r the
sins of Nottingham, and God had made even the devil a preacher to deter
them from them; whereat Will acted by signs all the sins of Nottingham,
and Mr. Darrel explained them to the people as he went on. With such a
master as this, it was no difficult matter for the pupil to succeed. Two
sermons were preached on his behalf. During Mr. Aldred's he lay still,
excepting a little struggle now and then: this was to show that Mr. Aldred
was not powerful as a Man of God. But when Mr. Darrel began, he roused
himself up, and on his describing the fourteen signs of Possession one
after the other, acted them all to the life as he told them off. "He tore;
he foamed; he wallowed; his Face was drawn awry; his Eyes would stare and
his Tongue hang out; he had a Swelling would seem to run from his Forehead
down by his Ear and Throat, and through his Belly and Thighs, to the Calf
of his Legs; he would speak with his Mouth scarce moving; and when they
looked his Tongue would seem drawn down his Throat; he would try to cast
himself into the Fire and Water; he would seem heavy that they could not
lift him, and his Joints stiff that they could not bend them." And when
Mr. Darrel further exhorted them all to stand firm, and they would see the
glory of God in the dispossession, he cried and rended and laid as if
dead, just in the order which the preacher desired. Then he rose up cured
and exorcised; but Mr. Darrel told him he might be possessed again, and he
must be very careful and watchful. Of course he was possessed again. He
had been too great a gainer by the first trial not to venture on a second.
If he had been bought off his apprenticeship, had large presents of
clothes, and kept in idleness at his father-in-law's, for a first trial,
what might not fall from the skies on this second occasion? So Will began
to talk wildly of a black dog that haunted him, offering him gold and
ginger, and of the devil who came with six more shapes to torment
him--namely, as a cock, a crane, a snake, an angel, a toad, a newt, a set
of viols, and dancers, and that he stood before him "with a foure-forked
cappe on his heade;" sometimes, too, making noises and motions like whelps
or "kitlings." Fourteen persons were thrown into prison, accused of
bewitching Master Will, of whom the most celebrated was Millicent Horslie,
whom no human skill could have saved had not the impostor betrayed himself
in time. For Will Somers had a revelation concerning her, which