Note 35 — Chapter VI

The story of the hangings at Leicester in 1616 has to be put together from various sources. Our principal authority, however, is in two letters written by Robert Heyrick of Leicester to his brother William in 1616, which are to be found in John Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (London, 1795-1815), II, pt. ii, 471, and in the Annual Register for 1800. See also William Kelly, Royal Progresses to Leicester (Leicester, 1884), 367-369. Probably this is the case referred to by Francis Osborne, where the boy was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury for further examination. Osborne, who wrote a good deal later than the events, apparently confused the story of the Leicester witches with that of the Boy of Bilston—their origins were similar—and produced a strange account; see his Miscellany of Sundry Essays, Paradoxes and Problematicall Discourses (London, 1658-1659), 6-9.