[126] Wright, quoting Lord Londesborough’s MSS.
[127] Wright.
[128] Webster. Wright. Harleian MSS.
[129] ‘A most Certain Strange and true Discovery of a witch, being taken by some Parliamentary Forces as she was standing on a small planck-board and sayling on it over the River of Newberry. 1643.’ Evidently a political matter, and perhaps with no substratum of truth in the story at all.
[130] A collection of Modern Relations. 1693.
[131] Matthew’s own account of them in a little tract called ‘Certaine Queries Answered, which have been and are likely to be objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out witches,’ was slightly different.—1. Holt, like a white kitling.—2. Jarmara, a fat spaniel without any legs at all, which she said she kept fat, for he sucked good blood from her body.—3. Vinegar Tom, a long-legged greyhound with an head like an ox, a long tail and broad eyes, who, when Hopkins spoke to, and bade him go to the place provided for him and his angels, transformed himself into the shape of a child of foure years without a head, and gave half a dozen turns about the house and vanished at the door.—4. Sack-and-sugar, like a black rabbit; and 5. Newes, like a polecat. Also he said that no mortal could invent such names as Elemauzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, Griezel Greedigut, &c., which, however, one of our great word-masters, Charles Dickens, would find no difficulty in doing, and which certainly have no very infernal sound in them.
[132] Baxter, Hutchinson, &c.
[133] Baxter.
[134] Tract.
[135] ‘The Laws against Witches.’ Published by Authority, 1645.