a pretty
gentleman; will you kisse me?" When the man happened to die this
solicitation assumed a serious aspect.[41]

Witchcraft was indeed so often the outcome of lower-class bickering that
trials involving the upper classes seem worthy of special record. During
the Protectorate there were two rather remarkable trials. In 1656
William and Mary Wade were accused of bewitching the fourteen-year-old
daughter of Elizabeth Mallory of Studley Hall. The Mallorys were a
prominent family in Yorkshire. The grandfather of the accusing child had
been a member of Parliament and was a well known Royalist colonel. When
Mistress Elizabeth declared that her fits would not cease until Mary
Wade had said that she had done her wrong, Mary Wade was persuaded to
say the words. Elizabeth was well at once, but Mary withdrew her
admission and Elizabeth resumed her fits, indeed "she was paste
holdinge, her extreamaty was such." She now demanded that the two Wades
should be imprisoned, and when they were "both in holde" she became well
again. They were examined by a justice of the peace, but were probably
let off.[42]

The story of Diana Crosse at Exeter is a more pathetic one. Mrs. Crosse
had once kept a girls' school--could it be that there was some
connection between teaching and witchcraft?[43]--had met with
misfortune, and had at length been reduced to beggary. We have no means
of knowing whether the suspicion of witchcraft antedated her extreme
poverty or not, but it seems quite clear that the former school-teacher
had gained an ill name in the community. She resented bitterly the
attitude of the people, and at one time seems to have appealed to the
mayor. It was perhaps by this very act that she focussed the suspicion
of her neighbors. To go over the details of the trial is not worth
while. Diana Crosse probably escaped execution to eke out the remainder
of her life in beggary.[44]

The districts of England affected by the delusion during this period
have already been indicated. While there were random cases in Suffolk,
Hertfordshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Cumberland, and Northumberland, by
far the greatest activity seems to have been in Middlesex, Cornwall, and
Yorkshire. To a layman it looks as if the north of England had produced
the greater part of its folk-lore. Certain it is that the witch stories
of Yorkshire, as those of Lancaster at another time, by their mysterious
and romantic elements made the trials of the south seem flat,