acquittals mentioned, only prove that the Notwithstanding that condemnations were regular ministers of the law were becoming no longer obtainable after 1716, popular outtoo enlightened to countenance such barbari- rages on supposed witches continued to take ties. Cases of possession, too, were latterly place in England for many years afterwards. overlooked by the law, which would have On an occasion of this kind, an aged female brought the parties concerned to a speedy end pauper was killed by a mob near Tring, in in earlier days, even though they had done Staffordshire; and for the murder, one of the no injury to other people, and were simply perpetrators was tried and executed. The ocunfortunate enough to have made compacts currence of such outrages having been traced with the demon for the attainment of some to the unrepealed statute of James I. against purely personal advantages. For example, in witchcraft, an act was passed, in 1736 (10th 1689, there occurred the famous case of a George II. cap. 55), discharging all legal pro'youth, named Richard Dugdale, who sacri- ceedings on the ground of sorcery or witchficed himself to the devil, on condition of being craft; and since this period, prosecutions for made the best dancer in Lancashire. The following hidden arts have had no higher aim dissenting clergy took this youth under their than the punishing of a pretended skill in charge, and a committee of them fasted and fortune-telling and other forms of practical prayed, publicly and almost incessantly, for a knavery.

whole year, in order to expel the dancing It has been said that James I. brought demon. The idea of this impostor leaping with him from Scotland strong impressions on for a twelvemonth, and playing fantastic the subject of witchcraft, and, accordingly, tricks before these grave divines, is extremely we now refer to the history of the delusion in ludicrous. But the divines played tricks not less fantastic. They became so contemptuously intimate with the demon, as to mock him on account of saltatory deficiencies. A portion of their addresses to him on this score has been preserved, but of too ridiculous a nature for quotation in these pages. If anything else than a mere impostor, it is probable that Dugdale was affected with St. Vitus' Dance; and this is the more likely, as it was after all a regular physician who brought his dancing to a close. But the divines took

care to claim the merit of the cure.

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After the time of Holt, the ministers of the law went a step further in their course of improvement, and spared the accused in spite of condemnatory verdicts. In 1711, Chief-justice Powell presided at a trial where an old woman was pronounced guilty. The judge, who had sneered openly at the whole proceedings, asked the jury if they found the woman guilty upon the indictment of conversing with the devil in the shape of a cat." The reply was, "We do find her guilty of that;" but the question of the judge produced its intended effect in casting ridicule on the whole charge, and the woman was pardoned. An able writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review remarks, after noticing this case: "Yet, frightful to think, after all this, in 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings, and making a lather of Soap! With this crowning atrocity, the catalogue of murders in England closes." And a long and a black catalogue it was. Barrington, in his observations on the statute of Henry VI., does not hesitate to estimate the numbers of those put to death in England on this charge, at THIRTY THOU

SAND!"

that country. In the reign of Queen Mary, the contemporary of Elizabeth, the public mind in Scotland fell into the common frenzy, and an act was passed by the Scottish Parliament for the suppression and punishment of witchcraft. In virtue of this law, great numbers were tried and executed. At this time, and subsequently, the Scottish witches were nearly all aged women; only a few men figured in the prosecutions. On coming to exercise the functions of majesty, James made numerous judicial investigations into alleged cases of witchcraft, and derived a pleasure in questioning old women respecting their dealings with Satan. The depositions made at these formal inquests are still preserved, and are among the most curious memorials of the sixteenth century.

The witch mania in Scotland was, through these prosecutions, brought to an extravagant height in the year 1591, when a large number of unhappy beings were cruelly burned to death on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. About this period some cases occurred to show that witchcraft was an art not confined to the vulgar. A woman of high rank and family, Catherine Ross, Lady Fowlis, was indicted at the instance of the king's advocate for the practice of witchcraft. On inquiry, it was clearly proved that this lady had endeavored, by the aid of witchcraft and poisons, to take away the lives of three or more persons who stood between her and an object she had at heart. She was desirous to make young Lady Fowlis possessor of the property of Fowlis, and to marry her to the Laird of Balnagown. Before this could be effected, Lady Fowlis had to cut off her sons-in-law, Robert and Hector Munro, and the young wife of Balnagown. besides several others. Having consulted with witches, Lady Fowlis began her work by getting pictures of the intended victims made in

