ped with
violence. Trenchers "without a wish" flew at their heads of free will.
Thunder and lightning came next, which were set down to the same cause.
Spectres made their appearance, as they thought, in different shapes,
and one of the party saw the apparition of a hoof, which kicked a
candlestick and lighted candle into the middle of the room, and then
politely scratched on the red snuff to extinguish it. Other and worse
tricks were practised on the astonished Commissioners who, considering
that all the fiends of hell were let loose upon them, retreated from
Woodstock without completing an errand which was, in their opinion,
impeded by infernal powers, though the opposition offered was rather of
a playful and malicious than of a dangerous cast.

The whole matter was, after the Restoration, discovered to be the trick
of one of their own party, who had attended the Commissioners as a
clerk, under the name of Giles Sharp. This man, whose real name was
Joseph Collins of Oxford, called _Funny Joe_, was a concealed loyalist,
and well acquainted with the old mansion of Woodstock, where he had been
brought up before the Civil War. Being a bold, active spirited man, Joe
availed himself of his local knowledge of trap-doors and private
passages so as to favour the tricks which he played off upon his masters
by aid of his fellow-domestics. The Commissioners' personal reliance on
him made his task the more easy, and it was all along remarked that
trusty Giles Sharp saw the most extraordinary sights and visions among
the whole party. The unearthly terrors experienced by the Commissioners
are detailed with due gravity by Sinclair, and also, I think, by Dr.
Plott. But although the detection or explanation of the real history of
the Woodstock demons has also been published, and I have myself seen it,
I have at this time forgotten whether it exists in a separate
collection, or where it is to be looked for.

Similar disturbances have been often experienced while it was the custom
to believe in and dread such frolics of the invisible world, and under
circumstances which induce us to wonder, both at the extreme trouble
taken by the agents in these impostures, and the slight motives from
which they have been induced to do much wanton mischief. Still greater
is our modern surprise at the apparently simple means by which terror
has been excited to so general an extent, that even the wisest and most
prudent have not escaped its contagious in