ed.[22]

The rest of the story the reader knows from the last chapter. Mother
Sutton and her daughter were put to various ordeals and at length
hanged. Doubtless the imaginative servant, who had in some way, perhaps,
been involved in the original quarrel, gained favor with his master, and
standing in the community.[23]

The tale of the Bakewell witches is a very curious one and, though not
to be confidently depended upon, may suggest how it was possible to
avail oneself of superstition in order to repay a grudge. A Scotchman
staying at a lodging-house in Bakewell fell in debt to his landlady, who
retained some of his clothes as security. He went to London, concealed
himself in a cellar, and was there found by a watchman, who arrested him
for being in an unoccupied house with felonious intent. He professed to
be dazed and declared that he was at Bakewell in Derbyshire at three
o'clock that morning. He explained it by the fact that he had repeated
certain words which he had heard his lodging-house keeper and her sister
say. The judge was amazed, the man's depositions were taken down, and he
was sent to the justices of Derby.

All that we really know about the Bakewell affair is that several
witches probably suffered death there in 1607. A local antiquarian has
given this tale of how the alarm started.[24] While it is unlike any
other narrative of witchcraft, it is not necessarily without foundation.

The reader has doubtless observed that the cases which we have been
describing occurred, all of them with one exception, between 1603 and
1619. In discussing the matter of the distribution of witchcraft in the
last chapter we noted that not only executions for the crime, but even
accusations and indictments, were nearly altogether limited to the first
fifteen years of James's rule. If it is true that there was a rather
sudden falling off of prosecution in the reign of the zealous James, the
fact merits explanation. Fortunately the explanation is not far to seek.
The king's faith in the verity of many of the charges made against
witches had been rudely shaken. As a matter of fact there had always
been a grain of skepticism in his make-up. This had come out even before
he entered England. In 1597 he had become alarmed at the spread of
trials in Scotland and had revoked all the commissions then in force for
the trial of the offence.[25] At the very time when he became king of
England, there were special circumstances that mus