And the like præstigiæ may be in the toad. It might be a real toad (though actuated and guided by a dæmon) which was cut in pieces, and that also which was whipt about, and at last snatcht out of sight (as if it had vanished) by these aerial hocus-pocus's. And if some juglers have tricks to take hot coals into their mouth without hurt, certainly it is not surprising that some small attempt did not suffice to burn that toad. That such a toad, sent by a witch and crawling up the body of the man of the house as he sate by the fire's side, was overmastered by him and his wife together, and burnt in the fire; I have heard credibly reported by one of the Isle of Ely. _Of these dæmoniack vermin, I have heard other stories also, as of a rat that followed a man some score of miles trudging through thick and thin along with him._ So little difficulty is there in that of the toad.--_Glanvil's Collection of Relations_, p. 200.
T 2 _a_ 1. "_Isabel Robey._" This person was of Windle, in the parish of Prescot, a considerable distance from Pendle. The Gerards were lords of the manor of Windle. Sir Thomas Gerard, before whom the examinations were taken, was created baronet, 22nd May, 9th James I.; and thrice married. From him the present Sir John Gerard, of New Hall, near Warrington, is descended. Sir Thomas was determined that the hundred of West Derby should have its witch as well as the other parts of the county. A more melancholy tissue of absurd and incoherent accusations than those against this last of the prisoners convicted on this occasion, it would not be easy to find; who was hanged, for all that appears, because one person was suddenly "pinched on her thigh, as she thought, with four fingers and a thumb," and because another was "sore pained with a great warch in his bones."
T 2 _a_ 2. "_This Countie of Lancaster, which now may lawfully bee said to abound asmuch in Witches of diuers kindes as Seminaries, Iesuites, and Papists._"] Truly, the county palatine was in sad case, according to Master Potts's account. If the crop of each of these was over abundant, it was from no fault of the learned judges, who, in their commissions of _Oyer and Terminer_, subjected it pretty liberally to the pruning-hook of the executioner.
