The last trial for witchcraft was conducted in 1717 at Leicester by Justice Parker.[45] Curiously enough, the circumstances connected with it make it evident that crudest forms of superstition were still alive. Decency forbids that we should narrate the details of the methods used to demonstrate the guilt of the suspected parties. No less than twenty-five people banded themselves against "Old woman Norton and daughter" and put them through tests of the most approved character. It need hardly be said that the swimming ordeal was tried and that both creatures "swam like a cork." The persecutors then set to work to "fetch blood of the witches." In this they had "good success," but the witches "would be so stubborn, that they were often forced to call the constable to bring assistance of a number of persons to hold them by force to be blooded."[46] The "old witch" was also stripped and searched "publickly before a great number of good women." The most brutal and illegal of all forms of witch procedure had been revived, as if to celebrate the last appearance of the Devil. But the rest of the story is pleasanter. When the case came before the grand jury at the assizes, over which Justice Parker was presiding, "the bill was not found." With this the story of English trials comes to an end. The statute of James I had been practically quashed, and, though it was not to be taken from the law books for nineteen years, it now meant nothing. It was very hard for the great common people to realize what had happened. As the law was breaking down they had shown an increasing tendency to take justice into their own hands. In the case with which we have just been dealing we have seen the accusers infringing the personal rights of the individual, and calling in the constables to help them in their utterly unlawful performances. This was not new. As early as 1691, if Hutchinson may be trusted, there were "several tried by swimming in Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire and some were drowned." It would be easy to add other and later accounts,[47] but we must be content with one.[48] The widow Coman, in Essex, had recently lost her husband; and her pastor, the Reverend Mr. Boys, went to cheer her in her melancholy. Because he had heard her accounted a witch he questioned her closely and received a nonchalant admission of relations with the Devil. That astounded him. When he sought to inquire more closely, he was put off. "Butter is eight pence a pound and Cheese a groat a pound," murmured the woman, and the clergyman left in bewilderment. But he came back in the afternoon, and she raved so wildly that he concluded her confession was but "a distraction in her head." Two women, however, worried from her further and more startling confessions. The minister returned, bringing with him "Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Grimes," two of the disbelieving "sparks of the age." The rest of the story may be told as it is given in another account, a diary of the time.