obert Throckmorton, Esquire, lived at Warbois, in
Huntingdonshire. He had five daughters, the eldest of whom, Miss Joan, was
fifteen, while the rest came down in steps, two years or so between each,
in the ordinary manner. On the tenth of November, Mistress Jane, being
then near ten years of age, was suddenly seized with a kind of fit. She
"screeked" loud and often, lay as if in a trance for half an hour or more,
shook one leg or one arm and no other, "as if the Palsie had been in it,"
made her body so stiff and rigid that no man could bend her, and went
through the usual forms of a young girl's hysteria. A neighbour, one Alice
Samuel, who lived next door to the Throckmortons, went in to see the
afflicted child; for all the neighbours were flocking in to see her as a
kind of curiosity; and, stepping up into the chimney-side, sat hard down
by her, she being held in another woman's arms by the fire. Suddenly the
child cried out, "Did you ever see one more like a Witch than she is?"
pointing to Mother Samuel; "take off her black-thrumb'd cap, for I cannot
abide to look at her."

Nothing was thought of her words at the time, the mother merely chiding
her for her lightness of speech; but "the old woman hearing her, sat
still, without saying a word, yet looked very dismally, as those that saw
her remembered very well." And as well she might, poor old soul; for she
must have known that Mrs. Jane's light speech would in all probability be
heavy enough to bring her down to the grave.

Doctoring did the child no good. Dr. Barrow of Cambridge, the most noted
man of the district, gave the distemper no satisfactory name, and his
remedies were powerless to remove it; Mr. Butler, another skilful man, was
equally at fault; and when, about a month after Mrs. Jane had been
attacked, two other daughters were driven to the like extremity, and
"cry'd out upon Mother Samuel, 'Take her away, look where she standeth
there before us in a black thrumb'd Cap (which she commonly wore, though
not then); it's she that hath bewitched us, and she will kill us if you
don't take her away,'" the parents were moved to believe the whole thing
supernatural, and that Mother Samuel had indeed bewitched them as they
said. About a month after the affliction of these two, a younger child,
not quite nine years old, was taken like the rest; and soon after Mrs.
Joan, of fifteen, went the same way--only more severely handled than them
all. Mrs. Joan had a specialty