Canto 3, 11. 139 Ff.) Is Disproved by the Following Passage

in Stearne: “I am certain (not-withstanding whatsoever hath been said of him) he died peaceably at Manningtree, after a long sicknesse of a Consumption, as many of his generation had done before him, without any trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsly reported of him” (p. 61). For the record of his burial, Aug. 12, 1647, see Notes and Queries, 1st Series, X, 285. The notion that Hopkins was “swum” and, since he floated, was subsequently hanged, most likely originated in a document criticising his performances which was brought before the Norfolk judges in 1646 or (more probably) in 1647. Hopkins printed a reply to this document shortly before his death,--The Discovery of Witches: in Answer to severall Queries, lately delivered to the Judges of Assize for the County of Norfolk. And now published by Matthew Hopkins, Witch-finder (London, 1647). The first “query,” as printed by Hopkins, was this:--“That he must needs be the greatest Witch, Sorcerer, and Wizzard himselfe, else hee could not doe it.” Cf. Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 145 ff.; Lives of Twelve Bad Men, edited by Thomas Seccombe, London, 1894, p. 64; Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 1656, pp. 101-102; James Howell, as above (p. 8, note 7); Gough, British Topography, 1780, II, 254.

Legge, Scottish Review, XVIII, 273-274. Ady (A Candle in the Dark, 1656, p. 105) says: “A little before the Conquest of Scotland (as is reported upon good intelligence) the Presbytery of Scotland did, by their own pretended authority, take upon them to Summon, Convent, Censure, and Condemn people to cruel death for Witches and (as is credibly reported) they caused four thousand to be executed by Fire and Halter, and had as many in prison to be tried by them, when God sent his conquering Sword to suppress them.” The “conquest” to which Ady refers is Cromwell’s in 1650. It is well known that from 1640 to Cromwell’s invasion, witch prosecution ran riot in Scotland, but that during his supremacy there were very few executions in that country (see Legge, pp. 266-267). Cf. p. 8, note 6, above.

Die praktischen Folgen des Aberglaubens, p. 34.

Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. Heppe, I, 492.

Dæmonolatreia, Lugduni, 1595.

See p. 42, above.

Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. Heppe, II, 38 ff.

See the extraordinary enumeration in Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, II, 293 ff.; cf. S. Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, pp. 141 ff., 283 ff.

Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, 1613 (Chetham Society reprint).

Matthew Hopkins, Discovery of Witches, 1647, p. 3.

John Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, 1648, p. 14.

Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, Chap. xxv.

Memorials, 1732, p. 163.

Page 450.

A Relation of the Diabolical Practices of above Twenty Wizards and Witches, 1697; Sadducismus Debellatus, 1698; A History of the Witches of Renfrewshire, 1877. A seventh committed suicide in prison.

An Account of the Tryals, Examination and Condemnation, of Elinor Shaw, and Mary Phillips [etc.], London ; The Northamptonshire Witches. Being a true and faithful Account of the Births [etc.] of Elinor Shaw, and Mary Phillips, (The two notorious Witches) That were executed at Northampton on Saturday, March the 17th, 1705.... Communicated in a Letter last Post, from Mr. Ralph Davis, of Northampton ... London, 1705. The first tract is dated March 8, 1705; the second, March 18th, 1705. Both are signed “Ralph Davis.” I have used the reprints by Taylor & Son, Northampton, 1866. On this case, see [F. Marshall,] A Brief History of Witchcraft, with Especial Reference to Northamptonshire, Northampton, 1866, pp. 13-15, 16; Notes and Queries, 7th Series, IX, 117; Northamptonshire Notes and Queries II, 19; Eugene Teesdale, in Bygone Northamptonshire, edited by William Andrews, 1891, pp. 114-115; Gough, British Topography, 1780, II, 46.

See p. 48, above. This was the last conviction for witchcraft, and probably the last trial, in England. Mrs. Mary Hickes and her daughter are said by Gough (British Topography, 1780, I, 439, II, 254, note) to have been executed for witchcraft on July 28, 1716, at Huntingdon. Gough cites a contemporary pamphlet as authority. The genuineness of this case is doubted (see Notes and Queries, 1st Series, V, 514; 2d Series, V, 503-504), but Mr. F. A. Inderwick argues for its acceptance (Side-Lights on the Stuarts, 2d ed., 1891, pp. 177-180), and it has certainly never been disproved. The alleged executions at Northampton in 1712 are certainly based on a slip of the pen in Gough, British Topography, 1780, II, 52; the cases actually occurred in 1612, and an account of them may be found in a tract (The Witches of Northamptonshire) published in that year, and reprinted by Taylor & Son, Northampton, 1867. See also Thomas Sternberg, The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, London, 1851, p. 152; F. Marshall, A Brief History of Witchcraft, Northampton, 1866, p. 16.

That is, Francis Bragge, who was also a clergyman, being Curate of Biggleswade according to Mr. W. B. Gerish (A Hertfordshire Witch, p. 8).

