a grasp wild and intense credulity would seize the minds of poor and half-crazy old women, when the wisest in the land averred that they were witches, when their own friends and neighbours appeared as witnesses against them, and when witch-fires blazed on every village green.
In the earlier period of the Romish Church we find frequent references to capital punishment for witchcraft; but it was not till the latter part of the sixteenth century, when the Papacy had attained to the very heyday of its power, that it began to hunt up witches with merciless rigour. As the Reformation dawned the charge of sorcery was discovered to be a most convenient one to bring against the Protestant heretics. It had two great advantages: it was easily made; and, once made, it could be confirmed upon the very slenderest evidence, or none at all. A person once accused of witchcraft found no refuge but the grave. It was in vain to prove an alibi. A dozen persons might swear that at the time you were accused of performing some diabolical act of sorcery you were fifty miles away; it was simply taken for granted that your master, the devil, had gifted you with being present at several places at the same moment of time. It is actually on record that a child saw a black cat go in at an old woman's cottage window, and averred that he believed the cat was the old woman's familiar spirit; and the aspersion of this child cost the woman her life. A rider fell from his horse; and, if an old woman happened to be in sight, she would be charged with having accomplished the rider's fall, and torture and death would follow to the accused. Somebody's cow would cease to yield her maximum supply of milk, and some unfortunate old creature would be singled out on this account to endure the most unspeakable suffering. A charge so easily made, and almost invariably fatal if once made, was a ready implement in the hand of the Church to weed out heretics who dared to breathe one disrespectful word of the Scarlet Woman.
All through Europe there came to be individuals and communities that boldly questioned the pretensions of the Church of Rome. The scholars and thinkers challenged her dogmas, and the common people doubted the sanctity of the Church when they became aware of the shameless immorality of her clergy. But by far the
