us.
He appealed to Elizabeth for protection and she gave him assurance that
he might push on with his studies. Throughout her life the queen
continued to stand by Dee,[27] and it was not until a new sovereign came
to the throne that he again came into danger. But the moral of the
incident is obvious. The privy council, so nervous about the conjurers
in the days of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Catholic and Spanish plots,
was now resting easier and refused to be affrighted.

We have already referred to the pardons issued as one of the evidences
of the more lenient policy of the government. That policy appeared too
in the lessening rigor of the assize judges. The first half of
Elizabeth's reign had been marked by few acquittals. Nearly half the
cases of which we have record in the second part resulted in the
discharge of the accused. Whether the judges were taking their cue from
the privy council or whether some of them were feeling the same reaction
against the cruelty of the prosecutions, it is certain that there was a
considerable nullifying of the force of the belief. We shall see in the
chapter on Reginald Scot that his _Discoverie of Witchcraft_ was said to
have "affected the magistracy and the clergy." It is hard to lay one's
finger upon influences of this sort, but we can hardly doubt that there
was some connection between Scot's brave indictment of the witch-triers
and the lessening severity of court verdicts. When George Gifford, the
non-conformist clergyman at Maiden, wrote his _Dialogue concerning
Witches_, in which he earnestly deprecated the conviction of so many
witches, he dedicated the book "to the Right Worshipful Maister Robert
Clarke, one of her Maiesties Barons of her Highnesse Court of the
Exchequer," and wrote that he had been "delighted to heare and see the
wise and godly course used upon the seate of justice by your worship,
when such have bene arraigned." Unfortunately there is not much evidence
of this kind.

One other fact must not be overlooked. A large percentage of the cases
that went against the accused were in towns judicially independent of
the assize courts. At Faversham, at Lynn, at Yarmouth, and at
Leicester[28] the local municipal authorities were to blame for the
hanging of witches. The regular assize courts had nothing to do with the
matter. The case at Faversham in Kent was unusual. Joan Cason was
indicted for bewitching to death a three-year-old child. Eight of her
neighbors, se