In previous chapters we have had occasion to observe the continuity of superstition in certain localities. It is obvious that Lancashire offers one of the best illustrations of that principle. The connection between the alarms of 1612 and 1633-1634 is not a matter of theory, but can be established by definite proof. It is perhaps not out of order to inquire, then, why Lancashire should have been so infested with witches. It is the more necessary when we consider that there were other witch cases in the country. Nicholas Starchie's children gave rise to the first of the scares. It seems likely that a certain Utley was hanged at Lancaster in 1630 for bewitching a gentleman's child.[29] During Commonwealth days, as we shall find, there was an alarm at Lancaster that probably cost two witches their lives. No county in England except Essex had a similar record. No explanation can be offered for the records of these two counties save that both had been early infected with a hatred of witches, and that the witches came to be connected, in tradition, with certain localities within the counties and with certain families living there. This is, indeed, an explanation that does not explain. It all comes back to the continuity of superstition. We have already referred to the widespread interest in the Lancashire witches. There are two good illustrations of this interest. When Sir William Brereton was travelling in Holland in June of 1634, a little while before the four women had been brought to London, he met King Charles's sister, the Queen of Bohemia, and at once, apparently, they began to talk about the great Lancashire discovery.[30] The other instance of comment on the case was in England. It is one which shows that playwrights were quite as eager then as now to be abreast of current topics. Before final judgment had been given on the Lancashire women, Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, well known dramatists, had written a play on the subject which was at once published and "acted at the Globe on the Bankside by His Majesty's Actors." By some it has been supposed that this play was an older play founded on the Lancashire affair of 1612 and warmed over in 1634; but the main incidents and the characters of the play are so fully copied from the depositions of the young Robinson and from the charges preferred against Mary Spencer, Frances Dickonson, and Margaret Johnson, that a layman would at once pronounce it a play written entirely to order from the affair of 1634. Nothing unique in the stories was left out. The pail incident--of course without its rational explanation--was grafted into the play and put upon the stage. Indeed, a marriage that afforded the hook upon which to hang a bundle of indecencies, and the story of a virtuous husband who discovers his wife to be a witch, were the only added motives of importance. For our purpose the significance of the play lies of course in its testimony to the general interest--the people of London were