The facility which the Favourite found of mastering so great and victorious a kingdom, and of removing the man who had carried the glory of his country so high, was not the only evidence, that however enlightened an age may be, knavery and folly need never despair. The tares they sow will shoot amidst any harvest. Will it be credited that, while the Romish superstition was crumbling away even in Spain and Portugal, a set of enthusiastic rogues dared to exhibit in the very heart of London, a pantomime of imposture, which would hardly have been swallowed in a paltry village of Castile? The methodists had endeavoured to establish in Warwickshire, not only the belief, but the actual existence of ghosts. Being detected, they struck a bold stroke, and attempted to erect their system in the metropolis itself. A methodist family, at first out of revenge, endeavoured to fasten on one Parsons the imputation of having debauched and murdered his wife’s sister. A young girl was reported to be visited by the deceased, whom she called Fanny, and with whom she established a correspondence of question and answer--not by words, but by scratching. A certain number of scratches signified “yes;” another number, “no.” At first this farce, which was acted in Cock-lane, in the city, was confined to the mob of the neighbourhood. As the rumour spread, persons of all ranks thronged to the house. Two methodist clergymen constantly attended the child, who lay in bed in a wretched chamber, with only a dim rushlight at one end. These worthy divines affected to cast an air of most serious import on the whole transaction, and by their interposition prompted Fanny and the girl on any dilemma. A servant wench commented and explained Fanny’s oracle. The father would accept no money from the various visitants, for which he was promised an adequate recompense by the chiefs of the sect. When the story had gained a requisite footing, Fanny had the indiscreet confidence to declare that her body was not in the vault where it had been interred. Samuel Johnson, author of the Dictionary, was in the number of the deluded, and with some others as wise as himself, visited the vault, where, to the disappointment of their credulity, they found the body.[189] Had the precaution been taken of conveying it away, the fury of the people might have been actuated to strange lengths; for so much credit had the story gained, that Parsons, the accused, fearing a prosecution, began first. A regular trial[190] instantly unravelled the cheat: the girl was detected of performing the scratchings herself, and one of the clergymen proved to be her abettor. Lord Chief Justice Mansfield tried the cause: the divine had the impudence to present a letter to him on the bench from the Archbishop of Canterbury,[191] interceding on his behalf, for Secker had a fellow feeling for hypocritical enthusiasm. The Chief Justice put the letter into his pocket unopened,