scourses, written by
John Deacon and John Walker ..._ (1602): "But like a tried and
weather-beaten bird [I] wish for quiet corner to rest myself in and to
drye my feathers in the warme sun."

[35] T. G. Law, "Devil Hunting in Elizabethan England," in _Nineteenth
Century_, March, 1894.

[36] On the matter of exorcism the position of the Church of England
became fixed by 1604. The question had been a cause of disagreement
among the leaders of the Reformation. The Lutherans retained exorcism in
the baptismal ritual and rivalled the Roman clergy in their exorcism of
the possessed. It was just at the close of the sixteenth century that
there arose in Lutheran Germany a hot struggle between the believers in
exorcism and those who would oust it as a superstition. The Swiss and
Genevan reformers, unlike Luther, had discarded exorcism, declaring it
to have belonged only to the early church, and charging modern instances
to Papist fraud; and with them seem to have agreed their South German
friends. In England baptismal exorcism was at first retained in the
ritual under Edward VI, but in 1552, under Bucer's influence, it was
dropped. Under Elizabeth the yet greater influence of Zurich and Geneva
must have discredited all exorcism, and one finds abundant evidence of
this in the writings of Jewel and his followers. An interesting letter
of Archbishop Parker in 1574 shows his utter incredulity as to
possession in the case of Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder of Lothbury;
see Parker's _Correspondence_ (Parker Soc., Cambridge, 1856), 465-466.
His successor, the Calvinistic Whitgift, was almost certainly of the
same mind. Bancroft, the next archbishop of Canterbury, drew up or at
least inspired that epoch-making body of canons enacted by Convocation
in the spring of 1604, the 72d article of which forbids any Anglican
clergyman, without the express consent of his bishop obtained
beforehand, to use exorcism in any fashion under any pretext, on pain of
being counted an impostor and deposed from the ministry. This ended the
matter so far as the English church was concerned. For this resume of
the Protestant and the Anglican attitude toward exorcism I am indebted
to Professor Burr.

[37] Harsnett, _A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_ (London,
1605), 136-138.

[38] It is not impossible that Harsnett was acting as a mouth-piece for
Bancroft. Darrel wrote: "There is no doubt but that S. H. stand for
Samuell Harsnet, chapline to the