told him when wanton cruelty damped the flame to waste it lingeringly, or roused it in the impatience of revenge; and when came those sharp and shooting pains, the hags were thrusting in their bodkins, and their loud and exulting laugh rang in his ears. They sat upon his breast in that perturbed sleep, from which he awoke gasping; and, as he started up, he saw them melting into air. Yet more miserable was the melancholy wretch whom the fiends were commissioned bodily to possess ; with whose breathing frame an infernal substance was incorporated, and almost identified; whose thoughts were agony, and his words involuntary blasphemies: or the unhappy father, who saw the work of hell operating upon his offspring, and resolved their ailments or their death into a mystery and curse.

But even these evils, horrible and distressing as they are, were not the only calamities dependent upon this baneful doctrine. The religious principles of the people became affected; and those who believed not in the existence of witches, were accounted sadducees, atheists, and infidels; and sharp and bitter, indeed, was the doom denounced against

them.

The question whether there be witches or not (observes one of the most strenuous advocates of witchcraft, and a divine of no mean repute in his day) is not a matter of vain speculation, or of indifferent moment, but an inquiry of very great and weighty importance. For, on the resolution of it depends the authority and just execution of some of our laws; and, what is more, our religion in its main doctrines is mainly concerned. There is no one, who is not very much a stranger to the world, but knows how atheism and infidelity have advanced in our days, and how openly they now dare to show themselves in asserting and disputing their vile cause. Particularly the distinction of the soul from the body, the being of spirits, and a future life, are assertions extremely despised and opposed by the men of this sort; and if we lose these articles, all religion comes to nothing. They are clearly and fully asserted in the sacred oracles, but those wits have laid aside those divine writings. They are proved by the best philosophy, and highest reason, but the unbelievers, divers of them, are too shallow to be capable of such proofs, and the more subtle are ready to

scepticise them away. But there is one head of argument that troubleth them much, and that is the topic of witches and If such there are, it is a senapparitions. sible proof of spirits, and another life; an argument of more direct force than any speculations or abstract reasonings, and infidels. On which account, they labour with all their might to persuade themselves and others, that witches and apparitions are but melancholick dreams, or crafty impostures. They expose and deride all relations of spirits and witchcrafts, and furnish themselves with some little arguments, or rather colours, against their existence. And when they have once swallowed this opinion, and are sure there are no witches denial of spirits, a life to come, and all the nor apparitions, they are prepared for the other principles of religion.*

such an one as meets with all the sorts of

The existence of witches being thus satisfactorily established, and their direful power universally acknowledged, we must not be surand dragged to the bar of public jusprised that they were hunted out, to their imputed crimes. tice to receive the punishment due The first formal trial of any importance, which we find recorded, is that of the witches of Warbois, which took place in 1593. Their accusation was founded improbable and ridiculous they may on circumstances which, however now appear, were in those days sufficiently criminal to ensure the condemnation and death of three harmless individuals. The following parDr. Hutchinson's "Historical Essay ticulars of this trial are copied from concerning Witchcraft," chap. 7.

Three persons,-old Samuel and his wife, and Agnes Samuel, their daughter, were condemned at Huntingdon by Mr. Justice Fenner, April 4, 1593, for bewitching, as was supposed, five of Mr. Throgmorton's children, seven servants, the lady Cromwell, and the gaoler's man, &c. The father and daughter, indeed, maintained their impocence to the last; but the old woman confessed. It ought to be observed, that this prosecution was not grounded upon any previous acts of sorcery that these people had been taken in, but upon experiments and charms, which the prosecutors compelled them to use, and tried upon them.

One of Mr. Throgmorton's daughters had fits, and was ill; but there were no signs or thoughts of witchcraft, till this old mother Samuel, living near them, came in to see her, and sate in the chimney corner,

they forgive her, she cried and confessed; but in a day or two she denied all again. Then Mr. Throgmorton was angry, and threatened to carry her before the Bishop at Bugden; and upon condition that she might not be carried thither, she promised to confess again, provided it might be to Mr. Throgmorton alone; but he secretly placed people under the window to hear what she said; and by this threatening promise and contrivance, he gained a second confession.

