reign of
James. It was an unusual method at best.[24] A commoner form of proof
was that adduced from the finding or seeing clay or waxen images in the
possession of the accused.[25] The witness who had found such a model on
the premises of the defendant or had seen the defendant handling it,
jumped readily to the conclusion that the image represented some
individual. If it should be asked how we are to account for this sort of
evidence, the answer is an easy one. Every now and then in the annals of
witchcraft it came out that a would-be accuser had hidden a waxen or
clay figure in the house of the person he wished to accuse and had then
found it. No doubt some cases started in this way. No doubt, too, bitter
women with grudges to satisfy did experiment with images and were caught
at it. But this was rare. In the greater number of cases the stories of
images were pure fabrications. To that category belong almost certainly
the tales told at Lancaster.[26]

"Spectral evidence" we have met with in the Elizabethan period. That
reign saw two or three instances of its employment, and there were more
examples of it in the reign of James. Master Avery of Northampton, who
with his sister was the principal accuser in the trials there, saw in
one of his fits a black wart on the body of Agnes Brown, a wart which
was actually found "upon search."[27] Master Avery saw other spectres,
but the most curious was that of a bloody man desiring him to have mercy
on his Mistress Agnes and to cease impeaching her.[28] At Bedford,
Master Enger's servant had a long story to tell, but the most thrilling
part concerned a visit which the young Mary Sutton (whom he was
accusing) made to him. On a "moonshine night" she came in at the window
in her "accustomed and personall habite and shape" and knitted at his
side. Then drawing nearer, she offered him terms by which he could be
restored to his former health, terms which we are to understand the
virtuous witness refused. It is pleasant to know that Master Enger was
"distrustfull of the truth" of this tale. One fears that these spectres
were not the products of overwrought imagination, as were many others,
but were merely fabrics of elaborate fiction.[29] In any case they were
not the groundwork of the proof. In the Fairfax prosecutions at York in
1622 the charges against the six women accused rested entirely upon a
great tissue of spectral evidence. The three children had talked to the
spectres, had m