the Gamester' with a magical bracelet. Unfortunately for Swinburne, the bracelet eventually lost its 'vertue' and thereby the magical properties which presumably had ensured his success at the gaming table. Swinburne then poisoned himself with ratsbane (arsenic), a common poison but particularly unpleasant way to die.

Here ended Aubrey's account of conjurors in Birdlip, a short tale, perhaps but one that reminds me of the faith and hope invested in 17th century magic, and its sometimes tragic consequences to those who believed.