and their abettors the devil hath entered into, as he did the Gadarenes'
swine, with so many more of them who hath fallen mad, and dyed in
hideous forms of such distractions, that which hath been of this within
these 12 last years in England, (should all of this nature, our
chronicles do tell, with all the superstitious monks have writ, be put
together,) would make the greater volume, and of more strange
occurrents.

And now as to the penman of this narrative, know that he was a divine,
and at the time of those things acted, which are here related, the
minister and schoolmaster of Woodstock; a person learned and discreet,
not byassed with factious humours, his name Widows, who each day put in
writing what he heard from their mouthes, (and such things as they told
to have befallen them the night before,) therein keeping to their own
words; and, never thinking that what he had writ should happen to be
made publick, gave it no better dress to set it forth. And because to do
it now shall not be construed to change the story, the reader hath it
here accordingly exposed.

The 16th day of _October_, in the year of our Lord 1649, the
Commissioners for surveying and valuing his majestie's mannor-house,
parks, woods, deer, demesnes, and all things thereunto belonging, by
name Captain Crook, Captain Hart, Captain Cockaine, Captain Carelesse,
and Captain Roe, their messenger, with Mr. Browne, 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 majestie's house
after this manner: The bed-chamber and withdrawing-room they both lodged
in and made their kitchen; the presence-chamber their room for dispatch
of their business with all commers; of the council-hall their
brew-house, as of the dining-room, their wood-house, where they laid in