After the execution of the Samuels family known as the Witches of Warboys on charges of witchcraft in 1593, Sir Henry Cromwell (grandfather of Oliver Cromwell) used their confiscated property to fund an annual sermon against witchcraft to be given in Huntingdon (Cambridgeshire) by a divinity scholar from Queens' College, Cambridge. Although beliefs about witchery had changed by the eighteenth century, the tradition persisted. Martin J. Naylor (c. 1762 1843), a Fellow of Queens' College and the holder of incumbencies in Yorkshire, gave four of the sermons, on 25 March each year from 1792 to...