Voluntary
Witch-Confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie,
&c.--Trial and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation
of the Number of Witches who suffered Death in England and
Scotland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries--Witches burned alive at Edinburgh in 1608--The
Lancashire Witches--Sir Thomas Overbury and Dr.
Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse 203

CHAPTER VIII.

The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most
acute and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of
its Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced
by Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir
Thomas Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English
Church least Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell
and Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under
the Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's
'Select Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods
of Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a Legal
and Numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship 219

CHAPTER IX.

Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on
Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the
World of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's
by Sir Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in
Court--Two Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in
1682--The last Witches judicially executed in
England--Uniformity of the Evidence adduced at the
Trials--Webster's Attack upon the Witch-creed in
1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of the
Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the
Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden 237

CHAPTER X.

Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North
America--Puritan Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton
Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal
Possession--Evidence given before the
Commission--Apologies issued by Authority--Sudden
Termination of the Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling
against the Agitators--The Salem Witchcraft the last
Instance of Judicial Prosecution on a large Scale in
Christendom--Philosophers begin to expose the