es; which they
did, and both recovered of their pains marvellously on the instant.
"Howbeit they were no sooner out of sight, but they fell againe into their
old traunces, and were more violently tormented than before; for when
Mischiefe is once a foote, she grows in short time so headstrong, that she
is hardly curbed." Mistress Belcher and Master Avery returning home from
Northampton in a coach, after their godly exercise of drawing blood from
these two wretched women, saw suddenly a man and woman riding both upon a
black horse. At which Master Avery cried out that either they or their
horses should presently miscarry; and he had no sooner spoken than both
their horses fell down dead. Wherefore, for all these crimes, as well as
for bewitching a young child to death, Agnes Browne and her daughter Joan
were adjudged guilty, and hanged on that 22nd of July, protesting their
innocence to the last. And then it came out that about a fortnight before
her apprehension Agnes Browne, Katherine Gardiner, and Joan Lucas, "all
birds of a winge," had been seen riding on a sow's back to a place called
Ravenstrop, to see one Mother Rhoades, an old witch that dwelt there. But
before they got there old Mother Rhoades had died, "and in her last cast
cried out that there were three of her old friends comming to see her, but
they came too late. Howbeit she would meet with them in another place
within a month after. And thus much concerning Agnes Browne and her
daughter Joane Vaughan," says the old black-letter book contemptuously.

The son of witches, Arthur Bill could not control his appointed fate.
Suspected by the authorities, but without proof, he and his father and
mother were swum for trial, tied cross bound and flung into the water,
where they floated and did not sink. Arthur was accused of bewitching to
her death one Martha Aspine, as also of having bewitched sundry cattle;
and as the parents had a bad name, it was thought best to try them all.
After this trial of the water, Arthur was afraid, says the black-letter
book, lest his father should relent and betray him and them all; whereupon
he sent for his mother, and both together bewitched a round ball into his
father's throat, so that he could not speak a word. When the ball was got
out, the father proved the principal witness against them. The poor
mother, who seems to have been a loving, sensitive, downcast woman,
fainted many times during this terrible period; "Many times complai