ces for the stricken family. It was to no
effect. "All or most of them joined together in a strange and
supernatural loud whupping that the house and grounde did sounde
therwith again."

But the exorcists were not by any means disheartened. On the following
day, in company with another minister, they renewed the services and
were able to expel six of the seven spirits. On the third day they
stormed and took the last citadel of Satan. Unhappily the capture was
not permanent. Darrel tells us himself that the woman later became a
Papist[16] and the evil spirit returned.

The exorcist now turned his skill upon a young apprenticed musician of
Nottingham. According to Darrel's story of the affair,[17] William
Somers had nine years before met an old woman who had threatened him.
Again, more than a year before Darrel came to Nottingham, Somers had had
two encounters with a strange woman "at a deep cole-pit, hard by the
way-side." Soon afterwards he "did use such strang and idle kinde of
gestures in laughing, dancing and such like lighte behaviour, that he
was suspected to be madd." He began to suffer from bodily distortions
and to evince other signs of possession which created no little
excitement in Nottingham.

Darrel had been sent for by this time. He came at once and with his
usual precipitancy pronounced the case one of possession. Somers, he
said, was suffering for the sins of Nottingham.[18] It was time that
something should be done. Prayer and fasting were instituted. For three
days the youth was preached to and prayed over, while the people of
Nottingham, or some of them at least, joined in the fast. On the third
day came what was deemed a most remarkable exhibition. The preacher
named slowly, one after another, fourteen signs of possession. As he
named them Somers illustrated in turn each form of possession.[19] Here
was confirmatory evidence of a high order. The exorcist had outdone
himself. He now held out promises of deliverance for the subject. For a
quarter of an hour the boy lay as if dead, and then rose up quite well.

Darrel now took up again the witchfinder's role he had once before
assumed. Somers was encouraged to name the contrivers of his
bewitchment. Through him, Darrel is said to have boasted, they would
expose all the witches in England.[20] They made a most excellent start
at it. Thirteen women were accused by the boy,[21] who would fall into
fits at the sight of a witch, and a general invitation