A 3. SECOND IMPRIMATUR: "Edward Bromley. I took upon mee to reuise and correct it."] This revision by the judge who presided at the trial gives a singular and unique value and authority to the work. We have no other report of any witch trial which has an equal stamp of authenticity. How many of the rhetorical flourishes interspersed in the book are the property of Thomas Potts, Esquier, and how many are the interpolation of the "excellent care" of the worthy Baron, it is scarcely worth while to investigate. Certainly never were judge and clerk more admirably paired. The Shallow on the bench was well reflected in the Master Slender below.

B a. "The number of them being knowen to exceed all others at any time heretofore at one time to be indicted, arraigned, and receiue their tryall."] Probably this was the case, at least in England; but a greater number had been convicted before, even in this country, at one time, than were found guilty on this occasion, as it appears from Scot, (Discovery of Witchcraft, page 543, edition 1584,) that seventeen or eighteen witches were condemned at once, at St. Osith, in Essex, in 1576, of whom an account was written by Brian Darcy, with the names and colours of their spirits.

B b. "She was a very old woman, about the age of fourescore."] Dr. Henry More would have styled old Demdike "An eximious example of Moses, his Mecassephah, the word which he uses in that law,—Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Margaret Agar and Julian Cox, (see Glanvill's Collection of Relations, p. 135, edition 1682,) on whom he dwells with such delighted interest, were very inferior subjects to what, in his hands, Elizabeth Sothernes would have made. They had neither of them the finishing attribute of blindness, so fearful in a witch, to complete the sketch; nor such a fine foreground for the painting as the forest of Pendle presented; nor the advantage, for grouping, of a family of descendants in which witchcraft might be transmitted to the third generation.

B 2 a. "Roger Nowell, Esquire."] This busy and mischievous personage who resided at Read Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood of Pendle, was sheriff of Lancashire in 1610. He married Katherine, daughter of John Murton, of Murton, and was buried at Whalley, January 31st, 1623. He was of the same family as Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul's, and Lawrence Nowell, the restorer of Saxon literature in England; and tarnished a name which they had rendered memorable, by becoming, apparently, an eager and willing instrument in that wicked persecution which resulted in the present trial. His ill-directed activity seems to have fanned the dormant embers into a blaze, and to have given aim and consistency to the whole scheme of oppression. From this man was descended, in the female line, one whose merits might atone for a whole generation of Roger Nowells, the truly noble-minded and evangelical Reginald Heber.

B 2 b 1. "Gouldshey,"] so commonly pronounced, but more properly Goldshaw, or Goldshaw Booth.

B 2 b 2. "The spirit answered, his name was Tibb."] Bernard, who is learned in the nomenclature of familiar spirits, gives, in his Guide to Grand Jurymen, 1630, 12mo, the following list of the names of the more celebrated familiars of English witches. "Such as I have read of are these: Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smacke, Litefoote, Nonsuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Callico, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dicke, Prettie, Grissil, and Jacke." In the confession of Isabel Gowdie, a famous Scotch witch, (in Pitcairne's Trials, vol. iii. page 614,) we have the following catalogue of attendant spirits, rather, it must be confessed, a formidable band. "The names of our Divellis, that waited upon us, ar thes: first, Robert the Jakis; Sanderis, the Read Roaver; Thomas the Fearie; Swain, the Roaring Lion; Thieffe of Hell; Wait upon Hirself; Mak Hectour; Robert the Rule; Hendrie Laing; and Rorie. We would ken them all, on by on, from utheris. Some of theim apeirit in sadd dunn, som in grasse-grein, som in sea-grein, and some in yallow." Archbishop Harsnet, in his admirable Declaration of Popish Impostures, under the pretence of casting out Devils, 1605, 4to, a work unsurpassed for rich humour and caustic wit, clothed in good old idiomatic English, has a chapter "on the strange names of these devils," in which he observes, (p. 46,) "It is not amiss that you be acquainted with these extravagant names of devils, least meeting them otherwise by chance you mistake them for the names of tapsters, or juglers." Certainly, some of the names he marshalls in array smell strongly of the tavern. These are some of them: Pippin, Philpot, Modu, Soforce, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito, Lustie Huffe-cap, Killico, Hob, Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, and Lustie Jollie Jenkin.

B 2 b 3. "About Day-light Gate."] Day-light Gate, i.e. Evening, the down gate of daylight. See Promptuarium Parvulorum, (edited by Way for the Camden Society,) page 188, "Gate down, or downe gate of the Sunne or any other planet."—Occasus. Palgrave gives, "At the sonne gate downe; sur le soleil couchant."

B 3 a 1. "The said Deuill did get blood vnder her left arme."] It would seem (see Elizabeth Device's Examination afterwards) as if some preliminary search were made, in the case of this poor old woman, for the marks which were supposed to come by the sucking or drawing of the Spirit or Familiar. Most probably her confession was the result of this and other means of annoyance and torture employed in the usual unscrupulous manner, upon a blind woman of eighty. Of those marks supposed to be produced by the sucking of the Spirit or Familiar, the most curious and scientific (if the word may be applied to such a subject) account will be found in a very scarce tract, which seems to have been unknown to the writers on witchcraft. Its title is "A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, containing these several particulars; That there are Witches called bad Witches, and Witches untruly called good or white Witches, and what manner of people they be, and how they may be knowne, with many particulars thereunto tending. Together with the Confessions of many of those executed since May, 1645, in the several Counties hereafter mentioned. As also some objections Answered. By John Stearne, now of Lawshall, neere Burie Saint Edmunds in Suffolke, sometimes of Manningtree in Essex. Prov. xvii. 15, He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord. Deut. xiii. 14, Thou shall therefore enquire, and make search, and aske diligently whether it be truth and the thing certaine. London, Printed by William Wilson, dwelling in Little Saint Bartholomews, neere Smithfield, 1648, pages 61, besides preface." Stearne, in whom Remigius and De Lancre would have recognized a congenial soul, had a sort of joint commission with Hopkins, as Witch-finder, and tells us (see address to Reader) that he had been in part an agent in finding out or discovering about 200 witches in Essex, Suffolk, Northamptonshire, Huntingtonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely. He deals with the subject undoubtedly like a man whose extensive experience and practice had enabled him to reduce the matter to a complete system. (See his account of their marks, pp. 43 to 50.) He might, like John Kincaid in Tranent, (see Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 599,) have assumed the right of Common Pricker, i.e. Searcher for the devil's marks, and had his own tests, which were infallible. He complains, good man, "that in many places I never received penny as yet, nor any am like, notwithstanding I have hands for satisfaction, except I should sue; [he should have sued by all means, we might then have had his bill of particulars, which would have been curious;] but many rather fall upon me for what hath been received, but I hope such suits will be disannulled, and that where I have been out of moneys for Towns in charges and otherwise such course will be taken that I may be satisfied and paid with reason." He was doubtless well deserving of a recompense, and his neighbours were much to blame if he did not receive a full and ample one. Of the latter end of his coadjutor, Hopkins, whom Sir Walter Scott (see Somers's Tracts, vol. iii. p. 97, edit. 1810,) and several other writers represent as ultimately executed himself for witchcraft, he gives a very different, and no doubt more correct account; which, singularly enough, has hitherto remained entirely unnoticed. "He died peaceably at Manningtree, after a long sicknesse of a consumption, as many of his generation had done before him, without any trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsely reported of him. He was the son of a godly minister, and therefore, without doubt, within the Covenant." Were not the interests of truth too sacred to be compromised, it might seem almost a pity to demolish that merited and delightful retribution which Butler's lines have immortalized.

B 3 a 2. "I will burne the one of you and hang the other."] The following extracts from that fine old play, "The Witch of Edmonton," bear a strong resemblance to the scene described in the text. Mother Sawyer, in whom the milk of human kindness is turned to gall by destitution, imbittered by relentless outrage and insult, and who, driven out of the pale of human fellowship, is thrown upon strange and fearful allies, would almost appear to be the counterpart of Mother Demdike. The weird sisters of our transcendant bard are wild and wonderful creations, but have no close relationship to the plain old traditional witch of our ancestors, which is nowhere represented by our dramatic writers with faithfulness and truth except in the Witch of Edmonton:—

Enter ELIZABETH SAWYER, gathering sticks.

Saw. And why on me? why should the envious world Throw all their scandalous malice upon me? 'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant, And like a bow buckled and bent together, By some more strong in mischiefs than myself, Must I for that be made a common sink, For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues To fall and run into? Some call me Witch, And being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one; urging, That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so) Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse. This they enforce upon me; and in part Make me to credit it; and here comes one Of my chief adversaries.

Enter Old BANKS.

Banks. Out, out upon thee, witch!

Saw. Dost call me witch?

Banks. I do, witch, I do; and worse I would, knew I a name more hateful. What makest thou upon my ground?

Saw. Gather a few rotten sticks to warm me.

Banks. Down with them when I bid thee, quickly; I'll make thy bones rattle in thy skin else.

Saw. You won't, churl, cut-throat, miser!—there they be; [Throws them down.] would they stuck across thy throat, thy bowels, thy maw, thy midriff.

