Far different was the application in days of old.  The common parish witch is thus described by a contemporary writer, as an old woman “with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue; having a rugged coat on her back, a skull-cap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a dog or cat by her side.”  Such was the witch of real life when this superstition was so prevalent in our own neighbourhood, and even throughout England.  From the beginning of the reign of James the First to the concluding part of the reign of James the Second, it may be considered as having attained the zenith of its popularity.  “Witchcraft and kingcraft both came in with the Stuarts and went out with them.”  It was as if his infernal majesty had taken a lesson from his sacred majesty, and issued a book of sports for his loyal subjects.  “The Revolution put to rights the faith of the country as well as its constitution.”  “The laws were more liberally interpreted and rationally administered.  The trade of witch-finding ceased to be reputable or profitable;” and that silly compilation, the “Demonology” of James, which, with the severe laws enacted against witchcraft by Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, had conjured up more witches and familiars than they could quell, was consigned to the book-worm and the dust.  It is said in the Arabian tales, that Solomon sent out of his kingdom all the demons that he could lay his hands on, packed them up in a brazen vessel, and cast them into the sea.  But James, “our English Solomon,” “imported by his book all that were flying about Europe, to plague the country, which was sufficiently plagued already in such a sovereign.”  This sapient ruler, who, it is said, “taught divinity like a king, and made laws like a priest,” in the first year of his reign made it felony to suckle imps, &c.  This statute, which was repealed March 24th, 1736, describes offences declared felonious, thus:—­

“One that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, covenant with, entertain or employ, feed or reward, any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or shall practise or exercise any witchcraft, &c., whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof:  such offenders, duly and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer death.”

As might be expected, witchcraft so increased in consequence of these denunciations, that, “in the course of fifty years following the passing of this act, besides a great number of single indictments and executions, fifteen were brought to trial at Lancaster in 1612, and twelve condemned; in 1622, six were tried at York; 1634, seventeen condemned at Lancaster; 1644, sixteen were executed at Yarmouth; 1645, fifteen condemned at Chelmsford, and hanged; in the same and following year, about forty at Bury in Suffolk; twenty more in the county, and many in Huntingdon; and (according to the estimate of Ady) some thousands were burned in Scotland.”