Witchcraft in Wiltshire. 



161 



say'd, that wicked old woman had bewitched her, and preyed her father to send 

 after her, and bring her back. Many horses being ready to goe out with carrots 

 to the inercats, men and labourers mounte, and some one way and some another 

 pursued the Woman, and the third day found her begging about twenty miles thence 

 at Edington, in the Mannour House, of which Mr. Leues (Leving ?), a person not 

 to bee mentioned without his due prayse of being both very prudent and very 

 hospitable, dwells ; to him they brought the woman. Hee having heard the 

 Complaynt, and taken the information and examination, made a Mittimus for 

 her to Salisbury Goale ; but, on the request of the men who tooke her, hee 

 suffered them to carry her back to Burbage, to the gardiner's house, to which 

 they carried her, and found the Mayd in a fearer, with the extreame torment of 

 her fingers, and not having slept since it came upon her. When Orchard was 

 brought to the Mayd, the Mayd charged her with bewitching her, and so did the 

 rest of the persons there, and threatened her with hanging : but Orchard stood 

 stoutly in it, that she was not bewitched, but that she had washed her hands in 

 unwholesome water, and that wholesome water would cure her ; whereupon some 

 of the same sort of water which she washed in before, was brought, which Goody 

 Orchard desiring to see, that she might judge whether it were wholesome or not, 

 she put one of her fingers into it, and carried her finger so that shee made three 

 circles in it contrary to the course of the Sun, and then pronounced it wholesome 

 water, and bid the Mayd dip her hands in it, which the Mayd doing, her fingers 

 recovered their due posture, and the extreme paynes ceased, but the tone of the 

 nerves being for the present lost, her fingers had no strength in them at the time 

 of the tryal, and were not without some payne. 



" The Woman was carried to Salisbury, and there convicted and executed ; 

 and, to prove her a Witch, Mr. Bartholomew and divers of Malmesbury, that 

 being discovered to be the place of her last abode, were bound to give evidence 

 against her, which they did ; for which, and for Mr. Bartholomew's being the 

 cause of her flying from Malmesbury, those dire revenges were taken upon Mrs. 

 Mary Webb, his daughter, who also had denyed the yeest. I have omitted, that 

 when the Hagg trotted about the garden, she muttered certayne words, some of 

 which the witnesses thought to be 



"Jan. 16, 1685-6. The Alderman of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, that being 

 the title of the chiefe Magistrate of that antient Borrow, sent to the Justices of 

 the Peace of that subdivision of the County, to pray them to assist him in a 

 discovery which was made of Witches by the voluntary confession of one Ann 

 Tilling, widdowe, who had confessed to Mrs. Mary Webb, the wife of Mr. Robert 

 Webb, since Alderman of that Burrow, that she Ann Tilling, — Peacock, and 

 — Witchell, widow, sisters, had bewitched Thomas, the son of the above-named 

 Robert Webb and Mary his wife, which Mary was the daughter of Mr. Bartholo- 

 mew, whos chest was broken as in the foregoing relation, so that Thomas AVebb 

 above-named had very grievous fitts of swooning, sometimes three or four times 

 in a day, and that he seemed to bee possest with some foreigne power betwixt 

 thos fitts, so that he would curse and sweare, tell what the persons suspected to 

 have harmed him were doing or saying, and often speake to them as if they or 

 some of them were present, although not visible to any person uppou the place. 



" The confession of Anne Tilling was made to Mrs. Mary Webb upon this 

 motion. Mrs. Webb meeting casually with Ann Tilling, reproached her for 



