Finally, you have this much less tragic business. In the first year of Queen Anne’s reign (1702), Richard Hathaway was tried at the Surrey Assizes before Lord Chief Justice Holt for falsely accusing Sarah Morduck of bewitching him. The offence being a misdemeanour, the prisoner had counsel, an advantage not then fully given to those charged with felony. The trial reads like one in our own day. The case for the Crown had been carefully put together. Possibly the authorities were striking at accusations of and prosecutions for Witchcraft. Sarah Morduck had been tried and acquitted at Guildford Assizes for bewitching Hathaway, whereupon this prosecution had been ordered. Dr. Martin, parish minister in Southwark, an able and enlightened divine, had saved Sarah from the mob, and so was led on to probe the matter. He found Hathaway apparently blind and dumb, but giving his assent by a sign to the suggestion that he should scratch Morduck, and so (according to the superstition already noted) obtain relief. Dr. Martin brought Sarah and a woman of the same height called Johnson to the room where the impostor lay, seemingly, at death’s door. Morduck announced her willingness to be scratched, and then Johnson’s hand was put into his. Hathaway was suspicious, and felt the arm very carefully, whereat the parson “spoke to him somewhat eagerly: If you will not scratch I will begone.” Whereupon he clawed so lustily that Johnson near fainted. She was forthwith hustled out of the room and Morduck pushed forward; but the rogue, fearing a trap, lay quiet till Dr. Martin encouraged him by simulated admiration. Then he opened wide his eyes, “caught hold of the apron of Sarah Morduck, and looked her in the face,” thus implying that his supposed scratching of her had restored his eyesight. Being informed of his blunder he “seemed much cast down,” but his native impudence soon asserting itself, he gave himself out for worse than ever, whilst Sarah Morduck, anxious to be clear at any cost, declared that not she but Johnson was the witch. The popular voice roundly abused Dr. Martin for a stubborn sceptic. Charges of bribery against him, as well as against the judge and jury who had acquitted Morduck, were freely bandied about. Dr. Martin had got Bateman a friend of his to see Hathaway, one of whose symptoms was the vomiting of pins. His evidence was that the rogue scattered the pins about the room by sleight of hand; Bateman had taken several parcels of them, almost by force, out of his pocket. Kensy, a surgeon, further told how Hathaway, being committed to his care, at first would neither eat nor drink. Kensy being afraid that he would starve himself to death sooner than have his cheat discovered, arranged a pretended quarrel with his maid Baker, who supplied the patient with food as if against his orders. Indeed, she plied him so well with meat and drink that, so she told the court, “he was very merry and danced about, and took the tongs