The three accused were also examined, and declared their belief that Grace Sowerbutts had been trained by the priest to accuse them of witchcraft, because they ‘would not be dissuaded from the Church.’
‘These examinations being taken, they were brought into the Court, and there openly in the presence of this great audience published and declared to the jury of life and death; and thereupon the gentlemen of their jury required to consider of them. For although they stood upon their Trial, for matter of fact of witchcraft, murther, and much more of the like nature: yet in respect all their accusations did appear to be practice, they were now to consider of them and to acquit them. Thus were these poor innocent creatures, by the great care and pains of this honourable Judge, delivered from the danger of this conspiracy; this bloody practice of the Priest laid open: of whose fact I may lawfully say, Etiam si ego tacuero clamabunt lapides.
‘These are but ordinary with Priests and Jesuits: no respect of blood, kindred, or friendship can move them to forbear their conspiracies; for when he had laboured treacherously to seduce and convert them, and yet could do no good, then devised he this means.
‘God of His great mercy deliver us all from them and their damnable conspiracies: and when any of his Majesty’s subjects, so free and innocent as these, shall come in question, grant them as honourable a trial, as reverend and worthy a judge to sit in judgment upon them, and in the end as speedy a deliverance.
‘And for that which I have heard of them, seen with my eyes, and taken pains to read of them, my humble prayer shall be to God Almighty, Vt convertantur ne pereant. Aut confundantur ne noceant.’[43]
I pass on to a remarkable trial for witchcraft which took place at Taunton Assizes in August, 1626, one Edward Ball and Joan Greedie being charged with having practised upon a certain Edward Dinham.
It seems that the complainant, when under the witch-spell, possessed no fewer than three voices—namely, his own natural voice, and two artificial voices, of which one was shrill and pleasant, the other deadly and hollow. These two voices belonged respectively to the good and evil spirits which alternately prevailed over him. As it is said that they spoke without any movement of the lips or tongue, it is probable the man was a natural ventriloquist, and made use of his gift to imperil the lives of Ball and Greedie, against whom he may have entertained a hostile feeling. He gave the following specimen of the conversation which took place between him and his spirits:
Good Spirit. How comes this man to be thus tormented?
Bad Spirit. He is bewitched.
Good. Who hath done it?