The discovery of witches : a study of Master Matthew Hopkins, commonly call'd Witch finder generall / by the Rev. Montague Summers, together with a reprint of The discovery of witches from the rare original of 1647.

  • Summers, Montague, 1880-1948.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discovery of witches : a study of Master Matthew Hopkins, commonly call'd Witch finder generall / by the Rev. Montague Summers, together with a reprint of The discovery of witches from the rare original of 1647. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    throne. Seventy persons of those implicated were put upon their trial, and the King himself took an active part in the judicial proceedings. The whole case is extremely important from every point of view, since persons of quality were in¬ volved as well as losels of the meanest condition. We here also have evidence that witchcraft was a world-wide con- spiracy, an integral part of that huge revolutionary movement which anarchy is always fostering, and which throughout history has continually broken forth in subversive move¬ ments and dark plots against civilization. Archbishop Spotswood, Primate of S. Andrews,1 writing of the year 1591, says that “ most of this Winter was spent in Examination of Witches and Sorcerers. Bothwel the Conspirator had consulted with Agnes Symson.”2 In 1597, at Edinburgh, King James published his famous Daemono-i logie, in Dor me oj a Dialogue, Diuided into three Bookes, a work which, when he succeeded to the English throne half a dozen years later, was naturally accepted as authoritative in England as it had already been received in his northern kingdom. No doubt many of the records are either missing, or have not yet been closely examined, but it is remarkable that the numbers of persons condemned to death in Eng¬ land under James I are by no means so many as were popu¬ larly supposed. There are indeed actually not more than fifty instances during a reign of two-and-twenty years, and these include the notorious prosecution of the Lancashire Witches in 1612. There were, of course, a great many more trials, and the offenders received various sentences, some He was translated to the metropolitan see on the death of Archbishop Grladstanes in 1615. r 2 Rather Agnes Sampson, an “ elder witch.” *9