e; and
decreed, at the same time, that all persons who refused to denounce a
witch, should be punished as accomplices; and that all, on the contrary,
who gave evidence against one should be rewarded.

"From these considerations, sire, and in the execution of so holy an
ordinance, your parliaments, by their decrees, proportion their
punishments to the guilt of the offenders; and your parliament of Normandy
has never, until the present time, found that its practice was different
from that of other courts; for all the books which treat upon this matter
cite an infinite number of decrees condemning witches to be burnt, or
broken on the wheel, or to other punishments. The following are
examples:--In the time of Chilperic, as may be seen in Gregory of Tours,
b. vi. c. 35 of his _History of France_; all the decrees of the parliament
of Paris passed according to, and in conformity with, this ancient
jurisprudence of the kingdom, cited by Imbert, in his _Judicial Practice_;
all those cited by Monstrelet, in 1459, against the witches of Artois; the
decrees of the same parliament, of the 13th of October 1573, against Mary
Le Fief, native of Saumur; of the 21st of October 1596, against the Sieur
de Beaumont, who pleaded, in his defence, that he had only sought the aid
of the devil for the purpose of unbewitching the afflicted and of curing
diseases; of the 4th of July 1606, against Francis du Bose; of the 20th of
July 1582, against Abel de la Rue, native of Coulommiers; of the 2d of
October 1593, against Rousseau and his daughter; of 1608, against another
Rousseau and one Peley, for witchcraft and adoration of the devil at the
Sabbath, under the figure of a he-goat, as confessed by them; the decree
of 4th of February 1615, against Leclerc, who appealed from the sentence
of the parliament of Orleans, and who was condemned for having attended
the Sabbath, and confessed, as well as two of his accomplices, who died in
prison, that he had adored the devil, renounced his baptism and his faith
in God, danced the witches' dance, and offered up unholy sacrifices; the
decrees of the 6th of May 1616, against a man named Leger, on a similar
accusation; the pardon granted by Charles IX. to Trois Echelles, upon
condition of revealing his accomplices, but afterwards revoked for renewed
sorcery on his part; the decree of the parliament of Paris, cited by
Mornac in 1595; the judgments passed in consequence of the commission
given by Henry IV. to the