'Articles of Visitation,' 1549,
an injunction is addressed to his clergy, that 'you shall inquire
whether you know of any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments,
witchcrafts, soothsaying, or any like craft, invented by the
devil.'

[96] Hutchison's _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_.
The author, chaplain in ordinary to George I., published his
book in 1718. It is worth while to note the colder
scepticism of the Hanoverian chaplain as compared with the
undoubting faith of his predecessor, Dr. Glanvil.

During the brief reigns of Edward VI. and Mary I. in England, no
conspicuous trials occur. As for the latter monarch, the queen
and her bishops were too absorbed in the pressing business of
burning for the real offence of heresy to be much concerned in
discovering the concomitant crimes of devil-worship.[97] An
impartial judgment may decide that superstition, whether engaged
in vindicating the dogmas of Catholicism or those of witchcraft,
is alike contemptible and pernicious.

[97] Agreeably to that common prejudice which selects
certain historical personages for popular and peculiar
esteem or execration, and attributes to them, as if they
were eccentricities rather than examples of the age, every
exceptional virtue or vice, the 'Bloody Queen' has been
stigmatised, and is still regarded, as an _extraordinary_
monster, capable of every inhuman crime--a prejudice more
popular than philosophical, since experience has taught that
despots, unchecked by fear, by reason, or conscience, are
but examples, in an eminent degree, of the character, and
personifications of the worst vices (if not of the best
virtues) of their time. Considered in this view, Mary I.
will but appear the example and personification of the
religious intolerance of Catholicism and of the age, just as
Cromwell was of the patriotic and Puritanic sentiment of the
first half, or Charles II. of the unblushing licentiousness
of the last half, of the seventeenth century.

In the year of Elizabeth's accession, 1558, Strype ('Annals of
the Reformation,' i. 8, and ii. 545) tells that Bishop Jewell,
preaching before the queen, animadverted upon the dangerous and
direful results of witchcraft. 'It may please your Grace,'
proclaims publicly the courtly Anglican prelate, 'to understand
that witches and sorcerers, within these last few years, are
marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's
subjec