[37] Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, “two wrinkled old women,” were tried
and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale at Bury St. Edmunds, county of
Suffolk, in 1664-5. The case is reported in _Tryals of the Witches_,
London, 1682. The document is copied into Howell’s _State Trials_, vol.
vi. pp. 647-702, to which is prefixed Gov. Hutchinson’s entire account
of witchcraft in New-England. An abstract of the case is in _Wonders of
the Invisible World_, pp. 55-60; and allusions to the same are found in
nearly all subsequent treatises on witchcraft. It is perhaps the most
noted case on record, as Sir Matthew Hale here sanctioned by his great
name the admission of spectral evidence, and the dogma that the devil
could act only through persons in league with him, that is, actual
witches. In the Dowse Library is “A Discourse concerning the great
mercy of God in preserving us from the Power and Malice of Evil Angels;
written by Sir Matthew Hale, at Cambridge 26 March 1661 [1665], upon
occasion of a Tryal of certain Witches before him the week before at
St. Edmund’s Bury.” London, 1693. 4to.