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
Soot’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).
[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.)
Transcriber’s Note
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation
in the text. These have been left unchanged. Dialect, obsolete and
alternative spellings were left unchanged. Words and phrases in italics
are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Unprinted punctuation and final stops missing at the end of
abbreviations and sentences were added. Footnotes were moved to the end
of the book.
Spelling correction: “maner” changed to “manner” ... to detract in any
manner ...