with her lips the pins which she had placed ready in her stomacher.  The man was acquitted, of course.  A frightful old hag, who was present, distinguished herself so much by her benedictions on the judge, that he asked the cause of the peculiar interest which she took in the acquittal.  “Twenty years ago,” said the poor woman, “they would have hanged me for a witch, but could not; and now, but for your lordship, they would have murdered my innocent son."[62]

[Footnote 62:  Roger North’s “Life of Lord-Keeper Guilford.”]

Such scenes happened frequently on the assizes, while country gentlemen, like the excellent Sir Roger de Coverley, retained a private share in the terror with which their tenants, servants, and retainers regarded some old Moll White, who put the hounds at fault and ravaged the fields with hail and hurricanes.  Sir John Reresby, after an account of a poor woman tried for a witch at York in 1686 and acquitted, as he thought, very properly, proceeds to tell us that, notwithstanding, the sentinel upon the jail where she was confined avowed “that he saw a scroll of paper creep from under the prison-door, and then change itself first into a monkey and then into a turkey, which the under-keeper confirmed.  This,” says Sir John, “I have heard from the mouth of both, and now leave it to be believed or disbelieved as the reader may be inclined."[63] We may see that Reresby, a statesman and a soldier, had not as yet “plucked the old woman out of his heart.”  Even Addison himself ventured no farther in his incredulity respecting this crime than to contend that although witchcraft might and did exist, there was no such thing as a modern instance competently proved.

[Footnote 63:  “Memoirs of Sir John Reresby,” p. 237.]

As late as 1682 three unhappy women named Susan Edwards, Mary Trembles, and Temperance Lloyd were hanged at Exeter for witchcraft, and, as usual, on their own confession.  This is believed to be the last execution of the kind in England under form of judicial sentence.  But the ancient superstition, so interesting to vulgar credulity, like sediment clearing itself from water, sunk down in a deeper shade upon the ignorant and lowest classes of society in proportion as the higher regions were purified from its influence.  The populace, including the ignorant of every class, were more enraged against witches when their passions were once excited in proportion to the lenity exercised towards the objects of their indignation by those who administered the laws.  Several cases occurred in which the mob, impressed with a conviction of the guilt of some destitute old creatures, took the law into their own hands, and proceeding upon such evidence as Hopkins would have had recourse to, at once, in their own apprehension, ascertained their criminality and administered the deserved punishment.