ause Joan refused her some curds. So Ales Manfielde was
condemned and executed; but not before she made her confession. She said
that Margaret Greuell (Greville), twelve years since, gave her four
imps--Robin, Jack, William, and Puppet or Mamet: they were like black
cats, two shes and two hes, and were put into a box with some wool, and
placed on a shelf by her bed. But Margaret denied it all, even when Ales
was confronted with her; denied too that queer tale of how she had
bewitched John Carter's two brewings, so that half a seame had to go to
the swill tub, all because he would not give her Godesgood. The brewing
was only unbewitched when John's son, a tall lusty man of thirty-six,
managed to stick his arrow in the brewing-vat. He had shot twice before,
but missed, though he was a good shot and stood close to the vat--which
was evident sorcery, somehow. Margaret denied also that she had bewitched
Nicholas Strickland's wife so that she could make no butter, because
Nicholas, who was a butcher, refused her a neck of mutton. But in spite of
all her denials, she, the hale woman of fifty-four, was condemned to
remain in prison, heaven knows for how long; escaping the gallows by a
greater miracle than any recorded of herself.

Elizabeth Ewstace, a year younger than Margaret Greville, was told that
she had bewitched Robert Sanneuer, drawing his mouth all awry so that it
could be got into its place again only with a sharp blow; and that she
had killed his brother Crosse, three years ago, and bewitched his wife
when with child and quite lusty and well, so that she had a most strange
sickness, and the child died soon after its birth; that she made his cows
give blood instead of milk; and caused his hogs "to skip and leap about
the yarde in a straunge sorte," because of the small bickerings to which
S. Osees seemed specially subject. And she hurt all Felice Okey's geese,
and in particular her favourite goose, because she, Felice, had turned
hers out of her yard; all of which Elizabeth Eustace denied to the face of
Alice Mansfield and her other accusers. And as, on being searched, she was
found to have no "bigges" or witch marks, she was mercifully kept in
prison--for the time. And Annis Glascocke, wife of John the sawyer, got
into the trouble that had its end only in the hangman's cord, because
Mychel the shoemaker charged her with being a "naughtie woman," and
because Ursley Kemp, informed by Tiffin, accused her of sundry things