By this time the persecutions, which were waning in England, had broken out at Salem in America; and we find Cotton Mather (like Glanvil, a divine, and F.R.S.) writing a little book[548] to justify their existence[549] (and his own conduct, for many were sceptical), upon that continent where, as he quaintly says, the Pilgrim Fathers “imagined that they should leave their posterity in a place where they should never see the inroads of Profanity or Superstition.” The records of the nineteen executions in this neighbourhood, of one poor creature who was pressed to death, and of the crowd of unhappy suspects who were cast into the prison,[550] show how the frenzy of this murderous “revival” swept like an epidemic down upon the settlement,[551] so that for fifteen months the air seemed charged and laden with hysteria, and are a grim commentary. But evolution operates even on taboos and superstitions, and this was probably the last general persecution, and Bishop Hutchinson called his learned work _An Historical Essay_,[552] for it was dealing mainly with the past. The law lagged behind, however, as it generally does, the statute of James I. (1603) being, when Hutchinson wrote, “now in force” in 1718. And so it continued for eighteen years longer, until repealed in 1736.[553] In Ireland the law lasted until 1821. Witchcraft was clearly kept alive by theology. People who really believed in a personal devil (and even those who questioned the witch convictions assumed the devil to be very much alive), designing mischief and disguised everywhere, could easily accept tales of familiar spirits.[554] Those who received the Hebrew and Christian records as altogether inspired, could not ignore possession and sorcery.[555] “Après que Dieu a parlé,” says de l’Ancre, “de sa propre bouche des magiciens et sorciers, qui est l’incrédule qui en peut justement douter?”[556] And Sir Matthew Hale said in his summing up: “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.”[557]