Annals of Witchcraft in New England: And Elsewhere in the United States, from Their First Settlement. Drawn Up from Unpublished and Other Well Authenticated Records of the Alleged Operations of Witches and Their Instigator, the Devil

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W. E. Woodward, 1869 - Witchcraft - 306 pages
 

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Page 108 - I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon halfway drawn, Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn; Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back, And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track. Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul; Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roll. "Good friends...
Page 122 - Has not this present parliament A ledger to the Devil sent, Fully empower'd to treat about Finding revolted witches out ? And has not he, within a year, Hang'd threescore of them in one shire ? Some only for not being drown'd, And some for sitting above ground, Whole days and nights, upon their breeches.
Page 107 - At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast, And slowly at the sheriff's side up the long street I passed ; I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see, How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me. And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned...
Page 107 - The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky. And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old, And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand, Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.
Page xxxv - Who after prov'd himself a witch, And made a rod for his own breech. Did not the Devil appear to Martin Luther in Germany, for certain ? And would have gull'd him with a trick, But Mart was too, too politic.
Page 122 - Whole days and nights, upon their breeches. And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches ; And some for putting knavish tricks Upon green geese and turkey-chicks, Or pigs that suddenly deceast Of griefs unnatural, as he guest ; Who after prov'd himself a witch, And made a rod for his own breech.
Page 192 - ... you are a liar; I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink.
Page 103 - I asked her what woman. She said, Goodwife Walford. I tried to persuade her it was only her weakness. She told me no, and related as above, that her back was as a flame of fire, and her lower parts were as it were numb and without feeling. I pinched her and she felt not. She continued that night and the day and night following very ill, and is still bad of her limbs and complains still daily of it.
Page 59 - An army of devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the centre, and, after a sort, the first-born of our English settlements ; and the houses of the good people there are fill'd with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants, tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural.

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