Witchcraft under Charles II and James II 254 CHAPTER XII. Glanvill and Webster and the Literary War over Witchcraft, 1660-1688 284 CHAPTER XIII. The Final Decline 313 CHAPTER XIV. The Close of the Literary Controversy 334 Appendices 345 A. Pamphlet Literature 345 B. List of Persons Sentenced to Death for Witchcraft during the Reign of James I 383 C. List of Cases of Witchcraft, 1558-1717, with References to Sources and Literature 384 Index 421 CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH WITCHCRAFT. It has been said by a thoughtful writer that the subject of witchcraft has hardly received that place which it deserves in the history of opinions. There has been, of course, a reason for this neglect--the fact that the belief in witchcraft is no longer existent among intelligent people and that its history, in consequence, seems to possess rather an antiquarian than a living interest. No one can tell the story of the witch trials of sixteenth and seventeenth century England without digging up a buried past, and the process of exhumation is not always pleasant. Yet the study of English witchcraft is more than an unsightly exposure of a forgotten superstition. There were few aspects of sixteenth and seventeenth century life that were not affected by the ugly belief. It is quite impossible to grasp the social conditions, it is impossible to understand the opinions, fears, and hopes of the men and women who lived in Elizabethan and Stuart England, without some knowledge of the part played in that age by witchcraft. It was a matter that concerned all classes from the royal household to the ignorant denizens of country villages. Privy councillors anxious about their sovereign and thrifty peasants worrying over their crops, clergymen alert to detect the Devil in their own parishes, medical quacks eager to profit by the fear of evil women, justices of the peace zealous to beat down the works of Satan--all classes, indeed--believed more or less sincerely in the dangerous powers of human creatures who had surrendered themselves to the Evil One.