(much more any of the Clergy) who should dayly
preach Terrour to convince such Offenders, stand up to take their Parts,
against such as are Complainants for the King and Sufferers themselves,
with their Families and Estates. I intend to give your Towne a visite
suddenly. I am to come to Kimbolton this Week, and it shall be tenne to
one, but I will come to your Town first, but I would certainly know afore,
whether your Town affords many Sticklers for such Cattell, or willing to
give and afford as good Welcome and Entertainment, as other where I have
beene, else I shall wave your Shire, (not as yet beginning in any Part of
it myself) and betake me to such Places, where I doe, and may persist
without Controle, but with Thanks and Recompense. So I humbly take my
leave and rest, Your Servant to be Commanded,

"MATTHEW HOPKINS."

I have not been able to find what was the result of this letter, but I do
not suppose that Hopkins, who was a great coward like all tyrants, cared
to brave even the small danger of one minister's opposition, not knowing
how many "sticklers for such cattle" might be at his back. In his Apology,
or "Certaine Queries Answered, which have been and are likely to be
objected against Matthew Hopkins, in his way of finding out Witches," he
says that "he never went to any towne or place, but they rode, writ, or
sent often for him, and were (for ought he knew) glad of him;" and if this
was true, Mr. Gaule most likely was rid of him at Great Stoughton, and
one rood of English land left undefiled. Besides, his hands were full
elsewhere; for when we think that at Bury St. Edmunds eighteen persons
were hanged on one day alone, and a hundred and twenty more left lying in
prison, all through his instrumentality, we must imagine that he had
enough to do in places where he was caressed and desired, not to forbear
troubling those where he was abhorred and might run some danger.

MR. CLARK'S EXAMPLES.

A few other men, too, were about as sane as Mr. Gaule on this maddest of
all mad subjects. Mr. Clark, a minister--and the ministers were generally
the worst--had a marvellous allowance of common sense, remembering the
times. A certain parishioner of his cried out that she was grievously
beset by a neighbour who came in the spirit, that is, as an apparition, to
teaze and torment her. Mr. Clark, the minister, knew the accused woman,
and believed in her innocency; but it happened one day, by one of those
curious coinc