Banks. Say'st thou me so, hag? Out of my ground! [Beats her.

Saw. Dost strike me, slave, curmudgeon! Now thy bones aches, thy joints cramps, and convulsions stretch and crack thy sinews!

Banks. Cursing, thou hag! take that, and that. [Beats her, and exit.

Saw. Strike, do!—and wither'd may that hand and arm Whose blows have lamed me, drop from the rotten trunk! Abuse me! beat me! call me hag and witch! What is the name? where, and by what art learn'd, What spells, what charms or invocations? May the thing call'd Familiar be purchased?

* * * * *

Saw. Still vex'd! still tortured! that curmudgeon Banks Is ground of all my scandal; I am shunn'd And hated like a sickness; made a scorn To all degrees and sexes. I have heard old beldams Talk of familiars in the shape of mice, Rats, ferrets, weasels, and I wot not what, That have appear'd, and suck'd, some say, their blood; But by what means they came acquainted with them, I am now ignorant. Would some power, good or bad, Instruct me which way I might be revenged Upon this churl, I'd go out of myself, And give this fury leave to dwell within This ruin'd cottage, ready to fall with age! Abjure all goodness, be at hate with prayer, And study curses, imprecations, Blasphemous speeches, oaths, detested oaths, Or anything that's ill; so I might work Revenge upon this miser, this black cur, That barks and bites, and sucks the very blood Of me, and of my credit. 'Tis all one, To be a witch, as to be counted one: Vengeance, shame, ruin light upon that canker!

Enter a Black Dog.

Dog. Ho! have I found thee cursing? now thou art Mine own.

Saw. Thine! what art thou?

Dog. He thou hast so often Importuned to appear to thee, the devil.

Saw. Bless me! the devil!

Dog. Come, do not fear; I love thee much too well To hurt or fright thee; if I seem terrible, It is to such as hate me. I have found Thy love unfeign'd; have seen and pitied Thy open wrongs, and come, out of my love, To give thee just revenge against thy foes.

Saw. May I believe thee?

Dog. To confirm't, command me Do any mischief unto man or beast. And I'll effect it, on condition That, uncompell'd, thou make a deed of gift Of soul and body to me.

Saw. Out, alas! My soul and body?

Dog. And that instantly, And seal it with thy blood: if thou deniest, I'll tear thy body in a thousand pieces.

Saw. I know not where to seek relief: but shall I, After such covenants seal'd, see full revenge On all that wrong me?

Dog. Ha, ha! silly woman! The devil is no liar to such as he loves— Didst ever know or hear the devil a liar To such as he affects?

Saw. Then I am thine; at least so much of me As I can call mine own—

Dog. Equivocations? Art mine or no? speak, or I'll tear—

Saw. All thine.

Dog. Seal't with thy blood.

[She pricks her arm, which he sucks.—Thunder and lightning.

See! now I dare call thee mine! For proof, command me: instantly I'll run To any mischief; goodness can I none.

Saw. And I desire as little. There's an old churl, One Banks—

Dog. That wrong'd thee: he lamed thee, call'd thee witch.

Saw. The same; first upon him I'd be revenged.

Dog. Thou shalt; do but name how?

Saw. Go, touch his life.

Dog. I cannot.

Saw. Hast thou not vow'd? Go, kill the slave!

Dog. I will not.

Saw. I'll cancel then my gift.

Dog. Ha, ha!

Saw. Dost laugh! Why wilt not kill him?

Dog. Fool, because I cannot. Though we have power, know, it is circumscribed, And tied in limits: though he be curst to thee, Yet of himself, he is loving to the world, And charitable to the poor; now men, that, As he, love goodness, though in smallest measure, Live without compass of our reach: his cattle And corn I'll kill and mildew; but his life (Until I take him, as I late found thee, Cursing and swearing) I have no power to touch.

Saw. Work on his corn and cattle then.

Dog. I shall. The WITCH OF EDMONTON shall see his fall.

Ford's Plays, edit. 1839, p. 190.

B 3 a. "Alizon Device."] Device is merely the common name Davies spelled as pronounced in the neighbourhood of Pendle.

B 3 b. "Is to make a picture of clay."]

Hecate. What death is't you desire for Almachildes?

Duchess. A sudden and a subtle.

Hecate. Then I've fitted you. Here be the gifts of both; sudden and subtle: His picture made in wax and gently molten By a blue fire kindled with dead men's eyes Will waste him by degrees.

Duchess. In what time, prithee?

Hecate. Perhaps in a moon's progress.

Middleton's Witch, edit. 1778, p. 100.

None of the offices in the Witches rubric had higher classical warrant than this method, a favourite one, it appears, of Mother Demdike, but in which Anne Redfern had the greatest skill of any of these Pendle witches, of victimizing by moulding and afterwards pricking or burning figures of clay representing the individual whose life was aimed at. Horace, Lib. i. Sat. 8, mentions both waxen and woollen images—

Lanea et effigies erat altera cerea, &c.

And it appears from Tacitus, that the death of Germanicus was supposed to have been sought by similar practices. By such a Simulachrum, or image, the person was supposed to be devoted to the infernal deities. According to the Platonists, the effect produced arose from the operation of the sympathy and synergy of the Spiritus Mundanus, (which Plotinus calls [Greek: ton megan goeta] [Transcriber's Note: typo "t" for "ton" in original Greek], the grand magician,) such as they resolve the effect of the weaponsalve and other magnetic cures into. The following is the Note in Brand on this part of witchcraft:—

King James, in his "Daemonology," book ii., chap. 5, tells us, that "the Devil teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay, that, by roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or dried away by continual sickness."

See Servius on the 8th Eclogue of Virgil; Theocritus, Idyll, ii., 22; Hudibras, part II., canto ii., l. 351.

Ovid says:

"Devovet absentes, simulachraque cerea figit Et miserum tenues in jecur urget acus." Heroid. Ep. vi., l. 91.

See also "Grafton's Chronicle," p. 587, where it is laid to the charge (among others) of Roger Bolinbrook, a cunning necromancer, and Margery Jordane, the cunning Witch of Eye, that they, at the request of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, had devised an image of wax, representing the king, (Henry the Sixth,) which by their sorcery a little and a little consumed; intending thereby in conclusion to waste and destroy the king's person. Shakspeare mentions this, Henry VI., P. II., act i., sc. 4.

It appears, from Strype's "Annals of the Reformation,", vol. i., p. 8, under anno 1558, that Bishop Jewel, preaching before the queen, said, "It may please your grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few last years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. Your grace's subjects pine away, even unto the death; their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject." "This," Strype adds, "I make no doubt was the occasion of bringing in a bill, the next parliament, for making enchantments and witchcraft felony." One of the bishop's strong expressions is, "These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness."

It appears from the same work, vol. iv., p. 6, sub anno 1589, that "one Mrs. Dier had practised conjuration against the queen, to work some mischief to her majesty; for which she was brought into question: and accordingly her words and doings were sent to Popham, the queen's attorney, and Egerton, her solicitor, by Walsingham, the secretary, and Sir Thomas Heneage, her vice-chamberlain, for their judgment, whose opinion was that Mrs. Dier was not within the compass of the statute touching witchcraft, for that she did no act, and spake certain lewd speeches tending to that purpose, but neither set figure nor made pictures." Ibid., vol. ii., p. 545, sub anno 1578, Strype says: "Whether it were the effect of magic, or proceeded from some natural cause, but the queen was in some part of this year under excessive anguish by pains of her teeth, insomuch that she took no rest for divers nights, and endured very great torment night and day."

Andrews, in his "Continuation of Henry's History of Great Britain," 4to, p. 93, tells us, speaking of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, who in the reign of Queen Elizabeth died by poison, "The credulity of the age attributed his death to witchcraft. The disease was odd, and operated as a perpetual emetic; and a waxen image, with hair like that of the unfortunate earl, found in his chamber, reduced every suspicion to certainty."

"The wife of Marshal d'Ancre was apprehended, imprisoned, and beheaded for a witch, upon a surmise that she had inchanted the queen to dote upon her husband; and they say the young king's picture was found in her closet, in virgin wax, with one leg melted away. When asked by her judges what spells she had made use of to gain so powerful an ascendancy over the queen, she replied, 'that ascendancy only which strong minds ever gain over weak ones.'" Seward's "Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons," &c., vol. ii., p. 215.

Blagrave, in his "Astrological Practice of Physick," p. 89, observes that "the way which the witches usually take for to afflict man or beast in this kind is, as I conceive, done by image or model, made in the likeness of that man or beast they intend to work mischief upon, and by the subtlety of the devil made at such hours and times when it shall work most powerfully upon them, by thorn, pin, or needle, pricked into that limb or member of the body afflicted."

This is farther illustrated by a passage in one of Daniel's Sonnets:

"The slie inchanter, when to work his will And secret wrong on some forspoken wight, Frames waxe, in forme to represent aright The poore unwitting wretch he meanes to kill, And prickes the image, framed by magick's skill, Whereby to vex the partie day and night." Son. 10; from Poems and Sonnets annexed to "Astrophil and Stella," 4to, 1591.

