The other case was at Brightling in Sussex, not far from London. There a woman who was suspected as the one who had told a servant that Joseph Cruther's house would be burned—a prophecy which came true very shortly—was accused as a witch. She had been accused years before at the Maidstone assizes, but had gone free. This time she was "watched" for twenty-four hours and four ministers kept a fast over the affair.[41]
These cases are worth something as an indication that the charge of witchcraft was still a method of getting rid of people whom the community feared.
At the beginning of this chapter the years 1660 to 1688 were marked off as constituting a single epoch in the history of the superstition. Yet those years were by no means characterized by the same sort of court verdicts. The sixties saw a decided increase over the years of the Commonwealth in the number of trials and in the number of executions. The seventies witnessed a rapid dropping off in both figures. Even more so the eighties. By the close of the eighties the accounts of witchcraft were exceedingly rare. The decisions of the courts in the matter were in a state of fluctuation. Two things were happening. The justices of the peace were growing much more reluctant to send accused witches to the assize courts; and the itinerant judges as a body were, in spite of the decisions of Hale and Raymond, more careful in witch trials than ever before, and more likely to withstand public sentiment.
The changes of opinion, as reflected in the literature of the time, especially in the literature of the subject, will show the same tendencies. We shall take them up in the next chapter.
[1] See Raine, ed., York Depositions (Surtees Soc.), preface, xxx.
[2] Joseph Hunter, Life of Heywood (London, 1842), 167, and Heywood's Diaries, ed. J. H. Turner (Brighouse, 1881-1885), I, 199; III, 100. Heywood, who was one of the leading Dissenters of his time, must not be credited with extreme superstition. In noting the death of a boy whom his parents believed bewitched, he wrote, "Oh that they saw the lords hand." Diary, I, 287.
[3] William Drage, Daimonomageia (London, 1665), 32-38.
[4] The Lord's Arm Stretched Out, ... or a True Relation of the wonderful Deliverance of James Barrow ... (London, 1664).
[5] Compare Drage, op. cit., 36, 39, 42, with The Lord's Arm Stretched Out, 17. Mary Hall, whose cure Drage celebrates, had friends among the Baptists. Drage seems to connect her case with those of Barrow and Hannah Crump, both of whom were helped by that "dispirited people" whom the author of The Lord's Arm Stretched Out exalts.