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.

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.

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.

[Transcriber's Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

THE WONDERFVLL DISCOVERIE OF WITCHES IN THE COVNTIE OF LANCASTER.

NOTES.

Chetham Society.

Footnotes.

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;—

We find the illustrious author of the Novum Organon sacrificing to courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the ingredients for a witches' ointment;[2]—Raleigh, adopting miserable fallacies at second hand, without subjecting them to the crucible of his acute and vigorous understanding;[3]—Selden, maintaining that crimes of the imagination may be punished with death;[4]—The detector of Vulgar Errors, and the most humane of physicians,[5] giving the casting weight to the vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;[6]—Hobbes, ever sceptical, penetrating and sagacious, yet here paralyzed, and shrinking from the subject as if afraid to touch it;[7]—The adventurous explorer, who sounded the depths and channels of the "Intellectual System" along all the "wide watered" shores of antiquity, running after witches to hear them recite the Common Prayer and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or innocence;[8]—The gentle spirit of Dr. Henry More, girding