tells us with great gravity: 

Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a lust to do murder. Sprenger in Mal.  Malefic. reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil.  See the story of the three witches in Rem.  Daemonola lib. cap. 3, about the end of the chapter.  And M. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich Quaest. 8.  And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia, Epod.  Horat. lib. ode 5, and Lucan, lib. 6, whose admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:—­

     Nec cessant a caede manus, si sanguine vivo
     Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto. 
     Nec refugit caedes, vivum si sacra cruorem
     Extaque funereae poscunt trepidantia mensae. 
     Vulnere si ventris, non qua natura vocabat,
     Extrahitur partus calidus ponendus in aris;
     Et quoties saevis opus est, et fortibus umbris
     Ipsa facit maneis.  Hominum mors omnis in usu est.

     Ben Johnson’s Works, by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 130.

L 2 a 2. “They said they would annoint themselues.”] Ben Jonson informs us: 

When they are to be transported from place to place, they use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride on.  Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, Remig.  Daemonolatriae lib. 1. cap. 14. Delrio, Disquis.  Mag. l. 2. quaest. 16. Bodin Daemonoman. lib. 2 c. 14. Barthol. de Spina. quaest. de Strigib.  Phillippo Ludwigus Elich. quaest. 10. Paracelsus in magn. et occul.  Philosophia, teacheth the confection. Unguentum ex carne recens natorum infantium, in pulmenti, forma coctum, et cum herbis somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta, &c.  And Giov.  Bapti.  Porta, lib. 2. Mag.  Natur. cap. 16.—­Ben Jonson’s Works by Gifford, vol. vii. p. 119.

L 3 a. “Did carrie her into the loft.”] There is something in this strange tissue of incoherencies, for knavery has little variety, which forcibly reminds us of the inventions of Elizabeth Canning, who ought to have lived in the days when witchcraft was part of the popular creed.  What an admirable witch poor old Mary Squires would have made, and how brilliantly would her persecutor have shone in the days of the Baxters and Glanvilles, who acquitted herself so creditably in those of the Fieldings and the Hills.

L 4 b 1. “Robert Hovlden, Esquire.”] This individual would be of the ancient family of Holden, of Holden, the last male heir of which died without issue, 1792. (See Whitaker’s Whalley, 418.)