[44] T. B. and T. J. Howell, _State Trials_ (London, 1809-1818), II. [45] See Potts, O 3 verso. [46] See _Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports_, XIII, 4 (Rye), pp. 136-137, 139-140, 144, 147-148. [47] See Alexander Roberts, _A Treatise of Witchcraft ..._ (London, 1616), dedicated to the "Maior and Aldermen." [48] M. A. Richardson, _Table Book_ (London, 1841-1846), I, 245. [49] North Riding Record Soc., _Quarter Sessions Records_, I, 58. [50] "... neither had they authoritie to compell her to goe without a Constable." [51] Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,674, fol. 148. This is a brief description of "how to discover a witch." It recommends the water ordeal and cites the case of Mr. Enger and Mary Sutton. [52] In the case of three of these four we know only that they were sentenced. [53] Before the Flower case at Lincoln came the Willimot-Baker cases at Leicester. The Bedford trial resembled much the Northampton trial of the previous year. CHAPTER VI. NOTABLE JACOBEAN CASES. It is possible to sift, to analyze, and to reconstruct the material derived from witch trials until some few conclusions about a given period can be ventured. A large proportion of cases can be proved to belong in this or that category, a certain percentage of the women can be shown to possess these or those traits in common. Yet it is quite thinkable that one might be armed with a quiver full of generalizations, and fail, withal, to comprehend Jacobean witchcraft. If one could have asked information on the subject from a Londoner of 1620, he would probably have heard little about witchcraft in general, but a very great deal about the Lancashire, Northampton, Leicester, Lincoln, and Fairfax trials. The Londoner might have been able to tell the stories complete of all those famous cases. He would have been but poorly informed could he not have related some of them, and the listener would have caught the surface drift of those stories. But a witch panic is a subtle thing, not to be understood by those who do not follow all its deeper sequences. The springs of the movement, the interaction of cause and effect, the operation of personal traits, these are factors that must be evaluated, and they are not factors that can be fitted into a general scheme, labelled and classified. This does not mean that the cases should be examined in chronological sequence. That is not necessary; for the half-dozen cases that we shall run over had little or no cause-and-effect connection with one another. It is convenient, indeed, to make some classification, and the simplest is that by probable origin, especially as it will enable us to emphasize that important feature of the trials. Now, by this method the six or more trials of note may be grouped under three headings: cases that seem to have originated in the actual practice of magic, cases where the victims of convulsions and fits started the furor, and cases that were simply the last stage of bitter quarrels or the result of grudges.