Jeremy Taylor was surely no Puritan; but he believed in witchcraft. It is a sin, he tells us, that is “infallibly desperate,”[11] and in his Holy Living (1650) he has even given the weight of his authority to the reality of sexual relations between witches and the devil.[12] It was not in Puritan times, but in 1664, four years after the Restoration, that Sir Matthew Hale, then Chief Baron of the Exchequer, pronounced from the bench the following opinion in the Bury St. Edmunds case:--“That there were such Creatures as _Witches_ he made no doubt at all; For _First_, the Scriptures had affirmed so much. _Secondly_, The wisdom of all Nations had provided Laws against such Persons, which is an Argument of their confidence of such a crime. And such hath been the judgment of this Kingdom, as appears by that Act of Parliament[13] which hath provided Punishments proportionable to the quality of the Offence. And desired them [the jury], strictly to observe their Evidence; and desired the great God of Heaven to direct their Hearts in this weighty thing they had in hand: _For to Condemn the Innocent, and to let the Guilty go free, were both an Abomination to the Lord_.”[14] Hale’s words were fraught with momentous consequences, for he was “allowed on all hands to be the most profound lawyer of his time,”[15] and the Bury case became a precedent of great weight. “It was,” writes Cotton Mather, “a Tryal much considered by the Judges of New England.”[16] Hale’s conduct on this occasion has of course subjected him to severe criticism. Lord Campbell, for example, goes so far as to declare that he “murdered” the old women,--a dictum which shows but slight comprehension of the temper of the seventeenth century. More creditable to Campbell’s historical sense is the following passage:--“Although, at the present day, we regard this trial as a most lamentable exhibition of credulity and inhumanity, I do not know that it at all lowered Hale in public estimation in his own life.”[17] Bishop Burnet, as is well-known, makes no mention of the case in his Life of Hale.[18] One might surmise that he omitted it out of respect for his hero’s memory, since his little book is rather an obituary tribute than a biography. More probably, however, Burnet did not regard the case as any more significant than many other decisions of Hale’s which he likewise passed over in silence. Unequivocal evidence that the Bury trial did not injure Hale’s reputation may be found in the silence of Roger North. North’s elaborate character of Hale, in his Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford,[19] is notoriously prejudiced in the extreme. Though admitting Hale’s legal learning and many good qualities, North loses no opportunity to attack his record. Besides, North praises the Lord Keeper for his conduct in procuring the acquittal of an alleged witch. If, then, the Bury case had seemed to him especially discreditable, or if he had thought that it afforded an opening for