tory,
if it did not serve to convey a characteristic idea of the English
nation. In the beginning of the year an obscure damsel, of low degree,
whose name was Elizabeth Canning, promulgated a report, which in a
little time attracted the attention of the public. She affirmed, that
on the first day of the new year, at night, she was seized under
Bedlam-wall by two ruffians, who having stripped her of her upper
apparel, secured her mouth with a gag, and threatened to murder her
should she make the least noise; that they conveyed her on foot about
ten miles, to a place called Enfieldwash, and brought her to the house
of one Mrs. Wells, where she was pillaged of her stays; and because
she refused to turn prostitute, confined in a cold, damp, separate, and
unfurnished apartment; where she remained a whole month, without any
other sustenance than a few stale crusts of bread, and about a gallon of
water; till at length she forced her way through a window, and ran home
to her mother's house almost naked, in the night of the twenty-ninth of
January. This story, improbable and unsupported, operated so strongly on
the passions of the people in the neighbourhood of Aldermanbury,
where Canning's mother lived, and particularly among fanatics of all
denominations, that they raised voluntary contributions, with surprising
eagerness, in order to bring the supposed delinquents to justice.
Warrants were granted for apprehending Wells, who kept the house at
Enfieldwash, and her accomplices, the servant maid, whose name was
Virtue Hall, and one Squires, an old gipsey-woman, which last was
charged by Canning of having robbed her of her stays. Wells, though
acquitted of the felony, was punished as a bawd. Hall turned evidence
for Canning, but afterwards recanted. Squires, the gipsey, was convicted
of the robbery, though she produced undoubted evidence to prove that she
was at Abbotsbury in Dorsetshire that very night in which the felony
was said to be committed, and Canning and her friends fell into
divers contradictions during the course of the trial. By this time the
prepossession of the common people in her favour had risen to such a
pitch of enthusiasm, that the most palpable truths which appeared on the
other side, had no other effect than that of exasperating them to the
most dangerous degree of rage and revenge. Some of the witnesses for
Squires, though persons of unblemished character, were so intimidated,
that they durst not enter the