shock the nerves of these witch
historiographers so much as the utter want of decorum and propriety
exhibited by these unhappy creatures in giving vent to these indignant
outbreaks, which a sense of the wicked injustice of their fate, and
seeing their own offspring brought up in evidence against them,
through the most detestable acts, and by the basest subornation, would
naturally extort from minds even of iron mould. If ever Lear's or
Timon's power of malediction could be justifiably called into
exercise, it would be against such a tribunal and such witnesses as
they had generally to encounter.

F 4 _a_. "_That at the third time her Spirit._"] Something seems to be
wanting here, as she does not state what occurred at the two previous
interviews. The learned judge may have exercised a sound discretion in
this omission, as the particulars might be of a nature unfit for
publication. The present tract is, undoubtedly, remarkably free from
those disgusting details of which similar reports are generally full
to overflowing.

F 4 _b_. "_The said Iennet Deuice, being a yong Maide, about the age
of nine yeares._"] This child must have been admirably trained, (some
Master Thomson might have been near at hand to instruct her,) or must
have had great natural capacity for deception. She made an excellent
witness on this occasion. What became of her after the wholesale
extinction of her family, to which she was so mainly instrumental, is
not now known. In all likelihood she dragged on a miserable existence,
a forlorn outcast, pointed at by the hand of scorn, or avoided with
looks of horror in the wilds of Pendle. As if some retributive
punishment awaited her, she is reported to have been the Jennet Davies
who was condemned in 1633, on the evidence of Edmund Robinson the
younger, with Mother Dickenson and others, but not executed. Her
confession, if she made one at the second trial, might not have been
unsimilar to that of Alexander Sussums, of Melford in Suffolk, who,
Hearne tells us, confessed "that he had things which did draw those
marks I found upon him, but said he could not help it, for that all
his kinred were naught. Then I asked him how it was possible they
could suck without his consent. He said he did consent to that. Then I
asked him again why he should do it when as God was so merciful
towards him, as I then told him of, being a man whom I had been
formerly acquainted withal, as having lived in town. He answered
agai