Discovery of Witches | Page 6

him up as Wierus had been represented
before him, as if he were as deeply dipped in diabolical practises as any
of those whom he defended. Atheist and Sadducee, if not very wizard
himself, were the terms in which his name was generally mentioned,
and as such, the royal author of the Demonology anathematizes him
with great unction and very edifying horror. Against the papists, the
satire of Scot had been almost as much directed as against what he calls
the "witch-mongers," so that that very powerful party were to a man
opposed to him. Vigorous, therefore, as was his onslaught, its effect
soon passed by; and when on the accession of James, the statute which
so long disgraced our penal code was enacted, as the adulatory tribute
of all parties, against which no honest voice was raised, to the known
opinions of the monarch, Scot became too unfashionable to be seen on
the tables of the great or in the libraries of the learned. If he were
noticed, it was only to be traduced as a sciolist, (imperitus dialecticæ et
aliarum bonarum artium, says Dr. Reynolds,) and to be exposed for
imagined lapses in scholarship in an age when for a writer not to be a
scholar, was like a traveller journeying without a passport. Meric
Casaubon, who carried all the prejudices of the time of James the first
into the reign of Charles the second, but who, though overshadowed by
the fame of his father, was no unworthy scion of that incomparable
stock, at the same time that he denounces Scot as illiterate, will only
acknowledge to having met with him "at friends houses" and
"booksellers shops," as if his work were one which would bring
contamination to a scholar's library. Scot was certainly not a scholar in

the sense in which the term is applied to the Scaligers, Casaubons, and
Vossius's, though he would have been considered a prodigy of reading
in these days of superficial acquisition. But he had original gifts far
transcending scholarship. He had a manly, straightforward, vigorous
understanding, which, united with an honest integrity of purpose, kept
him right when greater men went wrong. How invaluable a phalanx
would the battalion of folios which the reign of James the first
produced now afford us, if the admirable mother-wit and single-minded
sincerity of Reginald Scot could only have vivified and informed
them.[19]
[Footnote 18: In the epistle to his kinsman Sir Thomas Scot, prefixed to
his Discoverie, he observes:--
"I see among other malefactors manie poore old women conuented
before you for working of miracles, other wise called witchcraft, and
therefore I thought you also a meet person to whom I might commend
my booke."--And he then proceeds, in the following spirited and gallant
strain, to run his course against the Dagon of popular superstition:--
"I therefore (at this time) doo onelie desire you to consider of my report,
concerning the euidence that is commonlie brought before you against
them. See first whether the euidence be not friuolous, & whether the
proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting of ghesses,
presumptions, & impossibilities contrarie to reason, scripture, and
nature. See also what persons complaine vpon them, whether they be
not of the basest, the vnwisest, & most faithles kind of people. Also
may it please you to waie what accusations and crimes they laie to their
charge, namelie: She was at my house of late, she would haue had a pot
of milke, she departed in a chafe bicause she had it not, she railed, she
curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and finallie she said she would
be euen with me: and soone after my child, my cow, my sow, or my
pullet died, or was strangelie taken. Naie (if it please your Worship) I
haue further proofe: I was with a wise woman, and she told me I had an
ill neighbour, & that she would come to my house yer it were long, and
so did she; and that she had a marke aboue hir waste, & so had she: and
God forgiue me, my stomach hath gone against hir a great while. Hir

mother before hir was counted a witch, she hath beene beaten and
scratched by the face till bloud was drawne vpon hir, bicause she hath
beene suspected, & afterwards some of those persons were said to
amend. These are the certeinties that I heare in their euidences.
"_Note also how easilie they may be brought to confesse that which
they neuer did, nor lieth in the power of man to doo_: and then see
whether I haue cause to write as I doo. Further, if you shall see that
infidelitie, poperie, and manie other manifest heresies be backed and
shouldered, and their professors animated and hartened, by yeelding to