Anne Cate, another of the witches who was executed at Chelmsford, said she had three familiars like mice and a fourth like a sparrow. They were called James, Prickeare, Robyn, and Sparrow, and she sent them to kill both cattle and human beings.
It was thought impossible to kill these familiars, and one Goff, a glover and very honest man of Manningtree, confessed to passing Anne West's house about four o'clock on a moonlight morning and seeing her door was open, he looked into the house. "Presently there came three or four little things in the shape of black rabbits leaping and skipping about him, who, having a good stick in his hand, struck at them thinking to kill them, but could not, but at last caught one of them in his hand, and holding it by the body, he beat the head of it against his stick, intending to beat the brains out of it; but when he could not kill it that way, he took the body in one hand and the head in another and endeavoured to wring off the head, and as he wrung and stretched the neck of it, it came out between his hands like a lock of wool." Then he tried to drown it in a spring, but kept falling down. At last he crept to the water on hands and knees, holding the familiar under the water for a good space. But as soon as he let go it sprang out of the water up into the air and so vanished.
He went and asked Anne West why she had set her imps on him to molest and trouble him, but she said "they were sent out as scouts upon another design."[74]
Joan Cariden, widow, examined September 25, 1645, said, that about three-quarters of a year ago, as she was in bed about twelve or one of the clock in the night there lay a rugged soft thing on her bosom which was very soft, and she thrust it off with her hand; and she said that when she had thrust it away she thought God forsook her, for she could never pray so well as she could before, and further she said that she verily thought it was alive. Examined further, she said the Devil came to her in the shape of a black rugged dog in the night-time and crept into bed with her and spoke to her in mumbling language. The next night he came again and required her to deny God and lean on him.
Jane Hott, widow and associate of the above, also examined on September 25, 1645, confessed that a thing like a hedgehog had usually visited her, and when it lay on her breast she struck it off with her hand, and that it was as soft as a cat.
In 1664 one Elizabeth Style, a widow, of Bayford, was examined at Stoke Trister, Somerset, before Robert Hunt, for witchcraft.
One of the witnesses, Nicholas Lambert, examined on January 26 of that year, deposed to having watched the prisoner in company with William Thick and William Read of Bayford. The informant sat near the prisoner by the fire at three o'clock in the morning and was reading "The Practice of Piety," when he noticed "there came from her head a glistening bright fly about an inch in length, which pitched at first in the chimney and then vanished. In less than a quarter of an hour after, there appeared two flies more, of a less size and another colour, which seemed to strike at the informant's hand in which he held his book, but missed it. He looked steadfastly at the prisoner and perceived her countenance to change and to become very black and ghastly, the fire also at the same time changing its colour; whereupon the informants, Thick and Read, conceiving that her familiar was then about her, looked at her poll, and seeing her hair shake very strangely, took it up, and then a fly like a great Millar flew out from the place and pitched on the table board and then vanished away." When asked what it was that flew out of her poll the accused said it was a butterfly, and asked them why they had not caught it. She confessed that it was her familiar and that was the usual time when her familiar came to her.[75]
One Alice Duke, alias Manning, of Wincanton, in Somerset, who was tried in 1664 for witchcraft, confessed that her familiar visited her "in the shape of a little cat of a dunnish colour, which is as smooth as a want," and that "her familiar doth commonly suck her right breast about seven at night," when she fell into a kind of trance.
Margaret and Phillip Flower, daughters of Joan Flower, were tried for witchcraft near Belvoir Castle and executed at Lincoln on March 11, 1618, on the most extraordinary charges.[76]