rivate share in
the terror with which their tenants, servants, and retainers regarded
some old Moll White, who put the hounds at fault and ravaged the fields
with hail and hurricanes. Sir John Reresby, after an account of a poor
woman tried for a witch at York in 1686 and acquitted, as he thought,
very properly, proceeds to tell us that, notwithstanding, the sentinel
upon the jail where she was confined avowed "that he saw a scroll of
paper creep from under the prison-door, and then change itself first
into a monkey and then into a turkey, which the under-keeper confirmed.
This," says Sir John, "I have heard from the mouth of both, and now
leave it to be believed or disbelieved as the reader may be
inclined."[63] We may see that Reresby, a statesman and a soldier, had
not as yet "plucked the old woman out of his heart." Even Addison
himself ventured no farther in his incredulity respecting this crime
than to contend that although witchcraft might and did exist, there was
no such thing as a modern instance competently proved.

[Footnote 63: "Memoirs of Sir John Reresby," p. 237.]

As late as 1682 three unhappy women named Susan Edwards, Mary Trembles,
and Temperance Lloyd were hanged at Exeter for witchcraft, and, as
usual, on their own confession. This is believed to be the last
execution of the kind in England under form of judicial sentence. But
the ancient superstition, so interesting to vulgar credulity, like
sediment clearing itself from water, sunk down in a deeper shade upon
the ignorant and lowest classes of society in proportion as the higher
regions were purified from its influence. The populace, including the
ignorant of every class, were more enraged against witches when their
passions were once excited in proportion to the lenity exercised towards
the objects of their indignation by those who administered the laws.
Several cases occurred in which the mob, impressed with a conviction of
the guilt of some destitute old creatures, took the law into their own
hands, and proceeding upon such evidence as Hopkins would have had
recourse to, at once, in their own apprehension, ascertained their
criminality and administered the deserved punishment.

The following instance of such illegal and inhuman proceedings occurred
at Oakly, near Bedford, on 12th July, 1707. There was one woman, upwards
of sixty years of age, who, being under an imputation of witchcraft, was
desirous to escape from so foul a suspicion, and to