reputation for piety avail that clergyman in the eyes of his parishioners, who should refuse to lay those "extravagant and erring spirits," when requested, by those liturgic ceremonies which the orthodoxy of tradition requires. In the early part of the reign of James I., and at the period when his execrable statute against witchcraft might have been sharpening its appetite by a temporary fast for the full meal of blood by which it was eventually glutted--for as yet it could count no recorded victims--two wretched old women with their families resided in the Forest of Pendle. Their names were Elizabeth Southernes and Ann Whittle, better known, perhaps, in the chronicles of witchcraft by the appellations of Old Demdike and Old Chattox [perhaps, Chadwick]. Both had attained, or reached the verge of the advanced age of eighty, and were evidently in a state of extreme poverty, subsisting with their families by occasional employment, by mendicancy, but principally, perhaps, by the assumption of that unlawful power which commerce with spirits of evil was supposed to procure, and of which their sex, life, appearance, and peculiarities might seem to the prejudiced neighbourhood in the Forest to render them not unsuitable depositaries.[132] [For the details of the witchcraft alleged to be practised by these old crones and their families, with their trials and fate, see an article (page 185 _suprâ_) in the present volume, entitled "The Lancashire Witches of 1612."] PENDLE HILL AND ITS WITCHES. (From Rev. Richard James's _Iter Lancastrense_.) "Penigent, Pendle Hill, and Ingleborough, Three such hills be not in all England thorough."[133] I long to climb up Pendle[134]: Pendle stands Round cop, surveying all the wild moor lands, And Malkin's Tower,[135] a little cottage, where Report makes caitiff witches meet, to swear Their homage to the devil, and contrive The deaths of men and beasts. Let who will dive Into this baneful search, I wonder much If judges' sentence with belief on such Doth pass: then sure, they would not for lewd gain Bad clients favour, or put good to pain Of long pursuit; for terror of the fiend Or love of God, they would give causes end With equal justice. Yet I do confess Needs must strange fancies poor old wives possess, Who in those desert, misty moors do live, Hungry and cold, and scarce see priest to give Them ghostly counsel. Churches far do stand In laymen's hands, and chapels have no land To cherish learned curates,[136] though Sir John Do preach for four pounds unto Haslingden. Such yearly rent, with right of begging corn, Makes John a sharer in my Lady's horn: He drinks and prays, and forty years this life Leading at home, keeps children and a wife.[137] These are the wonders of our careless days: Small store serves him who for the people prays. WITCHCRAFT ABOUT 1654.