zed acording to the
truth. By G. B. maister of Artes._ [London, 1593.] See Hazlitt,
Collections and Notes, 1867-1877. The pamphlet may be found in the
library of Lambeth Palace. The story is a curious one; no action seems
to have been taken.

_A defensative against the poyson of supposed prophecies, not hitherto
confuted by the penne of any man; which being eyther uppon the warrant
and authority of old paynted bookes, expositions of dreames, oracles,
revelations, invocations of damned spirits ... have been causes of great
disorder in the commonwealth and chiefly among the simple and unlearned
people._ Henry Howard, afterwards Earl of Northampton, was the author of
this "defensative." It appeared about 1581-1583, and was revised and
reissued in 1621.

Three Elizabethan ballads on witches are noted by Hazlitt,
_Bibliographical Collections and Notes_, 2d series (London, 1882): _A
warnynge to wytches_, published in 1585, _The scratchinge of the
wytches_, published in 1579, and _A lamentable songe of Three Wytches of
Warbos, and executed at Huntingdon_, published in 1593. Already in
1562-3 "a boke intituled _A poosye in forme of a visyon, agaynste wytche
Crafte, and Sosyrye_," written "in myter" by John Hall, had been
published (_Stationers' Registers_, 1557-1570, p. 78).

Some notion of the first step in the Elizabethan procedure against a
witch may be gathered from the specimens of "indictments" given in the
old formula book of William West, _Simboleography_ (pt. ii, first
printed in 1594). Three specimens are given; two are of indictments "For
killing a man by witchcraft upon the statute of Anno 5. of the Queene,"
the third is "For bewitching a Horse, whereby he wasted and became
worse." As the documents in such bodies of models are usually genuine
papers with only a suppression of the names, it is probable that the
dates assigned to the indictments noted--the 34th and 35th years of
Elizabeth--are the true ones, and that the initials given, "S. B. de C.
in comit. H. vidua," "Marg' L. de A. in com' E. Spinster," and "Sara B.
de C. in comitatu Eb. vidua," are those of the actual culprits and of
their residences. Yorkshire is clearly one of the counties meant. It
was, moreover, West's own county.

Sec. 2.--The Exorcists (see ch. IV).

The account of Elizabethan exorcism which we have given is necessarily
one-sided. It deals only with the Puritan movement--if Darrel's work may
be so called--and does not treat the Cath