Nicholas Hempstead was pressed by Stearne until he confessed to sending his own imps to kill a horse and to attack men in his regiment. Both were named as witches. Stearne claimed that Hempstead had used witchcraft to destroy horses intended for the parliamentary army – Hempstead was later executed.
“NICHOLAS HEMPSTEAD of Creeting in Suffolk, being found upon exhortations, and laying the heinousness of the sin, and Gods Judgements, and Gods mercy and the like, notwithstanding he at first railed on me in very opprobrious terms, yet presently sent for me, and would have asked me forgiveness, he presently confessed that he had made a league and Covenant with the Devil, and how he had confirmed it with his blood; And the shape of his Imps, and of the Devil when they covenanted, and how he killed a horse of one of the Constables, because he pressed him for a soldier, and five of the best in Colonel Rochesters Troop; And diverse other things he had done, making a very large confession, with a great deal of penitence and sorrow, which he so continued with (as I since heard) to his very execution without alteration”
A confirmation and discovery of witches – John Stearne