circumstance entirely fails to account for the details we find in such trials as those of the Burton witches in 1597; of Elizabeth Sawyer in 1621; of John Palmer, the S. Albans warlock, in 1649; of the Kidderminster witches in 1660; and many more beside.
Before Hopkins had been busy very long, from one hundred and thirty to two hundred people were imprisoned in the common gaol at Bury St. Edmunds upon multiplied accusations of witchcraft. In spite of the troublous times and the pressure of a political crisis the crusade had grown into such proportion that Parliament was bound to take notice of the proceedings, and “thereupon a special Commission of Oyer and Terminer was granted for the trial of these Witches.” Serjeant John Godbolt presided over this court, which was composed of several Justices of the Peace together with two important ministers of Suffolk, Samuel Fairclough and Edmund Calamy. At the end of August the proceedings were opened by two sermons delivered by Mr. Fairclough at S. James’s, Bury St. Edmunds. Eighteen persons, including two men, one of whom was John Lowes, were sentenced to be hanged, and “dyed … very desperately.” But the special court was determined to put an end once and for all to the test of swimming, and this ordeal they prohibited in the most uncompromising terms, a measure which must have been something of a blow to Hopkins, who was notorious as a great favourer of the water experiment. There were still well-nigh one hundred and fifty persons in prison, and after a delay of three weeks or a month, during which interval the court broke up in some haste owing to the approach of the royal forces, a
41
