was a great deal of Pity that they did not think of the Experiment sooner.”
This story is supposed to be supported by Butler’s famous lines in Hudibras, Part II, Canto iii:
“Has not this present Parliament
A Legar to the Devil sent,
Fully empower’d to treat about
Finding revolted Witches out:
And has not he, within a year,
Hang’d threescore of them in one Shire?
Some only for not being drown’d,
And some for sitting above ground,
Whole days and nights upon their breeches,
And feeling pain, were hang’d for Witches.
And some for putting Knavish tricks
Upon Green-Geese and Turkey Chicks,
Or Pigs, that suddenly deceast,
Of griefs unnat’ral, as he guest;
Who after prov’d himself a Witch,
And made a Rod for his own breech.”
Upon this there is a note: “The Witchfinder in Suffolk, who in the Presbyterian times had a commission to discover Witches, of whom (right or wrong) he caus’d sixty to be hang’d within the compass of one year, and among the rest an old Minister, who had been a painful Preacher for many years.”
Butler’s allusion, however, does not convey anything more than that Hopkins fell from his high estate, and died in obscurity, leaving a name loathed and reprobated throughout East Anglia and indeed all England. It is cer-
