On Wash Common at Enborne, not far from the site of the battle of Newbury during the Civil War (1643), there is a group of prehistoric round barrows. Local tradition asserts that they cover the bodies of those slain in that battle, though in fact the parish registers of Newbury and Enborne show that the dead of both sides were given Christian burial in the churchyards of those places, as one would expect.
According to a contemporary pamphlet, some soldiers of the Earl of Essex’s army who were heading towards the battlefield of Newbury had a remarkable encounter with a witch.
A part of the army marching through Newbury, some of the soldiers, being scattered by the reason of their loitering by the way, in gathering Nuts, Apples, Plummes, Blackberries and the like, one of them by chance in clambering up a tree, being pursued by his fellow or Comrade in waggish merriment, lesting one with another, espied on the river being there adjacent, a tall, lean, slender woman, as he supposed, to his amazement, and great terror, treading of the water with her feet, with as much ease and firmnesse as if one should walk or trample on the earth.
The astonished soldier called his comrades, and both they and some officers watched the woman for some time, being hidden themselves. They realized she was not walking on the water itself, as they had first thought, but standing upright on a plank which floated just below the surface, ‘turning and winding it which way she pleased, making it pastime to her, little thinking who perceived her tricks’. Finally she pushed her board to the riverbank and landed, and the officer ordered his men to seize her. They demanded to know who she was, but she would not answer one word, either to them or to the officers (obstinate silence under questioning or torture was traditionally thought to be one of the signs of a witch). Seeing she was so obviously a witch, the officers were unwilling to let her go, but equally unwilling to take her with them, so they
…gave order to a couple of their soldiers that were approved good marks-men, to charge and shoot her straight, which they prepared to do, setting her boult upright against a mud bank, or wall; two of the soldiers according to their command made themselves ready, where having taken aime gave fire and shot at her as thinking sure they had sped her, but with a deriding and loud laughter at them she caught their bullets in her hand and chew’d them.
Another soldier put his carbine right up against her breast and fired, but the bullet bounced back like a ball and very nearly hit him in the face. Sword strokes were equally useless; the woman still would not speak, and still laughed scornfully. Then one man remembered hearing that to draw blood from the veins that cross the temples of the head would prevail against even the strongest sorcery, so they decided to do that. The witch, knowing then that the devil had left her and her power was gone, wailed, tore her hair, moaned, and cried out, ‘And it is come to passe, that I must die indeed? Why then his Excellency the Earle of Essex shall be fortunate and win the field.’
After which no more words could be got from her; wherewith they immediately discharged a Pistoll underneath her ear, at which she straight sunk down and dyed, leaving her legacy of a detested carcasse to the wormes, her soul we ought not to judge of, though the evills of her wicked life and death can scape no censure.