runs, "by means thereof her body wasted and consumed." "The chief object," says Sir Walter Scott, "in this imposture, was doubtless the advantage and promotion of the Catholic cause, as the patient would have been in due time exorcised and the fiend dispossessed, by the same priest who had taught her to counterfeit the fits. Revenge against the women, who had become proselytes to the Church of England, was probably an additional motive." But the imposture broke down, from the inability of the principal witness to support the scheme of deception. Unsuccessful, however, as it proved, the time was well chosen, the groundwork excellently laid, the evidence industriously got up, and it must ever deserve a prominent place in the history—a history, how delightful when it shall be written in the spirit of philosophy and with due application of researchof human fraud and imposture.

We can only speculate, of course, on such an occasion, but perhaps no trial is recorded as having taken place, with the results of which every body, the parties convicted only excepted, was, in all probability, better pleased or satisfied, than at this witch trial at Lancaster in 1612. The mob would be delighted with a pageant, always acceptable, in the execution of ten witches; and still more, that one of them was of a rank superior to their own; -the judge had no doubt, in his opinion, avoided each horn of the dilemma- the abomination mentioned in Scripture-punishing the innocent or letting the guilty go free-by tracking guilt with well breathed sagacity, and unravelling imposture

h

with unerring skill;-a Jesuit had been unkennelled, a spectacle as gratifying to a serious Protestant in those days, as running down a fox to a thorough sportsman ; — a plot had been discovered which might have made Lancaster Castle "to topple on its warders" and "slope its head to its foundations," and Master Cowell, who had held so many inquests, to vanish without leaving anything in his own. person whereon an inquest could be holden;-a pestilent nest of incorrigible witches had been dug out and rooted up, and Pendle Hill placed under sanatory regulations; — and last, and not least, as affording matter of pride and exultation to every loyal subject, a commentary had at last been collected for two texts, which had long called for some such support without finding it, King James's Demonology, and his statute against witchcraft. When the Discoverie of Master Potts, with its rich treasury of illustrative evidence, came to hand, would not the monarch be the happiest man in his dominions!

Twenty years after the publication of the tract now reprinted, Pendle Forest again became the scene of pretended witchcrafts; and from various circumstances, the trial which took place then (in 1633) has acquired even greater notoriety than the one which preceded it, though no Master Potts could be found to transmit a report of the proceedings in the second case, a deficiency which is greatly to be lamented. The particulars are substantially comprised in the following examination, which is given from the copy in Whitaker's Whalley, p. 213, which, on comparison, is unquestionably

more accurate than the other two versions, in Webster, p. 347, and Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 604:1 —

"THE EXAMINATION OF EDMUND ROBINSON,

"Son of Edm. Robinson, of Pendle forest, mason,2 taken

The copy in Baines is from the Harl. MSS., cod. 6854, fo. 26 b, and though inserted in his history as more correct than that in Whitaker's Whalley, is so disfigured by errors, particularly in the names of persons and places, as to be utterly unintelligible. From what source Whitaker derived his transcript does not appear; for the confession of Margaret Johnson he cites Dodsworth MSS. in Bodleian Lib., vol. 61, p. 47.

2 "The informer was one Edmund Robinson (yet living at the writing hereof, and commonly known by the name of Ned of Roughs) whose Father was by trade a Waller, and but a poor Man, and they finding that they were believed and had incouragement by the adjoyning Magistrates, and the persons being committed to prison or bound over to the next Assizes, the boy, his Father and some others besides did make a practice to go from Church to Church that the Boy might reveal and discover Witches, pretending that there was a great number at the pretended meeting whose faces he could know, and by that means they got a good living, that in a short space the Father bought a Cow or two, when he had none before. And it came to pass that this said Boy was brought into the Church of Kildwick a large parish Church, where I (being then Curate there) was preaching in the afternoon, and was set upon a stall (he being but about ten or eleven years old) to look about him, which moved some little disturbance in the Congregation for a while. And after prayers I inquiring what the matter was, the people told me that it was the Boy that discovered Witches, upon which I went to the house where he was to stay all night, where I found him, and two very unlikely persons that did conduct him, and manage the business; I desired to have some discourse with the Boy in private, but that they utterly refused; then in the presence of a great many people, I took the Boy near me, and said: Good Boy tell me truly, and in earnest, did thou see and hear such strange things of the meeting of Witches, as is

at Padiham before Richard Shuttleworth' and John Starkie,2 Esqs. two of his majesty's justices of the peace, within the county of Lancaster, 10th of February, A.D. 1633.

"Who informeth upon oath, (beeinge examined concerninge the greate meetings of the witches) and saith, that upon All-saints day last past, hee, this informer, beeinge with one Henry Parker, a neare doore neighbor to him in Wheatley-lane, desyred the said Parker to give him leave to get some bulloes, which hee did. In which tyme of gettinge bulloes, hee sawe two greyhounds, viz. a blacke and a browne one, came runninge over the next field towards him, he verily thinkinge the one of them to bee Mr. Nutters, and

reported by many that thou dost relate, or did not some person teach thee to say such things of thy self? But the two men not giving the Boy leave to answer, did pluck him from me, and said he had been examined by two able Justices of the Peace, and they did never ask him such a question, to whom I replied, the persons accused had therefore the more wrong.". Webster's Displaying of Witchcraft, p. 276.

1 This was Richard Shuttleworth of Gawthorp, Esq., who married the daughter and heiress of R. Fleetwood, Esq., of Barton, and died June 1669, aged 82.

2 John Starkie, Esq., of the family of Starkie of Huntroyd, the same probably who was sheriff of Lancashire 9 Charles I, and one of the seven demoniacs at Cleworth in the year 1595, on whose evidence Hartley was hanged for witchcraft. Having commenced so early, he must by this time have qualified himself, if he only improved the advantages of his Cleworth education, to take the chair and proceed as professor, in all matters appertaining to witchcraft.

3 Wheatley-lane is still a place of note in Pendle.

• Wild plums.

It would seem as if a case of witchcraft in Pendle, without a Nutter in some way connected with it, could not occur.

the other to bee Mr. Robinsons,' the said Mr. Nutter and Mr. Robinson havinge then such like. And the said greyhounds came to him and fawned on him, they havinge about theire necks either of them a coller, and to either of which collers was tyed a stringe, which collers as this informer affirmeth did shine like gould, and hee thinkinge that some either of Mr. Nutter's or Mr. Robinson's family should have followed them: but seeinge noe body to followe them, he tooke the said greyhounds thinkinge to hunt with them, and presently a hare did rise very neare before him, at the sight whereof he cryed, loo, loo, but the dogges would not run.. Whereupon beeinge very angry, he tooke them, and with the strings that were at theire collers tyed either of them to a little bush on the next hedge, and with a rod that hee had in his hand, hee bett them. And in stede of the blacke greyhound, one Dickonson wife stoode up (a neighb?) whom this informer knoweth, and in steade of the browne greyhound a little boy whom this informer knoweth not. At which sight this informer beeinge affraid indevoured to run away: but beeinge stayed by the woman, viz. by Dickonson's wife, shee put her hand into her pocket, and pulled out a peace of silver much like to a faire shillinge, and offered to give him to hould his

What Mr. Robinson is intended does not appear. It was a common name in Pendle. It is, however, a curious fact, that a family of this name, with the alias of Swyer, (see Potts, confession of Elizabeth Device,) is even now, or very recently was, to be met with in Pendle, of whom the John Robinson, alias Swyer, one of the supposed victims of Witchcraft, was probably an ancestor. There are few instances of an alias being similarly transmitted in families for upwards of two centuries.