Among the people of Massachusetts during the century which saw the Pilgrims seek religious liberty there, a delusion broke out which not only spread horror through the community and caused suffering and disgrace even in the most respectable families, but has baffled all later attempts at explanation. The witchcraft madness, as manifested there and elsewhere in the world, has remained alike the puzzle of history and the riddle of psychology. Historically, witchcraft is classed with other occult phenomena or practices connected with supposed supernatural influences. The famous trials and executions for witchcraft which took place in and near Salem, Massachusetts, toward the end of the seventeenth century, owed their special prominence to their peculiar localization and environment. Otherwise they might have been regarded as nothing more than incidents of a once general course in criminal procedure. Thousands in Europe had already suffered similar condemnation, and the last recorded execution for witchcraft in Great Britain did not occur till 1722. Even so late as 1805 a woman was imprisoned for this "crime" in Scotland. Hildreth's account skilfully condenses the essential matters relating to this strange episode in Massachusetts history. * * * * * The practice of magic, sorcery, and spells, in the reality of which all ignorant communities have believed, had long been a criminal offence in England. A statute of the thirty-third year of Henry VIII made them capital felonies. Another statute of the first year of James I, more specific in its terms, subjected to the same penalty all persons "invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts." That second Solomon, before whom the illustrious Bacon bowed with so much reverence, was himself a firm believer in witchcraft. He professed, indeed, to be an adept in the art of detecting witches, an art which became the subject of several learned treatises, one of them from James' own royal pen. During the Commonwealth England had abounded with professional witch-detectors, who travelled from county to county, and occasioned the death of many unfortunate persons. The "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts contained a capital law against witchcraft, fortified by that express declaration of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."