of these
men has seen how they seem the backbone of the entire movement. It is
true that the town of Yarmouth invited them of its own initiative to
take up the work there, but not until they had already made themselves
famous in all East Anglia. There is, indeed, too much evidence that
their visits were in nearly every case the result of their own
deliberate purpose to widen the field of their labors. In brief, two
aggressive men had taken advantage of a time of popular excitement and
alarm. They were fortunate in the state of the public mind, but they
seem to have owed more to their own exertions.

But perhaps to neither factor was their success due so much as to the
want of government in England at this time. We have seen in an earlier
chapter that Charles I and his privy council had put an end to a witch
panic that bade fair to end very tragically. Not that they interfered
with random executions here and there. It was when the numbers involved
became too large that the government stepped in to revise verdicts.
This was what the government of Parliament failed to do. And the reasons
are not far to seek. Parliament was intensely occupied with the war. The
writer believes that it can be proved that, except in so far as
concerned the war, the government of Parliament and the Committee of
Both Kingdoms paid little or no attention to the affairs of the realm.
It is certainly true that they allowed judicial business to go by the
board. The assizes seem to have been almost, if not entirely, suspended
during the last half of the year 1645 and the first half of 1646.[105]
The justices of the peace, who had always shown themselves ready to hunt
down witches, were suffered to go their own gait.[106] To be sure, there
were exceptions. The Earl of Warwick held a court at Chelmsford, but he
was probably acting in a military capacity, and, inexperienced in court
procedure, doubtless depended largely upon the justices of the peace,
who, gathered in quarter sessions, were assisting him. It is true too
that Parliament had sent down a Commission of Oyer and Terminer to Bury,
a commission made up of a serjeant and two clergymen. But these two
cases are, so far as we can discover, the sole instances during these
two years when the justices of the peace were not left to their own
devices. This is significant. Except in Middlesex and in the chartered
towns of England, we have, excepting during this time of war, no records
that witches were