NOTE ON THE GUERNSEY RECORDS.

The Records at the Guernsey _Greffe_, from which the foregoing
confessions and depositions have been transcribed, and whence the
following list of accusations is compiled, are of a very voluminous
character. In fact there is enough matter in them, connected with
Witchcraft alone, to fill at least a couple of thick octavo volumes.
There is, however, so much sameness in the different cases, and such a
common tradition running through the whole, that the present excerpts
give a very fair idea of the features which characterise the mass.
While some of these Records are tolerably complete, the greater part
of them unfortunately are fragmentary and imperfect. The books in
which they were originally written seem to have been formed of a few
sheets of paper stitched together. Then at some later period a number
of these separate sections--in a more or less tattered condition--were
gathered into volumes and bound together in vellum. It is evident,
however, that very little care was exercised in their arrangement in
chronological order. The consequence is that one portion of a trial
sometimes occurs in one part of a volume, and the rest in another
part; sometimes the depositions alone seem to have been preserved;
sometimes the confessions; while in many cases the sentences
pronounced are all that can now be discovered. Nevertheless these old
Records enshrine much that is interesting, and very well deserve a
more exhaustive analysis than they have ever yet received. There are
also in the margins of these volumes, scores of pen-and-ink sketches
of a most primitive description, depicting the carrying out of the
various rigours of the law. Rough and uncouth as these illustrations
are, they nevertheless possess a good deal of graphic significance,
and I hope to reproduce some of them in facsimile, in a future