dred's deliverance; and she kept her countenance, and did not
betray herself. But a short time after, the "bruit of her divinity and
miraculous trances" spreading far and wide, Mr. Thomas Wotton, "a man of
great Worship and Wisdom, and for deciding and ordering of Matters, of
rare and singular Dexterity," got to the true understanding of the case,
when "the Fraud was found, and the cozenage confessed, and she received
condign Punishment." After her trial, and when she knew the worst, she
"showed her Feats, Illusions, and Trances, with the Residue of all her
miraculous Works in the Presence of divers Gentlemen of great Worship and
Credit at Boston-Malherb, in the House of the said Mr. Wotton." "Now
compare this wench with the witch of Endor, and you shall see that both
the cozenages may be done by one art," says Reginald Scot.

MISCELLANEOUS.

It was in this same year that Agnes Brigs and Rachel Pindar had to do
penance at St. Paul's Cross, in London,[99] having been convicted of cheat
and imposture in pretending to vomit pins and straws and old "clouts," and
other such impossibilities; and for counterfeiting possession by the
Devil, which the philosophers of the time thought was no subject to trifle
with, or affect in any manner whatsoever. And then, a few years later, a
young Dutchman living at Maidstone was dispossessed of ten devils, and the
mayor of the town got to subscribe his name to the account, which turned
out afterwards to be nothing but fraud and lies. In 1579[100] four
witches were hung up together, the chief accusation against one of them,
Mother Still, being, "that she did kill one Saddocke with a touch on the
shoulder, for not keeping promise with her for an old cloak, to make her a
safeguard; and that she was hanged for her labour:" and another, Ellein
Smith, was executed at Maldon,[101] on the testimony of her little son of
eight, who accused her of having three spirits--Great Dick in a wicker
bottle, Little Dick in a leathern bottle, and Willet kept in a woolpack.
Upon which the house was commanded to be searched, and "the bottles and
packe were found, but the spirites were banished awaie."

At the Rochester assizes, held 1591, Margaret Simons,[102] the wife of
John Simons, of Brenchley in Kent, was arraigned for witchcraft, on the
charge of bewitching the son of John Ferrall the vicar. An ill-conditioned
young cub was he, and prentice to Robert Scotchford, clothier; and the
father himself seems to