When butter does refuse to come,[1]
And love proves cross and humoursome;
To him with questions, and with urine,[2]
They for discov'ry flock, or curing.
Quoth Hudibras, This Sidrophel125
I've heard of, and should like it well,
If thou canst prove the saints have freedom
To go to sorc'rers when they need 'em.
Says Ralpho, There's no doubt of that;
Those principles I've quoted late,130
Prove that the godly may allege
For anything their privilege,
And to the devil himself may go.
If they have motives thereunto:
For as there is a war between135
The devil and them, it is no sin
If they, by subtle stratagem.
Make use of him, as he does them.
Has not this present Parl'ament
A ledger to the devil sent,[3]140
Fully empower'd to treat about
Finding revolted witches out?[4]
And has not he, within a year,
Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire?[5]
- ↑ When a country wench, says Selden in his Table Talk, cannot get her butter to come, she says the witch is in the churn.
- ↑ Lilly's Autobiography abounds with illustrations of these lines; people of all ranks seem to have had faith in his diagnosis of their waters, as well as in his skill in "discovery."
- ↑ That is, an ambassador. The person meant was Hopkins, the noted witch-finder for the Associated Counties.
- ↑ That is, revolted from the Parliament.
- ↑ It is incredible what a number of poor, sick, and decrepit wretches were put to death, under the pretence of their being witches. Hopkins occasioned threescore to be hung in one year, in the county of Suffolk. See Dr Hutchinson, p. 59. Grey says, he has seen an account of between three and four thousand that suffered in the king's dominions, from the year 1640 to the king's restoration. "In December, 1649," says Whitelock, "many witches were apprehended. The witch-trier taking a pin, and thrusting it into the skin in many parts of their bodies; if they were insensible of it, it was a circumstance of proof against them. October, 1652, sixty were accused: much malice, little proof; though they were tortured many ways to make them confess."
