Skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to
light. A Dr. Fian, while his legs were crushed in the "boots"
and wedges were driven under his finger nails, confessed that
several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from the port of
Leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the princess.
With the coming in of the Puritans the persecution was even more
largely, systematically, and cruelly developed. The great
witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins, having gone through the county of
Suffolk and tested multitudes of poor old women by piercing them
with pins and needles, declared that county to be infested with
witches. Thereupon Parliament issued a commission, and sent two
eminent Presbyterian divines to accompany it, with the result
that in that county alone sixty persons were hanged for
witchcraft in a single year. In Scotland matters were even
worse. The _auto da fe_ of Spain was celebrated in Scotland under
another name, and with Presbyterian ministers instead of Roman
Catholic priests as the main attendants.
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