rosecution. Now there arose in England judges who definitely nullified
the law on the statute-book. By the decisions of Powell and Parker, and
most of all by those of Holt, the statute of the first year of James I
was practically made obsolete twenty-five or fifty years before its
actual repeal in 1736. We shall see that the gradual breaking down of
the law by the judges did not take place without a struggle. At the
famous trial in Hertford in 1712 the whole subject of the Devil and his
relation to witches came up again in its most definite form, and was
fought out in the court room and at the bar of public opinion. It was,
however, but the last rallying and counter-charging on a battle-field
where Webster and Glanvill had led the hosts at mid-day. The issue,
indeed, was now very specific. Over the abstract question of witchcraft
there was nothing new to be said. Here, however, was a specific
instance. What was to be done with it? Over that there was waged a merry
war. Of course the conclusion was foregone. It had indeed been
anticipated by the action of the bench.

We shall see that with the nullification of the law the common people
began to take the law into their own hands. We shall note that, as a
consequence, there was an increase in the number of swimming ordeals and
other illegal procedures.

The story of the Lancashire demonomania is not unlike the story of
William Somers in Nottingham a century before. In this case there was no
John Darrel, and the exorcists were probably honest but deluded men. The
affair started at the village of Surey, near to the superstition-brewing
Pendle Forest. The possessed boy, Richard Dugdale, was a gardener and
servant about nineteen years of age.[3] In April, 1689, he was seized
with fits in which he was asserted to speak Latin and Greek and to
preach against the sins of the place. Whatever his pretensions were, he
seemed a good subject for exorcism. Some of the Catholics are said to
have tampered with him, and then several Puritan clergymen of the
community took him in hand. For eight months they held weekly fasts for
his recovery; but their efforts were not so successful as they had
hoped. They began to suspect witchcraft[4] and were about to take steps
towards the prosecution of the party suspected.[5] This came to
nothing, but Dugdale at length grew better. He was relieved of his fits;
and the clergymen, who had never entirely given up their efforts to cure
him, hastened to c