Discovery of Witches

Discovery of Witches

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Edited by James Crossley
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Title: Discovery of Witches The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in
the Countie of Lancaster
Author: Thomas Potts
Editor: James Crossley
Release Date: April 25, 2006 [eBook #18253]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DISCOVERY OF WITCHES***
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Remains Historical & Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of
Lancaster and Chester
Published by the Chetham Society.
Vol. VI.
Printed for the Chetham Society. M.DCCC.XLV.

[Illustration: THE CHETHAM SOCIETY]

Council.
EDWARD HOLME, ESQ., M.D., PRESIDENT. REV. RICHARD
PARKINSON, B.D., CANON OF MANCHESTER,
VICE-PRESIDENT. THE HON. & VERY REV. WILLIAM
HERBERT, DEAN OF MANCHESTER. GEORGE ORMEROD,
ESQ., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A., F.G.S., SEDBURY PARK. SAMUEL
HIBBERT WARE, ESQ., M.D., F.R.S.E., EDINBURGH. REV.
THOMAS CORSER, M.A. REV. GEORGE DUGARD, M.A. REV.
C.G. HULTON, M.A. REV. J. PICCOPE, M.A. REV. F.R. RAINES,
M.A., F.S.A., MILNROW PARSONAGE, NEAR ROCHDALE.
JAMES CROSSLEY, ESQ. JAMES HEYWOOD, ESQ., F.R.S.
WILLIAM LANGTON, ESQ., TREASURER. WILLIAM FLEMING,
ESQ., M.D., HON. SECRETARY.

[Illustration]

POTTS'S DISCOVERY OF WITCHES
In the County of Lancaster,
Reprinted from the Original Edition of 1613.
With an Introduction and Notes, by JAMES CROSSLEY, ESQ.

Printed for the Chetham Society. M.DCC.XLV. Manchester: Printed by
Charles Simms and Co.

INTRODUCTION.
Were not every chapter of the history of the human mind too precious
an inheritance to be willingly relinquished,--for appalling as its
contents may be, the value of the materials it may furnish may be
inestimable,--we might otherwise be tempted to wish that the miserable
record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are
narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled. Most
assuredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of the author
of Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with
him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which
contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in
search of materials for humiliation and abasement, he will find in the
history of witchcraft in this country, from the beginning to the end of
the seventeenth century, large and abundant materials, whether it
affects the species or the individual. In truth, human nature is never
seen in worse colours than in that dark and dismal review. Childhood,
without any of its engaging properties, appears prematurely artful,
wicked and cruel[1]; woman, the victim of a wretched and debasing
bigotry, has yet so little of the feminine adjuncts, that the fountains of
our sympathies are almost closed; and man, tyrannizing over the sex he

was bound to protect, in its helpless destitution and enfeebled decline,
seems lost in prejudice and superstition and only strong in oppression.
If we turn from the common herd to the luminaries of the age, to those
whose works are the landmarks of literature and science, the reference
is equally disappointing;--
"The sun itself is dark And silent as the moon Hid in her vacant
interlunar cave."
[Footnote 1: Take, as an instance, the children of Mr. Throgmorton, of
Warbois, for bewitching whom, Mother Samuels, her husband, and
daughter, suffered in 1593. No veteran professors "in the art of
ingeniously tormenting" could have administered the question with
more consummate skill than these little incarnate fiends, till the poor
old woman was actually induced, from their confident asseverations
and plausible counterfeiting, to believe at last that she had been a witch
all her life without knowing it. She made a confession, following the
story which they had prompted, on their assurances that it was the only
means to restore them, and then was hanged upon that confession, to
which she adhered on the scaffold. Few tracts present a more vivid
picture of manners than that in which the account of this case of
witchcraft is contained. It is perhaps the rarest of the English tracts
relating to witchcraft, and is entitled "The most strange and admirable
Discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys, arraigned, convicted, and
executed at the last Assizes at Huntingdon, for the bewitching of the
five daughters of Robert Throckmorton, Esquire,