mes, when men did what seemed good in their own eyes,
assumed the title of Witchfinder General, and, travelling through the
counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, pretended to
discover witches, superintending their examination by the most
unheard-of tortures, and compelling forlorn and miserable wretches to
admit and confess matters equally absurd and impossible; the issue of
which was the forfeiture of their lives. Before examining these cases
more minutely, I will quote Baxter's own words; for no one can have less
desire to wrong a devout and conscientious man, such as that divine most
unquestionably was, though borne aside on this occasion by prejudice and
credulity.

"The hanging of a great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously
known. Mr. Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear
their confessions, and see there was no fraud or wrong done them. I
spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible persons that
lived in the counties, and some that went to them in the prisons, and
heard their sad confessions. Among the rest an old _reading parson_,
named Lowis, not far from Framlingham, was one that was hanged, who
confessed that he had two imps, and that one of them was always putting
him upon doing mischief; and he, being near the sea, as he saw a ship
under sail, it moved him to send it to sink the ship; and he consented,
and saw the ship sink before them." Mr. Baxter passes on to another
story of a mother who gave her child an imp like a mole, and told her to
keep it in a can near the fire, and she would never want; and more such
stuff as nursery-maids tell froward children to keep them quiet.

It is remarkable that in this passage Baxter names the Witchfinder
General rather slightly as "one Hopkins," and without doing him the
justice due to one who had discovered more than one hundred witches, and
brought them to confessions, which that good man received as
indubitable. Perhaps the learned divine was one of those who believed
that the Witchfinder General had cheated the devil out of a certain
memorandum-book, in which Satan, for the benefit of his memory
certainly, had entered all the witches' names in England, and that
Hopkins availed himself of this record.[57]

[Footnote 57: This reproach is noticed in a very rare tract, which was
bought at Mr. Lort's sale, by the celebrated collector Mr. Bindley, and
is now in the author's possession. Its full title is, "The Disc