nstructions for the making and maintaining
thereof_. That the book ministered to a practical interest was evidenced
by the call for three editions within five years. Whether he now applied
himself to the study of that subject which was to be the theme of his
_Discoverie_, we do not know. It was a matter which had doubtless
arrested his attention even earlier and had enlisted a growing interest
upon his part. Not until a decade after his _Hoppe-Garden_, however, did
he put forth the epoch-making _Discoverie_. Nor does it seem likely that
he had been engaged for a long period on the actual composition. Rather,
the style and matter of the book seem to evince traces of hurry in
preparation. If this theory be true--and Mr. Brinsley Nicholson, his
modern commentator, has adduced excellent reasons for accepting
it[2]--there can be but one explanation, the St. Oses affair. That
tragedy, occurring within a short distance of his own home, had no doubt
so outraged his sense of justice, that the work which he had perhaps
long been contemplating he now set himself to complete as soon as
possible.[3] Even he who runs may read in Scot's strong sentences that
he was not writing for instruction only, to propound a new doctrine, but
that he was battling with the single purpose to stop a detestable and
wicked practice. Something of a dilettante in real life, he became in
his writing a man with an absorbing mission. That mission sprang not
indeed from indignation at the St. Oses affair alone. From the days of
childhood his experience had been of a kind to encourage skepticism. He
had been reared in a county where Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of
Kent, first came into prominence, and he had seen the downfall that
followed her public exposure.[4] In the year after he brought out his
_Hoppe-garden_, his county was again stirred by performances of a
supposedly supernatural character. Mildred Norrington, a girl of
seventeen,[5] used ventriloquism with such skill that she convinced two
clergymen and all her neighbors that she was possessed. In answer to
queries, the evil spirit that spoke through Mildred declared that "old
Alice of Westwell"[6] had sent him to possess the girl. Alice, the
spirit admitted, stood guilty of terrible witchcrafts. The demon's word
was taken, and Alice seems to have been "arraigned upon this
evidence."[7] But, through the justices' adroit management of the trial,
the fraud of the accuser was exposed. She confessed her