THE DISCOVERIE
OF
WITCHCRAFT

BY
REGINALD SCOT, Esquire

BEING A REPRINT OF THE FIRST EDITION
PUBLISHED IN 1584

Edited
WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES, GLOSSARY, AND INTRODUCTION
BY
BRINSLEY NICHOLSON, M.D.
DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL

LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

This edition of Scot’s Discoverie consists
of 250 copies only.—E. S.

DR. NICHOLSON’S SUBSCRIBERS.

DEDICATION.

To the Memory
OF
H.R.H. PRINCE LEOPOLD, DUKE OF ALBANY,
UNTIMELY TAKEN FROM US,
THIS WORK OF AN ELIZABETHAN ENGLISHMAN,
AND OF A KINDRED SPIRIT,
WHOSE HONESTY, INTELLIGENCE, AND COMPASSION
FOUGHT AGAINST THE CRUEL SUPERSTITION
AND IGNORANCE OF HIS AGE,
IS,
BY ROYAL PERMISSION AND WITH REGRETFUL ESTEEM,
DEDICATED BY
THE EDITOR.

PREFACE

THIS reprint is not a facsimile of the edition of 1584, for that was in black letter, and its page smaller and of quarto size. Being also for modern readers, and for use, the i of the original has become, where necessary, the j of the second edition; the u and v have been altered according to modern usage, that is, generally interchanged; while the short s replaces the ſ. Such modernisations render it more readable by the historical and philosophical student, by the man of science, and by the psychological physician, willing to learn all that may instruct himself and benefit others. Neither would this reprint have been undertaken, unless the work itself had appeared to my friend and fellow-student, W. T. Gairdner, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Medicine in the University of Glasgow,—and led by him—to myself and others, worthy on the above-mentioned grounds, of being reproduced, and as being both in matter and style a valuable English classic.

While, however, it is not a facsimile, yet, excepting such variations as are above noticed, and allowing for the few and trifling errors from which no copy can expect to be free, not even a photographic one, as experts in these matters well know, this will, I believe, be found a correct reprint. Every proof has been thrice, and sometimes oftener, read over with the original by myself, and these efforts have been well supplemented by the intelligence and care of its printers. Even the word-errors of the original, where not in its list of errata, have been retained, though the true or conjectural readings have been given in the margin, or in two or three instances in the Notings at the end. Except also in two instances, where for necessity’s sake alterations have been introduced within []s, and the original given in the margin, the old punctuation has been retained, it being, as a rule, very good, while any slight slips are readily observed, and do not affect the sense. For such other differences as are due to the black letter, and for others like these, I would refer the print-studying reader to the Introduction.

In the biographical portion of this Introduction, besides a supposition or two of my own, which from his writings seem to me highly probable, there have been given notices of his pedigree, age, and marriages, matters hitherto unknown or misstated, and for which I would at once record my indebtedness to Edmund Ward Oliver, Esq. This gentleman having taken an interest in investigating these questions, and being a perfect stranger to me, wrote and offered the results of his inquiries so soon as he had learnt that I was engaged with this reprint, and has since most obligingly answered the various questions that I have had occasion to put to him. A copy of Scot’s Will has been also for the first time published, and some Notes and a Glossary added. Were I to have imitated the learned editors of former days, I should have added, not some, but exhaustive notes on every point, gathered from every known and unknown source; but I have confined myself to explanation, or to making a few remarks on the text, giving also the author’s agreement with, or obligations to Wier, so far as I knew them, and Shakespeare’s and Middleton’s obligations to himself; my reason for not entering into greater details being that I am no student of the pseudo-science of witchcraft, but a student only of what is useful, and true, and good.

It would be unseemly, especially after mentioning Mr. Oliver’s name, were I to close this without acknowledging the kind assistance of my well-known friend, James Gairdner, Esq., of the Public Record Office; of my Shakespearian friends, W. Aldis Wright, LL.D., and P. A. Daniel, Esq.; of that given me by the Very Reverend Father W. H. Eyre, lately Superior of Stonyhurst; by Mrs. Amelia Green; as also by Prof. W. W. Skeat, and Dr. J. A. H. Murray, in my Glossary; though all were, and personally are, strangers; as are Miss Kath. P. Woolrych, Oare Vicarage, Kent, and Miss Ayscough, of Brabourne Vicarage; and especially that given me by my other Shakespearian friends, the Rev. W. H. Harrison, of St. Anne’s, South Lambeth, and W. G. Stone, Esq. My best thanks are also due to Mr. J. J. Jervis for the use, for the printer, of a partially incomplete copy of the first edition; to the University of Glasgow for the loan, for my own use, for the greater part of a year, of another copy of this first edition; and for the use for the same period of a copy of the third edition to my Alma Mater of Edinburgh, endeared to me by the teachings, remembrances, and kindnesses of Sir William Hamilton, Allan Thomson, Christison, Traill, Jamieson, that most sagacious of surgeons and teachers, Syme, and the ever-to-be-revered physician and man, W. Pulteney Alison.

Br. Nicholson.

ERRATA.

INTRODUCTION.

EXCEPT that they add the names of some who have opposed his views, or some such trifling matters, all the writers of biographical notices of Scot have drawn their information from the account given of him in Wood’s Athenæ Oxon. Nor, indeed, until lately, unless original search had been made, were other sources available. Hence I, in the first place, give his words verbatim from the edition of 1691.

“Reynolde Scot, a younger Son of Sir John Scot of Scots-hall, near to Smeeth in Kent, by his Wife, Daughter of Reynolde Pimp of Pimps-court Knight, was born in that County, and at about 17 years of age was sent to Oxon, particularly, as it seems, to Hart hall, where several of his Country-men and name studied in the latter end of K. Hen. 8. and in the Reign of Ed. 6. &c. Afterwards he retired to his native Country without the honour of a degree, and settled at Smeeth, where he found great incouragement in his studies from his kinsman Sir Thos. Scot. About which time taking to him a Wife, he gave himself up solely to solid reading, to the perusing of obscure authors that had by the generality of Scholars been neglected, and at times of leisure to husbandry and gardening, as it may partly appear from these books following.

“A perfect platform of a Hop-garden, and necessary instructions for the making and maintenance thereof, with notes and rules for reformation of all abuses, &c. Lond. 1576. qu. the 2. edit. as it seems.

“The discovery of Witchcraft; wherein the leud dealing of Witches, and Witchmongers is notably detected, the knavery of Conjurers, the impiety of Inchantors, the folly of Southsayers, &c. With many other things are opened, which have long been hidden, howbeit very necessary to be known. Lond. 1584. qu. in 16 books.

“Discourse upon Devils and Spirits.—In this, and the former, both printed together, it plainly appears that the author was very well versed in many choice books, and that his search into them was so profound, that nothing slip’d his Pen that might make for his purpose. Further also in the said Discovery and Discourse, though he holds that Witches are not such that were in his time and before, commonly executed for Witches; or that Witches were, or are not; yet they, which were written for the instruction of all Judges and Justices of that age, (being the first of that nature that were published in the Mother tongue,) did for a time make great impressions in the Magistracy and Clergy, tho afterwards condemned by James King of Scots (the same who succeeded Qu. Elizabeth in the Monarchy of England) in his Preface to Dæmonology, printed under his Name at Edinburgh in 1597. qu. and by several others since, among whom was Rich. Bernard of Batcomb, in his Epist. Ded. before his Guide to Grand Jury-men, &c. Lond. 1627. in oct. What else our author Scot hath written, I cannot yet tell, nor anything else of him, only but that he dyed in Sept. or Oct. in fifteen hundred ninety and nine, and was buried among his Ancestors in the Church at Smeeth before-mentioned.

“In the time of the said Reynold Scot and before, have been conversant among the Muses in Hart hall, the Sackviles of Sussex, the Colepepers of Kent and Sussex, the Sedlies of Kent, and the Scots before mentioned, with others of inferiour note of the said Counties.”

Notes added in Bliss’s Reprint.

“7. The learned author in his Discovery is as vehement against Popery as against witchcraft, and quite indecent in his abuse of the saints of the Romish church.”—Cole. [His indecency being for the most part a narrative of, and obvious reflections on, their indecency. And this I say understanding the sense in which he uses the word.]

“8. See a full account of this curious book, as Mr. Oldys calls it, in his British Librarian, p. 213. All the copies of the first edit. 1584, that could be found were burnt by order of K. James I. an author on the other side of the question.”—Vid. Hist. Dictionary, sub voce “Scot”.

[“Reginaldus Scotus, Anglus, tractatum de Incantamentis scripsit, in quo plerasque traditiones de Magia Melancholiæ, & morbis variis, aut artibus histrionicis adscribit.”] “Hunc in Anglia publica auctoritate combustum, sibi autem nunquam fuisse visum refert Thomasius de crimine magiæ § 3.”—Vide [J. V.] Vogt., Cat. Libr. rar., p. 617 [1713].

“Liber in folio scriptus Anglica lingua a Reginaldo Scoto in quo plurima occurrunt contra magiæ existentiam argumenta. Est ille etiam in Belgicam linguam conversus: sed plenior editio est ultima Anglica.”—Morhof., ii, 459.

[Then a short note on the three editions.]

In 1874 there were privately printed, Memorials of the Scot Family, by Jas. Renat Scott, Esq., and from them I extract the following tables:

But as the first part of the ancestry given in this book is not supported by anything beyond possibility and legend, so this latter portion is incorrect in various particulars. Instead, however, of taking each inaccuracy item by item, it will be simpler to give a consecutive account of such facts as to his ancestry, and as to Reginald Scott himself, as can be proved by documentary evidence or rendered probable by deductions therefrom.

John Philipot, Rouge Dragon and Somerset Herald, who died in 1645, set forth the pleasant and picturesque, but slightly supported origin of the family. I say pleasant, because the Scotts in the times of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, were a family of large possessions, wealth, and influence, influence so great that it is said that Elizabeth refused the request made by Lord Buckhurst, or the Earl of Leicester, that Sir Thomas Scott should be ennobled, saying that he had already more influence in Kent than she had. She seems also to have had from this, or from some other reason, a personal dislike to them, for in her Progress in 1573, she having passed three days at his father-in-law’s, Sir John Baker, of Sissinghurst Castle, declined to visit Scotts-hall, saying she wished to proceed to her own house, though on her way thither she had to pass Sir Thomas’s gates. In his Villare Cantianum, p. 313, Philipot has these words: “Scotts-hall, which is now and hath been for divers Descents the Inheritance of eminent Gentlemen of that Sirname, whom I dare aver upon probable Grounds were originally called Balioll. William Balioll, second brother to Alexander de Balioll, frequently writ his Name William de Balioll le Scot, and it is probable, that upon the Tragedy of John, Earl of Atholl, who was made prisoner by Edward the first, and barbarously executed, in the year 1307. (whilst he endeavoured more nobly than successfully to defend the gasping Liberty of Scotland against the Eruption of that Prince;) this Family to decline the Fury of that Monarch, who was a man of violent passions, altered the name of Balioll to that of their Extraction and Country, and assumed for the future the Name of Scot. That the Sirname of this Family was originally Balioll, I farther upon these Reasons assert. First, the ancient Arms of Balioll Colledge in Oxford, which was founded by John Balioll, and dedicated to St. Katharine was a Katherin-Wheele, being still part of the paternal Coat of this Family. Secondly, David de Strabogie, who was Son and Heir to the unfortunate Earl above-said, astonished with an Example of so much Terror, altered his name from Balioll to Strabogie, which was a Signory which accrued to him the Right of his Wife, who was Daughter and Heir to John Comin, Earl of Badzenoth and Strabogie, and by this Name King Edward the second, omitting that of Balioll restored Chilham-castle to him for Life, in the fifteenth year of his reign. Thirdly, the Earls of Buccleugh, and the Barons of Burley in Scotland, who derive themselves originally from Balioll, are known at this instant by no other Sirname, but Scot, and bear with some inconsiderable Difference, those very Arms which are at present the paternal Coat of the Family of Scots-hall.”

This tradition excluded, we find that Sir William Scot of Braberne, now Brabourne, in Kent, is the first of whom we have historical mention. He was knighted in 1336, when the Black Prince was created Duke of Cornwall, and died in 1350: a brass to his memory, being in Weever’s time (1631), the first of the memorials of the Scot family in Brabourne church. According to Philipot, this Sir William was the same with Sir William Scot, then Chief Justice of England; but if Mr. Foss be right in stating that this latter died in 1346, the year of the Black Death, this view cannot be upheld.

Another Sir William, apparently a grandson of the above, acquired through his mother the manor of Combe in Brabourne, and through his first wife and her relations—modes of increase in which the family seem to have been fortunate—that of Orlestone, as well as other places; and in 1420 he built Scotshall, in the manor of Hall in Smeeth, and was in 1428 sheriff of the county, and in 1430 knight of the shire in parliament. He died 1433. Scotshall, from time to time enlarged or rebuilt, and especially so by Sir Edward Scot, in the reign of Charles I, became the family seat for twelve generations. Evelyn, under date August 2, 1663, records his visit to it (soon after the young knight’s marriage), and calls it “a right noble seate, uniformely built, with a handsome gallery. It stands in a park well stor’d, the land fat and good. We were exceedingly feasted by the young knight, and in his pretty chapell heard an excellent sermon by his chaplaine.” It was sold, with the remaining possessions of the family, at the close of the last century, and destroyed in 1808. Some undulations in a field on the north side of the road from Ashford to Hythe, about half a mile to the east of Smeeth church, alone mark its site.

