Swift's satire.

The years 1644 and 1645 are distinguished as especially abounding
in witches and witchfinders. In the former year, at Manningtree,
a village in Essex, during an outbreak in which several women
were tried and hanged, Matthew Hopkins first displayed his
peculiar talent. Associated with him in his recognised legal
profession was one John Sterne. They proceeded regularly on their
circuit, making a fixed charge for their services upon each
town or village. Swimming and searching for secret marks were
the infallible methods of discovery. Hopkins, encouraged
by an unexpected success, arrogantly assumed the title of
'Witchfinder-General.' His modest charges (as he has told us)
were twenty shillings a town, which paid the expenses of
travelling and living, and an additional twenty shillings a head
for every criminal brought to trial, or at least to execution.

The eastern counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Suffolk,
Northampton, Bedford, were chiefly traversed; and some two or
three hundred persons appear to have been sent to the gibbet or
the stake by his active exertions. One of these specially
remembered was the aged _parson_ of a village near Framlingham,
Mr. Lowes, who was hanged at Bury St. Edmund's. The pious Baxter,
an eyewitness, thus commemorates the event: 'The hanging of a
great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known. Mr.
Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear their
confessions and see that there was no fraud or wrong done them. I
spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible
persons that lived in the counties, and some that went to them in
the prison and heard their sad confessions. Among the rest, an
old _reading_ parson named Lowes, not far from Framlingham, was
one that was hanged, who confessed that he had two imps, and that
one of them was always putting him upon doing mischief; and he
being near the sea as he saw a ship under sail, it moved him to
send it to sink the ship, and he consented and saw the ship sink
before them.' Sterne, Hopkins's coadjutor, in an Apology
published not long afterwards, asserts that Lowes had been
indicted thirty years before for witchcraft; that he had made a
covenant with the devil, sealing it with his blood, and had those
familiars or spirits which sucked on the marks found on his body;
that he had confessed that, besides the notable mischief of
sinking the aforesaid vessel and making fourteen widows in one
quart