ven of them women, "poore people," testified against her.
The woman took up her own cause with great spirit and exposed the
malicious dealings of her adversaries and also certain controversies
betwixt her and them. "But although she satisfied the bench," says
Holinshed, "and all the jurie touching hir innocencie ... she ...
confessed that a little vermin, being of colour reddish, of stature
lesse than a rat ... did ... haunt her house." She was willing too to
admit illicit relations with one Mason, whose housekeeper she had
been--probably the original cause of her troubles. The jury acquitted
her of witchcraft, but found her guilty of the "invocation of evil
spirits," intending to send her to the pillory. While the mayor was
admonishing her, a lawyer called attention to the point that the
invocation of evil spirits had been made a felony. The mayor sentenced
the woman to execution. But, "because there was no matter of invocation
given in evidence against hir, ... hir execution was staied by the space
of three daies." Sundry preachers tried to wring confessions from her,
but to no purpose. Yet she made so godly an end, says the chronicler,
that "manie now lamented hir death which were before hir utter
enimies."[29] The case illustrates vividly the clumsiness of municipal
court procedure. The mayor's court was unfamiliar with the law and
utterly unable to avert the consequences of its own finding. In the
regular assize courts, Joan Cason would probably have been sentenced to
four public appearances in the pillory.

The differences between the first half and the second half of
Elizabeth's reign have not been deemed wide enough by the writer to
justify separate treatment. The whole reign was a time when the
superstition was gaining ground. Yet in the span of years from Reginald
Scot to the death of Elizabeth there was enough of reaction to justify a
differentiation of statistics. In both periods, and more particularly in
the first, we may be sure that some of the records have been lost and
that a thorough search of local archives would reveal some trials of
which we have at present no knowledge. It was a time rich in mention of
witch trials, but a time too when but few cases were fully described.
Scot's incidental references to the varied experiences of Sir Roger
Manwood and of his uncle Sir Thomas Scot merely confirm an impression
gained from the literature of the time that the witch executions were
becoming, throughout th