them. The other two continued in the court, and they
affirmed in the face of the country, and before the witches
themselves, what before hath been deposed by their friends and
relations; the prisoners not much contradicting them. In
conclusion, the judge and all the court were fully satisfied
with the verdict, and thereupon gave judgment against the
witches that they should be hanged.

They were much urged to confess, but would not.

That morning we departed for Cambridge, but no reprieve was
granted; And they were executed on Monday the 17th of March
following, but they confessed nothing.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Witchcraft, always an ecclesiastical offence, was first made a
statutory crime by 33 Hen. VIII. (1541), which Hutchinson suggests was
intended as 'a hank upon the reformers,' by reason of the part which
mentioned the pulling down of crosses. This act was repealed on the
accession of Edward VI., but was revived by 5 Eliz. c. 16 in a slightly
different form. Hutchinson mentions five convictions under this statute
between 1560 and 1597. A new act was passed in 1603, the first year of
the reign of James I. Under it seventeen persons were condemned to death
in Lancashire in 1634 on the evidence of one witness, who afterwards
admitted his imposture. Their lives were saved by the judge who tried
the case. In the eastern counties about fifty persons were executed in
1644 and 1645. Various other cases were tried throughout the seventeenth
century, of which a list is given by Hutchinson, and the last conviction
took place in 1712, at Hertford, but the prisoner was pardoned. The act
of James was repealed in 1736, when it was enacted that no more
prosecutions for witchcraft should take place, but that pretending to
exercise witchcraft, and so forth, should be offences punishable on the
same scale as other acts of petty cheating. Further information on the
subject may be found in Hutchinson's _Essay on Witchcraft_; and an
account of the very curious outburst of prosecutions for witchcraft in
New England about the time of this trial, and, it is said, partly in
consequence of it, may be found in Howell's _State Trials_, vol vi. pp.
647-686. In those parts of the British Empire where there is a large
population of negroes, it has been found necessary to make stringent
laws against witchcraft, which are regarded by the persons most affected
by them as something much more than a protection