According to some critics of the British government, we do not treat
the Egyptians well. But our conduct towards the Fellahs has
certainly improved since this entry was made in the register of St.
Nicholas, Durham (1592, August 8th): 'Simson, Arington,
Featherston, Fenwick, and Lancaster, WERE HANGED FOR BEING
EGYPTIANS.' They were, in fact, gypsies, or had been consorting
with gypsies, and they suffered under 5 Eliz. c. 20. In 1783 this
statute was abolished, and was even considered "a law of excessive
severity." For even a hundred years ago "the puling cant of sickly
humanitarianism" was making itself heard to the injury of our sturdy
old English legislation. To be killed by a poet is now an unusual
fate, but the St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentions
how "Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried." Gabriel was
"slayne" by Rare Ben Jonson, in Hoxton Fields.

The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in parish
registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner. On
August 21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for the
imaginary crime of witchcraft. "A grave, for a witch, sixpence," is
an item in the municipal accounts. And the grave was a cheap haven
for the poor woman who had been committed to the tender mercies of a
Scotch witch-trier. Cetewayo's medicine-men, who "smelt out"
witches, were only some two centuries in the rear of our
civilisation. Three hundred years ago Bishop Jewell, preaching
before Elizabeth, was quite of the mind of Cetewayo and Saul, as to
the wickedness of suffering a witch to live. As late as 1691, the
register of Holy Island, Northumberland, mentions "William Cleugh,
bewitched to death," and the superstition is almost as powerful as
ever among the rural people. Between July 13 and July 24 (1699) the
widow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch. She was not