“We intended to write a particular Treatise concerning the effects of this Eclips, which is the greatest this Age hath beheld, and in that Booke to have delivered unto Posterity a Method whereby they might have judged what manner of Effects should have been signified by any Defect of either of the two Luminaries; but our time at this present being otherwise taken up, we are confined to a narrow scantling of Paper: we hope some well-wishers unto Astrology will perfect what we intended on that Subject, being desirous to see the Labours of other Men abroad, the whole burthen hereof being too heavy for one Anglicus.” The idlest tales were believed and credited as facts, and men more cunning than the common herd thrived by magical and cabalistic spells they were supposed to cast upon evil spirits. The clergy dealt in exorcisms, and in surplice and stole performed the rites of the Church. They condemned witchcraft, however, as heresy; and as early as the reign of Henry VIII. a statute was passed which enacted that any person, after the day therein named, devising, practising, or exercising “any invocations, or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries, to the intent to get or find money or treasure, or to waste, consume, or destroy any person in his body, members, or goods, or to provoke any person to unlawful love, or for any other unlawful intent or purpose, or by occasion or colour of such things or any of them, or for despite of Christ, or lucre of money, dig up or pull down any cross, or crosses, or by such invocations or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorcery, or any of them, take upon them to tell or declare where goods stolen or lost shall be come—that then all and every person or persons offending as before is mentioned, shall be deemed, accepted, and adjudged a felon or felons, without benefit of clergy.” This act was carefully worded, inasmuch as it only extends to witchcraft or enchantment practised with a criminal or unlawful intent.