belief in witchcraft, as we have already had occasion to remark, was a constant quantity; but outbreaks of prosecution came, in England-and, generally speaking, elsewhere -spasmodically, at irregular intervals. If we look at Great Britain for a moment, we shall see that such outbreaks are likely to coincide with times of political excitement or anxiety. Thus early in Elizabeth's reign, when everything was more or less unsettled, Bishop Jewel, whom all historians delight to honor, made a deliberate and avowed digression, in a sermon before the queen, in order to warn her that witchcraft was rampant in the realm, to inform her (on the evidence of his own eyes) that her subjects were being injured in their goods and their health, and to exhort her to enforce the law.205 The initial zeal of James I. in the prosecution of witches stood in close connection with the trouble he was having with his turbulent cousin Francis Bothwell.206 The operations of Matthew Hopkins (in 1645-1647) were a mere accompaniment to the tumult of the Civil War; the year in which they began was the year of Laud's execution and of the Battle of Naseby. The Restoration was followed by a fresh outbreak of witch prosecution,-mild in England, though far-reaching in its consequences, but very sharp in Scotland. With facts like these in view, we can hardly regard it as an accident that the Salem witchcraft marks a time 206 'And by the way, to touch but a word or two of this matter, for that the horrible vsing of your poore subiects inforceth thereunto: It may please your Grace to vnderstand, that this kind of people, I meane witches, and sorcerers, within these few last yeeres, are maruellously increased within this your Graces realme. These eies haue seene most euident and manifest marks of their wickednesse. Your Graces subiects pine away euen vnto death, their collour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benummed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore, your poore subiects most humble petition vnto your Highnesse is, that the lawes touching such malefactours, may be put in due execution. For the shole of them is great, their doings horrible, their malice intollerable, the examples most miserable. And I pray God, they neuer practise further, then vpon the subiect. But this only by the way, these be the scholers of Beelzebub the chiefe captaine of the Diuels" (Certaine Sermons, 1611, p. 204, in Workes of Jewell; cf. Parker Society edition, Part II, p. 1028). I cannot date this sermon. 1572, the year to which it is assigned by Dr. Nicholson (in his edition of Reginald Scot's Discoverie, p. xxxii), is certainly wrong, for Jewel died in 1571. Strype associates it rather vaguely with the passage of the Witchcraft Act of 1563 (Annals of the Reformation, I, 8; cf. I, 295). 206 Legge, The Scottish Review, XVIII, 262. See also Newes from Scotland declaring the Damnable Life of Dr. Fian, 1591 (Roxburghe Club reprint). when the Colony was just emerging from a political struggle that had threatened its very existence. For several years men's minds had been on the rack. The nervous condition of public feeling is wonderfully well depicted in a letter written in 1688 by the Rev. Joshua Moodey in Boston to Increase Mather, then in London as agent of the Colony. The Colonists are much pleased by the favor with which Mather has been received, but they distrust court promises. They are alarmed by a report that Mather and his associates have suffered "a great slurr" on account of certain overzealous actions. Moodey rejoices in the death of Robert Mason, "one of the worst enemies that you & I & Mr. Morton had in these parts." Then there are the Indians:"The cloud looks very dark and black upon us, & wee are under very awfull circumstances, which render an Indian Warr terrible to us." The Colonists shudder at a rumor that John Palmer, one of Andros's Council, is to come over as Supreme Judge, and know not how to reconcile it with the news of the progress their affairs have been making with the King. And finally, the writer gives an account of the case of Goodwin's afflicted children, which, as we know, was a kind of prologue to the Salem outbreak:"Wee have a very strange th[ing] among us, which we know not what to make of, except it bee Witchcraft, as we think it must needs bee. "207 Clearly, there would have been small fear, in 1692, of a plot on Satan's part to destroy the Province, if our forefathers had not recently encountered other dangers of a more tangible kind. In conclusion, I may venture to sum up, in the form of a number of brief theses, the main results at which we appear to have arrived in our discussion of witchcraft: 1. The belief in witchcraft is the common heritage of humanity. It is not chargeable to any particular time, or race, or form of religion. 