[Footnote 84:  Wonder; amazement.]

[Footnote 85:  Until.  That is, many previous trials had been made of other persons suspected, or of those who were near neighbours, perhaps living at enmity with the deceased, who had voluntarily offered themselves to this solemn ordeal, or had been called upon thus publicly to attest their innocence of his blood.]

[Footnote 86:  Holding the lyke-wake.]

[Footnote 87:  Can be proved, by testimony or probation.]

[Footnote 88:  The large collar which goes about a draught-horse’s neck.]

Z a. “Master Leonard Lister.”] This Leonard Lister was the brother of Master Thomas Lister, for whose murder Jennet Preston was indicted; and married Ann, daughter of ——­ Loftus, of Coverham Abbey, county of York.

Z 2 a. “His Lordship commanded the Iurie to obserue the particular circumstances.”] The judge in this case was Altham, who seems even to have been more superstitious, bigotted, and narrow-minded than his brother in commission, Bromley.  Fenner, who tried the witches of Warbois, and Archer, before whom the trial of Julian Cox took place, are the only judges I can meet with, quite on a level with this learned baron in grovelling absurdity, upon whom “Jennet Preston would lay heavy at the time of his death,” whether she had so lain upon Mr. Thomas Lister or not, if bigotry, habit, and custom did not render him seared and callous to conscience and pity.

Z 3 b 1. “Take example by this Gentlemen to prosecute these hellish Furies to their end.”] It is marvellous that Potts does not, like Delrio, recommend the rack to be applied to witches “in moderation, and according to the regulations of Pope Pius the Third, and so as not to cripple the criminal for life.”  Not that this learned Jesuit is much averse to simple dislocations occasioned by the rack.  These, he thinks, cannot be avoided in the press of business.  He is rather opposed, though in this he speaks doubtfully and with submission to authority, to those tortures which fracture the bones or lacerate the tendons.  Verily, the Catholic and the Protestant author might have shaken hands; they were, beyond dispute, poene Gemelli.

Z 3 b 2. “Posterities.”] Master Potts, of the particulars of whose life nothing is known, made, as far as can be discovered, no further attempt to acquire fame in the character of an author.  No subject so interesting probably again occurred, as that which had diversified his legal pursuits “in his lodgings in Chancery-lane,” from the pleasing recollections associated with his Summer Circuit of 1612.  He was not, however, the only person of the name of Pott, or Potts, who distinguished himself in the field of Witchcraft.  The author of the following tract, in my possession, might have garnished it with various flowers from the work now reprinted, if he had been aware of such a repository:  “Pott