When finished with by the magistrates, the prisoner was taken to church, and in the presence of all the witnesses against her was examined by the rector, Mr. Michael Ogilby. This appears to be a relic of the old ecclesiastical courts. Here the prisoner adds other trifling items to her already long list of crimes. She had done to death Jane Dallyn, and also Lydia Burman. There was some excuse for this last, inasmuch as the said Lydia Burman had given evidence at the assizes in 1670 that the prisoner had appeared to her in the shape of a red pig, while she was at work, brewing in the house of Humphrey Ackland, of Bideford. Then Mr. Ogilby put her to the test of reciting the Lord's Prayer and the creed, but the prisoner failing to do this to his satisfaction, "he gave her many good exhortations, and so departed from her." Such was the evidence against, and the confession of, Temperance Lloyd. People believed it in those days, but now, alas! Cuilibet in sua arte credendum est.
Now, when Temperance was locked up in gaol, she evidently found it lonely, and so made sufficient observations to her attendants as to necessitate the arrest of her old cronies, Susanna Edwards and Mary Trembles. One remark was to the effect that if she was to be hanged, that Susanna should join her, and at the same time dropping hints about riding on a red cow, and so on.
On July 18th the same magistrates set to work on Susanna Edwards and Mary Trembles. A certain Grace Barnes had been taken ill in a mysterious manner, and to the alarm of her husband and friends. Whilst the attack lasted, one Agnes Whitfield, who was present, heard some one at the door, which opening, she found Mary Trembles pretending to be going to the bakehouse with a white pot in her hands. Grace Barnes being told who was at the door, cried out that Mary Trembles was one of them who did torment her; the other was Susanna Edwards, because she was always coming to her house on some foolish pretence or other. Then a blacksmith called William Edwards reports a conversation of Susanna Edwards, showing that she and Mary Trembles had been trying their art on Grace Barnes. One of the informants was Joane Jones, who was probably the female watcher at the prison, because she gives evidence of conversations overheard between Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards while in prison.
A curious scene took place before the magistrates on this occasion. Anthony Jones, husband of the last witness, was standing by the side of Susanna Edwards, and seeing her to twist her fingers about, said, "Thou devil, thou art tormenting some person or other!" This enraged the old woman, who looked at him and said, "Well enough I'll fit thee." The evidence of Grace Barnes being required, a constable and the man Jones are sent to fetch her; and as they are bringing her with much ado into the court, Susanna catches the eye of the officious Mr. Jones, who forthwith falls down in a fit, and is described as having "leapt and capered like a madman, and fell a shaking, quivering, and groaning, and lay for the space of half an hour like a dying or dead man." Then follows the examination of Mary Trembles, who pleads guilty to everything and anything. She had been enlisted to the cause of witchcraft by Susanna Edwards, and had been promised by her "never to want for money, drink, or clothes;" that the devil had appeared to her like a Lyon, and that she and Susanna had bewitched Grace Barnes because the latter had refused them some bread.
Susanna Edwards, in her confession, said that she had made the acquaintance of the devil two years ago in Parsonage Close, and that he was like a gentleman. She met him again the same day in Stambridge Lane, and that he again persuaded her to kill Grace Barnes. She had bewitched one Dorcas Coleman, and finally owned that "she gave herself to the devil when she did meet him in Stambridge Lane, and that the said Mary Trembles was a servant to her, in like manner as she, this examinant, was a servant to the devil (whom she called by the appellation of a gentleman)."
Another case was gone into against Susanna Edwards on July 26th, but it merely confirmed her confession, which was hardly necessary.
These miserable old women were, on this evidence and these confessions, sent to Exeter, where they, on August 18th, were tried, found guilty, and condemned to be hanged; and which sentence was carried out on the 25th of the same month at Heavitree, as we are informed in Jenkin's History of Exeter.
Even at the foot of the gallows they stuck to their story, altering it but little, though they were much questioned by a meddlesome Mr. Hann, "who was a minister in those parts." In a curious tract published in London this same year (1682), which I have appended to this, with a copy of the deposition taken at the magistrates' enquiry, there is a statement that Mary Trembles was very loath to be hanged, and in order to get her to the place of execution was strapped on a horse.
It is commonly supposed that this was the last execution for witchcraft in England; but such is not the case. In 1716 a woman and her daughter were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil. Twenty years after, in 1736, the penal act of James I. was erased from the statute-book. The judges of the land were among the first to set their faces against these judicial murders; one of the earliest being Mr. Chief Justice Holt, who on all occasions endeavoured to procure an acquittal.
There is a letter among the State papers from Lord Keeper North, who was at Exeter on circuit at these assizes, to Sir Leoline Jenkins, which gives an excellent view of the question as then considered. It is dated Exeter, August 19th, 1682. "Here have been three old women condemned for witchcraft; your curiosity will make you enquire of the circumstances. I shall only tell you that what I had from my brother Raymond, before whom they were tried, that they were the most old, decrepid, despicable, miserable creatures that he ever saw. A painter would have chosen them out of the whole country for figures of that kind to have drawn by.