[P. 425]. “Made a man for ever.” I note this 1584 use of the phrase.
[P. 426]. “I constreine the spirit of N.” The after text might induce one to suppose that “the” = thee, but the phrase is repeated seventeen times in this chapter, and “thee spirit of N.” not once, though we have “the spirit of thee N.” once, and “thou spirits of N.” thrice. Our Elizabethan ancestors were apt thus to mingle up the second and third persons.
[P. 428]. “Proove this.” Try it; put it to the proof.
[P. 431]. “(Blew miracles).” A friend suggests “trew”; but though this is probably the sense, yet I hesitate to change the word. W. B., in Notes and Queries, fully explains this as “blaues wunder”, an “amazing or wonderful wonder”, the adjective being intensative, as is perhaps “blue” in the phrase, “once in a blue moon,” i.e., never.
[P. 434]. “Doctor Burc.” The Burcot cozened into buying a familiar from Feats, p. 522.
——— “He strake.” Spirit-rapping, therefore, is older than this century, though the manner was different.
[P. 436]. “Matins at midnight.” The Franciscans solemnise matins directly midnight is passed.
[P. 437]. “Officiall.” The French name. Cf. Cotgrave and Du Cange.
[P. 439]. “To to abridge.” A printer’s repetition; one being at the end of a line, the second at the beginning of the next.
[P. 441]. “Deus in adjutorium.” Ps. lxx. Prayer Book.