State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 1 (of 2)
History
State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 1 (of 2)
Trials -- Great Britain
At such time as they be recovered out of their fits (occasioned
as this deponent conceives upon their naming of Lord, Jesus, or
Christ), this deponent hath demanded of them, what is the cause
they cannot pronounce those words: they reply and say, that Amy
Duny saith, I must not use that name.
And further, the said children after their fits were past, would
tell, how that Amy Duny and Rose Cullender would appear before
them holding their fists at them, threatening, that if they
related either what they saw or heard, that they would torment
them ten times more than ever they did before.
In their fits they would cry out, There stands Amy Duny or Rose
Cullender; and sometimes in one place and sometimes in another
running with great violence to the place where they fancied them
to stand, striking at them as if they were present; they would
appear to them sometimes spinning, and sometimes reeling, or in
other postures, deriding or threatening them.
Afterwards the witness sent the children to the house of Margaret
Arnold, his sister, at Yarmouth, to make trial whether the change of air
might do them any good.
_Margaret Arnold_ gave no credit to what was related to her when the
children were committed to her care, 'conceiving that possibly the
children might use some deceit in putting pins in their mouths
themselves'; she therefore 'took all the pins out of their clothes, and
sewed them all instead'; but 'notwithstanding all this care and
circumspection of hers,' they raised at least thirty pins in her
presence, and had most violent fits. They would cry out in their fits,
against Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, alleging that they saw them.
At some times the children (only) would see things run up and
down the house in the appearance of mice; and one of them
suddenly snapt one with the tongs, and threw it in the fire, and
it screeched out like a rat.
At another time a little thing like a bee
flew into the face of the younger child when she was out of
doors, and would have gone into her mouth; the child ran
screaming into the house and had a fit, and vomited up a
two-penny nail with a broad head, which she said the bee had
tried to put in her mouth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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