of all denominations, classed in general as Independents,
who, though they had originally courted the Presbyterians as the more
numerous and prevailing party, had at length shaken themselves loose of
that connexion, and finally combated with and overcome them. The
Independents were distinguished by the wildest license in their
religious tenets, mixed with much that was nonsensical and mystical.
They disowned even the title of a regular clergy, and allowed the
preaching of any one who could draw together a congregation that would
support him, or who was willing, without recompense, to minister to the
spiritual necessities of his hearers. Although such laxity of discipline
afforded scope to the wildest enthusiasm, and room for all possible
varieties of doctrine, it had, on the other hand, this inestimable
recommendation, that it contributed to a degree of general toleration
which was at that time unknown to any other Christian establishment. The
very genius of a religion which admitted of the subdivision of sects _ad
infinitum_, excluded a legal prosecution of any one of these for heresy
or apostasy. If there had even existed a sect of Manichaeans, who made it
their practice to adore the Evil Principle, it may be doubted whether
the other sectaries would have accounted them absolute outcasts from the
pale of the church; and, fortunately, the same sentiment induced them to
regard with horror the prosecutions against witchcraft. Thus the
Independents, when, under Cromwell, they attained a supremacy over the
Presbyterians, who to a certain point had been their allies, were
disposed to counteract the violence of such proceedings under pretence
of witchcraft, as had been driven forward by the wretched Hopkins, in
Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, for three or four years previous to 1647.

The return of Charles II. to his crown and kingdom, served in some
measure to restrain the general and wholesale manner in which the laws
against witchcraft had been administered during the warmth of the Civil
War. The statute of the 1st of King James, nevertheless, yet subsisted;
nor is it in the least likely, considering the character of the prince,
that he, to save the lives of a few old men or women, would have run the
risk of incurring the odium of encouraging or sparing a crime still held
in horror by a great part of his subjects. The statute, however, was
generally administered by wise and skilful judges, and the accused had
such a chance o