or unless they were taken to her house.

[23] This device seems to have been originally suggested by the children
to try Mother Samuel's guilt.

[24] The clergyman, "Doctor Dorrington," had been one of the leaders in
prosecuting them.

[25] Harsnett, _Discovery of the Fraudulent Practises of John Darrel_
(London, 1599), 92, 97.

[26] Among the manuscripts on witchcraft in the Bodleian Library are
three such pardons of witches for their witchcraft--one of Jane Mortimer
in 1595, one of Rosa Bexwell in 1600, and one of "Alice S.," without
date but under Elizabeth.

[27] In 1595 he was made warden of the Manchester Collegiate Church. Dee
has in our days found a biographer. See _John Dee_ (1527-1608), by
Charlotte Fell Smith (London, 1909).

[28] For the particular case, see Mary Bateson, ed., _Records of the
Borough of Leicester_ (Cambridge, 1899), III. 335; for the general
letters patent covering such cases see _id._, II, 365, 366.

[29] For this story see Ralph Holinshed, _Chronicles of England,
Scotland, and Ireland_ (London, 1577, reprinted 1586-1587 and
1807-1808), ed. of 1807-1808, IV, 891, 893. Faversham was then
"Feversham."

[30] Justice Anderson, when sentencing a witch to a year's imprisonment,
declared that this was the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth witch he had
condemned. This is good evidence that the records of many cases have
been lost. See Brit. Mus., Sloane MS. 831, f. 38.

CHAPTER III.

REGINALD SCOT.

From the chronicling of witch trials we turn aside in this chapter to
follow the career of the first great English opponent of the
superstition. We have seen how the attack upon the supposed creatures of
the Devil was growing stronger throughout the reign of Elizabeth. We
shall see how that attack was checked, at least in some degree, by the
resistance of one man. Few men of so quiet and studious life have
wrought so effectively as Reginald Scot. He came of a family well known
in Kent, but not politically aggressive. As a young man he studied at
Hart Hall[1] in Oxford, but left without taking his degree and returned
to Scots-Hall, where he settled down to the routine duties of managing
his estate. He gave himself over, we are told, to husbandry and
gardening and to a solid course of general reading in the obscure
authors that had "by the generality been neglected." In 1574 his studies
in horticulture resulted in the publication of _A Perfect Platforme of a
Hoppe-Garden and necessary i