How many of these fall to the share of England? I know not, but they were very active in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in the seventeenth. They seem to us, nowadays, to have frittered away their energies in attending on witches, in entering into divers persons and tormenting them, and in making senseless uproars and playing practical jokes. Let us take about half a dozen of these latter. Say, for argument sake, that they are not very abstruse or intellectual reading; at all events, they are as good as the modern stories of spiritual manifestations, and are as trustworthy. CHAPTER III. ‘The Just Devil of Woodstock’--Metrical Version--Presumed Genuine History of ‘The Just Devil of Woodstock.’ THE JUST DEVIL OF WOODSTOCK.[5] ‘The 16 day of _October_ in the year of our Lord 1649, The Commissioners for surveying and valuing his Majesties Mannor House, Parks, Woods, Deer, Demesnes, and all things thereunto belonging, by Name Captain _Crook_, Capt. _Hart_, Capt. _Cockaine_, Capt. _Carelesse_, and Capt. _Roe_ their Messenger, with Mr. _Brown_ their Secretary, and two or three servants, went from _Woodstock_ town (where they had lain some nights before) and took up their lodgings in his Majesties House, after this manner: The Bedchamber and withdrawing room, they both lodged in, and made their Kitchin; the Presence Chamber their room for dispatch of business with all commers: of the Councel Hall, their Brewhouse, as of the Dining room, their Woodhouse, where they laid in the clefts, of that antient standard in the High-Park, for many ages beyond memory, known by the Name of the Kings Oak, which they had chosen out, and caused to be dug up by the Roots.