Again, in "Diaria, or the Excellent Conceitful Sonnets of H.C.," (Henry Constable,) 1594:

"Witches, which some murther do intend, Doe make a picture, and doe shoote at it; And in that part where they the picture hit, The parties self doth languish to his end." Decad. II., Son. ii.

Coles, in his "Art of Simpling," &c., p. 66, says that witches "take likewise the roots of mandrake, according to some, or, as I rather suppose, the roots of briony, which simple folke take for the true mandrake, and make thereof an ugly image, by which they represent the person on whom they intend to exercise their witchcraft." He tells us, ibid., p. 26, "Some plants have roots with a number of threads, like beards, as mandrakes, whereof witches and impostors make an ugly image, giving it the form of the face at the top of the root, and leave those strings to make a broad beard down to the feet."—Brand's Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 9.

Ben Johnson has not forgotten this superstition in his learned and fanciful Masque of Queens, in which so much of the lore of witchcraft is embodied. There are few finer things in English poetry than his 3rd Charm:—

The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad, And so is the cat-a-mountain, The ant and the mole sit both in a hole, And the frog peeps out o' the fountain; The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play, The spindle is now a turning; The moon it is red, and the stars are fled, But all the sky is a burning: The ditch is made, and our nails the spade, With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick; There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood. Quickly, dame, then bring your part in, Spur, spur upon little Martin, Merrily, merrily, make him sail, A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail, Fire above, and fire below, With a whip in your hand, to make him go. Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 121.

Meric Casaubon, who is always an amusing writer, and whose works, notwithstanding his appetite for the wonderful, do not merit the total oblivion into which they have fallen, is very angry with Jerome Cardan, an author not generally given to scepticism, for the hesitation he displays on the subject of these waxen images:—

I know some who question not the power of devils or witches; yet in this particular are not satisfied how such a thing can be. For there is no relation or sympathy in nature, (saith one, who hath written not many years ago,) between a man and his effigies, that upon the pricking of the one the other should grow sick. It is upon another occasion that he speaks it; but his exception reacheth this example equally. A wonder to me he should so argue, who in many things hath very well confuted the incredulity of others, though in some things too credulous himself. If we must believe nothing but what we can reduce to natural, or, to speak more properly, (for I myself believe the devil doth very little, but by nature, though to us unknown,) manifest causes, he doth overthrow his own grounds, and leaves us but very little of magical operations to believe. But of all men, Cardan had least reason to except against this kind of magick as ridiculous or incredible, who himself is so full of incredible stories in that kind, upon his own credit alone, that they had need to be of very easie belief that believe him, especially when they know (whereof more afterwards) what manner of man he was. But I dare say, that from Plato's time, who, among other appurtenances of magic, doth mention these, [Greek: kerina mimemata] [Transcriber's Note: typo "mimkmata" for "mimemata" in original Greek] that is, as Ovid doth call them, Simulachra cerea, or as Horace, cereas imagines, (who also in another place more particularly describes them,) there is not any particular rite belonging to that art more fully attested by histories of all ages than this is. Besides, who doth not know that it is the devil's fashion (we shall meet with it afterwards again) to amuse his servants and vassals with many rites and ceremonies, which have certainly no ground in nature, no relation or sympathy to the thing, as for other reasons, so to make them believe, they have a great hand in the production of such and such effects; when, God knows, many times all that they do, though taught and instructed by him, is nothing at all to the purpose, and he, in very deed, is the only agent, by means which he doth give them no account of. Bodinus, in his preface to his "Daemonology," relateth, that three waxen images, whereof one of Queen Elizabeth's, of glorious memory, and two other, Reginae proximorum, of two courtiers, of greatest authority under the queen, were found in the house of a priest at Islington, a magician, or so reputed, to take away their lives. This he doth repeat again in his second book, chap. 8, but more particularly that it was in the year of the Lord 1578, and that Legatus Angliae and many Frenchmen did divulge it so; but withal, in both places he doth add, that the business was then under trial, and not yet perfectly known. I do not trust my memory: I know my age and my infirmities. Cambden, I am sure, I have read; and read again; but neither in him, nor in Bishop Carleton's "Thankful Remembrancer," do I remember any such thing. Others may, perchance. Yet, in the year 1576, I read in both of some pictures, representing some that would have kill'd that glorious queen with a motto, Quorsum haec, alio properantibus! which pictures were made by some of the conspiracy for their incouragement; but intercepted, and showed, they say, to the queen. Did the time agree, it is possible these pictures might be the ground of those mistaken, if mistaken, waxen images, which I desire to be taught by others who can give a better account.—Casaubon's (M.) Treatise, proving Spirits, Witches, and Supernatural Operations, 1672. 12mo., p. 92.

In Scotland this practice was in high favour with witches, both in ancient and modern times. The lamentable story of poor King Duff, as related by Hector Boethius, a story which has blanched the cheek and spoiled the rest of many a youthful reader, is too well known to need extracting. Even so late as 1676, Sir George Maxwell, of Pollock, (See Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 323,) apparently a man of melancholy and valetudinarian habits, believed himself bewitched to death by six witches, one man and five women, who were leagued for the purpose of tormenting a clay image in his likeness. Five of the accused were executed, and the sixth only escaped on account of extreme youth.

Isabel Gowdie, the famous Scotch witch before referred to, in her confessions gives a very particular account of the mode in which these images were manufactured. It is curious, and worth quoting:—

Johne Taylor and Janet Breadhead, his wyff, in Bellnakeith, Bessie Wilsone, in Aulderne, and Margret Wilsone, spows to Donald Callam in Aulderne, and I, maid an pictur of clay, to distroy the Laird of Parkis meall[62] children. Johne Taylor browght hom the clay, in his plaid newk;[63] his wyff brak it verie small, lyk meall,[64] and sifted it with a siew,[65] and powred in water among it, in the Divellis nam, and vrought it werie sore, lyk rye-bowt;[66] and maid of it a pictur of the Lairdis sones. It haid all the pairtis and merkis of a child, such as heid, eyes, nose, handis, foot, mowth, and little lippes. It wanted no mark of a child; and the handis of it folded down by its sydes. It was lyk a pow,[67] or a flain gryce.[68] We laid the face of it to the fyre, till it strakned;[69] and a cleir fyre round abowt it, till it ves read lyk a cole.[70] After that, we wold rest it now and then; each other day[71] ther wold be an piece of it weill rosten. The Laird of Parkis heall maill children by it ar to suffer, if it be not gotten and brokin, als weill as thes that ar borne and dead alreadie. It ves still putt in and taken out of the fyre, in the Divellis name. It wes hung wp wpon an knag. It is yet in Johne Taylor's hows, and it hes a cradle of clay abowt it. Onlie Johne Taylor and his wyff, Janet Breadhead, Bessie and Margret Wilsones in Aulderne, and Margret Brodie, thair, and I, were onlie at the making of it. All the multitud of our number of WITCHES, of all the COEVENS, kent[72] all of it, at owr nixt meitting after it was maid.

The wordis which we spak, quhan we maid the pictur, for distroyeing of the Laird of Parkis meall-children, wer thus:

'IN THE DIVELLIS nam, we powr in this water among this mowld (meall,)[73] For lang duyning and ill heall; We putt it into the fyre, That it mey be brunt both stik and stowre. It salbe brunt, with owr will, As any stikle[74] wpon a kill.'

THE DIVELL taught ws the wordis; and quhan ve haid learned them, we all fell downe wpon owr bare kneyis, and owr hair abowt owr eyes, and owr handis lifted wp, looking steadfast wpon THE DIVELL, still saying the wordis thryse ower, till it wes maid. And then, in THE DIVELLIS nam, we did put it in, in the midst of the fyre. Efter it had skrukned[75] a little before the fyre, and quhan it ves read lyk a coale, we took it owt in THE DIVELLIS nam. Till it be broken, it will be the deathe of all the meall children that the Laird of Park will ewer get. Cast it ower an Kirk, it will not brak quhill[76] it be broken with an aix, or som such lyk thing, be a man's handis. If it be not broken, it will last an hundreth yeir. It hes ane cradle about it of clay, to preserue it from skaith;[77] and it wes rosten each vther day, at the fyr; som tymes on pairt of it, som tymes an vther pairt of it; it vold be a litle wat with water, and then rosten. The bairn vold be brunt and rosten, ewin as it ves by ws.—Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, Vol. iii. pp. 605 and 612.

[Footnote 62: Male.]

[Footnote 63: In the nook, or corner, of his plaid.]

[Footnote 64: Pounded, or powdered it, like meal.]

[Footnote 65: To make the plaster fine, and free from earthy particles.]

[Footnote 66: Probably a sort of stir-about, or hasty-pudding, made of rye-flour.]

[Footnote 67: In another deposition it is thus expressed, 'lyk a pow or feadge.' A feadge was a sort of scone, or roll, of a pretty large size. Perhaps this term signifies, as large as the quantity of dough or paste necessary for making this kind of bread.]

[Footnote 68: A flayed sucking pig, after being scalded and scraped.]

[Footnote 69: Shrivelled with the heat.]

[Footnote 70: Red like a coal.]

[Footnote 71: Each alternate day.]

