Even the stir and tumult of the Civil War did not suspend the persecuting activity of a degraded superst.i.tion. In 1644 eight witches of Manningtree, in Ess.e.x, were accused of holding witches" meetings every Friday night; were searched for teats and devils" marks, convicted, and, with twenty-nine of their fellows, hung. In the following year there were more hangings in Ess.e.x; and in Norfolk a score of witches suffered. In 1650 a woman was hung at the Old Bailey as a witch. "She was found to have under her armpits those marks by which witches are discovered to entertain their familiars." In April, 1652, Jean Peterson, the witch of Wapping, was hung at Tyburn; and in July of the same year six witches perished at Maidstone.
In 1653 Alice Bodenham, a domestic servant, was tried at Salisbury before Chief Justice Wilde, and convicted. It is not certain, however, that she was executed.
In 1658 Jane Brooks was executed for practising witchcraft on a boy of twelve, named Henry James, at Chard, in Somersetshire; in 1663 Julian c.o.x, at Taunton, for a similar offence.
FOOTNOTE:
[43] Potts, "Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster" (1613).
THE WITCH-FINDER: MATTHEW HOPKINS.
The severe legislation against witchcraft had thus the effect--which invariably attends legislation when it becomes unduly repressive--of increasing the offence it had been designed to exterminate. It was attended, also, by another result, which is equally common--bringing to the front a number of informers who, at the cost of many innocent lives, turned it to their personal advantage. Of these witch-finders, the most notorious was Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, in Ess.e.x. When he first started his infamous trade, I cannot ascertain, but his success would seem to have been immediate. His earliest victims he found in his own neighbourhood. But, as his reputation grew, he extended his operations over the whole of Ess.e.x; and in a very short time, if any case of supposed witchcraft occurred, the neighbours sent for Matthew Hopkins as an acknowledged expert, whose skill would infallibly detect the guilty person.
His first appearance at the a.s.sizes was in the spring of 1645, when he accused an unfortunate old woman, named Elizabeth Clarke. To collect evidence against her, he watched her by night in a room in a Mr.
Edwards"s house, in which she was illegally detained. At her trial he had the audacity to affirm that, on the third night of his watching, after he had refused her the society of one of her imps, she confessed to him that, some six or seven years before, she had given herself over to the devil, who visited her in the form of "a proper gentleman, with a hazel beard." Soon after this, he said, a little dog came in--fat, short-legged, and with sandy spots besprinkled on the white ground-colour of its tub-like body. When he prevented it from approaching the woman--who declared it was Jacmara, one of her imps--it straightway vanished. Next came a greyhound, which she called Vinegar Tom; and next a polecat. Improving in fluent and fertile mendacity, Hopkins went on to a.s.sert that, on returning home that night, about ten of the clock, accompanied by his own greyhound, he saw his dog give a leap and a bound, and hark away as if hunting a hare; and on following him, he espied a little white animal, about the size of a kitten, and observed that his greyhound stood aloof from it in fright; and by-and-by this imp or kitten danced about the dog, and, as he supposed, bit a piece from its shoulder, for the greyhound came to him shrieking and crying, and bleeding from a great wound. Hopkins further stated that, going into his yard that same night, he saw a Black Thing, shaped like a cat, but thrice as big, sitting in a strawberry-bed, with its eyes fixed upon him. When he approached it, the Thing leaped over the pale towards him, as he thought, but, on the contrary, ran quite through the yard, with his greyhound after it, to a great gate, which was underset "with a pair of tumbril strings,"
threw it wide open, and then vanished, while his dog returned to him, shaking and trembling exceedingly.
In these unholy vigils of his, Hopkins was accompanied by one "John Sterne, of Manningtree, gentleman," who, as a matter of course, confirmed all his statements, and added the interesting detail that the third imp was called Sack-and-Sugar. The two wretches forced their way into the house of another woman, named Rebecca West, from whom they extracted a confession that the first time she saw the devil, he came to her at night, told her he must be her husband, and finally married her! The cruel tortures to which these and so many other unhappy females were exposed must undoubtedly have told on their nervous systems, producing a condition of hysteria, and filling their minds with hallucinations, which, perhaps, may partly have been suggested by the "leading questions" of the witch-finders themselves.