The son of this second Sir William, named Sir John, being connected with the Woodvilles, and therefore with the wife of Edward IV, and being a staunch Yorkist, and apparently a man of intelligence, was employed in special embassies to Charles, Duke of Burgundy, especially in 1467, when he went to treat of the marriage of the king’s sister with the duke. He had also various other and more substantial favours conferred upon him from time to time, from 1461 onwards, including that of Chilham Castle for life, as somewhat oddly, and I think wrongly, noted in the extract from Philipot. He died in 1485, and probably intestate, as no will is recorded.

To him succeeded his son, the third Sir William in this account, and he dying in 1524, was succeeded by his son, a second Sir John. This last, by his marriage with Anne, daughter of Reginald Pympe, had three sons, and died on the 7th October 1533. The eldest, William, followed his father on the 5th June 1536, and leaving no offspring, his next brother, Sir Reginald, took his place. Of the third brother, Richard, the father of our Reginald, I shall speak presently. Meanwhile, returning to the main line, I would say that Sir Reginald, dying on the 16th October 1554, was succeeded by his son, Sir Thomas, the “cousin” to whom Reginald was much indebted, and one of the four to whom he dedicated his Witchcraft. He was, in his day, a man of note, intelligence, and action. Finding his estate in debt, he yet kept one hundred at his table, was most hospitable, and died owing nothing, though, of course, to provide for the younger of his very numerous progeny, various portions of his estate were by his will sold after his death. He was deputy-lieutenant of his county, sheriff of Kent in 1576, knight of the shire for the Parliaments of 13 and 28 Elizabeth, chief of the Kentish forces at Northbourne Downs, where they were assembled to repel any landing from the Armada; and it may be added, as showing his promptness, readiness, and decision, that 4,000 of these were there, equipped for the field, the day after he received his orders from the Privy Council. He was one of the Commissioners to report on the advisability of improving the breed of horses in this country, and either before or after this, is said to have published a book on the subject. He was a Commissioner for draining and improving Romney Marsh, and afterwards Superintendent of the improvements of Dover harbour. Various letters to and from him in reference to Dover harbour, as well as to the Kentish forces, are to be found in the State Calendars. Having been the parent of seventeen children by his first wife, Emmeline Kempe, a relative by maternal descent, he died on the 30th December 1594, and Ashford parish offered to pay the expenses of his funeral if only they were allowed to bury him in their church. Most of these facts are noted in the following verses, which I give, chiefly because there are some probabilities that they were by Reginald. A copy of them seems to have been found among the family papers, in his handwriting. That he made some of the verse translations given in his Witchcraft is extremely probable, from the want in these cases of marginal references to the translator’s name; hence a second probability. The verses themselves render it likely that they were one of those memorial elegies then affixed επι ταϕον by affectionate friends and relatives, and not what we now call an epitaph; and the third verse clearly shows that they were written at least some little time after Sir Thomas’s decease, and therefore were not improbably written to be affixed to the handsome tomb erected over his remains. Hence a third probability; but beyond the accumulated force of these we cannot go.

Epitaph on Sir Thomas Scott, as given in the “Memorials of the Scott Family”, and also in Pick’s “Collection of Curious Pieces in the World”, vol. 3.

Here lyes Sir Thomas Scott by name;

Oh happie Kempe that bore him!

Sir Raynold, with four knights of fame,

Lyv’d lyneally before him.

His wieves were Baker, Heyman, Beere;

His love to them unfayned.

He lyved nyne and fiftie yeare,

And seventeen soules he gayned.

His first wief bore them every one;

The world might not have myst her![*]

She was a very paragon

The Lady Buckherst’s syster.

His widow lyves in sober sort,

No matron more discreeter;

She still reteiynes a good report,

And is a great housekeeper.

He (being called to special place)

Did what might best behove him.

The Queen of England gave him grace,

The King of Heav’n did love him.

His men and tenants wail’d the daye,

His Kinne and countrie[†] cryed;

Both young and old in Kent may saye,

Woe worth the day he dyed.

He made his porter shut his gate

To sycophants and briebors,

And ope it wide to great estates,

And also to his neighbours.

His House was rightly termed Hall

Whose bred and beefe was redie;

It was a very hospitall

And refuge for the needie.

From whence he never stept aside,

In winter nor in summer;

In Christmas time he did provide

Good cheer for every comer.

When any service shold be doun,

He lyked not to lyngar;

The rich would ride, the poor wold runn,

If he held up his fingar.

He kept tall men, he rydd great hors,

He did write most finely;

He used fewe words, but cold discours

Both wysely and dyvinely.

His lyving meane,[‡] his charges greate,

His daughters well bestowed;

Although that he were left in debt,

In fine he nothing owed.

But dyed in rich and happie state,

Beloved of man and woman

And (what is yeate much more than that)

He was envied[§] of no man.

In justice he did much excell,

In law he never wrangled:

He loved rellygion wondrous well,

But he was not new-fangled.

Let Romney Marsh and Dover saye;

Ask Norborne camp at leyseur;

If he were woont to make delaye

To doe his countrie pleasure.

But Ashford’s proffer passeth all—

It was both rare and gentle;

They would have pay’d his funerall

T’ have toomb’d him in their temple.

[*] Though a paragon, she lived, he would say, a quiet, retired life, obedient and loving to her husband.

[†] “Countrie”, seems not unlikely to be used here, as in the Discoverie not unfrequently, and twice in Wood’s notice just given, and, as then, for county.

[‡] “Meane”, that is, moderate, midway between the very rich and the poor.

[§] “Envied”, most probably in its then frequent sense of hated.

Before returning to Richard and Reginald, we may conclude this short notice of their ancestors by mentioning the very probable circumstance that the former were, by the female line, descendants of John Gower, the poet, as explained in the following table:

The Pashells, or Pashleys, were descended from Sir Edmund de Passelege, a Baron of the Exchequer, who purchased a manor in Smeeth in 1319; he died 1327. The family resided at Iden, Sussex; and the house there, and the manor in Smeeth, devolved on the Scots, Anne Pympe being her father’s only child. It is true that John Gower, the poet, does not mention any children in his extant will, but he was probably seventy-eight when he died; and, what is more to the purpose, his published will was probably only his testament, the will or declaration of uses of the land being commonly at that time a separate instrument. Th. Gower, of Clapham, given above as the father of Lowys, was probably the son or grandson of John Gower (see Sir Harris Nicolas in The Retrosp. Rev., 2 Ser., ii, 103-17). Also Gower the poet is known to have had property in Southwark; and Th. Gower, of Clapham, refers in his will (1458) to his tenement called The Falcon, in Southwark, near the hospital; and in Manning and Bray’s Surrey, iii, 623, there is noticed a deed of conveyance dated 22nd November 1506, of part of the site of St. Thomas’s Hospital, in Southwark, made by John Scot, of Iden, and Anne his wife, daughter and heir of John Pashley, who was cousin and heir of John Gower. It may be added as curious that Sir Robert Gower, who is believed to have been uncle to the poet, was buried in Brabourne church in 1349; his monument, now destroyed, being noticed in Weever.

On p. 500, Scot speaks of “his kinseman M. Deering”, Edw. Dering the divine, a writer on theological subjects and chaplain to her Majesty; but in what way they were kin I have been unable to discover.[*]

[*] My mother being a Dering, a daughter of the Thomas that was drowned in the West Indies, when trying to reach his vessel H.M.S. Circe, induces me to add, through the courtesy of Sir Edw. C. Dering, that a portrait of this worthy is still to be seen at Surrenden Dering, and that a family tradition has it, that preaching before her Majesty, he had the boldness to tell her, “that she had no more controul over her passions than an untamed heifer.” He was speedily unfrocked, and is said to have emigrated to America, where an Edw. Dering is at this moment the head of that branch, and a large landowner in Maine.

Returning now to Reginald’s father, Richard, the youngest of the three sons of that Sir John who died in 1533, we find that he married Mary, daughter of Geo. Whetenall, whose father was sheriff of Kent in 1527, and whose family had lived for three centuries at Hextall’s Place, near Maidstone. She survived her husband; and being remarried to Fulke Onslow, Clerk of the Parliaments, died before him, 8th October 1582, and was buried, as he afterwards was, in Hatfield church, Herts, where a brass to their memory is fixed in the north wall of the chancel. Of Richard himself nothing more is known. He probably died young, and certainly before December 1554, his death being mentioned in the will of his brother Sir Reginald, who died on the 16th of that month. In this will, failing his own issue—a lapse which did not occur—he left his real estate “unto Rainolde Scotte, son and heire of my brother Richard Scotte, decd”, and Rainolde’s issue failing, it was devised to a more distant branch. Hence, contrary to the table given on [page xi], from “The Memorials”, “Rainolde” was either the only son of Richard, or the only son then living. The same conclusion follows from the Inquis. post mortem of Lady Wynifred Rainsfoord, taken the 20th March 1575/6, where Sir Thomas Scot and his brothers are said to be co-heirs with Reynold of the lands held by her in gavelkind, the sons having one moiety, and Reynold the other.

This Inquisition also gives Reynold’s then age as thirty-eight or more, the words “et amplius” being, as was, usually at least, done in these documents, attached to all the other ages mentioned. Hence he was born in or before 1538 (not in 1541), and as, according to Wood, he entered Hart Hall, Oxford, when about seventeen, he entered it circa 1555; the intention that he should do so having been probably entertained by Sir Reginald, his uncle, who died 16th December 1554, and his expenses borne by his cousin, Sir Thomas. I say probably, because we have seen that, failing his own issue, he was named by Sir Reginald as the next heir to the estate, and also because we know nothing of the circumstances in which his widowed mother was left, nor as yet of the date at which she was re-married to Onslow.

On the 11th of October he married Jane—not, as stated in “The Memorials”, Alice—Cobbe, the daughter of an old yeoman family long resident at Cobbe’s Place, in the adjoining parish of Aldington. The entry in the Registers of Brabourne is—

“M[*] Reignold Scott and Jane Cobbe were

maryed the xith of October 1658.”

The only issue of this marriage, the only issue (that at least survived) of both his marriages—for the Maria in the table of “The Memorials” was the daughter of his second wife by her first husband—was Elizabeth, afterwards married to Sackville Turnor; and the only issue of that marriage, prior at least to Reynold’s death in 1599, was Cicely. Elizabeth’s birth must have been in or before 1574, for in the Inquis. post mortem of Reg. Scot generosus in 1602, she is said to be “28 et amplius”. The Holy Maid of Kent (mentioned by Scot, p. 26) was servant to one of her maternal progenitors, probably to her grandfather.

[*] To this upper portion of the “M” is added a character which may make it “Mr.” or “Married”; but I have not myself yet seen the entry.

In this year, 1574, was also published the first issue of his brain, his tractate on The Hoppe-Garden, the first work, I believe, in which not only was the culture of the hop in England advocated, both as having been successfully tried by him, and as against its importation from Poppering, in Flanders, where its mode of culture, etc., was endeavoured to be kept secret; but the whole subject of its growth, culture, drying, and preservation was gone into in a practical manner, and further explained by woodcuts. And here it may be worth noting that in this year Reynold was necessarily absent so far from London that the publisher inserted this apologetic note: “Forasmuch as M. Scot could not be present at the printing of this his Booke, whereby I might have used his advise in the correction of the same, and especiallie of the Figures and Portratures conteyned therein, whereof he delivered unto me such notes as I being unskilfull in the matter, could not so thoroughly conceyve, nor so perfectly expresse as ... the Author, or you ... the Reader might in all poyntes be satisfied [etc., etc.].” In the second edition, however, in 1576, it was: “Now newly corrected and augmented,” the augmentations increasing the book from fifty-three pages, exclusive of the epilogue, to sixty, and the corrections including one added and one emended engraving. As a matter of curiosity, and as showing that neither the publisher nor the author expected a second edition, it may be added that though only two years had elapsed, some at least of the wood engravings required to be re-cut in almost exact facsimile. A third edition was issued in 1578, and from these we can date the commencement of the hop harvests in Kent.

In 1575 he succeeded to one moiety of such part of Lady Winifred Rainsford’s estate as was held in gavelkind. Possibly, indeed, we may place his enjoyment of it earlier, for Lady Rainsford was declared insane; and to this, by the way, I am not disinclined to attribute Reynold’s prolonged absence from London in 1572, the attendance of some one of the family being required, and he, being older than the sons of Sir Thomas, and of a junior branch, and a man of business, having been chosen or requested to go. And I think we may place his loss of that estate between this date and that of 1584, the date of the publication of the Witchcraft. At least, in this Discoverie occur two passages which, taken together, seem to point to this. In his dedication to Sir Th. Scot he says: [A vi], “My foot being [not, having been] under your table, my hand in your dish, or rather in your pursse”—and, [A viii]: “If they will allow men knowledge and give them no leave to use it, men were much better be without it than have it; ... it is, as ... to put a candle under a bushell: or as to have a ship, and to let hir lie alwaies in the docke: which thing how profitable it is, I can saie somewhat by experience.” Though it may be said that Reynold was a man of business, and, as appears from his writings, a man of decision and of unusual intelligence, still circumstances may combine to bring disaster as a shipowner on such a one, and more especially if he be new to the business. That he did in some way lose his “moiety” is shown by the words of his will, for, speaking of his second wife, he says, “whome yf I had not matched wth all I had not dyed worth one groate.” Not, improbably, I think, it was to the time of his first marriage, or to his widowership, or to both, that Wood more especially refers when he speaks of his giving himself up to solid reading, etc.

When his first wife died and when he re-married is as yet unknown to us. But this latter could hardly have taken place until the latter end, at earliest, of 1584, since in that year he, as already quoted, describes himself as, “having his foot under your [Sir Th. Scot’s] table”, etc., or in other words, as being a dependant not worth one groat. Nor do we know more of this second wife beyond these slight particulars that we gather from Reynold’s will: that her Christian name was Alice—given in “The Memorials” instead of Jane, to Cobbe, the first wife—that she was a widow with a daughter by her former husband; and that she had some land, either in her own right or derived from her former husband. That she was a widow at the time of her remarriage is shown by Reynold’s bequest of “six poundes thirteene shillings foure pence to my daughter in Lawe Marie Collyar for apparell [? mourning] desiring that her mother’s hand be not anie thinge the shorter towards her in that respect.” Whether Collyar were this daughter’s maiden name, and therefore the name of her mother’s first husband, or whether it were the name of her own husband, is doubtful, though from the words just quoted I rather incline to this second supposition, and that the husband was not a man of much means. With regard to what I have said as to the mother’s possession of property, it has been suggested to me by one of good judgment, and a solicitor, that Reynold’s expression as to not dying worth a groat was merely an excuse for leaving the bulk of his property to his wife; as also that these concluding words of the will, and the resistance of probate to it made by Elizabeth, his daughter by his first wife, indicate the existence of family differences, probably attributable to this second marriage having been entered into with one of a social rank inferior to his own. I cannot, however, deduce this latter supposition from anything we know, neither can I thus interpret the last words of his will, nor believe him guilty of such a perversion of the truth. Reading his will attentively, I think we find that Scot, with his usual fine sense of justice, gives all the lands in “Aldington, Ruckinge, and Sellinge”, which had become his by his marriage with Alice, “to her and to her [not to his] heires”, while he only gives his lands in Romney Marsh and his lease of Brabourne Rectory to her for her life, and then the lease at least, which had come to him “from his Cozen Charles”, to his daughter Elizabeth. Reading the last words of his will verbatim, I think it consistent with justice to hold, that though he may have obtained these lands in Romney Marsh through the use of what had been his wife’s former property, but was during his marriage his own, he was entitled to leave them to his wife only for her life, they then proceeding not, as did the others, to her heirs, but to his. I strongly suspect, also, that his casual omission of any directions as to whom these Romney Marsh lands were to go after her death was the real cause of the probate of the will being resisted by his daughter Elizabeth, so as to definitely raise this point.

Reserving all notice of his Witchcraft till I speak of it under its bibliography, I would say that we know little more of his life. The Rev. Jos. Hunter, in his Chorus Vatum, states that he was “a Collector of subsidies to Q. Elizabeth in 15..., for the county of Kent.” Urged to inquiry by this, my friend, Jas. Gairdner, Esq., kindly examined for me the Exchequer documents in the Public Record Offices, and it appears from them that he was collector of subsidies for the lathe of Shepway in the years 28 and 29 of Elizabeth (1586–87). It may be added that, as appears from a previous document, 125/299, in the same class of papers, that Sir Reynold Scot and other Commissioners for the collection in the lathe of Shepway, of the first payment of the subsidy granted by the Parliament, 37 Henry VIII, had appointed a high Collector. Thus we learn the mode of his appointment; and on looking through the lists we find that many such were “generosi”, though the payment was but small. For Scot, forty shillings was deducted from the incomings; and this not as a percentage, but as salary.

From the same documents we find that he is twice designated “armiger”, a word agreeing with his 1584 title-page, “by Reginald Scot, Esquire”, though in the editions of his Hoppe Garden his name alone is given. This was for myself an important find; but it will suffice here to say that it confirms Hunter’s supposition that this esquireship was due to his having been made a justice of the peace, though as to the date it can only as yet be said that this dignity was probably granted between 1578 and 1584.

In an Accompt of Sir Th. Heanage, knight, Treasurer at Warr, in the Public Record Offices, and printed by J. Renat Scott in the Arch. Canti., vol. xi, p. 388, we find the following entries:

“Sr Thomas Scott knighte Collonel generall of the footemen in Kent for his Entertainment at xiijs iiijd pr diem for xxij dayes begonne the xxixth of Julye and endinge the xix of Auguste the summe of xiiijli xiijs iiijd.”

• • • • • • •

“Reinalde Scotte Trench mayster for his Enterteinment at iiijs pr diem, and due to him for the same tyme iiijli viijs.”

• • • • • • •

“Sr Thomas Scott knighte for Thenterteynemt of lxiij Wachemen & Garders appointed to watche & warde at Dongenesse for xxij dayes begonne [etc., as above] at viij the pece pr diem xlviliiiijs.”

From the Muster-roll taken on the 25th Jan. 1587–8, and now in the possession of Mr. Oliver, it appears that the county had then furnished 8,201 footmen and 711 horsemen, and that Sir Thomas was captain of the 309 trained foot raised in the lathe of Shepway, with four hundreds of the lathe of Scraye and Romney Marsh. Hence his office as Colonel-General was not given him—indeed, this is shown by the Accompt—until the men had been assembled in camp on the 29th July. In like manner the Muster-roll gives Sir Jas. Hales as Captain of the Lances; but in the pay list Th. Scott (a son of Sir Thomas) is Captain both of the Light Horse and Lances. With regard to “Reinalde”, who, under the name of Reginald, appears in the Muster-roll as one of the thirteen captains over 1,499 untrained foot, Mr. J. Renat Scott, in a note, states that he was a son of Sir Thomas Scott; but though sons of Sir Thomas were also captains, this assertion is a guess, unsupported by any known evidence.

He made his will on the 15th September 1599, and died twenty-four days thereafter, on the 9th October. Some say that he was either taken ill at Smeeth or died there, probably misinterpreting the words of his will; some also say that he was buried there; while some think that he was buried by the side of and close to Sir Thomas Scott’s tomb in Brabourne church; but all these, like the supposition of Philipot in his Kent Notes, Harl. MS. 3917, fol. 78a, that he erected that tomb, are mere guessings, and as such we leave them.

To the few particulars thus gathered together we are obliged, with the exception of two small points, one probable, and the other, I think, certain, to confine ourselves. The first or probable point is, that as his name appears five times as a witness to family business documents between 1566 and 1594, his signature appearing in this last year in Sir Thomas’s will, he must have kept up familiar intercourse with the latter, and was not improbably, in some measure at least, his man of business, and possibly his steward. The second point, which also goes to confirm this first one, as also to confirm the belief that he was made a justice of the peace, as being a person whose attainments, if not his position, would render him useful in such a post, is one to which I was independently led by his writings, and which is, I find, borne out by almost contemporary testimony.

He who in his Hoppe Garden showed such practical thought and foresight, and in his Witchcraft such independence of thought, was not a man, especially when married and a father, to live in dependence on a cousin. The wording, as well as the tone of his writings, agree with this. We find in them traces of legal study, a habit of putting things, as it were, in a forensic form, and noteworthy and not unfrequent references to legal axioms or dicta, quoted generally in their original Latin. The Dedication before his Hoppe Garden, and the first before his Witchcraft, are to men of high legal rank, judges, in fact, to whom he acknowledges his obligations. Referring the reader to these, and to the ambiguous sentence in the latter commencing “Finally” (sig. [A ii]), I would also give the words in the latter, where he says, [A. v]: “But I protest the contrarie, and by these presents I renounce all protection”; and in the former the legal phraseology is carried on throughout in—“and be it also knowne to all men by these presentes that your acceptance hereof shall not be any wyse prejudiciall unto you, for I delyver it as an Obligation, wherein I acknowledge my selfe to stande further bounde unto you, without that, that I meane to receyve your courtesie herein, as a release of my further duties which I owe,” [A. iii. v.] And in [B. v.]: “neither reproove me because by these presents I give notice thereof.” So also he would seem to have been an attendant at the assizes; and if we look to the story, told at [page 5], of Marg. Simons, we find that he was not only present at the trial, but busied himself actively in the matter, talking to the vicar, the accuser, about it, advertising the poor woman as to a certain accusation, he “being desirous to heare what she could saie for hir selfe”, and inquiring into the truth of her explanation by the relation of divers honest men of that parish. In like manner, his Will is written “wth myne owne hande” twenty-five days before his death; and, on inquiring from a lawyer, I find that it is drawn up in due legal form, and by one who had had a legal training. Lastly, Thomas Ady, M.A., in A Candle in the Dark, 1656, alias, A Perfect Discovery of Witches, 1661, a book, like Scot’s, against the reality of witchcraft, distinctly tells us, [p. 87], that Scot “was a student in the laws and learned in the Roman Laws”, the latter being exactly what such a man would be if he had turned towards the law as a profession. These considerations appear to me conclusive, even though it be added as an argument per contra that his name has not been found among the rolls of the Temple, Inner or Middle, or in those of Lincoln’s or Gray’s Inn.

And in taking leave of this portion of my subject, I cannot but reiterate the obligations both the reader and the literary world generally are under to Mr. Edmund Ward Oliver. The suppositions as to the cause of Scot’s loss of his moiety of the estates of Lady Winnifred Rainsford—not, it is believed, a large sum—and as to his law-studentship, based as they are on facts stated by Scot or derived from his writings, and those of Th. Ady, are my own; while in one or two instances I have put forth opinions not quite in accord with that gentleman’s. But nearly all the biographical facts regarding Scot himself and his marriages, in contradistinction to the supposed facts hitherto set forth, are due to the intelligent research of Mr. Oliver, and are not unfrequently stated in his own words.

The following table will bring into one view the pedigree of Reginald Scot given in the previous pages:

* It is noteworthy that, notwithstanding the memorial inscription to the first Sir William, Reginald, or whoever was the author of the verses to Sir Thomas, only traces the pedigree to this fourth knight after Sir Reginald. Either then the first Sir William was then accounted somewhat mythical, or not being a knight of fame, he was not recognised as the same with Sir William Scott, the Chief Justice of England.

WILL OF RAYNOLD SCOT.

Extracted from the copy, not the original, in the Principal Registry of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice.

S In the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

In the Name of God Amen. I Raynolde Scott in the Countie of Kent gent beinge of the Parish of Smeth Doe make and ordaine and wth myne owne hande doe write this my Last will and Testament on Saturdaye the fyfteenth of September Anno Dñi a thousand fyve hundred nyntie nyne and in the fortie one yeare of the raigne of or soveraigne Ladie Queene Elizabeth Fyrst I bequeath my Sowle to Almightie god and my body to be buryed as yt shall seeme good to Alice my wiefe whome I make and ordaine to be myne onely Executrix Item I bequeath to my sayde wief All my goods and chattells plate housholde stuffe Juelles and Chaynes with all my leases and goods moveable and vnmoveable savinge such as I shall by this my Will other Wise dispose of Item I (for the trust I repose in Mr. Edwarde Hall of Ashforde and of my neighbour Raynolde Keale of Smeeth in countie aforesaide doe make them two the overseers to this my Last will and gyve to eyther of them for theire paines and trouble wch they ar like to sustaine herebye fyve poundes Item I bequeath to Sr John Scott my lease of the banke or pond at Aldinge Item I bequeath to my graund childe Cisley Turnor tenne poundes to buy her a little Chaine Item I gyve to my daughter in Lawe Marie Collyar six poundes thirteene shillings foure pence to be paide unto her within one quarter after my decease, to be bestowed in apparell upon her selfe as she shall seeme good nether would I have her mothers hand anie thinge the shorter towardes her in that respect Item I give to my daughter Turnor the Covenant that I have of my Cozen Charles Scott touchinge the renuinge of my lease when his grace doth renne [read renue] his lease of Braborne Rectorie provided that my meaninge is, that my said wief shall enioye the full tearme that I nowe possesse and howsoever yt shalbe renued my daughter shall have the only renuinge which shalbe in effecte after the whole tearme wch I holde now be expired so as by any meane [intervening] renuinge my saide wief be not defeated of my true meaninge towardes her Item I do bequeath to my saied wief and to her heires for ever All my Landes Lyinge in Aldington and now in thoccupacion of John Pollard and all my Landes in Ruckinge in thoccupacion of —— Diggons and all my Landes in Sellenge in the occupacion of —— Coakar All which Landes lye in the sayde sayde[*] Countie of Kent Item I gyve and bequeath to my said wief all my other Landes in Rumney Marshe or els where in the said countye duringe her naturall lief[†] Item I doe gyve to my Servante Moyll Smyth the some of twentie shillinges yearelie duringe his naturall Life to be paide out of all my Landes halfe yearelie and that for defaulte of payment yt shalbe Lawfull for him to distraine And so I ende desyreinge the worlde to iudge the best hereof and of the consyderacions for greate is the trouble my poore wief hath had with me, and small is the comforte she hath receyved at my handes whome yf I had not matched wth all I had not dyed worth one groate.—

Ray: Scott.

[*] Sic, first at end of line.

[†] Sic, to be paide is interlined above this.

By a short notice following the copy of the will, it was proved on the 22nd November 1599. There is also a document setting forth that Alicia Scott, relicta, and Elizabetha Turnor, als Scott, filia naturalis et legitima, had disputed, before certain functionaries named regarding the will, and that probate was granted as aforesaid on the 22nd November 1599. But as the cause or subject of the dispute is not mentioned, this, like the short notice, is not given.

ABSTRACT OF INQUIS. POST MORTEM, 18 ELIZ. p. 1, No. 84.

Inquisition taken at Maidstone on the death of Lady Wynifred Rainsfoord, 30 March, 18 Eliz. [1575–6].

She was seised of the Manors of Nettlested and Hiltes with appurtenances in E. and W. Peckham, Brenchley, W. Barmling, Merewood, Marden; also of the Manor of Pympe with appurtenances in Yaulding, Marden, and Brenchley. Also various other lands, some of which, called Stockenbury, Motelands, and Souchefields, are in Brenchley.

She died 17 Oct. last, at Chelmsford in Essex.

Th. Scott, kt., is her next heir, viz., son and heir of Reginalde Scotte, kt., sonne and heir of Anne Scotte, wife of John Scotte, kt., daughter and heir of Reginald Pympe, brother of John Pympe, father of said Lady Winifred.

Thomas Scotte, kt., Charles Scott, Henry Scotte, George Scotte, and William Scotte [brothers of the first-named Thomas Scotte, kt.], and Reginald Scotte, are coheirs of the lands held in gavelkind. One moiety thereof descends to Thomas, Charles, etc. [as named above], sons and coheirs of Reginalde Scotte, kt., son and heir of Anne Scotte; and the other moiety to Reginald, son and heir of Richard Scotte, junior, son of the said Anne.

Thomas miles is 39 et amplius, Charles 34 [etc.], Henry 32 [etc.], George 30 [etc.], William 22 [etc.], and Reginald 38 years of age et amplius.

The exact words regarding the co-heirs are: “descendebant et de jure descendere debent præfato Thomæ Scotte militi, Carolo Scott, Henrico Scotte, Georgio Scotte et Will’o Scotte, fratribus dicti Thomæ Scotte militis et Reginaldo Scotte, consanguineo prædicti Thomæ Scotte militis, ut consanguineis et coheredibus prædictæ dominæ Winifridæ eo quod prædictæ terræ ... ultimo recitata sunt de natura de gavelkind.” This disproves the assertion of Mr. J. Renat Scott in Arch. Cant., xi, 388, and repeated in his genealogy of the Scott family, that the Reginald Scott mentioned in the former as receiving pay among those appointed in 1587-8 was “a son of Sir Thomas”.

ABSTRACT OF INQUIS. P.M., 45 ELIZ., pars. 1, No. 71.

Inquisition taken at Maidstone, 2 Dec. [1602], after the death of Reginald Scot, generosus.

He was seised of a tenement and 20 acres of land called Graynecourtte, held of Th. Scott, Esq., as of his manor of Brabourne, a tenement called Essex, and 20 acres of land in two parcels in Allington [Aldington], held of Edw. Hall, as of his manor of Pawlson. One parcel of land called Haythorne field, containing 20 acres in Bonington, held of the Queen in capite, and a tenement and one parcel of land lying in Barefield, containing two acres in Brabourne, tenure unknown, and one acre in Brabourne and 5 acres in Brabourne, and two parcels in Smeeth, and 30 acres of marsh called Gatesleaf, in Newchurch, held of Martin Barneham, Esq., as of his manor of Bylsyngton.

He died 9 Oct., 41 Eliz. [1599], at Smeeth.

Elizabeth, wife of Sackville Turner, gent., is his daughter and next heir, and was 28 years of age and more at his death.

Alice, his widow, has received the rents since his death.

[Elizabeth was the next heir to his own property, but that which was his own through his wife Alice, he specially devised “to her and to her heirs”.]

The Cause and History of the Work.—That is, what induced Scot to write it, and why did he set it forth as he did? inquiries which involve, among other matters, a short notice of the position then and previously held by witchcraft in England. His Hoppe-garden shows him to us as a man of intelligence, foresighted and reflective of thought, and desirous of improving the state of his country and countrymen. It shows him also as one who could not only seize a thought and commend it to others, but as one who had perseveringly put his idea into practice, found it feasible, and then so learnt the processes necessary for growing the plant, and preparing its catkins and storing them for use, that a priori one would suppose that he had done what he did not, namely, visited Holland and learnt the processes on the spot. The same qualities are seen in his Witchcraft, as is also his independence of thought. No sooner had his suspicions been aroused than he proceeded, as shown by the work and its references, to investigate the matter thoroughly and perseveringly. To this also he was encouraged, or rather led, by yet other two qualities, his straightforwardness or honesty of purpose, and his compassion, for these taught him that he was engaged in a righteous work, that of rescuing feeble and ignorant, though it may be too pretentious and shrewish, old women from false charges and a violent death, and in a noble work in endeavouring to stem the torrent of superstition and cruelty which was then beginning to overflow the land.

Nor was this the result in any way of a mind sceptically inclined. His book shows that he accepted the opinions of his day, unless he had been led to inquire into them, and either re-receive them as facts or discard them. Led doubtless by his academic training, it is abundantly clear that he had inquired into the grounds of his belief in the Established Church, and into the additions that had been made to its faith in the course of illiterate ages by the Popish Church. He had read Plotina, who taught him that the so-called vicars of Christ and his vice-gerents on earth were often devils incarnate and standard-bearers of vice, and that the system which did now and again produce a St. Francis d’Assis—all reverence to his name—produced also the congeners of Loyola, and Loyola himself, whose followers, while assuming to themselves the holy name of Socii Jesu, made that name famous and infamous, and their tenets execrated throughout the civilised world. But he accepted with some doubting, having, as he thought, great authority for it and no means of investigation, the story of the Remora; and accepted without doubting the beliefs that the bone of a carp’s head, and none other, staunched blood, the value of the unicorn’s horn, and the like, and—notwithstanding his disbelief in astrology—that seed-time and springing were governed by the waxing and waning of the moon. He also believed that precious stones owed their origin to the influences of the heavenly bodies; and besides his credulous beliefs as to certain waters, narrated at the commencement, he in the next chapter gives the absurdly wonderful virtues of these stones, some, as he says, believed in by him, “though many things most false are added”.

How then came he to inquire into and write so strongly against witchcraft? Before the time of the eighth Henry, sorcerers were dealt with by the ecclesiastical law, which punished them as heretics. Moreover, their supposed offences against the person seem, chiefly at least, to have been taken notice of when they were supposed to interfere with high or state matters or persons, as in the cases of Joan of Arc or Dame Eleanor Cobham. But in Henry’s time, probably through the extension of continental ideas, aided, it may be, by a desire to restrain the ecclesiastical power, c. 8 of the thirty-third year of his reign was passed. By this it was enacted, that witches, etc., who destroyed their neighbours, and made pictures [images] of them for magical purposes, or for the same purposes made crowns, swords, and the like, or pulled down crosses, or declared where things lost or stolen were become, should suffer death and loss of lands and goods, as felons, and lose the privileges of clergy and sanctuary. Afterwards, by 1 Edw. I, c. 12, this and other offences first made felonies in Henry’s time were no longer to be accounted such. Thirdly, in the fifth year of Elizabeth, Parliament, by its twelfth chapter, enacted, that whereas many have practised sorceries to the destruction of people and their goods, those that cause death shall suffer as was declared by 33 Henry VIII, c. 8, except that their wives and heirs shall not have their rights affected by such attainder. But that when a person was only injured, or their goods or cattle destroyed, the offenders should for the first offence suffer a year’s imprisonment, and once a quarter be exposed in the pillory in a market town for six hours, and there confess their offences; and for the second offence suffer death as felons, with the exceptions before rehearsed. While any who seek treasure, or would bring about unlawful love, or hurt anyone in his body or goods, should for a first offence be imprisoned and suffer as before, and for a second be imprisoned for life and forfeit his goods and cattle. This, so far as humanity is concerned, is a distinct advance on Henry’s enactment, though an apparent going back from that of Edward. Perhaps, as before, it arose from a desire to remove the offences from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical law, which would have burnt them, nor, as evidenced by its little results, does it seem to have been made through any mania or scare in the matter. This came on later, when, as we are told by Brian Darcie in 1582, at what time, under pie-crust promises of favour, he was endeavouring to get women to confess, and then be hanged,—“there is a man of great learning and knowledge come over lately into our Queenes Majestie, which hath advertised her what a companie and numbers of Witches be within Englande: whereupon I and other of her Justices have received Commission for the apprehending of as many as are within these limites.” Alas, this man of great learning and knowledge seems to have been none other than that otherwise light of the English Church, the great, good, and pious Bishop Jewel, who, having returned from a forced residence abroad, was speedily promoted by her Majesty, and in a sermon preached before her, in 1572, brought in the subject as follows:—

“Heere perhaps some man will replie, that witches, and conjurers often times chase away one Divell by the meane of another. Possible it is so; but that is wrought, not by power, but by Collusion of the Divels. For one Divell, the better to attaine his purpose, will give place, and make as though he stood in awe of another Divell. And by the way to touch but a word or two of this matter for that the horrible using of your poore subjects inforceth thereunto. It may please your Grace to understand, that this kind of people, I meenes witches and sorcerers, within these few last yeeres, are marvellously increased within this your Grace’s realme. These eies have seene most evident and manifest marks of their wickednesse. Your Grace’s subjects pine away even unto the death, their collour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benummed, their senses are bereft.”

“Wherefore, your poore subjects most humble petition unto your Highnesse, is, that the lawes touching such malefactours, may be put in due execution. For the shole of them is great, their doings horrible, their malice intollerable, the examples most miserable. And I pray God, they never practise further, then upon the subject. But this only by the way, these be the scholers of Beelzebub the chief captaine of the Divels.”

The plantings of the Queen in the commissions of her Justices thus instigated and encouraged, produced an abundant crop. According to the Dedications of Scot, Sir Roger Manwood, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, had had “in these causes such experience”, [A ii. v]., while Sir Thomas Scot, as Justice of the Peace, had also had “manie poore old women convented before him for ... witchcraft”, [A. vi]. Various booklets also, presently to be spoken of more at large, excited still more the imaginations of a credulous people, and it had been supposed, before Scot wrote, as will be seen on [p. 473], and in my note on that page, that the Queen’s person had been aimed at in that way.

It thus appears that though Scot may have been brought up in a traditional but little-regarded belief in witchcraft, he, when he was at least thirty-four, was not only unprepared, but startled, to witness and take part in this new departure from justice and mercy. Witchcraft, chiefly looked on as useful in discovering things lost, or in bringing a wished-for sweetheart to return the love of the seeker, or in curing ailments simple or grievous, became feared, reviled, and sought out: sought out by Commission of the Queen, sought out by the people as a great and fearful evil rapidly overspreading the land, and able and willing, like the Plague and Black Death, to count its victims by thousands, and from the cottage to the throne itself. He, a man both intelligent and compassionate, sees poor, old, decrepit creatures eking out a miserable livelihood by begging an occasional dole from their better off neighbours; ill-tempered by age and condition, and therefore abusive when refused such dole, or on slighter causes, sometimes perhaps through old knowledge or superstition, but probably more often for the sake of gain, pretending to be wise above what is known; he sees these accused of selling their souls for the sake of such a position in the world, he hears them accused sometimes of foul, more frequently of unlikely, crimes and acts, nay, such as an unprejudiced common sense must laugh at, while the evidence is nearly always so faulty that, were the accusation a different one, it would be at once turned inside out and thrown aside. Unfortunately, too, some of these old women being more or less mad, and others driven through fear on the one hand, or through promised favour on the other, confess themselves capable of doing these things, though any man of sense and observation could detect their state or motives. Luckily, too, he had had close to him, and in his wife’s family, the known and talked-of imposture of the Holy Maid of Kent; and in his own time and close to his own door, the case of the Pythonist of Westwell, at first carried out triumphantly, and then, on her own confession and her re-acted acts, branded as an impostor, like the Holy Maid. The Dutchman, too, at Maidstone, after being set forth as a worker of miracles and an exorcist, was found to be a rogue; and “manie other such miracles had beene latelie printed, whereof diverse had beene bewraied.” He had taken part also—apparently as one engaged for the defence—in that piece of folly called the trial of Margaret Simons, and knew the history of Ade Davie, and of her restoration to sanity without exorcism, hanging, or burning.

Is it not natural that his suspicions, and more than suspicions, should have been aroused, and that he should have been thus led to take up the whole subject seriously? One who had given himself up, as Wood says, to reading and thought as well as to healthy and useful exercise, must have sought for and obtained books on either side of the subject, and in especial the known book of Wier; and thoughtful reading of these, and meditation must have led him to extend his views, and gather them into a harmonious and consistent whole. Meanwhile, however, the bloodthirsty superstition daily increased, and there were published first, the mad book or books of Richard Gallis—spoken of in [pp. 132–3]—of the witches at Windsor, now, I believe, unfortunately lost, where, among other things, he narrates how, at a Sabbath meeting, he had a hand-to-hand encounter with the devil, and wounded him so sore that he stank of brimstone; and in 1582, there took place the wholesale condemnation of the poor old women of St. Osees, thirteen I believe of whom were hanged. There had been no such condemnation before in England. It is not unlikely that he himself witnessed their condemnation—see [pp. xxv–vi]. So unusual was it, that—as I cannot but believe on other evidence, as stated in my noting on Macbeth—a ballad was written on it, which became very commonly known, and was remembered as late as 1606. This same unusual breadth of punishment also created so much attention that Justice Brian Darcie thought it worth while to set forth in print, not the trial, but the depositions taken before him, and thus inform a too ignorant public that he and he alone was the primary cause of such a purification.

These facts, and especially this last, aroused, I believe, Scot’s compassion and indignation, and made both find vent in printed words. And besides these likelihoods, including that of date, there are two at first sight seemingly contradictory facts, which made themselves manifest to me when I first carefully read the book, and before I had formed any opinion on their causes, and which are on this view reconciled. These facts are, that while the plan which he has adopted, and his facts and conclusions, seem to have been deliberately sought out, thought over, and canvassed, there are evidences throughout of a feverous haste of composition, such feverous haste as the above spoken of emotions would excite in a man like Scot, who had witnessed so horrible and so bloody a perversion of justice. The proof of the first fact I leave to be observed by the intelligent reader; but while the second must also be observed by him, it is needful, to the full exposition of my argument, that I should collect in one view most at least of the details. This haste is evidenced in some of his corrected errata, but more in those that he did not correct. Thus we have, on [p. 174], a curious slip, by which Pharaoh becomes a Persian, and Nebuchadnezzar takes Pharaoh’s place as an Egyptian king, for other parts of the book prove conclusively that this was an unintentional lapsus, and one a second time overlooked when the book was re-read before the title-page and the preliminary leaves were set up. Similar are his errors as to Haias and Sedaias, for at one time he speaks of Rabbi Sedaias Haias, repeating it also at the last when he gives his “forren authors” consulted, and between these speaks of them as two persons, as they were. More especially would I call attention to his blunders as to Argerius Ferrerius. He quotes him—yet he is always Ferrarius—five times in his text, twice in his table of contents, and once in his “authors used”. So in his translation from him, the “s” of “verbis” being indistinct in some copies, he read the word as “verbi”, and thereby translated the sentence into such unmistakable nonsense that this alone should have shown him his error. So, also, we have the senseless, because careless, rendering of the sword in hand passage, [p. 257]; and with these may be classed his adoption of T. R.’s curious mistranslations from Wier’s Pseudomonarchia, or from another copy of the Empto. Salomonis, for a moment’s consideration would have shown him their absurdity, and led him to turn to Wier. In [p. 19] also, we find “infants” where, as stated in my note, all the editions of the Mal. Malef. in the British Museum have “infames”; and this, though a slip of memory, betokens, when taken with the rest, overhaste. These slips, in an ordinary writer, would lead to another conclusion, but not in this case, where we have evidence of both ordinary and recondite knowledge, of conclusions tried by actual experiment, of a quick and intelligent perception, and of what may be called, in a good sense, a ready and acute subtlety in refuting or retorting allegations or objections.

Our author’s indebtedness to Cornelius Agrippa and to Wier has, in a great measure, been anticipated in what has been said; but a few words may here be added. Casually coming across their books when he became a reader of out-of-the-way works, he did not become a follower of theirs, and then write a book, as the disciples of Pythagoras wrote books to expound and hand down the doctrines of their master. Wier had written a book against witchcraft, and a clear and comprehensive book. But while Scot certainly followed Wier in point of time, and as certainly was much indebted to him for the perfecting of his book, yet, as I have said, Scot seems to have taken up his belief against the reality of witchcraft from what he in his own experience had witnessed; and my view, that he was then led to read Wier and Cornelius Agrippa, and the writers on the other side, seems to me confirmed by what we find as to his indebtedness to Wier. The “Notings on Wier” show that, while he copied him in some other instances, he borrowed from him mainly a long list of illustrations, some of which even he may have drawn independently from the same sources as did Wier.

Bibliography.—We do not find an entry of Scot’s Hoppe-garden in the Stationers’ Registers, because the entries about 1574 are wanting. But why do we not find so large and important a book as the Witchcraft of 1584 so entered, the writer being of a family of no mean repute, and the head of his house, Sir Th. Scot, being in those days a man of some mark? The answer, after what has been said, is simple. He upheld and defended a heresy, the existence and diabolical powers and practices of witches being believed in and guarded against, by the Queen, the bishops, and the people. Hence the reply of the Stationers’ Company would most certainly have been—the same as in more trifling cases—“provided he shall get the bishop of London his alowance to yt”, words which, under the circumstances, would have been a refusal, and a refusal which, had any steps been taken against him after its publication, would have told against him. Hence he resolved to print it, taking all the blame and responsibility on his own shoulders, no stationer’s name being connected with it, and the name of the printer appearing only at the end of the book, without date or place of address—“Imprinted at London by | William Brome.” And here, by the way, it may be mentioned that though called in catalogues a quarto, its signatures are in eights. As before stated, both Thomas Ady and Anthony à Wood tell us that it “did for a time make great impressions on the Magistracy and Clergy”, and that it did so generally is shown by the appearance of Webster’s, Ady’s, and other books on the same side, and those of Gifford, Perkins, and others, on the other, including King James, who, in 1597, issued his Dæmonologie specially against it. Whether Elizabeth or the authorities under her took any notice of it is doubtful, for, as I have said, he was still an Esquire in 1587; and the last words of his will, “for greate is the trouble my poor wief hath had with me, and small is the comforte she hath receyved at my hands”, and his designation of himself as “gent.”, point rather to a voluntary surrender of his office, through weakness and ill-health, than to a dismissal.

But zeal for the truth, as he believed it, combined with his fears for himself, for he believed that he had been the object of witchcraft and of the machinations of the evil powers more than once, though luckily in vain, led the royal author on the other side to cause Scot’s book to be burned by the common hangman; and, as is also said by Cole, not one copy alone, as significant of its character, and of its being a liber prohibitus in the eyes of this Protestant Pope, but as many as could be laid hands upon. While, too, I have as yet found no direct proof of this latter statement, it is perhaps in some degree confirmatory of it, that no copies of the book exist in the library of St. Paul’s Cathedral, nor in that of Lambeth Palace, nor in that of Sion College. To the same cause is most likely due the exceedingly neat copy of various chapters, and parts of chapters, contained in the Sloane MS., ff. 2189, in the British Museum, its date according to the experts there being circa 1620. At one time I had suspected that these extracts had been made with the intent of writing a book either for or against the truth of witchcraft; but the methodical neatness of all but the first two or three pages, the manner in which the typographical form of the book is followed, the consecutive, though broken manner, in which the extracts follow one another, the absence of any word or any sign of remark or comment throughout, now cause me to hold that it was a copy made by or for one who took such portions as he wished from a book otherwise inaccessible.

Turning back to this burning, I would say also that I have not come across any English contemporary, or even early statement as to it, much less as to its date. Perhaps, however, without much fear of error, we may suppose it to have been done immediately after the Act against witches, passed in the first year of James’s reign. By it the Act 5 Eliz. was repealed, and any conjuration, etc., of an evil spirit was made a crime punishable by death as a felon, the culprit losing all benefit of clergy and sanctuary. The finding of treasure by magical means, provoking to unlawful love, or destroying of cattle, was for the first offence to bring with it imprisonment for one year, standing in the pillory once a quarter for six hours, and confessing his crime, as in the Act repealed; and for the second offence death as a felon, though the dowry and the heirship were not attainted. This Act itself shows how strong were James’s convictions in the matter, as does the publication in London of his Dæmonologie in the same year, it being entered on the Stationers’ Registers on the 3rd April 1603. Scot’s book was therefore against James’s belief, and the esteem in which it was held against his own powers as a reasoner and author. While, however, so far as I can find, we owe the knowledge of this burning to a German source, its extreme likelihood is corroborated by what I have said, that James’s belief in witchcraft was with him an undoubted Article of Faith, and by the fact that various books, known and unknown, were at different times publicly burnt during his reign, though no official records of these burnings have been preserved.

Cole, as quoted in Bliss’s edition of the Athen. Oxon., gives the account as made by Thomasius de crimine magiæ, a book which I believe does not exist. There is a Thesis inaugaralis de crimine magiæ submitted in 1701 by Johan Reiche to the Regia Academia Fredericiana ... præside D. Christiano Thomasio. But Reiche refers to an earlier writer—“Gisberti Voetii | Theologiæ in Acad. Ultrajectina Professoris | Selectarum | Disputationum | Theologicarum, | Pars Tertia. | .... | Ultrajecti, | Ex Officina Johannis à Waesberge, | Anno CIↃ IↃ C LIX, |” which says, p. 564:

“... Reginaldus Scot nobilis Anglus magiæ crimen aperte negavit, & ex professo oppugnavit, omnes ejus mirabiles effectus aut ad melancoliam, aliosve naturales morbos, aut ad artem, industriam, & agilitatem hominum figmentis & præstigiis suis illudentium, aut ad stolidas imaginationes, dictorum magorum, aut ad vanas nugas & fictiones eorundem magorum referens. Ejus liber tit. Discoverie of Withcraft [sic] in Anglia combustus est; quem nominatim etiam perstringit Sereniss. Magnæ Briantniæ [sic] Rex Jacobus in Dæmonologia, eumque tangit diffusissimæ eruditionis Theologus Johannes Raynoldus, in cens. lib. Apocryph. tom. 2 prælect. 169. In eundem, sed innominatum calamum strinxit eximius & subacti judicii Theologus, Guilelm. Perkinsus in tractatu de Bascanologia. Pars libri istius Reginaldi Scot elenctica (nam reliqua in editione Anglicana conjurationes continebat,) in Belgicum idioma translata est, ante annos aliquot Lugd. Batav. per Thomam Basson: ex illius libri lectione, seu fonte perenni, non pauci ab illo tempore docti & indocti in Belgio fluctuare, & de Magia σκεωτικιζειν ac λιβερτινιζειν (ut Libertinis & Semilibertinis infesta est patria nostra) quin eo ignorantiæ sæpe prolabi, ut non iniquè illis applicari potuerit, quod Sereniss. Rex Jacobus in Dæmonologiâ subdito suo Reginaldo Scot: esse quasi novos Sadduccæos: cum omnes diabolorum operationes & apparitiones suaviter exibilant: tanquam anicularum, aut superstitionis meticulosæ phantasmata ac sabellas. Sunt & alii, sed pessimi magiæ patroni, qui ad Deum & divina charismata seu gratias gratis datas, aut ad angelos bonos, operationes magicas referunt.”

Dr. W. N. du Rieu, Librarian of the University of Leyden, kindly informs me, that a translation into Dutch, “omitting some formulæ of malediction and other matters which would more interest English readers,” was made and edited by Th. Basson, an English stationer living at Leyden in 12mo in 1609. It was undertaken at the instigation of the professors of law and history, and its dedication, dated 10th January 1609, was to the Curators of the University, and to the burgomasters of Leyden. A second and corrected edition, published by his son, G. Basson, was also printed at Leyden in 1637, though the dedication is dated 8th May 1637, Amsterdam.

Though in various of the notes the passages have been spoken of, yet to call attention to the matter, and in the hope that others may be more successful, I would add that I have not discovered the principle on which he went, nor his authorities, for his Scripture readings. In his Latin quotations he generally quotes the Vulgate, twice or thrice Beza, or Beza varied, while at other times he goes by some other translation, or possibly makes it himself. So his long English quotation, [p. 284], is not taken from Wycliffe’s, Tyndale’s, Cranmer’s, Coverdale’s, Matthews’, or from the Genevan, Bishops’, or Rheims versions, though more like the Genevan, while, curiously enough, it precedes the one of 1611 by one or two verbal coincidences. Hence, I believe that he varied the Genevan version according to his own views and taste, and am the more inclined to this in that the passage is not in Italics, the then type and mark of quotations, but in Romans.

Notwithstanding, however, the decree that had gone forth, and, notwithstanding the strange Sadducean assertion, not argument, set forth by James, and followed by John Rainolds, D.D., in his work on the Apocrypha (tom. ii, 1032), and by Gisbert Voet, the book’s inherent excellency, as reported by Ady, and as evidenced by the notices of it in the various books on either side that afterwards came forth, and in part, perhaps, through that decree itself, called for its reproduction; and in 1651 it was issued with a new title-page, though naturally it was again not entered on the Stationers’ Registers. This time it was really—as evidenced by the signatures—a quarto. The text was one and the same with that printed off by Richard Cotes; but there were three issues, and three slightly different title-pages. The first bears—LONDON | Printed by Richard Cotes. 1651. The second has—Printed by R. C. and are to be sold by Giles Calvert, dwelling at the | Black Spread-Eagle at the West-end of Pauls. 1651. And except for these final words, separated on both title-pages by a line from the rest, both are word for word, and even to the misprint “superstions” identical. The explanation, in all probability, if not certainty, being that my “first” one was the first issue, when the publisher thought it more prudent to withhold his name; the other, a second issue of copies still called for, when, finding no ill results, he had become bolder. The third has below the line spoken of: London | Printed by E. [not R.] Cotes and are to be sold by Thomas Williams at the | Bible in Little Britain 1654. In this “Scots” is printed without the apostrophe, “men”, “women”, and “children”, as also “treatise”, have capital initials; on both occasions it has “Devils”, not “Divels”; and the last line but one above the dividing line ends “De-” not “Divels”, and “superstions” is rightly printed “superstitions”. These variations in the title-page, and the exact conformity of the text as to the various peculiarities of the letters, words, and sizes of the punctuation, show that Williams had come into possession of Calvert’s remainder, or of his set-up type, and had issued these sheets, prefixing a new title-page of his own, printed by E. Cotes.

There is not the slightest evidence of a copy of the 1584 edition having been prepared for the press, beyond the new title-page, and on two occasions the translation of Latin, that Scot had not—as he had done in similar instances—translated. The Latin-named ingredients on [p. 184] are Englished, and I have thus been enabled to give them in my notings with the more probability that they are correct. The second instance is, as stated in my margin, on [p. 416]. Two or three press errors are corrected, one of them not a certain emendation, and all within the competency of an ordinary compositor or reader; but no others, not even that of “increase” for “incense”, [p. 446], while fresh errors, indicative of a careless “reader”, are made.

What has been thus said as to the character of this second reprint, goes to prove that it was a publisher’s venture based upon the demand for the book, and, therefore, for gain, and one which he carried out spite of its having been burnt, and placed among the “prohibited books”. In like manner, and for the like purpose, and as before, without entry in the Stationers’ Registers, there was brought out the third, and so-called folio edition of 1665, though the sheets are in sixes. All but the title-page, which, curiously enough, was again re-written, though still bearing, like the second, the words, “By Reginald Scot Esquire”; it is a careless reprint of that second, with all its errors, and new ones superadded. But as a novelty and inducement to buy, nine chapters, commencing the fifteenth book, and a second book of the “Discourse on Devils and Spirits”, were added by an anonymous author. Who this anonymity was, I have uselessly spent some little time in inquiring, time that might have been better employed, even had I found him. But it goes to prove that these additions were merely made for novelty’s sake, and its glamour and gain, in that the writer was a believer in, and not improbably, from his minute directions, as well as from his reticence, a practiser of witchcraft, or of what he thought to be witchcraft. He also, and I give this as one possible clue, was a strong believer in the perishable Astral spirit of a man, as well as of Astral spirits in general, and much of his “Discourse” is taken up with remarks on these.

I may here add, as showing the carelessness with which these second and third editions were edited, a note of the errata marked in the first and not corrected in them.

[75], 21. “We,” so the second; in the third the (,) is rightly placed after “years”. A correction that could have been made by the least intelligent of “readers”.

[168], 31. “Earth read firmament.” Not corrected.

[247], 29. “Write add it.” Not corrected.

[269], 16. “If there be masses delete If.” Retained, but the second attempts to correct by inserting “no” before “masses”, and the third follows suit, though it is as nonsensical as before.

[463], 16. “Their business read that business.” Not corrected.

Beyond these, the limited edition now printed is the only other known to me. As stated in the preface, it is a reprint of the first edition, with some slight alterations in the lettering, but not in the spelling. Besides the few errata that have been found and recorded, the small heading on its left hand pages up to [p. 24] is “Chap. —”, like that on the right hand, instead of being “1 or 2 Booke”. So also in the earlier pages, the marginal references, though correct, are not printed line for line with the original. The pictorial initial letters of the first chapter of each book occupy in the original almost a third of the page. The first word of a chapter has only its first two letters—including its pictorial letter—in capitals, but the remainder, as well as the rest of the first line, is in larger type than the rest. The original being also in black letter was enabled to use both Romans and Italics as variants, whereas the reprint could only use Italics. The rule of the original is, however, in general very simple. “The — Chapter”, the contents of the chapter and proper names are in Romans; “The — Booke” and quotations in Italics; the translations of quotations in Romans. Wherever there can be any doubt the type of the original is marked in the margin, as are occasional uses by the author of [] to distinguish them from the editor’s use of the same. It may be added that “The — Chapter”, and the contents of the chapter, have been transposed. The V like arrangement of the lines at the end of a chapter have not been followed, but been imitated according to the spirit in which they were employed; for, after an investigation made for the purpose, it was found that they do not indicate a division of the text or matter, but were simply compositors’ devices to fill up a page when that page either ended a book, or when its blank space did not allow of the commencement of a new chapter. Similarly, on one page, a (∵) was added to complete the page. And, in like manner, if there was still space at the end of a book, an engraving was inserted. I would add that all the page references that I make are to the pages of the 1584 edition.

I had collected for an appendix various grammatical peculiarities of the age; but they increased the number of pages, and therefore the price of the book, without, as seemed to me, sufficient cause, more especially as the reader can readily consult Dr. Abbot’s Shakesperian Grammar, as well as notices in other books. One point, however, ought to be attended to. Though an educated and University man, accustomed to Latin and Greek, he, like all of his time, followed the then frequent habit of using singular verbs after plural nominatives not immediately preceding them. A close examination of these, both in Scot and Greene, another literate and Utriusque Academiæ in Artibus Magister; and one notable one in Ben Jonson, who elsewhere, so far as I know, avoids this error; as well as those in Shakespeare and others, have shown me that they cannot be explained as is sought in Dr. Abbot’s Shakesperian Grammar, § 333, where the form of the verb is held to be a remnant of the northern early English third person plural in “s”. The instances alone of the auxiliary verbs so used set this theory aside, and show that the custom was due to carelessness, habit, the remoteness or after position of the true nominatives, and to the nearness of another word, sometimes even to a transposed objective; or of a “that” or “which” that had the look of a singular, or in the case of a double nominative, to both words being considered as implying one thought, as indeed they often did, being merely synonyms. Our Elizabethan ancestors would have said: “Pity and compassion moves me,” because they held pity and compassion were one and the same; and the habit of using Saxon and Latin, or other synonyms, led them to use the same construction when the meanings were but allied. This seems to me the more likely explanation: but the reader may prefer this—that our ancestors took the phrase to be elliptical, and that the verb really employed after both substantives was to be understood after the first and before the “and”.

Contemporary Notices of Scot.—Of strictly contemporary notices, I know of but two. In Nash’s Four Letters Confuted, 1593, he asks, ed. Grosart, ii, 252: “How is the Supplication a diabolicall Discourse, otherwise than as it intreats of the diverse natures and properties of Divels and spirits? in that far fetcht sense may the famous defensative against supposed Prophecies, and the Discoverie of Witchcraft be called notorious Diabolicall discourses, as well as the Supplication, for they also intreate of the illusions and sundrie operations of spirits.” The second is in Gabriel Harvey’s Pierce’s Supererogation, 1593, ed. Grosart, ii, 291: “Scottes discoovery of Witchcraft, dismasketh sundry egregious impostures, and in certaine principall Chapters, & speciall passages, hitteth the nayle on the head with a witnesse: howsoever I could have wished, [G. H. is nothing if he be not quasi-critical and emending] he had either dealt somewhat more curteously with Monsieur Bodine, or cōfuted him somewhat more effectually.”

Of course, various of the after-writers on witchcraft, whichever side they took, either spoke of him explicitly, or alluded to him; Webster, Wagstaffe, Ady, and others, on the same side as Scot, and Meric Casaubon, Cotta, etc., ending with Glanvil on the other. But these, the really curious in such matters may be left to search out for themselves. Only I would like to mention John Deacon’s and John Walker’s Dialogicall Discourses of ... Devils [etc.], 1601, both because they, being clergymen, had the boldness—besides adding new arguments of their own, and though their wording is somewhat less decided than their own evident belief—out of three explanations of the case of the Witch of Endor which they set before the reader, to plainly prefer Scot’s view of her ventriloquism, both naming him in the text, and giving the reference to his page in their margin; and secondly, because so far as a hasty look enables one to give an opinion, they spoke more rationally on magical and other points than one would at that date expect. They also quote the opinion of Hippocrates on magical cures, as given by Scot, p. 450, and show that they take it, though not literally, from him, and not from Hippocrates directly, by giving a reference to Scot in the margin. Afterwards they published in 1603, a second large work, A summarie[?] answer to John Darrell, the first work having been also suggested by the same impostor, and his setting forth of himself as a caster out of devils.

I have said on [p. xxii] that the discovery of Scot’s name in the Subsidy Rolls for 1586 and 1587 with the affix of “Armiger” was for me an important find. And now I would explain that it was so, inasmuch as it set my mind at rest as to the oneness of the Raynold of the Hoppe-garden with the Reginald Scot Esquire, of the Witchcraft. Aware that Reynold and Reginald were variants of one name, used of and by the same person, the following facts hindered me for a long time from accepting the common belief that the Raynold and Reginald of these two works were one and the same. First, the author of the Hoppe-garden in each of his signatures to the editions of 1574–6–8, three in each, appears as Raynold. In the marriage entry, in the pay-account of the Kent forces, in the Muster-roll, and in the Will, it is also Raynold. But in 1584, throughout the Witchcraft, that is, four times in all, the name appears as Reginald. Secondly, in the Will of 1599, in accordance with the want of any title on the title-page of the Hoppe-garden, he describes himself as “gent”, and in the Inquisitio p. m., though he is called Reginald, the document being in Latin, he is, as in his Will, “generosus”. But in the title-page of the Witchcraft, he is Reginald Scot Esquire. The finding no evidence of the separate existence of a Raynold and a Reginald, the frequent references to the Scriptures in the Witchcraft, and the very frequent references to the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, in the “Address to the Reader” of the Hoppe-garden, the use in both works, as already quoted, of certain legal phrases, and the occurrence in the prefatory part of the Hoppe-garden of “with the licour (or rather the lucre)”, and “condemne the man, or rather the mynde”, a trick of language not unfrequently repeated in the Discoverie, a trick resulting from his love of irony, shook my doubts. But there were still, the want of any title after the name in the Hoppe-garden, the “gent” of the Will, and the “generosus” of the Inquisitio, as against the “Esquire” of the Discoverie. First, however, Hunter’s suggestion, that his esquireship was due to his having been appointed a Justice of the Peace, and then the discovery of armiger after his name, have removed all reasonable doubts; and to turn our belief to a positive certainty, it only remains to discover that he was a Justice of the Peace.

Possibly the reader may now expect some pages on Scot’s style as a writer, and on his claim—his claim, yet not one made by himself—to be considered an English classic. But, besides that, I am not “greatly æsthetic”, and besides having expressed my opinions in more than one place in this Introduction, I think that any reader, with any appreciation of style, and of the manner in which an argument ought to be carried out, can come to but one conclusion. Such belief, I may add, is strengthened by this, that most writers whom I have consulted are of this opinion: and I would conclude with three quotations, chiefly regarding the way in which he carried out his argument. The Rev. Jos. Hunter, in his MS. Chorus Vatum, ch. v, says: “In fact, I had no notion of the admirable character of this book till I read it this September 1839. It is one of the few instances in which a bold spirit opposes himself to the popular belief, and seeks to throw protection over a class of the defenceless. In my opinion, he ought to stand very prominent in any catalogue of Persons who have been public benefactors.”

“To answer his argument was wholly impossible, and though the publication of his book did not put an end to the notion which continued very prevalent for a century afterwards [though we know from Ady that it greatly checked the belief for a time], yet it had, I have no doubt, much to do with the silent and gradual extinction of it.”

So D’Israeli, in his Amenities of Literature, has these words: “A single volume sent forth from the privacy of a retired student, by its silent influence may mark an epoch in the history of the human mind.”

“Such a volume was The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot, a singular work, which may justly claim the honour in this country of opening that glorious career which is dear to humanity and fatal to imposture.”

Thirdly, Professor W. T. Gairdner, M.D. and LL.D., thus speaks, in his address on “Insanity: Modern Views as to its Nature and Treatment”, read before the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society: “But I cannot leave it [witchcraft] ... without expressing, more strongly than even Mr. Lecky does, the unqualified admiration and surprise which arise in the mind on finding that in 1584 ... there was at least one man in England ... who could scan the whole field of demonology, and all its terrible results in history, with an eye as clear from superstition, and a judgment as sound and unwavering in its opposition to abuses, as that of Mr. Lecky himself. There is only one book, so far as I know, in any language, written in the sixteenth or even the seventeenth century, that merits this praise: and it is a book which, notwithstanding its wide human interest, its great and solid learning, and a charming English style that makes it most readable, even at the present day, has never been reprinted for two hundred years, and is therefore extremely inaccessible to most readers. Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft ... stands brightly out amid the darkness of its own and the succeeding age, as a perfectly unique example of sagacity amounting to genius.” He adds: “Nothing, however, is more evident than that Scot, however indebted to Wier (and both of them, probably, to Cornelius Agrippa ...), was far in advance of either in the clearness of his views and the unwavering steadiness of his leanings to the side of humanity and justice.”

Note.—The italic numerals in the side margins
denote the pages of the first, the ordinary numbers
those of the second edition.

The diſcouerie
of witchcraft,
Wherein the lewde dealing of witches
and witchmongers is notablie detected, the
knauerie of coniurors, the impietie of inchan-
tors, the follie of ſoothſaiers, the impudent falſ-
hood of couſenors, the infidelitie of atheiſts,
the peſtilent practiſes of Pythoniſts, the

curioſitie of figurecaſters, the va-
nitie of dreamers, the beggerlie
art of Alcu-
myſtrie,

of Legierdemaine and iuggling are deciphered:
and many other things opened, which
haue long lien hidden, howbeit
verie neceſſarie to
be knowne.

nature and ſubſtance of ſpirits and diuels,
&c: all latelie written
by Reginald Scot
Eſquire.
1. Iohn. 4, 1.

Beleeue not euerie ſpirit, but trie the ſpirits, whether they are
of God; for manie falſe prophets are gone
out into the world, &c.
1584

SCOT’S
Diſcovery of VVitchcraft:
PROVING
The common opinions of Witches con-
tracting with Divels, Spirits, or Familiars; and

their power to kill, torment, and conſume the bodies of
men women, and children, or other creatures by diſeaſes
or otherwiſe; their flying in the Air, &c. To be but imaginary
Erronious conceptions and novelties;

WHEREIN ALSO,

melancholy, ignorant, and ſuperſtious people in extorting confeſſions,
by inhumane terrors and tortures is notably detected.

ALSO{ The knavery and confederacy of Conjurors. The impious blaſphemy of Inchanters. The impoſture of Soothſayers, and Infidelity of Atheiſts. The deluſion of Pythoniſts, Figure-caſters, Aſtrologers, and va-
nity of Dreamers. The fruitleſſe beggerly art of Alchimiſtry. The horrible art of Poiſoning and all the tricks and convey-
ances of juggling and Liegerdemain are fully deciphered.

and Juries, and for the preſervation of poor, aged, deformed, ignorant
people; frequently taken, arraigned, condemned and executed for
Witches, when according to a right underſtanding, and a good
conſcience, Phyſick, Food, and neceſſaries should be
adminiſtred to them.

Whereunto is added, a treatiſe upon the nature, and ſubſtance of Spirits and Divels,
&c. all written and publiſhed in Anno 1584. by Reginald Scot, Eſquire.

Size, Fol., 10¼ in. × 6⅛.

THE
Diſcovery of Witchcraft:
PROVING,
That the Compacts and Contracts of Witches

with Devils and all Infernal Spirits or Familiars, are but
Erroneous Novelties and Imaginary Conceptions.

Alſo diſcovering, How far their power extendeth, in Killing, Tormenting,
Conſuming, or Curing the bodies of Men, Women, Children, or Animals,
by Charms, Philtres, Periapts, Pentacles, Curſes, and Conjurations.

WHEREIN LIKEWISE

The Unchriſtian Practices and Inhumane Dealings of

Searchers and Witch-tryers upon Aged, Melancholly and Superſtitious
people, in extorting Confeſſions by Terrors and Tortures,
and in deviſing falſe Marks and Symptoms, are notably Detected.

And the Knavery of Juglers, Conjurers, Charmers, Soothſayers, Figure⸗Caſters,
Dreamers, Alchymiſts and Philterers; with many other things
that have long lain hidden, fully Opened and Deciphered.

ALL WHICH

Are very neceſſary to be known for the undeceiving of Judges, Juſtices,
and Jurors, before they paſs Sentence upon Poor, Miſerable and Ignorant People;
who are frequenly Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed for Witches and Wizzards.

IN SIXTEEN BOOKS.

By Reginald Scot Eſquire.

Whereunto is added
An excellent Diſcourse of the Nature and Subſtance
of
DEVILS and SPIRITS,
IN TWO BOOKS:
The Firſt by the aforeſaid Author: The Second now

added in this Third Edition, as Succedaneous to the former,
and conducing to the compleating of the Whole Work:
With Nine Chapters at the beginning of the Fifteenth.[*] Book
of the DISCOVERY.

LONDON:

Printed for A. Clark, and are to be ſold by Dixy Page at the Turks-Head
in Cornhill near the Royall Exchange, 1665.

[*] [Sic.]

The Epistle

To the Honorable, mine especiall good A. ii. A.
Lord, Sir Roger Manwood Knight, Lord
cheefe Baron of hir Majesties Court
of the Eschequer.

NSOMUCH as I know that your Lordship is by nature whollie inclined, and in purpose earnestly bent to releeve the poore, and that not onlie with hospitalitie and almes, but by diverse other devises and waies tending to their comfort, having (as it were) framed and set your selfe to the helpe and maintenance of their estate; as appeareth by your charge and travell in that behalfe. Whereas also you have a speciall care for the supporting of their right, and redressing of their wrongs, as neither despising their calamitie, nor yet forgetting their complaint, seeking all meanes for their amendement, and for the reformation of their disorders, even as a verie father to the poore. Finallie, for that I am a poore member of that commonwelth, where your Lordship is a principall person; I thought this my travell, in the behalfe of the poore, the aged, and the simple, might be/ A. ii. v. verie fitlie commended unto you: for a weake house requireth a strong staie. In which respect I give God thanks, that hath raised up unto me so mightie a freend for/A. v. them as your Lordship is, who in our lawes have such knowledge, in government such discretion, in these causes such experience, and in the commonwealth such authoritie; and neverthelesse vouchsafe to descend to the consideration of these base and inferior matters, which minister more care and trouble, than worldlie estimation.

And in somuch as your Lordship knoweth, or rather exerciseth the office of a judge, whose part it is to heare with courtesie, and to determine with equitie; it cannot but be apparent unto you, that when punishment exceedeth the fault, it is rather to be thought vengeance than correction. In which respect I knowe you spend more time and travell in the conversion and reformation, than in the subversion & confusion of offenders, as being well pleased to augment your owne private paines, to the end you may diminish their publike smart. For in truth, that commonwealth remaineth in wofull state, where fetters and halters beare more swaie than mercie and due compassion.

Howbeit, it is naturall to unnaturall people, and peculiar unto witchmongers, to pursue the poore, to accuse the simple, and to kill the innocent; supplieng in rigor and malice towards others, that which they themselves want in proofe and discretion, or the other in offense or occasion. But as a cruell hart and an honest mind doo seldome meete and feed togither in a dish; so a discreet and mercifull magistrate, and a happie commonwealth cannot be separated asunder. How much then are we bound to God, who hath given us a Queene, that of justice is not only the very perfect image & paterne; but also of mercie & clemencie (under God) the meere fountaine &/ A. 2. bodie it selfe? In somuch as they which hunt most after bloud in/A. iii. these daies, have least authoritie to shed it. Moreover, sith I see that in cases where lenitie might be noisome, & punishment wholesome to the commonwealth; there no respect of person can move you, no authoritie can abash you, no feare, no threts can daunt you in performing the dutie of justice.

In that respect againe I find your Lordship a fit person, to judge and looke upon this present treatise. Wherein I will bring before you, as it were to the barre, two sorts of most arrogant and wicked people, the first challenging to themselves, the second attributing unto others, that power which onelie apperteineth to God,a a Apoc. 4, 11. who onelie is the Creator of all things,b b Rom. 8.
Acts. 5.
Apoc. 2. who onelie searcheth the heart and reines, who oneliec c Luke. 16. knoweth our imaginations and thoughts, who onelied d Dan. 2. & 28, & 47. openeth all secrets, whoe e Psalm. 72. & 136.
Jer. 5. onelie worketh great wonders, who onelie hath powerf f Job, 5. & 36.
Sam. 12.
1. Reg. 8.
2. Reg. 3.
Isaie. 5.
Zach. 10. & 14.
Amos. 4. 7. to raise up & cast downe; who onelie maketh thunder, lightning, raine, tempests, and restraineth them at his pleasure; who onelieg g Job. 1. sendeth life and death, sicknesse & health, wealth and wo; who neither giveth nor lendeth hish h Isaie. 42, 8. glorie to anie creature.

And therefore, that which greeveth me to the bottome of my hart, is, that these witchmongers cannot be content, to wrest out of Gods hand his almightie power, and keepe it themselves, or leave it with a witch: but that, when by drift of argument they are made to laie downe the bucklers, they yeeld them up to the divell, or at the least praie aid of him, as though the raines of all mens lives and actions were committed into his hand; and that he sat at the sterne, to guide and direct the course of the whole world, imputing unto him power and abilitie inough to doo as great things, and as strange miracles as ever Christ did.

But the doctors of this supernaturall doctrine saie/ A. 2. v.somtimes, that the witch doth all these things by vertue of hir/ A. iii. v. charmes; sometimes that a spirituall, sometimes that a corporall divell doth accomplish it; sometimes they saie that the divell doth but make the witch beleeve she doth that which he himselfe hath wrought; sometimes that the divell seemeth to doo that by compulsion, which he doth most willinglie. Finallie, the writers hereupon are so eloquent, and full of varietie; that sometimes they write that the divell dooth all this by Gods permission onelie; sometimes by his licence, somtimes by his appointment: so as (in effect and truth) not the divell, but the high and mightie king of kings, and Lord of hosts, even God himselfe, should this waie be made obedient and servile to obeie and performe the will & commandement of a malicious old witch, and miraculouslie to answere hir appetite, as well in everie trifling vanitie, as in most horrible executions; as the revenger of a doting old womans imagined wrongs, to the destruction of manie innocent children, and as a supporter of hir passions, to the undoing of manie a poore soule. And I see not, but a witch may as well inchant, when she will; as a lier may lie when he list: and so should we possesse nothing, but by a witches licence and permission.

And now forsooth it is brought to this point, that all divels, which were woont to be spirituall, may at their pleasure become corporall, and so shew themselves familiarlie to witches and conjurors, and to none other, and by them onlie may be made tame, and kept in a box, &c. So as a malicious old woman may command hir divell to plague hir neighbor: and he is afflicted in manner and forme as she desireth. But then commeth another witch, and she biddeth hir divell helpe, and he healeth the same partie. So as they/A 3 make it a kingdome divided in it selfe, and therefore I trust it will not long endure, but will shortlie be overthrowne, according to the words of our Savior, Omne regnum in se divisum desolabitur, Everie king/domeA. iiii. divided in it selfe shalbe desolate.

And although some saie that the divell is the witches instrument, to bring hir purposes and practises to passe: yet others saie that she is his instrument, to execute his pleasure in anie thing, and therefore to be executed. But then (me thinks) she should be injuriouslie dealt withall, and put to death for anothers offense: for actions are not judged by instrumentall causes; neither dooth the end and purpose of that which is done, depend upon the meane instrument. Finallie, if the witch doo it not, why should the witch die for it? But they saie that witches are persuaded, and thinke, that they doo indeed those mischeefs; and have a will to performe that which the divell committeth: and that therefore they are worthie to die. By which reason everie one should be executed, that wisheth evill to his neighbor, &c. But if the will should be punished by man, according to the offense against God, we should be driven by thousands at once to the slaughterhouse or butcherie.Proverb. 5. For whosoever loatheth correction shall die. And who should escape execution, if this lothsomnesse (I saie) should extend to death by the civill lawes. Also the reward of sinne is death. Howbeit, everie one that sinneth, is not to be put to death by the magistrate. But (my Lord) it shalbe proved in my booke, and your Lordship shall trie it to be true, as well here at home in your native countrie, as also abrode in your severall circuits, that (besides them that be Venificæ, which are plaine poisoners) there will be found among our witches onelie two sorts; the one sort being such by imputation, as/A 3 v so thought of by others (and these are abused, and not abusors) the other by acceptation, as being willing so to be accompted (and these be meere cousenors.)

CalvineInstit. lib. 5. ca. 8. sect. 6.
Item upon Deut. cap. 18.
Lib. de lamiis, pag. 5. treating of these magicians, calleth them cousenors, saieng that they use their juggling knacks onelie to amase or abuse the people; or else for fame: but he/A. iiij. v. might rather have said for gaine. Erastus himselfe, being a principall writer in the behalfe of witches omnipotencie, is forced to confesse, that these Greeke words, μαγία, μαγγαγία, φαρμακία, are most commonlie put for illusion, false packing, cousenage, fraud, knaverie and deceipt: and is further driven to saie, that in ancient time, the learned were not so blockish, as not to see that the promises of magicians and inchanters were false, and nothing else but knaverie, cousenage, and old wives fables; and yet defendeth he their flieng in the aire, their transferring of corne or grasse from one feeld to another, &c.

But as Erastus disagreeth herein with himselfe and his freends: so is there no agreement among anie of those writers, but onlie in cruelties, absurdities, and impossibilities. And these (my Lord) that fall into so manifest contradictions, and into such absurd asseverations, are not of the inferior sort of writers; neither are they all papists, but men of such accompt, as whose names give more credit to their cause, than their writings. In whose behalfe I am sorie, and partlie for reverence suppresse their fondest errors and fowlest absurdities; dealing speciallie with them that most contend in crueltie,aa Isaie. 59, 7.
Rom. 3, 15. whose feete are swift to shed bloud, striving (as bb Eccl. 27, 5.Jesus the sonne of Sirach saith) and hasting (as cc Prov. 1, 16.Salomon the sonne of David saith) to powre out the bloud of the innocent; whose heat against these poore wretches cannot be allaied with anie other liquor than bloud. And therfore I feare that dd Jer. 2, 34.under their wings will be found the bloud of the soules of the poore, at that daie, when the Lord shall saie;/A 4 ee Ps. 139, 15.
Esai. 33, 15.Depart from me ye bloudthirstie men.

And bicause I know your Lordship will take no counsell against innocent bloud, but rather suppresse them that seeke to embrue their hands therein; I have made choise to open their case unto you, and to laie their miserable calamitie before your feete: following herein the/[A. v.] advise of that learned man Brentius, who saith; In epistola ad Jo. Wier.Si quis admonuerit magistratum, ne in miseras illas mulierculas sæviat, eum ego arbitror divinitùs excitatum; that is, If anie admonish the magistrate not to deale too hardlie with these miserable wretches, that are called witches, I thinke him a good instrument raised up for this purpose by God himselfe.

But it will perchance be said by witchmongers; to wit, by such as attribute to witches the power which apperteineth to God onelie, that I have made choise of your Lordship to be a patrone to this my booke; bicause I think you favour mine opinions, and by that meanes may the more freelie publish anie error or conceipt of mine owne, which should rather be warranted by your Lordships authoritie, than by the word of God, or by sufficient argument. But I protest the contrarie, and by these presents I renounce all protection, and despise all freendship that might serve to helpe towards the suppressing or supplanting of truth: knowing also that your Lordship is farre from allowing anie injurie done unto man; much more an enimie to them that go about to dishonor God, or to embezill the title of his immortall glorie. But bicause I know you to be perspicuous, and able to see downe into the depth and bottome of causes, and are not to be carried awaie with the vaine persuasion or superstition either of man, custome, time, or multitude, but mooved with the authoritie of truth onlie: I crave your countenance herein, even so farre foorth, and no further, than the lawe of God, the lawe of nature, the lawe of this land, and the/A 4 v rule of reason shall require. Neither doo I treat for these poore people anie otherwise, but so, as with one hand you may sustaine the good, and with the other suppresse the evill: wherein you shalbe thought a father to orphans, an advocate to widowes, a guide to the blind, a staie to the lame, a comfort & countenance to the honest, a scourge/ and terror to the wicked.[A. v. v.]

Thus farre I have beene bold to use your Lordships patience, being offended with my selfe, that I could not in brevitie utter such matter as I have delivered amplie: whereby (I confesse) occasion of tediousnes might be ministred, were it not that your great gravitie joined with your singular constancie in reading and judging be means of the contrarie. And I wish even with all my hart, that I could make people conceive the substance of my writing, and not to misconstrue anie part of my meaning. Then doubtles would I persuade my selfe, that the companie of witchmongers, &c: being once decreased, the number also of witches, &c: would soone be diminished. But true be the words of the Poet,*[* Homer.]

Haudquaquam poteris sortirier omnia solus,

Námque aliis divi bello pollere dederunt,

Huic saltandi artem, voce huic cytharáque canendi:

Rursum alii inseruit sagax in pectore magnus

Jupiter ingenium, &c.