[Footnote 72: Knew.]

[Footnote 73: It is written meall in the other Confession; and the metre (such as it is) requires this liberty. Mowld signifies 'earth' or 'dust.']

[Footnote 74: Stubble.]

[Footnote 75: Parched; shrivelled.]

[Footnote 76: Until.]

[Footnote 77: Harm; injury.]

B 4 b 1. "And sayd that she should haue gould, siluer, and worldly wealth at her will."] These familiars, to use Warburton's expression, always promised with the lavishness of a young courtier, and performed with the indifference of an old one. Nothing seems to puzzle Dr. Dee more, in the long and confidential intercourse he carried on so many years with his spirits, than to account for the great scarcity of specie they seemed to be afflicted with, and the unsatisfactory and unfurnished state of their exchequer. Bills, to be sure, they gave at long dates; but these constantly required renewing, and were never honoured at last. Any application for present relief, in good current coin of the realm, was invariably followed by what Meric Casaubon very significantly calls "sermonlike stuff." The learned professor in witchery, John Stearne, seems to fix six shillings as the maximum of money payment at one time which in all his experience he had detected between witches and their familiars. He was examining Joan Ruccalver, of Powstead, in Suffolk, who had been promised by her spirit that she should never want meat, drink, clothes, or money. "Then I asked her whether they brought her any money or no; and she said sometimes four shillings at a time, and sometimes six shillings at a time; but that is but seldom, for I never knew any that had any money before, except of Clarke's wife, of Manningtree, who confessed the same, and showed some, which, she said, her impe brought her, which was proper money." Confirmation, page 27. Judging from the anxiety which this worthy displays to be "satisfied and paid with reason" for his itinerant labours, such a scanty and penurious supply would soon have disgusted him, if he had been witch, instead of witch-finder.

B 4 b 2. "She had bewitched to death Richard Ashton, sonne of Richard Ashton, of Downeham, Esquire."] Richard Assheton, (as the name is more properly spelled,) thus done to death by witchcraft, was the son of Richard Assheton, of Downham, an old manor house, the scite of which is now supplied by a modern structure, which Dr. Whitaker thinks, in point of situation, has no equal in the parish of Whalley. Richard, the son, married Isabel, daughter and heiress of Mr. Hancock, of Pendleton Hall, and died without offspring. The family estate accordingly descended to the younger brother, Nicholas Assheton, whose diary for part of the year 1617 and part of the year following is given, page 303 of Whitaker's History of Whalley, edition 1818, and is a most valuable record of the habits, pursuits, and course of life of a Lancashire country gentleman of that period. It well deserves detaching in a separate publication, and illustrating with a more expanded commentary.

C b. "Piggin full."] Piggin is properly a sort of bowl, or pail, with one of the staves much longer than the rest, made for a handle, to lade water by, and used especially in brewhouses to measure out the liquor with.

C 2 a. "Nicholas Banister."] Dr. Whitaker, in the pedigree of the Banisters, of Altham, (genealogy was, it is well known, one of the vulnerable parts of this Achilles of topography,) erroneously states this Nicholas Banister to have been buried at Altham, December 7, 1611. It appears, however, from a deed, an inspection of which I owe to the kindness of my friend, Dr. Fleming, that his will was dated the 15th August, 1612. In all probability he did not die for some years after that date. He married, first, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Richard Elston, of Brockall, Esq.; and, second, Catherine, daughter of Edmund Ashton, of Chaderton, Esq. The manor house of Altham, for more than five centuries the residence of this ancient family, stands, to use Dr. Whitaker's words, upon a gentle elevation on the western side of the river Calder, commanding a low and fertile domain. It has been surrounded, according to the prudence or jealousy of the feudal times, with a very deep quadrangular moat, which must have included all the apparatus of the farm.

C 3 a. "At Malking Tower, in the forrest of Pendle."] Malkin Tower was the habitation of Mother Demdike, the situation of which is preserved, for the structure no longer exists, by local tradition. Malkin is the Scotch or north country word for hare, as this animal was one into which witches were supposed to be fond of transforming themselves. Malkin Tower is, in fact, the Witches' Tower. The term is used in the following passage in Morison's Poems, p. 7, which bears upon the above explanation:—

"Or tell the pranks o' winter's nights, How Satan blazes uncouth lights; Or how he does a core convene Upon a witch-frequented green, Wi' spells and cauntrips hellish rantin', Like mawkins thro' the fields they're janting."

C 4 b. "We want old Demdike, who dyed in the castle before she came to her tryall."] Worn out most probably with her imprisonment, she having been committed in April, and the cruelties she had undergone, both before and after her commitment. Master Nowell and Master Potts both wanted her, we may readily conceive, to fill up the miserable pageant; but she was gone where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. With the exception of Alice Nutter, in whom interest is excited from very different grounds, Mother Demdike attracts attention in a higher degree than any other of these Pendle witches. She was, beyond dispute, the Erictho of Pendle. Mother Chattox was but second in rank. There is something fearfully intense in the expression of the former,—blind, on the last verge of the extreme limit of human existence, and mother of a line of witches,—"that she would pray for the said Baldwin, both still and loud." She is introduced in Shadwell's play, the Lancashire Witches, 1682, as a persona dramatis, along with Mother Dickinson and Mother Hargrave, two of the witches convicted in 1633, but without any regard to the characteristic circumstances under which she appears in the present narrative. The following invocation, which is put into her mouth, is rather a favourable specimen of that play, certainly not one of the worst of Shadwell's, in which there are many vigorous strokes, with an alloy of coarseness not unusual in his works, and some powerful conceptions of character:

Come, sisters, come, why do you stay? Our business will not brook delay; The owl is flown from the hollow oak, From lakes and bogs the toads do croak; The foxes bark, the screech-owl screams, Wolves howl, bats fly, and the faint beams Of glow-worms light grows bright a-pace; The stars are fled, the moon hides her face. The spindle now is turning round, Mandrakes are groaning under ground: I'th' hole i'th' ditch (our nails have made) Now all our images are laid, Of wax and wooll, which we must prick, With needles urging to the quick. Into the hole I'le poure a flood Of black lambs bloud, to make all good. The lamb with nails and teeth wee'l tear. Come, where's the sacrifice? appear.

* * * * *

Oyntment for flying here I have, Of childrens fat, stoln from the grave: The juice of smallage, and night-shade, Of poplar leaves, and aconite, made With these. The aromatic reed I boyl, With water-parsnip and cinquefoil; With store of soot, and add to that The reeking blood of many a bat. Lancashire Witches, pp. 10, 41.

One of the peculiarities of Shadwell's play is the introduction of the Lancashire dialect, which he makes his clown Clod speak. The subjoined extract may perhaps amuse my readers. Collier would have enjoyed it:

Clod. An yeow been a mon Ay'st talk wy ye a bit, yeow mun tack a care o your sells, the plecs haunted with Buggarts, and Witches, one of 'em took my Condle and Lanthorn out of my hont, and flew along wy it; and another Set me o top o'th tree, where I feel dawn now, Ay ha well neegh brocken my theegh.

Doubt. The fellows mad, I neither understand his words, nor his Sence, prethee how far is it to Whalley?

Clod. Why yeow are quite besaid th' road mon, yeow Shoulden a gon dawn th' bonk by Thomas o Georges, and then ee'n at yate, and turn'd dawn th' Lone, and left the Steepo o'th reeght hont.

Bell. Prithee don't tell us what we should have done, but how far is it to Whalley?

Clod. Why marry four mail and a bit.

Doubt. Wee'l give thee an Angel and show us the way thither.

Clod. Marry thats Whaint. I canno see my hont, haw con Ay show yeow to Whalley to neeght.

Bell. Canst thou show us to any house where we may have Shelter and Lodging to night? we are Gentlemen and strangers, and will pay you well for't.

Clod. Ay byr Lady con I, th' best ludging and diet too in aw Lancashire. Yonder at th' hough where yeow seen th' leeghts there.

Doubt. Whose house is that?

Clod. Why what a pox, where han yeow lived? why yeow are Strongers indeed! why, 'tis Sir Yedard Harfourts, he Keeps oppen hawse to all Gentry, yeou'st be welcome to him by day and by neeght he's Lord of aw here abauts.

Bell. My Mistresses Father, Luck if it be thy will, have at my Isabella, Canst thou guide us thither?

Clod. Ay, Ay, there's a pawer of Company there naw, Sir Jeffery Shaklehead, and the Knight his Son, and Doughter.

Doubt. Lucky above my wishes, O my dear Theodosia, how my heart leaps at her! prethee guide us thither, wee'l pay thee well.

Clod. Come on, I am e'n breed aut o my sences, I was ne'er so freeghtened sin I was born, give me your hont.—Lancashire Witches, p. 14.

D b. "Ann Whittle, alias Chattox."] Chattox, from her continually chattering.

D 2 a 1. "Her lippes euer chattering and walking."] Walking, i.e., working. Old Chattox might have sat to Archbishop Harsnet for her portrait. What can exceed the force and graphic truth, the searching wit and sarcasm, of the picture he sketches in 1605?

