on against pulling down crosses.
In 1549 Ket's rebellion was troublesome; its vigour due partly to the old
prophecy repeated through the plains of Norfolk--

"Hob, Dic, and Hic, with Clubs and clouted Shoon,
Shall fill up Duffin-dale with slaughtered Bodies soon."

And then we come to nothing more until 1559, when Elizabeth "renewed the
same article of inquiry for sorcerers," but punishing the first conviction
only with the pillory. The following year eight men were taken up for
conjurations and sorcery, and tried at Westminster, where they had to
purge themselves by confession, penitence, and a repudiating oath. In 1562
the Earl and Countess of Lennox, Anthony Pool, Anthony Fortescue, and some
others, were condemned for treason and meddling with sorcerers; though,
indeed, Elizabeth herself was not free from either the superstition or its
practice; for did she not patronize Dr. Dee and his "skryer" John Kelly,
with his ranting about Madimi in her gown of "changeable sey," and all the
other spirits who came in and out of the "show-stone," and talked just the
same kind of rubbish as spirits talk now in modern circles? But the poor
"figure-flinger, with his tin pictures," was a sorcerer not to be
protected, so got tried and condemned--poor figure-flinger!

In 1562, the year of Lady Lennox's business, a new Act against witchcraft
was passed; and in 1589 one Mrs. Deir practised conjuration against the
Queen, for which she was tried, but acquitted for want of evidence; but
the Queen had excessive anguish in her teeth that year, by night and by
day. When Ferdinand Earl of Derby died, about this time, of perpetual and
unceasing sickness, a waxen image was found in his chamber stuffed with
hair the exact colour of his; which sufficiently accounted for his illness
and the mysterious manner of his death, though a Sadducee and sceptic
might have whispered of poison, or a physician have spoken of cholera;
from which disease indeed, by the minute symptoms so carefully detailed,
the poor earl's death seems to have been--if not from poison, which might
have produced the same effects. Still, the accusation of sorcery was so
convenient--such a cloak for viler sins! The latter half of Elizabeth's
reign was disgraced by many witch persecutions, for the subject was
beginning to attract painful notice now; and, though it was not till James
I. had set the smouldering fragments all a-blaze that the worst of the
evils were done, still enou