uch as it is) requires this liberty. _Mowld_ signifies 'earth'
or 'dust.']

[Footnote 74: Stubble.]

[Footnote 75: Parched; shrivelled.]

[Footnote 76: Until.]

[Footnote 77: Harm; injury.]

B 4 _b_ 1. "_And sayd that she should haue gould, siluer, and worldly
wealth at her will._"] These familiars, to use Warburton's expression,
always promised with the lavishness of a young courtier, and performed
with the indifference of an old one. Nothing seems to puzzle Dr. Dee
more, in the long and confidential intercourse he carried on so many
years with his spirits, than to account for the great scarcity of
specie they seemed to be afflicted with, and the unsatisfactory and
unfurnished state of their exchequer. Bills, to be sure, they gave at
long dates; but these constantly required renewing, and were never
honoured at last. Any application for present relief, in good current
coin of the realm, was invariably followed by what Meric Casaubon very
significantly calls "sermonlike stuff." The learned professor in
witchery, John Stearne, seems to fix six shillings as the maximum of
money payment at one time which in all his experience he had detected
between witches and their familiars. He was examining Joan Ruccalver,
of Powstead, in Suffolk, who had been promised by her spirit that she
should never want meat, drink, clothes, or money. "Then I asked her
whether they brought her any money or no; and she said sometimes four
shillings at a time, and sometimes six shillings at a time; but that
is but seldom, _for I never knew any that had any money before_,
except of Clarke's wife, of Manningtree, who confessed the same, and
showed some, which, she said, her impe brought her, which was proper
money." Confirmation, page 27. Judging from the anxiety which this
worthy displays to be "satisfied and paid with reason" for his
itinerant labours, such a scanty and penurious supply would soon have
disgusted him, if he had been witch, instead of witch-finder.

B 4 _b_ 2. "_She had bewitched to death Richard Ashton, sonne of
Richard Ashton, of Downeham, Esquire._"] Richard Assheton, (as the
name is more properly spelled,) thus done to death by witchcraft, was
the son of Richard Assheton, of Downham, an old manor house, the scite
of which is now supplied by a modern structure, which Dr. Whitaker
thinks, in point of situation, has no equal in the parish of Whalley.
Richard, the son, married Isabel, daughter and heiress of Mr. Hancock,
of P