d sinfull & therefore it cannot afford any evidence.

"2. That ye unusuall excresencies found upon their bodies ought not to
be allowed as evidence against them without ye approbation of some able
physitians.

"3. Respecting ye evidence of ye afflicted maid we find some things
testifyed carrying a suspition of her counterfeiting; Others that
plainly intimate her trouble from ye mother which improved by craft may
produce ye most of those strange & unusuall effects affirmed of her; &
of those things that by some may be thought to be diabolical or effects
of witchcraft. We apprehend her applying of them to these persons merely
from ye appearance of their spectres to her to be very uncertain and
failable from ye easy deception of her senses & subtile devices of ye
devill, wherefore cannot think her a sufficient witnesse; yet we think
that her affliction being something strange it well deserves a farther
inquiry.

"4. As to ye other strange accidents as ye dying of cattle &c., we
apprehend ye applying of them to these women as matters of witchcraft
to be upon very slender & uncertain grounds.

"Hartford JOSEPH ELIOT
"Octobr 1692 TIMOTHY WOODBRIDGE."

"The rest of ye ministers gave their approbation to ye sum of what
is ... above written tho this could not be drawen up before their
departure."

(Above in handwriting of Rev. Timothy Woodbridge.)
"Filed: Reasons of Repreuing Mercy Desbrough.

"To the Honrd Gen: Assembly of Connecticut Colony sitting in Hartford.
Reasons of repreuing Mercy Disbrough from being put to death until this
Court had cognizance of her case.

"First, because wee that repreued her had power by the law so to do.
Secondly, because we had and haue sattisfying reasons that the sentence
of death passed against her ought not to be executed which reasons we
give to this Court to be judge of

"1st. The jury that brought her in guilty (which uerdict was the ground
of her condemnation) was not the same jury who were first charged with
this prisoners deliuerance and who had it in charg many weeks. Mr.
Knowles was on the jury first sworn to try this woman and he was at or
about York when the Court sate the second time and when the uerdict was
given, the jury was altered and another man sworn.

"It is so inuiolable a practice in law that the indiudual jurors and
jury that is charged with the deliuerance of a prisoner in a capital
case and on whom the prisoner puts himself or herself to be tryed must
try