[1] It was one of many witch trials in the early modern period, but scholar Barbara Rosen claims it "attracted probably more notice than any other in the sixteenth century".
She accused the 76-year-old Alice Samuel of being the cause; this was echoed by Jane's four sisters and some household servants who began exhibiting similar symptoms.
Following this, there were a total of twelve maid-servants of the Throckmorton household (in addition to the five daughters) who experienced fits and the torment of Alice Samuell's alleged witchcraft.
Jane's fits were described as such: "Sometimes she would neese [sneeze] very loud and thick for the space of half an hour together; and evidently as one in a great trance and sound lay quietly as long, soon after would begin to swell and heave up her belly so as none was able to bend her or keep her down, sometime thee would shake one leg and no other part of her, as if the palsie had been in it, sometimes the other, presently she would shake one of her arms and then the other, and soon after her head, as if she had been infected with the running palsie".
[4] These daughters, two to three years older than Jane, cried out: "Take her away, look where she standeth here before us in a black thrumbed cap it is she that hath bewitched us and she will kill us if you do not take her away".
During this conversation, Lady Cromwell reportedly grabbed a pair of scissors and cut a lock of hair off Alice, and gave it to Mrs. Throckmorton to burn (a folk remedy believed to weaken a witch's power).
[6] Following the death of Lady Cromwell, a local parson convinced Alice to admit to witchcraft, which she retracted the very next day.
[H]e found upon the body of the old woman Alice Samuel a little lump of flesh, in manner sticking out as if it had been a teat, to the length of half an inch; which both he and his wife perceiving, at the first sight thereof meant not to disclose because it was adjoining so secret a place which was not decent to be seen.
Yet in the end, not willing to conceal so strange a matter, and decently covering that privy place a little above which it grew, they made open show thereof unto diverse that stood by.
[11] The scholar George Kittredge (1860–1941) called the Warboys trial "the most momentous witch-trial that had ever occurred in England", partially because it had "demonstrably produced a deep and lasting impression on the class that made laws".
[12] In Kate Pullinger's 1999 novel, Weird Sister, Agnes Samuel returns to the present day to terrorise the Throckmorton family, who still reside in Warboys but have no memory of the events of the late 16th century.