re, Robyn, and Frog," and they killed men and
beasts. Wherefore she too was hanged like the rest.

Anne Cate had four, given her by her mother twenty years ago, "James,
Prickeare, Robyn, and Sparrow:" the first three like mouses, and the
fourth like a sparrow; and they did evil and mischief and killed all whom
she would. She was hanged too.

At the end of the tract is a very curious bit of evidence, given by an
honest man of Manningtree, one Goff, a glover, concerning old Anne West,
then on her trial. He said that one moonlight morning, about four o'clock,
as he was passing Anne West's house, the door being open, he looked in and
saw three or four little things like black rabbits which came skipping
towards him. He struck at them, but missed; when, by better luck, he
caught one in his hand and tried to wring its head off; but "as he wrung
and stretched the neck of it, it came out betweene his hands like a lock
of wooll," so he went to drown it at a spring not far off. But still as he
went he could not hinder himself from falling down, so that at last he
was obliged to creep on his hands and knees, till he came to the water,
when he held the imp for a long space underneath, till he conceived it was
drowned, but, "letting goe his hand, it sprang out of the water up into
the aire, and so vanished away." Coming back to Anne West's, he found her
standing at her door in terrible undress, and to his complaint of why did
she send her imps to molest him? she answered "that they were not sent out
to trouble him, but as Scouts upon another designe."

But one of the most painful murders of the Hopkins Session was that of old
Mr. Lewis,[132] the "Reading Parson" of Franlingham; a fine old man of
good character, but generally regarded as a Malignant, because he
preferred to read Queen Elizabeth's Homilies instead of composing nasal
discourses of his own, of the kind so dear to the Puritan party: wherefore
the authorities and Matthew Hopkins--who was a devout Puritan--had their
eyes upon him, and were not disposed to be lenient. He was swum in
Hopkins's manner, cross-bound; set on a table cross-legged; kept several
nights without sleep, and twenty-four hours without food; run backwards
and forwards in the room, two men holding him, until he was out of breath;
"pricked" and searched for marks; after all which barbarity it is not
surprising to find that the poor old Reading Parson of eighty-five
"confessed." Yes, he had made a compact