s moreover a man for whom the king had a high personal
regard.

[55] At the August assizes there had been an effort to show that the
children were "counterfeiting." See the _Discourse_, 235-237.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES AND CHARLES I.

In his attitude towards superstition, Charles I resembled the later
rather than the earlier James I. No reign up to the Revolution was
marked by so few executions. It was a time of comparative quiet. Here
and there isolated murmurs against suspected creatures of the Devil
roused the justices of the peace to write letters, and even to make
inquiries that as often as not resulted in indefinite commitments, or
brought out the protests of neighbors in favor of the accused. But, if
there were not many cases, they represented a wide area. Middlesex,
Wilts, Somerset, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Durham,
Yorkshire, and Northumberland were among the counties infested. Yet we
can count but six executions, and only four of them rest upon secure
evidence.[1] This is of course to reckon the reign of Charles as not
extending beyond 1642, when the Civil War broke out and the Puritan
leaders assumed responsibility for the government.

Up to that time there was but one really notable witch alarm in England.
But it was one that illustrated again, as in Essex, the continuity of
the superstition in a given locality. The Lancashire witches of 1633
were the direct outcome of the Lancashire witches of 1612. The story is
a weird one. An eleven-year-old boy played truant one day to his
cattle-herding, and, as he afterwards told the story, went
plum-gathering. When he came back he had to find a plausible excuse to
present to his parents. Now, the lad had been brought up in the
Blackburn forest, close to Pendle Hill; he had overheard stories of
Malking Tower[2] from the chatter of gossipping women;[3] he had
shivered as suspected women were pointed out to him; he knew the names
of some of them. His imagination, in search for an excuse, caught at the
witch motive[4] and elaborated it with the easy invention of youth.[5]
He had seen two greyhounds come running towards him. They looked like
those owned by two of his neighbors. When he saw that no one was
following them, he set out to hunt with them, and presently a hare rose
very near before him, at the sight whereof he cried "Loo, Loo," but the
dogs would not run. Being very angry, he tied them to a little bush in
the hedge an