[Footnote B: The Rev. Canon Parkinson.]

[Footnote C: J.B. Wanklyn, Esq.]

In the early part of the reign of James the first, and at the period
when his execrable statute against witchcraft might have been
sharpening its appetite by a temporary fast for the full meal of blood
by which it was eventually glutted,--for as yet it could count no
recorded victims,--two wretched old women with their families resided
in the Forest of Pendle. Their names were Elizabeth Southernes and Ann
Whittle, better known, perhaps, in the chronicles of witchcraft, by
the appellations of Old Demdike and Old Chattox.[32] Both had
attained, or had reached the verge of the advanced age of eighty, were
evidently in a state of extreme poverty, subsisting with their
families by occasional employment, by mendicancy, but principally,
perhaps, by the assumption of that unlawful power, which commerce with
spirits of evil was supposed to procure, and of which their sex, life,
appearance, and peculiarities, might seem to the prejudiced
neighbourhood in the Forest to render them not unsuitable
depositaries. In both, perhaps, some vindictive wish, which appeared
to have been gratified nearly as soon as uttered, or some one of those
curious coincidences which no individual's life is without, led to an
impression which time, habit, and general recognition would gradually
deepen into full conviction, that each really possessed the powers
which witchcraft was believed to confer. Whether it be with witches as
it is said to be with a much maligned branch of a certain profession,
that it needs two of its members in a district to make its exercise
profitable, it is not for me to say; but it is seldom found that
competition is accompanied by any very amicable feeling in the