eard him cry pitifully, and found him so affrighted and distracted that
he neither knew his Father nor did know where he was, and so continued
very near a quarter of an hour before he came to himself. And he told this
Informer his Father all the particular passages that are before declared
in the said Robinson his Son's Information.

(Signed) "RICHARD SHUTTLEWORTH.
"JOHN STARKEY."

Who would dare to doubt such testimony as this? Here was another child of
God grievously mishandled; and what might not be done to the servants of
the devil who had so evilly intreated him? And was not Edmund Robinson
evidently raised up and directed by God to be the scourge of all witches,
and the great discoverer of their naughty pranks? So the lad was elevated
to the post of witch-finder, and was taken about from church to
church--accusing any who might strike his fancy or his fears, and sending
them off to prison at the impulse of his childish will. Among other places
he was brought to the parish church of Kildwick, where Webster was then
curate. It was during the afternoon service, and the lad was put upon a
stall to look the better about him, and discern the witches more clearly.
After service Webster went to him and found him with "two very unlikely
persons that did conduct him and manage the business:" the curate of
Kildwick would have drawn him aside, but the men would not suffer this.
Then said Webster, "'Good boy, tell me truly and in earnest, didst thou
hear and see such strange things of the meeting of witches as is reported
by many that thou dost relate, or did some person teach thee to say such
things of thyself?' But the two men, not giving the boy leave to answer,
did pluck him from me, and said he had been examined by two able Justices
of the Peace, and they did never ask him such a question; to whom I
replied, 'The persons accused had therefore the more wrong.'" So Webster
got nothing by this, and the boy was not damaged nor his credit shaken.
Very many persons were arrested on this young imp's accusations, beside
those seventeen whom he had seen "syleing" butter and bacon from
witch-ropes in the magic barn. And among the rest Jennet Device, (was she
our old acquaintance of perjured memory?) who was charged with killing
Isabelle, the wife of William Nutter; and Mary Spencer, who was in
imminent danger for having "caused a pale or cellocke to come to her, full
of water, fourteen yards up a hill from a well;" a