It is to be observed that their confessions wore a striking similarity, and that all the names mentioned of the so-called imps or familiars were of a ludicrous character, such as p.r.i.c.k-ear, Frog, Robin, and Sparrow. Then the excitement caused by these trials so wrought on the public mind that witnesses were easily found to testify--apparently in good faith--to the evil things done by the accused, and even to swear that they had seen their familiars. Thus one man declared that, pa.s.sing at daybreak by the house of a certain Anne West, he was surprised to find her door open. Looking in, he descried three or four Things, like black rabbits, one of which ran after him. He seized and tried to kill him, but in his hands the Thing seemed a mere piece of wool, which extended lengthwise without any apparent injury. Full speed he made for a neighbouring spring, in which he tried to drown him, but as soon as he put the Thing in the water, he vanished from his sight. Returning to the house, he saw Anne West standing at the door "in her smock," and asked her why she sent her imp to trouble him, but received no answer.
His experiments having proved successful, Hopkins took up witch-finding as a vocation, one which provided him with the means of a comfortable livelihood, while it gratified his ambition by making him the terror of many and the admiration of more, investing him with just that kind of power which is delightful to a narrow and commonplace mind. a.s.suming the t.i.tle of "Witch-finder-General," and taking with him John Sterne, and a woman, whose business it was to examine accused females for the devil"s marks, he travelled through the counties of Ess.e.x, Norfolk, Huntingdon, and Suss.e.x.
He was at Bury, in Suffolk, in August, 1645, and there, on the 27th, no fewer than eighteen witches were executed at once through his instrumentality. A hundred and twenty more were to have been tried, but the approach of the royal troops led to the adjournment of the a.s.size. In one year this wholesale murderer caused the death of sixty poor creatures. The "test" he generally adopted was that of "swimming," which James I. recommends with much unction in his "Demonologie." The hands and feet of the accused were tied together crosswise, the thumb of the right hand to the big toe of the left foot, and _vice versa_. She was then wrapped up in a large sheet or blanket, and laid upon her back in a pond or river. If she sank, she was innocent, but established her innocence at the cost of her life; if she floated, which was generally the case, as her clothes afforded a temporary support, she was p.r.o.nounced guilty, and hanged with all possible expedition.
Another "test" was the repet.i.tion of the Lord"s Prayer, which, it was believed, no witch could accomplish. Woe to the unfortunate creature who, in her nervousness, faltered over a syllable or stumbled at a word! Again she was forced into some awkward and painful att.i.tude, bound with cords, and kept foodless and sleepless for four-and-twenty hours. Or she was walked continuously up and down a room, an attendant holding each arm, until she dropped with fatigue. Sometimes she was weighed against the church Bible, obtaining her deliverance if she proved to be heavier. But this last-named test was too lenient for the Witch-finder-General, who preferred the swimming ordeal.
One of his victims at Bury was a venerable clergyman, named Lowes, who had been Vicar of Brandeston, near Framlingham, for fifty years.
"After he was found with the marks," says Sterne, "in his confession"--when made, to whom, or under what circ.u.mstances, we are not informed--"he confessed that in pride of heart to be equal, or rather above G.o.d, the devil took advantage of him, and he covenanted with the devil, and sealed it with his blood, and had those familiars or spirits which sucked on the marks found on his body, and did much harm both by sea and land, especially by sea; for he confessed that he, being at Lungar Fort [Landguard Fort], in Suffolk, where he preached, as he walked upon the wall or works there, he saw a great sail of ships pa.s.s by, and that, as they were sailing by, one of his three imps, namely, his yellow one, forthwith appeared to him, and asked him what he should do, and he bade him go and sink such a ship, and showed his imp a new ship among the middle of the rest (as I remember), one that belonged to Ipswich; so he confessed the imp went forthwith away, and he stood still and viewed the ships on the sea as they were a-sailing, and perceived that ship immediately to be in more trouble and danger than the rest; for he said the water was more boisterous near that than the rest, tumbling up and down with waves, as if water had been boiled in a pot, and soon after (he said), in a short time, it sunk directly down into the sea as he stood and viewed it, when all the rest sailed down in safety; then he confessed he made fourteen widows in one quarter of an hour. Then Mr. Hopkins, as he told me (for he took his confession), asked him if it did not grieve him to see so many men cast away in a short time, and that he should be the cause of so many poor widows on a sudden; but he swore by his Maker he was joyful to see what power his imps had: and so likewise confessed many other mischiefs, and had a charm to keep him out of the jail and hanging, as he paraphrased it himself; but therein the devil deceived him, for he was hanged that Michaelmas time, 1645, at Bury St. Edmunds." Poor old man! This so-called confession has a very dubious air about it, and reads as if it had been invented by Matthew Hopkins, who, as Sterne navely acknowledges, "took the confessions,"
apparently without any witness or reporter being present.
