Scott, "in this imposture, was doubtless the advantage and promotion
of the Catholic cause, as the patient would have been in due time
exorcised and the fiend dispossessed, by the same priest who had
taught her to counterfeit the fits. Revenge against the women, who had
become proselytes to the Church of England, was probably an additional
motive." But the imposture broke down, from the inability of the
principal witness to support the scheme of deception. Unsuccessful,
however, as it proved, the time was well chosen, the groundwork
excellently laid, the evidence industriously got up, and it must ever
deserve a prominent place in the history--a history, how delightful
when it shall be written in the spirit of philosophy and with due
application of research--of human fraud and imposture.

We can only speculate, of course, on such an occasion, but perhaps no
trial is recorded as having taken place, with the results of which
every body, the parties convicted only excepted, was, in all
probability, better pleased or satisfied, than at this witch trial at
Lancaster in 1612. The mob would be delighted with a pageant, always
acceptable, in the execution of ten witches; and still more, that one
of them was of a rank superior to their own;--the judge had no doubt,
in his opinion, avoided each horn of the dilemma--the abomination
mentioned in Scripture--punishing the innocent or letting the guilty
go free--by tracking guilt with well breathed sagacity, and
unravelling imposture with unerring skill;--a Jesuit had been
unkennelled, a spectacle as gratifying to a serious Protestant in
those days, as running down a fox to a thorough sportsman;--a plot had
been discovered which might have made Lancaster Castle "to topple on
its warders" and "slope its head to its foundations," and Master
Cowell, who had held so many inquests, to vanish without leaving
anything in his own person whereon an inquest could be holden;--a