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Throckmorton to forgive her, and confessing that she was the cause of his daughters' sufferings. Scarcely had she uttered the words when three of them, "who were then in their fit, and had so continued for the space of three weeks, wiped their eyes and instantly stood upon their legges, being as well as ever they were in their lives."

The next day, being Sunday, the old woman repeated this confession publicly in Warboys church. Here the matter might have ended, for Mr. Throckmorton appears to have been a humane man, and by no means desirous of imbruing his hands in the blood of his old neighbour-aggrieved though he must have been by the thought of his daughters' sufferings for the last three yearshad she not given fresh cause of offence and released him from his promise by retracting her confession next morning. He immediately went to her and threatened her with arrest if she did not renew her confession. Threats and entreaties were alike unavailing, and he at last, with much reluctance, gave the two Samuels, mother and daughter, in charge to the constable, to be taken before the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese Warboys was then situated, and who was then residing a few miles from Huntingdon. They were examined by the Bishop and two justices, but poor old Alice, being now thoroughly alarmed, told a strange story about a spirit called Langland, who had no dwelling, but was then "beyond sea," confessing that he appeared to her in the form of a dun chicken. After this she was committed for trial at Huntingdon Assizes.

The two women remained in prison, without being admitted to bail, till January 9th, when Mr. Throckmorton, entertaining doubts as to the guilt of the daughter, applied to the quarter sessions for permission "to baile out the maide, and to have her home to his house, to see if such evidences of wicked dealings with evil spirits would appear against her as had before appeared against her mother."

After some demur his request was granted, and Agnes Samuel accompanied him home. A few days later the girls "fell all of them afresh into their fits, and then the spirits did begin as plainly to accuse the daughter as ever they did the mother, and did tell the children that the old woman had sent over her spirits to her daughter, and that so she had bewitched them all over agayne."

In one respect poor Agnes was treated

worse than her mother, being subjected to severe scratchings from each of her supposed victims. This was considered an indubitable proof of supernatural agency, but for which we might find a more commonplace explan ation. These scratchings were always foretold by those who inflicted them. The eldest girl also predicted that the fits would cease whenever Agnes Samuel should say, "I charge thee divel, as I love thee, I am a witch and guiltie of this matter, that thou suffer this child to be well at present." This, we are told, was repeatedly tried before a variety of witnesses, and was always attended with instant success, though the words had no effect when spoken by any other person.

Agnes appears to have been induced to confess with much less difficulty than her mother. Probably the experience she had had of the scratching powers of six vigorous young vixens assisted greatly in overcoming any obstinacy. By employing the same arguments, they persuaded her to confess, not only that she was a worser witch than her mother," but that since her mother's confession she had bewitched Mrs. Pickering of Ellington, a married sister of Mr. Throckmorton.

Last of all the spirits began to accuse John Samuel, the father. Precisely the same charges were made against him; but, in his case, no amount of scratching, threats, or cajolery could wring a confession from him.

On April 5th, 1593, John, Alice, and Agnes Samuel were arraigned before Mr. Justice Fennel "for bewitching of the Ladie Cromwell to her death, and for bewitching of Mistress Joane Throckmorton and others.' Against them appeared as witnesses, Dr. Donington, parson of Warboys, Thomas Nut, M. A., Vicar of Ellington, the father, uncle, and aunt of the Throckmorton girls, several female servants, and one or two neighbours. Truly a cloud of witnesses by whom, says our author, "the before related proofs, presumptions, circumstances, and reasons, with many others too long to write, were at large delivered, until both the judge, justices, and jury said openly that the cause was most apparent, and that their consciences were well satisfied that the sayd witches were guiltie and deserved death."

As to John Samuel, ocular proof of his guilt was exhibited in court, "For Joane Throckmorton, happening at the time of his

trial to be seized with a fit, she was brought into court and set before the Judge, who was told that there was a charm, which if old Samuel would but speake, the sayd Joane would presently be well." The prisoner was therefore ordered by the judge to repeat the charm, but this he positively refused to do, till threatened that if he persisted in his ob stinacy, the court would hold him guiltie of the crimes whereof he was accused." In other words, after being permitted by law to plead "not guilty," he was compelled by the judge to confess his guilt.

Seeing it useless to contend against this determination to convict him, the poor old man at last complied, and repeated the formula, "As I am a witch, &c., which words were no sooner spoken by Samuel than the said Joane, as was her wont, wiped her eyes and came out of her fit. The judge immediately observed, you see, all, she is now well, but not with the musicke of David's harpe.'

