Whole days and nights, upon their breeches,
And feeling pain, were hanged for witches;
And some for putting knavish tricks
Upon green geese and turkey-chicks,
Or pigs, that suddenly deceased
Of griefs unnatural, as he guessed;
Who after proved himself a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech.*
Did not the devil appear to Martin
Luther in Germany for certain?

of a room with her legs tied across, so that, incapable of motion, and with her whole weight resting in a perpendicular position, the circulation of the blood would become impeded, and considerable pain and suffering would ensue. In this attitude she was kept, to make her confess, without food or sleep, for four-and-twenty hours.

* The whole of the preceding passage refers to Mathew Hopkins, the witch-finder, who in 1644, and the two following years, brought some hundreds of poor wretches to the gallows, and was highly rewarded by the parliament for his services. He was regularly appointed to the function, and took the style and title of witch-findergeneral. In one year, alluded to in the text, he hanged threescore witches in the county of Suffolk alone. Hopkins published a pamphlet with the following title, which fully explains its contents, and the official quality of the writer: The Discovery of Witches, in answer to several queries lately delivered to the Judges of Assize for the county of Norfolk; and now published by Mathew Hopkins, witch-finder, for the benefit of the whole kingdom. 1647. In this treatise he shows how he obtained his experience and knowledge of witches in the Hundred of Essex, where he lived; how he came to know the marks by which witches were to be detected; and what trials and tests he put them to, &c. So great was the consternation he produced amongst the old women, that numbers of them came from great distances voluntarily to be examined, hoping by thus demonstrating their innocence to escape condemnation; with what result may be seen from the following passage. The devil's policy is great,' says he, in persuading many of them to come of their own accord to be tried, persuading them their marks are so close they shall not be found out, so as divers have come ten or twelve miles to be searched, of their own accord, and hanged for their labour.' Hopkins, at last, overreached himself by these nefarious cruelties, and was at last put to the same torture himself he had so often inflicted on others. Dr. Hutchinson, referring to the above couplet of Butler's, says, 'These two verses relate to that which I have often heard, that Hopkins went on searching and swimming the poor creatures, till some gentlemen, out of indignation at the barbarity, took him and tied his own thumbs and toes, as he used to tie others; and when he was put into the water, he himself swam as they did. This cleared the country of him.'-Historical Essay.

And would have gulled him with a trick,
But Mart. was too, too politic.*

Did he not help the Dutch to purge,
At Antwerp, their cathedral church?†
Sing catches to the saints at Mascon,
And tell them all they came to ask him?‡
Appear in divers shapes to Kelly,§

And speak i' th' Nun of Loudun's belly?||

* Luther himself records his disputations with the devil, in his book de Missá privatá.

† Strada says that when the common people of Antwerp broke open the Cathedral during a tumult, in the beginning of the Civil War, there were several devils very busy amongst them helping them to destroy the shrines and images.

The exploits of the devil in the house of M. Perreaud, a minister of the reformed church at Mascon, in Burgundy, were related in a tract written by M. Perreaud at the time of the alleged occurrence, 1612, but not published for fifty-one years afterwards. The tract was translated into English by Peter de Moulin. The conduct of the devil on this occasion appears to have been marked by a deviation from the practices usually ascribed to him: for, in addition to snatches of impious and licentious verse, he sometimes indulged his hearers by singing psalms. Ralph calls M. Perreaud's people by the contemptuous epithet of Saints, because they belonged to the Geneva sect.

§ Edward Kelly was born at Worcester about 1555, and bred an apothecary. He was the associate and assistant of the famous Dr. Dee, who entertained so high an opinion of his skill in chemistry that he appointed him his seer or speculator. Kelly's duties in this capacity seem to have consisted in keeping a record of the revelations made by the angels or demons that appeared in the speculum. It was said that he raised a dead body in Lancaster, for which he lost his ears. He advocated the doctrine of a plurality of wives, which he pretended he had been enjoined to observe by a communication from the angels. Kelly went into Poland with Dr. Dee, from thence to Germany, where he was knighted by the emperor. He was afterwards imprisoned for a cheat, and died from the effects of a fall in making his escape.

The Histoire des Diables de Loudun was published at Amsterdam in 1693, many years after the circumstances it relates took place. Urban Grandier, curate and canon of Loudun, a man of handsome person and great eloquence, incurred the enmity of the monks by his popularity amongst women, and his alleged opposition to the celibacy of the priesthood. He was charged with licentious conduct in the church of which he was curate, but he carried the case before the president of Poitiers, and was finally acquitted. Not long after, some Ursuline nuns of Loudun were reported to be possessed of devils, and Grandier's enemies accused him of being the author of the 'possession'—that is, of

Meet with the parliament's committee,
At Woodstock, on a personal treaty ?*
At Sarum take a cavalier,

