s cast should be
such an atheist.'"[26]

The parson had at length assimilated the skepticism of the jurists and
the gentry. It was, as has been said, an Anglican clergyman who
administered the last great blow to the superstition. Francis
Hutchinson's _Historical Essay on Witchcraft_, published in 1718 (and
again, enlarged, in 1720), must rank with Reginald Scot's _Discoverie_
as one of the great classics of English witch literature. Hutchinson had
read all the accounts of trials in England--so far as he could find
them--and had systematized them in chronological order, so as to give a
conspectus of the whole subject. So nearly was his point of view that of
our own day that it would be idle to rehearse his arguments. A man with
warm sympathies for the oppressed, he had been led probably by the case
of Jane Wenham, with whom he had talked, to make a personal
investigation of all cases that came at all within the ken of those
living. Whoever shall write the final story of English witchcraft will
find himself still dependent upon this eighteenth-century historian.

Hutchinson's work was the last chapter in the witch controversy. There
was nothing more to say.

[1] _Witchcraft Farther Displayed._

[2] _A Full Confutation of Witchcraft_, 4.

[3] _Ibid._, 11.

[4] _Ibid._, 38.

[5] _Ibid._, 5.

[6] _Ibid._, 23-24.

[7] _The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider'd_, 72.

[8] If certain phrases may be trusted, this writer was interested in the
case largely because it had become a cause of sectarian combat and he
hoped to strike at the church.

[9] See Baxter's _Works_ (London, 1827-1830), XX, 255-271.

[10] See _ibid._, XXI, 87.

[11] W. Orme in his _Life of Richard Baxter_ (London, 1830), I, 435,
says that the Baxter MSS. contain several letters from Glanvill to
Baxter.

[12] _See Memoirs of Richard Baxter_ by Dr. Bates (in _Biographical
Collections, or Lives and Characters from the Works of the Reverend Mr.
Baxter and Dr. Bates_, 1760), II, 51, 73.

[13] _Ibid._, 26; see also Baxter's _Dying Thoughts_, in _Works_, XVIII,
284, where he refers to the Demon of Mascon, a story for which Boyle, as
we have seen, had stood sponsor in England.

[14] Ch. VII, sect. iv, in _Works_, XXII, 327.

[15] _Certainty of the World of Spirits_ (London, 1691), preface.

[16] Two other collectors of witch stories deserve perhaps a note here,
for each prefaced his collection with a discussion of witchcraft. The
Lon