r wits, asked her if she had not
killed such and such persons then living? to which old Widow Chambers
maundered out yes, she had killed them sure enough. She was committed to
Beccles Gaol, even after this; but died before her trial, happily for her.

This was in 1693. The following year was a busy one for the witch-finders,
but fortunate for such of the witches as came before Lord Chief Justice
Holt, a man of clear, well-balanced mind, evidently not given to
superstitious beliefs, or to much veneration for the Black Art. Mother
Munnings, of Hartis, in Suffolk, was one of those brought before him at
Bury St. Edmunds. She came with a bad character enough, accused of
bewitching men to their death, spoiling brewings and churnings, and
hurting cattle and corn--of being, in fact, a terrible pest to the whole
neighbourhood. She killed Thomas Pannel her landlord, who had offended her
by a rather summary method of ejectment, namely, taking her door off the
hinges, since he could not get her out of his house any other way. Mother
Munnings was angry: who would not have been? "Go thy way," she cried to
him passionately; "thy Nose shall lie upward in the Churchyard before
Saturday next." This was enough. Thomas Pannel sickened on Monday and died
on Tuesday, and was buried within the week according to her word. That
this was true was attested by a certain witness, a doctor, who said also
that Mother Munnings "was a dangerous woman: she could touch the Line of
Life." Mother Munnings had an imp, a thing like a polecat; and a man swore
that one night, coming from the alehouse--a rather important
circumstance--he saw her lift out of her basket two imps, a black one and
a white; and it was well known that Sarah Wager was taken both dumb and
lame after a quarrel with her, and was in that condition even at the time
of trial. But in the face of all these tremendous accusations the Lord
Chief Justice Holt directed the jury to bring her in Not Guilty, and poor
old Mother Munnings lived in peace and quietness for about two years
longer, doing no harm to anybody, and when dying declaring her innocence.
Dr. Hutchinson gives a very rational, but somewhat quaint, explanation of
two of the charges against her. On the death of her landlord, he says,
that he, Thomas Pannel, "was a consumptive spent Man, and the Words not
exactly as they swore them, and the whole Thing 17 years before;" and as
to the imps--"the White Imp is believed to have been a Lock