a year since, "as
she was in the bed about twelve or one of the clocke in the night, there
lay a 'rugged soft thing' upon her bosome which was very soft, and she
thrust it off with her hand; and she saith that when she had thrust it
away she thought God forsooke her, and she could never pray so well since
as she could before; and further saith that shee verily thinks it was
alive." On a second examination she said that the divell came to her in
the shape of a "black rugged Dog in the night time, and crept into the bed
to her, and spake to her in a mumbling tongue." Two days after she made
further revelations of how "within these two daies," she had gone to
Goodwife Pantery's house, where were other good wives, and where the
divell sat at the upper end of the table.

Jane Hot said that a thing like a "hedg-hog" had usually visited her for
these twenty years. It sucked her in her sleep, and pained her, so that
she awoke: and lay on her breast, when she would strike it off. It was as
soft as a cat. On coming into the gaol she was very urgent on the others
to confess, but stood out sturdily for her own innocence; saying, "that
she would lay twenty shillings that if she was swum she would sink." She
was swum and she floated; whereat a gentleman asked her "how it was
possible that she could be so impudent as not to confesse herselfe?" to
whom she answered, "That the Divell went with her all the way, and told
her that she should sinke; but when she was in the Water he sat upon a
Crosse beame, and laughed at her." "_These three were executed on Munday
last_," says the tract in emphatic italics.

It now came to the turn of Elizabeth Harris. She said that nineteen years
ago the devil came to her in the form of a muse (mouse) and told her she
should be revenged. And she was revenged on all who offended her; on
Goodman Chilman, who said she had stolen a pigge, and who therefore she
wished might die--and her Impe destroyed him; on Goodman Woodcot, in whose
High (hoy?) her son had been drowned, when "she wished that God might be
her revenger, which was her watchword to the Divell"--and the hoy was cast
away, as she conceived, in consequence of her wish. And did not Joan
Williford's imp tell her that "though the Boate went chearfully oute it
should not come so chearfully home?" She said further that sundry good
wives, named, had "ill tongues;" and that she had made a covenant with the
devil, written in the blood which she had scratch