University of Virginia Library

Notes

[[418].]

Precedents.

[[419].]

Susannah Martin and Bridget Bishop.

[[420].]

At pp. 223-236, above.

[[421].]

Timothy Swan, aged thirty, died early in February, 1692/3 (N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., II. 380; Mrs. Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover, p. 237).

[[422].]

Than.

[[423].]

I. e., Satan (see Rev. xii. 10).

[[424].]

Deserving of consideration.

[[425].]

The famous witch-hunt in which Matthew Hopkins was the leading spirit (1645-1646).

[[426].]

What is in thought is doubtless the boast of Nicolas Remy (Remigius), on the title-page of his Dœmonolatreia (1595), that his book rests on the trials of nine hundred, put to death for witchcraft within fifteen years; but this was in Lorraine, not yet a part of France, though in close relations with it.

[[427].]

Lib. VI., cap. 20, of this notable book by which the eminent Rhenish physician Wierus (Johann Weyer, 1515-1588) gave to the zeal of the witch-haters its first effective check. This passage, however, he borrows bodily from the Parergon Juris (VIII. 22) of an earlier opponent of witch persecution, the Italian jurist Andrea Alciati.

[[428].]

I. e., those crazed more than criminal: hellebore was counted a cure for insanity.

[[429].]

See p. 416, note 5. “Burton” has merely inserted into his Kingdom of Darkness (pp. 148-159) the contents of the contemporary True and Exact Relation (1645) which narrates this Essex persecution.

[[430].]

The following chapters (V.-XVII.) are devoted to the nature of witchcraft and the proper means for its detection.