Mary Smith of Lynn, wife of Henry Smith, glover, was envious of her
neighbours for their greater skill in making cheese: in the midst of her
discontents, and while her mind, by its passion and evil thoughts, was in
a fit condition for the devil to enter therein, Satan came to her as a
black man, provoking her in a "lowe murmuring and hissing Voyce," to
forsake God and follow him; to which she "condescended" in express terms.
The devil then constantly appeared to her--sometimes as a mist; sometimes
as a ball of fire, with dispersed spangles of black; but chiefly as a
black man; and sometimes as a horned man, in which shape he came to her
when in prison. Mary was a good hand at banning. She cursed John Orkton,
and wished his fingers might rot off, and they did so; she cursed
Elizabeth Hancock, whom she accused of stealing her hen, wishing that the
bones might stick in her throat, calling her a "prowde linny, prowde
flurts, and shaking the hand bade her go in, for she should repent it;"
and incontinently Elizabeth Hancock was taken with a pinching at the
heart, and sudden weakness of all her body, and fainting fits, and racking
pains, and madness, and raving, so that she tore the hair off her head as
she tossed about distracted. Her father went to a wise man, who showed him
Mary Smith's face in a glass, and bade him make a cake according to
certain directions, which then he was to lay, half on Bessie's head and
half on her back, and which would infallibly cure her, as she was not ill
but bewitched. The father did so, and the daughter mended. Soon after
this she married one James Scot, who, having a mortal hatred against Mary
Smith, killed her cat, and threatened that if his wife had any such fits
as she had before they married, he would hang Mary Smith without mercy. At
this Mary clapped her hands, and cried "They had killed her cat!" and the
next day Elizabeth had the old nipping round her heart. So James went to
Mary and said he would most certainly take her before the magistrates, if
she did not amend her ways and heal his wife at once. Fortunately for Mary
the woman got better, and the evil day was staved off for a time. To
Cecily Balye, the maid-servant next door, she sent her cat to sit upon her
breast when she slept, in revenge at the maid's sweeping a little dust
awry; and Cicely gave awful evidence how, through the thin partition which
divided them, she used to see Mary Smith adoring her imp in a submissive
manner--down on her knees, using strange gestures and uttering many
murmuring and broken speeches; and if she had listened, and looked more
attentively, she might have seen and heard more: "but she was with the
present spectacle so affrighted, that she hurried away in much feare and
distemper."
"The fourth endammaged by this Hagge," says Roberts, was one Edmund
Newton. He was a cheesemonger, like herself, and she thought he got the
best of the trade; so she, or her imp in her likeness, came to him as he
was lying in bed, and "whisked about his face a wet cloath of very
loathsome savour; after which he did see one clothed in russet, with a
little bush beard, who told him he was sent to looke vpon his sore legge,
and would heale it." When Newton rose to take a fairer look, he saw that
the russet man with a little bush beard had cloven feet, so refused his
offer of chirurgery. After this Mary was constantly sending her imps to
him--a toad and crabs--which crawled about the house, "which was a shoppe
planchered with boords, where his seruants (hee being a shoo maker) did
worke;" and one of them took the toad and flung it into the fire, during
which time the witch was grievously tormented. So nothing would serve
Edmund Newton's turn but he must "scratch her;" yet when he strove to do
so his nails turned like feathers, and he had no power over her, not even
to raise the skin so much as a nine weeks' old babe might have done. At
another time a great water-dog ran over his bed--the chamber door being
shut--and he fell lame in his hand, and did not recover the use of it
again. And then the law interfered, and Mary Smith was brought before the
magistrates to answer to the charge of witchcraft--by them committed to
the assizes--found guilty by judge and jury--and hanged by the neck till
she was dead, as a warning to the time and her own kind. This murder was
done 1616.