gradually died out, but the demoniac possession was harder to slay, as the exorcising of these spirits was a power highly valued alike by Roman Catholic priest and Puritan divine. At Downham, near Clitheroe, a case was reported, with the usual "godly minister" as voucher[127] again, in 1696, and the Vicar of Walton-on-the Hill furnished an account of another case which had taken place about half a century earlier, and in which the priest at Madame Westby's (of Mowbrick in Kirkham) and the Rector of Croston having failed to effect a cure, the possessed one was sent to Dr. Sylvester, of Liverpool, who physicked the "devil out of him." Towards the end of the century several other cases are on record where the priest is said to have exorcised the spirit. But the most famous instance of this class of deceptions was what is known as the "Surey demoniac," from its hero having lived at Surey, in the parish of Whalley. The boy who was possessed was one Richard Dugdale, aged nineteen, the son of a gardener, and he apparently had all the symptoms required for the occasion, and acted the part required of him to perfection. Amongst other things he was seen to vomit stones, silver and gold curtain rings; he could make himself "as light as a feather bouster," or as "heavy as a load of corn"; he had ventriloquial powers, and could speak out of the earth, and all these were accompanied with the more violent signs, such as convulsions, contortions, shoutings, and the like. The curious part of this is the ready credence which was given to it. Amongst those who subscribed their names to the account of this youth's performances, and asserted their opinions that the whole was true, and that this was a genuine case of diabolical possession, which was beyond the reach of the medical man, and could only be dealt with by prayer and fasting, were: the minister of Toxteth Chapel, near Liverpool; Samuel Angier, minister of Denton; Richard Frankland, M.A., sometime Vice-President of the Presbyterian College of Durham; Thomas Jolly, ejected minister of Altham; Henry Pendlebury, minister of Holcombe Chapel; Nathaniel Heywood, the ejected Vicar of Ormskirk; and Dr. Robert Whittaker, of Burnley; and besides these over thirty people gave evidence, many of them on oath, as to the truth of the details furnished before Hugh, Lord Willoughby, and Ralph Egerton, Esq., two justices of the peace. The first pamphlet, giving an account of "Satan's Strange and Dreadful Actings in and about the Body of Richard Dugdale," was published in London in 1697, and it called forth replies and counter-replies, the Rev. Thomas Jolly being one of the writers in support of the demoniac; and the Rev. Zachary Taylor, Vicar of Croston, one of those who believed the whole affair a "fanatical imposture."[128] For long years after this the belief in the efficacy of certain "charms," as well as the tales of the fortune-telling gipsies, lingered in the county, and even yet occasionally, on pulling