ish Witchcraft 1

CHAPTER II.

Witchcraft under Elizabeth 33

CHAPTER III.

Reginald Scot 57

CHAPTER IV.

The Exorcists 73

CHAPTER V.

James I and Witchcraft 93

CHAPTER VI.

Notable Jacobean Cases 120

CHAPTER VII.

The Lancashire Witches and Charles I 146

CHAPTER VIII.

Matthew Hopkins 164

CHAPTER IX.

Witchcraft during the Commonwealth and Protectorate 206

CHAPTER X.

The Literature of Witchcraft from 1603 to 1660 227

CHAPTER XI.

Witchcraft under Charles II and James II 254

CHAPTER XII.

Glanvill and Webster and the Literary War over
Witchcraft, 1660-1688 284

CHAPTER XIII.

The Final Decline 313

CHAPTER XIV.

The Close of the Literary Controversy 334

Appendices 345

A. Pamphlet Literature 345

B. List of Persons Sentenced to Death for
Witchcraft during the Reign of James I 383

C. List of Cases of Witchcraft, 1558-1717,
with References to Sources and Literature 384

Index 421

CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH WITCHCRAFT.

It has been said by a thoughtful writer that the subject of witchcraft
has hardly received that place which it deserves in the history of
opinions. There has been, of course, a reason for this neglect--the fact
that the belief in witchcraft is no longer existent among intelligent
people and that its history, in consequence, seems to possess rather an
antiquarian than a living interest. No one can tell the story of the
witch trials of sixteenth and seventeenth century England without
digging up a buried past, and the process of exhumation is not always
pleasant. Yet the study of English witchcraft is more than an unsightly
exposure of a forgotten superstition. There were few aspects of