y in England and a few hangings, but none that had
attracted comment. It was not until the summer of 1682, when three
Devonshire women were arraigned, tried, and sent to the gallows by
Justice Raymond,[23] that the public again realized that witchcraft was
still upheld by the courts.

The trials in themselves had no very striking features. At least two of
the three women had been beggars; the other, who had been the first
accused and who had in all probability involved her two companions, had
on two different occasions before been arraigned but let off. The
evidence submitted against them consisted of the usual sworn statements
made by neighbors to the justice of the peace, as well as of hardly
coherent confessions by the accused. The repetition of the Lord's Prayer
was gone through with and the results of examinations by a female jury
were detailed _ad nauseam_. The poor creatures on trial were remarkably
stupid, even for beings of their grade. Their several confessions
tallied with one another in hardly a single point.

Sir Thomas Raymond and Sir Francis North were the judges present at the
Exeter assizes. Happily the latter has left his impressions of this
trial.[24] He admits that witch trials worried him because the evidence
was usually slight, but the people very intent upon a verdict of guilty.
He was very glad that at Exeter his colleague who sat upon the "crown
side" had to bear the responsibilities.[25] The two women (he seems to
have known of no more) were scarce alive as to sense and understanding,
but were "overwhelm'd with melancholy and waking Dreams." Barring
confessions, the other evidence he considered trifling, and he cites the
testimony of a witness that "he saw a cat leap in at her (the old
woman's) window, when it was twilight; and this Informant farther saith
that he verily believeth the said Cat to be the Devil, and more saith
not." Raymond, declares his colleague, made no nice distinctions as to
the possibility of melancholy women contracting an opinion of themselves
that was false, but left the matter to the jury.[26]

We have already intimated that the rulings of the courts were by no
means all of them adverse to the witches. Almost contemporaneous with
the far-reaching sentence of Sir Matthew Hale at Bury were the trials in
Somerset, where flies and nails and needles played a similar part, but
where the outcome was very different. A zealous justice of the peace,
Robert Hunt, had for the las