an instance of ventriloquism, and to compare it to the
celebrated case of Mildred Norrington, he showed a boldness in
interpretation of the Bible far in advance of his contemporaries.

His anticipation of present-day points of view cropped out perhaps more
in his scientific spirit than in any other way. For years before he put
pen to paper he had been conducting investigations into alleged cases of
conjuring and witchcraft, attending trials,[15] and questioning
clergymen and magistrates. For such observation he was most favorably
situated and he used his position in his community to further his
knowledge. A man almost impertinently curious was this sixteenth-century
student. When he learned of a conjurer whose sentence of death had been
remitted by the queen and who professed penitence for his crimes, he
opened a correspondence and obtained from the man the clear statement
that his conjuries were all impostures. The prisoner referred him to "a
booke written in the old Saxon toong by one Sir John Malborne, a divine
of Oxenford, three hundred yeares past," in which all these trickeries
are cleared up. Scot put forth his best efforts to procure the work from
the parson to whom it had been entrusted, but without success.[16] In
another case he attended the assizes at Rochester, where a woman was on
trial. One of her accusers was the vicar of the parish, who made several
charges, not the least of which was that he could not enunciate clearly
in church owing to enchantment. This explanation Scot carried to her and
she was able to give him an explanation much less creditable to the
clergyman of the ailment, an explanation which Scot found confirmed by
an enquiry among the neighbors. To quiet such rumors in the community
about the nature of the illness the vicar had to procure from London a
medical certificate that it was a lung trouble.[17]

Can we wonder that a student at such pains to discover the fact as to a
wrong done should have used barbed words in the portrayal of injustice?
Strong convictions spurred on his pen, already taught to shape vigorous
and incisive sentences. Not a stylist, as measured by the highest
Elizabethan standards of charm and mellifluence, he possessed a
clearness and directness which win the modern reader. By his methods of
analysis he displayed a quality of mind akin to and probably influenced
by that of Calvin, while his intellectual attitude showed the stimulus
of the Reformation.

He was indee