The Witch-finder-General, when on his expeditions of inquiry, a.s.sumed the style of a man of fortune. He put up always at the best inns, and lived in the most luxurious fashion, which he could well afford to do, as, when invited to visit a town, he insisted on payment of his expenses for board and lodging, and a fee of twenty shillings. This sum he claimed under any circ.u.mstances; but if he succeeded in detecting any witches, he demanded another fee of twenty shillings for each one brought to execution. Generally his pretensions were admitted without demur; but occasionally he encountered a st.u.r.dy opponent, like the Rev. Mr. Gaul, of Great Staughton, in Huntingdonshire, who attacked him in a briskly-written pamphlet as an intolerable nuisance.
Hopkins replied by an angry letter to one of the magistrates of the town, in which he said: "I am to come to Kimbolton this week, and it shall be ten to one but I will come to your town first; but I would certainly know afore whether your town affords many sticklers for such cattle [_i.e._ witches], or [is] willing to give and afford us good welcome and entertainment, as other where I have been, else I shall waive your shire (not as yet beginning in any part of it myself), and betake me to such places where I do and may persist without control, but with thanks and recompense."
Neither Mr. Gaul nor the magistrates of Great Staughton showed any anxiety in regard to the witch-finder"s threat. On the contrary, Mr.
Gaul returned to the charge in a second pamphlet, ent.i.tled "Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft," in which, while admitting the existence of witches--for he was not above the superst.i.tion of his age and country--he vigorously attacked Hopkins for accusing persons on insufficient evidence, and denounced the atrocious cruelties of which he and his a.s.sociates were guilty. I have no doubt that this manly language helped to bring about a wholesome change of public opinion. In the eastern counties so bitter a feeling of resentment arose, that Hopkins found it advisable to seek fresh woods and pastures new. In the spring of 1647 he was at Worcester, where four unfortunates were condemned on the evidence of himself and his a.s.sociates. But the indignation against him deepened and extended, and he hastily returned to his native town, trembling for his wretched life. There he printed a defence of his conduct, under the t.i.tle of "The Discovery of Witches, in answer to several queries lately delivered to the Judge of a.s.size for the county of Norfolk; published by Matthew Hopkins, witch-finder, for the benefit of the whole kingdom." His death occurred shortly afterwards. According to Sterne, he died the death of a righteous man, having "no trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsely reported for him." But the more generally accepted account is an instance of "poetical justice"--of Nemesis satisfied--which I heartily hope is authentic. It is said that he was surrounded by a mob in a Suffolk village, and accused of being himself a wizard, and of having, by his tricks of sorcery, cheated the devil out of a memorandum-book, in which were entered the names of all the witches in England. "Thus," cried the populace, "you find out witches, not by G.o.d"s name, but by the devil"s." He denied the charge; but his accusers determined that he should be subjected to his favourite test. He was stripped; his thumbs and toes were tied together; he was wrapped in a blanket, and cast into a pond. Whether he was drowned, or whether he floated, was taken up, tried, sentenced, and executed, authorities do not agree; but they agree that he never more disturbed the peace of the realm as a witch-finder.
Butler has found a niche for this knave, among other knaves, in his "Hudibras":
"Hath not this present Parliament A lieger to the Devil sent, Fully empowered to set about Finding revolted witches out?
And has he not within a year Hanged threescore of them in one shire?
Some only for not being drowned, And some for sitting above ground Whole days and nights upon their breeches, And, feeling pain, were hanged for witches ...
Who proved himself at length a witch, And made a rod for his own breech"--
the engineer hoist with his own petard--happily a by no means infrequent mode of retribution.
