-their
precautions were redoubled. Representatives of the government were sent
out to search for conjurers and were paid well for their services.[42]
The Earl of Shrewsbury, a member of the council who had charge of the
now captive Queen Mary, kept in his employ special detectors of
conjuring.[43] Nothing about Elizabeth's government was better
organized than Cecil's detective service, and the state papers show that
the ferreting out of the conjurers was by no means the least of its
work. It was a service carried on, of course, as quietly as could be,
and yet the cases now and again came to light and made clear to the
public that the government was very fearful of conjurers' attacks upon
the queen. No doubt the activity of the council put all conjurers under
public suspicion and in some degree roused public resentment against
them.

This brings us back to the point: What had the conjurers to do with
witchcraft? By this time the answer is fairly obvious. The practisers of
the magic arts, the charmers and enchanters, were responsible for
developing the notions of witchcraft. The good witch brought in her
company the black witch. This in itself might never have meant more than
an increased activity in the church courts. But when Protestant England
grew suddenly nervous for the life of the queen, when the conjurers
became a source of danger to the sovereign, and the council commenced
its campaign against them, the conditions had been created in which
witchcraft became at once the most dangerous and detested of crimes.
While the government was busy putting down the conjurers, the aroused
popular sentiment was compelling the justices of the peace and then the
assize judges to hang the witches.

This cannot be better illustrated than by the Abingdon affair of
1578-1579. Word had been carried to the privy council that Sir Henry
Newell, justice of the peace, had committed some women near Abingdon on
the charge of making waxen images.[44] The government was at once
alarmed and sent a message to Sir Henry and to the Dean of Windsor
instructing them to find out the facts and to discover if the plots were
directed against the queen. The precaution was unnecessary. There was no
ground for believing that the designs of the women accused had included
the queen. Indeed the evidence of guilt of any kind was very flimsy. But
the excitement of the public had been stirred to the highest pitch. The
privy council had shown its fear of the w