About twenty years after the date of this disgraceful and tragical trial, the 9th. of Geo. II, the old laws which made witchcraft a capital crime were happily repealed. How many more of such prosecutions or executions took place within those twenty years we are not able to say. {747b} But it does not appear that the inhabitants in general, or the lower orders of the community which constitute the bulk of the nation, have ever yet been fully satisfied with the repeal of those laws. Hence they have been often ready to take the business into their own hands and proceed in a summary and very savage way against those whom they have thought proper to deem or denominate witches. A shocking case of this kind occurred at _Fring_ in _Hertfordshire_ as lately as 1751, when one _Ruth Osborn_, a reputed witch, fell a victim to the stupid credulity and abominable prejudice of a frantic mob: and though several of the ringleaders in that bloody and brutal transaction were afterwards hanged, yet the blind and superstitious belief that produced it remained still in the country, and is, even now, in many, if not in most parts of the kingdom as strong as ever. But little more than two years ago, as was observed before, one _Ann Izzard_, a poor, honest, industrious woman, of Great Paxton in Huntingdonshire, was very near meeting the same fate with the above Ruth Osborn. Two or three young women in the neighbourhood having fits, some people there gave out, that they were bewitched, and the suspicion fell upon Ann Izzard: a loaded cart sometime after, oversetting on its return from St. Neot’s market, while the same woman was in company, that accident was ascribed to her witchery. This confirmed and established the public opinion of her being actually a witch, and immediately set the whole parish in an uproar: “She has just overturned a loaded cart with as much ease as if it had been a spinning wheel,” was echoed from one end of it to the other. Men, women, and children raised their voices and exclaimed, “we have now sufficient proof of her guilt—this last act in open day speaks for itself—she is the person that does all the mischief; and if something is not done to put a stop to her baseness there will be no living in the place.”—Nor did this fit of phrensy terminate till they had made two attacks upon her, which, atrocious as they appeared to rational and enlightened people, where considered, by themselves as not only justifiable but highly meritorious. They were proceeding to still greater atrocities, which she escaped through the interposition of some of her more humane neighbours, who took her under their protection, and had the offenders prosecuted. {749}