We must not forget that the spirit had previously told Jane Throckmorton that she should have this fit in court, and that she should not come out of it until old father Samuel had pronounced these words.

At the place of execution Alice Samuel confessed her guilt, and that her husband had assisted her in the invocation of the spirits. Agnes warmly asserted her own innocence, which her mother stoutly maintained, though seemingly quite indifferent to her own and her husband's fate. John Samuel resolutely denied all complicity in the crimes laid to his charge, and showed much indignation against his persecutors, saying that his wife " was an olde simple woman, and that one might make her by fayre or foule words confess what they would." Posterity will agree with this stout-hearted victim of the ignorance and credulity of bishops and judges

As lord of the manor of Warboys, the goods and chattels of the Samuels were forfeited to Sir Henry Cromwell. They amounted in value to £40., a considerable sum at that time for persons of their rank. But Sir Henry, dreading possibly the exist ence of some diabolical infection in the property of such felons, and forgetful of the good

old maxim, "Non olet nummus," gave them to the corporation of Huntingdon, on condition "that they should pay forty shillings yearly to a Doctor or Bachelor in Divinity, of Queen's College, Cambridge, to preach a sermon against witchcraft, in the All Saints' Church, Huntingdon, on the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin, and to teach the people how to discover and frustrate the machinations of witches and dealers with evil spirits

This sermon continued to be preached till within the last fifty years; but for more than a century before its discontinuance, as the belief in witchcraft died out among the educated classes, it became an address against superstition and credulity.

Such are the particulars of three of the most cruel murders ever perpetrated under legal forms in any country. We cannot recall another instance in our own history of a whole family being put to death for this imaginary crime.

What cannot but strike a nineteenth century observer is, the deliberate manner in which all the rules of evidence were constantly violated by all concerned in these trials. In all ordinary cases, these rules were probably as well understood and prac ticed then as now. Had the crime of which. the Samuels were accused been larceny or burglary, they would, no doubt, have found as just and careful judges under Elizabeth as under Victoria. But as soon as this imaginary offence is imputed to them, the silliest tests, the most absurd presumptions, and the most malicious and self-contradictory statements are accepted as evidence; and to crown all, a judge on the bench compels a man being tried for his life to repeat a confession of his guilt. What a hold must this absurd belief have had on all classes when men of judicial habits of thought, and accustomed all their lives to weigh evidence and balance probabilities, could not see that a crime, demanding from its investigators such a constant suspension and perversion of the usual tests, and evidences of guilt, could from the very nature of things have no existence.

A. SPENCER JONES.

SUCH A GOOD MAN.

BY WALTER BESANT AND JAMES RICE.

Authors of 'Ready-Money Mortiboy,' 'The Golden Butterfly,' 'By Celia's Arbour, etc., etc.

ΤΗ

CHAPTER I.

THE CITY DINNER.

HE Master and his two Wardens are in the anteroom receiving the guests. They are surrounded by a Court consisting of officers, chaplain, and the Livery. It is not an ordinary Company dinner, but one of their great banquets. A foreign ambassador is present; a cabinet minister, who will give the dinner a political significance, and perhaps drop a hint in the matter of Eastern politics; there is the latest thing we have to show in the way of a soldier who has seen service, and actually commanded an army; there is one of the oldest extant specimens of the ancient British admiral, bluff and hearty; there is a bishop of pronounced Evangelical opinions, he of Bamborough; and there is a dean, who is declared by his enemies to have no opinions at all. There are also two or three of the City clergy, who perhaps rejoice to make of these banquets an occasion for fasting and mortification of the flesh. There is a man of science, on whom the clergy look askance, because he has lately uttered opinions which as yet they do not see their way out of; there are many rich men; there are no artists and no representatives of literature, because the Lord Mayor works off both these classes of humans in two dinners, which is, the Lord knows, sufficient honour for them, and City Companies know nothing about literature or

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that your balance at the bank, whose supposed exiguity has frequently given you so much anxiety, is in reality a splendid sum of five figures at least-else, how could you be in such company? that the suburban villa has no existence, and the pre-matrimonial dinginess of Gray's Inn, never, in plain fact, existed; that your whole life has always been spent in and naturally belongs to such palaces as this abode of the City Company; that your every-day dinner, your plain cut of mutton with a glass of thin claret, as you have always supposed it, has really been from the very beginning such a banquet as you are about to assist at ; and that doubt, insecurity, anxiety, necessity for work have no real existence at all in the order of things. Because the air that you breathe, the aspect of the guests, the sonorous names which ring like massive gold coins, and the place you are in fill you with the sense of the fatness which is stable and abiding.