207 Mather Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VIII, 366-368. This was the same Joshua Moodey, it will be remembered, who afterwards assisted Philip English and his family to escape from jail in Boston, and thus saved them from being executed as guilty of witchcraft (Sibley, Harvard Graduates, I, 376-377.) 2. Witchcraft in some shape or other is still credited by a majority of the human race. 3. The belief in witchcraft was practically universal in the seventeenth century, even among the educated; with the mass of the people it was absolutely universal. 4. To believe in witchcraft in the seventeenth century was no more discreditable to a man's head or heart than it was to believe in spontaneous generation or to be ignorant of the germ theory of disease. 5. The position of the seventeenth-century believers in witchcraft was logically and theologically stronger than that of the few persons who rejected the current belief. 6. The impulse to put a witch to death comes from the instinct of self-preservation. It is no more cruel or otherwise blameworthy, in itself, than the impulse to put a murderer to death. 7. The belief in witchcraft manifests itself, not in steady and continuous prosecution, but in sudden outbreaks occurring at irregular intervals. 8. Such outbreaks are not symptoms of extraordinary superstition or of a peculiarly acute state of unreason. They are due, like other panics, to a perturbed condition of the public mind. Hence they are likely to accompany, or to follow, crises in politics or religion. 9. The responsibility for any witch prosecution rests primarily on the community or neighborhood as a whole, not on the judge or the jury. 10. No jury, whether in a witch trial or in any other case, can be more enlightened than the general run of the vicinage. 11. Many persons who have been executed for witch—craft have supposed themselves to be guilty and have actually been guilty in intent. 12. Practically every person executed for witchcraft believed in the reality of such a crime, whether he supposed himself to be guilty of it or not. 13. The witch beliefs of New England were brought over from the Mother Country by the first settlers. 4 14. Spectral evidence had been admitted in the examinations and trials of witches in England for a hundred years before the Salem prosecutions took place. 15. Trials, convictions, and executions for witchcraft occurred in England after they had come to an end in Massachusetts, and they occurred on the Continent a hundred years later than that time. 16. Spectral evidence was admitted in English witch trials after such trials had ceased in Massachusetts. 17. The total number of persons executed for witchcraft in New England from the first settlement to the end of the century is inconsiderable, especially in view of what was going on in Europe. 18. The public repentance and recantation of judge and jury in Massachusetts have no parallel in the history of witchcraft. 19. The repentance and recantation came at a time which made them singularly effective arguments in the hands of the opponents of the witch dogma in England. 20. The record of New England in the matter of witchcraft is highly creditable, when considered as a whole and from the comparative point of view. 21. It is easy to be wise after the fact, especially when the fact is two hundred years old. THE ALMANACS OF ROGER SHERMAN 1750-1761. BY VICTOR HUGO PALTSITS. INTRODUCTION. merican almanacs offer an interesting subject for inquiry, American almanacs often are already written more or less o them, of which the best examples are those of Amos Perry, Samuel Briggs, Paul Leicester Ford, George Lyman Kittredge, Albert Carlos Bates and Matthew A. Stickney. To these has now (March, 1907) been added a "Preliminary Check List of American Almanacs, 1639-1800", compiled by Hugh Alexander Morrison, of the Library of Congress. This is a tentative list and the result of some years of devotion. Mr. Morrison hopes to be able to enlarge his list, and his plan is to produce, eventually, a full and accuratelydescribed bibliography. The weakest part of his work is where he depends upon the "American Bibliography" of Charles Evans, because Mr. Evans has introduced many titles upon supposition, which will lead to endless confusion and catch the unwary. So intricate a subject can be studied best by the monographic method, in which a single series is given concentration for the solution of the problematic questions which are inevitably connected with such publications. A conviction of this need is responsible for the present paper. Roger Sherman was born in Newton, Mass., on April 19, 1721 (O. S.). When he was two years of age his parents removed to that section of Stoughton which has since become Canton, and here he resided for twenty years. It was the formative period of his life, during which he attended the common country school and imbibed the limited knowl |