hrased negatively, "As I am no
witch," was ineffectual. And the affirmative charge, when tried by some
other person, had no result. This was deemed conclusive proof. The woman
was beyond doubt guilty. The same method was applied with equally
successful issue to the father. When he refused to use the words of the
charge he was warned by the judge that he would endanger his life. He
gave way.

It is needless to say that the grand jury arraigned all three of the
family and that the "jury of life and death" found them guilty. It
needed but a five hours' trial.[24] The mother was induced to plead
pregnancy as a delay to execution, but after an examination by a jury
was adjudged not pregnant. The daughter had been urged to make the same
defence, but spiritedly replied, "It shall never be said that I was both
a witch and a whore." At the execution the mother made another
confession, in which she implicated her husband, but refused to the end
to accuse her daughter.

From beginning to end it had been the strong against the weak. Sir
Robert Throckmorton, Sir Henry Cromwell, William Wickham, Bishop of
Lincoln, the justices of the peace, Justice Fenner of the king's court,
the Cambridge scholars, the "Doctor of Divinitie," and two other
clergymen, all were banded together against this poor but respectable
family. In some respects the trial reminds us of one that was to take
place ninety-nine years later in Massachusetts. The part played by the
children in the two instances was very similar. Mother Samuel had hit
the nail on the head when she said that the trouble was due to the
children's "wantonness." Probably the first child had really suffered
from some slight ailment. The others were imitators eager to gain notice
and pleased with their success; and this fact was realized by some
people at the time. "It had been reported by some in the county, those
that thought themselves wise, that this Mother Samuel ... was an old
simple woman, and that one might make her by fayre words confesse what
they would." Moreover the tone of the writer's defense makes it evident
that others beside Mother Samuel laid the action of the Throckmorton
children to "wantonness." And six years later Samuel Harsnett, chaplain
to the Bishop of London and a man already influential, called the
account of the affair "a very ridiculous booke" and evidently believed
the children guilty of the same pretences as William Somers, whose
confessions of imposture he w