“So choosing solitarie to abide
    Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deedes
    And hellish arts from people she might hide,
    And hurt far off unknown whomever she envide.”]

It is rather strange that Dr. Whitaker, to whom local superstitions were always matters of the strongest interest, and welcome as manna to the sojourners in the wilderness,[36] should have been ignorant, not merely of Master Potts’s discovery, but even of the fact of this trial of the witches in 1612.  It is equally singular that Sir Walter Scott should have forgotten, when writing his letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, that he had republished this tract, somewhat inaccurately, but with rather a long introduction and notes, in the third volume of his edition of the Somers Tracts, which appeared in 1810.  He mentions Potts’s Discoverie, in the amusing but very inaccurate and imperfect historical sketch referred to,[37] as a curious and rare book, which he had then for the first time obtained a sight of.  What could have been his meaning in referring his readers, for an account of Mother Demdike and a description of Malking Tower, to “Mr. Roby’s Antiquities of Lancaster,” that apocryphal historian having given no such account or description, and having published no such work, it is rather difficult to conjecture.

[Footnote 36:  In a scarce little book, “The Triumph of Sovereign Grace, or a Brand plucked out of the Fire, by David Crosly, Minister, Manchester,” 1743, 12mo., which I owe to the kindness of the very able historian of Cheshire, George Ormerod, Esq., Dr. Whitaker, to whom the volume formerly belonged, has been at the pains of chronicling the superstitions connected with a family, ranking amongst the more opulent yeomen of Cliviger, of the name of Briercliffe, on the execution of one of whom for murder the tract was published.  The Briercliffe’s, from the curious anecdotes which the Doctor gives with great unction, appear to have been one of those gloomy and fated races, dogged by some unassuageable Nemesis, in which crime and horror are transmitted from generation to generation with as much certainty as the family features and name.]

[Footnote 37:  We yet want a full, elaborate, and satisfactory history of witchcraft.  Hutchinson’s is the only account we have which enters at all at length into the detail of the various cases; but his materials were generally collected from common sources, and he confines himself principally to English cases.  The European history of witchcraft embraces so wide a field, and requires for its just completion a research so various, that there is little probability, I fear, of this desideratum being speedily supplied.]