Out of these is shaped vs the true Idoea of a Witch, an old weather-beaten Croane, hauing her chinne, & her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow eyed, vntoothed, furrowed on her face, hauing her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgottē her pater noster, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee haue learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: Pax, max, fax, for a spel: or can say Sir Iohn of Grantams curse, for the Millers Eeles, that were stolne: All you that haue stolne the Millers Eeles, Laudate dominum de coelis: And all they that haue consented thereto, benedicamus domino: Why then ho, beware, looke about you my neighbours; if any of you haue a sheepe sicke of the giddies, or an hogge of the mumps, or an horse of the staggers, or a knauish boy of the schoole, or an idle girle of the wheele, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porredge, nor her father, and mother, butter enough for their bread; and she haue a little helpe of the Mother, Epilepsie, or Cramp, to teach her role her eyes, wrie her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, holde her armes and hands stiffe, make anticke faces, grine, mow, and mop like an Ape, tumble like a Hedge-hogge, and can mutter out two or three words of gibridg, as obus, bobus: and then with-all old mother Nobs hath called her by chaunce, idle young huswife, or bid the deuill scratch her, then no doubt but mother Nobs is the Witch: the young girle is Owle-blasted, and possessed: and it goes hard but ye shall haue some idle adle, giddie, lymphaticall, illuminate dotrel, who being out of credite, learning, sobriety, honesty, and wit, will take this holy aduantage, to raise the ruines of his desperate decayed name, and for his better glory wil be-pray the iugling drab, and cast out Mopp the deuil.

They that haue their braines baited, and their fancies distempered with the imaginations, and apprehensions of Witches, Coniurers, and Fayries, and all that Lymphatical Chimaera: I finde to be marshalled in one of these fiue rankes, children, fooles, women, cowards, sick, or blacke, melancholicke, discomposed wits. The Scythians being a warlike Nation (as Plutarch reports) neuer saw any visions.—Harsnet's Declaration, p. 136.

D 2 a 2. "From these two sprung all the rest in order."] The descent from these two rival witch stocks, between which a deadly feud and animosity prevailed, which led to the destruction of both families, is shewn as follows:

Elizabeth Sothernes, alias Old Demdike, died in prison in 1612, about 80 years old. 1 2 Christopher = Eliz. Elizabeth, executed = John Device, or Howgate. Both of at Lancaster, Davies, supposed them were reputed 1612. to have been bewitched to be at the witches to death, meeting on Good by Widow Chattox, Friday, 1612, but because he had not were not indicted. paid her his yearly Perhaps they were aghen dole of meal. the "one Holgate and his wife" mentioned amongst the witches in 1633. 1 2 3 - James Device, or Alizon, executed Jennet, 9 years old Davies, executed at at Lancaster in 1612. in 1612, and an evidence Lancaster in 1612. in the present trial. Condemned herself, along with 16 other persons, for witchcraft, in 1633, when she appears to have been unmarried, but not executed.

Anne Whittle, alias Chattox, executed at Lancaster, 1612, about 80 years old. Anne, executed = Thomas Redferne. in 1612. Mary.

D 3 a. "Commaunded this examinate to call him by the name of Fancie."] The fittest name for a familiar she could possibly have chosen. Sir Walter Scott (Letters on Demonology, p. 242) unaccountably speaks of Fancie as a female devil. Master Potts would have told him, (see M 2 b,) "that Fancie had a very good face, and was a very proper man."

D 3 b 1. "The wife of Richard Baldwin, of Pendle."] Richard Baldwin was the miller who accosted Old Dembdike so unceremoniously.

D 3 b 2. "Robert Nutter."] The family of the Nutters, of Pendle, bore a great share in the proceedings referred to in this trial. It seems to have been a family of note amongst the inferior gentry or yeomanry of the forest. A Nutter held courts for many years about this period, as deputy steward at Clitheroe. (See Whitaker's Whalley, p. 307.) Three of the name are stated in the evidence to have been killed by witchcraft, Christopher Nutter, Robert Nutter, and Anne, the daughter of Anthony Nutter; and one of the unfortunate persons convicted is Alice Nutter. The branch to which Robert belonged is shewn in the following table:

Robert Nutter, the elder, = Elizabeth, who is reputed of Pendle, called old to have employed Anne Robert Nutter. Chattox, Loomeshaw's wife, and Jane Boothman to bewitch to death young Robert Nutter, that other relations might inherit. Christopher, reputed to have died of witchcraft about 18 years before. 1 2 3 Robert, of Greenhead, = Mary John, of Higham Margaret = Crooke in Pendle, a retainer Booth. of Sir Richard Shuttleworth, - reputed to have been gave evidence at the trial. bewitched to death 18 or 19 years before the trial took place.

D 4 a. "One Mr. Baldwyn (the late Schoole-maister at Coulne) did by his learning, stay the sayd Loomeshaws wife, and therefore had a Capon from Redfearne."] I regret that I can give no account of this learned Theban, who appears to have stayed the plague, and who taught at the school at which Archbishop Tillotson was afterwards educated. He well deserved his capon. Had he continued at Colne up to the time of this trial, he might perhaps, on the same easy terms, have kept the powers of darkness in check, and prevented some imputed crimes which cost ten unfortunates their lives.

E b 1. "Iames Robinson."] Baines, in his History of Lancashire, vol. i. p. 605, speaks of Edmund Robinson, the father of the boy on whose evidence the witches were convicted in 1633, as if he had been a witness at the present trial; which is probably a mistake for this James Robinson, as no Edmund Robinson appears amongst the witnessses whose depositions are given.

E b 2. "Anne Whittle alias Chattox was hired by this examinates wife to card wooll."] She seems to have been by occupation a carder of wool, and to have filled up the intervals, when she had no employment, by mendicancy.

E 2 a. "Sir Richard Shuttleworth."} Of the family of the Shuttleworths of Gawthorp, "where they resided" Whitaker observes, "in the condition of inferior gentry till the lucrative profession of the law raised them, in the reign of Elizabeth, to the rank of knighthood and an estate proportioned to its demands." Sir Richard was Sergeant-at-law, and Chief Justice of Chester, 31st Elizabeth, and died without issue about 1600.

E 2 b. "A Charme."] Evidently in so corrupted a state as to bid defiance to any attempt at elucidation.

E 3 a 1. "Perceiuing Anthonie Nutter of Pendle to fauour Elizabeth Sothernes alias Dembdike."] The Sothernes and Davies's and the Whittles and Redfernes were the Montagus and Capulets of Pendle. The poor cottager whose drink was forsepoken or bewitched, or whose cow went mad, and who in his attempt to propitiate one of the rival powers offended the other, would naturally exclaim from the innermost recesses of his heart, "A plague on both your houses."

E 3 a 2. "Gaping as though he would haue wearied this Examinate."] Wearied for worried.

E 3 b. "Examination of Iames Device."] This is a very curious examination. The production of the four teeth and figure of clay dug up at the west-end of Malkin Tower would look like a "damning witness" to the two horror-struck justices and the assembled concourse at Read, who did not perhaps consider how easily such evidences may be furnished, and how readily they who hide may find. The incident deposed to at the burial at the New Church in Pendle is a wild and striking one.

E 4 a. "About eleuen yeares agoe, this Examinate and her mother had their firehouse broken."] The inference intended is, that Whittle's family committed the robbery from Old Demdike's house. This was, in all probability, the origin of their feuds. The abstraction of the coif and band, tempting articles to the young daughter of Old Chattox, not destitute, if we may judge from one occurrence deposed to, of personal attractions, may be said to have convulsed Lancashire from the Leven to the Mersey,—to have caused a sensation, the shock of which, after more than two centuries, has scarcely yet subsided, and to have actually given a new name to the fair sex.

E 4 b 1. "One Aghen-dole of meale."] This Aghen-dole, a word still, I believe, in use for a particular measure of any article, was, I presume, a kind of witches' black mail. My friend, the Rev. Canon Parkinson, informs me that Aghen-dole, sometimes pronounced Acken-dole, signifies an half-measure of anything, from half-hand-dole. Mr. Halliwell has omitted it in his Glossary, now in progress.

E 4 b 2. "Iohn Moore of Higham, Gentleman."] Sir Jonas Moore, of whom an account is contained in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 479, and whom he characterizes as a sanguine projector, was born in Pendle Forest, and was probably of this family.

E 4 b 3. "She would meet with the said Iohn Moore, or his."] i.e. She would be equal with him.

F a 1. "Charne."] i.e. Charm.

F a 2. "With weeping teares she humbly acknowledged them to be true."] She seems to have confessed in the hope of saving her daughter, Anne Redfern. But from such a judge as Sir Edward Bromley, mercy was as little to be expected as common sense from his "faithful chronicler," Thomas Potts.

F 2 b. "Sparing no man with fearefull execrable curses and banning."] Nothing seems to shock the nerves of these witch historiographers so much as the utter want of decorum and propriety exhibited by these unhappy creatures in giving vent to these indignant outbreaks, which a sense of the wicked injustice of their fate, and seeing their own offspring brought up in evidence against them, through the most detestable acts, and by the basest subornation, would naturally extort from minds even of iron mould. If ever Lear's or Timon's power of malediction could be justifiably called into exercise, it would be against such a tribunal and such witnesses as they had generally to encounter.

