(we shall meet with it afterwards again) to amuse his servants and vassals with many rites and ceremonies, which have certainly no ground in nature, no relation or sympathy to the thing, as for other reasons, so to make them believe, they have a great hand in the production of such and such effects; when, God knows, many times all that they do, though taught and instructed by him, is nothing at all to the purpose, and he, in very deed, is the only agent, by means which he doth give them no account of.  Bodinus, in his preface to his “Daemonology,” relateth, that three waxen images, whereof one of Queen Elizabeth’s, of glorious memory, and two other, Reginae proximorum, of two courtiers, of greatest authority under the queen, were found in the house of a priest at Islington, a magician, or so reputed, to take away their lives.  This he doth repeat again in his second book, chap. 8, but more particularly that it was in the year of the Lord 1578, and that Legatus Angliae and many Frenchmen did divulge it so; but withal, in both places he doth add, that the business was then under trial, and not yet perfectly known.  I do not trust my memory:  I know my age and my infirmities.  Cambden, I am sure, I have read; and read again; but neither in him, nor in Bishop Carleton’s “Thankful Remembrancer,” do I remember any such thing.  Others may, perchance.  Yet, in the year 1576, I read in both of some pictures, representing some that would have kill’d that glorious queen with a motto, Quorsum haec, alio properantibus! which pictures were made by some of the conspiracy for their incouragement; but intercepted, and showed, they say, to the queen.  Did the time agree, it is possible these pictures might be the ground of those mistaken, if mistaken, waxen images, which I desire to be taught by others who can give a better account.—­Casaubon’s (M.) Treatise, proving Spirits, Witches, and Supernatural Operations, 1672. 12mo., p. 92.

In Scotland this practice was in high favour with witches, both in ancient and modern times.  The lamentable story of poor King Duff, as related by Hector Boethius, a story which has blanched the cheek and spoiled the rest of many a youthful reader, is too well known to need extracting.  Even so late as 1676, Sir George Maxwell, of Pollock, (See Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 323,) apparently a man of melancholy and valetudinarian habits, believed himself bewitched to death by six witches, one man and five women, who were leagued for the purpose of tormenting a clay image in his likeness.  Five of the accused were executed, and the sixth only escaped on account of extreme youth.

Isabel Gowdie, the famous Scotch witch before referred to, in her confessions gives a very particular account of the mode in which these images were manufactured.  It is curious, and worth quoting:—­