rom those of his own generation. Here
was a new abuse in England, here was a wrong that he had seen spring up
within his own lifetime and in his own part of England. He made it his
mission as far as possible to right the wrong. "For so much," he says,
"as the mightie helpe themselves together, and the poore widowes crie,
though it reach to heaven, is scarse heard here upon earth: I thought
good (according to my poore abilitie) to make intercession, that some
part of common rigor, and some points of hastie judgement may be advised
upon."[13]

It was indeed a splendid mission and he was singularly well equipped for
it. He had the qualifications--scholarly training and the power of
scientific observation, a background of broad theological and scriptural
information, a familiarity with legal learning and practice, as well as
a command of vigorous and incisive language--which were certain to make
his work effective towards its object.

That he was a scholar is true in more senses than one. In his use of
deduction from classical writers he was something of a scholastic, in
his willingness to venture into new fields of thought he was a product
of the Renaissance, in his thorough use of research he reminds us of a
modern investigator. He gives in his book a bibliography of the works
consulted by him and one counts over two hundred Latin and thirty
English titles. His reading had covered the whole field of superstition.
To Cornelius Agrippa and to Wierus (Johann Weyer),[14] who had attacked
the tyranny of superstition upon the Continent, he owed an especial
debt. He had not, however, borrowed enough from them to impair in any
serious way the value of his own original contribution.

In respect to law, Scot was less a student than a man of experience. The
_Discoverie_, however, bristled with references which indicated a legal
way of thinking. He was almost certainly a man who had used the law.
Brinsley Nicholson believes that he had been a justice of the peace. In
any case he had a lawyer's sense of the value of evidence and a lawyer's
way of putting his case.

No less practical was his knowledge of theology and scripture. Here he
had to meet the baffling problems of the Witch of Endor. The story of
the witch who had called up before the frightened King Saul the spirit
of the dead Samuel and made him speak, stood as a lion in the path of
all opponents of witch persecution. When Scot dared to explain this Old
Testament tale as