ted witch trial of Bury St. Edmunds.

These instances serve to illustrate the fate of a vast number of
hapless women during the seventeenth century; it is said that during
the sittings of the Long Parliament alone, as many as three thousand
persons were executed on charges of witchcraft. Besides these
unhappy wretches, a great many more suffered the terrible fate of
mob violence. The frenzied populace were often too impatient to await
legal procedure, and stoned the miserable women to death. In the minds
of the great majority of the people, such women were not human beings
at all, and so there was no cruelty in treating them with the greatest
violence possible. Indeed, such earnestness of purpose against the
adversaries of God could but redound, they thought, to their eternal
advantage. After all, was it not a devil, who for the time being
assumed human form, that they were treating with such violence?
to-morrow, the same demon might be found in a dog or in some other
animal, or perhaps afflicting with cholera the swine of some peasant,
to his severe loss. A description of a witch in the first half of the
seventeenth century says: "The devil's otter-hound, living both on
land and sea, and doing mischief in either; she kills more beasts than
a licensed butcher in Lent, yet is ne'er the fatter; she's but a dry
nurse in the flesh, yet gives such to the spirit. A witch rides many
times post on hellish business, yet if a ladder do but stop her, she
will be hanged ere she goes any further." The penal statutes against
witchcraft were not formally repealed until 1751, when there was
closed for England one of the saddest chapters in the history of human
mistakes. The last judicial executions for witchcraft in England were
in 1716.

In pleasing contrast to the unhappy creatures who were the victims
of fanatical persecutions during the Commonwealth period--the women
executed for witchcraft--stand the noble women who were developed by
the stern conditions of the Civil War--the heroines of internecine
strife. The domestic incidents of the Civil War form an interesting
commentary upon the character of the English woman, as they reveal
her in brave defence of castle or homestead, patient in hardship,
courageous in danger, and fertile in resources to avert misfortune.
Every important family was ranged on one side or the other, and the
line of division often passed through households. To all other issues
which aroused human passion, o