‘Item, none can giue euidence against witches, touching their assemblies, but witches onelie; bicause, (as _Bodin_ saith) none other can do it.’ Thus we see that the poor witch had everything against her, which will account in a great way for those marvellous confessions we read of, when the poor, weary, baited and tortured woman would confess to anything to get a few hours’ respite from pain, well knowing that execution would follow, whether she confessed or no. In fact, no other hypothesis is possible, when we read of the extraordinary matters to which these poor women confessed. CHAPTER XIV. Legislation against Witches--Punishment--Last Executions for Witchcraft--Inability to weep and sink--Modern Cases of Witchcraft. There has not been much legislation against witches in England, the Acts simply keeping in force. It is said that Athelstane in 928 made witchcraft a capital crime, but our ‘statutes at large’ give 33 Henry VIII., cap. 8 (1541), as the first Act really touching witchcraft, as coming within the ken of this book. Next comes 5 Elizabeth, cap. 16 (1562), and then 1 James I., cap. 12 (1604), previously substantially quoted. This was the law of the land until it was abolished in 1736, 9 George II., cap. 5, which did away with capital punishment for witchcraft, and the present law on the subject dates from 1822, 3 George IV., where the word ‘witchcraft’ certainly disappears, and only ‘All Persons pretending to be Gipsies: all Persons pretending to tell Fortunes, or using any subtle Craft, Means, or Device, by Palmistry, or other wise, to deceive or impose upon any of His Majestys subjects,’ shall be adjudged ‘Common Rogues and Vagabonds,’ and sentenced as such. Formerly the poor wretches were burned, a fearful fate, as Scot says, quoting Bodin. ‘Item, if a woman confesse freelie herein, before question[37] be made; and yet afterward denie it; she is neuerthelesse to be burned.’ Possibly the last case of burning for witchcraft is one I shall record later on, at Bury St. Edmunds, in 1644; but the same year one Alice Hudson was burned at York for receiving small sums of money from the Devil.[38] [Illustration] The last case of burning in Scotland was in Sutherland, in 1722, and the last in Ireland at Glarus, a servant being burnt as a witch in 1786. Probably the last burning for witchcraft, in any so-called civilized country, is the following, taken from the Steamer Edition of the _Panama Star and Herald_ of June 5, 1871: ‘According to the _Porvenir_ of Callao (Peru), 29th ult., a woman has been burnt in the public square of a town in the province of Guavina, about thirty-four leagues from the port of Iquique, for being a witch. This punishment, worthy of the flourishing days of the Spanish Inquisition, was ordered by the Lieutenant-Governor and Judge of the Province.’