overy of
Witches, in Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of
Assize for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins,
Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom. Printed for R.
Royston, at the Angel, in Inn Lane. 1647."]

It may be noticed that times of misrule and violence seem to create
individuals fitted to take advantage from them, and having a character
suited to the seasons which raise them into notice and action; just as a
blight on any tree or vegetable calls to life a peculiar insect to feed
upon and enjoy the decay which it has produced. A monster like Hopkins
could only have existed during the confusion of civil dissension. He was
perhaps a native of Manningtree, in Essex; at any rate, he resided there
in the year 1644, when an epidemic outcry of witchcraft arose in that
town. Upon this occasion he had made himself busy, and, affecting more
zeal and knowledge than other men, learned his trade of a witchfinder,
as he pretends, from experiment. He was afterwards permitted to perform
it as a legal profession, and moved from one place to another, with an
assistant named Sterne, and a female. In his defence against an
accusation of fleecing the country, he declares his regular charge was
twenty shillings a town, including charges of living and journeying
thither and back again with his assistants. He also affirms that he went
nowhere unless called and invited. His principal mode of discovery was
to strip the accused persons naked, and thrust pins into various parts
of their body, to discover the witch's mark, which was supposed to be
inflicted by the devil as a sign of his sovereignty, and at which she
was also said to suckle her imps. He also practised and stoutly defended
the trial by swimming, when the suspected person was wrapped in a sheet,
having the great toes and thumbs tied together, and so dragged through a
pond or river. If she sank, it was received in favour of the accused;
but if the body floated (which must have occurred ten times for once, if
it was placed with care on the surface of the water), the accused was
condemned, on the principle of King James, who, in treating of this mode
of trial, lays down that, as witches have renounced their baptism, so it
is just that the element through which the holy rite is enforced should
reject them, which is a figure of speech, and no argument. It was
Hopkins's custom to keep the poor wretches waking, in order to prevent