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In the darkest of all 'dark ages, when, on the current hypothesis, such tales as we examine ought to be most plentiful, even witch-trials are infrequent. Mr.
"I can assure you it is astonishing, and most delicious, the way in which the Devil and the gruesomest witch-trials adapt themselves to the mental bent and style of the author of 'Nutcracker and the King of Mice. Just let me tell you, dear Ottmar, how I chanced to lay my hands upon an experimental essay on this subject of our doughty Lothair's.
Nay, if no more than one suffered in consequence, the district might think itself fortunate. The commissioners seldom stopped short at one victim. The revelations of the rack in most cases implicated half a score. Of all the records of the witch-trials preserved for the wonder of succeeding ages, that of Wurzburg, from 1627 to 1629, is the most frightful.
Then, after nightfall, stealing out from his room into the silent streets of Salem, and shadowy as the ghosts with which to his susceptible imagination the dusky town was thronged, he glided beneath the house in which the witch-trials were held, or across the moonlit hill upon which the witches were hung, until the spell was complete. Nor can we help fancying that, after the murder of old Mr.
At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690. In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason if there was any which lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times.
After mentioning several works published in England, containing "witch-stories," witch-trials, etc., he proceeds: "All these books were in New England, and the conformity between the behavior of Goodwin's children, and most of the supposed be-witched at Salem, and the behavior of those in England, is so exact, as to leave no room to doubt the stories had been read by the New England persons themselves, or had been told to them by others who had read them.
Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate, at the time when witch-trials were so frequent, and himself a devout believer in the crime, relates, in his "Criminal Law," first published in 1678, some remarkable instances of it.
We cannot reasonably reject the testimony of those old witch-trials, for they are supported by the evidence of witnesses, or other clearly recorded facts; and there are many instances of people who have committed crimes deserving of death.
The commissioners named by Innocent VIII. to prosecute the witch-trials in Germany, were Jacob Sprenger, so notorious for his work on demonology, entitled the "Malleus Maleficarum," or "Hammer to knock down Witches," Henry Institor a learned jurisconsult, and the Bishop of Strasburgh.
The incident revived for a time all the stories of witch-trials and of the exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and Sir Richard's orders that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good many to be rather foolhardy, though they were duly carried out. Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain.
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