self a pretender
and suffered "condign punishment." This case happened within six miles
of Scot's home and opened his eyes to the possibility of humbug. In the
very same year two pretenders, Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder, were
convicted in London. By vomiting pins and straws[8] they had convinced
many that they were bewitched, but the trickery was soon found out and
they were compelled to do public penance at St. Paul's.[9] We are not
told what was the fate of a detestable Mother Baker, who, when consulted
by the parents of a sick girl at New Romney in Kent, accused a neighbor
woman.[10] She said that the woman had made a waxen heart and pricked it
and by this means accomplished her evil purpose. In order to prove her
accusation, she had in the mean time concealed the wax figure of a heart
in the house of the woman she accused, and then pretended to find
it.[11] It is some satisfaction to know that the malicious
creature--who, during the history of witchcraft, had many imitators--was
caught and compelled to confess.

Scot learned, indeed, by observing marvels of this sort[12]--what it is
strange that many others did not learn--to look upon displays of the
supernatural with a good deal of doubt. How much he had ever believed in
them we do not know. It is not unlikely that in common with his
generation he had, as a young man, held a somewhat ill-defined opinion
about the Devil's use of witches. The belief in that had come down, a
comparatively innocuous tradition, from a primitive period. It was a
subject that had not been raised in speculation or for that matter in
court rooms. But since Scot's early manhood all this had been changed.
England had been swept by a tidal wave of suspicion. Hazy theological
notions had been tightened into rigid convictions. Convictions had
passed into legislative statutes and instructions to judges. The bench,
which had at first acted on the new laws with caution and a desire to
detect imposture, became infected with the fear and grew more ready to
discover witchcraft and to punish it. It is unnecessary to recapitulate
the progress of a movement already traced in the previous chapter.
Suffice it to say that the Kentish gentleman, familiarized with accounts
of imposture, was unwilling to follow the rising current of
superstition. Of course this is merely another way of saying that Scot
was unconventional in his mental operations and thought the subject out
for himself with results variant f