Sixteen persons reported dead of this common epidemic, besides a countless number with pains and “starkness in their limbs,” and “a great warch in their bones!” No wonder that Doctors Bromley and Potts thought active treatment necessary, with a decided preference for hemp, as the leading specific.

T 3 b. “With great warch in his bones.”] Warch is a word well known and still used in this sense, i.e., pain, in Lancashire.

T 4 b 1. “The said Peter was now satisfied that the said Isabel Robey was no Witch, by sending to one Halseworths, which they call a wiseman.”] I honour the memory of this Halsworth, or Houldsworth, as I suppose it should be spelled, for he was indeed a wise man in days when wisdom was an extremely scarce commodity.

T 4 b 2. “To abide vpon it.”] i.e., my abiding opinion is.

X a. “Elizabeth Astley, John Ramsden, Alice Gray, Isabel Sidegraues, Lawrence Hay.”] The specific charges against these persons, with the exception of Alice Gray, do not appear, nor is it said where their places of residence were.  Alice Gray was reputed to have been at the meeting of witches at Malkin’s Tower, and to her the judge refers, perhaps, in particular, when he says, “Without question, there are amongst you that are as deepe in this action as any of them that are condemned to die for their offences.”

X b. “The Execution of the Witches.”] We could have dispensed with many of the flowers of rhetoric with which the pages of this discovery are strewed, if Master Potts would have favoured us with a plain, unvarnished account of what occurred at this execution.  It is here, in the most interesting point of all, that his narrative, in other respects so full and abundant, stops short, and seems curtailed of its just proportions.  The “learned and worthy preacher,” to whom the prisoners were commended by the judge, was probably Mr. William Leigh, of Standish, before mentioned.  Amongst his papers or correspondence, if they should happen to have been preserved, some account may eventually be found of the sad closing scene of these melancholy victims of superstition.

X 2 a. “Neither can I paint in extraordinarie tearmes.”] The worthy clerk is too modest.  He is a great painter, the Tintoretto of witchcraft.

Y a 1. “Hauing cut off Thomas Lister, Esquire, father to this gentleman now liuing.”] Thomas Lister, of Westby, ancestor of the Listers, Lords Ribblesdale, married Jane, daughter of John Greenacres, Esquire, of Worston, county of Lancaster, and was buried at Gisburn, February 8th, 1607.  His son, Thomas Lister, referred to as the “gentleman now living,” married Jane, daughter of Thomas Heber, Esq., of Marton, after mentioned, and was buried at Gisburn, July 10th, 1619.