[16] For the case see The Tryall and Examinations of Mrs. Joan Peterson ...; The Witch of Wapping, or an Exact ... Relation of the ... Practises of Joan Peterson ...; A Declaration in Answer to severall lying Pamphlets concerning the Witch of Wapping ..., (as to these pamphlets, all printed at London in 1652, see below, appendix A, § 5); French Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1652; Weekly Intelligencer, April 6-13, 1652; The Faithful Scout, April 9-16, 1652; Mercurius Democritus, April 7-17, 1652.
[17] The French Intelligencer tells us the story of her execution: "She seemed to be much dejected, having a melancholy aspect; she seemed not to be much above 40 years of age, and was not in the least outwardly deformed, as those kind of creatures usually are."
[18] For an account of this affair see A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the ... Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone ... (London, 1652).
[19] It was "supposed," says the narrator, that nine children, besides a man and a woman, had suffered at their hands, £500 worth of cattle had been lost, and much corn wrecked at sea. Two of the women made confession, but not to these things.
[20] See Ashmole's diary as given in Charles Burman, Lives of Elias Ashmole, Esq., and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves ... (London, 1774), 316.
[21] In his Certainty of the World of Spirits (London, 1691), 44, 45, Richard Baxter, who is by no means absolutely reliable, tells us about this case. It should be understood that it is only a guess of the writer that the physician was to blame for the accusation; but it much resembles other cases where the physician started the trouble.
[22] William Cotton, Gleanings from the Municipal and Cathedral Records Relative to the History of the City of Exeter (Exeter, 1877), 149-150.
[23] Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 127.
[24] Mercurius Politicus, November 24-December 2, 1653. One of these witches was perhaps the one mentioned as from Launceston in Cornwall in R. and O. B. Peter, The Histories of Launceston and Dunheved (Plymouth, 1885), 285: "the grave in wch the wich was buryed."
[25] Richard Burthogge, An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (London, 1694), 196, writes that he has the confessions in MS. of "a great number of Witches (some of which were Executed) that were taken by a Justice of Peace in Cornwall above thirty Years agoe." It does not seem impossible that this is a reference to the same affair as that mentioned by the Launceston record.