On November 1, 1694, in Westmoreland County, William Earle accused Phyllis Money of 'hexing the horse' of Henry Dunkin, causing it to spook, and cutting Henry’s leg.  Earle further declared that Phyllis Money had instructed her daughter, Henry Dunkin’s wife, in the wiles of witchcraft, and that Phyllis enrolled her husband to be a wizard.

Not content with speaking these terrible words in Dunkin's house, Earle had repeated them over and over in other places.  In consequence of Earle's groundless charges, Phyllis said her neighbors had refused to "keep company" with her and her husband, and that they had been much injured in their credit and good name; and even went so far as to assert that their lives had been in imminent danger.

Phyllis and her husband brought a civil suit against William Earle, which amounted to an ordinary action of defamation; and in the end failed to secure any damages, Phyllis stating that she had never been guilty of witchcraft, or of any ‘wicked and base acts’ of that nature. 

The following year, 1695, Henry Dunkin was summoned to court in a civil suit for ‘scandalous reflections’ on the reputation of John Dunkin and his wife, Elizabeth.

Henry had accused both John and Elizabeth Dunkin of witchcraft and that Elizabeth had boasted to him that she was a sorceress; that she had bewitched his cow, and was herself regularly sucked by the Devil.  If these charges could be proven, it would have rendered Elizabeth, by the provisions of he English law, liable to be burnt at the stake, an accursed and shameful death.

A short time after Henry Dunkin reported these words to have been uttered, he went to John Dunkin's house, and there heaped "atrocious and scurrilous names" upon Elizabeth, denounced her is a witch and her children as witches' imps, and ended by defying all her works of sorcery.

Such "damnable and wicked words" falsely attributed to her, Elizabeth alleged, were deliberately designed to destroy the good names of herself and her husband, to ruin them in heir estates and fortunes, and to bring lasting discredit in their posterity.

The case was submitted to a jury, with a claim on John and Elizabeth Dunkin's part of forty thousand pounds of tobacco in damages.  The jury returned a verdict allowing them only forty pounds.

The trial of Edward Prescott (d. 1662) for hanging a witch named Elizabeth Richardson (d. 1658), with the charges preferred by Col. John Washington (c. 1634–1677), an immigrant, and the great grandfather of Gen. George Washington (1732–1799).

Prescott, a merchant, had committed a felony in 1658 while hanging Richardson, on his ship “Sea Horse of London” as it was bound from England on the high seas, en route to Maryland. Trial was set, Prescott proved that though he was owner of the ship, he was not master at the time. Therefore, he was acquitted because of the absence of Washington, who could not attend due to the baptism of his son.