s, '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 gentlemen there 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.' Some of the possessed, having been put to the proof
by having their eyes covered, and being touched upon the hand by
one of those present, fell into contortions as if they had been
touched by the witches.

The suspicion of imposture thus raised was quickly silenced by
fresh proof. Robert Sherringham, farmer, deposed that 'about two
years since, passing along the street with his cart and horses,
the axle-tree of his cart touched her house and broke down some
part of it; at which she was very much displeased, threatening
him that his horses should suffer for it. And so it happened; for
all those horses, being four in number, died within a short time
after. Since that time he hath had great losses by sudden dying
of his other cattle. So soon as his sows pigged, the pigs would
leap and caper, and immediately fall down and die. Also, not long
after, he was taken with a lameness in his limbs that he could
neither go nor stand for some days.'[152]

[152] This witness finished his evidence by informing the
Court that 'after all this, he was very much vexed with a
great number of lice, of extraordinary bigness; and although
he many times shifted himself, yet he was not anything the
better, but would swarm again with them. So that in the
conclusion he was forced to burn all his clothes, being two
suits of apparel, and then was clear from
them.'--_Narratives of Sorcery_, &c., from the most
authentic sources, by Thomas Wright.

The extreme ridiculousness, even more than the iniquity, of the
accusations may be deemed the principal characteristic of such
procedures: these _childish_ indictments were received with
eagerness by prosecutors, jury, and judge. After half an hour's
deliberation the jury returned a unanimous verdict against the
prisoners, who were hanged, protesting their innocence to the
end. The year before, a woman named Julian Coxe was hanged at
Taunton on the evidence of a hunter that a hare, which had taken
refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found on the opposite side
in the likeness of a witch, who had assumed the fo