The pamphlet winds up with some pious and moral reflections, of no interest to the reader. There is no doubt but that people verily believed that the Devil lived among them in a material shape, and we have throughout England divers of his punchbowls, dykes, quoits, and even the prehistoric flint arrow-heads were known as ‘Devil’s arrows.’ But a most singular instance of this belief is to be found in Blount’s ‘Law Dictionary’ (ed. 1717), under the word _Conventio_, an agreement or covenant. It is Latin, and is an extract from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Hatfield, near the isle of Axholme, in Yorkshire. It is also mentioned in the ‘Antiquarian Repertory,’ vol. ii., p. 395. The following is a translation: ‘At a court held at Hatfield on the Wednesday next after the Festival--In the 11th Year of Edward III. (1337). ‘Robert de Roderham appeared against John de Ithow, for that he had not kept the agreement made between them, and therefore complains that on a certain day and year, at Thorne, there was an agreement between the aforesaid Robert and John, whereby the said John sold to the said Robert, the Devil, bound in a certain bond, for three pence farthing, and thereupon, the said Robert delivered to the said John, one farthing, as earnest money, by which the property of the said Devil rested in the person of the said Robert, to have livery of the said Devil, on the fourth day next following: at which day the said Robert came to the forenamed John, and asked delivery of the said Devil according to the agreement between them made. But the said John refused to deliver the said Devil, nor has he yet done it, etc., to the great damage of the said Robert to the amount of 60 shillings, and he has therefore brought his suit, etc. ‘The said John came, etc., and did not deny the said agreement; and because it appeared to the Court that such a suit ought not to subsist among Christians, the aforesaid parties are therefore adjourned to the infernal regions, there to hear their judgment, and both parties were amerced, etc., by William De Scargell, Seneschal.’ CHAPTER IX. The Witch of Endor--The ‘Mulier Malefica’ of Berkeley--Northern Witches. Of all the extraordinary popular delusions that have existed, the wave of belief in witchcraft which flowed over this land in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is one of the most remarkable. The belief that some people have the power of exercising supernatural control over their fellow-creatures is not confined to any land, and dates from remote antiquity. But it is with the witches of Britain, and those of the Britons who emigrated from their country, that it is my province to deal. [Illustration]