But this confession was not sufficient for the tender and scrupulous conscience of Mr. Throgmorton. He, consequently, invented a charm, which he declared had been revealed to him by spirits; and so great was the influence which he had gained over the mind of this poor old woman, that he made her repeat it "a hundred times over." It was as follows:-"I charge thee, thou Devil, as I love thee, and have authority over thee, and am a witch, and guilty of this matter, that thou suffer these children to be well at present." The children, for whose benefit this damning exhortation was uttered, had the faculty, it appears, of immediately recovering from their indisposition, so soon as they had heard this invocation; and it seems very evident, from a "narrative" of this trial, published the same year, that these children of Mr. Throgmorton were nothing more nor less than a pack of malicious and wicked impostors, instigated, no doubt, by their father, for some purpose best known to him self. The writer of the "narrative," who was clearly no friend to the delinquents, confesses, with much naïvete, that the children would "come out of their fits" at many other absurd experiments ;-as "carrying them abroad, or into the churchyard, or even turning their faces one way rather than another." * It appears, moreover, that these urchins never failed to display their pretended afflictions in the presence of strangers, and that they derived a

great deal of pleasure from the wonderment of those silly persons, who believed all that they saw and heard.

The judge (Fenner) seems, also, to have been fully determined upon the destruction of this ill-fated fahis innocence, and, as no positive mily. Old Samuel sturdily declared proof of guilt had appeared in evidence against him, this precious expounder of the law told him, that "if he would not speak the words of the charm, the court would hold him guilty of the crime he was ac cused of;" and thus this poor old man was urged to a confession, which, untrue and unjust as it was, occasioned his condemnation and death! A circumstance occurred during the trial, which ought to have convinced every body of the innocence of the daughter, Agnes Samuel. This young girl seems to have been a girl of more than usual virtue and intelligence. The only crime, of which she was guilty, was hiding herself when the officers came to apprehend her, and repeating, by compulsion, the damnatory charm, already pronounced by her father and mother. She strenuously maintained her innocence to the last; and some persons near her advised her, as the only means of prolonging, and, perhaps, of preserving, her life, to plead that she was with child. But she heard the proposal with indignation, and replied::-" No, I will never do that. It shall never be said, that I am both a witch and a w-e.' But even this honourable resolution had no effect upon the bigoted minds of her accusers. Nothing but the death of herself and her aged parents would satisfy their blood-thirsty persecutors; and the parents and their child were consequently executed at Huntingdon, a few days after their condemnation.†

Four years after this trial, appeared at Edinburgh the " Dæmonologie of King James the First. Previous to this monarch's accession to the

throne of England, several circumstances had occurred to confirm and propagate the delusion which he advocated. The condemnation of the witches of Warbois, the validity of whose crime was doubted by few, was a proof in the minds of the multitude, of the existence and terrific effects of witchcraft; and this occurrence alone furnished a sufficient plea for the prosecution of suspected persons. Besides, the king, who was much celebrated for his wisdom, had, before his arrival in England, not only examined in person a woman (Agnes Symson* accused of witchcraft, but had given a very formal account of the practices and illusions of evil spirits, the compacts of witches, the ceremonies used by them, the manner of detecting them, and the justice of punishing them, in the Dialogues of his "Dæmonologie," written in the Scottish dialect, and published at Edinburgh as aforesaid. This book, soon after his accession, was re-printed in London;t and as the ready way to gain King James's favour was to flatter his speculations, the system set forth in the "Dæmonologie" was immediately adopted by all who desired either to gain preferment, or not to lose it. The royal treatise, as may be readily supposed, completely superseded the work of Reginald Scot; every one,' as an old writer observes, was very forward to read and admire the king's book on so curious a subject;" and the "Discoverie of Witchcraft," although it contained facts, collected with singular zeal and industry, and a most com

plete exposition of their absurdity, was despised and ridiculed, while the pedantic treatise of the king was idolized, and all its preposterous details fully credited. Hence the doctrine of witchcraft was very powerfully inculcated; and as the greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions, than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted, but that the persuasion made rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated so strongly in its favour. The infection soon reached the parliament, and in the first year of King James a statute was passed, which repealed, in some measure, that enacted in the 5th of Elizabeth, than which it was more comprehensive and severe, having for its object the more effectual punishment (as the preamble expresses it) of those detestable slaves of the Devil, witches, sorcerers, enchanters, and conjurors. ‡ This statute is most carefully worded, and comprises every possible (and impossible) species of the crime, whose suppression it was intended to effect. It enacts, 1st, that if any person, or persons, shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit ;-2d, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or accursed spirit, to or for any intent or purpose;-3d, or shall take up any dead man, woman, or child out of the grave, or the skin, bones, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charms, or enchantment;-4th, or shall use, practise, or exercise any sort of witch