F 4 a. "That at the third time her Spirit."] Something seems to be wanting here, as she does not state what occurred at the two previous interviews. The learned judge may have exercised a sound discretion in this omission, as the particulars might be of a nature unfit for publication. The present tract is, undoubtedly, remarkably free from those disgusting details of which similar reports are generally full to overflowing.

F 4 b. "The said Iennet Deuice, being a yong Maide, about the age of nine yeares."] This child must have been admirably trained, (some Master Thomson might have been near at hand to instruct her,) or must have had great natural capacity for deception. She made an excellent witness on this occasion. What became of her after the wholesale extinction of her family, to which she was so mainly instrumental, is not now known. In all likelihood she dragged on a miserable existence, a forlorn outcast, pointed at by the hand of scorn, or avoided with looks of horror in the wilds of Pendle. As if some retributive punishment awaited her, she is reported to have been the Jennet Davies who was condemned in 1633, on the evidence of Edmund Robinson the younger, with Mother Dickenson and others, but not executed. Her confession, if she made one at the second trial, might not have been unsimilar to that of Alexander Sussums, of Melford in Suffolk, who, Hearne tells us, confessed "that he had things which did draw those marks I found upon him, but said he could not help it, for that all his kinred were naught. Then I asked him how it was possible they could suck without his consent. He said he did consent to that. Then I asked him again why he should do it when as God was so merciful towards him, as I then told him of, being a man whom I had been formerly acquainted withal, as having lived in town. He answered again, he could not help it, for that all his generation was naught; and so told me his mother and aunt were hanged, his grandmother burnt for witchcraft, and ten others of them questioned and hanged. This man is yet living, notwithstanding he confessed the sucking of such things above sixteen years together."—Confirmation, p. 36.

G 3 a. "Anne Crouckshey."] Anne Cronkshaw.

G 3 b 1. "Vpon Good Friday last there was about twentie persons."] This meeting, if not a witches' Sabbath, was a close approximation to one. On the subject of the Sabbath, or periodical meeting of witches, De Lancre is the leading authority. He who is curious cannot do better than consult this great hierophant, (his work is entitled Tableau de l'Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons. Paris, 1613, 4to.) whose knowledge and experience well qualified him to have been constituted the Itinerant Master of Ceremonies, an officer who, he assures us, was never wanting on such occasions. In that singular book, The History of Monsieur Oufle, p. 288, (English Translation, 1711, 8vo.) are collected from various sources all the ceremonies and circumstances attending the holding the Sabbath. It appears that non-attendance invariably incurred a penalty, which is computed upon the average at the eighth part of a crown, or in French currency at ten sous—that, though the contrary has been maintained by many grave authors, egress and ingress by the chimney (De Lancre had depositions without number, he tells us, vide p. 114, on this important head,) was not a matter of solemn obligation, but was an open question—that no grass ever grows upon the place where the Sabbath is kept; which is accounted for by the circumstance of its being trodden by so many of those whose feet are constitutionally hot, and therefore being burnt up and consequently very barren—that two devils of note preside on the occasion, the great negro, who is called Master Leonard, and a little devil, whom Master Leonard sometimes substitutes in his place as temporary vice-president; his name is Master John Mullin. (De Lancre, p. 126.) With regard to a very important point, the bill of fare, great difference of opinion exists: some maintaining that every delicacy of the season, to use the newspaper phrase, is provided; others stoutly asserting that nothing is served up but toads, the flesh of hanged criminals, dead carcases fresh buried taken out of Churchyards, flesh of unbaptized infants, or beasts which died of themselves—that they never eat with salt, and that their bread is of black millet. (De Lancre, pp. 104, 105.) In this diversity of opinion I can only suggest, that difference of climate, habit, and fashion, might possibly have its weight, and render a very different larder necessary for the witches of Pendle and those of Gascony or Lorrain. The fare of the former on this occasion appears to have been of a very substantial and satisfactory kind, "beef, bacon, and roasted mutton:" the old saying so often quoted by the discontented masters of households applying emphatically in this case:—

"God sends us good meat, but the devil sends cooks."

We find in the present report no mention made of the

"Dance and provencal song"

which formed one great accompaniment of the orgies of the southern witches. Bodin's authority is express, that each, the oldest not excused, was expected to perform a coranto, and great attention was paid to the regularity of the steps. We owe to him the discovery, which is not recorded in any annals of dancing I have met with, that the lavolta, a dance not dissimilar, according to his description, to the polka of the present day, was brought out of Italy into France by the witches at their festive meetings. Of the language spoken at these meetings, De Lancre favours us with a specimen, valuable, like the Punic fragment in the Poenolus, for its being the only one of the kind. In nomine patrica araguenco petrica agora, agora, Valentia jouando goure gaiti goustia. As it passes my skill, I can only commend it to the especial notice of Mr. Borrow against his next journey into Spain. What was spoken at Malkin Tower was, doubtless, a dialect not yet obsolete, and which Tummus and Meary would have had no difficulty in comprehending. On the subject of these witches' Sabbaths, Dr. Ferriar remarks, in his curious and agreeable Essay on Popular Illusions, (see Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, vol. iii., p. 68,) a sketch which it is much to be regretted that he did not subsequently expand and revise, and publish in a separate form:—

The solemn meetings of witches are supposed to be put beyond all doubt by the numerous confessions of criminals, who have described their ceremonies, named the times and places of meeting, and the persons present, and who have agreed in their relations, though separately delivered.[78] But I would observe, first, that the circumstances told of those festivals are ridiculous and incredible in themselves; for they are represented as gloomy and horrible, yet with a mixture of childish and extravagant fancies, more likely to disgust and alienate than to conciliate the minds of the guests. They have every appearance of uneasy dreams; sometimes the devil and his subjects say mass, sometimes he preaches to them, more commonly he was seen in the form of a black goat, surrounded by imps in a thousand frightful shapes; but none of these forms are new, they all resemble known quadrupeds or reptiles. Secondly, I observe, that there is direct proof furnished even by demonologists, that all these supposed journies and entertainments are nothing more than dreams. Persons accused of witchcraft have been repeatedly watched, about the time which they had fixed for the meeting; they have been seen to anoint themselves with soporific compositions, after which they fell into profound sleep, and on awaking, several hours afterwards, they have related their journey through the air, their amusement at the festival, and have named the persons whom they saw there. In the instance told by Hoffman, the dreamer was chained to the floor. Common sense would rest satisfied here, but the enthusiasm of demonology has invented more than one theory to get rid of these untoward facts. Dr. Henry More, as was formerly mentioned, believed that the astral spirit only was carried away: other demonologists imagined that the witch was really removed to the place of meeting, but that a cacodemon was left in her room, as an [Greek: eidolon], to delude the spectators. Thirdly, some stories of the festivals are evidently tricks. Such is that related by Bodinus, with much gravity: a man is found in a gentleman's cellar, and apprehended as a thief; he declares his wife had brought him thither to a witch-meeting, and on his pronouncing the name of God, she and all her companions had vanished, and left him inclosed. His wife is immediately seized, on this righteous evidence, and hanged, with several other persons, named as present at the meeting.

[Footnote 78: There is a grave relation, in Delrio, of a witch being shot flying, by a Spanish centinel, at the bridge of Nieulet, near Calais, after that place was taken by the Spaniards. The soldier saw a black cloud advancing rapidly, from which voices issued: when it came near, he fired into it; immediately a witch dropped. This is undoubted proof of the meetings!—Disq. Mag., p. 708.]

G 3 b 2. "Christopher Iackes, of Thorny-holme, and his wife."] This would appear to be Christopher Hargreaves, called here Christopher Jackes, for o' or of Jack, according to the Lancashire mode of forming patronymics.

G 4 a. "The first was, for the naming of the Spirit, which Alizon Deuice, now Prisoner at Lancaster, had: But did not name him, because shee was not there."] Gaule says, speaking of the ceremonies at the witches' solemn meetings: "If the witch be outwardly Christian, baptism must be renounced, and the party must be rebaptized in the Devil's name, and a new name is also imposed by him; and here must be godfathers too, for the Devil takes them not to be so adult as to promise and vow for themselves." (Cases of Conscience touching Witches, page 59. 1646, 12mo.) But Gaule does not mention any naming or baptism of spirits and familiars on such occasions.

G 4 b. "Romleyes Moore."] Romilly's or Rumbles Moor, a wild and mountainous range in Craven, not unaptly selected for a meeting on a special emergency of a conclave of witches.

H 2 a 1. "Was so insensible, weake, and vnable in all thinges, as he could neither speake, heare, or stand, but was holden vp."] Pitiable, truly, was the situation of this unhappy wretch. Brought out from the restraint of a long imprisonment, before and during which he had, as we may conjecture, been subjected to every inhumanity, in a state more dead than alive, into a court which must have looked like one living mass, with every eye lit up with horror, and curses, not loud but deep, muttered with harmonious concord from the mouths of every spectator.

