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6,852 published records with substantive text · Page 12 of 143
"In old time of the King Artour, Of which that Bretons speken great honour, All was this land fulfilled of faerie; The Elf queen, with her joly company, Danced full oft in many a grene mead
Read record →"As in a conjuror's circle--William found A mean for our deliverance,--'Turn your cloaks,' Quoth he, 'for Puck is busy in these oaks; If ever you at Bosworth would be found, Then turn your cloaks, for this is fairy ground.' But ere this witchcraft was performe
Read record →In this passage the bishop plainly shows the fairies maintained their influence in William's imagination, since the courteous keeper was mistaken by their associate champion for Puck or Robin Goodfellow
Read record →n his mouth, and a tail at his breech; eyes like a basin, fangs like a dog, claws like a bear, a skin like a negro, and a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry, Boh!
Read record →Before leaving the subject of fairy superstition in England we may remark that it was of a more playful and gentle, less wild and necromantic character, than that received among the sister people
Read record →The constant attendant upon the English Fairy court was the celebrated Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, who to the elves acted in some measure as the jester or clown of the company--(a character then to be found in the establishment of every person of quality)--or t
Read record →"Know ye this, by the way, that heretofore Robin Goodfellow and Hobgoblin were as terrible, and also as credible, to the people as hags and witches be now; and in time to come a witch will be as much derided and condemned, and as clearly perceived, as the illu
Read record →We are then to take leave of this fascinating article of the popular creed, having in it so much of interest to the imagination that we almost envy the credulity of those who, in the gentle moonlight of a summer night in England, amid the tangled glades of a d
Read record →With the fairy popular creed fell, doubtless, many subordinate articles of credulity in England, but the belief in witches kept its ground
Read record →In short, the spirit of the age was little disposed to spare error, however venerable, or countenance imposture, however sanctioned by length of time and universal acquiescence
Read record →He seems to have been a zealous Protestant, and much of his book, as well as that of Harsnet, is designed to throw upon the Papists in particular those tricks in which, by confederacy and imposture, the popular ideas concerning witchcraft, possession, and othe
Read record →To defend the popular belief of witchcraft there arose a number of advocates, of whom Bodin and some others neither wanted knowledge nor powers of reasoning
Read record →the tribe of sorcerers from punishment, by stating that he himself was a conjurer and the scholar of Cornelius Agrippa, and might therefore well desire to save the lives of those accused of the same league with Satan
Read record →It is first to be observed that Wierus, for what reason cannot well be conjectured, except to show the extent of his cabalistical knowledge, had introduced into his work against witchcraft the whole Stenographia of Trithemius, which he had copied from the orig
Read record →s substitution of mystical fancies for experimental reasoning gave, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a doubtful and twilight appearance to the various branches of physical philosophy
Read record →Penal Laws unpopular when rigidly exercised--Prosecution of Witches placed in the hand of Special Commissioners, ad inquirendum--Prosecution for Witchcraft not frequent in the Elder Period of the Roman Empire--Nor in the Middle Ages--Some Cases took place, how
Read record →Penal laws, like those of the Middle Ages, denounced against witchcraft, may be at first hailed with unanimous acquiescence and approbation, but are uniformly found to disgust and offend at least the more sensible part of the public when the punishments become
Read record →In the earlier period of the Church of Rome witchcraft is frequently alluded to, and a capital punishment assigned to those who were supposed to have accomplished by sorcery the death of others, or to have attempted, by false prophecies or otherwise, under pre
Read record →ate female fell into the hands of the English, after having, by her courage and enthusiasm manifested on many important occasions, revived the drooping courage of the French, and inspired them with the hope of once more freeing their country
Read record →The Duchess was condemned to do penance, and thereafter banished to the Isle of Man, while several of her accomplices died in prison or were executed
Read record →But in the meanwhile, as the accusation of witchcraft thus afforded to tyranny or policy the ready means of assailing persons whom it might not have been possible to convict of any other crime, the aspersion itself was gradually considered with increase of ter
Read record →The Waldenses and Albigenses were parties existing in great numbers through the south of France
Read record →"All those who have afforded us some signs of the approach of Antichrist agree that the increase of sorcery and witchcraft is to distinguish the melancholy period of his advent; and was ever age so afflicted with them as ours?
