f steady peace and security. By 1653 the equilibrium of England had
been restored. Cromwell's government was beginning to run smoothly. The
courts were in full swing. None of those conditions to which we have
attributed the spread of the witch alarms of the Civil Wars were any
longer in operation. It is not surprising, then, that the Protectorate
was one of the most quiet periods in the annals of witchcraft. While the
years 1648-1653 had witnessed thirty executions in England, the period
of the Protectorate saw but half a dozen, and three of these fell within
the somewhat disturbed rule of Richard Cromwell.[30] In other words,
there was a very marked falling off of convictions for witchcraft, a
falling off that had indeed begun before the year 1653. Yet this
diminution of capital sentences does not by any means signify that the
realm was rid of superstition. In Middlesex, in Somerset and Devon, in
York, Northumberland, and Cumberland, the attack upon witches on the
part of the people was going on with undiminished vigor. If no great
discoveries were made, if no nests of the pestilent creatures were
unearthed, the justices of the peace were kept quite as busy with
examinations as ever before.

To be sure, an analysis of cases proves that a larger proportion of
those haled to court were light offenders, "good witches" whose healing
arts had perhaps been unsuccessful, dealers in magic who had aroused
envy or fear. The court records of Middlesex and York are full of
complaints against the professional enchanters. In most instances they
were dismissed. Now and then a woman was sent to the house of
correction,[31] but even this punishment was the exception.

Two other kinds of cases appeared with less frequency. We have one very
clear instance at Wakefield, in York, where a quarrel between two tenant
farmers over their highway rights became so bitter that a chance threat
uttered by the loser of the lawsuit, "It shall be a dear day's work for
you," occasioned an accusation of witchcraft.[32] In another instance
the debt of a penny seems to have been the beginning of a hatred between
two impecunious creatures, and this brought on a charge.[33]

The most common type of case, of course, was that where strange disease
or death played a part. In Yorkshire, in Hertfordshire, and in Cornwall
there were trials based upon a sort of evidence with which the reader is
already quite familiar. It was easy for the morbid mother of a dead
c