Note 51 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Strutt derives the 'long-continued custom of swimming people suspected of witchcraft' from the Anglo-Saxon mode of judicial trial—the ordeal by water. Another 'method of proving a witch,' by weighing against the Church Bible (a formidable balance), is traced to some of their ancient customs. James VI. (Demonologie) is convinced that 'God hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism and wilfully refused the benefit thereof.'