F 4 a. “That at the third time her Spirit.”] Something seems to be wanting here, as she does not state what occurred at the two previous interviews.  The learned judge may have exercised a sound discretion in this omission, as the particulars might be of a nature unfit for publication.  The present tract is, undoubtedly, remarkably free from those disgusting details of which similar reports are generally full to overflowing.

F 4 b. “The said Iennet Deuice, being a yong Maide, about the age of nine yeares.”] This child must have been admirably trained, (some Master Thomson might have been near at hand to instruct her,) or must have had great natural capacity for deception.  She made an excellent witness on this occasion.  What became of her after the wholesale extinction of her family, to which she was so mainly instrumental, is not now known.  In all likelihood she dragged on a miserable existence, a forlorn outcast, pointed at by the hand of scorn, or avoided with looks of horror in the wilds of Pendle.  As if some retributive punishment awaited her, she is reported to have been the Jennet Davies who was condemned in 1633, on the evidence of Edmund Robinson the younger, with Mother Dickenson and others, but not executed.  Her confession, if she made one at the second trial, might not have been unsimilar to that of Alexander Sussums, of Melford in Suffolk, who, Hearne tells us, confessed “that he had things which did draw those marks I found upon him, but said he could not help it, for that all his kinred were naught.  Then I asked him how it was possible they could suck without his consent.  He said he did consent to that.  Then I asked him again why he should do it when as God was so merciful towards him, as I then told him of, being a man whom I had been formerly acquainted withal, as having lived in town.  He answered again, he could not help it, for that all his generation was naught; and so told me his mother and aunt were hanged, his grandmother burnt for witchcraft, and ten others of them questioned and hanged.  This man is yet living, notwithstanding he confessed the sucking of such things above sixteen years together.”—­Confirmation, p. 36.

G 3 a. “Anne Crouckshey.”] Anne Cronkshaw.

G 3 b 1. “Vpon Good Friday last there was about twentie persons.”] This meeting, if not a witches’ Sabbath, was a close approximation to one.  On the subject of the Sabbath, or periodical meeting of witches, De Lancre is the leading authority.  He who is curious cannot do better than consult this great hierophant, (his work is entitled Tableau de l’Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons.  Paris, 1613, 4to.) whose knowledge and experience well qualified him to have been constituted the Itinerant Master of Ceremonies, an officer who, he assures us, was never wanting on such occasions.  In that singular book, The History of Monsieur Oufle, p. 288,