4to, p. 93, tells us, speaking of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, who in the reign of Queen Elizabeth died by poison, “The credulity of the age attributed his death to witchcraft.  The disease was odd, and operated as a perpetual emetic; and a waxen image, with hair like that of the unfortunate earl, found in his chamber, reduced every suspicion to certainty.”

“The wife of Marshal d’Ancre was apprehended, imprisoned, and beheaded for a witch, upon a surmise that she had inchanted the queen to dote upon her husband; and they say the young king’s picture was found in her closet, in virgin wax, with one leg melted away.  When asked by her judges what spells she had made use of to gain so powerful an ascendancy over the queen, she replied, ’that ascendancy only which strong minds ever gain over weak ones.’” Seward’s “Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons,” &c., vol. ii., p. 215.

Blagrave, in his “Astrological Practice of Physick,” p. 89, observes that “the way which the witches usually take for to afflict man or beast in this kind is, as I conceive, done by image or model, made in the likeness of that man or beast they intend to work mischief upon, and by the subtlety of the devil made at such hours and times when it shall work most powerfully upon them, by thorn, pin, or needle, pricked into that limb or member of the body afflicted.”

This is farther illustrated by a passage in one of Daniel’s
Sonnets: 

“The slie inchanter, when to work his will
And secret wrong on some forspoken wight,
Frames waxe, in forme to represent aright
The poore unwitting wretch he meanes to kill,
And prickes the image, framed by magick’s skill,
Whereby to vex the partie day and night.”
Son. 10; from Poems and Sonnets annexed to “Astrophil
and Stella,” 4to, 1591.

Again, in “Diaria, or the Excellent Conceitful Sonnets of
H.C.,” (Henry Constable,) 1594: 

“Witches, which some murther do intend,
Doe make a picture, and doe shoote at it;
And in that part where they the picture hit,
The parties self doth languish to his end.”

          
                                                Decad.  II., Son. ii.

Coles, in his “Art of Simpling,” &c., p. 66, says that witches “take likewise the roots of mandrake, according to some, or, as I rather suppose, the roots of briony, which simple folke take for the true mandrake, and make thereof an ugly image, by which they represent the person on whom they intend to exercise their witchcraft.”  He tells us, ibid., p. 26, “Some plants have roots with a number of threads, like beards, as mandrakes, whereof witches and impostors make an ugly image, giving it the form of the face at the top of the root, and leave those strings to make a broad beard down to the feet.”—­Brand’s Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 9.

Ben Johnson has not forgotten this superstition in his learned and fanciful Masque of Queens, in which so much of the lore of witchcraft is embodied.  There are few finer things in English poetry than his 3rd Charm:—­