rm of the
animal, and taken the opportunity of her hiding-place to resume
her proper shape. In 1682 three women were executed at Exeter.
Their witchcraft was of the same sort as that of the Bury
witches. Little variety indeed appears in the English witchcraft
as brought before the courts of law. They chiefly consist in
hysterical, epileptic, or other fits, accompanied by vomiting of
various witch-instruments of torture. The Exeter witches are
memorable as the last executed judicially in England.

Attacks upon the superstition of varying degrees of merit were
not wanting during any period of the seventeenth century.
Webster, who, differing in this respect from most of his
predecessors, declared his opinion that the whole of witchcraft
was founded on natural phenomena, credulity, torture, imposture,
or delusion, has deserved to be especially commemorated among the
advocates of common sense. He had been well acquainted in his
youth with the celebrated Lancashire Witches' case, and enjoyed
good opportunities of studying the absurd obscenities of the
numerous examinations. His meritorious work was given to the
world in 1677, under the title of 'The Displaying of Supposed
Witchcraft.' Towards the close of the century witch-trials still
occur; but the courts of justice were at length freed from the
reproach of legal murders.

The great revolution of 1688, which set the principles of
Protestantism on a firmer basis, could not fail to effect an
intellectual as well as a political change. A recognition of the
claims of common sense (at least on the subject of diabolism)
seemed to begin from that time; and in 1691, when some of the
criminals were put upon their trial at Frome, in Somersetshire,
they were acquitted, not without difficulty, by the exertion of
the better reason of the presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice
Holt. Fortunately for the accused, Lord Chief Justice Holt was a
person of sense, as well as legal acuteness; for he sat as judge
at a great number of the trials in different parts of the
kingdom. Both prosecutors and juries were found who would
willingly have sent the proscribed convicts to death. But the age
was arrived when at last it was to be discovered that fire and
torture can extinguish neither witchcraft nor any other heresy;
and the princes and parliaments of Europe seemed to begin to
recognise in part the philosophical maxim that, 'heresy and
witchcraft are two crimes which commonly increase by punishm