Sterne, the witch-finder"s colleague, not unnaturally shared in the public disfavour, and in defence of himself and his deceased partner gave to the world a "Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft," in which he acknowledges to have been concerned in the detection and condemnation of some 200 witches in the counties of Ess.e.x, Suffolk, Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Norfolk and Cambridge, and the Isle of Ely. He adds that "in many places I never received penny as yet, nor any like, notwithstanding I have bonds for satisfaction, except I should sin; but many rather fall upon me for what hath been received, but I hope such suits will be disannulled, and that when 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." One can hardly admire sufficiently the brazen effrontery of this appeal!
The number of persons imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft grew so large as to excite the alarm of the Government, who issued stringent orders to the country magistrates to commit for trial persons brought before them on this charge, and forbade them to exercise summary jurisdiction. Eventually a commission was given to the Earl of Warwick, and others, to hold a gaol-delivery at Chelmsford. Lord Warwick, who had done good service to the State as Lord High Admiral, was sagacious and fair-minded. But with him went Dr. Edmund Calamy, the eminent Puritan divine, to see that no injustice was done to the parties accused. This proved an unfortunate choice; for Calamy, who, in his sermon before the judges, had enlarged on the enormity of the sin of witchcraft, sat on the bench with them, and unhappily influenced their deliberations in the direction of severity. As a result, sixteen persons were hanged at Yarmouth, fifteen at Chelmsford, besides some sixty at various places in Suffolk.
Whitlocke, in his "Memorials," speaks of many "witches" as having been put upon their trial at Newcastle, through the agency of a man whom he calls "the Witch-finder." Another of the imitators of Hopkins, a Mr.
Shaw, parson of Rusock, came to condign humiliation (1660). Having instigated some bucolic barbarians to put an old woman, named Joan Bibb, to the water-ordeal, she swam right vigorously in the pool, and struggled with her a.s.sailants so strenuously that she effected her escape. Afterwards she brought an action against the parson for instigating the outrage, and obtained 20 damages.
In 1664, Elizabeth Styles, of Bayford, Somersetshire, was convicted and sentenced to death, but died in prison before the day fixed for her execution. It is said that she made a voluntary confession--without inducement or torture--in the presence of the magistrates and several divines--another case (if it be true) of the morbid self-delusion which in times of popular excitement makes so many victims.
One feels the necessity of speaking with some degree of moderation respecting the credulity of the ignorant and uneducated cla.s.ses, when one finds so sound a lawyer and so admirable a Christian as Sir Matthew Hale infected by the mania. No other blot, I suppose, is to be found on his fame and character; and that he should have incurred this indelible stain, and fallen into so pitiable an error, is a problem by no means easy of solution.
At the Lent a.s.size, in 1664, at Bury St. Edmunds, two aged women, named Rose Cullender and Amy Duny were brought before him on a charge of having bewitched seven persons. The nature of the evidence on which it was founded the reader will appreciate from the following examples:
Samuel Pacey, of Lowestoft, a man of good repute for sobriety and other homely virtues, having been sworn, said: That on Thursday, October 10 last, his younger daughter Deborah, about nine years old, fell suddenly so lame that she could not stand on her feet, and so continued till the 17th, when she asked to be carried to a bank which overlooked the sea, and while she was sitting there, Amy Duny came to the witness"s house to buy some herrings, but was denied. Twice more she called, but being always denied, went away grumbling and discontented. At this instant of time the child was seized with terrible fits; complained of a pain in her stomach, as if she were being p.r.i.c.ked with pins, shrieking out "with a voice like a whelp,"
and thus continuing until the 30th. This witness added that Amy Duny, being known as a witch, and his child having, in the intervals of her fits, constantly exclaimed against her as the cause of her sufferings, saying that the said Amy did appear to her and frighten her, he began to suspect the said Amy, and accused her in plain terms of injuring his child, and got her "set in the stocks." Two days afterwards, his daughter Elizabeth was seized with similar fits; and both she and her sister complained that they were tormented by various persons in the town of bad character, but more particularly by Amy Duny, and by another reputed witch, Rose Cullender.
