of the case in his Life of Hale.18 One might surmise that he omitted it out of respect for his hero's memory, since his little book is rather an obituary tribute than a biography. More probably, however, Burnet did not regard the case as any more significant than many other decisions of Hale's which he likewise passed over in silence. Unequivocal evidence that the Bury trial did not injure Hale's reputation may be found in the silence of Roger North. North's elaborate character of Hale, in his Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, 19 is notoriously prejudiced in the extreme. Though admitting Hale's legal learning and many good qualities, North loses no opportunity to attack his record. Besides, North praises the Lord Keeper for his conduct in procuring the acquittal of an alleged witch. If, then, the Bury case had seemed to him especially discreditable, or if he had thought that it afforded an opening for hostile criticism, we cannot doubt that he would have spoken out in condemnation. His complete silence on the subject is therefore the most emphatic testimony to the general approval of Hale's proceedings. Highly significant, too, is the fact that even Lord Campbell does not blame Hale for believing in witchcraft, but only for allowing weight to the evidence in this particular case. "I would very readily have pardoned him," he writes, "for an undoubting belief in witchcraft, and I should have considered that this belief detracted little from his character for discernment and humanity. The Holy Scriptures teach us that, in some ages of the world, wicked persons, by the agency of evil spirits, were permitted, through means which exceed the ordinary powers of nature, to work mischief to their fellow-creatures.

In the reign of Charles II., a judge who from the bench should have expressed a disbelief in [magic and the black art] would have been thought to show little respect for human laws, and to be nothing better than an atheist." We may profitably compare what Guilford himself (then Francis North, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) wrote of the Devonshire witches in 1682,-nearly twenty years

18 Published in 1682.

19 Edition of 1826, I, 117 ff.

after the Bury case: "We cannot reprieve them, without appearing to deny the very being of witches, which, as it is contrary to law, so I think it would be ill for his Majesty's service, for it may give the faction occasion to set afoot the old trade of witch-finding, that may cost many innocent persons their lives which the justice will prevent.

Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici, was no Puritan, and he was one of the leading scientific men of his day. Yet he gave his opinion, as an expert, at the request of the Court in this same Bury St. Edmunds case, to the following effect:-"That the Devil in such cases did work upon the Bodies of Men and Women, upon a Natural Foundation, (that is) to stir up, and excite such humours super-abounding in their Bodies to a great excess, and further, that "he conceived, that these swouning Fits were Natural, and nothing else but what they call the Mother, 22 but only heightned to a great excess by the subtilty of the Devil, co-operating with the Malice of these which we term Witches, at whose Instance he doth these Villanies. "23

,,21

Browne has been much blamed for this dictum, but there is nothing unreasonable or unscientific in it, if one merely grants the actuality of demoniacal possession, which was then to all intents and purposes an article of faith. If the devil can work upon our bodies at all, of course he can intensify any natural fits or spasms from which we happen to be suffering. Thus Browne's diagnosis of the disease in this case as hysteria, by no means excluded the hypothesis of maleficium. But most modern writers refuse to discuss such subjects except de haut en bas,-from the vantageground of modern science.

Sir Thomas Browne's view was, it seems, substantially identical with that of his predecessor, the famous Robert Burton,-no Puritan either!-who has a whole subsection

20 State Papers (Domestic), 1682, Aug. 19, bundle 427, no. 67, as quoted by Pike. History of Crime in England, II, 238.

"A Tryal of Witches, as above, p. 41.

22 That is, hysteria.

23

A Tryal, as above, p. 42. Cf. the Supplementary Memoir, in Simon Wilkin's edition of Browne's Works, 1852, I, liv-lvi.

"Of Witches and Magitians, how they cause Melancholy, asserting that what "they can doe, is as much almost as the Diuell himselfe, who is still ready to satisfie their desires, to oblige them the more vnto him. "24

Joseph Glanvill, the author of The Vanity of Dogmatizing, was no Puritan,25 but a skeptical philosopher, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles II.; neither was his friend, Dr. Henry More, the most celebrated of the Cambridge Platonists. Yet these two scholars and latitudinarians joined forces to produce that extraordinary treatise, Saducismus Triumphatus: or, A Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions. This book, an enlarged form of Glanvill's Philosophical Considerations concerning Witchcraft (1666), was published in 1681, and went through no less than five editions, the last appearing as late as 1726.26 It was thought to have put the belief in apparitions and witchcraft on an unshakable basis of science and philosophy.27

No English work on the subject had a more powerful influence. When the Rev. John Hale, of Beverley, wrote his Modest Enquiry, 28 which deplored the Salem excesses and protested against spectral evidence,—a notable treatise, published, with a prefatory epistle from the venerable Higginson, 29 in 1702,-he was able to condense the affirm

24 Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, Part 1, section 2, member 1, subsection 3. I quote from the edition of 1624.

25 The following short character of Glanvill, by Bishop Kennet, may be quoted, not because it is just, but because it might conceivably be brought forward by somebody in rebuttal of this proposition:-"Mr. Joseph Glanvill of Lincoln College, Oxon. Taking the Degree of M. A. in the beginning of 1658, was about that Time made Chaplain to old Francis Rous, one of Oliver's Lords, and Provost of Eaton College.He became a great Admirer of Mr. Richard Baxter, and a zealous Person for a Commonwealth. After his Majesty's Restauration he turn'd about, became a Latitudinarian, -Rector of Bath, Prebendary of Worcester, and Chaplain to the King" (White Kennet, An Historical Register, 1744, p. 931).

