In the first half of the century the numbers of women who had been condemned and hanged as witches may be counted almost by dozens,[581] and in the reign of Charles II at least five wretched creatures were put to death for practices in the black art. What is here noteworthy about their trials is that they exhibit just the same characteristics as the trials for the Popish Plot. The monstrous evidence offered by the witnesses and the credulity displayed by the court at the trials of the Suffolk witches in 1665 and of the Devon witches seventeen years later at least equalled, if they did not surpass, anything which is recorded of political cases of the same age. Two instances will suffice to demonstrate the truth of this. At the trial at Bury St. Edmunds, Margaret Arnold gave evidence as to the children who were said to have been bewitched: “At another time the younger child, being out of her fits, went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a little thing like a bee flew upon her face and would have gone into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, screeching out in a most terrible manner; whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her, but before she could get to her, the child fell into her swooning fit, and at last with much pain, straining herself, she vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and after that the child had raised up the nail, she came to her understanding and, being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered ‘that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth.’”[582] The information of Elizabeth Eastchurch against Temperance Lloyd, one of the three women condemned in 1682, is a fair specimen of the evidence which was, in the words of Fox, “impossible to be true,” and which was nevertheless accepted and acted upon by the courts. “The said informant upon her oath saith. That upon the second day of this instant July, the said Grace Thomas,[583] then lodging in this informant’s said husband’s house, and hearing of her to complain of great pricking pains in one of her knees, she the said informant did see her said knee, and observed that she had nine places in her knee which had been pricked, and that every one of the said pricks were as though it had been the prick of a thorn. Whereupon this informant afterwards, upon the same 2nd day of July, did demand of the said Temperance Lloyd whether she had any wax or clay in the form of a picture whereby she had pricked and tormented the said Grace Thomas? Unto which the said Temperance made answer that she had no wax or clay, but confessed that she had only a piece of leather which she had pricked nine times.”[584]