The persecutions attendant upon witchcraft are chargeable to no one division of the Church more than to another, for Protestant as well as Catholic, Puritan as well as Prelatist, felt that in this work he was fulfilling the will of God and safeguarding society. King James I., in his _Demonology_, asks: "What can be the cause that there are twentie women given to that craft where there is only one man?" He gives as his reason for the disparity in numbers the greater frailty of women, which he easily and satisfactorily proves by reference to the fall of Eve, as marking the beginning of Satan's dominance of the sex.
In entering upon a crusade of persecution of witches, the Puritans were in harmony with the enactments of the sovereigns before the Commonwealth, and were in conformity with the temper of the times and the universally prevailing belief of the country. The austerity they assumed toward the sex in general made it easy for them to believe that particular characters, given over to vagabondage, were by reason of their moral turpitude especial subjects of Satan for the temptation of men. With them, the persecution of witches was not solely a matter of superstition, but of public morals as well. They were often actuated by a sincere desire to raise the standard of morality, and to preserve order and decency. That the women rather than the men should have suffered for evil courses was due, of course, to the conception that moral reprobation is to be visited upon the weaker sex.
In the second half of the seventeenth century the witchcraft superstition became a veritable epidemic, and persecution broke out in different sections of the country. Hardly had the stories of the execution of witches in one place ceased to be a nine days' wonder, when the tongues of the people were busy with stories of similar occurrences somewhere else. An angry sailor threw a stone at a boy; and the boy's mother roundly cursed the assailant of her offspring, and added the hope that his fingers would rot off. When, two years later, something of the sort actually did happen, her imprecation was remembered against her, and there was also brought to light the fact that a neighbor with whom she was at odds had been seized with severe pains and felt her bed rocking up and down. The evidence was conclusive, the woman must be a witch; such was the verdict, and death was her sentence. Two women who lived alone, and, probably partly because of their solitary existence, had developed irascible tempers and demeanors which enlisted the hearty dislike of the inhabitants of the fishing hamlet near by, were subjected to the petty persecutions in which children instigated by their parents are such adepts; finding existence too miserable to care very much for their reputations, they endangered their security by their attitude toward their tormentors. At last, nobody would even sell them fish, and their cursing and prophecies of evil for their enemies became increasingly violent. In the order of nature, some children were seized with fits, and, under the inspiration of their elders, declared that they saw the two women coming to torment them. After being eight years under accusation, the women were brought to trial, and Sir Matthew Hale, the presiding judge, after expressing his belief that the Scriptures proved the reality of witchcraft, decided against the unhappy women and condemned them to be hanged. This occurred in 1664, and constituted the celebrated witch trial of Bury St. Edmunds.