clay, which she hung up, and shot at with and theft by means of enchantments; and so arrows shod with flints of a particular kind, on. South-running water, salt, rowan-tree, called elf-arrow heads. No effect being thus enchanted flints (probably elf-arrow heads), produced, this really abandoned woman took and doggerel verses, generally a translation of to poisoning ale and dishes, none of which the Creed or Lord's Prayer, were the means cut off the proper persons, though others who employed for effecting a cure. Diseases, accidentally tasted them lost their lives. By again, were laid on by forming pictures of the confession of some of the assistant hags, clay or wax; by placing a dead hand, or some the purposes of Lady Fowlis were discovered, mutilated member, in the house of the intended and she was brought to trial; but a local or victim; or by throwing enchanted articles at provincial jury of dependents acquitted her. his door. A good purpose did not save the One of her purposed victims, Hector Munro, witch; intercourse with spirits, in any shape, was then tried in turn for conspiring with being the crime. witches against the life of his brother George. Of course, in the revelations of the various It was proved that a curious ceremony had witches, inconsistencies were abundant, and been practised to effect this end. Hector, even plain and evident impossibilities were being sick, was carried abroad in blankets, frequently among the things averred. The and laid in an open grave, on which his foster- sapient James, however, in place of being led mother ran the breadth of nine riggs, and, by these things to doubt the whole, was only returning, was asked by the chief attendant strengthened in his opinions, it being a maxim witch, which she chose should live, Hector or George?" She answered, "Hector." George Munro did die soon afterwards, and Hector recovered. The latter was also acquitted, by a provincial jury, on his trial.

laid down by the king himself, in a book bearing that name. The removal of James to England moderated, but did not altogether stop, the witch prosecutions. After his death they slackened more considerably. Only eight witchcraft cases are on the record as having occurred between 1625 and 1640 in Scotland, and in one of these cases, remarkable to tell, the accused escaped. The mania, as it ap pears, was beginning to wear itself out.

of his that the witches were "all extremo lyars." Other persons came to different conclusions from the same premises; and before the close of James' reign, many men of sense began to weary of the torturings and burnings These disgraceful proceedings were not that took place almost every day, in town or without their parallel in other families of note country, and had done so for a period of thirty of the day. Euphemia Macalzean, daughter years (betwixt 1590 and 1620). Advocates of an eminent judge, Lord Cliftonhall, was now came forward to defend the accused, and burned at the stake in 1591, having been con- in their pleadings ventured even to arraign some victed, if not of witchcraft, at least of a long of the received axioms of " Dæmonologie" career of intercourse with pretenders to witchcraft, whom she employed to remove obnoxious persons out of her way tasks which they accomplished by the very simple means of poisoning, where they did accomplish them at all. The jury found this violent and abandoned woman, for such she certainly was, guilty of participation in the murder of her own godfather, of her husband's nephew, and another individual. They also found her guilty of having been at the Wise Woman of Keith's great witch-convention of North Berwick; but every witch of the day was compelled to admit having been there, out of compliment to the king, to whom it was a source of agreeable terror to think himself of so much importance as to call for a solemn convocation of the powers of evil to overthrow him. Euphemia Macalzean was "burnt in ashes, quick to the death." This was a doom not assigned to the less guilty. Alluding to cases of this latter class, a writer (already quoted) in the Foreign Quarterly Review remarks: In the trials of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel Gardiner, the charges are principally of taking off and laying on diseases either on men or cattle; meetings with the devil in various shapes and places; raising and dismembering dead bodies for the purpose of enchantments; destroying crops; scaring honest persons in the shape of cats; taking away women's milk; committing housebreaking

As the spirit of puritanism gained strength, however, which it gradually did during the latter part of the reign of Charles I., the partially cleared horizon became again overcast; and again was this owing to ill-judged edicts, which, by indicating the belief of the great and the educated in witchcraft, had the natural effect of reviving the frenzy among the flexible populace. The General Assembly was the body in fault on this occasion, and thenceforward the clergy were the great witch-hunters in Scotland. The Assembly passed condemnatory acts in 1640, 43, 44, 45, and 49; and with every successive act, the cases and convictions increased, with even a deeper degree of attendant horrors than at any previous time. "The old impossible and abominable fancies,' says the Review formerly quoted, "of the Malleus were revived. About thirty trials appear on the record between 1649 and the Restoration, only one of which seems to have terminated in an acquittal; while at a single circuit, held at Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in

