racing in their fullest extent the most absurd and gross
of the popular errors on this subject. He considered his crown and life
as habitually aimed at by the sworn slaves of Satan. Several had been
executed for an attempt to poison him by magical arts; and the turbulent
Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, whose repeated attempts on his person
had long been James's terror, had begun his course of rebellion by a
consultation with the weird sisters and soothsayers. Thus the king, who
had proved with his pen the supposed sorcerers to be the direct enemies
of the Deity, and who conceived he knew them from experience to be his
own--who, moreover, had upon much lighter occasions (as in the case of
Vorstius) showed no hesitation at throwing his royal authority into the
scale to aid his arguments--very naturally used his influence, when it
was at the highest, to extend and enforce the laws against a crime which
he both hated and feared.

The English statute against witchcraft, passed in the very first year of
that reign, is therefore of a most special nature, describing witchcraft
by all the various modes and ceremonies in which, according to King
James's fancy, that crime could be perpetrated; each of which was
declared felony, without benefit of clergy.

This gave much wider scope to prosecution on the statute than had
existed under the milder acts of Elizabeth. Men might now be punished
for the practice of witchcraft, as itself a crime, without necessary
reference to the ulterior objects of the perpetrator. It is remarkable
that in the same year, when the legislature rather adopted the passions
and fears of the king than expressed their own by this fatal enactment,
the Convocation of the Church evinced a very different spirit; for,
seeing the ridicule brought on their sacred profession by forward and
presumptuous men, in the attempt to relieve demoniacs from a disease
which was commonly occasioned by natural causes, if not the mere
creature of imposture, they passed a canon, establishing that no
minister or ministers should in future attempt to expel any devil or
devils, without the license of his bishop; thereby virtually putting a
stop to a fertile source of knavery among the people, and disgraceful
folly among the inferior churchmen.

The new statute of James does not, however, appear to have led at first
to many prosecutions. One of the most remarkable was (_proh pudor!_)
instigated by a gentleman, a scholar of classica