the Laws
of a Kingdom--Usually punished in England as a Crime connected with
Politics--Attempt at Murder for Witchcraft not in itself
Capital--Trials of Persons of Rank for Witchcraft, connected with
State Crimes--Statutes of Henry VIII--How Witchcraft was regarded by
the three Leading Sects of Religion in the Sixteenth Century; first,
by the Catholics; second, by the Calvinists; third, by the Church of
England and Lutherans--Impostures unwarily countenanced by
individual Catholic Priests, and also by some Puritanic
Clergymen--Statute of 1562, and some cases upon it--Case of
Dugdale--Case of the Witches of Warbois, and the execution of the
Family of Samuel--That of Jane Wenham, in which some Church of
England Clergymen insisted on the Prosecution--Hutchison's Rebuke to
them--James the First's Opinion of Witchcraft--His celebrated
Statute, 1 Jac. I.--Canon passed by the Convocation against
Possession--Case of Mr. Fairfax's Children--Lancashire Witches in
1613--Another Discovery in 1634--Webster's Account of the manner in
which the Imposture was managed--Superiority of the Calvinists is
followed by a severe Prosecution of Witches--Executions in Suffolk,
&c. to a dreadful extent--Hopkins, the pretended Witchfinder, the
cause of these Cruelties--His Brutal Practices--His
Letter--Execution of Mr. Lowis--Hopkins Punished--Restoration of
Charles--Trial of Coxe--Of Dunny and Callendar before Lord
Hales--Royal Society and Progress of Knowledge--Somersetshire
Witches--Opinions of the Populace--A Woman Swum for Witchcraft at
Oakly--- Murder at Tring--Act against Witchcraft abolished, and the
belief in the Crime becomes forgotten--Witch Trials in New
England--Dame Glover's Trial--Affliction of the Parvises, and
frightful Increase of the Prosecutions--Suddenly put a stop to--The
Penitence of those concerned in them.

Our account of Demonology in England must naturally, as in every other
country, depend chiefly on the instances which history contains of the
laws and prosecutions against witchcraft. Other superstitions arose and
decayed, were dreaded or despised, without greater embarrassment, in the
provinces in which they have a temporary currency, than that cowards and
children go out more seldom at night, while the reports of ghosts and
fairies are peculiarly current. But when the alarm of witchcraft arises,
Super