1659, seventeen persons were convicted and | convulsions, saw spirits, and, in short, feigned burnt for this crime." But it must be remem- herself bewitched. To sustain her story, she bered that the phrase, "on the record," accused one person after another, till not less alludes only to justiciary trials, which formed than twenty were implicated, some of them but a small proportion of the cases really tried. children of the ages of twelve and fourteen! The justiciary lists take no note of the com- They were tried on the evidence of the girl, missions perpetually given by the Privy- and five human beings perished through her council to resident gentlemen and clergymen to malicious impostures. It is remarkable that try and burn witches in their respective dis- this very girl afterwards founded the thread tricts. These commissions executed people manufacture in Renfrewshire. From a friend over the whole country in multitudes. Wod- who had been in Holland, she learnt some row, Lamont, Mercer, and Whitelocke prove secrets in spinning, and, putting them skilthis but too satisfactorily. fully in practice, she led the way to the extensive operations carried on of late years in that department. She became the wife of the minister of Kilmaurs, and, it is to be hoped, had leisure and grace to repent of the wicked misapplication in her youth of those talents which she undoubtedly possessed.

The clergy continued, after the Restoration, to pursue these imaginary criminals with a zeal altogether deplorable. The Justiciary Court condemned twenty persons in the first year of Charles II.'s reign (1661), and in one day of the same year the council issued fourteen new provincial commissions, the aggregate The last Justiciary trial for witchcraft in doings of which one shudders to guess at. Scotland was in the case of Elspeth Rule, To compute their condemnations would be who was convicted in 1708, and banished. impossible, for victim after victim perished at A belief in the crime was evidently expiring the stake, unnamed and unheard of. Moray-in the minds of the Scottish law-authorities; shire became at this particular period the scene of a violent fit of the great moral frenzy, and some of the most remarkable examinations, signalizing the whole course of Scottish witchcraft, took place in that country. The details, though occasionally ludicrous from their absurdity, are too horrible for narration in the present pages.

On the new government becoming thoroughly fixed in power, this form of religious persecution for in some degree such it wasabated. From 1662, there is an interval of six years without a single justiciary trial for the crime of witchcraft, and one fellow was actually whipped for charging some person with it. After this period, the dying embers of the delusion only burst out on occasions, here and there, into a momentary flame. In 1678, several women were condemned, "on their own confession," says the Register; but we suspect this only means, in reality, that one malicious being made voluntary admissions involving others, as must often have been the case, we fear, in these proceedings. Scattered cases took place near the beginning of the eighteenth century. such as those at Paisley in 1697, at Pittenweem in 1704, and at Spott about the same time. It is curious, that as something like direct evidence became necessary for condemnation, evidence did present itself, and in the shape of possessed or enchanted young persons, who were brought into court to play off their tricks. The most striking case of this nature was that of Christian Shaw, a girl about eleven years old, and the daughter of Mr. Shaw, of Bargarran, in Renfrewshire. This wretched girl, who seems to have been an accomplished hypocrite, young as she was, quarrelled with a maid-servant, and, to be revenged, fell into

and the Lord Advocate, or public prosecutor, endeavored to prevent the county courts from taking cognizance of the subject. Notwithstanding his remonstrances, however, a case of trial and execution for witchcraft was conducted by Captain David Ross of Littledean, sheriff-depute of Sutherlandshire, in 1722. "The victim," observes Sir Walter Scott, in his Letters on Demonology, was an insane old woman belonging to the parish of Loth, who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter lame both of hands and feet, a circumstance attributed to the witch's having been used to transform her into a pony, and get her shod by the devil. It does not appear that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless." The execution took place at Dornoch, and was the last that was inflicted for witchcraft in Great Britain. Here may be said to end the tragical annals of witchcraft in Scotland. The number of its victims, from first to last, it would be difficult accurately to compute; but the black scroll would include, according to those who have most attentively inquired into the subject, upwards of Four THOUSAND persons.

Having thus presented a historical sketch of witchcraft in England and Scotland, we proceed to give an account of the mania as it occurred in the North American colonies.