Guest after guest, they come crowding in singly and in pairs. His Highness of Hyderabad, Ek Rupiya Dao, ablaze with diamonds. His Excellency the Minister for the Republic of El Dorado: did his smiling and courteous Excellency, in his own tropical retreat beneath the palms of that much borrowing country, ever dream in his wildest moments of such a dinner as he is about to put away? and does he feel that his presence, recorded in the daily papers, will assist the new loan? The Ambassador of Two Eagle Land, said to be the most courteous minister ever sent to London-also said to be the greatest of—but that is calumny. The Archbishop of Kensington: doth monseigneur seek for new converts, or doth he desire to make up for the rigours of Lent, now happily finished and got through? and would he mind repeating for the general benefit that capital story which he told his companion just before his carriage stopped, its last smile still playing round lips too solid for austerity? The Lord Bishop of

A buzz of expectation: a whispering among the guests: a murmur which at the slightest provocation would turn into applause and shouts of acclamation: a craning forward of necks: a standing up on tip-toe of short-legged guests in the background: a putting up of eye-glasses. Hush! here he comes.

SIR JACOB ESCOMB.

The Master and the Wardens bow low: lower than when they received the Secretary of State for Internal Navigation: lower than for the Ambassador of Two Eagle Land: lower than for him of El Dorado: a great deal lower than for any bishop or clergyman: lower even than to that light and glory of the earth, the successful striker of Canadian "ile."

Bamborough, our own prop, stay, and com- visit the dead and gone generations of his fort in matters spiritual, regards his Roman early centuries. Think how delightful it Catholic Brother-Father (is that quite a cor- must have been for Methusalem to see again rect way of putting the relationship?) with in the Champs Elysées the friends of his eyes of distrust, as if he feared to be con- youth, remembered after so many hundred verted on the spot by some Papistic trick years. Even Old Parr must have had some and so be disgraced for ever. The Rev. such strange welcoming of long-forgotten Cyprian Chancel, who is about to suffer friends and playmates who had been turned martyrdom through the new Act. He has into dust, ere he began to feel old. Three prepared his face already, walks with his hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds a head on one side and his hands up, like a year! And all got out of "ile," you said? figure out of a church window, and looks as Dear, dear! Really the atmosphere of this if he was about to go straight to a red-hot | Hall is Celestial-Olympian. We are among fire and blaze cheerfully, though slowly, pinnacles-Alps-of Greatness. round an iron stake. "I remember when they plucked Chancel at Cambridge for classical honours," whispers a voice at my right. His Reverence hears the remark and he winces. Touch a Ritualist on the subject of intellectual distinction, and you revive many old griefs of pluckings sore, which many times he bore, and a lowly degree taken ignobly among the common herd. This is a sad memory for one who has become a leader of women, old and young. Mr. Gabriel Cassilis. The figure seems familiar to me. He is tall and rather bent; he carries a gold pince-nez, with which he taps his knuckles. The great financier, said | to be worth, in the delightful metaphor of the last century, a couple of Plums at least. Happy Gabriel Cassilis ! Was there not some talk about his wife and a man named Lawrence Colquhoun? To be sure there was; and she married the old man after all, and now Lawrence has come back again to London. Wonder if there will be any scandal? Who is that with him? Mr. Gilead P. Beck-hush-sh-sh! thin tall man, with lanky legs, shrewd face, full of curiosity. Lucky American who struck "ile" in Canada: owner of Petroleaville: said to be worth a thousand pounds a day: goes where he likes: does what he likes: might marry whom he likes: some nonsense about selling himself to the devil for a lucky butterfly. What a thing -of course without the bargain with the Evil One, which no well-regulated mind would approve of or consent to-to have a thousand pounds a day! If nothing else, it makes a man a law unto himself: he can do what he likes. Wonder why it can't do away with the laws of nature? With a thousand pounds a day, a man ought to be able to live, in youth and vigour, till he grew quite tired of things and became ready to re

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SIR JACOB ESCOMB !

