103.]
[Footnote 2: He was examined by the Government as to his connection with
the Paris conspirators.--See State Papers, vol. clxxx. 16, 17.]
68. With the truth or falsehood of the statements and deductions made by
Harsnet, we have little or no concern. Western did not pretend to deny
that he had the power of exorcism, or that he exercised it upon the
persons in question, but he did not admit the truth of any of the more
ridiculous stories which Harsnet so triumphantly brings forward to
convict him of intentional deceit; and his features, if the portrait in
Father Morris's book is an accurate representation of him, convey an
impression of feeble, unpractical piety that one is loth to associate
with a malicious impostor. In addition to this, one of the witnesses
against him, Tyrell, was a manifest knave and coward; another, Mainy, as
conspicuous a fool; while the rest were servant-maids--all of them
interested in exonerating themselves from the stigma of having been
adherents of a lost cause, at the expense of a ringleader who seemed to
have made himself too conspicuous to escape punishment. Furthermore, the
evidence of these witnesses was not taken until 1598 and 1602, twelve
and sixteen years after the events to which it related took place; and
when taken, was taken by Harsnet, a violent Protestant and almost
maniacal exorcist-hunter, as the miscellaneous collection of literature
evoked by his exposure of Parson Darrell's dealings with Will Sommers
and others will show.
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