Elizabeth Hill, aged thirteen, had strange fits. She was much convulsed
and contorted; she writhed, foamed, and could with difficulty be held or
mastered; she had moreover swellings and holes in her flesh, which were
made she said by thorns, and whence the bystanders averred they saw the
child hook out thorns. Even the clergyman of the parish, William Parsons
rector of Stoke Trister, added his testimony to the rest: and on the 26th
of January, 1664, in an examination taken before Robert Hunt, vouched for
the truth of the fits, and the swellings, and the black thorns in the
midst of the swellings; but he did not add to this testimony the further
assertion that it was Elizabeth Styles who had bewitched the child, though
she herself "cried out" on her, and said that she tormented her in her
fits. Elizabeth Styles was further accused of causing Richard Hill's horse
to sit down and paw with his fore feet when attempted to be crossed, and
of having bewitched Agnes Vining by means of a rosy-cheeked apple, which
was no sooner eaten than it caused a grievous pricking in Agnes' thigh,
who forthwith languished and died, "her hip rotted, and one of her eyes
swelled out." These are signs of a worse bewitchment than poor old Mother
Styles's rosy-cheeked apple--signs of the deadly sorcery of scrofula
induced by the poverty, dirt, bad food and worse lodging of the times; for
the effects of which many a poor wretch lost her life who yet had done no
more harm than the nursling at the breast. Robert Hunt the Justice, and
one of our fine old English gentlemen, did not take this materialistic
view of the matter. When told of Agnes Vining's illness and manner of
disease, and seeing Elizabeth Styles looking appalled and concerned, he
said to her: "You have been an old sinner, you deserve little mercy." To
which the poor soul answered, humbly, "I have asked God for it." She then
said that the devil had seduced her, and so began her confession on the
26th of January--three days after the first accusation by the Hills. She
said that about ten years ago the devil appeared to her as a handsome man
changing afterwards to the shape of a black dog; "that he promised her
money, and that she should live gallantly, and have the Pleasures of the
World for twelve years," if only she would sign a certain bond with her
blood, give him her soul, obey his laws, and let him suck her blood. To
all of which she consented after four solicitations, whereupon he pricked
her finger--the mark thereof to be seen at this time--and she, with her
own blood signed the paper with an O, when the devil gave her sixpence and
vanished with the bond. Since then he appeared to her constantly, under
the forms of a man, a cat, a dog, or a "fly like a millar" (a large white
moth), as which last he usually sucked her poll about four in the morning;
and hurt her terribly in doing so. She also said that when she wanted him
to do anything for her, she called him by the name of "Robin," adding, "O
Satan give me my purpose!" which he never failed to do. It was he who
stuck the thorns into Elizabeth Hill; but then she implicated three other
women, Alice Duke, Ann Bishop, and Mary Penny, saying that they too had
stuck thorns into an enchanted picture meant for Elizabeth Hill, one
night when they had all met the devil on the common, he, as a man in black
clothes with a little band, first anointing its forehead with oil, saying,
"I baptize thee with this oyl." After which they had a supper of wine,
cakes, and roast meat, all brought by the man in black, and they ate and
drank and danced and were merry. This they did always, whenever they would
destroy any one obnoxious; and so had a merry time of it upon the whole.
When they wanted to go to their meetings "they would anoint their wrists
and foreheads with an oyl the spirit brings them, which smells raw," after
which they were carried off, saying: "Thout, tout, a tout, tout,
throughout and about:" on their return changing the stave to "Rentum
Tormentum," which was the shibboleth to bring them back. But before they
left they used to make obeisance to the man in black, who usually played
to their dancing, saying, "A Boy! merry meet, merry part;" on which he
vanished, and the conclave was broken up. She then told the "several grave
and orthodox divines" who assisted Robert Hunt to take her examination,
that Alice Duke's familiar was a cat, and Ann Bishop's a rat. Her own was
a millar; concerning which Nicholas Lambert made some strange revelations.
He said that as he and two others, hired to watch Elizabeth Styles in
prison, were sitting near her as she crouched by the fire--he, Nicholas
Lambert, reading in "The Practise of Piety"--about three in the morning
they saw a "glistering bright fly," about an inch in length, come from her
head and pitch on the chimney: then instantly vanish. In less than a
quarter of an hour after, in came two other flies and seemed to strike at
his hand, but which dodged him cleverly when he struck at them with his
book. At this, Styles's countenance became very black and ghastly, and
the fire also changed its colour; so the watchers, conceiving that her
familiar was about her, and seeing also her hair shake very strangely,
went to examine her poll, when out flew a great millar, which pitched on a
table board and then vanished away. Her poll was red like raw beef, but
presently regained its natural colour. Upon which Elizabeth confessed that
it was her familiar, and that she had felt it tickle her poll. She was
condemned, after having inculpated thirteen other persons, but "prevented
execution by dying in gaol, a little before the expiring of the term her
confederate daemon had set for her enjoyment of Diabolical Pleasures."
Alice Duke, "another witch of Styles's Knot," a widow living in
Wincaunton, county of Somerset, was then apprehended and examined. She
seems to have given no trouble, but to have come frankly to the point, and
to have admitted whatever they liked to demand. She said that, eleven or
twelve years ago, Ann Bishop persuaded her to go one night to the
churchyard, and "being come thither to go backward round the church, which
they did three times." In their first round they met a man in black
clothes who accompanied them: in their second a thing like a great black
toad, which leaped up against Duke's apron: in the third, "somewhat in the
shape of a rat" which vanished away. After which they both went home, but
before they went the man in black said something softly to Ann Bishop, yet
what it was Alice did not hear. Soon after this she signed herself away in
the same manner and for the same purposes as Elizabeth Styles had done;
and the devil gave her sixpence as he had given Styles, and vanished away
with the fatal paper. She confirmed all that Styles had said concerning
the meetings on the common, the enchanted pictures and the greenish oil,
the devil, the wine, and cakes, and music; she gave information, though,
of many more such pictures which were to doom the unfortunate likenesses
to death; and she said farther that Ann Bishop was the devil's favourite,
and that she sat next him, and wore "a green Apron, a French Waistcoat,
and a red Petticoat." She gave the same phrase that Elizabeth Styles had
given, as the magic password which took them to and from the devil's
meetings; and she confessed that her familiar came to her each night,
about seven o'clock, "in the shape of a little Cat of a dunnish colour,
which is as smooth as a Want, and when she is suck'd she is in a kind of
Trance." She had hurt several people; specially Thomas Hanway's daughter
by giving her a pewter dish for a "good handsel" in the time of her lying
in. This pewter dish was of such a malicious and venefical nature that
when Thomas Hanway's daughter used it to heat some deer suet and rose
water for her breasts, she was put to extreme pain; which pain she had not
when she heated the same deer suet and the same rose water in a common
spoon. So, suspecting harm in the dish, she put it into the fire, "which
then presently vanished, and nothing of it was afterwards to be found."
Alice Duke also said that she called the devil "Robin," and demanded of
him aid and help in her undertakings. Like Styles and many others, she
said that when the devil vanished he left an ill smell behind him; which
is explained as, "Those ascititious Particles he held together in his
visible vehicle, being loosened at his vanishing, and so offending the
Nostrils by their floating and diffusing themselves in the open air."