d him
to do anything for her, she called him by the name of "Robin," adding, "O
Satan give me my purpose!" which he never failed to do. It was he who
stuck the thorns into Elizabeth Hill; but then she implicated three other
women, Alice Duke, Ann Bishop, and Mary Penny, saying that they too had
stuck thorns into an enchanted picture meant for Elizabeth Hill, one
night when they had all met the devil on the common, he, as a man in black
clothes with a little band, first anointing its forehead with oil, saying,
"I baptize thee with this oyl." After which they had a supper of wine,
cakes, and roast meat, all brought by the man in black, and they ate and
drank and danced and were merry. This they did always, whenever they would
destroy any one obnoxious; and so had a merry time of it upon the whole.
When they wanted to go to their meetings "they would anoint their wrists
and foreheads with an oyl the spirit brings them, which smells raw," after
which they were carried off, saying: "Thout, tout, a tout, tout,
throughout and about:" on their return changing the stave to "Rentum
Tormentum," which was the shibboleth to bring them back. But before they
left they used to make obeisance to the man in black, who usually played
to their dancing, saying, "A Boy! merry meet, merry part;" on which he
vanished, and the conclave was broken up. She then told the "several grave
and orthodox divines" who assisted Robert Hunt to take her examination,
that Alice Duke's familiar was a cat, and Ann Bishop's a rat. Her own was
a millar; concerning which Nicholas Lambert made some strange revelations.
He said that as he and two others, hired to watch Elizabeth Styles in
prison, were sitting near her as she crouched by the fire--he, Nicholas
Lambert, reading in "The Practise of Piety"--about three in the morning
they saw a "glistering bright fly," about an inch in length, come from her
head and pitch on the chimney: then instantly vanish. In less than a
quarter of an hour after, in came two other flies and seemed to strike at
his hand, but which dodged him cleverly when he struck at them with his
book. At this, Styles's countenance became very black and ghastly, and
the fire also changed its colour; so the watchers, conceiving that her
familiar was about her, and seeing also her hair shake very strangely,
went to examine her poll, when out flew a great millar, which pitched on a
table board and then vanished away. Her poll was red like raw beef, but