So far we have been dealing with genuine, if inaccurate, magicians, but a case that occurred in London in 1382 shows that there were impostors even in that learned profession. Mistress Alice Trig having lost her Paris kerchief suspected Alice Byntham of having stolen it, and apparently not without good reason. The two women seem to have been fairly intimate, and Alice Byntham went to a cobbler, William Northamptone, and gave him information of certain very private matters concerning the other Alice. William then went round to Mistress Trig and posed as a wise man, which he may have been, skilled in magic, which he was not, and revealed to her his knowledge of her private affairs. She, being duly impressed, asked him who had stolen her kerchief, to which he replied, whoever it was it certainly was not Alice Byntham, and launching out rashly into prophecy told his questioner that she would be drowned within a month. The dismal prospect almost terrified her into an early grave, but in the end she survived to see William standing in the pillory. A case that is recorded in Lincolnshire in the sixteenth century is interesting as showing the more than local reputation enjoyed by some of these cunning men. The church of Holbeach having been robbed, the parishioners consulted their fellow-townsman John Lamkyn, a man known to have 'resonable knowledg in the sciens of gramer,' which he taught to the children of the neighbourhood, and said to have a knowledge not so reasonable of such arts as enchantment, witchcraft, and sorcery. He, at the request of the churchwardens, went off to consult Edmund Nash, a wheeler, famed as 'an expert man in the knowleg of thynges stolen,' who lived at 'Cicestre,' which may have been either Chichester or Cirencester, as it is called in one place 'Chechestre' and in another 'Circetter,' but was in any case a very long way off. Lamkyn took with him a pair of leather gloves found in the vestry after the robbery, and Nash made certain deductions therefrom, which caused suspicion to fall upon John Partridge, who complained that he had lost friends and reputation and been 'brought into infamy and slander and owte of credenz.' Lamkyn's version of the story made out Nash to be merely a private detective following up clues without recourse to magic, and also hinted that Partridge's reputation was no great loss. There is as little reason to believe one as the other.