[170] Legge, as above, p. 264. [171] 2d ed., 1720. [172] P. 83; 2d ed., p. 108. [173] See W. F. Poole, in Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, II, 133. Dr. Poole finds twelve executions in New England before 1692. This makes the total for all New England, from 1620 to the present day, 34 (including two who died in jail). Cf. C. W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, Boston, 1867, II, 351; S. G. Drake, Annals of Witchcraft, pp. 191 ff. In this part of my paper I have made a few quotations from a book of my own, The Old Farmer and his Almanack (Boston, 1904). [174] “They were the first of all people,” writes Mr. Goodell, “to escape the thraldom” (Reasons for Concluding that the Act of 1711 became a Law, 1884, p. 21). [175] See Francis Hutchinson, Historical Essay, 2d edition, 1720, pp. 45 ff. [176] John Stearne, Hopkins’s associate, speaks of what he has himself “learned and observed since the 25. of March 1645 as being in part an agent in finding out or discovering some of those since that time, being about two hundred in number, in Essex, Suffolke, Northamptonshire, Huntingtonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolke, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Ely in the County of Cambridge, besides other places, justly and deservedly executed upon their legall tryalls” (A Confirmation and Discovery of Witch-craft, London, 1648, To the Reader). Stearne wrote his book after the death of Hopkins, which took place in 1647. In the life of Hopkins in the Dictionary of National Biography, the Witch-Finder is said to have begun operations in 1644. This is a manifest error. Hopkins himself (Discovery of Witches, 1647, p. 2, see below) says that his experiences began at Manningtree “in _March_ 1644,” but Stearne’s statement makes it clear that this is Old Style, for Stearne was also concerned in the Manningtree business, and the year is completely established by the report of the proceedings,--A True and Exact Relation of the several Informations [etc.] of the late Witches, London, 1645 (cf. T. B. Howell’s State Trials, IV, 817 ff.). The traditional statement that Hopkins was hanged as a wizard (cf. Hudibras, Part ii, canto 3, 11. 139 ff.) is disproved by the following passage in Stearne: “I am certain (not-withstanding whatsoever hath been said of him) he died peaceably at Manningtree, after a long sicknesse of a Consumption, as many of his generation had done before him, without any trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsly reported of him” (p. 61). For the record of his burial, Aug. 12, 1647, see Notes and Queries, 1st Series, X, 285. The notion that Hopkins was “swum” and, since he floated, was subsequently hanged, most likely originated in a document criticising his