DUCKING A WITCH IN HERTS 165 



It seems scarcely credible that almost within 

 living memory such beliefs could have existed, and 

 such terrible cruelties practised, as were perpetrated 

 upon poor defenceless old women, and that even 

 courts of justice should have employed themselves 

 to sustain this miserable superstition. Such, how- 

 ever, was the case. I find that in 1751, on April 18, 

 the town crier of Hemel Hempstead announced 

 that, ' On Monday next, a man and a woman are 

 to be ducked at Gubblecote, near Long Marston ' 

 (which place I know well), the same notice being 

 cried at Leighton and at Winslow. On April 20, 

 in accordance with the notice given by the criers in 

 various other towns, Ruth Osborne was ducked as a 

 witch at Gubblecote. Both Osborne and his wife 

 had fallen under the suspicion of the mob on account 

 of some supposed witchcraft. As in the case of Sir 

 John Long's witch, the crime of this poor old couple, 

 in the eyes of the rabble and the local Bumbles, was 

 possibly the fact that in their old age they might 

 become chargeable to the parish. The Tring 

 overseers, learning that the brutal and ignorant mob 

 intended to impose the swimming test on the old 

 man and his wife, made some attempt to protect 

 them in the workhouse, but on the mob threatening 

 them, surreptitiously they placed them in the vestry 

 of the church, believing that the sanctuary would 

 be respected. But even this precaution was un- 

 availing. The mob, raging for blood, burst open 

 the door, seized the poor victims, and assaulted them 

 in a most merciless manner. The accused were 



