[Footnote 60:  Webster gives the sequel of this curious case of imposture:—­“Four of them, to wit Margaret Johnson, Francis Dicconson, Mary Spenser, and Hargraves Wife, were sent for up to London, and were viewed and examined by his Majesties Physicians and Chirurgeons, and after by his Majesty and the Council, and no cause of guilt appearing but great presumptions of the boys being suborned to accuse them falsely.  Therefore it was resolved to separate the boy from his Father, they having both followed the women up to London, they were both taken and put into several prisons asunder.  Whereupon shortly after the Boy confessed that he was taught and suborned to devise, and feign those things against them, and had persevered in that wickedness by the counsel of his Father, and some others, whom envy, revenge and hope of gain had prompted on to that devillish design and villany; and he also confessed, that upon that day when he said that they met at the aforesaid house or barn, he was that very day a mile off, getting Plums in his Neighbours Orchard.  And that this is a most certain truth, there are many persons yet living, of sufficient reputation and integrity, that can avouch and testifie the same; and besides, what I write is the most of it true, upon my own knowledge, and the whole I have had from his own mouth.”—­Displaying of Witchcraft, p. 277.]

In Dr. Whitaker’s astonishment that Margaret Johnson should make the confession she appears to have done, in a clear case of imposture, few of his readers will be disposed to participate, who are at all conversant with the trials of reputed witches in this country.  Confessions were so common on those occasions, that there is, I believe, not a single instance of any great number of persons being convicted of witchcraft at one time, some of whom did not make a confession of guilt.  Nor is there anything extraordinary in that circumstance, when it is remembered that many of them sincerely believed in the existence of the powers attributed to them; and others, aged and of weak understanding, were, in a measure, coerced by the strong persuasion of their guilt, which all around them manifested, into an acquiescence in the truth of the accusation.  In many cases the confessions were made in the hope, and no doubt with the promise, seldom performed, that a respite from punishment would be eventually granted.  In other instances, there is as little doubt, that they were the final results of irritation, agony, and despair.[61] The confessions are generally composed of “such stuff as dreams are made of,” and what they report to have occurred, might either proceed, when there was no intention to fabricate, from intertwining the fantastic threads which sometimes stream upon the waking senses from the land of shadows, or be caused by those ocular hallucinations of which medical science has supplied full and satisfactory solution.  There is no argument which so long maintained its ground in support of witchcraft as that which was founded on the confessions referred to.  It was the last plank clung to by many a witch-believing lawyer and divine.  And yet there is none which will less bear critical scrutiny and examination, or the fallacy of which can more easily be shown, if any particular reported confession is taken as a test and subjected to a searching analysis and inquiry.