I' th' cause's service, prisoner?
As Withers, in immortal rhyme,
Has registered to after-time.t
Do not our great reformers use
This Sidrophel to forbode news;‡

having used witchcraft with the sisterhood. In order to make sure of their victim, they influenced Cardinal Richelieu against him by denouncing him as the author of a certain satire upon the Cardinal's person and family. Grandier was immediately arrested. The trial took place in August, 1634. The devils were interrogated in the persons of the nuns, and upon this evidence Grandier was convicted of magic and witchcraft, and sentenced to be burned alive, and his ashes to be thrown up into the air. He is said to have met his fate with fortitude. *A circumstantial narrative of the annoyances inflicted upon a Parliamentary Committee sitting at Woodstock in 1649 by the visitations of the devil, or some of his imps, is given by Dr. Plot, in his Nat. History of Oxfordshire. Sir Walter Scott has made a free use of the details in his romance of Woodstock. The commissioners were sent to Woodstock to value the palace and demesne soon after the execution of Charles I.; but had scarcely taken up their residence in the king's apartments when they were thrown into consternation by a series of inexplicable disturbances. The furniture of the rooms seemed to be suddenly inspired with vitality, the beds were lifted, the provisions scattered about, and the commissioners pelted with billets, and drenched with pails of dirty water. At last, this unaccountable persecution became so alarming, in spite of the psalms and prayers resorted to in the hope of laying the evil spirit, that the commissioners were compelled to make their escape, and leave Satan in possession of the premises. It was afterwards discovered that the whole affair was contrived by the Secretary of the Committee, with the aid of his fellowservants, to drive the inquisitors from the royal mansion. Ralph says that the commissioners met the devil at Woodstock on a personal treaty a sly inuendo against the parliament, who refused to enter into a personal treaty with the king.

† Referring to a doggrel ballad by Withers on a cavalier, who, being taken prisoner at Salisbury, and drinking the health of the devil on his knees, was carried off in a remarkable manner through a pane of glass.

The enumeration which follows of the astrological services rendered to the parliament by Lilly is borne out by the account he gives of himself in his autobiography. When the army was quartered at Windsor he was sent for, and feasted in a garden by General Fairfax; and when the king went unto the Scots' in 1646, his judgment was desired as to how his Majesty might be taken. He was sent for also at the

To write of victories next year,*
And castles taken, yet i' th' air?
Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk, two years hence? the last eclipse?
A total o'erthrow given the king+
In Cornwall, horse and foot, next spring?
And has not he point-blank foretold
Whats'e'er the close committee would?
Made Mars and Saturn for the cause,
The moon for fundamental laws?
The Ram, the Bull, and Goat, declare
Against the Book of Common-Prayer?
The Scorpion take the protestation,
And Bear engage for reformation?
Made all the royal stars recant,
Compound, and take the covenant?'

siege of Colchester; and he tells us that the Council of State gave him, on another occasion, £50, and settled a pension on him of £100 a year, which he enjoyed for two years. There are numerous similar instances; and it appears that on several emergencies he was consulted by the Royal party, to whose interests, notwithstanding his connexion with the parliament, he seems to have been secretly attached. He confesses as much up to a certain period. Till the year 1645,' he says, 'I was more Cavalier than Roundhead, and so taken notice of; but after that, I engaged body and soul in the cause of the Parliament.' Notwithstanding this, he received fees from the agents of the king afterwards, advised as to where his Majesty might most effectually lie concealed, and entered into a plan for his escape from Carisbrook Castle. The truth is that Lilly was a professional impostor, ready to serve any person, party, or sect that was able to pay him.

*In Oliver Cromwell's Protectorship, I wrote freely and satirical enough; he was now become Independent, and all the soldiery my friends; for when he was in Scotland, the day of one of their fights, a soldier stood with Anglicus in his hand; and as the several troops passed by him, 'Lo, hear what Lilly saith; you are in this month promised victory, fight it out, brave boys! and then read that month's prediction.''-LILLY'S Life.

† Amongst the instances mentioned of his success in prognosticating victories, Lilly particularly specifies his prophecy concerning the battle of Naseby: I therein made use of the king's nativity, and finding that his ascendant was approaching to the quadrature of Mars, about June, 1645, I gave this unlucky judgment: If now we fight, a victory stealeth upon us;' and so it did in June, 1645, at Naseby, the most fatal overthrow he ever had.'-Life.

Warburton suggests that this passage is a hidden satire, and that

Quoth Hudibras, 'The case is clear
The saints may employ a conjurer,
As thou hast proved it by their practice;
No argument like matter of fact is:
And we are best of all led to
Men's principles, by what they do.
Then let us straight advance in quest
Of this profound gymnosophist,*
And as the fates and he advise,
Pursue, or waive this enterprise.'

This said, he turned about his steed,
And eftsoons on th' adventure rid;
Where leave we him and Ralph a while,
And to the Conjurer turn our style,
To let our reader understand
What's useful of him before-hand.
He had been long t'wards mathematics,
Optics, philosophy, and statics,
Magic, horoscopy, astrology,
And was old dog at physiology;
But as a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
His own weight brings him down again,
And still he's in the self-same place
Where at his setting out he was;t

by the several planets and signs here recapitulated are meant the several leaders who took the covenant, as Essex and Fairfax, indicated by Mars and Saturn, &c. The 'royal stars,' he thinks, allude to Charles, Elector-Palatine, and Charles II., who both took the Covenant.

*The gymnosophists, a sect of Indian philosophers, derived their name from their usage of going with naked feet, and very little clothing. They lived in woods and remote places, subsisted upon roots and herbs, abjured wine, and never married. They believed in the immortality and transmigration of the soul, and placed their chief happiness in abstinence and a contempt of the goods of fortune.