The colonial laws to which New England witches were amenable, codified by Rev. Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, who had had extensive legal training and practice before entering the ministry, were published in 1641. Mr. Ward[2] followed Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, in great measure, but he distanced England in mildness and was far ahead of his time in scope. With him, however, the witch found no favor. Death was the punishment for witchcraft, first and last, and the Puritan, whose sure palladium of civil and religious freedom was the Bible, obeyed the precept to the letter, his highest knowledge and authority. Footnote 2: See M. V. B. Perley’s Ipswich History in J. W. Lewis’s History of Essex County, Mass., Vol. I, page 626. THE MODERN WITCH AND HER TERRIBLE PERSECUTION The modern witch, it is said, had her birth near the beginning of the Christian era. Her persecution began about two hundred years later. From that time hundreds of thousands of victims were immolated to appease the inconsiderate and insatiate demands of her persecutors. In the earliest years witches were generally burned, and in the first one hundred and fifty years it is estimated thirty thousand thus perished. Later, in France, in one century, an almost incredible number suffered—one thousand in a single diocese. In the century, 1600 to 1700, two hundred were hanged in England, one thousand were burned in Scotland, and a much greater number on the Continent. THE AMERICAN WITCH AND VIEWS OF THE EDUCATED In America there were witch trials—in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania,[3]—some years before 1692. In Boston, 1648, Margaret Jones, of malignant touch, was hanged, and Mrs. Ann (Wm.) Hebbins, in 1655. In Springfield, 1651, Mrs. Mary (Hugh) Parsons was hanged. In Ipswich quarter court, 1652, a man was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty shillings, or to be whipped for “having familiarity with the Devil.” The doctrine of witches was embraced not only by the common people, but also by the learned; Tycho Brahe, the prince of astronomers, and Kepler, his student, Martin Luther, the bold theologian, and Melancthon, the gentle; the silver-tongued Dr. Watts and the pious Baxter, who styled a disbeliever in witchcraft “an obdurate Sadducee,” and others whom time fails me to mention. Footnote 3: In 1908 or 1909 a Dutch woman in Pennsylvania was charged in court with the misdemeanor of casting a spell on a cow, so that the cow gave no milk. The woman was fined $5 and ten days in jail. OLD CRONE LORE AND THREE NOTABLE DISSENTERS