sted to the witches that if
they continued in their confession he would deal with them in the
same manner.' These are some of the interesting particulars of
this judicial commission as reported by contemporaries. Seventy
persons were condemned to death. One woman pleaded (a frequent
plea) in arrest of judgment that she was with child; the rest
perseveringly denying their guilt. Twenty-three were burned in a
single fire at the village of Mohra. Fifteen children were also
executed; while fifty-six others, convicted of witchcraft in a
minor degree, were sentenced to various punishments: to be
scourged on every Sunday during a whole year being a sentence of
less severity. The proceedings were brought to an end, it seems,
by the fear of the upper classes for their own safety. An edict
of the king who had authorised the enquiry now ordered it to be
terminated, and the history of the commission was attempted to be
involved in silent obscurity. Prayers were ordered in all the
churches throughout Sweden for deliverance from the malice of
Satan, who was believed to be let loose for the punishment of the
land.[156] It is remarkable that the incidents of the Swedish
trials are chiefly reproductions of the evidence extracted in the
courts of France and Germany.

[156] _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, by Thomas Wright, who
quotes the authorised reports. Sir Walter Scott refers to
'An account of what happened in the kingdom of Sweden in the
years 1669, 1670, and afterwards translated out of High
Dutch into English by Dr. Anthony Horneck, attached to
Glanvil's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. The translation refers
to the evidence of Baron Sparr, ambassador from the court of
Sweden to the court of England in 1672, and that of Baron
Lyonberg, envoy-extraordinary of the same power, both of
whom attest the confessions and execution of the witches.
The King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of
the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His judges and
commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and
children to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence
as was brought before them; but whether the actions
confessed and proved against them were real, or only the
effect of a strong imagination, he was not as yet able to
determine."'

CHAPTER X.

Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America--Puritan
Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton Mather's 'Late
M