with a Vail over her Face stand by her
bedside, and one standing by her like a little old Man in silk Cloaths,
and that this Man, whom she took to be a Spirit, drew the Vail from off
the Woman's Face, and then she knew it to be Goody Newton; and that the
Spirit spake to the Deponent, and would have had her promise him to follow
his Advice, and she should have all things after her own Heart; to which
she says she answered 'That she would have nothing to say to him, for her
Trust was in the Lord.'" After this Mary Longdon was taken very ill,
vomiting pins and needles and horse-nails and stubbs and wool and straw,
while small stones followed her about the room, and from place to place,
striking her sharply on her head and shoulders and arms, then vanishing
away. She was also strangely put upon by beds, and other such assailants.
Sometimes she was forcibly carried from one bed to another; sometimes
taken to the top of the house, or laid on a board betwixt two sollar
beams, or put into a chest, or laid under a parcel of wool, or betwixt two
feather beds, or (in the day time) between the bed and the mat in her
master's room. All of these pranks done by Florence Newton's Astral
Spirit, by which Mary maid was bewitched. Florence Newton also bewitched
to his death David Jones, who had constituted himself one of her watchers
while she was in "bolts" in prison. David took great pains to teach her
the Lord's Prayer, but Florence, being a witch, could not repeat it
correctly; at last she called out to him, "David! David! come hither; I
can say the Lord's Prayer now." Not that she could, for when she came to
the clause "Forgive us our Trespasses," she skipped over it, or boggled at
it, or got round it in some way or other that was not holy; then seizing
David's hand between the bars of the grate she kissed it thankfully; and
thus and there possessed him, so that he died fourteen days after of that
strange languishing disease known to all the world as a bewitchment.

THE WITCHES OF STYLES'S KNOT.[147]

Elizabeth Hill, aged thirteen, had strange fits. She was much convulsed
and contorted; she writhed, foamed, and could with difficulty be held or
mastered; she had moreover swellings and holes in her flesh, which were
made she said by thorns, and whence the bystanders averred they saw the
child hook out thorns. Even the clergyman of the parish, William Parsons
rector of Stoke Trister, added his testimony to the rest: and on the 26th
of