Baxter relates the following circumstance as having occurred at this trial:  “A godly minister, yet living, sitting by to see one of the girls (who appeared as a witness against the prisoners) in her fits, suddenly felt a force pull one of the hooks from his breeches; and, while he looked with wonder at what was become of it, the tormented girl vomited it up out of her mouth.”

To give an idea of the nature of the testimony upon which the principal stress was laid by the government, I will extract the following passages from the report of the trial:  “Robert Sherringham testified that the axle-tree of his cart, happening, in passing, to break some part of Rose Cullender’s house, in her anger at it, she vehemently threatened him his horses should suffer for it; and, within a short time, all his four horses died; after which he sustained many other losses, in the sudden dying of his cattle.  He was also taken with a lameness in his limbs, and so far vexed with lice of an extraordinary number and bigness, that no art could hinder the swarming of them, till he burned up two suits of apparel.”—­“Margaret Arnold testified that Amy Dunny afflicted her children:  they (the children), she said, would see mice running round the house, and, when they caught them and threw them into the fire, they would screech out like rats.”—­“A thing like a bee flew at the face of the younger child; the child fell into a fit, and at last vomited up a two-penny nail, with a broad head, affirming that the bee brought this nail, and forced it into her mouth.”—­“She one day caught an invisible mouse, and, throwing it into the fire, it flashed like to gunpowder.  None besides the child saw the mouse, but every one saw the flash!”

In this instance we perceive the influence of prejudice in perverting evidence.  The circumstance that the mouse was invisible to all eyes but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture.  But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive proof of diabolical agency.

Many persons who were present expressed the opinion, that the issue of the trial would have been favorable to the prisoners, had it not been for the following circumstance:  Sir Thomas Browne, a physician, philosopher, and scholar of unrivalled celebrity at that time, happened to be upon the spot; and it was the universal wish that he should be called to the stand, and his opinion be obtained on the general subject of witchcraft.  An enthusiastic contemporary admirer of Sir Thomas Browne thus describes him:  “The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere of the world:  all that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much; and of the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge