n without disgrace. I longed
for death, and so I told a lie."

Of Sir George Mackenzie, the eminent Scotch advocate, it was said:

He went to examine some women who had confessed,[196] and one of
them told him "under secrecie" that she had not confessed
because she was guilty, but being a poor wretch who wrought for
her meat, and being defined for a witch, she knew she would
starve, for no person thereafter would give her either meat or
lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her,
and therefore she desired to be out of the world, whereupon she
wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called upon God to witness
what she said.

The death these poor women chose to suffer rather than accept a chance
of life with the name of witch clinging to them,[197] was one of the
most painful of which we can conceive,[198] although in the diversity
of torture inflicted upon "the witch," it is scarcely possible to say
which was the least agonizing.

Not only was the persecution for witchcraft brought to New England by
the Puritans, but it has been considered and treated as a capital
offense by the laws of both Pennsylvania and New York. Trials took
place in both colonies not long before the Salem tragedy; the peaceful
Quaker, William Penn, presiding upon the bench at the time of the
trial of two Swedish women accused of witchcraft. The Grand Jury
acting under instruction given in a charge delivered by him, found
bills against them, and his skirts were only saved from the guilt of
their blood by some technical irregularity in the indictment.

Marriage with devils was long one of the most ordinary accusations in
witch trials. The knowledge of witches was admitted, as is shown in
the widely extended belief of their ability to work miracles. A large
part of the women termed witches were in reality the profoundest
thinkers, the most advanced scientists of those ages. For many hundred
years the knowledge of medicine, and its practice among the poorer
classes was almost entirely in their hands, and many discoveries in
this science are due to them; but an acquaintance with herbs soothing
to pain, or healing in their qualities, was then looked upon as having
been acquired through diabolical agency. Even those persons cured
through the instrumentality of some woman were ready when the hour
came to assert their belief in her indebtedness to the devil for that
knowledge. Not only we