There were also executions for sorcery at
Seville, in Spain, in 1781, and at Glarus, in Switzerland,
in 1783; while even as late as December 15th, 1802, five
women were condemned to death for sorcery at Patna, in the
Bengal Presidency, by the Brahmins, and were all executed.
IN ENGLAND the record of Witchcraft is also a
melancholy chapter. A statute was enacted declaring all
witchcraft and sorcery to be felony without benefit of
clergy, 33 Henry VIII. 1541; and again 5 Elizabeth, 1562,
and 1 James I. 1603. The 73rd Canon of the Church, 1603,
prohibits the Clergy from casting out devils. Barrington
estimates the judicial murders for witchcraft in England,
during two hundred years, at 30,000; Matthew Hopkins, the
"witch-finder," caused the judicial murder of about one
hundred persons in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, 1645-7; Sir
Matthew Hale burnt two persons for witchcraft in 1664; about
1676 seventeen or eighteen persons were burnt as witches at
St. Osyths, in Essex; in 1705 two pretended witches were
executed at Northampton, and five others seven years
afterwards; in 1716, a Mrs.
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