hild to recall or imagine angry words spoken to her shortly before the
death of her offspring. It was quite as natural for a sick child to be
alarmed at the sight of a visitor and go into spasms. There was no fixed
rule, however, governing the relation of the afflicted children and the
possible witches. When William Wade was named, Elizabeth Mallory would
fly into fits.[34] When Jane Brooks entered the room, a bewitched youth
of Chard would become hysterical.[35] It was the opposite way with a
victim in Exeter,[36] who remained well only so long as the witch who
caused the trouble stayed with him.[37]

Closely related to these types of evidence was what has been denominated
spectral evidence, a form of evidence recurrent throughout the history
of English witchcraft. In the time of the Protectorate we have at least
three cases of the kind. The accused woman appeared to the afflicted
individual now in her own form, again in other shapes, as a cat, as a
bee, or as a dog.[38] The identification of a particular face in the
head of a bee must have been a matter of some difficulty, but there is
no ground for supposing that any objection was made to this evidence in
court. At all events, the testimony went down on the official records in
Yorkshire. In Somerset the Jane Brooks case,[39] already referred to,
called forth spectral evidence in a form that must really have been very
convincing. When the bewitched boy cried out that he saw the witch on
the wall, his cousin struck at the place, upon which the boy cried out,
"O Father, Coz Gibson hath cut Jane Brooks's hand, and 'tis bloody."
Now, according to the story, the constable proceeded to the woman's
house and found her hand cut.

As to the social status of the people involved in the Protectorate
trials there is little to say, other than has been said of many earlier
cases. By far the larger number of those accused, as we have already
pointed out, were charmers and enchanters, people who made a penny here
and twopence there, but who had at best a precarious existence. Some of
them, no doubt, traded on the fear they inspired in their communities
and begged now a loaf of bread and now a pot of beer. They were the same
people who, when begging and enchanting failed, resorted to
stealing.[40] In one of the Yorkshire depositions we have perhaps a hint
of another class from which the witches were recruited. Katherine Earle
struck a Mr. Frank between the shoulders and said, "You are