nswered. By John Stearne, now of Lawshall, neere Burie
Saint Edmunds in Suffolke, sometimes of Manningtree in Essex. Prov.
xvii. 15, He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the
just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord. Deut. xiii. 14,
Thou shall therefore enquire, and make search, and aske diligently
whether it be truth and the thing certaine. London, Printed by William
Wilson, dwelling in Little Saint Bartholomews, neere Smithfield, 1648,
pages 61, besides preface." Stearne, in whom Remigius and De Lancre
would have recognized a congenial soul, had a sort of joint commission
with Hopkins, as Witch-finder, and tells us (see address to Reader)
that he had been in part an agent in finding out or discovering about
200 witches in Essex, Suffolk, Northamptonshire, Huntingtonshire,
Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely. He deals
with the subject undoubtedly like a man whose extensive experience and
practice had enabled him to reduce the matter to a complete system.
(See his account of their marks, pp. 43 to 50.) He might, like John
Kincaid in Tranent, (see Pitcairne's _Criminal Trials_, vol. iii. p.
599,) have assumed the right of Common Pricker, i.e. Searcher for the
devil's marks, and had his own tests, which were infallible. He
complains, good man, "that in many places I never received penny as
yet, nor any am like, notwithstanding I have hands for satisfaction,
except I should sue; [he should have sued by all means, we might then
have had his bill of particulars, which would have been curious;] but
many rather fall upon me for what hath been received, but I hope such
suits will be disannulled, and that where I have been out of moneys
for Towns in charges and otherwise such course will be taken that I
may be satisfied and paid with reason." He was doubtless well
deserving of a recompense, and his neighbours were much to blame if he
did not receive a full and ample one. Of the latter end of his
coadjutor, Hopkins, whom Sir Walter Scott (see Somers's Tracts, vol.
iii. p. 97, edit. 1810,) and several other writers represent as
ultimately executed himself for witchcraft, he gives a very different,
and no doubt more correct account; which, singularly enough, has
hitherto remained entirely unnoticed. "He died peaceably at
Manningtree, after a long sicknesse of a consumption, as many of his
generation had done before him, without any trouble of conscience for
what he had done, as was f