Under Charles I, the Common-wealth, and succeeding reigns, the public opinion on this subject continued unchanged, and the judicial proceedings against witches went on as before. If they exceeded at any particular period, we presume it must have been under the _Common-wealth_, when the witch-finders appear to have been in full employment, and at the height of their prosperity. But we can hardly give credit to the account which Dr. Zachary Grey said he had seen, of between 3 and 4000 persons who suffered death, in the British dominions, for witchcraft, from the year 1640 to 1660. The spirit which then predominated and reigned, was certainly violent enough, and bore cruelly hard on the poor creatures who were accused of witchcraft: but such a number of victims in so short a space of time, is surely too excessive and extravagant to be credited. It is however greatly to be regretted that the leaders of that interesting period adhered in this particular to the creed of their ancestors, and were so stupidly in the dark as they appear to have been on this and some other subjects. It does not appear, as far as the present writer has discovered, that any of the _judges_, till after the revolution, shewed the least inclination to discountenance the prosecution of reputed witches, or the prevailing and popular notions about witchcraft. Even _Sir Matthew Hale_ went with the stream of public opinion, and was among those oracles of the law who passed, without hesitation, the sentence of death on those whom the verdict of a jury pronounced guilty of that reputed crime. _Sir John Holt_ and _Sir John Powel_, to their immortal honour, appear to have been the first of our English judges who viewed this pretended offence with minds superior to vulgar prejudice. The conduct of the former, on a certain trial for that offence, is said to have been such as put an end to all similar prosecutions in that part of the country, and even throughout the kingdom. {744} But the law was not repealed or altered in his time.