These instances serve to illustrate the fate of a vast number of hapless women during the seventeenth century; it is said that during the sittings of the Long Parliament alone, as many as three thousand persons were executed on charges of witchcraft. Besides these unhappy wretches, a great many more suffered the terrible fate of mob violence. The frenzied populace were often too impatient to await legal procedure, and stoned the miserable women to death. In the minds of the great majority of the people, such women were not human beings at all, and so there was no cruelty in treating them with the greatest violence possible. Indeed, such earnestness of purpose against the adversaries of God could but redound, they thought, to their eternal advantage. After all, was it not a devil, who for the time being assumed human form, that they were treating with such violence? to-morrow, the same demon might be found in a dog or in some other animal, or perhaps afflicting with cholera the swine of some peasant, to his severe loss. A description of a witch in the first half of the seventeenth century says: "The devil's otter-hound, living both on land and sea, and doing mischief in either; she kills more beasts than a licensed butcher in Lent, yet is ne'er the fatter; she's but a dry nurse in the flesh, yet gives such to the spirit. A witch rides many times post on hellish business, yet if a ladder do but stop her, she will be hanged ere she goes any further." The penal statutes against witchcraft were not formally repealed until 1751, when there was closed for England one of the saddest chapters in the history of human mistakes. The last judicial executions for witchcraft in England were in 1716.
In pleasing contrast to the unhappy creatures who were the victims of fanatical persecutions during the Commonwealth period--the women executed for witchcraft--stand the noble women who were developed by the stern conditions of the Civil War--the heroines of internecine strife. The domestic incidents of the Civil War form an interesting commentary upon the character of the English woman, as they reveal her in brave defence of castle or homestead, patient in hardship, courageous in danger, and fertile in resources to avert misfortune. Every important family was ranged on one side or the other, and the line of division often passed through households. To all other issues which aroused human passion, or touched the springs of human character and brought forth the reserve heroism of human life, was added that issue which stirs deepest the human heart,--the issue of religion. The contest was not merely between king and people: it was a contest as well between the people themselves as to the form of religion they desired as the expression of their faith.