7] London, 1678; see pp. 515-518.

[58] _Works_ (ed. of Edinburgh, 1841), II, 162.

[59] Glanvill, _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 80.

[60] By the eighties it is very clear that the justices were ceasing to
press charges against witches.

[61] In an article to be published separately.

[62] See his essay "Of Poetry" in his _Works_ (London, 1814), III,
430-431.

[63] Justice Jeffreys and Justice Herbert both acquitted witches
according to F. A. Inderwick, _Sidelights on the Stuarts_ (2d ed.,
London, 1891), 174.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FINAL DECLINE.

In the history of witchcraft the years from 1688 to 1718 may be grouped
together as comprising a period. This is not to say that the year of the
Revolution marked any transition in the course of the superstition. It
did not. But we have ventured to employ it as a convenient date with
which to bound the influences of the Restoration. The year 1718 derives
its importance for us from the publication, in that year, of Francis
Hutchinson's _Historical Essay on Witchcraft_, a book which, it is not
too much to say, gave the final blow to the belief in England.[1]

We speak of fixing a date by which to bound the influences of the
Restoration. Now, as a matter of fact, there is something arbitrary
about any date. The influences at work during the previous period went
steadily on. The heathen raged, and the people imagined a vain thing.
The great proletariat hated witches as much as ever. But the justices of
the peace and the itinerant judges were getting over their fear of
popular opinion and were refusing to listen to the accusations that were
brought before them. The situation was in some respects the same as it
had been in the later seventies and throughout the eighties. Yet there
were certain features that distinguished the period. One of them was the
increased use of exorcism. The expelling of evil spirits had been a
subject of great controversy almost a century before. The practice had
by no means been forgotten in the mean time, but it had gained little
public notice. Now the dispossessors of the Devil came to the front
again long enough to whet the animosity between Puritans and Anglicans
in Lancashire. But this never became more than a pamphlet controversy.
The other feature of the period was far more significant. The last
executions for witchcraft in England were probably those at Exeter in
1682.[2] For a whole generation the courts had been frowning on witch
p