intact. In any case it was burned to ashes in the same fire as consumed the wretched Boullé and it seems probable that this corpse was incinerated to put an end to the vampirish attacks upon the cloister. At Maidstone, in 1652, “Anne Ashby, alias Cobler, Anne Martyn, Mary Browne, Anne Wilson, and Mildred Wright of Cranbrooke and Mary Read, of Lenham, being legally convicted, were according to the Laws of this Nation, adjudged to be hanged, at the common place of Execution. Some there were that wished rather they might be burnt to Ashes; alledging that it was a received opinion among many, that the body of a witch being burnt, her bloud is prevented thereby from becomming hereditary to her Progeny in the same evill.”[4]
It is even recorded that in one case the witch herself considered that she should be sent to the stake. A rich farmer in Northamptonshire had made an enemy of a woman named Anne Foster. Thirty of his sheep were discovered dead with their “Leggs broke in pieces, and their Bones all shattered in their Skins.” Shortly after his house and several of his barns were found ablaze. It was suspected that Anne Foster had brought this about by sorcery. She was tried upon this charge at Northampton in 1674, and “After Sentence of Death was past upon her, she mightly desired to be Burned; but the Court would give no Ear to that, but that she should be hanged at the Common place of Execution.”[5]
These two categories are those to which, it is generally believed, cases of vampirism may be assigned, and the remaining classes are almost entirely peculiar to Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, Greece and Eastern Europe.
The vampire is believed to be one who for some reason is buried with mutilated rites. It will be remarked that this idea has a very distinct connexion with the anxious care taken by the Greek and Roman of classical times that the dead should be consigned to the tomb with full and solemn ceremony. Example might be multiplied upon example and it will suffice to refer to the passage in the Iliad where the soul of Patroclus is represented as urgently demanding the last ceremonial observances at the tomb.
“Sleep’st thou, Achilles, mindless of thy friend,
Neglecting, not the living, but the dead?
Hasten my funeral rites, that I may pass
