sermon or lecture upon the enormity of witchcraft, and this case
in particular, to be preached by a doctor or bachelor of divinity of
Queen's College, Cambridge. I have not been able to ascertain the exact
date at which this annual lecture was discontinued, but it appears to
have been preached so late as 1718, when Dr. Hutchinson published his
work upon witchcraft.

To carry on in proper chronological order the history of the witch
delusion in the British isles, it will be necessary to examine into
what was taking place in Scotland during all that part of the sixteenth
century anterior to the accession of James VI. to the crown of England.
We naturally expect that the Scotch,--a people renowned from the
earliest times for their powers of imagination,--should be more deeply
imbued with this gloomy superstition than their neighhours of the
South. The nature of their soil and climate tended to encourage the
dreams of early ignorance. Ghosts, goblins, wraiths, kelpies, and a
whole host of spiritual beings, were familiar to the dwellers by the
misty glens of the Highlands and the romantic streams of the Lowlands.
Their deeds, whether of good or ill, were enshrined in song, and took a
greater hold upon the imagination because "verse had sanctified them."
But it was not till the religious reformers began the practice of
straining Scripture to the severest extremes, that the arm of the law
was called upon to punish witchcraft as a crime per se. What Pope
Innocent VIII. had done for Germany and France, the preachers of the
Reformation did for the Scottish people. Witchcraft, instead of being a
mere article of faith, became enrolled in the statute book; and all
good subjects and true Christians were called upon to take arms against
it. The ninth Parliament of Queen Mary passed an act in 1563, which
decreed the punishment of death against witches and consulters with
witches, and immediately the whole bulk of the people were smitten with
an epidemic fear of the devil and his mortal agents. Persons in the
highest ranks of life shared and encouraged the delusion of the vulgar.
Many were themselves accused of witchcraft; and noble ladies were shown
to have dabbled in mystic arts, and proved to the world that, if they
were not witches, it was not for want of the will.

Among the dames who became notorious for endeavouring to effect their
wicked ends by the devil's aid, may be mentioned the celebrated Lady
Buccleugh, of Branxholme, f