Note 75 — II. THE WITCHES.

It will be remembered, that much against the will of the Puritan leaders, they had been compelled by the royal authority to allow the use of the service of the Church of England, which they and their friends in England had fancied some years before that they had destroyed. For a similar instance of combined bigotry and superstition, cf. Winthrop’s history of the mice and the Prayer Books. Hist. of New England, ii. 20.