H 2 a 2. "Anne Towneley, wife of Henrie Townely, of the Carre."] Would this be Anne, the daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Catterall, of Catterall and Little Mitton, Esq., who married Henry Townley, the son of Lawrence Townley? (See Whitaker's Whalley, p. 396.) The Townleys of Barnside and Carr were a branch of the Townleys, of Townley. Barnside, or Barnsete, is an ancient mansion in the township of Colne, which, Whitaker observes, was abandoned by the family, for the warmer situation of Carr, about the middle of the last century.

H 2 a 3. "Master Nowel humbly prayed Master Towneley might be called."] It is to be regretted we have no copy of the viva voce examination of Mr. Townley, the husband of the lady whose life was said to have been taken away by witchcraft. The examinations given in this tract are altogether those of persons in a humble rank of life. The contrast between their evidence and that of an individual occupying the position of the descendant of one of the oldest families in the neighbourhood, with considerable landed possessions, might have been amusing and instructive.

H 2 a 4. "Master Nowell humbly prayed, that the particular examinations taken before him and others might be openly published and read in court."] This kind of evidence, the witnesses being in court, and capable of being examined, would not be received at the present day. At that time a greater laxity prevailed.

H 3 a. "Sheare Thursday."] The Thursday before Easter, and so called, for that, in the old Fathers' days, the people would that day, "shave their hedes, and clypp their berdes, and pool their heedes, and so make them honest against Easter Day."—Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i., p. 83, edition 1841.

K b 1. "A Charme."] Sinclair, in his Satan's Invisible World Discovered, informs us, that "At night, in the time of popery, when folks went to bed, they believed the repetition of this following prayer was effectual to preserve them from danger, and the house too.

"Who sains the house the night, They that sains it ilka night. Saint Bryde and her brate, Saint Colme and his hat, Saint Michael and his spear, Keep this house from the weir; From running thief, And burning thief; And from and ill Rea, That be the gate can gae; And from an ill weight, That be the gate can light Nine reeds about the house; Keep it all the night, What is that, what I see So red, so bright, beyond the sea? 'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands, Through the feet, through the throat, Through the tongue; Through the liver and the lung. Well is them that well may Fast on Good-friday."

which lines are not unlike some of those in the present "charme," which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in poetical spirit.

K b 2. "Ligh in leath wand."] Leath is no doubt lithe, flexible. What "ligh in" is intended for, unless it be lykinge, which the Promptorium Parvulorum (vide part i. p. 304) explains by lusty, or craske, Delicativus, crassus, I am unable to conjecture. It is clear, that the wand in one hand is to steck, i.e. stake, or fasten, the latch of hell door, while the key in his other hand is to open heaven's lock.

K b 3. "Let Crizum child goe to it Mother mild."] The chrisom, according to the usual explanation, was a white cloth placed upon the head of an infant at baptism, when the chrism, or sacred oil of the Romish Church, was used in that sacrament. If the child died within a month of its birth, that cloth was used as a shroud; and children so dying were called chrisoms in the old bills of mortality.

K b 4. "A light so farrandly."] Farrandly, or farrantly, a word still in use in Lancashire, and which is equivalent to fair, likely, or handsome. (See Lancashire Dialect and Glossary.) "Harne panne," i.e., cranium.—Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 237.

K 2 a 1. "Vpon the ground of holy weepe."] I know not how to explain this, unless it mean the ground of holy weeping, i.e., the Garden of Gethsemane.

K 2 a 2. "Shall neuer deere thee."] The word to dere, or hurt, says Mr. Way, Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 119, is commonly used by Chaucer and most other writers until the sixteenth century:

"Fyr he schal hym nevyr dere." Coeur de Lion, 1638.

Fabyan observes, under the year 1194, "So fast besyed this good Kyng Richarde to vex and dere the infydelys of Sury." Palsgrave gives, "To dere or hurte a noye nuire, I wyll never dere you by my good wyll." Ang. Sax., [Anglo-Saxon: derian] nocere, [Anglo-Saxon: derung] laesio.

K 3 a. "The Witches of Salmesbvry."] Or, more properly, Samlesbury. This wicked attempt on the part of this priest, or Jesuit, Thompson, alias Southworth, to murder the three persons whose trial is next reported, by suborning a child of the family to accuse them of what, in the excited state of the public mind at the time, was almost certain to consign them to a public execution, has few parallels in the annals of atrocity. The plot was defeated, and the lives of the persons accused, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, saved, by no sagacity of the judge or wisdom of the jury, but by the effect of one simple question, wrung from the intended victims on the verge of anticipated condemnation, and which, natural as it might appear, was one the felicity of which Garrow or Erskine might have envied. It demolished, like Ithuriel's spear, the whole fabric of imposture, and laid it open even to the comprehension of Sir Edward Bromley and Master Thomas Potts. This was a case which well deserved Archbishop Harsnet for its historian. His vein of irony, which Swift or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had, from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute 1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have accomplished at once what was slowly and with difficulty brought about by the arguments of Scot and Webster, the establishment of the Royal Society, and a century's growth of intelligence and knowledge.

K 3 b 1. "A Seminarie Priest."] Of this Thompson, alias Southworth, I find no account in Dodd's Catholic Church History. A John Southworth is noticed, vol. iii. p. 303, who is described as of an ancient family in Lancashire, and who was executed at Tyburn, June 28th, 1655. His dying speech is to be found in the same volume, p. 360. The interval of time, as well as the difference of surname, excludes the presumption of his being identical with the person referred to in the text, the hero of this extraordinary conspiracy, and who was probably of the family of Sir John Southworth, after mentioned.

K 3 b 2. "A Iesuite, whereof this Countie of Lancaster hath good store."] Lancashire was, about this period, the great hot-bed of Popish recusants. From the very curious list of recusants given (Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 541,) it would seem that Samlesbury was one of their strongholds:—

James Cowper a seminarie prieste receipted releived and mainteined att the lodge of Sir John Southworthe in Samlesburie Parke by Mr. Tho: Southworthe, one of the younger sonnes of the said Sir John. And att the howse of John Warde dwellinge in Samlesburie Park syde. And the said Prieste sayeth Masse att the said lodge and att the said Wards howse. Whether resorte, Mr. Sowthworthe, Mres. An Sowthworthe, John Walmesley servante to Sir John Southworthe, Tho. Southworthe dwellinge in the Parke, John Gerrerde, servante to Sir John Southworthe, John Singleton, John Wrighte, James Sherples iunior, John Warde of Samlesburie, John Warde of Medler thelder, Henrie Potter of Medler, John Gouldon of Winwicke, Thomas Gouldon of the same, Roberte Anderton of Samlesburie and John Sherples of Stanleyhurst in Samlesburie.—Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 543.

Att the lodge in Samlesburie Parke there be masses daylie and Seminaries dyuerse Resorte thither as James Cowpe, Harrisson Bell and such like, The like vnlawfull meetings are made daylie att the howse of John Warde by the Parke syde of Samlesburie all wiche matters, masses, resorte to Masses, receipting of Seminaries wilbe Justifyed by Mr. Adam Sowtheworthe Thomas Sherples and John Osbaldston.—Ibid., p. 544.

K 4 b. "Picked her off."] Threw her off.

L a. "Hugh Walshmans."] The wife of Hugh Walshman, of Samlesbury, is mentioned in the list of recusants; Baines, vol. i. p. 544.

L 2 a 1. "Brought a little child."] The evidence against the Pendle witches exhibits meagreness and poverty of imagination compared with the accumulated horrors with which the Jesuit, fresh, it may be, from Bodin and Delrio, made his "fire burn and cauldron bubble." With respect to this old story of the magical use made of the corpses of infants, Ben Jonson, in a note on

"I had a dagger: what did I with that? Killed an infant to have his fat;"

tells us with great gravity:

Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a lust to do murder. Sprenger in Mal. Malefic. reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of the three witches in Rem. Daemonola lib. cap. 3, about the end of the chapter. And M. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich Quaest. 8. And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia, Epod. Horat. lib. ode 5, and Lucan, lib. 6, whose admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:—

Nec cessant a caede manus, si sanguine vivo Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto. Nec refugit caedes, vivum si sacra cruorem Extaque funereae poscunt trepidantia mensae. Vulnere si ventris, non qua natura vocabat, Extrahitur partus calidus ponendus in aris; Et quoties saevis opus est, et fortibus umbris Ipsa facit maneis. Hominum mors omnis in usu est.

Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 130.

L 2 a 2. "They said they would annoint themselues."] Ben Jonson informs us:

When they are to be transported from place to place, they use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride on. Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, Remig. Daemonolatriae lib. 1. cap. 14. Delrio, Disquis. Mag. l. 2. quaest. 16. Bodin Daemonoman. lib. 2 c. 14. Barthol. de Spina. quaest. de Strigib. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich. quaest. 10. Paracelsus in magn. et occul. Philosophia, teacheth the confection. Unguentum ex carne recens natorum infantium, in pulmenti, forma coctum, et cum herbis somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta, &c. And Giov. Bapti. Porta, lib. 2. Mag. Natur. cap. 16.—Ben Jonson's Works by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 119.

