pretty babe was born a martyr, and added to the number of the holy innocents.

Parsons, the English Jesuit, has asserted that the women were felons and were executed for theft, while other apologists have described them as prostitutes and generally infamous in character. The original sentences, however, which still exist at the Guernsey Greffe, and which I have examined, conclusively settle the question. Both the ecclesiastical sentence, which is in Latin, and the civil sentence, which is in French, distinctly describe the charge as one of heresy, and make no mention whatever of any other crime as having aught to do with the condemnation.

It has been questioned too whether a child could be born alive under such circumstances. Mr. F.B. Tupper, in his History of Guernsey (page 151), says: "We are assured by competent surgical authority that the case is very possible"; and he further mentions that in a volume entitled Three Visits to Madagascar, by the Rev. Wm. Ellis, published in London, in 1858, a precisely similar case is stated to have occurred in that island. A native woman was burnt for becoming a convert to Christianity, and her infant, born in the flames, was thrust into them again, and burnt also.

Lord Tennyson refers to this Guernsey martyrdom in his historical drama of Queen Mary (Act v. Scene iv.). It is night-time in London; a light is burning in the Royal Palace; and he makes two "Voices of the Night" say:—

First:—There's the Queen's light. I hear she cannot live.

Second:—God curse her and her Legate! Gardiner burns
Already; but to pay them full in kind,
The hottest hold in all the devil's den
Were but a sort of winter; Sir, in Guernsey,
I watch'd a woman burn; and in her agony
The mother came upon her—a child was born—
And, Sir, they hurl'd it back into the fire,
That, being thus baptised in fire, the babe
Might be in fire for ever. Ah, good neighbour,
There should be something fierier than fire
To yield them their deserts.

With regard to Witchcraft in Jersey, I have not had an opportunity of personally examining the official records there. I find, however, some information on the subject, given by M. De La Croix, in his Ville de St. Hélier, and Les Etats de Jersey, upon which I have drawn. In the way of legislation, the Guernsey Court does not appear to have promulgated any penal statutes on the subject, being content to treat the crime as one against the common law of the Island. In Jersey on the contrary, Witchcraft was specially legislated against at least on one occasion, for we find that on December 23rd, 1591, the Royal Court of that island passed an Ordinance, of which the following is the purport:—

In 1562 two women were executed in Jersey for witchcraft. One of them named Anne, a native of St. Brelade's, was burnt at St. Helier's; and the other, Michelle La Blanche, expiated her crime at the gibbet of the Hurets, in the parish of St. Ouen, because criminals dwelling on the Fief Haubert de St. Ouen, were, in accordance with custom, required to be executed within the boundaries of the said Fief—seeing that it possessed a gallows-right—and their goods and lands became forfeited to the Seigneur.

In 1583 a rather curious point of law was raised in connection with a pending witch-trial at St. Helier's. On the 15th of February in that year, a suspected witch named Marion Corbel, who had been imprisoned in the Castle awaiting her trial, suddenly died. Whereupon her relatives came forward and claimed to be heirs to her goods and chattles, seeing that she had not been convicted of the imputed crime, and urging that her death put an end to further criminal proceedings. The Queen's Procureur, however—it was in the reign of Elizabeth—contended that death was no bar to the completion of the indictment, although it had effectually removed the criminal from the jurisdiction of the Court, as far as punishment was concerned. The very reasonable claim of the deceased woman's relatives was therefore set aside, and the defunct of course being found guilty, her possessions reverted to the crown.

Again, forty years later, in 1623, an old woman of sixty, named Marie Filleul, daughter of Thomas Filleul, of the parish of St. Clement's, was tried before a jury of twenty-four of her countrymen, and found guilty of the diabolical crime of Sorcery. She was therefore hanged and burnt as a witch, and her goods were confiscated to the King [James I.], and to the Seigneurs to whom they belonged.

It may be interesting to note here the opinion of Mr. Philippe Le Geyt, the famous commentator on the constitution and laws of Jersey, and one of the most enlightened men of his time, who for many years was Lieutenant-Bailiff of that island. He was born in 1635 and died in 1715, in his eighty-first year. In Vol. I., page 42, of his works, there occurs a passage of which the following is a translation:—

Coming down now to within a century ago, we find an article in the Gazette de Jersey, of Saturday, March 10th, 1787, complaining of the great increase of wizards and witches in the island, as well as of their supposed victims. The writer says that the scenes then taking place were truly ridiculous, and he details a case that had just occurred at St. Brelade's as corroborative of his assertion. It appears that a worthy householder there, had dreamed that a certain wizard appeared to him and ordered him to poison himself at a date which was specified, enjoining him above all things not to mention the incident to anyone. The poor silly fellow was dreadfully distressed, for he felt convinced that he