Joan Cariden’s confession was commonplace, but Jane Hott said that ‘a thing like a hedge hog had usually visited her, and came to her a great while agoe, about twenty yeares agoe, and that if it sucked her, it was in her sleep, and the paine thereof awaked her, and it came to her once or twice in the moneth, and sucked her, and when it lay upon her breast, she strucke it off with her hand, and that it was as soft as a Cat. ‘At her first coming into the Gaole, she spake very much to the other that were apprehended before her, to confesse if they were guilty; and stood to it very perversely that she was cleare of any such thing, and that, if they put her into the Water to try her, she should certainly sinke. But when she was put into the Water it was apparent that she did flote upon the Water. Being taken forth, a Gentleman to whom, before, she had so confidently spake, and with whom she offered to lay twenty shillings to one that she could not swim, asked her how it was possible she could be so impudent as not to confesse herselfe? To whom she answered, That the Divell went with her all the way, and told her that she should sinke; but when she was in the Water, he sate upon a Crosse beame and laughed at her.’ CHAPTER XVII. Confessions of Witches executed in Essex--The Witches of Huntingdon--‘Wonderfull News from the North’--Trial of Six Witches at Maidstone--Trial of Four Witches at Worcester--A Lancashire Witch tried at Worcester--A Tewkesbury Witch. A sickening story is told in ‘A true and exact Relation of the seuerall Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the late Witches, arraigned and executed in the County of Essex. Who were arraigned and condemned at the late Sessions, holden at Chelmesford before the Right Honorable Robert Earle of Warwicke and severall of his Majesties Iustices of Peace, the 29 of July 1645,’ etc., London, 1645. In this veritable ‘bloody assize,’ the rascally Matthew Hopkins appears, and it would almost seem as if the poor women confessed anything in order to have the luxury of dying. The charges against them were so frivolous, and the confessions so silly, that they must have either been imbecile or reckless. The following is a list of them: