Two women were executed at Lincoln, in 1618, for bewitching Lord
Rosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, and others of the
family--Lord Rosse being bewitched to death; also for preventing
by diabolic arts the parents from having any more children.
Before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and one of the
Barons of the Exchequer, it was proved that the witches had
effected the death of the noble lord by burying his glove in the
ground, and 'as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of
the said lord rot and waste.' Margaret Flower confessed she had
'two familiar spirits sucking on her, the one white, the other
black spotted. The white sucked under her left breast,' &c.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most acute
and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of its
Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced by
Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir Thomas
Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English Church least
Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell and
Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under the
Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's 'Select
Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods of
Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a legal and
numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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