Tring, in Hertfordshire, where seizing Luke Osborne and his
wife, two inoffensive old people suspected of witchcraft,
they ducked them in a pond till the old woman died. After
which, her corpse was put to bed to her husband by the mob,
of whom only one person--a chimney-sweeper named Colley, who
was the ringleader--was brought to trial and hanged for the
detestable outrage.

The laws against witchcraft in England had lain dormant for
many years, when an ignorant person attempted to revive them
by filing a bill against a poor old woman in Surrey, accused
as a witch; this led to the repeal of the laws by the
statute 10 George II. 1736. Credulity in witchcraft,
however, still lingers in some of the country districts of
the United Kingdom. On September 4th, 1863, a poor old
paralysed Frenchman died in consequence of having been
ducked as a wizard at Castle Hedingham, in Essex, and
similar cases have since occurred; while on September 17th,
1875,--only ten years ago--an old woman named Ann Turner,
was killed as a witch, by a half-insane man, at Long
Compton, Warwickshire.

IN SCOTLAND, thousands of persons were burnt for
witchcraft within a period of about a hundred years, in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among the victims were
persons of the highest rank, while all orders of the state
concurred. James I. even caused a whole assize to be
prosecuted because of an acquittal; the king published his
work on _Dæmonologie_, in Edinburgh, in 1597; the last
sufferer for witchcraft in Scotland was at Dornoch, in 1722.