[410] Baxter's Works, xiii. 457.
[411] Professor Kingsley, in his Lectures on the Roman and the Teuton, ascribes the spread of witch-mania to the influence of the Romish clergy (p. 293).
[412] In an instructive article respecting Witchcraft, in Charles Knight's Cyclopædia, it is remarked "that a large portion of the witchcraft superstition was propagated by means of books, or through the tuition of men of letters."
[413] Enquiries about sorcerers, incantations, and witchcraft occur in the Visitation Articles of Laud.—Works, v. 417, 432.
[414] There are numerous stories of Lancashire witches in the State Papers. See, for example, Calendar Dom., 1634-1635, p. 78.
[415] Gaule's Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches, 1646. See also Hale's Tracts, containing Trial of the Witches at Bury St. Edmunds.
[416] Widdrington, in a letter to Whitelocke (Memorials, 424), says: "I met at Berwick with a discovery of witches by a Scotchman, who professeth himself an artist that way. I know not whence he derives his skill. His salary was twenty shillings for every witch. He got thirty pounds after that rate." Of the burning or imprisonment of witches, cases are mentioned by Whitelocke, in pp. 412, 423, 450, 570.
[417] In the Assembly Books of the Corporation of Yarmouth is this entry:—"August 15th, 1637. That the gentleman, Mr. Hopkins, employed in the country for discovering and finding out witches be sent for to town, to search for those wicked persons, if any may be, and have his fee and allowance for his pains, as he hath in other places."
[418] There is amongst the Baxter MSS. in Dr. Williams's Library, a long letter respecting something of this kind, which I remember noticing many years ago.
[419] "During the few years of the Commonwealth, there is reason to believe that more alleged witches perished in England than in the whole period before and after."—Lecky's Rise and Influence of Rationalism, 116; Hutchinson's Historical Account of Witchcraft, p. 68.