f the ioy of
liberty, which shee saw others possesse. The iangling of irons did not put
her in minde of the chaines wherewith shee should be bound in eternall
torments, vnlesse heaven's mercy vnloosed them, nor of the howling terrors
and gnashing of teeth which in hel euery soule shall receiue for the
particular offences committed in this life, without vnfained and hearty
contrition. Shee neuer remembered or thought shee must die, or trembled
for feare of what should come to her after death. But as her use was
alwaies knowne to be deuilish, so her death was at last found to be
desperate. For shee (and the rest before named) being brought from the
common gaole of Northampton to Northampton Castle, where the Assizes are
vsually held, were seuerally arraigned and indited for the offences they
had formerly committed, but to the inditement they pleaded not guilty.
Putting therefore their causes to the triall of the Countrey, they were
found guilty, and deserved death by the verdit of a credible Iury
returned. So without any confession or contrition, like birds of a feather
they all held and hangd together for company at Abington gallowes hard by
Northampton the two and twintieth day of Iuly last past; Leauing behinde
them in prison many others tainted with the same corruption, who without
much mercy and repentance are likely to follow them in the same tract of
Precedencie."

THE WITCHES OF LANCASHIRE.[114]

In Pendle Forest, a wild tract of land on the borders of Yorkshire, lived
an old woman about the age of fourscore, who had been a witch for fifty
years, and had brought up her own children, and instructed her
grandchildren, to be witches. "She was a generall agent for the Deuill in
all these partes;" her name was Elizabeth Southernes, usually called
Mother Demdike; the date of her arraignment 1612. She was the first tried
of this celebrated "coven," twenty of whom stood before Sir James Altham
and Sir Edward Bromley, charged with all the crimes lying in sorcery,
magic, and witchcraft. Old Mother Demdike died in prison before her trial,
but on her being taken before the magistrate who convicted them all, Roger
Nowell, Esq., she made such a confession as effectually insured her due
share of execration, and hedged in the consciences of all who had assailed
her from any possible pangs of self-reproach or doubt.

About fifty years ago, she said, she was returning home from begging,
when, near a stone pit in the Pendle Fore