error, but the honesty to confess it. "His reign, (says Fuller,*) was scattered over with cheaters in this kind, but the King, remembering what Solomon saith,.. It is the honour of a King to search out a matter,.. was no less dexterous than desirous to make discovery of these deceits. Various were his waies in detecting them, awing some into confession with his presence, perswading others by promise of pardon and fair usage. He ordered it so, that a proper courtier made love to one of these bewitched maids, and quickly Cupid his arrows drave out the pretended darts of the devil. Another there was, the tides of whose possession did so ebbe and flow that punctually they observed one hour, till the King came to visit her. The maid, loath to be so unmannerly as to make His Majesty attend her time, antedated her fits many hours, and instantly ran through the whole zodiack of tricks which she used to play. A third,

* Church History, Book X, p. 74.

strangely affected when the first verse of St. John's Gospel was read unto her in our translation, was tame and quiet whilst the same was pronounced in Greek, her English devil, belike, understanding no other language. The frequency of such forged possessions wrought such an alteration upon the judgement of King James, that he, receding from what he had written in his Demonologie, grew first diffident of, and then flatly to deny the working of witches and devils, as but falsehoods and delusions."

The manners of Charles the Second's reign began under James the First. "Divers sects and particular titles past unpunished, nor regarded, as the sect of the Roaring Boys, Boneventors, Bravadors, Quarterors, and such like, being persons prodigall, and of great expence, who having runne themselves into debt, were constrained to run into factions to defend themselves from danger of the

law; these received maintenance from divers of the nobility, and not a little, as was suspected, from the Earl of Northampton, which persons, although of themselves they were not able to at tempt any enterprise, yet faith, honesty,, and other good acts were little set by, and the citizens through lasciviousness consuming their estates, it was like that their number would rather increase than diminish, and under these pretences they entered into many desperate enterprises, and scarce any durst walk the streets after nine at night."

Truth brought to Light by Time, p. 3.

222. Sir Thomas Overbury. ·

The rare book from which the last extract is taken, contains a curious account of the manner in which, Over- buy was murdered. They poisoned ham with aqua fortis, white arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis costi tus, great spiders, and cantharides, what-

ever was or was believed to be most deadly," to be sure to hit his complexion." The murder was perpetrated with devilish perseverance. It appeared upon the trials that arsenic was always mixed with his salt; once he desired pig for dinner, and Mrs. Turner put into it lapis costitus; at another time he had two partridges sent him from the court, and water and onions being the sauce, Mrs. Turner put in cantharides instead of pepper, so that whatever he took was poisoned.

Overbury made his brags that he had won for Somerset the love of his Lady, by his letters and industry... To speak plainly, says Bacon in arraigning Somerset, Overbury had little that was solid for religion or moral virtue, but was wholly possest with ambition and vain glory,.. he was naught and corrupt,... a man of unbounded and impudent spirit. Mrs. Turner's execution affected the fashions.

"Were there now, (says Michaell Sparke the stationer,) in these times such sentence and execution performed, as the then learned Lord Cook gave on that fomenter of lust, Mistris Anne Turner, whose sentence was to be hang'd at Tiburn in her yellow Tiffiny Ruff and Cuffs, being she was the first inventer and wearer of that horrid garb; were there now in these daies the like upon such notorious black-spotted faces, naked brests and backs, no doubt but that ugly fashion would soon there end in shame and detestation, which now is too vainly followed; for never since the execution of her in that yellow ruff and cuffs, there hanged with her, was ever any seen to wear the like."

Truth brought to Light. Epistle

Dedicatory.

"Sir Jervas Yelvis also was executed in full dress, hee being arrayed in a black suit, and black jerkin with hanging. sleeves (aptly worn on the occasion),