Authorities, however, were very divided about the propriety and the efficacy of the ordeal, even if it were conducted, as was often the case in Elizabethan days, with much solemnity and parade under the supervision of the minister of the parish and his churchwardens. The people had no such scruple, and there was no livelier sport than to see a witch ducked. So general and deep-rooted was the common belief in this test that we even find suspects demanding to be subjected to it. Widow Coman, an Essex witch, who died in 1699, was at her own request thus experimented upon no less than three times. Hutchinson has a very significant passage (Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, Second Edition, 1720, pp. 175–6); “And as great Numbers of poor Creatures have been destroyed, and the Justice of the Nation reproach’d for this Custom of Swimming, and yet our Country-People are still as fond of it, as they are of Baiting a Bear or Bull: I will take leave to publish it in as solemn a Manner as I can; that at the Summer-Assizes held at Brentwood in Essex, in the year 1712, our Excellent Lord Chief Justice of England, the Right Honourable the Lord Parker, by a just and righteous Piece of Judgment, hath given all Men Warning, That if any dare for the future to make use of that Experiment, and the Party lose her Life by it, all they that are the Cause of it are guilty of Wilful Murther … if any Man hereafter uses that ungodly Tryal, and the Party tried be drown’d; neither King James’ Book, nor any other past Precedents will save them from an Halter.” In 1751 a chimney-sweep, named Colley, was hanged for having headed at Tring, Hertfordshire, a disorderly rabble who ducked an old beggar, Osborne,
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