named, &c.[59] And if they would torment a man, they bid theire spirit goe and tormt. him in any particular place.  And yt Good-Friday is one constant day for a yearely generall meetinge of witches.  And yt on Good-Friday last, they had a meetinge neare Pendle water syde.  Shee alsoe saith, that men witches usually have women spirits, and women witches men spirits.  And theire devill or spirit gives them notice of theire meetinge, and tells them the place where it must bee.  And saith, if they desyre to be in any place upon a sodaine, theire devill or spirit will upon a rodde, dogge, or any thinge els, presently convey them thither:  yea, into any roome of a man’s house.  But shee saith it is not the substance of theire bodies, but theire spirit assumeth such form and shape as goe into such roomes.  Shee alsoe saith, yt ye devill (after he begins to sucke) will make a pappe or dugge in a short tyme, and the matter which hee sucks is blood.  And saith yt theire devills can cause foule weather and storms, and soe did at theire meetings.  Shee alsoe saith yt when her devill did come to sucke her pappe, hee usually came to her in ye liknes of a cat, sometymes of one colour and sometymes of an other.  And yt since this trouble befell her, her spirit hath left her, and shee never sawe him since.”

[Footnote 59:  The omission here is thus supplied in Baines’s Transcript; but the actual names are scarcely to be recognised, from the clerical errors of the copy:—­

“One Pickerne and his wife both of Wyndwall,
Rawson of Clore and his wife
Duffice wife of Clore by the water side
Cartmell the wife of Clore
And Jane of the hedgend in Maresden.”]

On the evidence contained in these examinations several persons were committed for trial at Lancaster, and seventeen, on being tried at the ensuing assizes, were found guilty by the jury.  The judge before whom the trial took place was, however, more sagacious and enlightened than his predecessors, Bromley and Altham.  He respited the execution of the prisoners; and on the case being reported to the king in council, the Bishop of Chester, Dr. Bridgman, was required to investigate the circumstances.  The inquiry was instituted at Chester, and four of the convicted witches, namely, Margaret Johnson, Frances Dickonson, Mary Spencer, and the wife of one of the Hargreaves’s, were sent to London, and examined, first by the king’s physicians and surgeons, and afterwards by Charles the first in person.

“A stranger scene” to quote Dr. Whitaker’s concluding paragraph “can scarcely be conceived; and it is not easy to imagine whether the untaught manners, rude dialect, and uncouth appearance of these poor foresters, would more astonish the king; or his dignity of person and manners, together with the splendid scene with which they were surrounded, would overwhelm them.  The end, however, of the business was, that strong presumptions appeared of the boy having been suborned to accuse them falsely, and they were accordingly dismissed.  The boy afterwards confessed that he was suborned."[60]