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Updated: June 14, 2025
"This is the Potter's Field. Behold the fate Of those who deal in witchcrafts, and when questioned, Refuse to plead their guilt or innocence, And stubbornly drag death upon themselves. "Those who lie buried in the Potter's Field Will rise again as surely as ourselves That sleep in honored graves with epitaphs; And this poor man whom we have made a victim, Hereafter will be counted as a martyr."
Young Bohemian maid, you confess your participation in the feasts, witches' sabbaths, and witchcrafts of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer." "Yes," she said, so low that her words were lost in her breathing. "You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to appear in the clouds to call together the witches' sabbath, and which is beheld by socerers alone?" "Yes."
Stearne could not avoid noticing that some of those who suffered were very religious. One woman, who had kept an imp for twenty-one years, "did resort to church and had a desire to be rid of her unhappy burden." I. e., witches. This letter is printed by Gaule at the opening of his Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts.
Not content with thus entangling herself in a fearful web of crime, she went on to point out other women guilty of similar witchcrafts. Four of those whom she named were haled before the justice. Elizabeth Bennett, who spun wool for a cloth-maker, was one of those most vehemently accused, but she denied knowledge of any kind of witchcraft.
Another pamphlet seems to have been issued about the affair: Strange and wonderfull Witchcrafts, discovering the damnable Practises of seven Witches against the Lives of certain noble Personages and others of this Kingdom; with an approved Triall how to find out either Witch or any Apprentise to Witchcraft, 1621. Another edition in 1635; see Lowndes.
A description was given of the methods practised, and it was enacted that the use of any invocation or conjuration of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries should be considered felony. It will be observed that the law made no graduation of offences. Everything was listed as felony. No later piece of legislation on the subject was so sweeping in its severity.
So God me help, said Sir Launcelot, I may not wite this to you; but her that made this enchantment upon me as between you and me, an I may find her, that same Lady Brisen, she shall lose her head for witchcrafts, for there was never knight deceived so as I am this night. And so Sir Launcelot arrayed him, and armed him, and took his leave mildly at that lady young Elaine, and so he departed.
His ready pen was soon furnished with materials for "a story all made up of wonders," which, with some other matters of the same sort, and a sermon preached on the occasion, he presently published, under the title of Memorable Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, with a preface in which he warned all "Sadducees" that he should regard their doubts for the future as a personal insult.
Oh the witchcrafts, by which some men's spirits are intoxicated! and the strength of delusion, by which some are infatuated, and turned aside from the simplicity that is in Jesus Christ! For to obey God and Christ in all things, with you, is to do it from principles purely human in the faith of this: that Christ hath designed to possess us again with that holiness we had lost.
"IV. As in complaints upon witchcrafts there may be matters of enquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there may be matters of presumption which yet may not be reckoned matters of conviction, so it is necessary, that all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those that may be complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an unblemished reputation.
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