ions, shows that the Royalists
were inclined to remark the number of witches in the counties friendly
to Parliament: "It is the ordinary mirth of the Malignants in this City
to discourse of the Association of Witches in the Associated Counties,
but by this they shall understand the truth of the old Proverbe, which
is that where God hath his Church, the Devill hath his Chappell." The
writer goes on, "I am sory to informe you that one of the cheifest of
them was a Parsons Wife (this will be good news with the Papists)....
Her name was Weight.... This Woman (as I heare) was the first
apprehended."[19] It seems, however, that Mrs. "Weight" escaped. Social
and religious influences were not without value. A later pamphleteer
tells us that the case of Mrs. Wayt, a minister's wife, was a "palpable
mistake, for it is well knowne that she is a gentle-woman of a very
godly and religious life."[20]

Meantime Hopkins had extended his operations into Suffolk. Elizabeth
Clarke and Anne Leech had implicated certain women in that county. Their
charges were carried before the justices of the peace and were the
beginning of a panic which spread like wildfire over the county.

The methods which the witchfinder-general used are illuminating. Four
searchers were appointed for the county, two men and two women.[21] "In
what Town soever ... there be any person or persons suspected to be
witch or Witches, thither they send for two or all of the said
searchers, who take the partie or parties so suspected into a Roome and
strip him, her, or them, starke naked."[22] The clergyman Gaule has
given us further particulars:[23] "Having taken the suspected Witch,
shee is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool, or Table,
crosse-legg'd, or in some other uneasie posture, to which if she submits
not, she is then bound with cords; there is she watcht and kept without
meat or sleep for the space of 24 hours.... A little hole is likewise
made in the door for the Impe to come in at; and lest it might come in
some lesse discernible shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and
anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or flyes, to kill
them. And if they cannot kill them, then they may be sure they are her
Impes."[24] Hutchinson tells a story of one woman, who, after having
been kept long fasting and without sleep, confessed to keeping an imp
called Nan. But a "very learned ingenious gentleman having indignation
at the thing" drove the people f