seems to have known Richard Bernard’s[1] Guide to Grand Jurymen, 1627, a book with which he would no doubt have become familiar during his professional training. This author had made a special study of the legal aspect of witchcraft, and he resumes many of the arguments of both continental and native writers. He is conscious that terrible mistakes have been made costing human lives, and he believes that much supposed witchcraft is due to the extraordinary self-deception of the feeble-minded, who are often crazy for notoriety at any cost and by any means. He freely allows that there have been grave errors of justice owing to credulity and inexperience. He concludes that rumours of magic are often “the vain conceits of the addle-headed, or of silly fooles or of pratling gossips or of superstitiously fearful; or of fansieful melancholicks, or of discomposed and crased wits.” Nevertheless he is thoroughly convinced that, in spite of much hysteria, many impostures, and a good deal of ignorance, witchcraft is a very real and true thing, and when actually detected and proven it should be dealt with most rigorously according to law. In this he some what resembles John Cotta, the Northampton physician, who, in his The Triall of Witchcraft, 1616, puts forward what might be called the medical side of the case from a rationalizing point of view, namely that witchcraft is a stern fact, but that it is rare, and that the vast majority of instances can but prove the result of mental disorders and hallucinations. Yet he was bound to allow that the testimony of sober and reliable witnesses or the plain discovery of occult practices must be considered sufficient to condemn a witch.
- ↑ 1568–1641. Bernard was Vicar of Batcombe, Somerset.
