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We are now in the fourteenth century of the Hejira; glance at European Christendom of that period in the Christian era, or even much later, and reflect on the Sicilian Vespers, the Inquisition, the massacre of the Huguenots, the atrocious witchfinders who served that pedantic Protestant prig, James I, and all the burnings, hackings and slayings perpetrated in the name of Christendom.
Her friends turned the tables by indicting Stearne and some forty others of conspiracy, and apparently succeeded in driving them from the county. In Bury the forces of the opposition had appealed to Parliament, and the Commission of Oyer and Terminer, which, it will be noticed, is never mentioned by the witchfinders, was sent out to limit their activities.
Both were willing to admit that mistakes could be made and were often made in assuming that natural bodily marks were the Devil's marks. There were, however, special indications by which the difference between the two could be recognized. And the two witchfinders, of course, possessed that "insight" which was necessary to make the distinction.
Moreover, while it is true that East Anglia and the counties adjacent, the stronghold of the Puritans, were the scene of Hopkins's operations, it is quite as true that in those counties arose that powerful opposition which forced the witchfinders into retirement.
It will be easier to realize what had happened when we discover that, so far as records go, Kent and Essex were entirely quiet during the period, and East Anglia almost so. We shall later see that these counties had not at all forgotten to believe in witchcraft, but the witchfinders had ceased their activities for a while.
Death himself cannot quit scores with him; like the demoniac in the gospel, he lives among tombs, nor is all the holy water shed by widows and orphans a sufficient exorcism to dispossess him. Thus the cat sucks your breath and the fiend your blood; nor can the brotherhood of witchfinders, so sagely instituted with all their terror, wean the familiars.
In Huntingdonshire, we have seen how Hopkins roused a protesting clergyman, John Gaule. If we may judge from the letter he wrote to one of Gaule's parishioners, Hopkins had by this time met with enough opposition to know when it was best to keep out of the way. His boldness was assumed to cover his fear. But it was in Norfolk that the opposition to the witchfinders reached culmination.
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