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unsafe it would be to trust their reputations and their lives to the mercy of these profligate accusers. Of fifty-six bills of indictment that were offered to the grand-jury on the third of January, 1693, twenty-six only were found true bills, and thirty thrown out. On the twenty-six bills that were found, three persons only were pronounced guilty by the petty jury, and these three received their pardon from the government. The prisons were thrown open; fifty confessed witches, together with two hundred persons imprisoned on suspicion, were set at liberty, and no more accusations were heard of. The “afflicted,” as they were technically termed, recovered their health; the “spectral sight” was universally scouted; and men began to wonder how they could ever have been the victims of so horrible a delusion. ²²⁷

190. Hutchinson on Witchcraft.

191. I Samuel, xv, 23.

192. Doctrine of Divorce, Preface.

193. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, p. 746.

194. Alciatus, Parergon Juris, L. VIII, cap. 22.

195. Danaeus, apud Delrio, Proloquium.

196. Bartholomaeus de Spina, De Strigibus, c. 13.

197. Biographie Universelle.

198. Biographie Universelle.

199. Hospinian, Historia Sacramentaria, Part II, fol. 131.

200. Bayle.

201. Paulus Jovius, Elogia Doctorum Virorum, c.101.

202. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, Lib. II, Quaestio xi, S. 18.

203. Delrio, Lib. II, Quaestio xxix. S. 7.

204. Wierus, Lib. II, c.v. S. 11, 12.

205. Cent. I, cap. 70.

206. De Praestigiis Demonum, Lib. II, cap. iv, sect. 8.

207. Durrius, apud Schelhorn, Amoenitates Literariae, Tom. V, p.50, et seqq.

208. Memoirs, p. 14.

209. Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic, Letter IV.

210. Appendix to Johannes Glastoniensis, edited by Hearne.

211. Camden, anno 1693, 1694.

212. Pitcairn, Trials in Scotland in Five Volumes, 4to.

213. King James’s Works, p. 135.

214. King James’s Works, p. 135, 136.

215. Truth brought to Light by Time. Wilson, History of James I.

216. Fuller, Church History of Britain, Book X, p. 74. See also Osborn’s Works, Essay I: where the author says, he “gave charge to his judges, to be circumspect in condemning those, committed by ignorant justices for diabolical compacts. Nor had he concluded his advice in a narrower circle, as I have heard, than the denial of any such operations, but out of reason of state, and to gratify the church, which hath in no age thought fit to explode out of the common people’s minds an apprehension of witchcraft.” The author adds, that he “must confess James to have been the promptest man living in his dexterity to discover an imposture,” and subjoins a remarkable story in confirmation of this assertion.

217. Discovery of the Witches, 1612, printed by order of the Court.

218. History of Whalley, by Thomas Dunham Whitaker, p. 215.

219. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, Vol. II, p. 507.

220. Heylyn, Life of Laud.

221. Hutchinson on Witchcraft.

222. Menagiana, Tom. II, p. 252, et seqq.

223. Judges, v, 20.

224. Certainty of the World of Spirits.

225. Trial of the Witches executed at Bury St. Edmund’s.

226. Narrative translated by Dr. Horneck, apud Satan’s Invisible World by Sinclair, and Sadducismus Triumphatus by Glanville.

      227. Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World; Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World; Neal, History of New England.

      Conclusion

       Table of Contents

      The volume of records of supposed necromancy and witchcraft is sufficiently copious, without its being in any way necessary to trace it through its latest relics and fragments. Superstition is so congenial to the mind of man, that, even in the early years of the author of the present volume, scarcely a village was unfurnished with an old man or woman who laboured under an ill repute on this score; and I doubt not many remain to this very day. I remember, when a child, that I had an old woman pointed out to me by an ignorant servant-maid, as being

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