Witchcraft -- England; Witchcraft -- Great Britain; Witchcraft -- Scotland
dead, just in the order which the preacher desired. Then he rose up cured
and exorcised; but Mr. Darrel told him he might be possessed again, and he
must be very careful and watchful. Of course he was possessed again. He
had been too great a gainer by the first trial not to venture on a second.
If he had been bought off his apprenticeship, had large presents of
clothes, and kept in idleness at his father-in-law's, for a first trial,
what might not fall from the skies on this second occasion? So Will began
to talk wildly of a black dog that haunted him, offering him gold and
ginger, and of the devil who came with six more shapes to torment
him--namely, as a cock, a crane, a snake, an angel, a toad, a newt, a set
of viols, and dancers, and that he stood before him "with a foure-forked
cappe on his heade;" sometimes, too, making noises and motions like whelps
or "kitlings." Fourteen persons were thrown into prison, accused of
bewitching Master Will, of whom the most celebrated was Millicent Horslie,
whom no human skill could have saved had not the impostor betrayed himself
in time. For Will Somers had a revelation concerning her, which must be
told in the words of his "confession," as reported by Harsnet:--"Maister
Darrel told my father-in-law and others in my hearing, that he, the said
Maister Darrel, Maister Aldred, and some others, were going to carrie
Millicent Horsley (that present morning) to the said Maister Perkins, to
be examined. Whereupon, I gessing by the time of Maister Darrel's
departure, and by the distance of the way, and of the likelihood that she
woulde deny herselfe to bee a witche, said to those that were present by
mee in one of my fittes, about eleven of the clocke, that Millicent
Horsley was in examining, and that she denyed herselfe to be a witch."
This coincidence was too striking an instance of supernatural power to be
overlooked. Mr. Darrel worked on it as one of the most marvellous proofs
of the boy's undeniable possession, and Millicent Horsley lay in gaol,
together with thirteen others, to satisfy the craft of one and the
credulity of the other, and to prove the whole age sick, diseased, and
enfeebled by superstition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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