of the choicest amenities, was the result. But as Glanvil had error and credulity, and Webster reason and right judgment on his side, it mattered little who was assumed to have the best of it for the moment. Time and education gradually settled the question, and buried it for a time out of sight; yet it has sprung up anew of late, and now needs settling again. THE BIDEFORD TROUBLES.[152] In the July of 1682, Temperance Lloyd, of Bideford, or "Bytheford," was accused of bewitching Mrs. Grace Thomas. Temperance, being a little crazy, had cried one day on meeting Mrs. Grace, who had been for long months but a poor, "dunt," feckless body; and when asked why she wept had made answer, "For joy to see her who had been so ill, walk abroad again without disaster." But that very same night Mrs. Grace was taken with fresh pains, "sticking and pricking Pains, as if Pins and Awls had been thrust into her Body, from the Crown of her Head to the Soles of her Feet, and she lay as if she had been upon a rack;" and none but Temperance Lloyd the cause thereof, despite all her hypocritical tears. And did not Elizabeth Eastcheap see her knee, which looked as if it had been pricked in nine places with a thorn? And when Temperance was asked if she had any clay or wax wherewith to torment Mrs. Grace, did she not confess to a bit of leather which she had pricked nine times, and which was as full of venom and sorcery as any wax or clay in the world? Besides, it came out afterwards, that she had gone to Thomas Eastcheap's shop in the form of a gray or "braget cat," and thence taken out a "puppit or picture, commonly called a child's baby," which she stuck full of pins, whereby to prick Grace to death. When asked in what part of the house the said puppet or picture was hidden, she refused to tell, saying the devil would tear her in pieces if she confessed. Anne Wakely, too, the neighbour who went to nurse poor Grace, had her word to say; for one morning--it was on a bonny day in June--she saw "something in the shape of a magpye come at the chamber window;" and when Temperance was questioned as to what she knew of this fluttering thing, she made answer that it was the Black Man in the shape of a bird which she had sent to trouble poor rheumatic pain-racked Grace. For Temperance was not stiff. She was easily brought to confess how she had given herself over to the service of a black man, who made her do all manner of hurt to her neighbours--made her pinch Grace Thomas, and bewitch William Herbert to his death twelve years ago, and destroy Anne Fellows three years since--for both of which crimes she had been arraigned and questioned at the time, but had managed to get clear. Now, however, she confessed that she had been guilty of them. The dread and evil fame and poverty under which she had lived so long had done their appointed work on her poor old brain; and she was ready to confess to anything which it was desired she should allow. Yes, she had bewitched the eyes of