would be afraid alone, he said he had no fear of anything: So being left till Saturday in the Forenoon, he was found in this posture, viz. sitting upon a stool which was on the Hearth of the Chimney, with his feet on the floor and his Body straight upward, his shoulders touching the lintel of the Chimney, but his Neck tyed with his own neck-cloath (whereof the knot was behind) to a small stick thrust into a hole above the lintel of the Chimney, upon which the Company, especially John Campbel a Chyrurgeon who was called, thought at first in respect of his being in an ordinary posture of sitting, and the neck-cloath not having any drawn knot (or run loup) but an ordinary one which was not very strait, and the sticke not having the strength to bear the weight of his Body or the struggle, that he had not been quite dead; but finding it otherways, and that he was in such a Situation that he could not have been the Actor thereof himself, concluded that some extraordinary Agent had done it, especially considering that the Door of the Room was secured, and that there was a board set over the Window which was not there the night before when they left him.'[1]
A similar fate befell the warlock Playfair in 1597. He was found strangled in his prison at Dalkeith with the 'point' of his breeches tied round his neck.[2]
