of Wool taken
out of her Basket to spin; and its Shadow, it is supposed, was the Black
one." Not an impossibility with an ignorant country clown, reeling home
half drunk from the alehouse, and disposed to make a miracle out of the
plainest matter before him seen through a witch's window.

At the Ipswich assizes of that same year the Lord Chief Justice had to
hold the sword of judgment unsheathed between Margaret Elnore and her
accusers. Margaret belonged to a family of witches, her grandmother and
her aunt having been both hanged for that rational offence; and now, when
Mrs. Rudge had been for three years in a languishing condition--ever since
her husband had refused to take Elnore for his tenant--what so likely as
that she was bewitched, and that the enraged witch and relative of witches
had done it? Besides, women who had quarrelled with Margaret had found
themselves suddenly covered with vermin, not at all due to their own
uncleanly habits, but to the diabolical power of old Elnore, who would
send lice or locusts, disease or death, just as it suited her. For she had
eight or nine imps, and she was plainly branded with the witch marks. Lord
Chief Justice Holt pooh-poohed the imps and the vermin, and directed again
a verdict of Not Guilty. So Margaret Elnore was suffered to live out the
natural term of her life, and Mrs. Rudge recovered her health for a
certain time; but--some years after Margaret was peaceably laid in her
grave--"fell again into the same Kind of Pains (supposed from the Salt
Humour), and died of the same Distemper."

The next year Mary Guy was tried at Launceston for bewitching Philadelphia
Row, who swore to her apparition perpetually troubling her, and who had
the uncomfortable habit of vomiting pins, straws, and feathers. But the
Lord Chief Justice turned a deaf ear to Philadelphia Row also, and Mary
Guy was acquitted. So was Elizabeth Horner, who, in 1696, was brought
before him at Exeter, charged with having bewitched three children
belonging to William Bovet, whereof one was dead: "another had her Legs
twisted, and yet from her Hands and Knees she would spring Five Foot
high." The children brought up crooked pins, and were grievously bitten,
and pinched, and pricked, and bruised--the marks of all this ill usage
appearing plainly on the flesh; and they swore that Bess Horner's head
would go off her shoulders and walk quietly into their stomachs: and the
mother deposed "that one of them walked up a