section 1.

Many of the actors in the affair were persons of local prominence, and can be identified. The "Mr. Greatrix" was Valentine Greatrakes, the famous healer or "stroker," who also makes his appearance in the tale of the haunted butler (see p. 164). He was born in 1629, and died in 1683. He joined the Parliamentary Army, and when it was disbanded in 1656, became a country magistrate. At the Restoration he was deprived of his offices, and then gave himself up to a life of contemplation. In 1662 the idea seized him that he had the power of healing the king's-evil. He kept the matter quiet for some time, but at last communicated it to his wife, who jokingly bade him try his power on a boy in the neighbourhood. Accordingly he laid his hands on the affected parts with prayer, and within a month the boy was healed. Gradually his fame spread, until patients came to him from various parts of England as well as Ireland. In 1665 he received an invitation from Lord Conway to come to Ragley to cure his wife of perpetual headaches. He stayed at Ragley about three weeks, and while there he entertained his hosts with the story of Florence Newton and her doings; although he did not succeed in curing Lady Conway, yet many persons in the neighbourhood benefited by his treatment. The form of words he always used was: "God Almighty heal thee for His mercy's sake"; and if the patient professed to receive any benefit he bade them give God the praise. He took no fees, and rejected cases which were manifestly incurable. In modern times the cures have been reasonably attributed to animal magnetism. He was buried beside his father at Affane, co. Waterford.[33] Some of his contemporaries had a very poor opinion of him; Increase Mather, writing in 1684, alludes contemptuously to "the late miracle-monger or Mirabilian stroaker in Ireland, Valentine Greatrix," whom he accuses of attempting to cure an ague by the use of that "hobgoblin word, _Abrodacara_." John Pyne, the employer of the bewitched servant-girl, served as Bailiff of Youghal along with Edward Perry in 1664, the latter becoming Mayor in 1674; both struck tradesmen's tokens of the usual type. Richard Myres was Bailiff of Youghal in 1642, and Mayor in 1647 and 1660. The Rev. James Wood was appointed "minister of the gospel" at Youghal, by the Commonwealth Government, at a salary of £120 per annum; in 1654 his stipend was raised to £140, and in the following year he got a further increase of £40. He was sworn in a freeman at large in 1656, and appears to have been presented by the Grand Jury in 1683 as a religious vagrant.[34] Furthermore, it seems possible to recover the name of the Judge who tried the case at the Cork Assizes. Glanvill says that he took the Relation from "a copy of an Authentick Record, as I conceive, every half-sheet having W. Aston writ in the Margin, and then again W. Aston at the end of all, who in all likelihood must be some publick Notary or Record-Keeper." This man, who is also mentioned in the narrative, is to be identified with Judge Sir William Aston, who after the establishment of the Commonwealth came to Ireland, and was there practising as a barrister at the time of the Restoration, having previously served in the royalist army. On 3rd November 1660 he was appointed senior puisne Judge of the Chief Place, and died in 1671.[35] The story accordingly is based on the notes taken by the Judge before whom the case was brought, and is therefore of considerable value, in that it affords us a picture, drawn by an eye-witness in full possession of all the facts, of a witch-trial in Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century.