The case of the “Surey Demoniac,” as he was termed, which was set forth at length in a publication issued in London towards the close of the seventeenth century,[92] is certainly worthy of being noticed here. In the year 1697 a youth of nineteen years of age, named Richard Dugdale, excited great attention; it being generally believed that he was possessed by an evil spirit, as the direct consequence of Witchcraft. His paroxysms were witnessed by numerous clergymen, physicians, and persons of respectability and rank; and caused an amount of interest and excitement which can scarcely be realized.[93] His fits commenced with violent convulsions; his sight or eyeballs turned upward and backwards; he afterwards answered questions; predicted during one fit the period of accession and duration of another fit; spoke in foreign languages, of which at other times he was ignorant, and described events passing at a distance with singular and recognized accuracy. Here again the word of narration is quoted at length:--“At the end of one fit the demoniac told what hour of the night or day his next [fit] would begin, very precisely and punctually, as was constantly observed, though there was no equal or set distance of time between his fits; betwixt which there would be, sometimes a few hours, sometimes many, sometimes one day, sometimes many days.” “He would have told you,” one of the deponents asserts on oath, “when his fits would begin, when they were two or three in one day, or three or four days asunder, wherein he never was, that the deponent knoweth of, disappointed.” On one occasion, when the minister was addressing him, he exclaimed, “At ten o’clock my next fit comes on.” “Though he was never learned in the English tongue, and his natural and acquired abilities were very ordinary, yet, when the fit seized him, he often spake Latin, Greek, and other languages very well.... He often told of things in his fits done at a distance, whilst those things were a-doing,--as, for instance, a woman being afraid to go to the barn, though she was come within a bow’s length of it, was immediately sent for by the demoniac, who said, ‘Unless that weak-faithed jade come, my fits will last longer.’ Some said, ‘Let us send for Mr. G----.’ The demoniac answered, ‘He is now upon the hay-cart,’ which was found to be true.... On another occasion he told what great distress there was in Ireland, and that England must ‘pay the piper.’ Again, one going by him to a church meeting, was told by the demoniac in his fit, ‘Thou needest not go to the said meeting, for I can tell thee the sermon that will be preached there,’ upon which he told him the text and much of the sermon that was that day preached.” Lastly, it is certified by two of the deponents that “the demoniac could not certainly judge what the nature of his distemper was; because when he was out of his fits, he could not tell how it was with him when he was in his fits.”