him with the mode in which he executed his promise to teach his vassal dancing.  The following specimen of raillery is worth commemoration:—­“What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? &c.  Canst thou dance no better? &c.  Ransack the old records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there find out some better way of trampling?  Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles 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 of forty pounds as lord of the manor, out of the estate