L 3 a. "Did carrie her into the loft."] There is something in this strange tissue of incoherencies, for knavery has little variety, which forcibly reminds us of the inventions of Elizabeth Canning, who ought to have lived in the days when witchcraft was part of the popular creed. What an admirable witch poor old Mary Squires would have made, and how brilliantly would her persecutor have shone in the days of the Baxters and Glanvilles, who acquitted herself so creditably in those of the Fieldings and the Hills.

L 4 b 1. "Robert Hovlden, Esquire."] This individual would be of the ancient family of Holden, of Holden, the last male heir of which died without issue, 1792. (See Whitaker's Whalley, 418.)

L 4 b 2. "Sir John Southworth."] In this family the manor of Samlesbury remained for three hundred and fifty years. This was, probably, the John (for the pedigree contained in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 430, does not give the clearest light on the subject) who married Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Sherburne, of Stonyhurst, and who took a great lead amongst the Catholics of Lancashire. What was the degree of relationship between Sir John and the husband of the accused, Jane Southworth, there is nothing in the descent to show. Family bickering might have a share, as well as superstition, in the opinion he entertained, "that she was an evil woman." Of the old hall at Samlesbury, the residence of the Southworths, a most interesting account will be found in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 431. He considers the centre of very high antiquity, probably not later than Edward III; and observes, "There is about the house a profusion and bulk of oak that must almost have laid prostrate a forest to erect it."

M 1 b. "The particular points of the Evidence."] What a waste of ingenuity Master Potts displays in this recapitulation, where he is merely slaying the slain, and where his wisdom was not needed. Had he applied it to the service of the Pendle witches, he would have found still grosser contrarieties, and as great absurdity. But in that case, there was no horror of Popery to sharpen his faculties, or Jesuit in the background to call his humanity into play.

M 2 a. "The wrinkles of an old wiues face is good euidence to the Iurie against a Witch."] Si sic omnia! For once the worthy clerk in court has a lucid interval, and speaks the language of common sense.

M 2 b. "But old Chattox had Fancie."] A great truth, though Master Potts might not be aware of the extent of it.

M 4 a. "M. Leigh, a very religious Preacher."] Parson of Standish, a man memorable in his day. He published several pieces, amongst others the two following: 1. "The Drumme of Devotion," by W. Leigh, of Standish, 1613.—2. "News of a Prodigious Monster in Aldington, in the Parish of Standish, in Lancashire," 1613, 4to, which show him to have been an adept in the science of title-making. He was one of the tutors of Prince Henry, and was great-grandfather of Dr. Leigh, author of the History of Lancashire.

N 3 b. "The Arraignment and Triall of Anne Redferne."] This poor woman seems to have been regularly hunted to death by her prosecutors, who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge and jury. Acquitted on one indictment, she is now put on her trial on another; the imputed crime being her having caused the death of a person, who did not even accuse her of being accessory to it, nearly eighteen years before, by witchcraft; the only evidence, true or false, being, that she had been seen, about the same period, making figures of clay or marl. Her real offence, it may well be conjectured, was her having rejected the improper advances of the ill-conditioned young man whose death she was first indicted for procuring, and to which circumstance the rancour of his relations, the prosecutors, may evidently be traced. It is gratifying to know that she had firmness of mind to persist in the declaration of her innocence to the last.

O 3 a. "Alice Nutter."] We now come to a person of a different description from any of those who have preceded as parties accused, and on whose fate some extraordinary mystery seems to hang. Alice Nutter was not, like the others, a miserable mendicant, but was a lady of large possessions, of a respectable family, and with children whose position appears to have been such as, it might have been expected, would have afforded her the means of escaping the fate which overtook her humbler companions.

"I knew her a good woman and well bred, Of an unquestion'd carriage, well reputed Amongst her neighbours, reckoned with the best." Heywood's Lancashire Witches.

She is described as the wife of Richard Nutter of the Rough Lee, and mother of Miles Nutter, who were in all likelihood nearly related to the other Nutters whose descent has been given. The tradition is, that she was closely connected by relationship or marriage with Eleanor Nutter, the daughter of Ellis Nutter of Pendle Forest, the grandmother of Archbishop Tillotson. That she was the victim of a foul and atrocious conspiracy, in which the movers were some of her own family, there seems no reason to doubt. The anxiety of her children to induce her to confess may possibly have originated in no impure or sinister motive, but it is difficult altogether to dismiss from the mind the suspicion that her wealth was her great misfortune; and that to secure it within their grasp her own household were passive, if not active, agents in her destruction. Any thing more childish or absurd than the evidence against her—as, for instance, that she joyned in killing Henry Mitton because he refused a penny to Old Demdike—it would not be easy, even from the records of witch trials, to produce. As regards Alice Nutter, Potts is singularly meagre, and it is to be lamented that the deficiency of information cannot at present be supplied. Almost the only fact he furnishes us with is, that she died maintaining her innocence. It would have been most interesting to have had the means of ascertaining how she conducted herself at her trial and after her condemnation; and how she met the iniquitous injustice of her fate, sharpened, as it must have been, by the additional bitterness of the insults and execrations of the blind and infuriated populace at her execution. It is far from improbable that some of the correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county hitherto unpublished may ultimately furnish these particulars.

Alice Nutter was doubtless the original of the story of which Heywood availed himself in The Late Lancashire Witches, 1634, 4to, which is frequently noticed by the writers of the 17th century—that the wife of a Lancashire country gentleman had been detected in practising witchcraft and unlawful arts, and condemned and executed. In that play there can be little hesitation in ascribing to Heywood the scenes in which Mr. Generous and his wife are the interlocutors, and to Broome, Heywood's coadjutor, the subordinate and farcical portions. It is a very unequal performance, but not destitute of those fine touches, which Heywood is never without, in the characters of English country gentlemen and the pathos of domestic tragedy. The following scene, which I am tempted to extract, though very inferior to the noble ones in his Woman Killed by Kindness, between Mr. and Mrs. Frankford, which it somewhat resembles in character, is not unworthy of this great and truly national dramatic writer:—

MR. GENEROUS. WIFE. ROBIN, a groom.

Gen. My blood is turn'd to ice, and all my vitals Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested That vigorous agitation, which till now Exprest a life within me. I, methinks, Am a meer marble statue, and no man. Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread; Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent; That, being made an infant once again, I may begin to know. What, or where am I, To be thus lost in wonder?

Wife. Sir.

Gen. Amazement still pursues me, how am I chang'd, Or brought ere I can understand myself Into this new world!

Rob. You will believe no witches?

Gen. This makes me believe all, aye, anything; And that myself am nothing. Prithee, Robin, Lay me to myself open; what art thou, Or this new transform'd creature?

Rob. I am Robin; And this your wife, my mistress.

Gen. Tell me, the earth Shall leave its seat, and mount to kiss the moon; Or that the moon, enamour'd of the earth, Shall leave her sphere, to stoop to us thus low. What, what's this in my hand, that at an instant Can from a four-legg'd creature make a thing So like a wife!

Rob. A bridle; a jugling bridle, Sir.

Gen. A bridle! Hence, enchantment. A viper were more safe within my hand, Than this charm'd engine.— A witch! my wife a witch! The more I strive to unwind Myself from this meander, I the more Therein am intricated. Prithee, woman, Art thou a witch?

Wife. It cannot be denied, I am such a curst creature.

Gen. Keep aloof: And do not come too near me. O my trust; Have I, since first I understood myself, Been of my soul so chary, still to study What best was for its health, to renounce all The works of that black fiend with my best force; And hath that serpent twined me so about, That I must lie so often and so long With a devil in my bosom?

Wife. Pardon, Sir. [She looks down.]

Gen. Pardon! can such a thing as that be hoped? Lift up thine eyes, lost woman, to yon hills; It must be thence expected: look not down Unto that horrid dwelling, which thou hast sought At such dear rate to purchase. Prithee, tell me, (For now I can believe) art thou a witch?

Wife. I am.

Gen. With that word I am thunderstruck, And know not what to answer; yet resolve me. Hast thou made any contract with that fiend, The enemy of mankind?

Wife. O I have.

Gen. What? and how far?

Wife. I have promis'd him my soul.

Gen. Ten thousand times better thy body had Been promis'd to the stake; aye, and mine too, To have suffer'd with thee in a hedge of flames, Than such a compact ever had been made. Oh— Resolve me, how far doth that contract stretch?

Wife. What interest in this Soul myself could claim, I freely gave him; but his part that made it I still reserve, not being mine to give.

Gen. O cunning devil: foolish woman, know, Where he can claim but the least little part, He will usurp the whole. Thou'rt a lost woman.

Wife. I hope, not so.

Gen. Why, hast thou any hope?

Wife. Yes, sir, I have.

Gen. Make it appear to me.

Wife. I hope I never bargain'd for that fire, Further than penitent tears have power to quench.

Gen. I would see some of them.

Wife. You behold them now (If you look on me with charitable eyes) Tinctur'd in blood, blood issuing from the heart. Sir, I am sorry; when I look towards heaven, I beg a gracious pardon; when on you, Methinks your native goodness should not be Less pitiful than they; 'gainst both I have err'd; From both I beg atonement.