l
spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, or feed any such spirit, the
first offence to be imprisonment for a year and standing in the pillory
once a quarter; the second offence to be death."

The minor punishment seems but rarely to have been inflicted. Every
record that has been preserved, mentions that the witches were hanged
and burned, or burned without the previous strangling, "alive and
quick." During the whole of James's reign, amid the civil wars of his
successor, the sway of the Long Parliament, the usurpation of Cromwell,
and the reign of Charles II, there was no abatement of the persecution.
If at any time it raged with less virulence, it was when Cromwell and
the Independents were masters. Dr. Zachary Grey, the editor of an
edition of "Hudibras," informs us, in a note to that work, that he
himself perused a list of three thousand witches who were executed in
the time of the Long Parliament alone. During the first eighty years of
the seventeenth century, the number executed has been estimated at five
hundred annually, making the frightful total of forty thousand. Some of
these cases deserve to be cited. The great majority resemble closely
those already mentioned, but two or three of them let in a new light
upon the popular superstition.

Every one has heard of the "Lancashire witches," a phrase now used to
compliment the ladies of that county for their bewitching beauty; but
it is not every one who has heard the story in which it originated. A
villainous boy, named Robinson, was the chief actor in the tragedy. He
confessed, many years afterwards, that he had been suborned by his
father and other persons to give false evidence against the unhappy
witches whom he brought to the stake. The time of this famous trial was
about the year 1634. This boy Robinson, whose father was a wood-cutter,
residing on the borders of Pendle Forest, in Lancashire, spread abroad
many rumours against one Mother Dickenson, whom he accused of being a
witch. These rumours coming to the ears of the local magistracy, the
boy was sent for, and strictly examined. He told the following
extraordinary story, without hesitation or prevarication, and
apparently in so open and honest a manner, that no one who heard him
doubted the truth of it:--He said, that as he was roaming about in one
of the glades of the forest, amusing himself by gathering blackberries,
he saw two greyhounds before him, which he thought at the time belonged
to some ge