Susanna Edwards, in her confession, said that she had made the acquaintance of the devil two years ago in Parsonage Close, and that he was like a gentleman. She met him again the same day in Stambridge Lane, and that he again persuaded her to kill Grace Barnes. She had bewitched one Dorcas Coleman, and finally owned that "she gave herself to the devil when she did meet him in Stambridge Lane, and that the said Mary Trembles was a servant to her, in like manner as she, this examinant, was a servant to the devil (whom she called by the appellation of a gentleman)." Another case was gone into against Susanna Edwards on July 26th, but it merely confirmed her confession, which was hardly necessary. These miserable old women were, on this evidence and these confessions, sent to Exeter, where they, on August 18th, were tried, found guilty, and condemned to be hanged; and which sentence was carried out on the 25th of the same month at Heavitree, as we are informed in Jenkin's _History of Exeter_. Even at the foot of the gallows they stuck to their story, altering it but little, though they were much questioned by a meddlesome Mr. Hann, "who was a minister in those parts." In a curious tract published in London this same year (1682), which I have appended to this, with a copy of the deposition taken at the magistrates' enquiry, there is a statement that Mary Trembles was very loath to be hanged, and in order to get her to the place of execution was strapped on a horse. It is commonly supposed that this was the last execution for witchcraft in England; but such is not the case. In 1716 a woman and her daughter were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil. Twenty years after, in 1736, the penal act of James I. was erased from the statute-book. The judges of the land were among the first to set their faces against these judicial murders; one of the earliest being Mr. Chief Justice Holt, who on all occasions endeavoured to procure an acquittal. There is a letter among the State papers from Lord Keeper North, who was at Exeter on circuit at these assizes, to Sir Leoline Jenkins, which gives an excellent view of the question as then considered. It is dated Exeter, August 19th, 1682. "Here have been three old women condemned for witchcraft; your curiosity will make you enquire of the circumstances. I shall only tell you that what I had from my brother Raymond, before whom they were tried, that they were the most old, decrepid, despicable, miserable creatures that he ever saw. A painter would have chosen them out of the whole country for figures of that kind to have drawn by.