Carrying their religious opinions to an excess, and generally ignorant of the economy of nature, the inhabitants of New England yielded a remarkable credence to the popular superstition, and carried it as far, in the way of judicial punishment, as it had gone in any European nation. Their situation, perhaps,

as colonists in a pagan region, helped to fan the flame of their fury against witches. They regarded the Indians as worshippers of the devil, and practisers of incantations; they, therefore, felt it to be necessary to be doubly on their guard, and to watch the first appearances of witchcraft within the settlements. We learn from a respectable authority-Chandler's Criminal Trials to which we are indebted for many subsequent particulars, that the first suspicion of witchcraft among the English in America was about the year 1645.

there, and acquitted of witchcraft, but was convicted of being a Quaker, and banished out of the jurisdiction. In Pennsylvania, when William Penn officiated as judge in his new colony, two women, accused of witchcraft, were presented by the grand jury. Without treating the charge with contempt, which the public mind would not have borne, he charged the jury to bring them in guilty of being suspected of witchcraft, which was not a crime that exposed them to the penalty of the law. Notwithstanding the frequent instances of supposed witchcraft in Massachusetts, no person had suffered death there on that account for nearly thirty years after the execution of Anne Hibbins. The sentence of this woman was disapproved of by many influential men, and her fate probably prevented further prosecutions. But in 1685, a very circumstantial account of most of the cases above mentioned was published, and many arguments were brought to convince the country that they were no delusions or impostures, but the effects of a familiarity between the devil and such as he found fit for his instruments.'

Before going further with our account of these strange doings, it is necessary to introduce to the reader a person who made himself exceedingly prominent in exciting and keeping up the witchcraft mania. This individual was the Rev. Cotton Mather- a noted character in American biography.

"At Springfield, on the Connecticut river, several persons were supposed to be under an evil hand; but no one was convicted until 1650, when a poor wretch, Mary Oliver, after a long examination, was brought to a confession of her guilt, but it does not appear that she was executed. About the same time, three persons were executed near Boston, all of whom at their death asserted their innocence. In 1655, Anne Hibbins, the widow of a magistrate and a man of note in Boston, was tried for this offence before the Court of Assistants. The jury found her guilty, but the magistrates refused to accept the verdict. The case was carried up to the General Court, where the popular voice prevailed, and the prisoner was executed. In 1662, at Hartford, Connecticut, a woman named Greensmith confessed that she had been grossly familiar with a demon, and she was executed. In 1669, Susanna Martin of Salisbury was bound Cotton Mather was descended from a reover to the court upon suspicion of witch- spectable English family. His grandfather craft, but escaped. She suffered death in and father were ministers of the Congrega1692. In 1671, Elizabeth Knap, who pos- tional body, in which he also was destined to sessed ventriloquial powers, alarmed the peo- perform a distinguished part. He was born ple of Groton; but as her demon railed at at Boston in 1662; and his mother being a the minister of the town, and other persons daughter of John Cotton, an eminent nonconof good character, the people would not be- formist divine, he received from him the lieve him. Her fraud and imposture were soon name of Cotton. In his youth, he was condiscovered. In 1694, Philip Smith, a judge of sidered a prodigy of piety and devotion to the court, a military officer, and a representa- study, and at an early age he was raised to tive of the town of Hadley, fancied himself the ministry as assistant to his father. Later under an evil hand, and suspected an old in life, he did good service to the colony, as a woman, one of his neighbors, as the cause of his zealous advocate of popular rights during the sickness. She was dragged from her house struggles with the Stuarts and the establishby some young men, who hung her up until ment of the revolution of 1688. Cotton Mashe was nearly dead, then rolled her in the ther, however, is chiefly remembered for his snow, and at last buried her in it; but it indefatigable zeal in seeking out and getting happened that she survived, and the melan- witches tried and executed. This great work choly man died. Trials for witchcraft out of he felt to be his mission; his mind was full New England were not common. In 1665, of it. He seems to have considered that in Ralph Hall and his wife were tried for the nothing could he do the commonwealth such offence in New York, and acquitted. In 1660, good service as in ridding it of traffickers in Queen's County, Long Island, Mary Wright, with every order of demons. In order to was suspected of corresponding with the Au- make known his opinion on the subject, he thor of Evil. She was arraigned, and it was wrote various treatises, expounding the nafinally concluded to transport her to the Gen- ture of the invisible world, and all breathing eral Court of Massachusetts, 'where charges an earnest belief in the constant personal inof this kind were more common, and the terference of Satan with his ministerial preproofs necessary to support them better un-lections. Among his manuscripts, which have derstood.' She was accordingly arraigned been collected by the Massachusetts Historical

