hat is) to stir up and excite such humours
superabounding in their bodies to a great excess, whereby he did, in an
extraordinary manner, afflict them with such distempers as their bodies
were most subject to, as particularly appeared in the children of
Dorothy Dunent, (one of the indictments against the prisoners being for
their bewitchment;) for he conceived that these swooning fits were
natural, and nothing else but that they call the mother, but _only
heightened to a great excess by the subtilty of the devil co-operating
with the malice of these, which we term witches, at whose instance he
doth the villanies_."

The ceremony of initiation to the dreadful vocation and great powers of
witchcraft was attended with considerable form and mystery:--

----They call me hag and witch.
What is the name? When, and by what art learned?
With what spell, what charm or invocation,
May the thing call'd _familiar_ be purchas'd?

The older and more ugly the performer in these appalling ceremonies, the
better. Some witches seem to have had the devil quite at their beck; but
his visits to most of them appear to have been "few and far between."
The convention (remarks John Gaule, an old writer) for such a solemn
initiation being proclaimed (by some herald imp) to some others of the
confederation, on some great holy or Lord's day, they meet in some
church, either before the consecrated bell hath tolled, or else very
late, after all the services are past and over. "The party, in some
vesture for that purpose, is presented by some confederate or familiar
to the prince of devills, sitting now in a throne of infernall majesty,
appearing in the form of a man, only labouring to hide his cloven foot.
To whom, after bowing and homage done, a petition is presented to be
received into his association and protection; and first, if the witch be
outwardly Christian, baptism must be renounced, and the party must be
re-baptised in the devill's name, and a new name is also imposed by him,
and here must be godfathers too ... But above all he is very busie with
his long nails, in scraping and scratching those places of the forehead
where the signe of the crosse was made, or where the chrisme was laid.
Instead of both which, he impresses or inures the mark of the beast (the
devill's flesh brand) upon one or other part of the body. Further, the
witch (for her part) vows, either by word of mouth, or peradventure by
writing, (and that in her owne bloode,) t