However this may be, there must have been at hand for working up the materials into a plausible form, some drill sergeant of evidence behind the curtain, who had his own interest to serve or revenge to gratify.  The two particulars in the narrative that one feels least disposed to question, are, that James Device stole a wether from John Robinson of Barley, to provide a family dinner on Good Friday, and that when the meat was roasted John Bulcock performed the humble, but very necessary, duty of turning the spit.

R 3 a. “My Lord Gerrard.”] Thomas Gerard, son and heir of Sir Gilbert Gerard, Master of the Robes 23d Elizabeth, was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Gerard of Gerard’s Bromley, in Staffordshire, 1603.  He died 1618.

S a. “Kniues, Elsons, and Sickles.” In the Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 138, to Elsyn (elsyng^k) Sibula, Mr. Way appends this note:  “This word occurs in the Gloss on Gautier de Bibelesworth, Arund.  MS. 220, where a buckled girdle is described:—­

    “Een isy doyt le hardiloun ([thorn character]e tunnge)
    Passer par tru de subiloun (a bore of an alsene.)

“An elsyne,—­acus, subula.  Cath.  Ang.  Sibula, an elsyn, an alle or a bodkyn.  ORTUS.  In the inventory of the goods of a merchant at Newcastle, A.D. 1571, occur, ‘vj. doss’ elsen heftes, 12_d_; 1 clowte and 1/2 a C elsen blades, viij_s_. viij_d_; xiij. clowtes of talier, needles, &c.’  Wills and Inventories published by the Surtees Society, l. 361.  The term is derived from the French alene; elson for cordwayners, alesne.  Palsg.  In Yorkshire and some other parts of England an awl is still called an elsen.”

S b. “Which the said Alizon confessing.”] In the case of this paralytic pedlar, John Law, his mishap could scarcely be called such, as it would for the remainder of his life, be an all-sufficient stock-in-trade for him, and popular wonder and sympathy, without the judge’s interposition, would provide for his relief and maintenance.  The near apparent connection and correspondence of the damnum minatum and damnum secutum, in this instance, imposed upon this unfortunate woman, as it had done upon many others, and gave to her confession an earnestness which would appear to the unenlightened spectator to spring only from reality and truth.

S 3 b. “Margaret Pearson.”] This Padiham witch fared better than her neighbours, being sentenced only to the pillory.  Nothing affords a stronger proof of the vindictive pertinacity with which these prosecutions were carried on than the fact of this old and helpless creature being put on her trial three several times upon such evidence as follows.  Chattox, like many other persons in her situation, was disposed to have as many companions in punishment, crime or no crime, as she could compass, and denounced her accordingly:  “The said Pearson’s wife is as ill as shee.”