Sieur de l'Ancre, councillor of the parliament
of Bourdeaux; of the 20th of March 1619, against Etienne Audibert; those
passed by the chamber of Nerac, on the 26th of June 1620, against several
witches; those passed by the parliament of Toulouse in 1577, as cited by
Gregory Tolosanus, against four hundred persons accused of this crime, and
who were all marked with the sign of the devil. Besides all these, we
might recal to your majesty's recollection the various decrees of the
parliament of Provence, especially in the case of Gaufredy in 1611; the
decrees of the parliament of Dijon, and those of the parliament of Rennes,
following the example of the condemnation of the Marshal de Rays, who was
burned in 1441, for the crime of witchcraft, in presence of the Duke of
Brittany;--all these examples, sire, prove that the accusation of
witchcraft has always been punished with death by the parliaments of your
kingdom, and justify the uniformity of their practice.

"These, sire, are the motives upon which your parliament of Normandy has
acted in decreeing the punishment of death against the persons lately
brought before it for this crime. If it has happened that, on any
occasion, these parliaments, and the parliament of Normandy among the
rest, have condemned the guilty to a less punishment than that of death,
it was for the reason that their guilt was not of the deepest dye; your
majesty, and the kings your predecessors, having left full liberty to the
various tribunals to whom they delegated the administration of justice, to
decree such punishment as was warranted by the evidence brought before
them.

"After so many authorities, and punishments ordained by human and divine
laws, we humbly supplicate your majesty to reflect once more upon the
extraordinary results which proceed from the malevolence of this sort of
people; on the deaths from unknown diseases, which are often the
consequences of their menaces, on the loss of the goods and chattels of
your subjects, on the proofs of guilt continually afforded by the
insensibility of the marks upon the accused, on the sudden transportation
of bodies from one place to another, on the sacrifices and nocturnal
assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony of ancient and
modern authors, and verified by so many eye-witnesses, composed partly of
accomplices, and partly of people who had no interest in the trials beyond
the love of truth, and confirmed, moreover, by the conf