Society, there is a paper on which is endorsed appointed several physicians "to examine the following curious record in his handwrit- her very strictly, whether she was no way ing: :-" November 29, 1692. - While I was crazed in her intellectuals." These sage inquispreaching at a private fast (kept for a pos-itors do not appear to have been acquainted sessed young woman), on Mark ix. 28, 29, with the fact, that a person may be deranged the devil in the damsel flew upon me, and on one subject, and yet sane on all others. tore the leaf, as it is now torn, over against the text." For a fac-simile of this strange record, we refer to Jared Sparks' life of Muther, from which we derive the present account of this credulous and meddlesome personage.

They conversed with the woman a good deal, and, finding that she gave connected replies, agreed that she was in full possession of her mind. She was then found guilty of witchcraft, and sentenced to die. Cotton Mather eagerly seized on this admirable opportunity Several instances of alleged witchcraft, as of conversing with a legally-condemned witch. has been seen, prepared the way for the great He paid many visits to the poor woman while Salem tragedy, and these doubtless stimulated she was in prison, and was vastly edified the zeal of Cotton Mather. In 1688, a case with her communications. She described her occurred which, being under his own eye, interviews with the Prince of Darkness, and afforded materials for minute investigation. her attendance upon his meetings, with a The family of John Goodwin, a respectable clearness that seems to have filled him with and devout man, living in the northern part perfect delight. No sentiments of compas of Boston, began to be troubled with super- sion appear to have been excited in his mind natural visitations. The children had all towards this unfortunate woman. He acbeen religiously educated, and were thought companied her to the scaffold, and rejoiced in to be without guile. The eldest was a girl seeing what he considered justice done upon of thirteen or fourteen years. She had a her. To the moment of her death, she conquarrel with a laundress, whom she had tinued to declare that the children should not charged with taking away some of the family be relieved an unequivocal proof of disorlinen. The mother of the laundress was an dered intellect.

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Irishwoman, who, resenting the imputations Sure enough, the execution did not stay the on her daughter's character, gave the girl disorder. The children complained of sufferharsh language. Shortly afterwards, the girl, ing as much as before. Some of these facts her sister, and two brothers, complained of are amusing. Mather in his simplicity says: being tormented with strange pains in differ-" They were often near drowning or burning ent parts of their bodies, and these affections themselves, and they often strangled themwere pronounced to be diabolical by the phy-selves with their neckcloths; but the provisicians who happened to be consulted. "One dence of God still ordered the seasonable sucor two things were said to be very remark-cors of them that looked after them." On able; all their complaints were in the day- the least reproof of their parents, they time, and they slept comfortably all night; would roar excessively." It usually took they were struck dumb at the sight of the abundance of time to dress or undress them, Assembly's Catechism, Cotton's Milk for Babes, through the strange postures into which they and some other good books; but could read in would be twisted on purpose to hinder it. Oxford jests, Popish and Quaker books, and If they were bidden to do a needless thing, the Common Prayer, without any difficulty. such as to rub a clean table, they were able Sometimes they would be deaf, then dumb, to do it unmolested; but if to do a useful then blind; and sometimes all these disorders thing, as to rub a dirty table, they would together would come upon them. Their presently, with many torments, be made intongues would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints, would appear to be dislocated; and they would make most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut with knives, beat, &c., and the marks of wounds were afterwards to be seen. The ministers of Boston and Charlestown kept a day of fasting and prayer at the A number of cunningly-devised tricks were troubled house; after which, the youngest performed by this artful young creature, all of child made no more complaints. The others which imposed on Cotton, who resolved to continuing to be afflicted, the magistrates give an account of her case in a sermon. This interposed, and the old woman was appre- publicity, however, was by no means pleasing hended; but, upon examination, would neither to the victim of witchcraft. She made many confess nor deny, and appeared to be disor- attempts to prevent the preaching of the serdered in her senses." In order to satisfy them- mon, threatening Mather with the vengeance selves on this latter point, the magistrates of the spirits, till he was almost out of

capable." Such a choice opportunity as this family afforded for inquiry into the physiology of witchcraft, was not to be lost. In order to inspect the specimen more at leisure, he had the eldest daughter brought to his own house. He wished to "confute the Sadducism of that debauched age," and the girl took care that the materials should not be wanting.