26 See Dr. Ferris Greenslet's Joseph Glanvill, A Study in English Thought and Letters of the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1900, especially Chap. vi. For a bibliography of Glanvill, see Emanuel Green, Bibliotheca Somersetensis, Taunton (Eng.), 1902, I, 206 ff.

27 More's theories on the subject of apparitions, demons, and witches may also be read, at considerable length, in his Antidote against Atheism, Book iii, Chaps. 2-13 (Philosophical Writings, 2d ed., 1662, pp. 89 ff.); cf. the Appendix to the Antidote, Chaps. 12-13 (pp. 181 ff.) and The Immortality of the Soul, Chap. 16 (pp. 129 ff.). 28 A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, Boston, 1702.

19 Dated 1697-8.

ative part of his argument, because, as he himself says, Glanvill "hath strongly proved the being of Witches. "'80

Dr. Meric Casaubon, Prebend of Canterbury, was not a Puritan; yet the second part of his Credulity and Incredulity (1668) contains a vigorous assertion of demonology and witch-lore, and was republished in 1672 under the alluring title, A Treatise Proving Spirits, Witches and Supernatural Operations by Pregnant Instances and Evidences.31

Ralph Cudworth, the antagonist of Hobbes, was not a Puritan. Yet in his great Intellectual System he declares for the existence of sorcery, and even admits a distinction between its higher operations—as in the coupyía of Apollonius of Tyana32—and the vulgar performances of everyday wizards.33 There is some reason, too, for supposing that Cudworth took part with Henry More in examining certain witches at Cambridge, and heard one of them try to recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, as she had offered to do "as an argument she was no witch. "34

30 P. 12.

31 Meric Casaubon was born in 1599 and died in 1671. His learned, lively, and vastly entertaining work, A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolicall Possession, appeared in 1655, and in a "Second edition: revised, and enlarged" in 1656. It shows an open mind and a temper rather skeptical than credulous. Passages of interest in our present discussion may be found on pp. 37-41, 44, 49, 94-95, 100, 118, 174 (Quakers), 286, of the second edition. Of particular significance is the Doctor's account of his visit to a man who was thought to be possessed but whom he believed to be suffering from some bodily distemper (pp. 97 ff.). Casaubon's treatise (in two parts) Of Credulity and Incredulity, in Things Natural, Civil, and Divine, came out in 1668, and was reissued, with a new title-page (as above), in 1672. A third part, Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual, appeared in 1670. Webster's assault upon Casaubon in his Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft was made in apparent ignorance of the fact that the venerable scholar had been dead for some years (see p. 24, below).

32 Compare Reginald Scot's chapter "Of Theurgie, with a Confutation thereof" (Discoverie of Witchcraft, book xv, chap. 42, 1584, p. 466, ed. 1665, p. 280). See also Henry Hallywell, Melampronoea: or A Discourse of the Polity and Kingdom of Darkness. Together with a Solution of the Chiefest Objections brought against the Being of Witches, 1681, pp. 50-51.

33 Cap. iv, §15, ed. Mosheim, 1773, I, 395–396.

34 Sadducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1726, p. 336; see James Crossley's Introduction to Potts, Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster, reprinted from the Edition of 1613 (Chetham Society, 1845), p. vi, note 2. This experiment was twice tried as late as 1712, in the case of Jane Wenham, by the Rev. Mr. Strutt, once in the presence of Sir Henry Chauncy, and again in the presence of the Rev. Mr. GardiIts ill success is recorded by a third Anglican clergyman,-Mr. Francis Bragge (A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, Practis'd by Jane Wenham, London, 1712, pp. 11, 15).

ner.

Robert Boyle, the improver of the air-pump and the discoverer of Boyle's Law, had "particular and considerable advantages to persuade [him], upon good grounds" that some witch stories are true, and he thought that Glanvill's investigations would do "a good service to religion. "85 This was in 1677. In the following year Boyle declared his belief in the performances of the devil of Mascon. Boyle's religious views did not hinder him from being a leader in that fervor of scientific experimentation which is one of the glories of the latter half of the seventeenth century. And he too was not a Puritan.

Isaac Barrow, the master of Newton, was not a Puritan. Yet he left on record, in one of his sermons, one of the most powerful and eloquent of all protests against disbelief in the kind of phenomena which our ancestors are so often attacked for crediting. The passage is long, but must be quoted in full, for every word is of weight:

"I may adjoin to the former sorts of extraordinary actions, some other sorts, the consideration of which (although not so directly and immediately) may serve our main design; those (which the general opinion of mankind hath approved, and manifold testimony hath declared frequently to happen) which concern apparitions from another world, as it were, of beings unusual; concerning spirits haunting persons and places, (these discerned by all senses, and by divers kinds of effects;) of which the old world (the ancient poets and historians) did speak so much, and of which all ages have afforded several attestations very direct and plain, and having all advantages imaginable to beget credence; concerning visions made unto persons of especial eminency and influence, (to priests and prophets;) concerning presignifications of future events by dreams; concerning the power of enchantments, implying the cooperation of invisible powers; concerning all sorts of intercourse and confederacy (formal or virtual) with bad spirits: all which

35 Letter to Glanvill, Sept. 18, 1677, Works, ed. Birch, V, 244. Compare Dr. Samuel Collins's letter to Boyle, Sept. 1, 1663 (Boyle's Works, V, 633-634). In a letter to Glanvill (Works, V, 245).

36

37 See Demonologie ou Traitte des Demons et Sorciers . . . Par Fr. Perreaud. Ensemble l'Antidemon de Mascon, ou Histoire Veritable de ce qu'un Demon a fait & dit, il y a quelques années, en la maison dudit S. Perreaud à Mascon. Geneva, 1653.