womb.  This done, he concealed the body, as it may readily be supposed, among the bushes that usually encompass a pond, and the next night when it grew dusk, fetching a hay spade from a rick that stood in the close, he made a hole by the side of the pond, and there slightly buried the woman in her clothes.  Having thus despatched two at once, and thinking himself secure, because unseen, he went the same day to his brother-in-law, one Thomas Lofthouse of Rusforth, within three miles of York, who had married his drowned wife’s sister, and told him he had carried his wife to one Richard Harrison’s house in Selby, who was his uncle, and would take care of her.

But Heaven would not be so deluded, but raised up the ghost of the murdered woman to make the discovery.  It was Easter Tuesday following, about two-o’clock in the afternoon, that the afore-mentioned Lofthouse, having occasion to water a quickset hedge not far from his house, as he was going for the second pailful, an apparition went before him in the shape of a woman, and soon after set down against a rising green grass plot, right over against the pond.  He walked by her as he went to the pond, and as he returned with the pail from the pond, looking sideways to see whether she continued in the same place, he found she did, and that she seemed to dandle something in her lap that looked like a white bag, as he thought, which he did not observe before.  So soon as he had emptied his pail, he went into his yard and stood still to turn whether he could see her again, but she was vanished.  In this information he says that the woman seemed to be habited in a brown-coloured petticoat, waistcoat and a white hood, such a one as his wife’s sister usually wore, and that her countenance looked extremely pale and wan, with her teeth in sight, but no gums appearing, and that her physiognomy was like that of his wife’s sister, who was wife to William Barwick.

But notwithstanding the ghastliness of the apparition, it seems it made so little impression on Lofthouse’s mind that he thought no more of it, neither did he speak to anybody concerning it until the same night, as he was at family duty of prayers, when that apparition returned again to his thoughts, and discomposed his devotion; so that after he had made an end of his prayers, he told the whole story of what he had seen to his wife, who laying circumstances together, immediately inferred that her sister was either drowned or otherwise murdered, and desired her husband to look after her the next day, which was the Wednesday in Easter week.  Upon this, Lofthouse, recollecting what Barwick had told him of his carrying his wife to his uncle at Selby, repaired to Harrison before-mentioned, but found all that Barwick had said to be false, for Harrison had neither heard of Barwick nor his wife, neither did he know anything of them.  Which notable circumstance, together with that other of the apparition, increased his suspicion to that degree that now concluding his wife’s sister was murdered, he went to the Lord Mayor of York.  And having obtained his warrant, he got Barwick apprehended; who was no sooner brought before the Lord Mayor, but his own conscience then accusing him, he acknowledged the whole matter, as it has been already related, and as it appears by the examination and confession herewith printed.