m the wording of the narrative, would seem
to have conducted the examination preliminary to the assizes as a
justice of the peace would. A justice of the peace would doubtless,
however, have belonged to some Huntingdonshire county family. Now, the
writer has searched the various records and histories of
Huntingdonshire--unfortunately they are but too few--and among the
several hundred Huntingdonshire names he has found no Wilmots (and, for
that matter, no Hickes either). This would seem to make the story more
improbable.

In an earlier number of _Notes and Queries_ (1st series, V, 514), James
Crossley, whose authority as to matters relating to witchcraft is of the
highest, gives cogent reasons why the Huntingdonshire narrative could
not be true. He recalls the fact that Hutchinson, who made a
chronological table of cases, published his work in 1718. Now Hutchinson
had the help of two chief-justices, Parker and King, and of Chief-Baron
Bury in collecting his cases; and yet he says that the last execution
for the crime in England was in 1682. Crossley makes the further strong
point that the case of Jane Wenham in 1712 attracted wide attention and
was the occasion of numerous pamphlets. "It is scarcely possible," he
continues, "that in four years after two persons, one only nine years
old, ... should have been tried and executed for witchcraft without
public attention being called to the circumstance." He adds that
neither the _Historical Register_ for 1716 nor the files of two London
newspapers for that year, though they enumerate other convictions on the
circuit, record the supposed cases.

It will be seen that exactly the same arguments apply to the Northampton
trials of 1705. Hutchinson had been at extraordinary pains to find out
not only about Jane Wenham, but about the Moordike case of 1702. It is
inconceivable that he should have quite overlooked the execution of two
women at Northampton.

We have observed that the Northampton, Huntingdon, and Worcester
pamphlets have curious resemblances in wording to one another
(resemblances that point to a common authorship), that the Worcester
narrative can be proved to be fictitious, and that the Huntingdon
narrative almost certainly belongs in the same category. We have shown,
further, that the Northampton and Huntingdon stories present features of
witchcraft characteristic of the Chelmsford and Bury cases of 1645, from
the first of which the material of the Worcester pamp