Commentaries, book iv, chap. 4, sec. 6 (4th ed., 1770, IV, 60-61); cf. Dr. Samuel A. Green, Groton in the Witchcraft Times, 1883, p. 29. In 1715 and 1716 there appeared, in London, A Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery, and Witchcraft, in two volumes, which asserted the truth, and gave the particulars, of a long line of such phenomena, from the case of the Witches of Warboys (in 1592) to the Salem Witchcraft itself. The book was the occasion of Dr. Francis Hutchinson’s Historical Essay, published in 1718, and in a second edition in 1720. Richard Boulton, the author of the Compleat History, returned to the charge in 1722, in The Possibility and Reality of Magick, Sorcery, and Witchcraft, Demonstrated. Or, a Vindication of a Compleat History of Magick, etc. The Compleat History came out anonymously, but Boulton, who describes himself as “sometime of Brazen-Nose College in Oxford,” acknowledges the authorship in his reply to Hutchinson.

The Case of Witchcraft at Coggeshall, Essex, in the year, 1699, being the Narrative of the Rev. J. Boys, Minister of that Parish. Printed from his Manuscript in the possession of the Publisher. London, A. Russell Smith, 1901 (50 copies only).

In Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700, pp. 3 ff.

An Answer of a Letter from a Gentleman in Fife, 1705; cf. also A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts on Witchcraft and the Second Sight, Edinburgh, 1820, pp. 79 ff.

Daily Journal, Jan. 15, 1731, as quoted in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1731, I, 29.

Daines Barrington points with pride to this early abolition of penalties:--“It is greatly to the honour of this country, to have repealed all the statutes against this supposed crime so long ago as the year 1736, when laws of the same sort continue in full force against these miserable and aged objects of compassion, in every other part of Europe” (Observations on the More Ancient Statutes, 3d ed., 1769, p. 367. on 20 Henr. VI.).

Gough, British Topography, 1780, I, 517.

Gentleman’s Magazine for 1751, XXI, 186, 198; Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 326 ff.; Gough, as above, I, 431.

Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 314, 322, 327.

See, for example, A. Löwenstimm, Aberglaube und Strafrecht, Berlin. 1897; W. Mannhardt, Die praktischen Folgen des Aberglaubens, 1878 (Deutsche Zeit- und Streit-Fragen, ed. by F. von Holstendorff, VII, nos. 97, 98); Wuttke, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, 2d ed., 1869; the chapter on Hexerei und Hexenverfolgung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, in Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, ed. by Heppe, II, 330 ff; cf. The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, [II,] 1888, p. 394; North Riding Record Society, Publications, IV, 20, note; History of Witchcraft, sketched from the Popular Tales of the Peasantry of Nithsdale and Galloway (R. H. Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 1810, pp. 272 ff.); H. M. Doughty, Blackwood’s Magazine, March, 1898, CLXIII, 394-395; Brand’s Popular Antiquities, ed. Hazlitt, III, 71, 95, 96,100 ff.; The Antiquary, XLI, 363; W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine, 1883; Miss Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, Chap. xiii; W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, 1879, Chap. vi; J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, 1902; Notes and Queries, 1st Series, VII, 613, XI, 497-498; 3rd Series, II, 325; 4th Series, III, 238, VII, 53, VIII, 44; 5th Series, V, 126, 223, IX, 433, X, 205, XI, 66; 6th Series, I, 19, II, 145, IV, 510; 7th Series, IX, 425, XI, 43; 8th Series, IV, 186, 192, V, 226, VI, 6, VII, 246; 9th Series, II, 466, XII, 187; the journal, Folk-Lore, passim.

Cf. Allen Putnam, Witchcraft of New England explained by Modern Spiritualism, Boston, 1880.

“And by the way, to touch but a word or two of this matter, for that the horrible vsing of your poore subiects inforceth thereunto: It may please your Grace to vnderstand, that this kind of people, I meane witches, and sorcerers, within these few last yeeres, are maruellously increased within this your Graces realme. These eies haue seene most euident and manifest marks of their wickednesse. Your Graces subiects pine away euen vnto death, their collour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benummed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore, your poore subiects most humble petition vnto your Highnesse is, that the lawes touching such malefactours, may be put in due execution. For the shole of them is great, their doings horrible, their malice intollerable, the examples most miserable. And I pray God, they neuer practise further, then vpon the subiect. But this only by the way, these be the scholers of Beelzebub the chiefe captaine of the Diuels” (Certaine Sermons, 1611, p. 204, in Workes of Jewell; cf. Parker Society edition, Part II, p. 1028). I cannot date this sermon. 1572, the year to which it is assigned by Dr. Nicholson (in his edition of Reginald Soot’s Discoverie, p. xxxii), is certainly wrong, for Jewel died in 1571. Strype associates it rather vaguely with the passage of the Witchcraft Act of 1563 (Annals of the Reformation, I, 8; cf. I, 295).

Legge, The Scottish Review, XVIII, 262. See also Newes from Scotland declaring the Damnable Life of Dr. Fian, 1591 (Roxburghe Club reprint).

Mather Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VIII, 366-368. This was the same Joshua Moodey, it will be remembered, who afterwards assisted Philip English and his family to escape from jail in Boston, and thus saved them from being executed as guilty of witchcraft (Sibley, Harvard Graduates, I, 376-377.)

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