[Sidenote: H.N. 146.]

Lauder relates several trials for witchcraft in much detail, and they
evidently gave him some uneasiness. Some of the women commonly confessed
and implicated other persons. In one such case the women, who among other
persons, accused the parish minister, said that the devil sometimes
transformed them 'in bees, in crows, and they flew to such and such remote
places; which was impossible for the devil to doe, to rarefy the substance
of their body into so small a matter ... thir confessions made many
intelligent sober persons stumble much what faith was to be adhibite to
them.' In another case from Haddington a woman confessed and accused five
others and a man. Lauder saw the man examined and tested by pricking. He
says, 'I remained very unclear and dissatisfied with this way of triall,
as most fallacious: and the man could give me no accompt of the principles
of his art, but seemed to be a drunken foolish rogue.' Then, according to
his custom, he cites a learned authority, Martino del Rio, who lays bare
the craft and subtlety of the devil, and mentions that 'he gives not the
nip to witches of quality; and sometimes when they are apprehended he
delets it....' 'The most part of the creatures that are thus deluded by
this grand impostor and ennemy of mankind are of the meanest rank, and are
ather seduced by malice, poverty, ignorance, or covetousness.' But he finds
comfort in the pecuniary circumstances of the Tempter. 'It's the
unspeakable mercy and goodness of our good God that that poor devill has
not the command of money (tho we say he is master of all the mines and hid
treasures of the earth) else he would debauch the greatest part of the
world.'


CONTENTS OF HIS EARLY JOURNALS AND ACCOUNTS