that witchcraft was considered a heresy, and punished accordingly by the Ecclesiastical Courts, The Mirror says, Que sorcery et divinal sont members de heresie; and according to Fleta, Christiani autem Apostata, sortilegi et hujusmodi, detractari debent et comburi. "I have seen,"

says Sir Edward Coke, (3 Inst. 44,) a report of a case in an ancient register, that in October, anno 20 Hen. VI., Margery Gudeman, of Eye, in the county of Suffolk, was, for witchcraft and consultation with the devil, after sentence, and a relapse, burnt, by the king's writ, de heretico comburendo; and this agreeth with antiquity, for witches, &c. by the laws before the Conquest, were burnt to death. It had been,” continues his Lordship, "a great defect in government if so great an abomination had passed with impunity; and this is the cause why we have proved how and in what manner conjuration, witchcraft, &c., were punished with death, &c. before the making of the said late statutes, &c." The statutes here alluded to by Coke are the 33 Hen. VIII. c. 8, whereby all witchcraft and sorcery were declared to be felony, without benefit of clergy, and the 1 Jac. 1. c. 12, which enacts that all persons invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, convenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit; or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sor

cery, charm, or enchantment; or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts, shall be guilty of felony without benefit of clergy, and suffer death; and if any person should attempt by sorcery to discover hidden treasure, or to restore stolen goods, or to provoke unlawful love, or to hurt any man or beast, though the same were not effected, he or she should suffer imprisonment and pillory for the first offence, and death for the second." This statute probably originated with James himself, who assigns the increase of witches and the denial of their existence as reasons for the publication of his "Demonology," and who doubtless took the earliest opportunity, on his accession to the Crown of England, of enacting this law in favour of his theory.

"The fearful abounding," observes this learned Monarch," at this time, in this country, of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me, beloved reader, to dispatch in post this following Treatise of mine, not in anywise, as I protest, to serve as a shew of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience,) to endeavour thereby, as far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many, both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merit most severely to be punished, against the damnable opinions of two, principally in our age, whereof the one called

Scott, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft."

The accounts vary as to the number of persons who suffered under these most cruel and absurd Statutes. Hutchinson, in his Historical Essay concerning witchcraft, tells us, that in 103 years from the statute against witchcraft in the 33 Hen. VIII. till 1644, he finds but fifteen executed; but that in the sixteen years following there were 109, if not more, condemned and hanged. In the five years following, he found five witches condemned, and three of them, if not all five, executed, and three more at Exeter, in 1682. Since that time, he informs us, he had not met with one witch hanged in England, though in Scotland and New England several had suffered indeed, so late as the year 1692, he states that nineteen persons were hanged at Salem, in New England, and many more imprisoned. Howell, the letter-writer, states the number executed in the middle of the seventeenth century to have been much greater. In a letter, dated Feb. 3rd, 1646, and another dated Feb. 20th, 1647, he says that in two years there were indicted in Suffolk and Essex between 200 and 300 witches, of whom more than half were executed. It was not until towards the conclusion of the seventeenth century that this infamous superstition began to decline. "It is seldom,"

says Roger North, (Life of L. K. Guilford, v. i. p. 280,) "that a poor old wretch is brought to trial upon that account, but there is at the heels of her a popular rage that does little less than demand her to be put to death, and if a judge is so clear and open as to declare against that impious vulgar opinion, that the devil himself has power to torment and kill poor innocent children, or that he is pleased to divert himself with the good people's cheese, butter, pigs, and geese, and the like errors of the ignorant and foolish rabble ; the countrymen (the triers) cry, this judge hath no religion, for that he doth not believe witches, and so to show that they have some, hang the poor witches." The same writer proceeds to give a curious account of two women who were tried before Mr. Justice Raymond, at Exeter, as witches, and convicted. "His Lordship was somewhat more thoughtful upon this subject, because that in the year in which Mr. Justice Raymond was his Co-Judge, on the circuit, two old women were hurried out of the country to be tried at Exeter for witchcraft; and the city rung with tales of their preternatural exploits, as the current of such tattle useth to overflow. Nay, things went so far as to say that the judge's horses were at a stand, and could not draw the coach up the castle lane: all which the common sort of people firmly believed. It fell out that Ray

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mond sate on the crown side there, which freed his Lordship of the care of such trials. But he had really a concern upon him at what happened; which was that his brother Raymond's passive behaviour should let these poor women die. The cases were so far clear, viz. that the old women confessed and owned in court that they were witches. These were two miserable old creatures, that one may say, as to sense or understanding, were scarce alive, but were overwhelmed with melancholy and waking dreams, and so stupid as no one would suppose they knew either the construction or consequence of what they said. All the rest of the evidence was trifling. I, sitting in the Court the next day, took up the file of informations taken by the justices, which were laid out upon the table, and against one of the old women read thus :-" This informant saith he saw a cat leap in at her (the old woman's) window, when it was twilight, and this informant further saith that he verily believeth the said cat ́to be the devil, and more saith not."-The judge made no nice distinctions, as, how possible it was for old women, in a sort of melancholy madness, by often thinking in pain and want of spirits, to contract an opinion of themselves that was false, and that their confession ought not to be taken. against themselves, without a plain evidence that it was rational and sensible, no more than that of a lunatic or distracted person, but he left the