Jonet Kerr and Issobell Ramsay at Edinburgh in 1661 we find the names of thirteen persons, or one coven.[1] At Crook of Devon in 1662 thirteen persons were tried and condemned at one assise.[2] In 1662 Isobel Gowdie of Auldearne, who has been already quoted, gave her evidence freely and without torture; she stated that there were thirteen persons in each coven, and gives the names of all the members of her own coven, including the officer.[3] Janet Breadheid, of the same coven as Isobel, gives the names of thirty-nine persons or three covens who were actually present in the kirk at Nairn to see her admitted as a member of the organisation.[4] In Somerset in 1664 the number of the accused was twenty-six, or two covens.[5] At Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1673, Ann Armstrong, whose words have already been quoted, was (according to her own account) taken by force to a meeting where she saw ten people whom she mentions by name "and thre more, whose names she knowes not"; at another meeting "she see the said Anne Forster, Anne Driden, and Luce Thompson, and tenne more unknowne to her"; and at a large assembly where many persons were present "every thirteen of them had a divell with them in sundry shapes."[6] Again, on counting the names of those who, according to Ann Armstrong, were present at the witch-assemblies, it will be found that there were twenty-six, or two covens.
It seems certain then that, in the constitution of the witch-societies, thirteen was the appointed number for a coven in Great Britain. The French evidence is not so clear, for the French trials are rarely published in extenso. There is, however, one cause celèbre, which in
