and stratagems spring up one
new method of cutting capers? Is this the top of skill and pride, to
shuffle feet and brandish knees thus, and to trip like a doe and skip
like a squirrel? And wherein differ thy leapings from the hoppings of a
frog, or the bouncings of a goat, or friskings of a dog, or
gesticulations of a monkey? And cannot a palsy shake such a loose leg as
that? Dost thou not twirl like a calf that hath the turn, and twitch up
thy houghs just like a springhault tit?"[54] One might almost conceive
the demon replying to this raillery in the words of Dr. Johnson, "This
merriment of parsons is extremely offensive."

[Footnote 54: Hutchison on Witchcraft, p. 162.]

The dissenters were probably too honest, however simple, to achieve a
complete cure on Dugdale by an amicable understanding; so, after their
year of vigil, they relinquished their task by degrees. Dugdale, weary
of his illness, which now attracted little notice, attended a regular
physician, and was cured of that part of his disease which was not
affected in a regular way _par ordonnance du medecin_. But the reverend
gentlemen who had taken his case in hand still assumed the credit of
curing him, and if anything could have induced them to sing _Te Deum_,
it would have been this occasion. They said that the effect of their
public prayers had been for a time suspended, until seconded by the
continued earnestness of their private devotions!

The ministers of the Church of England, though, from education,
intercourse with the world, and other advantages, they were less prone
to prejudice than those of other sects, are yet far from being entirely
free of the charge of encouraging in particular instances the witch
superstition. Even while Dr. Hutchison pleads that the Church of England
has the least to answer for in that matter, he is under the necessity of
acknowledging that some regular country clergymen so far shared the
rooted prejudices of congregations, and of the government which
established laws against it, as to be active in the persecution of the
suspected, and even in countenancing the superstitious signs by which in
that period the vulgar thought it possible to ascertain the existence of
the afflictions by witchcraft, and obtain the knowledge of the
perpetrator. A singular case is mentioned of three women, called the
Witches of Warbois. Indeed, their story is a matter of solemn enough
record; for Sir Samuel Cromwell, having received the sum