Another witness deposed that she had heard the two children cry out against these persons, who, they said, threatened to increase their torments tenfold if they told tales of them. "At some times the children would see Things run up and down the house in the appearance of mice; and one of them suddenly snapped one with the tongs, and threw it in the fire, and it screeched out like a bat. At another time, the younger child, being out of her fits, went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a little Thing like a bee flew upon her face, and would have gone into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible manner; whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her, but before she could reach her, the child fell into her swooning fit, and, at last, with much pain and straining, vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and after that the child had raised up the nail she came to her understanding, and being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth."
Such evidence as this failing to satisfy Serjeant Keeling, and several magistrates who were present, of the guilt of the accused, it was resolved to resort to demonstration by experiment. The persons bewitched were brought into court to touch the two old women; and it was observed (says Hutchinson) that when the former were in the midst of their fits, and to all men"s apprehension wholly deprived of all sense and understanding, closing their fists in such a manner as that the strongest man could not force them open, yet, at the least touch of one of the supposed witches--Rose Cullender, by name--they would suddenly shriek out, opening their hands, which accident would not happen at any other person"s touch. "And lest they might privately see when they were touched by the said Rose Cullender, they were blinded with their own ap.r.o.ns, and the touching took the same effect as before. There was an ingenious person that objected there might be a great fallacy in this experiment, and there ought not to be any stress put upon this to convict the parties, for the children might counterfeit this their distemper, and, perceiving what was done to them, they might in such manner suddenly alter the erection and gesture of their bodies, on purpose to induce persons to believe that they were not natural, but wrought strangely by the touch of the prisoners. Wherefore, to avoid this scruple, it was privately desired by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, and Mr.
Serjeant Keeling, and some other gentleman then in court, would attend one of the distempered persons in the farthest part of the hall whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did accordingly; and Amy Duny was brought from the bar, and conveyed to the maid. They then put an ap.r.o.n before her eyes; and then one other person touched her hand, which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the court. Whereupon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting that they did believe the whole transaction of the business was a mere imposture." As, in truth, it was.
It is remarkable that Sir Matthew Hale was still unconvinced. He invited the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a man of great learning and ability--the author of the "Religio Medici," and other justly famous works--who admitted that the fits were natural, but thought them "heightened by the devil co-operating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies." Sir Matthew then charged the jury. There were, he said, two questions to be considered: First, whether or not these children were bewitched? And, second, whether the prisoners at the bar had been guilty of bewitching them? _That there were such creatures as witches, he did not doubt_; and he appealed to the Scriptures, which had affirmed so much, and also to the wisdom of all nations, which had enacted laws against such persons. Such, too, he said, had been the judgment of this kingdom, as appeared by that Act of Parliament which had provided punishment proportionable to the quality of the offence. He desired them to pay strict attention to the evidence, and implored the great G.o.d of heaven to direct their hearts in so weighty a matter; for to condemn the innocent, and set free the guilty, was "an abomination to the Lord."
After a charge of this description, the jury naturally brought in a verdict of "Guilty." Sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced; and the two poor old women, protesting to the last their innocence, suffered on the gallows. Who will not regret the part played by Sir Matthew Hale in this judicial murder? It is no excuse to say that he did but share in the popular belief. One expects of such a man that he will rise superior to the errors of ordinary minds; that he will be guided by broader and more enlightened views--by more humane and generous sympathies. Instead of attempting an apology which no act can render satisfactory, it is better to admit, with Sir Michael Foster, that "this great and good man was betrayed, notwithstanding the rect.i.tude of his intentions, into a great mistake, under the strong bias of early prejudices."
Gradually, however, a disbelief in witchcraft grew up in the public mind, as intellectual inquiry widened its scope, and the relations of man to the Unseen World came to be better understood. Among the educated cla.s.ses the old superst.i.tion expired much more rapidly than among the poorer; and so we find that though convictions became rarer, committals and trials continued tolerably frequent until the closing years of the eighteenth century. To the ghastly roll of victims, however, additions continued to be made. Thus in August, 1682, three women, named Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards, and Mary Trembles, were tried at Exeter before Lord Chief Justice North and Mr. Justice Raymond, convicted of various acts of witchcraft, and sentenced to death. Before their trial they had confessed to frequent interviews with the devil, who appeared in the shape of a black man as long (or as short) as a man"s arm; and one of them acknowledged to have caused the death of four persons by witchcraft. Some portion of these monstrous fictions they recanted under the gallows; but even on the brink of the grave they persisted in claiming the character of witches, and in a.s.serting that they had had personal intercourse with the devil.
