twelve-moneth since, like a man something ancient, in blackish cloathes, but he had ugly feet uncovered.'[1] The evidence of the Suffolk witches, 1645-6, is to the same effect; Thomazine Ratcliffe of Shellie confessed that 'there came one in the likeness of a man.—One Richmond, a woman which lived at Brampford, confessed the Devill appeared to her in the likenesse of a man, called Daniel the Prophet.—One Bush of Barton, widdow, confessed that the Devill appeared to her in the shape of a young black man'.[2] All the Covens of Somerset, 1664, were evidently under one Chief; he came to Elizabeth Style as 'a handsome man'; to Elizabeth Style, Anne Bishop, Alice Duke, and Mary Penny as 'a Man in black Clothes, with a little Band'; to Christian Green 'in the shape of a Man in blackish Clothes'; and to Mary and Catherine Green as 'a little Man in black Clothes with a little Band'.[3] To the Yorkshire witch, Alice Huson, 1664, he appeared like a Black Man on a Horse upon the Moor', and again 'like a Black Man upon a Black Horse, with Cloven Feet'.[4] Abre Grinset of Dunwich, in Suffolk, 1665, said 'he did appear in the form of a Pretty handsom Young Man'.[5] In Northumberland, 1673, Ann Armstrong said that 'she see the said Ann Forster [with twelve others and] a long black man rideing on a bay galloway, as she thought, which they call'd there protector'.[6] The Devonshire witch Susanna Edwards, 1682, enters into some detail: 'She did meet with a gentleman in a field called the Parsonage Close in the town of Biddiford. And saith that his apparel was all of black. Upon which she did hope to have a piece of money of him. Whereupon the gentleman drawing near unto this examinant, she did make a curchy or courtesy unto him, as she did use to do to gentlemen. Being demanded what and who the gentleman she spake of was, the said examinant answered and said, That it was the Devil.'[7] In Northamptonshire, 1705, he came to Mary Phillips and Elinor Shaw as 'a tall black Man'.[8]
Scotland.—The earliest description is in the trial of Bessie
