[16] Roger North, op. cit., 61.
[17] Inderwick has given a good illustration of Hale's weakness of character: "I confess," he says, "to a feeling of pain at finding him in October, 1660, sitting as a judge at the Old Bailey, trying and condemning to death batches of the regicides, men under whose orders he had himself acted, who had been his colleagues in parliament, with whom he had sat on committees to alter the law." Interregnum, 217-218.
[18] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, XIV, 9, p. 480.
[19] Bishop Burnet, in his Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale (London, 1682), does not seem to have felt called upon to mention the Bury trial at all. See also Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (London, 1849), I, 563-567.
[20] Roger North, op. cit., 130, 131. The story, as here told, ascribes the event to the year preceding Lord Guilford's first western circuit—i. e., to 1674. But this perhaps need not be taken too exactly, and the witch was probably that Elizabeth Peacock who was acquitted in 1670 and again in the case of 1672 described above. At least the list of "Indictments for witchcraft on the Western Circuit from 1670 to 1712," published by Inderwick in his Sidelights on the Stuarts (London, 1888), shows no other acquittal in Wiltshire during this decade.
[21] For this letter see the Gentleman's Magazine, 1832, pt. I, 405-410, 489-402. The story is confirmed in part by Inderwick's finds in the western Gaol Delivery records. As to the trustworthiness of this unknown justice of the peace, see above, pp. 160, 162, and notes.
[22] That the judge was Sir Richard Rainsford appears from Inderwick's list, mentioned above, note 20.
[23] A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against ... Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards (London, 1682). And The Tryal, Condemnation and Execution of Three Witches ... (London, 1682). See also below, note 26, and appendix A, § 6.
[24] Roger North, op. cit., 130.
[25] At a trial at the York assizes in 1687 Sir John Reresby seems to have played about the same part that North played at Exeter. Serjeant Powell, later to be chief justice, was presiding over the case. "An old woman was condemned for a witch. Those who were more credulous in points of this nature than myself, conceived the evidence to be very strong against her. The boy she was said to have bewitched fell down on a sudden before all the court when he saw her, and would then as suddenly return to himself again, and very distinctly relate the several injuries she had done him: but in all this it was observed the boy was free from any distortion; that he did not foam at the mouth, and that his fits did not leave him gradually, but all at once; so that, upon the whole, the judge thought it proper to reprieve her." Memoirs and Travels of Sir John Reresby (London, 1813), 329.