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Your Lordships to be commanded

Reginald Scot.

[A. vi.] A. a

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[Rom. and Ital. of this reversed from original.]

I therefore (at this time) doo onelie desire you to consider of my report, concerning the evidence that is commonlie brought before you against them. See first whether the evidence be not frivolous, & whether the proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting of ghesses, presumptions, & impossibilities contrarie to reason, scrip/ture, and nature. See also what persons complaine upon them, whether they be not of the basest, the unwisest, & most faithles kind of people. Also/ may it please you to waie what accusations and crimes they laie to their charge, namelie: She was at my house of late, she would have had a pot of milke, she departed in a chafe bicause she had it not, she railed, she curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and finallie she said she would be even with me: and soone after my child, my cow, my sow, or my pullet died, or was strangelie taken. Naie (if it please your Worship) I have further proofe: I was with a wise woman, and she told me I had an ill neighbour, & that she would come to my house yer it were long, and so did she; and that she had a marke above hir waste, & so had she: and God forgive me, my stomach hath gone against hir a great while. Hir mother before hir was counted a witch, she hath beene beaten and scratched by the face till bloud was drawne upon hir, bicause she hath beene suspected, & afterwards some of those persons were said to amend. These are the certeinties that I heare in their evidences.