Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/340

276 Barnes; and she stated that whilst her body lay motionless in bed, she could go to any place she liked invisibly.

Mary Trembles confessed that the devil came to her "in the shape of a Lyon" and sucked her so hard, that she was obliged to scream for pain, and that she also could travel invisibly.

Among these witches, a certain Anne Fellow was said to have been done to death by their practices. They had also bewitched cows so that they would not yield their milk; and Temperance admitted that she had caused several shipwrecks and been instrumental to the death of several persons and many cattle. They could only say the Lord's Prayer backwards. They had squeezed Hannah Thomas to death. At their trial at the assizes, all their confessions before the Mayor and Alderman at Bideford were accepted against them. There was no evidence produced to inculpate them beyond these confessions and the suppositions of women who had felt pains and pricks in their bodies. Nevertheless, the three poor creatures were sentenced to death. On the scaffold they were again questioned, and denied almost everything that they had previously been induced or frightened into admitting.

The authorities for this account are:—

"A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against Three Witches, Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards &hellip; London, 1682."

"The Tryal, Condemnation and Execution of three Witches &hellip; who were arraigned at Exeter, on the 18th of August, 1682 &hellip; London, 1682." In this the names are given inaccurately.

There is also a broadside ballad on the subject. At the top are two rude woodcuts of witches, and a