d he said that the black spirit
came to her, and wanted her soul, but the maid answered her soul was none
of hers to give; that he had got her blood already, but should never have
her soul; and after a tumbling and throwing of her about rarely, he
vanished away. At another time the witch was brought to the maid suddenly,
when she instantly closed her eyes and fell back in so deep a sleep that
they could not by any means awaken her; but so soon as the witch had gone,
she woke up of herself, and was quite well. Anne Bodenham was condemned to
die, and there was no help for her; but when sentence was passed, Anne
Styles fell to bitter weeping and wailing, lamenting her own wickedness,
and willing that the witch should be reprieved, if possible to the law.
This was taken as a sign of her sweet and loving Christian spirit of
forgiveness; we, who read such signs more clearly by the light of a better
knowledge, know that it meant simply the weak pity of a selfish
conscience, grieving for its sin, yet afraid to retract and make amends.
Beside all this evidence, and its lies, Anne Bodenham had a tame toad
which she wore in a green bag round her neck; and she had a great deal of
natural clairvoyance and mesmeric power; and she was evidently a highly
superstitious woman, who believed in her own powers, and was not unwilling
to aid them by a little extra supernaturalism and good mechanical tricks.
But she would confess to no witchcraft; knew nothing of a Red Book half
written over in blood, which red book with its bloody writing contained a
catalogue of those who had sold themselves to the devil; though she
acknowledged that she had a Book of Charms, much as a servant maid of
to-day might have a Book of Dreams: and that she could say the Creed
backwards as well as forwards; and that she sometimes prayed to the
planet Jupiter. The time-honoured belief in astrology and the power of the
planets might well linger in the brain of an old country woman, who had a
smattering of knowledge far beyond her station, and who had dabbled in
mechanics and the art of conjuring; who could not, moreover, understand
her own sensitive condition; and who had the alternative, as one of the
witnesses said, of passing for a witch or a woman of God. The judge and
jury had a very distinct idea as to which category she ought to be placed
in; and fully believed what James Bower reports, that she could turn
herself into a "mastive Dog, a black Lyon, a white Bear, a