He is a man of a commanding presence, tall, portly, dignified in bearing; he is about fifty-five years of age, a time when dignity is at its best; he has a large head, held a little back; hair still abundant, though streaked with grey; a big and prominent nose, great lips, and a long square chin. His eyes, you might say, did you not know him to be such a good man, are rather hard. Altogether, it is the face of a successful man, and of a man who knows how to get on in the world. The secret of that man is the secret which that other philanthropist, Voltaire, discovered pretty early in life and published for the benefit of humanity-it is that some men are anvils and some hammers, that it is better to be a hammer than an anvil; or, leaving the metaphorical method, that those who make money cannot pile it up fast unless they make it out of the labours of other men.

Sir Jacob knows everybody of any distinction. He shakes hands not only with the Bishop of Bamborough, but also with

him of Kensington; he is acquainted with Mr. Cassilis and already knows Mr. Gilead P. Beck. Sir John Sells, Sir Solomon Goldbeater, Sir Samuel Ingot, the Indian prince, Ek Rupiya Dao, and the Rajah Jeldee Ag Lao are all known to him, and the clergy are to a man reckoned as his private and intimate friends. Therefore, for the brief space which remains before dinner is announced, there is a general press to shake hands with this greatest of great men. Those who cannot do so feel small; I am one of the small.

Dinner! Welcome announcement.

I am placed at the lower end of the hall, the end where those sit who have least money. Sir Jacob, naturally, is near the Master. In the open space between the two ends of the great horse-shoe table is a piano-a Grand, of course. In the corner of the hall separated from Us, the aristocratic diners, is a screen behind which you may hear, perhaps, the sounds of more plates and the voices of other guests. They are, in fact, the four singers and the pianoforteplayer, who are, after dinner, to give us a small selection of ballad and glee music (printed for us in a little book in green and gold) between the speeches. They dine at the same time as ourselves, that is allowed; but not, if you please, in our sight. We all draw the line somewhere. In the City the line is drawn at professional musicians, people who play and sing for hire.

Grace, with a gratitude almost unctuous, from the chaplain.

Turtle, with punch. My next-door neighbour is a thin, tall man. From his general appearance, which suggests insatiable hunger, I am convinced that he is going to make a noble, an Enormous dinner. He does. He begins magnificently with three plates of turtle soup one after the other, and three glasses of iced punch. He has eaten and drunk enough at the very commencement of his dinner to keep an English labourer going the whole of one day, an Italian for two days, a Syrian for an entire week. What a great country this is where the power of eating expands with the means of procuring food!. After the third plate of turtle he turns to me, and begins talking about Sir Jacob Escomb. "There is a man, sir," he says, "of whom we have reason to be proud. Don't talk to me of your lords-hereditary legislators: your bishops-ah! backstairs influence and

your foreign counts and excellencies-counts and excellencies! A beggarly lot at home, no doubt. Our great men, sir, the backbone of wealthy England, are such men as Sir Jacob Escomb. Self-made, practical, with an eye always open for the main chance, full of energy, the director of a dozen different concerns.'

"What are they, then?" I asked in my innocence, for though I had heard of this man, I knew not what soldiers call "his record."

"He is an ironmaster at Dolmen-in-Ravendale, he has the principal share in a coalmine, he has a great office in the City, he is a gigantic contractor, he has built railways over half Europe."

"Pardon," said a foreigner opposite ;"you are speaking of Sir Jacob Escomb? Would you point him out to me, this great man?"

We indicate the distinguished Englishman with not unnatural pride in our country. "A-ha!" said the foreigner, putting up his glasses. "That is the Sir Jacob Escomb who made our railways for us. C'est très remarquable."

"Good railways, sir, no doubt," said the thin man. "You were very glad, I suppose,. to get the great Sir Jacob?"

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The

"Good? I do not know." The foreigner shrugged his shoulders They carry our troops, which was what we wanted. cost was not many millions above the contract price. We borrowed all the millions for those railways from England. It is good of England to lend the world money to help carry troops, very good. I am glad to have seen this man-great in England."

"And with all his wealth," the thin man went on, helping himself largely to salmon, "such a good man!" He shook his head with an expression of envy. Who could aspire to so much goodness? It was more than one man's share.

I got no more conversation out of that thin man, because for two hours and a half he continued to eat steadily, which gave him no time for talk. And to drink! Let us do him justice. He drank with as much zeal as he ate, and with equal impartiality put down champagne-the Hammerers' champagne is not too dry-sauterne. chablis, madeira, hock, and sherry-they gave us manzanilla. A glass of port with the cheesethe port at the Hammerers' is generous and

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