applied to such a subject) account will be found in
a very scarce tract, which seems to have been unknown
to the writers on witchcraft. Its title is “A
Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, containing
these several particulars; That there are Witches
called bad Witches, and Witches untruly called good
or white Witches, and what manner of people they be,
and how they may be knowne, with many particulars thereunto
tending. Together with the Confessions of many
of those executed since May, 1645, in the several
Counties hereafter mentioned. As also some objections
Answered. By John Stearne, now of Lawshall, neere
Burie Saint Edmunds in Suffolke, sometimes of Manningtree
in Essex. Prov. xvii. 15, He that justifieth
the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even
they both are an abomination to the Lord. Deut.
xiii. 14, Thou shall therefore enquire, and make search,
and aske diligently whether it be truth and the thing
certaine. London, Printed by William Wilson,
dwelling in Little Saint Bartholomews, neere Smithfield,
1648, pages 61, besides preface.” Stearne,
in whom Remigius and De Lancre would have recognized
a congenial soul, had a sort of joint commission with
Hopkins, as Witch-finder, and tells us (see address
to Reader) that he had been in part an agent in finding
out or discovering about 200 witches in Essex, Suffolk,
Northamptonshire, Huntingtonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk,
Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely. He deals
with the subject undoubtedly like a man whose extensive
experience and practice had enabled him to reduce
the matter to a complete system. (See his account
of their marks, pp. 43 to 50.) He might, like John
Kincaid in Tranent, (see Pitcairne’s Criminal
Trials, vol. iii. p. 599,) have assumed the right
of Common Pricker, i.e. Searcher for the
devil’s marks, and had his own tests, which were
infallible. He complains, good man, “that
in many places I never received penny as yet, nor
any am like, notwithstanding I have hands for satisfaction,
except I should sue; [he should have sued by all means,
we might then have had his bill of particulars, which
would have been curious;] but many rather fall upon
me for what hath been received, but I hope such suits
will be disannulled, and that where I have been out
of moneys for Towns in charges and otherwise such
course will be taken that I may be satisfied and paid
with reason.” He was doubtless well deserving
of a recompense, and his neighbours were much to blame
if he did not receive a full and ample one. Of
the latter end of his coadjutor, Hopkins, whom Sir
Walter Scott (see Somers’s Tracts, vol. iii.
p. 97, edit. 1810,) and several other writers represent
as ultimately executed himself for witchcraft, he
gives a very different, and no doubt more correct
account; which, singularly enough, has hitherto remained
entirely unnoticed. “He died peaceably at
Manningtree, after a long sicknesse of a consumption,
as many of his generation had done before him, without
any trouble of conscience for what he had done, as
was falsely reported of him. He was the son of
a godly minister, and therefore, without doubt, within
the Covenant.” Were not the interests of
truth too sacred to be compromised, it might seem
almost a pity to demolish that merited and delightful
retribution which Butler’s lines have immortalized.