Although both were subpoenaed as witnesses neither Fortune nor Judith Natus were called to the stand, the attorney responsible later explaining that the mob outside may have intimidated several witnesses. Susannah Wells's neighbours were turned away by the mob and her daughter and half-brother were quickly recognised and stopped. However, three witnesses found in Dorset by George Squires, to testify for his mother, passed by unrecognised. The first, John Gibbons, said that the Squires had visited his house in Abbotsbury "with handkerchiefs, lawns, muslins, and checks, to sell about town" from 1–9 January. This was corroborated by his neighbour, William Clarke. Squires's last witness, Thomas Greville, claimed that he had accommodated Mary and "her sister and her brother" under his roof in Coombe, on 14 January, where they sold "handkerchiefs, lawns, and such things". This was contradicted by John Iniser, a fishmonger around Waltham Cross and Theobalds. Insier claimed he knew Squires by sight and that in the three weeks before her arrest he had seen her telling fortunes in the neighbourhood of Wells's house. Wells, whose witnesses had been unable to pass by the mob outside, was able to offer only two sentences in her defence. She told the court that she had not seen Canning before 1 February, and that "as to Squires, I never saw her above a week and a day before we were taken up." According to a contemporary report in the "London Daily Advertiser", as the three witnesses left the court the mob, waiting in the yard, "beat them, kicked them rolled them in the Kennel and otherwise misused them before they suffered them to get from them".