Luce Thompson, and tenne more unknowne to her.—Att the house of John Newton off the Riding, the said Lucy wished that a boyl'd capon with silver scrues might come down to her and the rest, which were five coveys consisting of thirteen person in every covey.' At a large meeting at Allensford, where a great many witches were present, 'every thirteen of them had a divell with them in sundry shapes.' It is also noticeable that Ann Armstrong mentions twenty-six persons by name as having been at various meetings to her knowledge.[1] At Paisley (1692) thirteen persons of high position brought an action for libel against six others for saying that they, the thirteen, had drunk the Devil's health in the house of one of them; the libellers were punished, but the number of persons libelled suggests that the accusation might have been true.[2]
3. Duties
An important part of the organization was the system of reporting to the Grand Master everything which had happened since the previous Great Assembly. The chief work of the Covens was the performance of magical rites, either publicly at the Esbats or privately in the houses of the witches and their neighbours. As these rites, especially when performed privately, were more or less in the nature of experiments, the results were reported and when successful were recorded in writing for future use. The book in which the records were made remained in the hands of the Devil, who in this way had always a store of well-tried magical spells and recipes to kill or cure, from which he could instruct his followers as occasion demanded.
The position of the Devil as the instructor of the witches is to be found in most of the trials in Great Britain. Cooper states this plainly: 'He deliuers unto his Proselite, and so to the rest, the Rules of his Art, instructing them in the manner of hurting and helping, and acquainting them with such medicines and poysons as are vsuall herevnto.'[3] Bessie Dunlop (1567) never attempted to cure any disease without