Read record →Such a person, a mere youth, was tried at Besançon, who gave himself out for a servant, or yeoman pricker, of the Lord of the Forest--so he called his superior--who was judged to be the devil
Read record →While the spirit of superstition was working such horrors in France, it was not, we may believe, more idle in other countries of Europe
Read record →Where a number of them are concerned in the same mischief, there is something resembling virtue in the fidelity with which the common secret is preserved
Read record →This additional evidence speaks for itself, and shows the whole tale to be the fiction of the children's imagination, which some of them wished to improve upon
Read record →The Effects of the Witch Superstition are to be traced in the Laws of a Kingdom--Usually punished in England as a Crime connected with Politics--Attempt at Murder for Witchcraft not in itself Capital--Trials of Persons of Rank for Witchcraft, connected with St
Read record →Our account of Demonology in England must naturally, as in every other country, depend chiefly on the instances which history contains of the laws and prosecutions against witchcraft
Read record →The existence of witchcraft was, no doubt, received and credited in England, as in the countries on the Continent, and originally punished accordingly
Read record →Two remarkable statutes were passed in the year 1541; one against false prophecies, the other against the act of conjuration, witchcraft, and sorcery, and at the same time against breaking and destroying crosses
Read record →The Church of Rome, as we have seen, was unwilling, in her period of undisputed power, to call in the secular arm to punish men for witchcraft--a crime which fell especially under ecclesiastical cognizance, and could, according to her belief, be subdued by the
Read record →It followed that, while the divines of the Church of England possessed the upper hand in the kingdom, witchcraft, though trials and even condemnations for that offence occasionally occurred, did not create that epidemic terror which the very suspicion of the o
Read record →The passing of Elizabeth's statute against witchcraft in 1562 does not seem to have been intended to increase the number of trials, or cases of conviction at least; and the fact is, it did neither the one nor the other
Read record →e snares to the priests of the Church of Rome, who, while they were too sagacious not to be aware that the pretended fits, contortions, strange sounds, and other extravagances, produced as evidence of the demon's influence on the possessed person, were nothing
Read record →The ministers of the Church of England, though, from education, intercourse with the world, and other advantages, they were less prone to prejudice than those of other sects, are yet far from being entirely free of the charge of encouraging in particular insta
Read record →But the nursery drama of Miss Throgmorton had a horrible conclusion
Read record →in the power of these malignant children, who had carried on the farce so long that they could not well escape from their own web of deceit but by the death of these helpless creatures
Read record →We may here mention, though mainly for the sake of contrast, the much-disputed case of Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkerne, as she was termed, which was of a much later date
Read record →He thus expostulates with some of the better class who were eager for the prosecution:--"(1) What single fact of sorcery did this Jane Wenham do?
Read record →This gave much wider scope to prosecution on the statute than had existed under the milder acts of Elizabeth
Read record →be a legitimate mode of proof, gave a most cruel advantage against the accused, for it could not, according to the ideas of the demonologists, be confuted even by the most distinct alibi
Read record →The report against these people is drawn up by Thomas Potts
Read record →The witness averred that Mother Dickenson offered him money to conceal what he had seen, which he refused, saying "Nay, thou art a witch." Apparently she was determined he should have full evidence of the truth of what he said, for, like the Magician Queen in
Read record →There was now approaching a time when the law against witchcraft, sufficiently bloody in itself, was to be pushed to more violent extremities than the quiet scepticism of the Church of England clergy gave way to
Read record →"The hanging of a great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known
Read record →A monster like Hopkins could only have existed during the confusion of civil dissension
Read record →Gaul describes the tortures employed by this fellow as equal to any practised in the Inquisition
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