Under this law, and the methods of its administration, witchcraft so
called increased; persecutions multiplied, especially under the
Commonwealth, and notably in the eastern counties of England, whence so
many of all estates, all sorts and conditions of men, had fled over seas
to set up the standard of independence in the Puritan colonies.

Many executions occurred in Lancashire, in Suffolk, Essex, and
Huntingdonshire, where the infamous scoundrel "Witch-finder-General"
Matthew Hopkins, under the sanction of the courts, was "pricking,"
"waking," "watching," and "testing" persons suspected or accused of
witchcraft, with fiendish ingenuity of indignity and torture. Says James
Howell in his _Familiar Letters_, in 1646:

"We have multitudes of witches among us; for in Essex and Suffolk there
were above two hundred indicted within these two years, and above the
half of them executed."

"Within the compass of two years (1645-7), near upon three hundred
witches were arraigned, and the major part of them executed in Essex and
Suffolk only. Scotland swarms with them more and more, and persons of
good quality are executed daily."

Scotland set its seal on witchcraft as a crime by an act of its
parliament so early as 1563, amended in 1649. The ministers were the
inquisitors and persecutors. They heard the confessions, and inflicted
the tortures, and their cruelties were commensurate with the hard and
fast theology that froze the blood of mercy in their veins.

The trials were often held by special commissions issued by the privy
council, on the petition of a presbytery or general assembly. It was