As to the authenticity of the above, we are told in the Preface: ‘And now, as to the Penman of this Narrative, know that he was a Divine, and, at the time of those things acted, which are here related, the Minister and Schoolmaster of _Woodstock_, a person learned and discreet, nor byassed with factious humours, his name _Widows_, who, each day, put in writing what he heard from their mouthes, (and such things as they told to have befallen them the night before), therein keeping to their own words.’ There was also a metrical account[6] of these strange doings, printed in the year in which they occurred; but although it exactly tallies with the prose as above, it is not written in so refined a strain. The _British Magazine_ for April, 1747 (vol. ii., p. 156) professes to give ‘The genuine history of the good devil of _Woodstock_, famous in the world in the year 1649, and never accounted for, or at all understood to this time.’ It is by an anonymous writer, who says he found it in some original papers which had lately fallen into his hands, ‘under the name of authentick memoirs of the memorable _Joseph Collins_ of Oxford, commonly known by the name of _funny Joe_,’ and it puts forth that this said Joe, under the name of Giles Sharp, entered the service of the Commissioners as a servant, and with the help of two friends, an unknown trap-door in the ceiling of the bedchamber, and some fulminating mercury, played the part of the Devil; but as the document is not known to be in existence, and is only mentioned in the pages of a magazine a hundred years afterwards, the reader may attach whatever credit he pleases to it. At all events, it proves that something very extraordinary, according to popular rumour, did take place at Woodstock during the Commissioners’ occupation. CHAPTER IV. ‘The Dæmon of Tedworth.’ ‘THE DÆMON OF TEDWORTH.[7]