[19] The women were tried in March, 1618/19. Henry, the elder son of the earl, was buried at Bottesford, September 26, 1613. John Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (London, 1795-1815), II, pt. i, 49, note 10. Francis, the second, lingered till early in 1620. His sister, Lady Katherine, whose delicate health had also been ascribed to the witches, was now the heiress, and became in that year the bride of Buckingham, the king's favorite. There is one aspect of this affair that must not be overlooked. The accusation against the Flowers cannot have been unknown to the king, who was a frequent visitor at the seat of the Rutlands. It is hard to believe that under such circumstances the use of torture, which James had declared essential to bring out the guilt of the accused witches, was not after some fashion resorted to. The weird and uncanny confessions go far towards supporting such an hypothesis.
[20] The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther committed by ... Annis Dell, ... with the severall Witch-crafts ... of one Johane Harrison and her Daughter, 63.
[21] This story must be accepted with hesitation; see below, appendix A, §3.
[22] See above, pp. 110-111.
[23] The trial of Elizabeth Sawyer at Edmonton in 1621 had to do with similar trivialities. Agnes Ratcliffe was washing one day, when a sow belonging to Elizabeth licked up a bit of her washing soap. She struck it with a "washing beetle." Of course she fell sick, and on her death-bed accused Mistress Elizabeth Sawyer, who was afterwards hanged.
[24] See T. Tindall Wildridge, in William Andrews, Bygone Derbyshire (Derby, 1892), 180-184. It has been impossible to locate the sources of this story. J. Charles Cox, who explored the Derby records, seems never to have discovered anything about the affair.
[25] See F. Legge, "Witchcraft in Scotland," in the Scottish Review, XVIII, 264.
[26] See above, ch. IV, especially note 36.
[27] On Mary Glover see also appendix A, § 2. On other impostures see Thomas Fuller, Church History of Britain (London, 1655; Oxford, ed. J. S. Brewer, 1845), ed. of 1845, V, 450; letters given by Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, Biography and Manners ... (London, 1791), III, 275, 284, 287-288; also King James, His Apothegms, by B. A., Gent. (London, 1643), 8-10.
[28] Cal. St. P., Dom., 1603-1610, 218.