The Book of Cats. 1 69 



The superstition continued on the increase, and 

 reached its cuhnination in the Puritanic time of 

 the Commonwealth, when persons more cunning 

 and wicked than the rest, gained a subsistence by 

 discovering witches (by pretended marks and trials 

 they used), and denouncing them to death. The 

 chief of these persons was Mathew HOPKINS, 

 Witch Finder General, as he termed himself. He 

 was a native of Manningtree, in Essex, and he 

 devoted his pretended powers so zealously in the 

 service of his country, that in 1644, sixteen witches, 

 discovered by him, were burnt at Yarmouth ; 

 fifteen were condemned at Chelmsford, and hanged 

 in that town and at Manningtree. Many more at 

 Bury St. Edmunds, in 1645 and 1646, amounting to 

 nearly forty in all at the several places of execu- 

 tion, and as many more in the country as made 

 up threescore. 



In this work he was aided by one John Stern, 

 and a woman, who with the rest, pretended to 

 have secret means of testing witchcraft ; nor was 

 their zeal unrewarded by the weak and super- 

 stitious parliament. Mr. Hopkins, in a book 

 published in 1647, owns that he had twenty shil- 

 lings for each town he visited to discover witches, 

 and owns that he punished many : testing them 



