Sir John Crook, have her to him in his chambers in the Temple. The
maid went with her mother and some neighbours, and in an hour's time came
Mother Jackson, disguised like a country market woman, with a muffler
hiding her face, an old hat, and a short cloak bespattered with mire. As
soon as she entered the maid fell backward on the floor; "her Eyes drawn
into her Head, her Tongue toward her Throat, her Mouth drawn up to her
Ear, her Bodie became stiff and senseless, Her Lips being shut closs a
plain and audible Voice came out from her Nostrils saying 'Hang her, hang
her.'" The Recorder, willing to try her, called for a candle at which to
light a sheet of paper, then held the burning paper to her hand till a
blister came, rising and breaking and the water running down on the floor.
But still the maid lay as if dead, with the Voice coming out of her
Nostrils, saying, "Hang her, hang her." Not satisfied with the trial of
burning, the Recorder got a long pin, which he made hot and thrust up her
nostrils to see if she would "neese," wink, bend her brows, or stir her
head; but still she lay as before, stiff, senseless, and as one dead. The
minister, one Lewis Hughes, who tells this story which Sinclair quotes,
told the Recorder that he had often prayed with the maid, and that when
he concluded with the Lord's Prayer and came to "but deliver us from all
evil," the maid would be tost and shaken as a mastiff might shake a cur.
Then the Recorder bade the witch say the Lord's Prayer, but she could not
say it: she kept on all right until the clause "deliver us from evil," and
this she skipped over; neither would she confess that Jesus Christ was our
Lord in the Articles of the Christian Faith. When Mary was in her fits, if
the witch but so much as laid her hand upon her she was tost and shaken
fearfully. This the Recorder wished to verify: so he bade first one, then
another, of the neighbours come forward and touch her; which they did; but
she never stirred till Mother Jackson touched her, when she was shaken as
before. Then the Recorder said, "Lord, have mercy upon the woman!" for he
was now fully convinced; and sent poor old Mother Jackson off to Newgate.
As soon as she was sent off the maid came to herself, the voice ceased out
of her nostrils, and she went home with her mother. Three weeks or more
after the witch was condemned, the maid had the same fits, strange and
fearful to behold, and the Recorder told the minister, and all th