robated by her neighbours
for her Daughters casting out of doores, and other conceiued displeasures,
she grew past all shame and womanhood, and many times cursed them all that
were the cause of this discontentment, and made her so loathsome to her
former familiar friends and beneficial acquaintance."

Things being come to this pass, it was not difficult to persuade the Earl
and his Countess that, when their eldest son Henry, Lord Ross, sickened
very strangely, and after a while died,--when their second son Francis
was also tortured by a strange sickness--and the Lady Katherine their
daughter was in danger of her life "through extreame maladies and vnusuall
fits"--it was all done by Joan Flower's witchcraft, and that the quickest
way out of their troubles was to arrest the widow and her two daughters
and see what could be done with them, both by their own confessions and
the neighbours' relations. They were arrested accordingly, and carried
before the magistrates where witnesses were not awanting. The first
evidence given was that of Philip Flower, sister to Margaret, and daughter
of poor old Joan. On the 4th of February she confessed that her mother and
sister "maliced" the Earl of Rutland, his countess, and their children,
because they were put out of the Castle; wherefore her sister Margaret, by
desire of her mother, got Lord Henry's right-hand glove which she found on
the rushes in the nursery, and delivered it to Joan, who presently rubbed
it on the back of her spirit Rutterkin, bidding him "height and goe and
doe some hurt to Henry Lord Rosse," then put it into boiling water,
pricking it many times with a knife, and burying it in the yard with a
wish that Lord Henry might never thrive. Whereupon he fell sick and
shortly after died. She also said that she often saw the spirit Rutterkin
leap on her sister Margaret's shoulder and suck her neck, and that her
mother had often cursed the earl and his lady, and boiled feathers and
blood together, "vsing many Deuillish speeches and strange gestures." On
the 22nd of the same month Margaret was examined, and she also gave no
trouble. She confessed that truly she had got Lord Henry's glove, and that
her mother had done with it in all particulars of stroking Rutterkin's
back, and putting it into boiling water, and pricking, and burying it,
according to the words of Philip; also that some two or three years ago
she had found a glove of the Lord Francis', which her mother rubbed o