and two were shees, lyke vnto black Cats.

"Elizabeth Ewstace had iii Impes or Spirits of colour white, grey,
and black.

"Annis Herd had vi Impes or Spirites, like auises and black byrdes,
and vi other like Kine, of the bygnes of Rats, with short hornes; the
Auises shee fed with wheat, barley, otes, and bread, the Kine with
straw and hay.

Annys Glascocke. } These have not confessed any thing touching
12. Joan Pechey. } the hauing of spirits.
13. Joan Robinson.}

Annis Glascocke } bewitched { Mychell Steuens Childe.
} to death { The base Childe at Pages.
{William Pages Childe.

Thus did W. W. and Bryan Darcey finish their respective works, in which,
perhaps, this formal tabular statement, this pretence at scientific
arrangement and accuracy, is the strangest and most revolting
element.[105]

Another rare and curious[106] black-letter pamphlet gives a marvellous
account of a woman's possession, as it happened in Somersetshire; which
perchance we of the light-minded and sceptical nineteenth century might
interpret differently to what the believing sixteenth held likely.

THE WOMAN AND THE BEAR.

One Stephen Cooper, of Ditchet, a yeoman of honest reputation, good
wealth, and well beloved by his neighbours, being sick and weak, sent his
wife Margaret to a farm of his at Rockington, Gloucestershire, where she
remained a few days--not finding all to her liking, she said. When she
returned she found her husband somewhat better, but she herself was
strange and wild, using much idle talk to him concerning an old groat
which her little son had found and which she wanted to see, and raving
about the farm in Gloucestershire, as if she had been bewitched, and knew
not what she said. Then she began to change in very face, and to look on
her husband with "a sad and staring countenance;" and, one night, things
came to a climax, for she got very wild and bad, and shook so frightfully
that they could scarce keep her down in the bed; and then she began
talking of a headless bear, which, she said, she had been into the town to
beat away during the time of her fit, and which had followed her from
Rockington: as the sequel proved was true. Her friends and husband
exhorted her to prayer and patience, but she still continued marvellously
holden, the Devil getting quite the better of her until Su