If witches, under examination or torture, would not confess, all their apparel was changed, and every hair of their body shaven off with a sharp razor, lest they should secrete magical charms to prevent their confessing. Witches were believed to be most apt to confess on _Fridays_.—The two following expedients, or fiery ordeals, are also mentioned, as used to extort confession: the first, burning the thatch of the house of the suspected witch; the other, burning any animal supposed to be bewitched by her, as a hog or ox. These, it was held would force a witch to confess, {742} in spite of her teeth, or of the devil.—Our ancestors, strange as it may seem, persisted in the belief and practice, or observance of these horrid monstrosities till within the memory of some of the present generation. Nor had they perhaps relinquished or abandoned them quite so soon, but for the laudable exertions of such men as Locke and Addison, and their enlightened contemporaries. Our kings, courtiers, and legislators were all believers in witchcraft, and hearty approvers of the existing laws against that reputed crime. One of the former, and deemed the _wisest_ of that sacred order, and the _Solomon_ of his day, (James I,) wrote a book in defence of that belief, and of subjecting witches to capital punishment; and when _Reginald Scott_, the first of our countrymen who ventured to dissent froth the popular creed and write on the other side of the question, published his book, his majesty ordered it to be _burnt_ by the common hangman. The whole nation approved of the royal and magnanimous deed, and poor Scott passed for a notorious heretic.—It is not a little mortifying and humiliating to the dignity and pride of man, that the same stupid and absurd notions about witchcraft were among the articles of the creed of the great lord _Bacon_ and his most enlightened contemporaries, as well as of their wise sovereign, and the whole body of the mobility or national rabblement. The poor witches, of course, had then almost terrible time of it; as much so, probably, to the full, as in the darkest days of popery.