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The Witches of Northamptonshire, ... A 4. Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie ..., X 4 verso. Ibid., 20. One notable instance must be mentioned.
The first record of its use was in 1612, nine years after James ascended the English throne. In that year there was a "discoverie" of witches at Northampton. Eight or nine women were accused of torturing a man and his sister and of laming others.
Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 512-514. Glanvill had answered a somewhat similar argument, that the miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of the Devil.
Raleigh's chief prose works are the Discoverie of Guiana, a work which would certainly have been interesting enough had he told simply what he saw, but which was filled with colonization schemes and visions of an El Dorado to fill the eyes and ears of the credulous; and the History of the World, written to occupy his prison hours.
All these explorations he accomplished in a sailing vessel about the size of the Julia A. Decker, the ship "Discoverie" of seventy tons. He had wintered at the southern extremity of Hudson's Bay surrounded by a mutinous crew.
Eleven years later came the trials which brought out the pamphlet: The most strange and admirable discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys, arraigned, convicted and executed at the last assises at Huntingdon ..., London, 1593. There can be no doubt as to the historical character of this pamphlet. The Throckmortons, the Cromwells, and the Pickerings were all well known in Huntingdonshire.
Ibid., 15: "Howbeit you shall understand that few or none are throughlie persuaded, resolved, or satisfied, that witches can indeed accomplish all these impossibilities; but some one is bewitched in one point, and some is coosened in another, untill in fine, all these impossibilities, and manie mo, are by severall persons affirmed to be true." Discoverie, 472. Ibid., 7-8. Ibid., 8.
He cannot, for instance, in this respect compare with a man whose works he persecuted, namely, Reginald Scot, who in 1584 published his immortal Discoverie of Witchcraft, a book which, alike for its motive as its matter, occupies one of the highest places in the history of the literature of Europe.
Nay, that which is more, Gabota discovered this longe tracte of the firme lande twoo yeres before Columbus ever sawe any parte of the continente thereof. But Gabote made his greate discoverie in the yere 1496. as he testifieth in his relation above mentioned.
Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 542, says of this trial, "In the meane time let anie man with good consideration peruse that booke published by W. W. and it shall suffice to satisfie him in all that may be required.... See whether the witnesses be not single, of what credit, sex, and age they are; namelie lewd miserable and envious poore people; most of them which speake to anie purpose being old women and children of the age of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 yeares."
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