who should be
"lawfullie convict be assyses of notorious and common witches, haunting
and resorting devilles and witches."[195] The lives of thousands of
people were rendered unbearable, and the complaint of one, Margaret
Miall, that "she desyres not to live, because nobody will converse with
her, seeing she is under the reputation of a witch," must have
represented the feelings of many.

It was not only for working ill that people were accused of witchcraft
and executed; ill or well made little difference. In Edinburgh in 1623
it was charged against Thomas Grieve that he had relieved many
sicknesses and grievous diseases by sorcery and witchcraft. "He took
sickness off a woman in Fife, and put it upon a cow, which thereafter
ran mad and died." He also cured a child of a disease "by straiking back
the hair of his head, and wrapping him in an anointed cloth, and by that
means putting him asleep," and thus through his devilry and witchcraft,
cured the child. Other charges of a similar kind were brought against
Grieve, who was found guilty and hanged on the Castle Hill.[196] At the
same place, a year previous, Margaret Wallace was also sentenced to be
hanged and burned, on the same kind of charge, and for "practising
devilry, incantation, and witchcraft, especially forbidden by the laws
of Almighty God, and the municipal laws of this realm."

The following bill of costs for burning two women, Jane Wischert and
Isabel Cocker, in Aberdeen, has a certain melancholy interest:--

L. _s._ _d._

Item for 20 loads of Peatts to burn them 2 0 0
" for ane boll of colles 1 4 0
" for four tar barrells 0 6 8
" for fir and win barrells 0 16 8
" for a staick and the dressing of it 0 16 0
" for four fathoms of towis 4 0 0
" to Jon Justice for their execution 0 13 4

In England, no less than in Scotland, America, and on the Continent,
much learned testimony might be cited in defence of witchcraft. The
great Sir Thomas Browne said in the most famous of his writings: "For my
part I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches. They
that doubt of these do not only deny them, but spirits; and are
obliquely and upon consequence, a sort, not of infidels, but
atheists."[197] Henry More, the great Platonist, asserted that they who
deny the agency of