He mentions Potts's Discoverie, in the amusing but very inaccurate and imperfect historical sketch referred to,[37] as a curious and rare book, which he had then for the first time obtained a sight of. What could have been his meaning in referring his readers, for an account of Mother Demdike and a description of Malking Tower, to "Mr. Roby's Antiquities of Lancaster," that apocryphal historian having given no such account or description, and having published no such work, it is rather difficult to conjecture.

With all his habitual tautology and grave absurdity, Master Potts is, nevertheless, a faithful and accurate chronicler, and we owe his memory somewhat for furnishing us with so elaborate a report of what took place on this trial, and giving us, "in their own country terms," the examinations of the witnesses, which contain much which throws light on the manners and language of the times, and nearly all that is necessary to enable us to form a judgment on the proceedings. It will be observed that he follows with great exactness the course pursued in court, in opening the case and recapitulating the evidence separately against each prisoner, so as most graphically to place before us the whole scene as it occurred. The part in which he is felt to be most deficient, is in the want of some further account of the prisoners convicted, from the trial up to the time of their execution. To Master Potts, a man of legal forms and ceremonies, the entire interest in the case seems to have come in and gone out with the judge's trumpets.

As most of the points in the trial which appeared to require observation, have been adverted to in the notes which follow the reprint, it is not considered necessary to enter into any analysis or review of the evidence adduced at the trial, which presents such a miserable mockery of justice. Mother Demdike, it will be seen, died in prison before the trial came on. Of the Pendle witches four, namely Old Chattox, Elizabeth Device, James Device, and Alizon Device, had all made confessions, and had little chance, therefore, of escaping condemnation. They were all found guilty; and with them were convicted, Anne Redfern, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, and Jane Bulcock, who were all of Pendle or its neighbourhood, and who maintained their innocence and refused to make any confession. They were executed, along with the first-mentioned four and Isabel Robey, who was of Windle, in the parish of Prescot, and had been found guilty of similar practises, the day after the trial, viz. on the 18th of August, 1612, "at the common place of execution near to Lancaster."

The main interest in reviewing this miserable band of victims will be felt to centre in Alice Nutter.[38] Wealthy, well conducted, well connected, and placed probably on an equality with most of the neighbouring families and the magistrate before whom she was brought, and by whom she was committed, she deserves to be distinguished from the companions with whom she suffered, and to attract an attention which has never yet been directed towards her.[39] That Jennet Device, on whose evidence she was convicted, was instructed to accuse her by her own nearest relatives, to whom "superfluous lagged the veteran on the stage," and that the magistrate, Roger Nowell, entered actively as a confederate into the conspiracy from a grudge entertained against her on account of a long disputed boundary, are allegations which tradition has preserved, but the truth or falsehood of which, at this distance of time, it is scarcely possible satisfactorily to examine. With such a witness, however, as Jennet Device, and such an admirable engine as the meeting at Malking-Tower, the guests at which she could multiply ad libitum, doling out the plaat, as Titus Oates would call it, by such instalments, and in such fragmentary portions, as would conduce to an easy digestion of the whole, the wonder seems not to be, that one unfortunate victim of a higher class should have perished in the meshes of artful and complicated villainy, but that its ramifications were not more extensive, and still more fatal and destructive. From one so capable of taking a hint as the little precocious prodigy of wickedness, in whose examination, Potts tells us, "Mr. Nowell took such great paines," a very summary deliverance might be expected from troublesome neighbours, or still more troublesome relatives; and if, by a leading question, she could only be induced to marshal them in their allotted places at the witches' imaginary banquet, there was little doubt of their taking their station at a place of meeting where the sad realities of life were only to be encountered, "the common place of execution near to Lancaster."

The trial of the Samlesbury witches, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth, forms a curious episode in Potts's Discoverie. A Priest or Jesuit, of the name of Thomson, alias Southworth, had tutored the principal evidence, Grace Sowerbuts, a girl of the age of fourteen, but who had not the same instinctive genius for perjury as Jennet Device, to accuse the three persons above mentioned of having bewitched her; "so that," as the indictment runs, "by means thereof her body wasted and consumed." "The chief object," says Sir Walter Scott, "in this imposture, was doubtless the advantage and promotion of the Catholic cause, as the patient would have been in due time exorcised and the fiend dispossessed, by the same priest who had taught her to counterfeit the fits. Revenge against the women, who had become proselytes to the Church of England, was probably an additional motive." But the imposture broke down, from the inability of the principal witness to support the scheme of deception. Unsuccessful, however, as it proved, the time was well chosen, the groundwork excellently laid, the evidence industriously got up, and it must ever deserve a prominent place in the history—a history, how delightful when it shall be written in the spirit of philosophy and with due application of research—of human fraud and imposture.

We can only speculate, of course, on such an occasion, but perhaps no trial is recorded as having taken place, with the results of which every body, the parties convicted only excepted, was, in all probability, better pleased or satisfied, than at this witch trial at Lancaster in 1612. The mob would be delighted with a pageant, always acceptable, in the execution of ten witches; and still more, that one of them was of a rank superior to their own;—the judge had no doubt, in his opinion, avoided each horn of the dilemma—the abomination mentioned in Scripture—punishing the innocent or letting the guilty go free—by tracking guilt with well breathed sagacity, and unravelling imposture with unerring skill;—a Jesuit had been unkennelled, a spectacle as gratifying to a serious