In March, 1684, Alicia Welland was tried before Chief Baron Montague at Exeter, convicted, and executed.
To estimate the extent to which the belief in witchcraft, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, operated against the lives of the accused, Mr. Inderwick has searched the records of the Western Circuit, from 1670 to 1712 inclusive, and ascertained that out of fifty-two persons tried in that period on various charges of witchcraft, only seven were convicted, and one of these seven was reprieved. "What occurred on the Western," he remarks, "probably went on at each of the several circuits into which the country was then divided; and one cannot doubt that in Norfolk, Suffolk, Ess.e.x, Huntingdon, and Lancashire, where the witches mostly abounded, the charges and convictions were far more numerous than in the West. The judges appear, however, not to have taken the line of Sir Matthew Hale, but, as far as possible, to have prevented convictions. Indeed, Lord Jeffreys--who, when not engaged on political business, was at least as good a judge as any of his contemporaries--and Chief Justice Herbert, tried and obtained acquittals of witches in 1685 and 1686 at the very time that they were engaged on the b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.size in slaughtering the partic.i.p.ators in Monmouth"s rebellion. It is also a remarkable fact that, from 1686 to 1712, when charges of witchcraft gradually ceased, charges and convictions of malicious injury to property in burning haystacks, barns, and houses, and malicious injuries to persons and to cattle, increased enormously, these being the sort of accusations freely made against the witches before this date."
I think there can be little doubt that many evil-disposed persons availed themselves of the prevalent belief in witchcraft as a cover for their depredations on the property of their neighbours, diverting suspicion from themselves to the poor wretches who, through accidental circ.u.mstances, had acquired notoriety as the devil"s accomplices. It would also seem probable that not a few of the reputed witches similarly turned to account their bad reputation. It is not impossible, indeed, that there may be a certain degree of truth in the tales told of the witches" meetings, and that in some rural neighbourhoods the individuals suspected of being witches occasionally a.s.sembled at an appointed rendezvous to consult upon their position and their line of operations. The practices at these gatherings may not always have been kept within the limits of decency and decorum; and in this way the loathsome details with which every account of the witches" meetings are embellished may have had a real foundation.
That the judges at length began persistently to discourage convictions for witchcraft is seen in the action of Lord Chief Justice Holt at the Bury St. Edmunds a.s.size in 1694. An old woman, known as Mother Munnings, of Harks, in Suffolk, was brought before him, and the witnesses against her retailed the village talk--how that her landlord, Thomas Purnel, who, to get her out of the house she had rented from him, had removed the street-door, was told that "his nose should lie upward in the churchyard" before the following Sat.u.r.day; and how that he was taken ill on the Monday, died on the Tuesday, and was buried on the Thursday. How that she had a familiar in the shape of a polecat, and how that a neighbour, peeping in at her window one night, saw her take out of her basket a couple of imps--the one black, the other white. And how that a woman, named Sarah Wager, having quarrelled with her, was stricken dumb and lame. All this t.i.ttle-tattle was brushed aside in his charge by the strong common-sense of the judge; and the jury, under his direction, returned a verdict of "Not guilty." Dr. Hutchinson remarks: "Upon particular inquiry of several in or near the town, I find most are satisfied that it is a very right judgment. She lived about two years after, without doing any known harm to anybody, and died declaring her innocence. Her landlord was a consumptive-spent man, and the words not exactly as they swore them, and the whole thing seventeen years before.... The white imp is believed to have been a lock of wool, taken out of her basket to spin; and its shadow, it is supposed, was the black one."
In the same year (1694) a woman, named Margaret Elmore, was tried at Ipswich; in 1695 one Mary Gay at Launceston; and in 1696 one Elizabeth Hume at Exeter; but in each case, under the direction of Chief Justice Holt, a verdict of acquittal was declared. Thus the seventeenth century went its way in an unaccustomed atmosphere of justice and humanity.