there had been any. So
the famous trial of the Pendle Witches came to an end; and of the twenty
who were accused twelve were hanged while the rest escaped only for the
present, many of them meeting with their doom a few years afterwards.

GRACE SOWERBUTS AND THE PRIESTS.[122]

At the same time and place, namely, "at the Assizes and Generall
Gaole-delivery, holden at Lancaster, before Sir Edward Bromley," old
Jennet Bierly, Ellen Bierly her daughter-in-law, and Jane Southworth, were
accused by Grace Sowerbuts of bewitching her, so that her "bodie wasted
and was consumed." Grace was fourteen years old--a very ripe time for
bewitchment and possession--and her evidence ran that for some years past
she had been fearfully tormented by these women, for that "they did
violently draw her by the Haire of the Head, and layd her on the toppe of
a Hay-mowe;" and that Jennet Bierly appeared to her, first under her own
shape and form, then as a black dog, and that as she was going over a
style "she picked her off," but did not hurt her much, for soon she was
enabled to rouse herself up, and go on her way without any great damage.
But often the women came to her as black dogs, tempting her to cast
herself into the water, or dragging her into the hay-loft where they
covered her with hay on her head and with straw on her body, they, the
black dogs, lying on the top of the straw till they took away all sense
and feeling and she knew not where she was; and oft they "carried her
where they met black things like men that danced with them and did abuse
their bodies, and they brought her to one Thomas Walsham's House in the
Night, and there they killed his Child, by putting a Nail into the Navil,
and after took it forth of the Grave, and did boil it, and eat some of it,
and made Oyl of the bones; and such like horrid lies," says honest
Webster, indignantly. But fortunately for the three accused, Grace
Sowerbuts was a popish pet, and suspected of decided papistical leanings;
and it was said that she was put up to all this by one Thomson, a popish
priest, whose real name was Southworth, and who was a relation of old Sir
John Southworth the great popish lord of the district; to whom also Jane,
one of the accused, was a near relative, but a hated enemy, as is often
the case--Sir John having been known to ride miles round to avoid passing
by her house. Jane Southworth was a Protestant and a convert, therefore
likely to receive the protection of