stages of Monmouth’s rebellion, an astrologer, consulting the stars, saw that the duke would be presently King of England. After Sedgemoor he was cast into Dorchester Gaol for this unlucky prediction. Again falling to his observations, he clearly read “that he would be whipped at the Cart’s ----”; and this time the planets spoke true. In 1783, the poet Cowper reports one humorous case from his own experience. At Olney a man was publicly whipped for theft; he whealed with every stroke; but that was only because the beadle drew the scourge against a piece of red ochre hidden in his hand. Noting the fraud, the parish constable laid his cane smartly about the shoulders of the all too-lenient official, whereat a country wench, in high dudgeon, set to pomelling the constable. And of the three the thief alone escaped punishment. State Trials for Witchcraft Early Laws against Witchcraft--The Essex Witches--The Devon Witches--The Bury St. Edmunds Case--Bewitched Children--The Scepticism of Serjeant Keeling--Evidence of Sir Thomas Browne--The Judge’s Charge--The End of it All--The Trial of Richard Hathaway--The Comic Side of Superstition--A Rogue’s Punishment--A Word in Conclusion. I propose to examine the Witchcraft cases in Howell’s twenty-one bulky volumes of State Trials. The general subject, even in England, is too vast for detailed treatment here; also it is choked with all manner of absurdities. In a trial some of these are pared away: you know what the people saw, or believed they saw, and you have the declarations of the witches themselves. Only five cases, all between 1616 (13 Jac. I.) and 1702 (1 Anne) are reported. The selection is capricious, for some famous prosecutions as that of the Lancashire witches are omitted, but it is fairly representative. In the early times Witchcraft and sorcery were left to the Church. In 1541, 33 Hen. VIII. c. 8, made both felony without “benefit of clergy;” and by the 1 Jac. I. c. 12, all persons invoking 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, shall be guilty of felony without “benefit of clergy,” and suffer death. King James’s views on Witchcraft and his skill (whereon he greatly plumed himself) as witch-finder are famed. Royal influence went hand-in-hand with popular superstition. In less than a century and a half, legislative if not vulgar ideas were altered, and in 1736, by 9 Geo. II. c. 5, the laws against Witchcraft were swept away, though charlatans professing the occult sciences were still punished as cheats.