A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718Notestein, Wallace
History
A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718
Notestein, Wallace
Witchcraft -- England -- History
[24] Queries 8 and 9 answered by Hopkins to the Norfolk assizes confirm
Gaule's description. See Hopkins, 5. "Query 8. When these ... are fully
discovered, yet that will not serve sufficiently to convict them, but
they must be tortured and kept from sleep two or three nights, to
distract them, and make them say anything; which is a way to tame a
wilde Colt, or Hawke." "Query 9. Beside that unreasonable watching, they
were extraordinarily walked, till their feet were blistered, and so
forced through that cruelty to confess." Hopkins himself admitted the
keeping of Elizabeth Clarke from sleep, but is careful to insert "upon
command from the Justice." Hopkins, 2-3. On p. 5 he again refers to this
point. Stearne, 61, uses the phrase "with consent of the justices."
[25] Suffolk Institute of Archæology, _Proceedings_, X, 378. Baxter
seems to have started the notion that Lowes was a "reading parson," or
Anglican.
[26] _Ibid._
[27] See _A Magazine of Scandall, or a heape of wickednesse of two
infamous Ministers_ (London, 1642), where there is a deposition, dated
August 4, 1641, that Lowes had been twice indicted and once arraigned
for witchcraft, and convicted by law as "a common Barrettor" at the
assizes in Suffolk. Stearne, 23, says he was charged as a "common
imbarritor" over thirty years before.
[28] This account of the torture is given, in a letter to Hutchinson, by
a Mr. Rivet, who had "heard it from them that watched with him." It is
in some measure confirmed by the MS. history of Brandeston quoted in
_County Folk Lore, Suffolk_ (Folk Lore Soc.), 178, which adds the
above-quoted testimony as to his litigiousness.
[29] Stearne, 24.
[30] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches_, 5;
_Moderate Intelligencer_, September 4-11, 1645.
[31] See Samuel Clarke, _Lives of sundry Eminent Persons ..._ (London,
1683), 172. In writing the life of Samuel Fairclough, Clarke used
Fairclough's papers; see _ibid._, 163.
[32] Fairclough was a Non-Conformist, but not actively sympathetic with
Presbyterianism. Calamy was counted a Presbyterian.
[33] Hopkins, 5-6; Stearne, 18.
[34] One of these was Lowes.
[35] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches._
[36] Stearne, 14.
[37] _A True Relation of the Araignment of eighteene Witches_, 5.
[38] _Ibid._; Stearne, 25.
[39] Hutchinson speaks of repeated sessions. Stearne, 25, says: "by
reason of an Allarum at Cambridge, the gaol delivery at Burie St.
Edmunds was adjourned for about three weeks." As a matter of fact, the
king's forces seem not to have got farther east than Bedford and
Cambridge. See Whitelocke, _Memorials_, I, 501.
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