else was charged.[14] The reader
will remember that in the Lancaster cases of 1612 the evidence of marks
on the body was notably absent, so notably that we were led to suspect
that it had been ruled out by the judge. That such evidence was now
reckoned important is proof that this particularly dark feature of the
witch superstition was receiving increasing emphasis.

How many in all were accused we do not know. Webster, writing later,
said that seventeen were found guilty.[15] It is possible that even a
larger number were acquitted. Certainly some were acquitted. A
distinction of some sort was made in the evidence. This makes it all the
harder to understand why the truth of Robinson's stories was not tested
in the same way in which those of Grace Sowerbutts had been tested in
1612. Did that detection of fraud never occur to the judges, or had they
never heard of the famous boy at Bilston? Perhaps not they but the
juries were to blame, for it seems that the court was not altogether
satisfied with the jury's verdict and delayed sentence. Perhaps, indeed,
the judges wrote to London about the matter. Be that as it may, the
privy council decided to take cognizance of an affair that was already
the talk of the realm.[16] Secretaries Coke and Windebank sent
instructions to Henry Bridgeman, Bishop of Chester and successor to that
Morton who had exposed the boy of Bilston, to examine seven of the
condemned witches and to make a report.[17] Bridgeman doubtless knew of
his predecessor's success in exposing fraudulent accusations. Before the
bishop was ready to report, His Majesty sent orders that three or four
of the accused should be brought up to London by a writ of habeas
corpus. Owing to a neglect to insert definite names, there was a
delay.[18] It was during this interval, probably, that Bishop Bridgeman
was able to make his examination. He found three of the seven already
dead and one hopelessly ill. The other three he questioned with great
care. Two of them, Mary Spencer, a girl of twenty, and Frances
Dickonson, the first whom Robinson had accused, made spirited denials.
Mary Spencer avowed that her accusers had been actuated by malice
against her and her parents for several years. At the trial, she had
been unable, she said, to answer for herself, because the noise of the
crowd had been so great as to prevent her from hearing the evidence
against her. As for the charge of bewitching a pail so that it came
running towards h