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Familiars, which are depicted in the foreground. He himself is represented in a Puritanical garb, a broad brimmed hat, Geneva cloak, and trooper's boots, with a long walking-staff in his hand, used evidently, from the spurs on his heels, rather as a mark of authority, than as a walking-staff.

His favourite hunting grounds were the Counties of Essex, Huntingdon, Norfolk, and Sussex, where he itinerated regularly for the extirpation of witches. His usual modes of procedure were to strip the poor old creatures and prick them for the discovery of the identifying marks; to weigh them against the Church Bible, and if found lighter, to condemn them. Another method of proof was to set the accused to repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Creed which no witch could do correctly; but Hopkins' usual ordeal was to cause the suspected old woman to be stripped of her clothing and have her hands and feet tied cross wise, the right thumb and the left great toe, and the left thumb to the right toe. Then when thus manacled, she was wrapped in a sheet and cast into a pool of water. If she sank and was drowned, she was declared to be innocent, but if she floated and was rejected by the baptismal element, she was proved to be

guilty, and was sent forthwith to the stake. This method of proving the crime was recommended by King James in his Demonologie as an infallible test. In one year Hopkins brought sixty poor creatures to the stake for this pretended crime.

On one occasion, when making a professional visitation of Huntingdonshire, the living of Houghton, a village between Huntingdon and St. Ives, was held by a Rev. John Gaule, an enlightened man, who denied the belief in witches, and wrote. several pamphlets on the question, one entitled, "An exposure of some of the nefarious acts of witchfinders," which was specially directed against Hopkins and his barbarities, and charging him with being "a a common nuisance," to which he replied in an angry and authoritative tone to the functionaries of Houghton, stating that he had intended making a special visitation of their town, but desired to know if it contained many "such sticklers for witchcraft as Mr. Gaule," also whether they were willing to receive and entertain him with the customary hospitality if he so far honoured them with his presence, adding by way of menace that if he did not receive a satisfactory reply "he would wave their shire altogether, and

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go instead where he might do and punish, not only without control but with thanks and recompenses. This threat, however, did not dismay the good people of Houghton, who took no notice of either him or his threat.

downwards,

From the year 1644, for a few years through the civil war and the Long Parliament, Hopkins carried on a lucrative trade in witchproving, through the Eastern Counties, where, with the sanction of the authorities he sent hundreds of poor wretches to the stake. Butler, in his "Hudibras," thus refers to Hopkins.

"Hath not this present parliament

A lieger to the Devil sent,

Fully empowered to treat about

Finding revolted witches out?

And has he not within a year

Hang'd three score of them in the shire?
Some only for not being drown'd

And some for sitting above ground

Whole days and nights upon their breeches,

And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches;
And some for putting Knavish tricks
Upon green geese or turkey chicks;
Or pigs that suddenly deceased
Of griefs unnatural, as he guessed:
Who proved himself at length a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech."

Eventually, after a fairly long career of success

in murder and money making, his mendacious impostures and false charges excited the indignation of the public. When passing through Suffolk during one of his visitations, he was accused of being in league himself with the Devil, and was charged with having stolen from him a memorandum book containing a list of all the witches in England, which he obtained by means of sorcery. Of course he denied his guilt, but was put by the mob to his own swimming test. Some say he was drowned, others that he floated and was condemned on other evidence and executed. There is no record of his trial, but from that time we hear no more of him, the probability being that he met with his death at the hands of the populace.

An Esser Poet.

BY THE REV. GEO. S. TYACK, B.A.

HERE are some people who, without any

TH

necessary insincerity, are called upon to act two very different parts in the great drama of history; such a one was the Essex worthy who forms the subject of this paper. Reading the life of Francis Quarles, or a volume of his songs, we find ourselves in company with a politician of an age in which politics admitted of no middle course, a courtier, a satirist, the defender of Church and King, and a sufferer for Royalty and loyalty in the tempestuous days of the first Charles. But on opening other volumes of his works in prose or verse, we seem to hear the grave even tones of the moralist and philosopher, who, in quaint terms and with manifold conceits, reminds us of the vanity of things temporal, of the littleness of earthly greatness, of the reality of death and eternity.

Francis Quarles was born of a good family at

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