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208 Jonet Kerr and Issobell Ramsay at Edinburgh in 1661 we find the names of thirteen persons, or one coven. At Crook of Devon in 1662 thirteen persons were tried and condemned at one assise. In 1662 Isobel Gowdie of Auldearne, who has been already quoted, gave her evidence freely and without torture; she stated that there were thirteen persons in each coven, and gives the names of all the members of her own coven, including the officer. Janet Breadheid, of the same coven as Isobel, gives the names of thirty-nine persons or three covens who were actually present in the kirk at Nairn to see her admitted as a member of the organisation. In Somerset in 1664 the number of the accused was twenty-six, or two covens. At Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1673, Ann Armstrong, whose words have already been quoted, was (according to her own account) taken by force to a meeting where she saw ten people whom she mentions by name "and thre more, whose names she knowes not"; at another meeting "she see the said Anne Forster, Anne Driden, and Luce Thompson, and tenne more unknowne to her"; and at a large assembly where many persons were present "every thirteen of them had a divell with them in sundry shapes." Again, on counting the names of those who, according to Ann Armstrong, were present at the witch-assemblies, it will be found that there were twenty-six, or two covens.

It seems certain then that, in the constitution of the witch-societies, thirteen was the appointed number for a coven in Great Britain. The French evidence is not so clear, for the French trials are rarely published in extenso. There is, however, one cause celèbre, which in