Discover the Truth Behind Witchcraft Stories. William Godwin
‘Note that a legion is 6666, and now by multiplication count how manie legions doo arise out of euerie particular,’
Or a grand total of 14,198,580 devils, not including their commanders.
How many of these fall to the share of England? I know not, but they were very active in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in the seventeenth. They seem to us, nowadays, to have frittered away their energies in attending on witches, in entering into divers persons and tormenting them, and in making senseless uproars and playing practical jokes. Let us take about half a dozen of these latter. Say, for argument sake, that they are not very abstruse or intellectual reading; at all events, they are as good as the modern stories of spiritual manifestations, and are as trustworthy.
Chapter III.
‘The Just Devil of Woodstock’—Metrical Version—Presumed Genuine History of ‘The Just Devil of Woodstock.’
THE JUST DEVIL OF WOODSTOCK.5
‘The 16 day of October in the year of our Lord 1649, The Commissioners for surveying and valuing his Majesties Mannor House, Parks, Woods, Deer, Demesnes, and all things thereunto belonging, by Name Captain Crook, Capt. Hart, Capt. Cockaine, Capt. Carelesse, and Capt. Roe their Messenger, with Mr. Brown their Secretary, and two or three servants, went from Woodstock town (where they had lain some nights before) and took up their lodgings in his Majesties House, after this manner: The Bedchamber and withdrawing room, they both lodged in, and made their Kitchin; the Presence Chamber their room for dispatch of business with all commers: of the Councel Hall, their Brewhouse, as of the Dining room, their Woodhouse, where they laid in the clefts, of that antient standard in the High-Park, for many ages beyond memory, known by the Name of the Kings Oak, which they had chosen out, and caused to be dug up by the Roots.
‘Octob. 17. About the middle of the night, these new guests were first awaked, by a knocking at the Presence Chamber door, which they also conceived did open, and something to enter, which came through the room, and also walkt through the withdrawing room into the Bed chamber, and there walkt about that room with a heavy step during half an hour; then crept under the bed where Captain Hart, and Capt. Carelesse lay, where it did seeme (as it were) to bite and gnaw the Mat and Bed-coards, as if it would tear and rend the feather beds, which having done a while, then would they heave