_Witchcraft._--In the 13th year of the reign of King William the Third--
"One Hathaway, a most notorious rogue, feigned himself bewitched
and deprived of his sight, and pretended to have fasted nine weeks
together; and continuing, as he pretended, under this evil
influence, he was advised, in order to discover the person
supposed to have bewitched him, to boil his own water in a glass
bottle till the bottle should break, and the first that came into
the house after, should be the witch; and that if he scratched the
body of that person till he fetched blood, it would cure him;
which being done, and a poor old woman coming by chance into the
house, she was seized on as the witch, and obliged to submit to be
scratched till the blood came, whereupon the fellow pretended to
find present ease. The poor woman hereupon was indicted for
witchcraft, and tried and acquitted at Surrey assizes, before
Holt, chief justice, a man of no great faith in these things; and
the fellow persisting in his wicked contrivance, pretended still
to be ill, and the poor woman, notwithstanding the acquittal,
forced by the mob to suffer herself to be scratched by him. And
this being discovered to be all imposition, an information was
filed against him."--_Modern Reports_, vol. xii. p. 556.