Those who knew him more intimately affirm that he often cured this complaint in Normandy; whence appears how false is their notion who in our times assert that the cure of this disease does not proceed from personal sanctity but from hereditary virtue in the Royal line." WITCHCRAFT. "A thousand fantasies Begin to throng on my memory, Of calling shapes and beck'ning shadows dire, And aery tongues, that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses." A lingering belief in witchcraft still remains among the most ignorant of our population, both rural and urban. Some particulars relative to the existence of this superstition in this county in the seventeenth century will be found among the county records in the early part of this volume. The law against witchcraft, passed in the time of James I, being very stringent, the driving out evil spirits, allaying of ghosts, and abjuring witches, became, for nearly a century, a profitable employment. Witch-finders existed as public officers; and beside the public executions which disgraced every assizes, multitudes of accused were destroyed by popular resentment, while others were drowned by the test applied, for if, on being thrown into the water, they did not sink, they were presumed witches, and either killed on the spot or reserved for burning at the assizes. In the year 1649, four persons were tried at Worcester for this supposed offence, and all were executed, _two of them confessing their crime_, viz.: Margaret Landis and Susan Cook; Rebecca West and Rose Holybred died obstinate. The custom at Worcester was to duck the accused in the Severn (Cooken Street, or "Cucken Street," as it is spelt in some old maps, being no doubt the line of route on these occasions). Baxter, in his "World of Spirits," speaks of those men who told of things stolen and lost, and who showed the face of a thief in a glass, and caused the goods to be brought back, who were commonly called "white witches." "When I lived (he says) at Dudley, Hodges, at Sedgley, two miles off, was long and commonly accounted such a one; and when I lived at Kederminster, one of my neighbours affirmed that, having his yarn stolen, he went to Hodges, ten miles off, and he told him that at such an hour he should have it brought home again and put in at the window, and so it was; and as I remember he showed him the person's face in a glass. Yet I do not think that Hodges made any known contract with the devil, but thought it an effect of art."