[29] Fuller, op. cit., V, 450.
[30] Ibid.; John Gee, The Foot out of the Snare, or Detection of Practices and Impostures of Priests and Jesuits in England ... (London, 1624), reprinted in Somers Tracts, III, 72.
[31] Ibid.; Fuller, op. cit., V, 450.
[32] How much more seriously than his courtiers is suggested by an anecdote of Sir John Harington's: James gravely questioned Sir John why the Devil did work more with ancient women than with others. "We are taught thereof in Scripture," gaily answered Sir John, "where it is told that the Devil walketh in dry places." See his Nugæ Antiquæ (London, 1769), ed. of London, 1804, I, 368-369.
[33] Fuller, op. cit., V, 451.
[34] Ibid.
[35] The story of the hangings at Leicester in 1616 has to be put together from various sources. Our principal authority, however, is in two letters written by Robert Heyrick of Leicester to his brother William in 1616, which are to be found in John Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (London, 1795-1815), II, pt. ii, 471, and in the Annual Register for 1800. See also William Kelly, Royal Progresses to Leicester (Leicester, 1884), 367-369. Probably this is the case referred to by Francis Osborne, where the boy was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury for further examination. Osborne, who wrote a good deal later than the events, apparently confused the story of the Leicester witches with that of the Boy of Bilston—their origins were similar—and produced a strange account; see his Miscellany of Sundry Essays, Paradoxes and Problematicall Discourses (London, 1658-1659), 6-9.
[36] For the disgrace of the judges see Cal. St. P., Dom., 1611-1618, 398.
[37] Webster knew Bishop Morton, and also his secretary, Baddeley, who had been notary in the case and had written an account of it. See John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London, 1677), 275.
[38] The Catholics declared that the Puritans tried "syllabub" upon him. This was perhaps a sarcastic reference to their attempts to cure him by medicine.