And therefore as doubtfull to prevaile by persuading, though I have reason and common sense on my side; I rest upon earnest wishing; namelie, to all people an absolute trust in God the creator, and not in creatures, which is to make flesh our arme: that God may have his due honor, which by the undutifulnes of manie is turned into dishonor, and lesse cause of offense and errour given by common received evill example. And to your Lordship I wish, as increase of honour, so continuance of good health, and happie daies.

Your Lordships to be commanded
Reginald Scot.

To the right worshipfull Sir[A. vi.] A. a
Thomas Scot Knight, &c.

[Rom. and Ital. of this reversed from original.]

Ir, I see among other malefactors manie poore old women convented before you for working of miracles, other wise called witchcraft, and therefore I thought you also a meet person to whom I might cōmend my booke. And here I have occasion to speake of your sincere administration of justice, and of your dexteritie, discretion, charge, and travell emploied in that behalfe, wherof I am oculatus testis. Howbeit I had rather refer the reader to common fame, and their owne eies and eares to be satisfied; than to send them to a Stationers shop, where manie times lies are vendible, and truth contemptible. For I being of your house, of your name, & of your bloud; my foot being under your table, my hand in your dish, or rather in your pursse, might bee thought to flatter you in that, wherein (I knowe) I should rather offend you than please you. And what need I currie favour with my most assured friend? And if I should onelie publish those vertues (though they be manie) which give me speciall occasion to exhibit this my travell unto you, I should doo as a painter, that describeth the foot of a notable personage, and leaveth all the best features in his bodie untouched.

I therefore (at this time) doo onelie desire you to consider of my report, concerning the evidence that is commonlie brought before you against them. See first whether the evidence be not frivolous, & whether the proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting of ghesses, presumptions, & impossibilities contrarie to reason, scrip/ture,A a 2 and nature. See also what persons complaine upon them, whether they be not of the basest, the unwisest, & most faithles kind of people. Also/[A. vi. v.] may it please you to waie what accusations and crimes they laie to their charge, namelie: She was at my house of late, she would have had a pot of milke, she departed in a chafe bicause she had it not, she railed, she curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and finallie she said she would be even with me: and soone after my child, my cow, my sow, or my pullet died, or was strangelie taken. Naie (if it please your Worship) I have further proofe: I was with a wise woman, and she told me I had an ill neighbour, & that she would come to my house yer it were long, and so did she; and that she had a marke above hir waste, & so had she: and God forgive me, my stomach hath gone against hir a great while. Hir mother before hir was counted a witch, she hath beene beaten and scratched by the face till bloud was drawne upon hir, bicause she hath beene suspected, & afterwards some of those persons were said to amend. These are the certeinties that I heare in their evidences.

Note also how easilie they may be brought to confesse that which they never did, nor lieth in the power of man to doo: and then see whether I have cause to write as I doo. Further, if you shall see that infidelitie, poperie, and manie other manifest heresies be backed and shouldered, and their professors animated and hartened, by yeelding to creatures such infinit power as is wrested out of Gods hand, and attributed to witches: finallie, if you shall perceive that I have faithfullie and trulie delivered and set downe the condition and state of the witch, and also of the witchmonger, and have confuted by reason and lawe, and by the word of God it selfe, all mine adversaries objections and arguments: then let me have your countenance against them that maliciouslie oppose themselves against me./

My greatest adversaries are yoong ignorance and old custome.A a 2 For what follie soever tract of time hath fostered, it is/[A. vii.] so superstitiouslie pursued of some, as though no error could be acquainted with custome. But if the lawe of nations would joine with such custome, to the maintenance of ignorance, and to the suppressing of knowledge; the civilest countrie in the world would soone become barbarous, &c. For as knowledge and time discovereth errors, so dooth superstition and ignorance in time breed them. And concerning the opinions of such, as wish that ignorance should rather be mainteined, than knowledge busilie searched for, bicause thereby offense may grow: I answer,John. 5. that we are commanded by Christ himselfe to search for knowledge: Prov. 15, 1.for it is the kings honour (as Salomon saith) to search out a thing.

Aristotle said to Alexander, that a mind well furnished was more beautifull than a bodie richlie araied. What can be more odious to man, or offensive to God, than ignorance: for through ignorance the Jewes did put Christ to death.Acts. 3.
Proverbs. 9. Which ignorance whosoever forsaketh, is promised life everlasting: and therfore among Christians it should be abhorred above all other things. For even as when we wrestle in the darke, we tumble in the mire, &c: so when we see not the truth, we wallow in errors. A blind man may seeke long in the rishes yer he find a needle; and as soone is a doubt discussed by ignorance. Finallie, truth is no sooner found out in ignorance, than a sweet savor in a dunghill. And if they will allow men knowledge, and give them no leave to use it, men were much better be without it than have it. Matth. 25.
Matth. 5.
Luke. 8.For it is, as to have a tallent, and to hide it under the earth; or to put a candle under a bushell: or as to have a ship, & to let hir lie alwaies in the docke: which thing how profitable it is, I can saie somewhat by experience./

But hereof I need saie no more, for everie man seeth thatA a 2 v none can be happie who knoweth not what felicitie meaneth. For what availeth it to have riches, and not to have the use/ thereof? [A. vii. v.]Trulie the heathen herein deserved more commendation than manie christians, for they spared no paine, no cost, nor travell to atteine to knowledge. Pythagoras travelled from Thamus to Aegypt, and afterwards into Crete and Lacedæmonia: and Plato out of Athens into Italie and Aegypt, and all to find out hidden secrets and knowledge: which when a man hath, he seemeth to be separated from mortalitie. For pretious stones, and all other creatures of what value soever, are but counterfeits to this jewell: they are mortall, corruptible, and inconstant; this is immortall, pure and certeine. Wherfore if I have searched and found out any good thing, that ignorance and time hath smothered, the same I commend unto you: to whom though I owe all that I have, yet am I bold to make other partakers with you in this poore gift.

Your loving cousen,
Reg. Scot.

To the right worshipfull his loving friends,[A. viii].
A a 3
Maister Doctor Coldwell Deane of Ro-
chester, and Maister Doctor Read- man Archdeacon of Can-
turburie, &c.

[Rom. and Ital. reversed; the italics of original smaller than in that to Sir Th. Scot.

Aving found out two such civill Magistrates, as for direction of judgement, and for ordering matters concerning justice in this common wealth (in my poore opinion) are verie singular persons, who (I hope) will accept of my good will, and examine my booke by their experience, as unto whom the matter therin conteined dooth greatlie apperteine: I have now againe considered of two other points: namelie, divinitie and philosophie, whereupon the groundworke of my booke is laid. Wherein although I know them to be verie sufficientlie informed, yet dooth not the judgement and censure of those causes so properlie apperteine to them as unto you, whose fame therein hath gotten preeminence above all others that I know of your callings: and in that respect I am bold to joine you with them, being all good neighbours togither in this commonwelth, and loving friends unto me. I doo not present this unto you, bicause it is meet for you; but for that you are meet for it (I meane) to judge upon it, to defend it, and if need be to correct it; knowing that you have learned of that grave counseller Cato, not to shame or discountenance any bodie. For if I thought you as readie, as able, to disgrace me for mine insufficiencie; I should not have beene hastie (knowing your learning) to have written unto you: but if I should be abashed to write to you, I should shew my selfe ignorant of your courtesie.

I knowe mine owne weakenesse, which if it have beene able to mainteine this argument, the cause is the stronger. Eloquent words may please the eares, but sufficient matter persuadeth the hart. So as, if I exhibit wholsome drinke (thought it be small) in a treene*[* = wooden] dish with a faithfull hand, I hope it will bee as well accepted, as strong wine offered in a silver bowle with a flattering heart. And surelie it is a point of as great liberalitie to receive a small thing thankeful/lie,A a 3 v. as to give and distribute great and costlie gifts bountifullie: for there is more supplied with courteous answers than with rich rewards. The ty/rant[A. viii. v.] Dionysius was not so hated for his tyrannie, as for his churlish and strange behaviour. Among the poore Israelites sacrifices, God was satisfied with the tenth part of an Ephah of flower, so as it were fine and good. Christ liked well of the poore widowes mite, Lewis of France accepted a rape root of clownish Conan, Cyrus vouchsafed to drinke a cup of cold water out of the hand of poore Sinætes: and so it may please you to accept this simple booke at my hands, which I faithfullie exhibit unto you, not knowing your opinions to meet with mine, but knowing your learning and judgement to be able as well to correct me where I speake herein unskilfullie, as others when they speake hereof maliciouslie.

Some be such dogs as they will barke at my writings, whether I mainteine or refute this argument: as Diogenes snarled both at the Rhodians and at the Lacedæmonians: at the one, bicause they were brave; at the other, bicause they were not brave. Homer himselfe could not avoid reprochfull speaches. I am sure that they which never studied to learne anie good thing, will studie to find faults hereat. I for my part feare not these wars, nor all the adversaries I have; were it not for certeine cowards, who (I knowe) will come behind my backe and bite me.

But now to the matter. My question is not (as manie fondlie suppose) whether there be witches or naie: but whether they can doo such miraculous works as are imputed unto them. Good Maister Deane, is it possible for a man to breake his fast with you at Rochester, and to dine that day at Durham with Maister Doctor Matthew; or can your enimie maime you, when the Ocean sea is betwixt you? What reall communitie is betwixt a spirit and a bodie? May a spirituall bodie become temporall at his pleasure? Or may a carnall bodie become invisible? Is it likelie that the lives of all Princes, magistrates, & subjects, should depend upon the will, or rather upon the wish of a poore malicious doting old foole; and that power exempted from the wise, the rich, the learned, the godlie, &c? Finallie, is it possible for man or woman to do anie of those miracles expressed in my booke, & so constantlie reported by great clarks? If you saie, no; then am I satisfied. If you saie that God, absolutelie, or by meanes can accomplish all those, and manie more, I go with you. But witches may well saie they can doo these things, howbeit they cannot shew how they doo them. If I for my part should saie I could doo/A a 4. those things, my verie adversaries would saie that I lied.

O Maister Archdeacon, is it not pitie, that that which is said to be doone with the almightie power of the most high God, and by our saviour his onelie sonne Jesus Christ our Lord, shouldbe referred to a baggage old womans nod/B. i. or wish, &c? Good Sir, is it not one manifest kind of Idolatrie, for them that labor and are laden, to come unto witches to be refreshed? If witches could helpe whom they are said to have made sicke, I see no reason, but remedie might as well be required at their hands, as a pursse demanded of him that hath stolne it. But trulie it is manifold idolatrie, to aske that of a creature, which none can give but the Creator. The papist hath some colour of scripture to mainteine his idoll of bread, but no Jesuiticall distinction can cover the witchmongers idolatrie in this behalfe. Alas, I am sorie and ashamed to see how manie die, that being said to be bewitched, onelie seeke for magicall cures, whom wholsome diet and good medicines would have recovered. I dare assure you both, that there would be none of these cousening kind of witches, did not witchmongers mainteine them, followe them, and beleeve in them and their oracles: whereby indeed all good learning and honest arts are overthrowne. For these that most advance their power, and mainteine the skill of these witches, understand no part thereof: and yet being manie times wise in other matters, are made fooles by the most fooles in the world.

Me thinks these magicall physicians deale in the commonwelth, much like as a certeine kind of Cynicall people doo in the church, whose severe saiengs are accompted among some such oracles, as may not be doubted of; who in stead of learning and authoritie (which they make contemptible) doo feed the people with their owne devises and imaginations, which they prefer before all other divinitie: and labouring to erect a church according to their owne fansies, wherein all order is condemned, and onelie their magicall words and curious directions advanced, they would utterlie overthrowe the true Church. And even as these inchanting Paracelsians abuse the people, leading them from the true order of physicke to their charmes: so doo these other (I saie) dissuade from hearkening to learning and obedience, and whisper in mens eares to teach them their frierlike traditions. And of this sect the cheefe author at this time is/A a 4 v one Browne, a fugitive, a meet cover for such a cup: as heretofore the Anabaptists, the Arrians,*[* Arians] and the Franciscane friers.

Trulie not onlie nature, being the foundation of all perfection; but also scripture, being the mistresse and director thereof, and of all christianitie, is beautified with knowledge and learning. For as nature without discipline dooth naturallie incline unto vanities, and as it were sucke up errors:Rom. 2, 27.
2. Cor. 3, 6. so doth the word, or rather the letter of the scripture, without understanding, not onlie make us devoure errors, but yeeldeth us up to death & destruction: & therefore Paule saith he was not a minister of the letter, but of the spirit.

Thus have I beene bold to deliver unto the world, and to you, those simple/B. i. v. notes, reasons, and arguments, which I have devised or collected out of other authors: which I hope shall be hurtfull to none, but to my selfe great comfort, if it may passe with good liking and acceptation. If it fall out otherwise, I should thinke my paines ill imploied. For trulie, in mine opinion, whosoever shall performe any thing, or atteine to anie knowledge; or whosoever should travell throughout all the nations of the world, or (if it were possible) should peepe into the heavens, the consolation or admiration thereof were nothing pleasant unto him, unles he had libertie to impart his knowledge to his friends. Wherein bicause I have made speciall choise of you, I hope you will read it, or at the least laie it up studie with your other bookes, among which therein your is none dedicated to any with more good will. And so long as you have it, it shall be untoyou (upon adventure of my life) a certeine amulet, periapt, circle, charme, &c: to defend you from all inchantments.

Your loving friend
Reg. Scot.

To the Readers.B. ii. B