the queen and her
government.[24]

We can trace the effect of the ecclesiastic's appeal still further. The
impression produced by it was responsible probably not only for the
passage of the law but also for the issue of commissions to the justices
of the peace to apprehend all the witches they were able to find in
their jurisdictions.[25]

It can hardly be doubted that the impression produced by the bishop's
sermon serves in part to explain the beginning of the state's attack
upon witches. Yet one naturally inquires after some other factor in the
problem. Is it not likely that there were in England itself certain
peculiar conditions, certain special circumstances, that served to
forward the attack? To answer that query, we must recall the situation
in England when Elizabeth took the throne. Elizabeth was a Protestant,
and her accession meant the relinquishment of the Catholic hold upon
England. But it was not long before the claims of Mary, Queen of Scots,
began to give the English ministers bad dreams. Catholic and Spanish
plots against the life of Elizabeth kept the government detectives on
the lookout. Perhaps because it was deemed the hardest to circumvent,
the use of conjuration against the life of the queen was most feared.
It was a method too that appealed to conspirators, who never questioned
its efficacy, and who anticipated little risk of discovery.

To understand why the English government should have been so alarmed at
the efforts of the conjurers, we shall have to go back to the
half-century that preceded the reign of the great queen and review
briefly the rise of those curious traders in mystery. The earlier half
of the fifteenth century, when the witch fires were already lighted in
South Germany, saw the coming of conjurers in England. Their numbers
soon evidenced a growing interest in the supernatural upon the part of
the English and foreshadowed the growing faith in witchcraft. From the
scattered local records the facts have been pieced together to show that
here and there professors of magic powers were beginning to get a
hearing. As they first appear upon the scene, the conjurers may be
grouped in two classes, the position seekers and the treasure seekers.
To the first belong those who used incantations and charms to win the
favor of the powerful, and so to gain advancement for themselves or for
their clients.[26] It was a time when there was every encouragement to
try these means. Men like Wolsey