Two statutes were passed in 1551, one relating to false prophesies, due no doubt to the machinations of Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid of Kent,” and the other was levelled at conjurgations, witchcraft and sorcery. The statute of Elizabeth, in 1562, recognized witchcraft as a crime of first magnitude, punishable by death, regardless of whether it was exerted against the lives, limbs, or property of the subjects.[25] On his accession to the throne in 1604 King James passed the statute whereby it was enacted that: “If any person shall use, practice, or exercise, any conjurgation of any wicked or evil spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, or feed any such spirit, the first offense to be imprisoned for a year and stand in the pillory once a quarter; the second offense to be death.” The milder punishment was not inflicted, but all convicted under this statute were hanged and burned, or burned, without previous strangling, “alive and quick.” This statute continued on the statute books until the year 1736, when it was repealed and suffered no longer to disgrace the intelligence of the country, after which date witches, conjurers and fortune-tellers were only subjected to the jail sentences common to other misdemeanors, confinement for short intervals, or the pillory. We are reliably informed that during the Long Parliament, in England, three thousand witches were executed[26] and during the first eighty years of the seventeenth century, it has been estimated that five hundred people were annually executed for witchcraft, in England, making a total of forty thousand who thus met their deaths, during the whole period referred to.[27] One of the rankest weeds in the garden of wild delusions that flourished in England, in the seventeenth century was Matthew Hopkins, who prided himself upon the title of “Witch-finder General.” About 1644 he made the discovery of some moles or other marks on the accused persons, which he advertised as “devil’s marks” and he immediately became in great demand in helping to hunt down and convict persons accused of this crime. He had several tests to subject them to, and one of the cruelest was to tie the hands and feet of the prisoner together cross-wise, the right thumb to the toe of the left foot and _vice versa_. Being thus tied, so they could not swim, they were wrapped in a cloth or blanket and placed in a pool of water or a river, on their backs. If they sank, they were innocent, but drowned for their innocence, and if they floated, they were adjudged guilty of witchcraft and hanged or burned.[28]